Prompt Post #7
Welcome to the Glee Angst Meme again! You know how these things work. You can come here and prompt your most angsty prompts, and write stories filling those angsty prompts to let our characters suffer.
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Please remember to place any Trigger Warnings in the subject line of your ( Read more... )
'Yes, I have a boyfriend,' Blaine told her. 'Kurt. He's amazing.'
'Ooh, boyfriend!' the nine-year-old exclaimed, forgetting about her quest for water. 'I wanna see! I wanna see! Do you have a picture?'
Blaine had to laugh at the little girl's excitement. 'Sure. Let me find one.' Blaine pulled out his phone and began scrolling through his gallery in search of a suitable photo of Kurt. Paige was practically hanging off his arm and bouncing up and down.
'Let me see, let me see, let me seeee.'
'Paige, behave,' Lucy called sternly over her shoulder from the stove. 'Give poor Amber a chance. She's doing what you asked.'
Blaine froze in his search. He had expected this to happen at some point, but it did not make it sting any less. Except for Kurt asking about the baby photo the other week, it had been years since Blaine had heard anyone refer to his birth name or call him “she”. It felt kind of like a slap to the face, but he kept calm as he turned towards his cousin.
'Actually, it's Blaine now,' he informed her with as much politeness and patience as he could muster. 'And I'd prefer it if you didn't refer to me as “she”.'
From the adults this statement garnered no response whatsoever. None of them even looked up at him. Paige, however, cocked her head at him, and she seemed to be working something out in her head. She pulled at Blaine's arm and peeked at the photo that was showing on his phone, which was of Blaine and Kurt in their Dalton days, the first one they had taken together as boyfriends. Comprehension dawned on Paige's face.
'You're gay.' Her words seemed to surprise her a little, but there was no malice or prejudice in her voice at all. Blaine nodded, and she grinned in response. 'Cool.'
Blaine smiled fondly after Paige as she skipped off. There was hope for this family yet.
'Amber, dear,' Linda, who was Lucy's mother, called. 'Come help me out for a minute.'
Blaine kind of wanted to shout at her Do I LOOK like an Amber? but instead he walked calmly over to join her by the stove, repeating in a quiet but firm voice, 'Please, my name is Blaine. It has been for over three years.'
'Here, stir this,' Linda instructed him, pretending not to hear him.
*
If cooking dinner had been unpleasant, sitting down to eat it was absolute hell.
It started out with the normal holiday chatter of catching up with each other's families - whose daughters were getting married, whose sons had received a promotion recently, which couples were having kids, and where were they all spending Thanksgiving - and it went on long enough that Blaine was lulled into a false sense of security. For a while he even managed to enjoy it all, choosing to let himself be entertained by, rather than annoyed with, his family’s hopelessly outdated values and the way his father seemed to absorb them as his own in their presence.
Around the time when everyone was tucking into their second helpings, however, his grandmother, who was sitting at the head of the table, put down her knife and fork with a loud clatter and announced in a clear voice, 'I'm sorry, but I just can't keep ignoring this.'
'What, Mother?' his father inquired from the other end of the table, sounding politely puzzled.
'That, John!' She gestured wildly at Blaine, who froze in the middle of cutting up a piece of turkey. Next to him, Cooper's movements tensed.
'Mother, this is not the time--'
'How could you let her do this, John? I thought pulling her out of that Dalton school meant you had put a stop to it. I don't know how you afforded it for so long, anyway.'
Blaine became aware that the room had got very quiet. Everyone had abandoned their previous conversation, and all were all staring at either his grandmother or father, if not at Blaine himself.
'Look, can we not do this right now?' his father insisted.
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'I have to agree,' Lucy spoke up then, agreeing with her father. She turned to Blaine. 'No one is blaming you, sweetheart. It's not your fault that your parents didn't know how to help you.'
'We did help him,' his father commented. 'I told you all this years ago. He's transgender.'
'Mommy, it's true,' Paige spoke up in barely more than a whisper but, in the silence that had fallen over the table, it was loud enough for everyone to hear. 'Amber's a boy. Sh-- He told me. It's Blaine now, and he's gay.'
Lucy shushed her daughter. 'Paige, honey, this is grown-up stuff, okay? Eat your dinner.'
The girl sank back in her chair with a frustrated frown on her face, and Blaine wanted to send her a smile or a wink or something, but he couldn't seem to get even simple motor skills to function, so he sat still frozen in his chair.
'She's sick, John,' Blaine's grandmother implored. 'She thinks she's a boy, for Christ's sake. You don't treat something like that by letting her live out the fantasy. If I told you I'm the king of France, you wouldn't indulge me, and start calling me your majesty, would you?'
It was Cooper's turn to join in. 'Really, grandma, it's not the same thing at all. He has a diagnosis and it's not “crazy”. We didn't pull any of this out of our asses.'
'Be quiet, Cooper,' she sneered at him. 'You're hardly equipped to talk about this. I think we all know what kind of people end up in your particular profession, don't we?' She looked around the table for confirmation that yes, actors were in fact stupid. 'Did you even finish college?'
Cooper opened and closed his mouth at her, too exasperated for words, as she turned back at their father.
'This is what happens when you marry a liberal,' she declared. 'I told you that Grace was bad news. And where is Grace, by the way? Couldn't be bothered to show up, could she? I guess her kind don't care about family.'
Blaine stared down at his plate. A loud ringing had started in his ears, and he tried to concentrate on that, rather than the words of the people around him, but it was impossible to drown out. The comments kept coming, everyone joining in now, and Blaine was hardly aware of who was saying what anymore.
'I don't care what any doctor says, there's no such thing as “transgender”. There's just very sick and confused people and the people who choose to indulge them.'
'I think it might be some kind of internalized misogyny.'
'She doesn't even act that masculine.'
'She admitted to having a boyfriend.'
'She will always be a girl, no matter how much she thinks she isn't. No amount of hormones can change that.'
'God made her a girl and trying to change that is an insult to Him.'
'You're making her a freakshow.'
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No one paid any mind, however, and the next thing Blaine knew, he felt a hand tugging at him, and Cooper's voice in his ear, 'Come on.' No one seemed to notice when Blaine followed Cooper into the kitchen, all too involved in handing out opinions and offering possible cures. Blaine caught a glimpse of his father, who looked completely overwhelmed and lost.
In the kitchen Blaine leaned heavily against the counter, trying to get his breathing to return to normal. He accepted the glass of water Cooper offered him, swallowing it down with difficulty, his throat too constricted to work normally. Cooper stood a few feet away, watching him with a sad expression. He didn't seem to know what to say.
'I was going to come out to Kurt on Monday,' Blaine spoke in a hollow voice. 'What if--' He shook his head, forcing himself to end the train of thought there. Kurt wasn't like that. Whatever he was ultimately going to do or say, he was still Kurt. He wasn't like those people in there.
'I'm sorry I wasn't more help in there.' Cooper's voice was full of regret.
'It's okay,' Blaine assured him. He understood. There was an unspoken understanding in the Anderson family that you didn't cross grandmother Angela, and she could get downright vicious if you tried. Blaine suspected she had struck a nerve when she had all but called Cooper stupid, and he at least had tried.
'Why didn't you speak up for yourself?' Cooper wondered.
Blaine crossed his arms over his chest, and responded a little defiantly. 'Because what good was it gonna do? And because I shouldn't have to.' He paused for a moment and let his arms hang slack against his sides again, adding in a thin voice, 'Because I wanted Dad to.'
Blaine let a small sob escape his throat, and Cooper crossed the space between them and drew Blaine into an embrace, allowing him to stifle his frustrated cries against his brother's chest.
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