[fic] Unconditional
Title: Unconditional
Summary: A parent’s love for their child should be unconditional. Moments in the life of Blaine Anderson, as told by the two men who loved him long before Kurt ever did. Gen, Anderson family fic.
Warnings: Sympathetic portrayal of a homophobic character, sexism, effemiphobia, internalized homophobia, stereotypes and assumptions about said stereotypes, and crude language
THE OPINIONS OF CHARACTERS IN THIS FIC ARE NOT THE SAME OPINIONS AS THE AUTHOR. I feel this should be obvious, but sometimes people need a reminder, so, just throwing that out there.
A/N:
I like to think that Blaine’s dad is not a horrible person, but rather a clueless one who has absolutely no idea how to relate to either of his sons. After all, Blaine has to get his failboat-ness from somewhere, right?
RESEARCH: because I did do research for this fic.
Blaine and his family live on Hampton Court in Lima, Ohio, because those looked like nice houses and I could picture Blaine living there. See also: I googlemapped the crap out of Real Life Lima. It’s also a decent amount away from where I imagine most of McKinley life is, so I can easily imagine him living in Lima all his life and never running into anyone from McKinley.
Blaine’s mother works, in my head, as an associate professor of Psychology for the Bowling State University, in Bowling Green, Ohio, which is an hour away from Lima. It’s a long comminute, but not unheard of, and would sort of explain why, even if Blaine has a mother who loves him more than life itself, she might be absent often. National average for a psychology professor is $65,000.
Blaine’s father is an attorney who works in Lima. The average salary for a lawyer in Lima, Ohio specifically is $83,000 a year.
Needless to say, Blaine’s family probably has money.
Part of why I put Blaine’s house on Hampton Court is because it’s close to a country club, which is probably a place where Blaine could play polo, fencing, etc.
It’s also about five minutes from a Catholic school.
Why put Blaine in a Catholic school? Because I think it explains a lot about him, actually. Blaine has this people-pleasing personality: he wants to be liked, and he wants to be whatever everyone else wants him to be. I also just really want the show to address Blaine’s spirituality at some point in time, because unlike Kurt, Blaine strikes me as someone who is innately spiritual, if not religious. Plus the concept of spirituality vs. sexuality is very interesting to me as a writer.
And, you know, a gay kid in a Catholic school probably makes for some good angst.
In my head, the Warbler council is made up of three people: a senior, a junior, and a sophomore, which is why David and Thad are still at Dalton in S3 but Wes is not. Wes was the senior representative, meaning he graduated.
Name game: Blaine’s middle names are Thomas (American) and Crisanto (Filipino). If I had to pick only one, I’d go with Crisanto for two reasons: 1) cultural heritage! 2) Crisanto means “golden flower”, which works for two things--Blaine means “yellow” so gold=yellow, yes I can work with this. The second is that I just like the idea that Blaine’s middle name means flower.
Blaine’s birthday is also the same birthday as Darren Criss’s (Feb 5th), which, coincidentally, is also my own birthday.
About Blaine and the models: a friend of mine does this. He has absolutely no artistic talent at all whatsoever, but he loves painting models. I figured that would be something fun for Blaine to do, especially since he does, in fact, have model cars in his room.
About character personalities: my headcanon is that Mrs. Anderson is a bamf, Mr. Anderson is more conservative, Blaine is emotionally-stunted, and Cooper was Santana in another life. Canon will probably prove me wrong on all of the above, but that’s what fanfiction is for, right?
A million and one thanks to my two betas, M and buckeyegirl. Without them, this fic would make much less sense.
--
I don't know any parents that look into the eyes of a newborn baby and say, how can we screw this kid up?
-Russell Bishop
Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get-only with what you are expecting to give-which is everything.
--Katherine Hepburn
1
This is the story of how Blaine Anderson came into the world:
In January 1993, Mark Anderson hires a Filipino woman named Maria Castillo as his personal secretary. She is a beautiful, intelligent, quick-witted young woman, who loves music and art, and is working at his firm to put herself through college. She has the slightest bit of a Filipino accent that Mark finds absolutely charming, and she just-she brings this light into his life. He didn’t even know it was dark, before.
She’s also fifteen years younger than him, so he tries to keep his thoughts to himself.
(He also has a wife and a son; those things should be more important than his secretary’s age, but for some reason, he thinks of them last.)
In June of 1993, his relationship with Ms. Castillo becomes sexual; romantic. It becomes the secret everyone knows but no one talks about.
That’s not the scandal, though.
Men have affairs with their secretaries; that’s not really news. Especially when the secretary in question is young and exotic and can sing, bringing music into an otherwise lifeless office.
The scandal comes in May of 1994, when Maria tells Mark that she’s pregnant.
(He tries to convince her, only once, to have an abortion. She slaps him in the face and doesn’t come back into work, leaving his life dark and empty and unorganized once more.)
So Mark reacts. First, he talks to his wife; her reaction is about what he expected, though not for the reasons he thought. She doesn’t care that he’s cheated on her, or that he’s been cheating on her for the past year. No, what Jamie Anderson cares about is the fact that her husband has knocked up some sort of ethnic whore, and “good God, Mark, what are people going to say about that? Why don’t you ever think about me and my reputation, Mark?”
(Cooper Anderson, age eight, wants to know why his parents are fighting, considering they normally don’t even bother to talk.)
Mark knows in that moment what he must do. Not because he and his wife don’t love each other and never really have, but because Maria is not a whore. But because of her ethnicity, because they aren’t married, because she’s a woman, because she’s fifteen years younger than him, because she’s his secretary--people are going to assume that she is, and she doesn’t deserve that.
He’s not sure what she deserves (the world, if he could give it to her) but she deserves more than that.
So he does the right thing. He files for divorce. He tells his son that it’s not about you. Sometimes people just drift apart. I still love you, even if it feels like I’m replacing you. He calls his parents and tells them what’s going on, and his mother screams almost the exact same things Jamie screamed at him--about his reputation and an ethnic whore half his age who only wants him for his money, who is only having his baby because that means she won’t have to work for eighteen years while living off of his child support checks.
He camps outside of Maria’s one-room apartment for three days; she finally lets him inside when it starts raining. It’s been a little while since he’s seen her, and she’s gotten bigger. Only slightly, but he can sort of see where there’s a little person growing inside of her, the slight curve of her belly a little larger.
He tries to give her the same ring Jamie threw at his head, and she threatens to kick him out again.
She tells him this: “I didn’t come to America to be someone’s housewife--I’m going to finish school. I’m almost done with my master’s, anyway, and it’s just two more years after that before I finally get my doctorate.”
He nods. “I know, I understand. I wouldn’t ask that of you, anyway.”
She rubs her belly. “And I’m not killing my baby, Mark Anderson. I can’t believe you would even suggest that.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” He tries to place his hands on her stomach, but she smacks his hand away instead.
“Yes, you did,” she accuses him, and he knows better than to try and lie to her again. She squeezes his hand into her own. “But you can never mean it again. Because our son deserves better than a father who thinks he’s a mistake, and if you don’t want to be a part of this, then that’s fine. Blaine and I will figure out a way to make it on our own.”
His fingertips light trail the edge of her stomach. “Blaine?”
She nods. “The baby. That’s what I’m naming him, if it’s a boy.” She presses his hand flat against her stomach. He doesn’t feel anything-he can’t, at this point, the baby is really nothing more than a collection of cells starting to form into a fetus. But there is life there, growing and thriving, even if it isn’t fully formed and really there yet.
She kisses him gently. “I’m twenty six. I’m not too young, and I’m not stupid. I know how difficult this will be by myself. But I will if I have to, because Blaine and I both deserve a hundred percent, and if you can’t give us that, then you can find somewhere else to sleep at night.”
He kisses her and promises her a hundred and ten percent, because how can he not? He loves her, and for her, he would give the world.
2
On January 31st, 1995, Mark and Maria Anderson, newly wedded and heavily pregnant, move into a house on Hampton Court in Lima, Ohio. Lima is perhaps not the city of their dreams, or even the best place for new beginnings, but Mark finds a job there, with good pay and decent benefits. Its three hours away from where his ex-wife and son live in Detroit, but only a little over an hour away from the university where Maria plans to enroll for her doctorate in the fall. It’s a cozy little town, not nearly as busy as Detroit but not exactly provincial, either. There’s a Taco Bell right down the street from their house, and at least three different schools where they could enroll their son.
It’s nice. It’s a good place to start over. They can be happy here.
Five days later, Blaine Thomas Crisanto Anderson is born, six pounds three ounces, two weeks early with a powerful set of lungs and a wild mess of dark curls.
They hadn’t even finished unpacking yet.
3
The first time Cooper Anderson ever thinks of Blaine as anything other than the little bastard who tore my family a part, Blaine is seven years old and crying his eyes out.
Cooper, age sixteen, is staying with his dad and stepmom and half-brother because A) he’s supposed to for at least two weeks in the summer according to the divorce agreement, and B) Dad wants him to check out the university Maria works at, so he could maybe live with them and just commute to school after he graduates.
Cooper Anderson wants to say, fuck you, Dad, but doesn’t.
As far as stepfamilies go, Maria could be a lot worse. She at least seems willing to acknowledge that she ruined his life, even if she’s doesn’t act particularly guilty about it.
Actually, if he’s being completely honest, Maria is sort of cool, in that she remembers what being sixteen is like better than Dad does. She also has good taste in music and she lets him have a lot more freedom than Mom or Dad.
(Mostly, she doesn’t try to act like Cooper’s mom. He appreciates that.)
The worst part about Maria, though, is that she’s always trying to make him spend time with the little bastard. She’s always trying to get them to act like they’re brothers, like they’re family or something. Fuck that. Blaine’s just this obnoxious, snot-nosed kid, the reason his parents got a divorce. They may share a Dad, but they aren’t a family. They aren’t even the same ethnicity.
But Cooper is still only sixteen, which means that he sometimes has to do things he doesn’t want to do, and that includes babysitting his half-brother for an afternoon.
Blaine’s a pretty self-reliant little kid, though, so Cooper only has to sort of watch him. Lima may be a piss-poor town in the dead end of nowhere, but they still have girls there, pretty girls, who are easy and dumb and willing to open their legs for smooth-talking big-city boys like Cooper, who act like gentlemen and are really anything but. He’s trying to chat up a blonde in a cheerleading skirt when he hears Blaine scream.
And Cooper-if anyone should hate Blaine, it should be Cooper, Blaine ruined everything-but he’s so little, and dumb, and nice, he really is a nice little kid; one of the sweetest kids Cooper has ever met.
Why would anyone push him down like that?
So Blaine is lying down in the sand with a scraped knee, crying his eyes out, and the kid who pushed him (a little Asian girl in pigtails) is mouthing off to him in a broken mixture of English and Not English, meaning Cooper only understands about every other word that comes out of her mouth. Another little boy--maybe her brother, he looks a little older-- is standing beside her, and grabs her hand. “Malaya, he didn’t mean it like that; he’s just a hapa, he didn’t know what it means.”
Cooper doesn’t know what a hapa is, or why Blaine is one, but he does know that the kid says it like it’s an insult. Something hot and angry bubbles beneath Cooper’s skin at the implication. Blaine is just a kid, just a little boy, and he doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve to be hurt or insulted just because his mom isn’t white or his dad isn’t Filipino.
So Cooper does what he can, swooping down and scooping Blaine up into his arms, the cheerleader forgotten. Blaine cries into his chest, and Cooper turns to the two kids and tells them point-blank that they may both be bigger than Blaine, but Cooper is bigger than either of them, so leave my brother alone.
The two kids run off after that, scared or distracted or both, but Cooper doesn’t really care. He takes Blaine over to where the first aid station is in the garage, and washes the sand out of the scrape on his knee. He puts Neosporin on the wound, sealing it up with a Band-Aid that’s got little robots on it, which makes Blaine stop crying and actually start giggling.
Then Cooper takes him and buys him an ice cream cone, and tries not to think about why he cares so much.
4
Cooper does, in fact, attend the university his father wants, but not really because his father wants him to. He does it mostly because Maria is a professor there now and that means he can get discounted tuition, and because the university has an amazing theatre program, but mostly he does it for Blaine.
He’s just so little. And Maria and Dad, they’re-they’re better than he thought they’d be, honestly, but they’re both sort of workaholics, which means Blaine gets left alone a lot. And that’s not right, not really.
So Cooper lives at home rather than in a dorm, and he picks his little brother up from school every day, which means he sees, before Maria, before Dad, how badly Blaine gets bullied sometimes.
(He goes to a Catholic school; aren’t there rules about that sort of thing?)
But Blaine-Blaine’s a weird kid, and Cooper means that in the most affectionate way possible. When left to his own devices, Blaine’s hobbies are art, photography, theatre, music, horses, and robots, all of which are okay but not when you are eleven, when you are supposed to be noticing girls for the first time. He’s also very particular about his clothes, which is odd in a way Cooper tries not to think about, in a way that might make other boys not like him so much.
He does like sports, though, so Cooper tries to encourage that as much as possible-takes him to football games, teaches him how to throw a punch, encourages him to try out for sports teams, anything to make him seem more normal, because if Blaine is friendless and teased in middle school then high school is going to be hell.
He catches Blaine reading a fashion magazine, and wonders if he’ll even make it that far.
5
Which means, of course, that Cooper Anderson gets the distinct pleasure of being the first person Blaine ever comes out to.
Their parents aren’t home yet, and the house is quiet and dark and perfect for studying, and Cooper is knee-deep into a research paper when Blaine knocks on his bedroom door, timid and quiet. Cooper is tempted to tell him to go away, he’s busy, but he looks so small standing there against the door, so Cooper invites him in anyway. “Come on in. What’s up?”
Blaine curls up on Cooper’s bed, Spiderman pajamas still a little too big on him, his glasses on with curls bouncing around his face. He’s so young, so little, and even though he’ll be thirteen in a couple of months he still seems so small, surely Cooper wasn’t that small when he was thirteen, was he?
(When Cooper was thirteen, he wore all black and hated his father. Now he’s twenty and wears more blue than black, and hates his father less than he thought possible at thirteen years old.)
Blaine’s quiet, though, just sitting on the corner of Cooper’s bed, taking up as little space as possible. Cooper rolls his eyes because seriously, research paper, but he gives Blaine his space and the silent comfort of his brother’s room.
Finally, Blaine speaks up. “What’s a fag?”
Cooper blinks. “What?”
“Fag. F-a-g, short for-“
“I know what it means,” Cooper blurts out. “Why do you want to know?”
Blaine hugs his knees to his chest. “Because it was written on my locker this morning.”
“What? Blaine, you can’t let them do that, that’s-“
Blaine doesn’t stop, though. “And Mr. Godfrey in second period gave us a lecture about how God hates fags and how they’re going to burn in hell and I just, I don’t understand, God’s supposed to love everyone, He’s God, if He wanted to hate someone why would He even make them in the first place-“
“Blaine--”
“-and why would He hate me.” The last part comes out as a choked sob, and before Cooper really knows what he’s doing he’s on the bed beside Blaine, holding him as he sobs quietly into Cooper’s university sweatshirt. Cooper lets him cry it out, the house silent around them for several long minutes; only Blaine’s sobs breaking up the monotony of the darkness.
He lets Blaine get quiet again before he asks what he really wants to know.
“Are you gay, Blaine? It’s okay if you are; I just want to know.”
Blaine gets quiet again, and he sniffles a little bit before he answers. “I think so. I don’t-I don’t like girls, like that. Like I’m supposed to.”
What Cooper wants to say is, You’re twelve. What do you know about sex, about sexuality? You probably still think girls have cooties.
But Cooper also remembers being twelve, and noticing girls for the very first time, and how weird it would be if he didn’t when all of his friends did, how that could make you feel different, alien and strange.
What he says instead is, “But you like boys, though? Like, you want to kiss them and stuff?”
Blaine’s face turns red, but he doesn’t look ashamed. Not really. “I think so. I mean, I’ve never kissed a boy but I think-I think I’d like to.”
Cooper hugs his little brother tightly. “If that makes you happy, then I’m happy for you, Blaine.” He pulls him just a little closer. “Don’t listen to the kids at school, okay? They just don’t know how to act, they’ve only ever been taught to hate.”
Blaine lifts his head up, looking a little brighter. “And Mr. Godfrey?”
“Is a stupid old man trying to scare you into being just like everyone else, rather than just being yourself. Don’t listen to him; he shouldn’t even be talking about that kind of stuff in school anyway.”
“And Dad?” Blaine asks, quietly. “Do you think Dad will-be okay with all of this?”
And Cooper honestly doesn’t know the answer. Dad’s never been outwardly homophobic, but Dad’s also a Republican and sent his youngest son to a Catholic school, so there’s really no telling. It’s one thing to be accepting of gays and lesbians who you meet out in the world, but it’s quite another to be understanding of one who lives in your own house.
So Cooper doesn’t say anything at all. He just holds his brother, and thinks that his professor will just have to accept “family emergency” as the reason why his research paper isn’t done, because there’s no way he’s writing anything else tonight.
6
“I think Blaine’s gay.”
Mark spits his coffee across the table.
It’s a late morning in the Anderson household, but a quiet one, with Maria and Blaine already off to school. Usually Mark and Cooper would be gone already, too, but Cooper’s morning class got canceled and so did Mark’s early morning meeting, so the two older Anderson men were just enjoying a quiet breakfast--at least until Cooper opened his mouth.
Mark tries to wipe down the kitchen table with a rag and mostly just succeeds in getting coffee all over his tie. “What makes you say that?”
Cooper shrugs, setting down his bowl of cereal on a coffee-less spot on the table. “I don’t know. I just don’t think he likes girls very much.”
Mark suspects, in that moment, that Cooper knows more, but isn’t quite willing to share this information.
Mark finishes wiping down the table and sighs. “He’s still young. He probably doesn’t even know what he likes yet.”
Cooper shrugs again, engulfing another bite of cereal. “Maybe. But when I was thirteen, girls were all I could think about. I just don’t think Blaine’s the same.” He takes another bite of his cereal. “That wouldn’t be a problem, would it? If Blaine was gay? I mean, you wouldn’t kick him out of the house or anything, would you?”
“Of course not.” Mark says automatically, because the idea of kicking Blaine out--for whatever reason, he could want to have sex with his horse and Mark would still love him-is not something Mark even wants to consider. “I don’t know what I’d do, to be honest. I’ve never really thought about it.”
What he wants to say is: Blaine can’t be gay-- he likes football.
What he wants to say is: Blaine’s just a late bloomer, that’s all. Don’t worry--before too long he’ll be completely girl crazy and we’ll be sick of him.
What he wants to say is: Oh God, what if he is gay? I don’t know what to do with a gay son!
What he doesn’t say, what he doesn’t even want to admit he thinks, is: I hope he’s not gay. His life is going to be so hard if he is. God, please, don’t let my son be gay.
He doesn’t say anything, though--just pours himself another cup of coffee, and thinks that he’ll deal with it if it comes down to it. It does no one any good to be worrying about it now.
7
Only the next time Mark Anderson thinks about his youngest son’s sexuality, it’s because his Blaine is comatose, beaten and bloody with his head swollen, unable to wake up.
The police try to question them about who they think did this, who is responsible, but Mark has no answers for them, has no words at all, because this is the last thing he ever thought would happen to one of his kids. He had no idea it was ever going to be this bad.
(That’s because fourteen-year-old Blaine Anderson doesn’t come out to his parents, but is rather forced out of it via traumatic brain injury. He’s out at school, out to his friends, out to his brother, but it’s a conversation that has never happened at home. He tried, once, but then his mother asked him about something else and the time just wasn’t right.
(Instead, his parents find out he’s gay while his brain is trying to leak out of his skull, because three Catholic boys took offense to another boy going to a dance with a friend; because those boys had the audacity to like boys and not be ashamed about it.
(His parents are so out of touch; they didn’t even know he was going to a dance, much less that he was gay.)
8
Cooper Anderson isn’t there when Blaine gets his head busted in and almost dies. In fact, Cooper isn’t even in Lima, or Dayton, or anywhere he’s supposed to be. Instead, he’s halfway to LA and working his way to getting as shitfaced as possible. And if you ever need a reason to get shitfaced, running away from home is a good one. His phone’s not off, but the bar is loud and crazy, and he’s busy doing body shots off a stripper--it’s not like he really hears it the first sixteen times it goes off.
He answers on the seventeenth ring, though. It’s his Dad. “Hey, Dad, did you get my message? I’m leaving this cowtown, gonna go be a movie star-“
“Where the hell are you?”
He doesn’t sound happy. Cooper hiccups into the phone. “I’m in Oklahoma or some shit, hello to you, too, can’t you even pretend like you’re proud of me or something-“
“Your brother is in the hospital, James Cooper Anderson.” Oh God, it sounds like Dad is crying; what happened? “He’s in intensive care, at St. Rita’s. Get a cab if you aren’t sober enough to drive yourself to the airport, but just get here.”
Cooper already has his coat on, waving off his new drinking buddies and trying to walk in a straight line long enough to get someone to call him a cab. “What happened? What’s wrong with Blaine?”
“He got beat up. He went to a dance with a boy, and he got beat up.” It occurs to Cooper that his father sounds scared--his father, the man who acts like he doesn’t feel anything, sounds fucking terrified, and how messed up is that? “They aren’t sure he’s going to wake back up, he’s lost so much blood, oh God.”
He can hear Maria in the background (“My baby, my baby”) and feels sick to his stomach. His little brother might be dying--his baby brother, little Blaine, might not ever wake up. What was he trying to get away from, again? It can’t possibly matter anymore.
“Why didn’t you tell me he was gay? You knew, didn’t you?” He did. He did know, but that’s not fair, it wasn’t his secret to tell. “Why didn’t you tell us? His friend here is telling us he’s been bullied for months, and no one’s ever said anything to us. You didn’t say anything to us. Fuck, neither did he.” His Dad chokes back another sob, and every image Cooper has ever had of his father as this heartless, soulless automaton vanishes in an instant. “Why didn’t he tell us, Cooper? We would have done something. We would have-we would have-“
Cooper gives the cab driver a hundred dollar bill to drive as fast as he can.
9
Blaine doesn’t wake up the next day. Or the day after that. Or the day after that.
And that’s the worst part, about being the parent of a kid in a coma. It’s seeing your baby bloody and bruised and being told he might never wake up. It’s being told that three boys hated your baby enough that they essentially tried to kill them. It’s nursing so many questions, and only having a sleeping boy who could, but can’t, answer them.
It’s the waiting, and not knowing whether you should hold on to hope, or start planning a funeral.
From November to March, Blaine sleeps, and his family waits. Mark and Maria, when they aren’t standing vigil at Blaine’s bedside, interrogate every person they can get their hands on, starting with Cooper and ending with the boy Blaine brought to the dance. They threaten to sue Lima Catholic High into the ground for what Blaine went through, but it’s a private school, and there is little they can actually do to a school that makes its own rules.
(And their principal, who acts like Blaine doesn’t matter, like being gay is something Blaine chose, like he deserved to be beaten almost to death; Maria has to hold her husband back from punching him in the face.)
Mark, meanwhile, does what he can. He does research.
And while no one has actually sat down and written, specifically, “How to Be a Good Dad to your Gay Teenaged Son,” they have written articles, and there are forums filled to the brim with people going through the same thing as the Andersons, who offer up their own advice and suggestions. He learns about the suicide risks (oh God, Blaine is a suicide risk, what if he had--? That would be so much worse.) and the It Gets Better project and gay marriage and what he can do to make it better and what he shouldn’t do to make it worse, and it’s just--it’s a lot of information to take in at once. Mark soaks through it all like a sponge, but even then it doesn’t quite feel like enough, especially since Blaine still hasn’t woken up.
The best advice comes from a man whose daughter is already dead, killed in a gaybashing three years ago. His advice is to spend time with your kids, get to know them, and show them that you love and support them.
This would be fine, except Mark is starting to learn that he knows nothing about his youngest son. He goes to Blaine’s room at home and takes everything in, trying to figure out something about his son.
The first thing he notices is the dresser full of trophies. Some of them are familiar, like the one of the Allen County Spelling Bee, or the polo trophy, but the majority of them are new, still shiny and bright and unfamiliar. There are a lot of music trophies, which takes Mark back because when did Blaine start liking music? More importantly, when did he become good enough at it to win trophies? --There are others, too--ones for fencing, ones for polo, one for tennis (Jesus, when did Blaine start playing tennis?) and art and a couple of other academic ones. Mark feels a surge of pride suddenly, because when did his kid get so good at this stuff?
There are other interesting things in Blaine’s room, too. There are very old film cameras, and books that are probably way too advanced for Blaine’s age, and little robots and model cars and-
That’s it. A car.
What sort of fourteen-year-old (no, fifteen, he’s fifteen now, he’s slept through his fifteenth birthday) doesn’t want a car? And he obviously likes older cars-maybe Mark can find an older car, and when Blaine gets better, they can work on it together, restoring it, making it good as new. That would be fun--getting their hands dirty, doing some real manly work. That would be a good bonding experience, something they both could enjoy. It’d be good for Blaine.
(What Mark doesn’t get is that Blaine doesn’t give two shits about cars--Blaine would be happy driving his mother’s green station wagon. What Blaine does like is models, because he likes taking things apart and putting them back together. The cars, the robots sitting on his dresser--those are art, things Blaine has painstakingly put together and painted himself in the comfort of his room.)
But Mark doesn’t know that, so when he finds the ’59 Chevy, he buys it before his wife can protest, and when he visits Blaine’s hospital room that afternoon, he squeezes his son’s hand and tells him that he’s just got to wake up soon now, okay, he’s just bought him a car.
He’s just got to wake up now.
10
Blaine does wake up, on a cold and foggy Ohio morning during the first week of March, and it happens so softly that nobody really notices it at first. He blinks awake slowly, and it’s not until he turns his head and says “Mama?” in a croaked voice sore from disuse, that anyone realizes he’s awake.
Later, Mark will say he could hear Maria’s joyful screams from his office across town.
It’s harder now, though, now that Blaine is awake and alive and real. There are hugs and tears and I love you’s going around in spares, but it’s crowded in Blaine’s little room, so the “gay” conversation doesn’t come up quite yet.
But then it’s months of physical therapy, and getting Blaine enrolled in summer school, and taking him to tour Dalton, and more physical therapy, and then actual psychological therapy, because their son has dealt with a lot recently and Maria just thinks it would be good for him.
Before Mark even realizes it, it’s hot and July and Blaine’s not even going to be living with them in two months, and Mark has yet to say to his son so you’re gay, but I love you anyway.
Talking to your kids should be easier than this, he thinks.
But it’s really not.
So instead, on a hot Saturday in July, Mark drags Blaine outside and shows him the old ’59 Chevy, and tells him they’re going to fix it up, just the two of them, and when they get finished rebuilding it, it can be Blaine’s car, so he’ll have something he can drive to and from Dalton.
This is a good idea, Mark thinks. They’ll bond over this. And while they’re bonding, they’ll talk, and Mark will be able to say all the things he’s been planning on saying since that awful, awful day when he got a call saying Mr. Anderson, your son is in the hospital…
It doesn’t quite work out that way, though. It’s hot, ridiculously so, and Mark’s not the type who is afraid to get his hands a little dirty, but he’s not used to it, either.
So he’s hot and sweaty, and dirty, and miserable. Blaine looks like he’d rather be absolutely anywhere else in the world right now. And it turns out that neither of them really know anything about cars, so that turns into a frustrating experience, too.
They don’t talk, and they certainly don’t bond. If anything, Mark feels even more distant to his younger son now.
The Chevy is still in the garage, in pieces. Mark should really sell it, or get rid of it, or do something with it, but he can’t quite bear to part with it just yet.
(He can’t stand the idea of giving up just yet.)
Part Two | Part Three