Fic: Love Belongs to All in Deed and Name, 2/?
Title: Love Belongs to All in Deed and Name, 2/?
Author: knittycat99
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Genre: Romance/Angst
Rating: R for language, boy on boy action, and Blaine's dad being a jerk
Spoilers: my take on canon through 3.05
Summary: Blaine keeps himself pretty well hidden, until he meets a stranger at school
Author's Note: I've tinkered a little with Blaine's reasons for transferring to McKinley. And I'm keeping him in the same grade as Kurt because, really? I just don't buy that they're a year apart.
Word Count: 4,537
Summer stretched, warm and languid and full of empty hours, in front of Blaine and his heart. He’d thought it was going to beat out of his chest that morning in the Lima Bean on Kurt’s last day of school, when he’d looked across the table and lifted his filter for the last time and told Kurt he loved him.
And then it nearly stopped beating when Kurt swallowed coffee past his surprise and said it back.
Some days, Blaine still didn’t understand what was lovable about him, and he told Kurt as much one morning as they shared bagels in the park before Blaine had to go down to Six Flags for rehearsal and Kurt had to go to the garage.
“That’s what summer will be,” Kurt smiled at him, a smear of strawberry cream cheese at the corner of his lip. He smiled at Blaine gently, but with nothing but kindness. “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.” He rubbed his thumb over the back of Blaine’s hand, and Blaine thought about what it might be like next year, graduation at their heels and their whole lives out there for the taking.
“Teach me,” Blaine said, resting his head on Kurt’s shoulder and sipping at his coffee for the last brief moments before he had to leave.
“As you wish,” Kurt murmured, kissing his hair.
**
It had seemed so easy in Kurt’s head when he mentioned it in June, but by July he knew that the task of repairing Blaine’s self-esteem was going to be nothing but difficult.
He had been chewing on something Blaine had mentioned to him the night before, when they were sitting together on the porch swing watching the fireflies in the grass, and was still wrapped up in it when he walked blindly into his dad at the Mr. Coffee in the garage office.
“What’s up, kiddo?”
“Hm?” Kurt looked up from his daze, watched his dad fill his mug half with regular coffee before topping it off with decaf, and didn’t blink.
“You’ve been distracted all morning. Things okay with you and Blaine?”
“Oh. Yeah. We’re good.” And Kurt meant it, because he knew that he and Blaine were as solid as Mike and Tina right now, he just didn’t know if Blaine was solid. He leaned back against the counter and waited while his dad poured milk into his coffee. “Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Has Blaine ever- do you- has he ever mentioned his parents to you?” Kurt knew there were times when he wasn’t around and Blaine would hang out with his dad and Finn, and he was sure there were conversations he hadn’t been privy to.
His dad ran a hand over the bill of his ballcap. “Just once. Something about rebuilding a car. Why? Something wrong at his house?”
Kurt wasn’t sure if there was any kind of difference between wrong and just not right, so he shook his head. “I don’t think so. I just- I think Blaine’s dad . . . maybe doesn’t always like a lot of things about Blaine.”
“His being gay.”
Kurt nodded at his dad’s flat tone, but went on. “Yes, but that’s not all. His grades, his activities. Me, even before we were dating, back when we were just friends.”
His dad waved a hand in the air and fixed him with a stare. “You guys, you’ve never been just friends, it just took you forever to figure it out. But go on.”
“Blaine just doesn’t have the kind of love and support from his parents that I have from you. And he doesn’t always think very much of himself.” Kurt wanted to tell his dad everything, all the little comments Blaine would tell him in their quiet evening hours together, between kisses and strong hands on night-cooled skin, but they were Blaine’s longest-kept secrets and hardest admissions.
“Mmm. But you’ve known this awhile, yeah?” At Kurt’s affirmative nod, his dad kept on. “So what’s got your goat this morning?”
“They had another fight yesterday.”
“They fight a lot?”
“Um. It’s been worse, since the spring.” Since Blaine and I started dating, Kurt thought, but couldn’t admit out loud.
“OK. So. Are you you just going to tell me or do I need to pull every word from you? Because I saved a timing belt for you, but if you take too long with all this stuff, I might need to hand it off to Benny or Hal.”
Damn. Kurt loved timing belts. Anything to do with engines, really, because they were like puzzles. He took a sip of coffee and a deep breath, thought about Blaine crying softly into the phone and the way he’d felt so helpless in his comfortable, accepting house. “His dad . . . he told Blaine he’d never been the kind of boy who would make a father proud, but he wished that Blaine would at least try.” He felt tears pricking the corners of his eyes. “What kind of a parent would think that about their child, let alone actually say it to their face?”
The tears were falling in earnest then, hot and salty on Kurt’s cheeks, and his dad was holding him tight in his arms. Kurt secretly loved that his dad was free with his affections; usually a heavy hand on his shoulder was all he needed, but sometimes the best thing in the world was the scratchy poly-blend of his dad’s coverall under his cheek and the comforting smell of Old Spice mixed with engine oil. All of it made Kurt feel safe, and it was even better when he hadn’t known he needed it.
He let his dad hold him a few seconds longer than normal, then pulled away and wiped his face on one of the bandanas he kept in his pockets for clean-up while he was working. “I just- I wish there was something I could do to help, you know?”
“Kurt. It’s not your job to fix Blaine, or Blaine’s relationship with his father.”
“But- I told him I’d help.”
His dad smiled at him, the real kind that crinkled his eyes and lit up his face. “You do, kiddo. I can tell. Just- don’t worry on it so much, and keep doing whatever you’ve been doing. You can’t fix what happens in that house, but you can give Blaine what he needs outside of his house. Just, keep being you, okay? You’re what Blaine needs.”
“Okay.” Kurt felt a little coil of tension settle in his stomach, a little nagging question in his head whispering what if you’re not enough? “What if I’m not enough?”
“Oh, kiddo. You don’t have to be his everything. You just have to be something. You have to be yourself. And if it feels like too much, for God’s sake talk to me, okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Now. Do you want the timing belt?”
**
“What would you think if I transferred to McKinley?” Blaine shifted onto his side and ran a hand through his hair where it was warm and a little sweat-damp from being on Kurt’s shoulder. He laid his palm flat on Kurt’s stomach to compensate for the sudden lack of contact, and he shivered when Kurt ran a finger gently in the crook of his elbow.
“I think your father would kill me. And then you.”
“I don’t care. I can’t- God, Kurt. I don’t think I can take another year of suffocating every day.”
“But you love Dalton.” Kurt rolled onto his side so that he was facing Blaine, and he tapped a finger on the tip of Blaine’s nose. “And don’t you dare tell me that’s not true.”
Blaine shook his head. “My dad loves what Dalton makes me seem like to the world. I loved Dalton because it gave me sanctuary. But . . . I don’t think I need that anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Blaine pressed a kiss to Kurt’s forehead, “I have you. And you taught me how not to hide. I can’t do that at Dalton. I need to be someplace where I can be all of myself.”
“I- Blaine. I don’t think-” He could hear Kurt’s reticence, and he pulled back because maybe, just mayebe the idea of being in the same school again was too much for Kurt.
“I’m sorry. God, Kurt. If it’s too much, I’ll stay at Dalton. It’s not that big a deal, really.” He sat up, swung his legs over the side of Kurt’s bed and reached his feet out, searching for his flip-flops where he’d kicked them off before tumbling down into the security of Kurt’s arms.
“Blaine, wait.” Kurt’s hand was almost too hot on his shoulder. “Just- stop, will you? And let me explain?” His sigh was frustrated and a little pained, so Blaine stopped scrabbling for his shoes but he stayed turned away, facing the window with his feet braced flat on the floor. He watched the kids across the street running through the garden sprinkler in their clothes, their mom half-laughing and half-frowning at them from the porch.
“What? What is there to explain? You don’t want me at McKinley-”
“No, that’s not it at all.” Kurt’s arms tightened around him, pulled him back down on the bed so that he was wrapped up in Kurt’s body. “I would love to have you at McKinley. but I need you to understand . . . I can’t be everything for you.” Blaine felt Kurt’s head shaking lightly behind him. “I don’t even thing I can be everything for myself, most days. So just- think before you leap. If you’re going to make a big change like this, don’t do it because of me, or because of your father. Because if you don’t do this for yourself, for the right reasons, then how am I any better than your father?”
“You could never be anything like my father. But . . .” Blaine wrapped his own arms around Kurt’s where they crossed over his chest, enjoying the feeling of home that was a part of every touch he shared with Kurt. “If you want me to think longer, I will.” He smiled to himself. “I’m probably going to do it anyway, though,” he said teasingly, and jumped when Kurt used first his lips and then the gentle graze of his teeth against the side of Blaine’s neck. “You. Are. Evil.”
Blaine turned fast in Kurt’s arms, jabbing a finger into Kurt’s side just under his ribcage in the place that always made him squeal and slide away, collapsed in giggles.
But Kurt just gritted his teeth. “War!” He grunted, somehow managing the most gentle of touches at the very top of Blaine’s neck, right at his hairline. The same spot that always sent ticklish shivers through his whole body. But they didn’t feel ticklish that time. Instead, every touch, every attempt at playfulness that he and Kurt had spent so much time learning felt charged and alive with something more.
Blaine was too wrapped up in his thoughts to realize Kurt had flipped him onto his back until Kurt was pressed full and long against him, using his height advantage to basically pin Blaine to the bed.
“Oh.” Blaine opened his eyes and hardly had time to blink before Kurt’s mouth was on his, and all of it was hot and wet and a little sloppy and everything Blaine had been wanting but had been afraid to ask for because they were still so very careful around anything that might be read as sexual.
“You need to wear more tank tops,” Kurt muttered as his trailed kisses down Blaine’s neck onto his shoulder.
“You need to wear fewer clothes, period,” Blaine said, plucking his hand at the collar of the undershirt peeking out from beneath Kurt’s button-down. “And the belts. It’s August, Kurt. Stop with the- ugh.” He almost jumped in surprise when Kurt bucked his hips gently, because holy fuck they’d never done this before, and it was so not part of the plan they’d established for these things.
“Shut. Up.” Kurt dropped his forehead to Blaine’s shoulder and rolled his hips again, and oh shit, was that Kurt’s hand? Blaine could feel Kurt’s fingers brushing the waistband of his shorts, seeking button and zipper, and Blaine suddenly wanted so much, not just Kurt’s hand but his own hands, peeling away at Kurt’s clothes.
“Ungh. Too many clothes, K. Hold on,” he shifted them both onto their sides so he could help with his own shorts before tackling Kurt’s.
“Shutupshutupshutup, and just freaking touch me already.” Kurt’s touch wasn’t gentle anymore, but needy and strong and Blaine knew he needed to focus on something or he would be done for in seconds. Kurt’s fingers were long and smooth and cool against his erection, and it felt so much better than his own hand.
“Oh, God, Kurt,” he whispered into the crook of Kurt’s neck. He closed his eyes and breathed in Kurt, and the smell of cut grass from somewhere, and the fabric softener on Kurt’s sheets, and then he was able to focus on the lightness in his body, and the way his soclose orgasm was coiling in his abdomen, and then there was something else in his consciousness, something coffee and bells and-
“Boys? Is Blaine staying for-”
And Kurt was gone, shifted away, his voice high and panicked.
“Carole?”
“Oh, Kurt, I- I’m-”
Blaine had his eyes closed against the melee, but he muttered to nobody in particular, “I’m so embarrassed right now.”
Carole’s voice sounded distant and a little bit stunned and more than a little amused, and Blaine could hear her clogs clicking on the floor as she headed down the hall. “I’m going to make some lemonade and give you two a minute. Come down for cookies, too, and we can talk, okay?”
“Oh, my god!” Kurt dropped his head back to the pillow. “I’m so sorry, Blaine. I wanted- and you didn’t even-”
Blaine ran a hand over his flaming cheeks. “It’s, well. Not okay, but you know what I mean. I’ll manage. At least it wasn’t your dad?”
Kurt hummed in agreement. “Or yours,” he said with a slightly harsh laugh. “C’mon,” he tugged at the hem of Blaine’s tank top. “Let’s get put together and go have some cookies and lemonade. Like we’re six or something.”
“It’s sweet,” Blaine said, tucking himself back together and running a hand through his out-of-control summer frizz of curls. “She cares about you.”
“Sweet, I’ll give you. But the talk that’s going to follow? File it under mortifying.” Kurt shook his head mournfully. “I think we’re going to have to set some boundaries,” he said as he took Blaine’s hand and led him out of the bedroom. “Because now that we’ve tried that? I don’t know if I could stop again.” His look was only half-teasing, and Blaine completely understood.
“I don’t think I could stop again, either.” Kurt squeezed his hand and smiled at him, something intense and a little regretful in his eyes.
“Good,” Kurt said, as they navigated their way down the stairs and into the kitchen. “Just don’t tell Carole that,” he whispered in the moment before Carole turned and ushered them to the table, cold lemonage and homemade oatmeal raisin cookies. It all felt like home to Blaine, as much as Kurt did, and even though he was embarrassed it all felt real and right, and Blaine wanted to hold on to all of it.
**
“This no hands rule pretty much sucks,” Blaine muttered into the cloth of Kurt’s t-shirt as Kurt moved Blaine’s hands from his hips back up to his waist.
“Might I remind you that this was your idea? What was it you said? Oh, yes, better not to touch than be tempted.”
Blaine sat up and rested his head against the back of his seat. “I’m pretty sure that may have been the dumbest thing I’ve ever said.”
“I think you might be right about that.”
Blaine reached over the console and twined his fingers into Kurt’s. “I think I’m going to tell my dad tonight.”
“I’m pretty sure he already knows about the gay thing, baby.” Kurt’s voice was teasing.
“About transferring.” Blaine swallowed around the butterflies under his ribcage. “I need to do it, and I think sooner is better than later.”
“Are you sure about this? Because McKinley doesn’t have the reputation that Dalton does. And you know that it’s not going to be easy for you, for us, there.”
“I know,” Blaine nodded. “I’m not doing this for the easy, you know that. I just- I need this.”
Kurt squeezed his hand. “I suppose, if you can survive your father then you’ll have no trouble surviving McKinley.”
**
Blaine had expected to have to search his father out, in his study or the very off-limits master bedroom, but he pulled up in surprise when he slipped through the front door 5 minutes before his curfew to see his father, sitting stiffly in one of the living room chairs, a tumbler of iced down scotch swirling in his hand.
“Dad.” Blaine nodded, nervous and jittery in the worst way. He closed his eyes, stilled himself in the way he knew his father would like. “What are you doing up?”
“We never see you anymore. You’re always out. With that boy.” Blaine could feel his father’s scowl without even having to look.
“Kurt. His name is Kurt. And I- I-” Blaine stammered, warring over what he needed to say, and what he wanted to say. Need first, he told himself.
“You what?” his father snapped, as if he already knew what Blaine was trying to say.
Need first. “I’m transferring to McKinley.”
Blaine startled as his dad slammed his glass down on the coffee table, condensation spattering over the surface. “You are doing no such thing.”
“Yes, Dad. I am. I need this. Dalton isn’t going to give me the tools I need to make it in the world.” Steady, he could hear Kurt’s voice in his head. Courage, come back full circle.
“Dalton will give you the best education. That is the only tool you need,” his father said, conviction rich in his voice.
Blaine turned away for a moment, ran his hands through his hair in frustration. When he turned back, he could feel the flush of anger in his face. “God, Dad. You’re never going to get it, are you. The summer camps, the car, Dalton? None of it is going to make me straight. None of it is going to make me into the person you want, the son you want. Why can’t you see me?”
His dad shook his head, frowning at his shoes. “All I see is a child who doesn’t appreciate all the advantages he’s been given, who doesn’t respect his family and his community. I see a spoiled, over-indulged brat.”
Blaine planted his hands on the back of the sofa and stared at his father. “You have no fucking clue, Dad. I never asked for any of those things. All they taught me was that I wasn’t enough for you. Not enough of a man, not the right kind of son. And I never will be, will I?”
“You’re my son. I love you.” It was obligation, and Blaine knew it. He shook his head, because his father clearly didn’t.
“No. You don’t.” Blaine could feel tears welling up in his eyes. “You tolerate the idea of me, but nothing I do, nothing I become, will ever be what you want. Because I’m not perfect, Dad. I’m a broken mess, and I need Kurt and McKinley so that I can learn to put myself back together again.”
“You’re not going to that school with that boy. I won’t allow it.” His father turned on him then, face stony and voice cold.
Blaine closed his eyes, gathering his strength for the next part of the battle, when he felt movement behind him and a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“I will.” His mother’s voice was steel. “I’ll sign whatever you need, baby.”
The endearment that from Kurt sent shivers down his spine had an entirely different effect from his mother’s mouth. He hadn’t heard her say it since he was a sad little boy, six years old and upset from facing down his first schoolyard bully. The unusual support from his mother sent him reeling, tearful and broken, into her arms.
**
When Blaine was a little boy, he had been Catherine’s. She had loved those days, when Kent was doing his surgical residency and it was just her and her baby boy. Those lazy years of Blaine’s early childhood were a bright haziness in her memory, walks to the park and sandcastles and swings, snuggles and Blaine’s upstretched arms and his smile, and his funny little way of signing and talking. “Mease, Mommy, mease!” for “more, please,” chubby hand smearing strawberry juice in a circle on the front of his t-shirt and Catherine would just smile and scoop him up for berry-sticky kisses before stripping him out of his dirty clothes and letting him run through the apartment in his diaper.
When he hit elementary school, he was hers until the day an older 3rd grade boy called him a sissy, a Mama’s Boy. Blaine had come home, backpack dangling from his scrawny shoulder, and climbed up into her lap at the table for the last time. He was still baby-fat in his hands and cheeks, and he curled into her and cried into her shirt before swiping at his cheeks with his fists and straightening up. “Don’t tell Daddy,” he’d asked in a whisper.
“I won’t, baby,” she promised, her heart breaking.
“I need to be a big boy now,” he nodded, and thumped up the stairs to his room, backpack banging on the stairs behind him.
After that, it wasn’t so much that he was Kent’s boy, because he wasn’t in the least. It was just that he was absent from her in a way that made her heart ache to have her little boy back.
Watching him learn to hide almost broke her. At first it was small things, things that garnered the faintest of Kent’s praise, a perfect spelling test or doing chores without being asked. As he got older, bigger things started to pile up. Soccer and lacrosse instead of band and drama. Not putting up a fight over that summer camp in Maine when what he’d really wanted to do was the rec center musical theater intensive.
And then something shifted. Catherine felt it sweep through the house those first weeks of Blaine’s freshman year, saw it in the way her boy went tense and silent and more withdrawn than normal, and she didn’t have to wonder about it at all. Blaine was her son, her baby, and she just knew. She didn’t blink when he’d blurted his secret to her and Kent over dinner one Friday night, casually spooning peas onto his plate in one breath and in the next staring at them with wavering confidence, his shaky breath a giveaway to what his words would hold.
“I’m gay,” he whispered over pot roast and potatoes, and Kent’s fork clattered to his plate. Catherine just sat and watched Kent rail over Blaine’s bowed head, because what could she do? She had known, of course, because he was her son and she knew him like her own heartbeat.
After, he sat slumped at the table in the aftermath of Kent’s oddly calm dismissal of everything Blaine had told them. Catherine cleared the plates, took Kent a scotch in his office, and returned to the kitchen where she sat with Blaine, murmured words he didn’t seem to hear, but they made her feel better. Things she hoped he’d come back to when he wasn’t shocked and hurting, the things she’d whispered to him as a toddler when he’d tumble off of everything he climbed and hurt himself. I love you, you’re my son, this changes nothing in my eyes. You are okay, you are good and strong and brave. Most of it was for Blaine, but some was for her, too, a defiance of all the things she’d become in the years since they moved from Columbus. A defiance of Kent, if she were being really honest.
She held Blaine’s hand in the emergency room when the resident put 8 stitches in his forehead and casted his broken wrist, and silently thanked a God she didn’t believe in that those bastards outside of the dance hadn’t hurt him worse.
The following week, she hemmed his uniform pants and took up the sleeves on his new Dalton blazers even though Kent said it was just as easy to send them to the tailor. But the sewing helped soothe her raw, nervous edges; she hadn’t used her machine since the lean years of Kent’s internship and residency, back when she bought Blaine’s clothes a size and season ahead, constantly taking in and letting down so he could get two years out of the same outfits. But it felt good, those hours in the attic, dust motes floating in hazy sunlight as she did something concrete to help her son.
For almost two years, she watched Blaine become a shell of himself, constantly struggling and striving to be everything that Kent would approve of, and she watched as he was broken down, smaller and smaller, time and time again. Until he came home from school on an October afternoon last year a little looser, buzzing with the kind of energy she had gotten used to seeing only when he sang.
Then there was a name, a boy, text messages and hushed phone calls and afternoon coffees. And then Catherine could see that the boy, Kurt, was a gift. A miracle worker. He was giving Catherine her son, her baby, back.
She was two chapters into the Diana Gabaldon she’d been shuffling from nightstand to desk to car to office and back again for two years when the loud disagreement started, so she’d stood at the top of the stairs listening to Blaine try, again and again and against all hope, to make Kent understand something he was never going to.
Her good, brave boy, putting himself out there for slaughter.
She took a deep breath, crossed the room. And spoke the words aloud, did the thing she should have done when Blaine was six and crying in her arms.
“I’ll sign whatever you need, baby.”
Kent glared at her in the moment before he stomped off to his office, and she was there, picking up the pieces and parts of her shattered son. She only hoped that she would be able to help him now in the ways she hadn’t been for so long.
“You’re still my good, brave boy,” she whispered into his ear, held him tight.
When his sobs shuddered to ragged breaths, he pulled away and wiped his cheeks with his hands. “Thank you, Mommy,” he whispered hoarsely, and her heart broke all over again.
Author: knittycat99
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Genre: Romance/Angst
Rating: R for language, boy on boy action, and Blaine's dad being a jerk
Spoilers: my take on canon through 3.05
Summary: Blaine keeps himself pretty well hidden, until he meets a stranger at school
Author's Note: I've tinkered a little with Blaine's reasons for transferring to McKinley. And I'm keeping him in the same grade as Kurt because, really? I just don't buy that they're a year apart.
Word Count: 4,537
Summer stretched, warm and languid and full of empty hours, in front of Blaine and his heart. He’d thought it was going to beat out of his chest that morning in the Lima Bean on Kurt’s last day of school, when he’d looked across the table and lifted his filter for the last time and told Kurt he loved him.
And then it nearly stopped beating when Kurt swallowed coffee past his surprise and said it back.
Some days, Blaine still didn’t understand what was lovable about him, and he told Kurt as much one morning as they shared bagels in the park before Blaine had to go down to Six Flags for rehearsal and Kurt had to go to the garage.
“That’s what summer will be,” Kurt smiled at him, a smear of strawberry cream cheese at the corner of his lip. He smiled at Blaine gently, but with nothing but kindness. “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.” He rubbed his thumb over the back of Blaine’s hand, and Blaine thought about what it might be like next year, graduation at their heels and their whole lives out there for the taking.
“Teach me,” Blaine said, resting his head on Kurt’s shoulder and sipping at his coffee for the last brief moments before he had to leave.
“As you wish,” Kurt murmured, kissing his hair.
**
It had seemed so easy in Kurt’s head when he mentioned it in June, but by July he knew that the task of repairing Blaine’s self-esteem was going to be nothing but difficult.
He had been chewing on something Blaine had mentioned to him the night before, when they were sitting together on the porch swing watching the fireflies in the grass, and was still wrapped up in it when he walked blindly into his dad at the Mr. Coffee in the garage office.
“What’s up, kiddo?”
“Hm?” Kurt looked up from his daze, watched his dad fill his mug half with regular coffee before topping it off with decaf, and didn’t blink.
“You’ve been distracted all morning. Things okay with you and Blaine?”
“Oh. Yeah. We’re good.” And Kurt meant it, because he knew that he and Blaine were as solid as Mike and Tina right now, he just didn’t know if Blaine was solid. He leaned back against the counter and waited while his dad poured milk into his coffee. “Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Has Blaine ever- do you- has he ever mentioned his parents to you?” Kurt knew there were times when he wasn’t around and Blaine would hang out with his dad and Finn, and he was sure there were conversations he hadn’t been privy to.
His dad ran a hand over the bill of his ballcap. “Just once. Something about rebuilding a car. Why? Something wrong at his house?”
Kurt wasn’t sure if there was any kind of difference between wrong and just not right, so he shook his head. “I don’t think so. I just- I think Blaine’s dad . . . maybe doesn’t always like a lot of things about Blaine.”
“His being gay.”
Kurt nodded at his dad’s flat tone, but went on. “Yes, but that’s not all. His grades, his activities. Me, even before we were dating, back when we were just friends.”
His dad waved a hand in the air and fixed him with a stare. “You guys, you’ve never been just friends, it just took you forever to figure it out. But go on.”
“Blaine just doesn’t have the kind of love and support from his parents that I have from you. And he doesn’t always think very much of himself.” Kurt wanted to tell his dad everything, all the little comments Blaine would tell him in their quiet evening hours together, between kisses and strong hands on night-cooled skin, but they were Blaine’s longest-kept secrets and hardest admissions.
“Mmm. But you’ve known this awhile, yeah?” At Kurt’s affirmative nod, his dad kept on. “So what’s got your goat this morning?”
“They had another fight yesterday.”
“They fight a lot?”
“Um. It’s been worse, since the spring.” Since Blaine and I started dating, Kurt thought, but couldn’t admit out loud.
“OK. So. Are you you just going to tell me or do I need to pull every word from you? Because I saved a timing belt for you, but if you take too long with all this stuff, I might need to hand it off to Benny or Hal.”
Damn. Kurt loved timing belts. Anything to do with engines, really, because they were like puzzles. He took a sip of coffee and a deep breath, thought about Blaine crying softly into the phone and the way he’d felt so helpless in his comfortable, accepting house. “His dad . . . he told Blaine he’d never been the kind of boy who would make a father proud, but he wished that Blaine would at least try.” He felt tears pricking the corners of his eyes. “What kind of a parent would think that about their child, let alone actually say it to their face?”
The tears were falling in earnest then, hot and salty on Kurt’s cheeks, and his dad was holding him tight in his arms. Kurt secretly loved that his dad was free with his affections; usually a heavy hand on his shoulder was all he needed, but sometimes the best thing in the world was the scratchy poly-blend of his dad’s coverall under his cheek and the comforting smell of Old Spice mixed with engine oil. All of it made Kurt feel safe, and it was even better when he hadn’t known he needed it.
He let his dad hold him a few seconds longer than normal, then pulled away and wiped his face on one of the bandanas he kept in his pockets for clean-up while he was working. “I just- I wish there was something I could do to help, you know?”
“Kurt. It’s not your job to fix Blaine, or Blaine’s relationship with his father.”
“But- I told him I’d help.”
His dad smiled at him, the real kind that crinkled his eyes and lit up his face. “You do, kiddo. I can tell. Just- don’t worry on it so much, and keep doing whatever you’ve been doing. You can’t fix what happens in that house, but you can give Blaine what he needs outside of his house. Just, keep being you, okay? You’re what Blaine needs.”
“Okay.” Kurt felt a little coil of tension settle in his stomach, a little nagging question in his head whispering what if you’re not enough? “What if I’m not enough?”
“Oh, kiddo. You don’t have to be his everything. You just have to be something. You have to be yourself. And if it feels like too much, for God’s sake talk to me, okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Now. Do you want the timing belt?”
**
“What would you think if I transferred to McKinley?” Blaine shifted onto his side and ran a hand through his hair where it was warm and a little sweat-damp from being on Kurt’s shoulder. He laid his palm flat on Kurt’s stomach to compensate for the sudden lack of contact, and he shivered when Kurt ran a finger gently in the crook of his elbow.
“I think your father would kill me. And then you.”
“I don’t care. I can’t- God, Kurt. I don’t think I can take another year of suffocating every day.”
“But you love Dalton.” Kurt rolled onto his side so that he was facing Blaine, and he tapped a finger on the tip of Blaine’s nose. “And don’t you dare tell me that’s not true.”
Blaine shook his head. “My dad loves what Dalton makes me seem like to the world. I loved Dalton because it gave me sanctuary. But . . . I don’t think I need that anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Blaine pressed a kiss to Kurt’s forehead, “I have you. And you taught me how not to hide. I can’t do that at Dalton. I need to be someplace where I can be all of myself.”
“I- Blaine. I don’t think-” He could hear Kurt’s reticence, and he pulled back because maybe, just mayebe the idea of being in the same school again was too much for Kurt.
“I’m sorry. God, Kurt. If it’s too much, I’ll stay at Dalton. It’s not that big a deal, really.” He sat up, swung his legs over the side of Kurt’s bed and reached his feet out, searching for his flip-flops where he’d kicked them off before tumbling down into the security of Kurt’s arms.
“Blaine, wait.” Kurt’s hand was almost too hot on his shoulder. “Just- stop, will you? And let me explain?” His sigh was frustrated and a little pained, so Blaine stopped scrabbling for his shoes but he stayed turned away, facing the window with his feet braced flat on the floor. He watched the kids across the street running through the garden sprinkler in their clothes, their mom half-laughing and half-frowning at them from the porch.
“What? What is there to explain? You don’t want me at McKinley-”
“No, that’s not it at all.” Kurt’s arms tightened around him, pulled him back down on the bed so that he was wrapped up in Kurt’s body. “I would love to have you at McKinley. but I need you to understand . . . I can’t be everything for you.” Blaine felt Kurt’s head shaking lightly behind him. “I don’t even thing I can be everything for myself, most days. So just- think before you leap. If you’re going to make a big change like this, don’t do it because of me, or because of your father. Because if you don’t do this for yourself, for the right reasons, then how am I any better than your father?”
“You could never be anything like my father. But . . .” Blaine wrapped his own arms around Kurt’s where they crossed over his chest, enjoying the feeling of home that was a part of every touch he shared with Kurt. “If you want me to think longer, I will.” He smiled to himself. “I’m probably going to do it anyway, though,” he said teasingly, and jumped when Kurt used first his lips and then the gentle graze of his teeth against the side of Blaine’s neck. “You. Are. Evil.”
Blaine turned fast in Kurt’s arms, jabbing a finger into Kurt’s side just under his ribcage in the place that always made him squeal and slide away, collapsed in giggles.
But Kurt just gritted his teeth. “War!” He grunted, somehow managing the most gentle of touches at the very top of Blaine’s neck, right at his hairline. The same spot that always sent ticklish shivers through his whole body. But they didn’t feel ticklish that time. Instead, every touch, every attempt at playfulness that he and Kurt had spent so much time learning felt charged and alive with something more.
Blaine was too wrapped up in his thoughts to realize Kurt had flipped him onto his back until Kurt was pressed full and long against him, using his height advantage to basically pin Blaine to the bed.
“Oh.” Blaine opened his eyes and hardly had time to blink before Kurt’s mouth was on his, and all of it was hot and wet and a little sloppy and everything Blaine had been wanting but had been afraid to ask for because they were still so very careful around anything that might be read as sexual.
“You need to wear more tank tops,” Kurt muttered as his trailed kisses down Blaine’s neck onto his shoulder.
“You need to wear fewer clothes, period,” Blaine said, plucking his hand at the collar of the undershirt peeking out from beneath Kurt’s button-down. “And the belts. It’s August, Kurt. Stop with the- ugh.” He almost jumped in surprise when Kurt bucked his hips gently, because holy fuck they’d never done this before, and it was so not part of the plan they’d established for these things.
“Shut. Up.” Kurt dropped his forehead to Blaine’s shoulder and rolled his hips again, and oh shit, was that Kurt’s hand? Blaine could feel Kurt’s fingers brushing the waistband of his shorts, seeking button and zipper, and Blaine suddenly wanted so much, not just Kurt’s hand but his own hands, peeling away at Kurt’s clothes.
“Ungh. Too many clothes, K. Hold on,” he shifted them both onto their sides so he could help with his own shorts before tackling Kurt’s.
“Shutupshutupshutup, and just freaking touch me already.” Kurt’s touch wasn’t gentle anymore, but needy and strong and Blaine knew he needed to focus on something or he would be done for in seconds. Kurt’s fingers were long and smooth and cool against his erection, and it felt so much better than his own hand.
“Oh, God, Kurt,” he whispered into the crook of Kurt’s neck. He closed his eyes and breathed in Kurt, and the smell of cut grass from somewhere, and the fabric softener on Kurt’s sheets, and then he was able to focus on the lightness in his body, and the way his soclose orgasm was coiling in his abdomen, and then there was something else in his consciousness, something coffee and bells and-
“Boys? Is Blaine staying for-”
And Kurt was gone, shifted away, his voice high and panicked.
“Carole?”
“Oh, Kurt, I- I’m-”
Blaine had his eyes closed against the melee, but he muttered to nobody in particular, “I’m so embarrassed right now.”
Carole’s voice sounded distant and a little bit stunned and more than a little amused, and Blaine could hear her clogs clicking on the floor as she headed down the hall. “I’m going to make some lemonade and give you two a minute. Come down for cookies, too, and we can talk, okay?”
“Oh, my god!” Kurt dropped his head back to the pillow. “I’m so sorry, Blaine. I wanted- and you didn’t even-”
Blaine ran a hand over his flaming cheeks. “It’s, well. Not okay, but you know what I mean. I’ll manage. At least it wasn’t your dad?”
Kurt hummed in agreement. “Or yours,” he said with a slightly harsh laugh. “C’mon,” he tugged at the hem of Blaine’s tank top. “Let’s get put together and go have some cookies and lemonade. Like we’re six or something.”
“It’s sweet,” Blaine said, tucking himself back together and running a hand through his out-of-control summer frizz of curls. “She cares about you.”
“Sweet, I’ll give you. But the talk that’s going to follow? File it under mortifying.” Kurt shook his head mournfully. “I think we’re going to have to set some boundaries,” he said as he took Blaine’s hand and led him out of the bedroom. “Because now that we’ve tried that? I don’t know if I could stop again.” His look was only half-teasing, and Blaine completely understood.
“I don’t think I could stop again, either.” Kurt squeezed his hand and smiled at him, something intense and a little regretful in his eyes.
“Good,” Kurt said, as they navigated their way down the stairs and into the kitchen. “Just don’t tell Carole that,” he whispered in the moment before Carole turned and ushered them to the table, cold lemonage and homemade oatmeal raisin cookies. It all felt like home to Blaine, as much as Kurt did, and even though he was embarrassed it all felt real and right, and Blaine wanted to hold on to all of it.
**
“This no hands rule pretty much sucks,” Blaine muttered into the cloth of Kurt’s t-shirt as Kurt moved Blaine’s hands from his hips back up to his waist.
“Might I remind you that this was your idea? What was it you said? Oh, yes, better not to touch than be tempted.”
Blaine sat up and rested his head against the back of his seat. “I’m pretty sure that may have been the dumbest thing I’ve ever said.”
“I think you might be right about that.”
Blaine reached over the console and twined his fingers into Kurt’s. “I think I’m going to tell my dad tonight.”
“I’m pretty sure he already knows about the gay thing, baby.” Kurt’s voice was teasing.
“About transferring.” Blaine swallowed around the butterflies under his ribcage. “I need to do it, and I think sooner is better than later.”
“Are you sure about this? Because McKinley doesn’t have the reputation that Dalton does. And you know that it’s not going to be easy for you, for us, there.”
“I know,” Blaine nodded. “I’m not doing this for the easy, you know that. I just- I need this.”
Kurt squeezed his hand. “I suppose, if you can survive your father then you’ll have no trouble surviving McKinley.”
**
Blaine had expected to have to search his father out, in his study or the very off-limits master bedroom, but he pulled up in surprise when he slipped through the front door 5 minutes before his curfew to see his father, sitting stiffly in one of the living room chairs, a tumbler of iced down scotch swirling in his hand.
“Dad.” Blaine nodded, nervous and jittery in the worst way. He closed his eyes, stilled himself in the way he knew his father would like. “What are you doing up?”
“We never see you anymore. You’re always out. With that boy.” Blaine could feel his father’s scowl without even having to look.
“Kurt. His name is Kurt. And I- I-” Blaine stammered, warring over what he needed to say, and what he wanted to say. Need first, he told himself.
“You what?” his father snapped, as if he already knew what Blaine was trying to say.
Need first. “I’m transferring to McKinley.”
Blaine startled as his dad slammed his glass down on the coffee table, condensation spattering over the surface. “You are doing no such thing.”
“Yes, Dad. I am. I need this. Dalton isn’t going to give me the tools I need to make it in the world.” Steady, he could hear Kurt’s voice in his head. Courage, come back full circle.
“Dalton will give you the best education. That is the only tool you need,” his father said, conviction rich in his voice.
Blaine turned away for a moment, ran his hands through his hair in frustration. When he turned back, he could feel the flush of anger in his face. “God, Dad. You’re never going to get it, are you. The summer camps, the car, Dalton? None of it is going to make me straight. None of it is going to make me into the person you want, the son you want. Why can’t you see me?”
His dad shook his head, frowning at his shoes. “All I see is a child who doesn’t appreciate all the advantages he’s been given, who doesn’t respect his family and his community. I see a spoiled, over-indulged brat.”
Blaine planted his hands on the back of the sofa and stared at his father. “You have no fucking clue, Dad. I never asked for any of those things. All they taught me was that I wasn’t enough for you. Not enough of a man, not the right kind of son. And I never will be, will I?”
“You’re my son. I love you.” It was obligation, and Blaine knew it. He shook his head, because his father clearly didn’t.
“No. You don’t.” Blaine could feel tears welling up in his eyes. “You tolerate the idea of me, but nothing I do, nothing I become, will ever be what you want. Because I’m not perfect, Dad. I’m a broken mess, and I need Kurt and McKinley so that I can learn to put myself back together again.”
“You’re not going to that school with that boy. I won’t allow it.” His father turned on him then, face stony and voice cold.
Blaine closed his eyes, gathering his strength for the next part of the battle, when he felt movement behind him and a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“I will.” His mother’s voice was steel. “I’ll sign whatever you need, baby.”
The endearment that from Kurt sent shivers down his spine had an entirely different effect from his mother’s mouth. He hadn’t heard her say it since he was a sad little boy, six years old and upset from facing down his first schoolyard bully. The unusual support from his mother sent him reeling, tearful and broken, into her arms.
**
When Blaine was a little boy, he had been Catherine’s. She had loved those days, when Kent was doing his surgical residency and it was just her and her baby boy. Those lazy years of Blaine’s early childhood were a bright haziness in her memory, walks to the park and sandcastles and swings, snuggles and Blaine’s upstretched arms and his smile, and his funny little way of signing and talking. “Mease, Mommy, mease!” for “more, please,” chubby hand smearing strawberry juice in a circle on the front of his t-shirt and Catherine would just smile and scoop him up for berry-sticky kisses before stripping him out of his dirty clothes and letting him run through the apartment in his diaper.
When he hit elementary school, he was hers until the day an older 3rd grade boy called him a sissy, a Mama’s Boy. Blaine had come home, backpack dangling from his scrawny shoulder, and climbed up into her lap at the table for the last time. He was still baby-fat in his hands and cheeks, and he curled into her and cried into her shirt before swiping at his cheeks with his fists and straightening up. “Don’t tell Daddy,” he’d asked in a whisper.
“I won’t, baby,” she promised, her heart breaking.
“I need to be a big boy now,” he nodded, and thumped up the stairs to his room, backpack banging on the stairs behind him.
After that, it wasn’t so much that he was Kent’s boy, because he wasn’t in the least. It was just that he was absent from her in a way that made her heart ache to have her little boy back.
Watching him learn to hide almost broke her. At first it was small things, things that garnered the faintest of Kent’s praise, a perfect spelling test or doing chores without being asked. As he got older, bigger things started to pile up. Soccer and lacrosse instead of band and drama. Not putting up a fight over that summer camp in Maine when what he’d really wanted to do was the rec center musical theater intensive.
And then something shifted. Catherine felt it sweep through the house those first weeks of Blaine’s freshman year, saw it in the way her boy went tense and silent and more withdrawn than normal, and she didn’t have to wonder about it at all. Blaine was her son, her baby, and she just knew. She didn’t blink when he’d blurted his secret to her and Kent over dinner one Friday night, casually spooning peas onto his plate in one breath and in the next staring at them with wavering confidence, his shaky breath a giveaway to what his words would hold.
“I’m gay,” he whispered over pot roast and potatoes, and Kent’s fork clattered to his plate. Catherine just sat and watched Kent rail over Blaine’s bowed head, because what could she do? She had known, of course, because he was her son and she knew him like her own heartbeat.
After, he sat slumped at the table in the aftermath of Kent’s oddly calm dismissal of everything Blaine had told them. Catherine cleared the plates, took Kent a scotch in his office, and returned to the kitchen where she sat with Blaine, murmured words he didn’t seem to hear, but they made her feel better. Things she hoped he’d come back to when he wasn’t shocked and hurting, the things she’d whispered to him as a toddler when he’d tumble off of everything he climbed and hurt himself. I love you, you’re my son, this changes nothing in my eyes. You are okay, you are good and strong and brave. Most of it was for Blaine, but some was for her, too, a defiance of all the things she’d become in the years since they moved from Columbus. A defiance of Kent, if she were being really honest.
She held Blaine’s hand in the emergency room when the resident put 8 stitches in his forehead and casted his broken wrist, and silently thanked a God she didn’t believe in that those bastards outside of the dance hadn’t hurt him worse.
The following week, she hemmed his uniform pants and took up the sleeves on his new Dalton blazers even though Kent said it was just as easy to send them to the tailor. But the sewing helped soothe her raw, nervous edges; she hadn’t used her machine since the lean years of Kent’s internship and residency, back when she bought Blaine’s clothes a size and season ahead, constantly taking in and letting down so he could get two years out of the same outfits. But it felt good, those hours in the attic, dust motes floating in hazy sunlight as she did something concrete to help her son.
For almost two years, she watched Blaine become a shell of himself, constantly struggling and striving to be everything that Kent would approve of, and she watched as he was broken down, smaller and smaller, time and time again. Until he came home from school on an October afternoon last year a little looser, buzzing with the kind of energy she had gotten used to seeing only when he sang.
Then there was a name, a boy, text messages and hushed phone calls and afternoon coffees. And then Catherine could see that the boy, Kurt, was a gift. A miracle worker. He was giving Catherine her son, her baby, back.
She was two chapters into the Diana Gabaldon she’d been shuffling from nightstand to desk to car to office and back again for two years when the loud disagreement started, so she’d stood at the top of the stairs listening to Blaine try, again and again and against all hope, to make Kent understand something he was never going to.
Her good, brave boy, putting himself out there for slaughter.
She took a deep breath, crossed the room. And spoke the words aloud, did the thing she should have done when Blaine was six and crying in her arms.
“I’ll sign whatever you need, baby.”
Kent glared at her in the moment before he stomped off to his office, and she was there, picking up the pieces and parts of her shattered son. She only hoped that she would be able to help him now in the ways she hadn’t been for so long.
“You’re still my good, brave boy,” she whispered into his ear, held him tight.
When his sobs shuddered to ragged breaths, he pulled away and wiped his cheeks with his hands. “Thank you, Mommy,” he whispered hoarsely, and her heart broke all over again.