Fic: A Nation of Two (Blaine/Kurt, R) (2/4)
a nation of two.
by novelized. ~30,000 words.
fandom: Glee.
pairing: Kurt/Blaine.
summary: In which Blaine and Kurt aren't "Facebook official" and Blaine transfers to McKinley.
part two.
Kurt comes over Sunday night to “help Blaine with his outfit-making decisions.” Blaine feels the need to point out that he’s completely capable of dressing himself - in fact, he did it for the first eight years of his public school career - but Kurt’s so excited that he doesn’t have the heart to. Besides, he needs a little emotional support.
His parents are out, which is a relief; he loves them, he does, but his mom eyes every boy Blaine brings over like she’s already imagining the two of them sending ambiguous Christmas cards from South Beach and adopting Vietnamese children, and his dad walks past his bedroom door every five minutes for inane reasons, like wondering if Blaine had seen his favorite soup spoon lately (“top drawer, Dad, where it’s always been”) or, casually, if he thinks it looks like it’s going to rain.
Kurt sits cross-legged on Blaine’s bed and sifts through his stack of shirts critically. “Can I admit something?” he ventures, and Blaine spins his chair around from his position at the computer to really look at him.
“Go for it.”
There’s a green button-up on top of the stack; Kurt holds it up and squints at Blaine experimentally. “This would be good with your eyes,” he says, and then, getting to the point, “I kind of can’t believe this is actually happening.”
“What,” Blaine says, “you finally on my bed? No, I can’t either.”
Kurt throws the shirt at his face. “Not what I was talking about, jerk.”
“I know, I know.” Blaine clicks out of the Facebook game he was playing (Kurt absolutely hates that he plays those - that might be half the reason he only logs on whenever they’re together) and relaxes back in his seat, stretching out and propping his feet up on the mattress. “I kind of can’t believe it either.”
“You do realize that you’re doubling the gay population at McKinley, right?”
Blaine raises a closed fist in minority solidarity. “I do what I can to help the cause.”
“Oh, I have a suggestion.” Kurt waves in the general direction of Blaine. “This, what you’re doing right now? Try never doing that again.”
Lowering his hand, Blain scowls at him. “Always trying to stifle me,” he mutters, jokingly. “Trying to keep my people down.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And yet you still want to spend every waking moment with me…”
Kurt rolls his eyes and goes back to sifting through clothing selections. “Are you nervous?” he asks, not looking up, and Blaine tilts his head in consideration.
“Yes,” he admits. “And excited. And scared.”
“That’s a whole lot of emotion for one person,” Kurt says, but Blaine just bares his teeth in a cheesy grin and says low, faux-seductive, “I’m a whole lot of man.”
Another eyeroll. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell anyone that I know you.”
“Now that would just be cruel.” Blaine uses the heel of his left foot to scratch idly at the ankle of his right. He’s feeling so many things at once. Part of him is ready to jump out of his body, all restless energy and anxiety in his bones. It was like what he’d experienced before the first day at Dalton but tripled, because no one at Dalton used cuss words during school hours or pushed guys into lockers because they secretly wanted to kiss them. He’s not just opening himself up to new possibilities. He’s opening himself up to all of that. To endless potential, on both ends of the spectrum.
Gathering the hangers that didn’t make the first cut, Kurt carries them to the closet and then arranges them by their colors, starting with dark hues and then working his way to the whites. Blaine watches him silently, amazed. “So should I pick you up for school tomorrow?” Kurt says, not turning around from his careful concentration on his job, tongue poking just slightly out of his mouth.
“Mm, as nice as that’d be, I think maybe I should drive myself. Give myself some time to hyperventilate in the car before I walk in.” Kurt looks at him sharply and he flashes him a grin, to show he’s kidding. Mostly. “And I’m supposed to get my schedule arranged in the office first, anyway.”
“Fine. I’ll meet you at your locker, then?”
Blaine nods. “Number 123.”
“123,” Kurt repeats. “Sequential. I like it.”
“Careful, Kurt, your OCD is peeking through.”
Kurt ignores him. “And then you’re going to Glee club with me, right? I’ve already talked to Mr. Schuester about it.”
This, actually, is news to Blaine. He drops his feet to the ground and sits up a little more, eyebrows raised. “And?”
“And, well, after everything that happened with Jesse St. James” - Blaine curls his lips in a grimace; he knows Jesse St. James, knows that whole story - “he was understandably a little bit skeptical at first. But, then again, Regionals are over, so you have no motivation to sabotage, and he knows you’d be a valuable asset to the team and a great addition to everything we’ve begin preparing for Nationals.”
Blaine looks impressed. “I should hire you to write pamphlets about me,” he teases, and then swivels around, digging through his desk drawer for a pad of paper and a pen. “Can you repeat that, but slower?”
Kurt huffs out an exasperated sigh, which is how Blaine knows he’s walking on thin ice. (He would’ve known that anyway. His jaw tightens when he starts to get annoyed, even if it’s imperceptible to everyone else. He’s spent hours watching - and making - it happen.) “Here,” he says, moving forward and draping a soft blue shirt over his head. Blaine squints at him through an open buttonhole. “Wear this tomorrow. And, Blaine?”
He tucks the notepad away. “Yeah?”
“Remember: it’s hallway, not corridor. Anything in the cafeteria with ‘mystery’ as part of its name is inherently inedible. And, most importantly, no one, I repeat, no one at McKinley cares about the glee club.”
A careless shrug of the shoulders. At Dalton, no one had cared about football. (They didn’t even have a team.) These things happened. “We’ll see about that. They might not care yet…”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Kurt mirrors his shrug and heads for the door; it’s getting late, and Blaine knows he has an entire moisturizing routine to begin. He pauses just outside, arms halfway into his jacket, and flashes Blaine a comforting smile. “Goodnight, Blaine. See you at school.”
***
Locker number 123 is suspiciously difficult to find. Cut through the lobby and turn left, and you’ve got lockers number 100 through 116, but if you turn right, they start at 140 and go upwards. Class schedule clenched painfully tight in his grip, Blaine makes two large and confusing circles around the first floor before giving in to his manly pride and poking his head in the guidance counselor’s office for help.
“Uh, hi,” he says, and she stops dusting her office chair - could leather chairs even attract dust? - to look up at him.
“Oh, hello!” she replies, in a chirpy upbeat voice. She peels her rubber gloves off and gives him a bright, tell-me-all-your-problems kind of smile. “How can I help you?”
“It’s just…” Blaine lifts his shoulders into a helpless shrug. “I’m new here, and I can’t find -”
“Blaine!” someone calls from behind him, and he cuts himself off mid-sentence and turns around. It’s not Kurt, like he’d maybe been expecting. It’s Rachel Berry, knee-length polkadot dress to prove it, and she appears at his side almost immediately. “Hi, welcome to your first day at McKinley!” she says, peppy and measured like maybe she was a high school tour guide in a past life. Clearly she’s been planning this. “Do you need someone to show you around? I can take it from here, Mrs. Pillsbury-Howell.” She leans into the office and whispers pointedly, with a sharp jab of her chin towards Blaine, “Ex-boyfriend,” and he’s far too amused to correct her. The guidance counselor just nods in a sort of politely confused way as they depart. Rachel slides her arm into his.
“Kurt told us you were transferring. I couldn’t be more pleased,” she starts, taking his schedule out of his hand and scanning it quickly before veering them to the left.
“Oh really? Because I was afraid you might be upset about the new competition.”
“Competition?” She looks at him with such an air of feigned innocence that he has to laugh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We aren’t competitors now, we’re teammates. And besides -” They stop short, right at locker 123, so Blaine has to be at least somewhat grateful and impressed that she’d gotten them there that quickly (and he should’ve taken notes, because this is a part of the school he doesn’t recognize). “ -our voices mesh together very well, I think this could be very beneficial for Nationals.”
“Rachel,” he points out gently, like maybe he’s talking to a child, “I’m not even in the glee club yet.”
“The keyword being yet. Really, all you have to do is show up at a meeting. Lauren Zizes became a member and we didn’t even find out for two months straight if she could actually sing.”
Blaine starts in on his locker combination. At Dalton, they didn’t have padlocks on their lockers. They didn’t need padlocks on their lockers. Petty theft was about as common as student pregnancy. “So can she?” he asks, offhandedly.
Rachel waves a hand. “Unimportant.”
“Please tell me,” says a voice from behind them, an unmistakable voice, “that you’re not torturing Blaine already, Rachel.”
The two of them turn around in unison. Blaine’s smile widens. His stomach feels oddly warm. “Kurt,” he says, “hi.”
“I’m not torturing him,” Rachel says defensively, “I’m showing him the ropes.”
“How very Mother Teresa of you.” Kurt leans against the locker next to his, locker 124, very effortlessly. He’s wearing some sort of Kurt Hummel trademarked outfit, and even though Blaine’s seen him in his normal clothes before, it’s still going to take some getting used to. Seeing him like that every day. He looks incredible.
“You look incredible,” Blaine says, and Kurt actually blushes.
“Oh,” he says, looking caught off-guard, but only momentarily. “Thank you. Artistic expression has done wonders for you, too.”
Blaine laughs and shoves his brand new books into his brand new locker. “Kurt,” he says, “you picked this out for me.”
“I didn’t say whose artistic expression.”
“Right, right. How silly of me for thinking you’d actually try to pay me a compliment.”
“You look nice,” Kurt insists, but then his eyes flicker upwards. “Though I notice that you’ve, uh, really gone to town on the hair gel today.”
Blaine’s hand automatically goes up to his hair, carefully flattened against his head. He’d gone a little overboard that morning. Twice he’d started at a new school and been known as ‘the kid with really curly hair.’ He didn’t want to take any chances at shooting for three. It was smooth and flat and every single hair was in place. Until about thirty seconds ago, he’d thought it looked decent. “You don’t like it?”
“No, I do. It’s very New England prep of you. I’m surprised there’s no matching polo shirt or carefully-pressed khakis.”
“That’s tomorrow’s outfit,” Blaine shoots back, scrunching his nose at him.
“Boys, you’ll have to excuse me,” Rachel says suddenly, and Blaine starts, because he’d kind of forgotten she was actually there. “If I don’t go now, I won’t have time to practice a song in the bathroom before first period begins. I’ll see you both after school.”
They watch her flounce down the hall in silence for a moment, and then Blaine shakes his head and hangs his backpack in the locker. Kurt reaches out and straightens it. “I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into, do I?” he says more than asks, and Kurt swings the locker door shut.
“No idea,” he agrees cheerfully, and they head off together down the hall.
***
The first day is mostly uneventful. A kid in his second period class leans over and whispers, “Did you do the homework from Friday?” and Blaine gives him a weird look and whispers back, “I’m new,” and the kid just lifts his eyebrows and goes, “Really? You weren’t here last week?” so that’s something. The girl beside him during fourth period plays Angry Birds the entire time, not even trying to hide it under her desk, but the teacher doesn’t seem to care. That would never fly at Dalton. Neither would what happens in the hallway in the middle of the day, which is Sue Sylvester body-checking two students into a locker and then striding past without a single glance back. She does give Blaine a curt nod and says, “Are you sure you’re not lost, new kid? The Shire is that way,” which may or may not have been spoken as a term of endearment, but he’s not sure, so he says nothing at all.
The best parts of the day are when he gets to see Kurt. They have third period together, which is awesome, even if he fails to write down anything the teacher says because he’s too busy watching Kurt interact with people who aren’t Dalton students, who aren’t as well-bred and well-mannered as the people he’s spent the past three years with. They eat lunch together, too, with Mercedes and Rachel. The conversations are buoyant and comfortable, from who said what in which class to the upcoming Tony Awards to who can rock a good pair of skinny jeans (final assessment: everyone). He’s disappointed when they have to split. The entire lunch hour had gone by in a flash.
They meet, again, at Blaine’s locker after the final bell. Kurt looks positive and cheerful, which is different from the casual nonchalance he’d come to expect after a full day of school. It might have to do with McKinley. Blaine has a sneaking suspicion it has more to do with him. (Or maybe, he thinks but doesn’t say, that’s just hopeful wishing.)
“So?” Kurt says expectantly, adjusting the strap on his messenger bag as he wanders towards him. “How’d the first day go?”
“It was oddly…” Blaine pauses and searches for a word. He thinks about how his math teacher had called him “Blair” four times, even though he’d corrected him after every occurrence, and about how the vaguely attractive boy next to him in English had drooled on his notebook. “Normal,” he finishes, confidently. “It was all oddly normal.”
Kurt looks like he doesn’t know whether or not to smile about that. “Is normal good?”
“Kurt,” Blaine takes a moment to tug his backpack out of the locker and swing it over his shoulders, “normal is great. It was kind of like… Dalton was awesome, of course, but it was so idealistic. Sometimes…” His grin twists into something a little more unsure. “Sometimes it didn’t even feel real.”
“Well,” Kurt says, nodding slowly. He knows that better than anyone. He understands in a way that no one else can. “I can assure you, McKinley is very real. As real as plebeian high school in Ohio can be, anyway.”
“You, Kurt Hummel, are a snob.”
“I’m not a snob. I just have extremely refined taste.”
Blaine looks at him seriously, eyebrows drawn in. Kurt looks just as seriously right back.
“Snob,” Blaine says again.
“Underappreciated debonair.”
Blaine shakes his head and starts down the hall. “Snobby snob snob.”
“What are you, five?” Kurt calls, but he’s holding back a smile.
“No, I’m six. And a half.”
“Is that how you measure your height, too?” Kurt hurries to catch up with him; they walk together, matching stride for stride, towards the choir room. The hallways are slowly emptying, with the sort of dying breath that only seven hours inside a classroom can exude. “Do you say you’re five-foot-four and a half?”
“Hey!” Blaine stops mid-step and wraps his hand around Kurt’s elbow, giving him a little shake. “Totally uncalled for. I am definitely at least five-foot-seven.”
“And a half,” Kurt smiles.
“And a half,” Blaine agrees. He doesn’t let go of Kurt’s elbow until two seconds too late. Kurt looks down at his fingers against the sleeve of his shirt, and then they lock eyes and Blaine drops his grip. “Sorry,” he says, probably unnecessarily.
“For what?”
“I… don’t know.” Blaine shakes his head and tries to make it look like a joke. He doesn’t actually know what he’s apologizing for, so he tries switching tactics. “Hey, Kurt. Make me a promise.”
Kurt looks uncertain, but not unwilling. “Yes?”
“Promise me that no matter what happens… you won’t make me sit next to Rachel Berry.”
“I promise.” Kurt draws a cross over his heart, as solemnly as possible, and then he leads them inside the room, where most of the other members have already assembled. Brittany’s got her legs draped over Artie’s lap; Tina and Mike seem to be splitting one seat between the two of them; Santana’s running her fingers through Sam’s hair but in a bored, idle kind of way, and he’s got his eyes closed like he’s a puppy being petted; Rachel is standing by the piano, shuffling through stacks of sheet music like it’s the most important task in the world; Puck’s numbering his abs out loud, and Lauren’s rolling her eyes after every single count; Mercedes is playing some game or another on her iPhone; Quinn’s not doing much of anything, just sitting there with her legs crossed at the ankle; and Finn’s staring at the ceiling like the answers to the universe are written there. Blaine’s pretty proud of himself for remembering all of their names. The first and only time he’d been introduced to the majority of them had ended in… not one of his finest moments.
Mr. Schuester calls attention to the club by clapping his hands. (It’s so similar and yet so completely different than Wes’s formalistic gavel. They’re not immediately silenced, like at Dalton. In fact, Puck finishes with abs number four through seven before deciding to turn his attention to the front of the room.)
“Hey,” Puck says, “it’s the kid from the party. Weren’t you the one mackin’ on Rachel?”
“Gross,” Santana says, sitting up straight. “Please, Puckerman. I just ate.”
So - not the greatest introduction.
“Guys,” Schuester says, raising a hand to silence them. “I’m assuming you all know Blaine Anderson. He’s just transferred from Dalton, so I think we need to be sure to give him a warm welcome.”
Instead of providing assistance, Kurt detaches himself from Blaine’s side and hurries over to sit next to Mercedes, two rows back. Blaine realizes after a second that he’s maybe supposed to say something. He looks at everyone. They all look back. “Um, hey,” Blaine says. “So, like Mr. Schuester said, I just transferred and -”
“Dude,” Puck interrupts, staring at him with squinty eyes. “I’m pretty sure I’d be able to find the hypotenuse of your eyebrows.”
“There’s a hypotenuse living in my basement,” Brittany says seriously.
Blaine looks around for help.
“Okay!” Mr. Schuester says, too fast, like he’s a little too used to that sort of thing. “We have a lot of work to do, so maybe we should -”
“Wait,” Santana says, leaning forward in her seat. “If Kurt’s boyfriend is joining -”
“I’m not -” Blaine starts, but she completely ignores him.
“-then that means we have fourteen members now.” She shifts her ruthless gaze over to Lauren Zizes, who Blaine mostly remembers because she’d challenged him to a wrestling match after his fourth (fifth? seventh?) shot of tequila that night. “Does that mean you’ll be quitting?” Santana asks, and if she’s trying to look upset about the possibility, she’s failing pretty spectacularly.
“Are you kidding? And miss out on all of this new eye candy?” Lauren says, without missing a beat. “After Kurt said he’d be transferring, I posted a picture of Blaine Downey Jr. on my Tumblr last night and almost immediately gained sixty new followers. No way, I’m in this for the long haul.”
“Wait,” Finn says, bewildered expression on his face. “Kurt, is Blaine your boyfriend now?”
“No,” Kurt says hurriedly.
“I always thought you’d be into taller dudes,” Puck says, giving Blaine a skeptical up-and-down.
“Kurt’s a really good kisser,” Brittany says happily, and Blaine looks over at her, mouth falling open a little.
“Okay, okay, let’s get started,” Mr. Schuester cuts in, finally coming to Blaine’s rescue. He gives him a clap on the shoulder and then gestures for him to sit down, and, head still spinning just a bit, he climbs up and sits down on the other side of Mercedes. She gives him a comforting pat on the leg as Rachel clambers out of her seat, sheet music in hand. He leans forward to catch Kurt’s gaze, but Kurt just flashes him the briefest of shrugs, as if to say “I told you so.”
All in all, though. Not the worst first day.
***
Blaine’s second, third, fourth, and fifth days at McKinley pass smoothly. Almost too smoothly. He keeps bracing himself each morning for something - a muttered comment, a sideswipe on the way to the cafeteria. But nothing happens. He sings a Journey song in Glee club (“the first of many,” Kurt whispers to him) and he learns a shortcut through the school on the way to English class. It’s a pretty successful week, to be honest. His mom calls him precisely five minutes after the final bell each day, and she asks how it was with a timid edge to her voice, like she’s been waiting for bad news for the past eight hours, but every day the only thing he has to report on is a good grade on a test or an extra-long practice, so he’ll be late getting home. She sighs outwardly at the end of each phone call. He hasn’t retconned to his old school. He’s not living each day in fear.
He even learns the protocol of Glee club pretty quickly. It’s nothing like it is at Dalton. If someone wants to sing a song here, for any reason whatsoever - Finn has serenaded two different girls in his first week, Puck keeps singing songs at Lauren with big, moony eyes - then they just go for it, and they do group numbers just because they’re fun, not because they’re rehearsing rigidly for Nationals for the next few months.
Blaine pulls Mr. Schuester aside after practice on Friday, and when he says, “So, um, about Nationals…” Schue looks at him half-distractedly and says, “You’re coming with us, right?” and Blaine blinks in surprise and says, “Well, I just thought - I haven’t really earned a spot…” and Mr. Schue nods and says, “Okay, then, Monday. You can sing on Monday. Earn your spot,” so Blaine only has one weekend to prepare.
He drags Kurt over to his house after his Friday dinner with his family. Blaine’s dad is sitting in his favorite armoire in the living room, watching a documentary on the History channel, and he glances up when the doorbell rings. “You didn’t tell us you were having friends over, Blaine,” he says, his voice clipped.
“It’s just Kurt,” Blaine says, pausing with his hand on the doorknob.
“Regardless, you still have to ask permission.”
His heart skips a beat or two with a surge of annoyance, but he forces it away. “Okay,” he says, “I’m sorry.” The doorbell rings again. Blaine plasters a smile onto his face and says, trying for some humor, “Hey, Dad, can Kurt come over?”
But by now his dad has gone back to his TV show. “Make sure you keep your door open,” he says, settling into the cushions. Blaine takes in a breath through his nose and opens the door.
“About time,” Kurt says impatiently, rubbing his hands together as if he’d been freezing. It’s in the 40s, at least, and Kurt’s wearing a big coat. It’s stupidly endearing, like most of the things Kurt does. Blaine grabs for his hand.
“I need your help,” he says, leading him up the steps. He doesn’t miss the way Kurt curls his fingers into his, fitting loosely, perfectly. He gives Kurt’s hand a little squeeze.
“With what? Not another hair dilemma, I hope, I left my emergency kit in the car -”
“No, nothing like that.”
He pulls Kurt into his bedroom. He knows that disobeying his dad and shutting the door would be stupid; he’d be up in a matter of minutes, armed with some dumb question and an overly distrusting gaze. Maybe he’d offer to check if the ventilation system was working again. Last time he’d managed to stick around for a whole twenty minutes under the thinly veiled guise of that excuse. So Blaine closes the door eighty percent of the way. Compromise, he thinks. That’s how it was done in the olden days.
“I’m singing on Monday,” he starts, turning to face Kurt.
Kurt looks blankly back at him. Polite, of course, but blank.
“Is this where I feign shock and awe?” he asks, one hand settling over his heart for good measure.
“No, come on, cut it out. I mean. In front of everyone. A sort of formal audition, if you will.”
Kurt’s expressions fogs over, a little more disgruntled than five seconds ago. “What? No one auditions. Not a single person in that room had to audition -”
“It’s not really an audition,” Blaine cuts in, before he can go on a civil rights rampage. “And I sort of asked for it. I’m just kind of… nervous, is all. I wanted your help.”
“Blaine Anderson? Nervous? Did I hear that correctly?”
Blaine looks around for something soft to throw at him, but there’s nothing, so he settles for giving him the best impression of a scathing look that he can. Based on Kurt’s reaction, it probably falls somewhere between sleepy kitten and mildly annoyed chipmunk.
Darn him.
“Just sit here and tell me what you think of my song, okay? We have about seven minutes before my mom barges in here with a plateful of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies, and there’s no getting rid of her easily.”
Finally, Kurt does as he’s told, climbing up into his usual position at the foot of Blaine’s bed. He tucks his legs underneath him. “So what song are you dazzling me with, Mr. Anderson?”
“Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
Kurt stares at him. “Excuse me?”
“The song,” Blaine laughs, mostly at the expression on Kurt’s face. “By Rod Stewart.”
“Right.” Kurt is adorable when he blushes. He’s most definitely blushing right now. “I knew that.”
“Feel free to answer the question, though,” Blaine says, and when Kurt gives a shrug of indifference, Blaine gives him a look that’s definitely on this side of angry raccoon. Improvement.
The CD player is already set up and cued. Blaine clears his throat and presses play before turning around to face Kurt. His parents are far too used to his impromptu bursting into song to come running. He figures they’ll leave him alone for a little while, at least until the music stops. The two of them, Blaine and Kurt, lock eyes while Blaine sings; it’s flirty, and upbeat, and Blaine gets into it, really into it, waggling his eyebrows at Kurt as he drops into the chorus. Kurt, sitting cross-legged, looks overly amused.
There is a moment, right near the end of the song, where Blaine has an impulsive feeling that he’s had many times before. He doesn’t know what prompts it, exactly. The fact that they’re alone in his bedroom. The fact that Kurt keeps his eyes trained on him, intently, even when he’s making ridiculous faces and singing ridiculous lyrics. The fact that Kurt both looks and smells really, really good, even when he’s not trying. (Or maybe he is trying. He can’t be too sure.) The thing is, Blaine wants to kiss him. Like, he really wants to kiss him, because he knows how good he is at kissing, and he can hardly think of a reason not to, except -
Except the thing with first kisses is that they don’t always lead to second kisses, no matter how badly you want them to. The one and only kiss they’d shared had immediately been the best kiss Blaine had ever gotten. (In all honesty, he hasn’t had as many as some of his friends seem to think he’s had. He doesn’t ever bother correcting them, though. No harm, no foul, right?) Sometimes Blaine is a go-getter. Sometimes he talks to his friends’ parents behind their backs, and sometimes he sings stupid songs to curly-haired boys in public places. Blaine knows that he does a fine job at acting like he’s got it all together, and that most of the time, he can fool even himself. He can be confident, he can be self-assured. He can make an amazing cheese omelet.
But he can’t make Kurt kiss him.
That kiss had been amazing. That, he knew, was not one-sided. Kurt had even whimpered a little when they finally pulled away, quiet and low, from the back of his throat, and it was the hottest noise Blaine has ever heard in his entire life. Ever. Kurt had held his hand and Kurt had hugged him, and Kurt had looked for a second too long when he’d changed pants after Warblers practice that one time. (For the record, he’d kept his boxers on.)
But he still hadn’t kissed him.
Blaine had been the one to make the conscious decision not to kiss Kurt again. Not to assume that they’re in some sort of relationship of the ages just because they’d had the best kiss since The Notebook. (Blaine tells everyone that he hates that movie, but he owns a copy and keeps it hidden on the second shelf in his closet, right next to the pornos that would give his dad an aneurism should he ever stumble across them.) You don’t just jump into relationships with people. Especially when they’re your best friend, or, the closest thing you’ve ever had to a best friend. If Kurt wanted something more - he could take the initiative - he’s never been shy about what he wanted -
So they’re not dating, and they haven’t even kissed since that first time, which is okay. He likes being Kurt’s friend too much to really jeopardize it. Because they are. Friends. It’s not a bad arrangement. Not at all.
And even though Blaine wants to kiss him, especially now, he doesn’t. Instead, he finishes the song with as much cheese as he can muster and drops down to his knees in a grand flourishing gesture, and Kurt laughs and claps politely.
Blaine reaches for Kurt’s foot. “Well?” he asks, breathing hard, giving it a little shake. He’s not sure if he’s asking for judgment on the song, or on him.
“You,” Kurt says, answering both, “are phenomenal. Truly an inspired performance. Also possibly the gayest thing I’ve seen since Brokeback Mountain.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Blaine shoots back, dropping Kurt’s foot and climbing back to his feet. He collapses onto the bed next to Kurt, sprawled out, hands pillowing his head, legs dangling over.
Kurt rests his hand flat against Blaine’s chest, innocent, for just a brief second. “Not at all,” he says. “That was actually the biggest compliment I could’ve ever given you.”
There’s a sudden noise from the hallway. Blaine lifts his head and sees his dad hovering by the door, arms crossed. Kurt’s hand mysteriously disappears from his chest. “Boys,” his dad says in greeting. “Kurt, how are you?”
“I’m doing fine, Mr. Anderson, yourself?”
“Doing well, thanks.” He leans against the doorframe. “Your mother wants to know if you boys want a snack.”
“We just had dinner an hour ago,” Blaine points out.
“Didn’t ask if you wanted a meal, just a snack. She was thinking about making popcorn.”
“We’re fine, Dad. But thanks.”
His dad nods and strokes his beard for a second. “You guys want to watch some TV?” he asks. “There’s a documentary about UFOs and extraterrestrials coming on in a minute.”
“Mm, tempting, but I think we’re going to sit this one out.”
“Maybe next time,” Kurt offers, in that trying-to-be-friendly way of his. Blaine smirks a little at his effort. “I love me a good alien documentary.”
Blaine’s dad smiles, legitimately smiles, for the first time since Kurt had gotten there. “Me too,” he agrees, “I watched one the other day about Area 51 -”
“On the Discovery Channel? My dad and I watched that too. Pretty fascinating, right?”
“Completely fascinating, there’s some weird stuff in this world that we don’t know about. I’ve got a pretty good one saved on the DVR if you’re ever over and get bored.” His dad nods and then he turns and heads for the stairs, saying over his shoulder as he goes, “Well, you two have fun, let me know if you need anything.”
Blaine can’t help but be a little bit amazed by Kurt. Sine when had one of his guy friends ever managed to charm his dad that quickly, that effortlessly? He shakes his head in wonderment and nudges him in the shoulder.
“Kurt,” he tells him, seriously, “I think my dad just developed a crush.”
***
Monday’s performance goes just as smoothly as that night in his bedroom, except he tones it down a little, doesn’t stare at Kurt the entire time. Everyone gets really into it; they jump to their feet and join him on the floor in the chorus, singing and dancing and laughing. Blaine even gives Kurt a little twirl near the end, and no one notices, or if they do, no one cares.
Afterwards, Mr. Schue claps him on the shoulder and says, pleased, “Welcome to the glee club, Blaine,” and it feels really, really good to be a part of this. A part of them.
***
News travels fast in a public school. That’s one thing Blaine doesn’t forget, doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget. High school is just one big freakishly inbred subculture, and McKinley is no exception. But his first week had gone so well, so swimmingly, that he’d started to believe that the ret of his high school career could be like this. Well-liked and well-adjusted. A member of the Glee club. Headed to Nationals in the spring. Maybe he would try out for the soccer team next year, get to know a few of the more athletic guys -
But the athletic guys at McKinley are far different from the athletic guys at Dalton. These guys have biceps twice the size of Blaine’s head. They walk through the hallways and the other students part like Moses and the Red Sea. (A stupid metaphor, but Blaine thinks it every time.) He almost, almost strikes up a conversation with one of the football players in homeroom, but when Blaine opens his mouth the guy shoots him one of the filthiest looks imaginable, and Blaine clears his throat and pretends he was only doing mouth exercises instead.
Fine, he thinks. He’ll just stay out of their way.
And because Kurt had warned him that no one at McKinley cared about the Glee club - a fact which proves itself more true each day - Blaine doesn’t think anyone actually knows that he’s a member. It’s unremarkable. Unimportant.
How wrong he is.
Tuesday, after his last class of the day, he’s one-armedly wrestling books into his backpack when he hears them. He’s still thinking about calculus functions and Shakespeare’s poems and what he’s going to have for dinner, so it takes a few seconds for his brain to catch up. “Hey,” someone calls out, deep-voiced and manly. “Hey. Short dude.”
With a sense of foreboding, Blaine looks up. That’s a nickname he’s heard before. It’s Azimio, the one Kurt’s told him about, and two other football guys. They’ve got each got one large Styrofoam cup in hand, which is not that unusual, but none of them are drinking out of them, which is.
“Hi,” Blaine says, drawing himself up, back stiff with uncertainty. “What can I do for you?” He’s been waiting for this moment. He knew, deep down, that it was inevitable. That homophobes didn’t always learn their lesson and move on to be better functioning members of society. That high school bullies were still high school bullies, even if they put their behavior temporarily on hold. He’s ready for them. He thinks, vaguely, that expecting them makes it easier. He’ll be impressed if they can find a gay joke he hasn’t heard before.
“We’ve got a tradition at this school, prissy boy,” Azimio says, and they advance on him, cups raised. “Welcome to the Glee club.”
All at once, Blaine is hit with three different flavors of ice-cold Slushie, so fast he doesn’t have time to brace himself for it, and they explode against his face, his chest, his hair, his ears with the sharp pain of some sort of external brain freeze. Blaine can’t stop himself from gasping as it drips into the collar of his shirt, but, weirdly enough, what he can’t stop himself from thinking is that’s it?
The football players had tossed their now-empty cups carelessly onto the ground and strode past, exchanging high-fives as they went.
That’s it?
No offensive jokes, no shoves to the chest, nothing about his sexuality at all? That’s it? That’s not it, though, because once the shock of that wears off, he realizes that the Slushie is every bit the ten kinds of miserable Kurt had told him about. His nostrils are burning and his shirt is drenched in purple stickiness. He stands there, frozen, for a moment, not sure what he’s supposed to do.
“Oh man,” says a voice from behind him, and Blaine slowly turns around. It’s Finn. Not exactly the white knight he’d imagined, but comforting all the same. “They got you, huh?”
Blaine’s teeth are chattering without him even realizing. “They did,” he responds, watching the juice drip down and splatter against the tile floor, “in various colors and sizes. They must’ve been having a sale.”
Finn shakes his head, and then he reaches for Blaine’s shoulder but thinks better of it, considering his shoulder now smells like fruit-flavored gas station. “Well, now you’ve got the first one over with,” he offers, with a trying-to-be-helpful smile. “Now you know what to expect.”
Blaine can’t fathom this happening again. He thinks already thirty-five percent of his body is numb. “Silver lining,” he says, though, flicking ice away from his backpack.
“Come on.” Finn motions towards the locker room at the end of the hall; for lack of better prospects, Blaine follows after him. “Do you have spare clothes?”
So that’s what Kurt had been implying. He’d just sort of assumed Kurt wanted him to stash an extra sweater in his locker in the off chance their outfits clashed. This, he realizes, made much more sense.
“No,” Blaine admits, looking sadly at his ruined-forever polo shirt.
Finn nods. He pulls open the door and steps aside to let Blaine through first. “Go turn the sink on,” he instructs, like this is all second nature to him, heading over to the locker that is presumably his, if the QB sticker on front means anything. Blaine does as he’s told, though bewilderedly, testing out the temperature with his fingertips while Finn digs through what is simultaneously the messiest and most confusing locker Blaine has ever seen. (Why, for instance, is there half a copy of Lord of the Flies, and, behind that, a plastic cow figurine?)
“Where’s the rest of the book?” Blaine asks, for conversation’s sake, letting the water warm up.
Finn furrows his eyebrows. “Huh?”
“Lord of the - nevermind.”
“Here.” Finn looks triumphant as he tugs a slightly-wrinkled tshirt out of a plastic bag in the back. He holds it up. McKinley Football, it says. 2009. It’s huge.
“Um.” Blaine doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be reacting to. “It’s nice,” he says, after a beat.
Finn ignores his look. “It’s for you,” he explains, crossing over to the sink. “Here, you should -” He gestures to the running water with one hand. “You want to get it out of your hair before it kind of… gels. Especially considering, you know, how much gel you already have in there. If you wait too long you’ll be smelling it for weeks.”
“It’s not the worst smell I’ve ever smelled,” Blaine points out, but he bends his head regardless, inserting his hair into the water. Finn stands around awkwardly while he rubs at his curls. The curls he’d tried so hard to keep plastered to his head. His hand feels goopy with hair product and syrupy sugar. “I haven’t worn my hair curly since freshman year,” Blaine tells him, but since he’s speaking into the sink, it comes out muffled and echo-y.
“What?”
“I said -” Blaine shakes his head, giving up. The warm water feels good against his scalp. He splashes some of it against the stickiest parts of his cheeks, his neck.
“You missed a spot,” Finn says, and Blaine meets his gaze in the mirror before cleaning off that spot, too. He admittedly doesn’t spend a lot of time around Finn Hudson, because when he goes over to Kurt’s house, he’s usually holed up in his bedroom. (“Probably looking at porn,” Kurt had explained with a grimace.) But still. This wasn’t the sort of thing he would’ve expected.
When he’s fairly sure most of the Slushie has disappeared down the drain, Blaine shakes the excess water away and straightens. Finn holds out a somehow magically-procured towel. “It’s mine,” he explains after a minute. “But I haven’t really used it yet, it’s not…”
Blaine takes it, half grateful, half a little weirded out. “Thanks,” he says, running the towel over his face first, and then through his hair. He doesn’t point out that it smells like stale corn chips. “For everything. I mean. You didn’t have to -”
“Yeah, I did.”
“No, seriously.”
“No, I know. I did.” Finn looks so earnest that Blaine doesn’t know what to say. Finn shrugs. “You’re a member of the Glee club now. We all have each other’s backs.” He hands him the tshirt and points to one of the closed-doored stalls. “And, besides. You’re. You know. Kurt’s…”
“Friend,” Blaine supplies for him, amused.
“Sure. Friend.” Finn doesn’t look like he believes him; Blaine’s not all too upset about that. “And you’ve been the best - friend - Kurt’s had. You’ve been really good for him. Everyone thinks that.”
Blaine curls the shirt up in his fist. He’s slightly taken aback. “They do?”
“Yeah. He’s a lot happier now than he used to be.”
“Karofsky’s gone,” Blaine says, pointedly.
Finn shrugs again. “Yeah, but he was happy before that. He’s been pretty happy since he met you.”
There’s a pause.
“I’m glad,” Blaine says finally, looking down. “Kurt deserves to be happy.”
“Yeah.” Finn’s starting to look a little uncomfortable; extensive talk about feelings, outside his area of expertise. Blaine feels bad for him, so he drops it. “You should probably change,” Finn says, gesturing again to the stall. “We’re late. Schue’s probably wondering where we are.”
Blaine hesitates. As nice as the gesture is, he’s not sure he should. He’s a practical guy. And he doesn’t want to make things harder for other people than they have to be. “Finn, this is cool of you and all, but do you know what it’s going to look if we walk out of the guys’ locker room at the same time, with my hair wet and wearing your clothes?”
Judging by the expression on Finn’s face, he hadn’t considered that. But a minute later, he shakes his head. “I don’t care, man.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure.” Finn drops down onto one of the benches, waiting for him to change. “Puck steals my shirts all the time. This is no different.”
That, Blaine thinks, is one of the best things he could’ve said. Finn might have a long way to go, a lot to learn, but at least he’s trying. He’ll make it a point to tell Kurt later. He knows that the majority of it has got to be his doing, anyway. Blaine nods and disappears into the bathroom stall, shrugs his soaked shirt off, drapes it over the door, and then pulls on the grey tshirt loan from Finn. He swims in it. It hits halfway to his knees, and the sleeves stop just short of his elbows. He knows he probably looks ridiculous in it, but then, it’s better than being sopping wet and purple. Probably. He pushes the door back open.
Finn looks at him for half a second and snorts out a laugh that he almost tries to turn into a cough, but fails.
“Oh, come on,” Blaine says, beelining straight to the mirror. “It’s not my fault you’re freakishly tall.” He stares at his reflection for a second or two. His hair. His hair was… unruly. Messy. He hadn’t worn his hair without product in so long that he’d almost forgotten just how crazy the curls could be. He looked ridiculous. And, worst of all, he didn’t have any spare gel in his locker.
“You ready?” Finn asks from behind him. “You can put your shirt in that laundry pile over there, but I don’t know when that actually gets washed. And also…”
“It’s pretty much unsalvageable. I know.” Blaine grabs his backpack and heads for the door of the locker room, rolling the sleeves up as he walks. He glances at Finn out of the corner of his eye. “Thanks,” he says, meaning it. “Again.”
“No problem.” Finn trails after him, taking long, easy strides. He clears his throat and jams his hands into his pockets. “You going to keep up with March Madness?”
Blaine laughs. “Of course I am,” he says, and Finn looks impressed, like he hadn’t actually expected him to say yes. “I’ve got thirty dollars riding on my bracket, so…”
“No kidding? Maybe we should watch the games together sometime.”
Imagining the two of them, sharing a couch, talking basketball over handfuls of popcorn - it’s weird, but it’s not the worst image in the world. Blaine doesn’t have many friends who’re into sports. Sometimes he and the Warbler boys would watch golf tournaments on ESPN, but then, that hardly counts. “Yeah. Definitely. That’d be awesome.”
“Kurt makes a really good cheeseball,” Finn says.
“I like cheeseballs.”
“I like pretty much any food with cheese in it. Actually, no. I like pretty much any food period.” Finn tips his head to the side, thoughtful. He puts his hand on his stomach as if simply talking about food has made him hungry. “I just really like to eat.”
“We,” Blaine says, stopping short just outside the music room, “have quite a bit in common, my friend.”
Finn grins at him and motions for Blaine to enter first. They’ve apparently already started, because there’s a steady buzz of chatter that fades into silence when they walk in. Blaine can practically feel thirteen pairs of eyes flicker from his hair to the shirt, and maybe back to the hair again. Puck, of course, is the first to speak.
“Whoa, dudes, have a little after school rendezvous in the showers?” he says, wiggling his eyebrows at them suggestively.
“Oh God,” Kurt says next, his palm pressed flat against his forehead, “oh God, someone pinch me, my greatest fears are materializing right in front of my eyes -”
Sam Evans leans over and, presumably trying to be helpful, pinches him in the arm. Kurt lowers his hands and glares.
“Hey, Finn, why didn’t I get one of your tshirts after we did the dirty?” Santana asks, half-smug and half-insulted. Rachel very pointedly looks down at the floor.
“You took three of mine,” Brittany tells Santana, and Blaine’s eyes widen slightly, but before any of his questions can be answered Puck’s talking over everyone, again, saying, “All these opportunities to switch teams and you wait until this kid arrives? First my boy Kurt, now my boy Finn? What kind of magical sex powers do you have, Anderson?”
“Blaine got Slushied,” Finn says, very loud and very fast.
The talking stops at once. They all wince in unison, in solidarity. Blaine feels a weird sense of belonging.
“That sucks,” Sam says, shaking his head, “I can’t even walk past the Slushie machines at 7/11 without having post-traumatic flashbacks.”
“My mom bought me a Slushie once and I screamed so loudly that my dad thought someone murdered me,” Tina adds, sympathetically. “He actually called 911.”
“I like the blue ones,” Brittany says happily. “They taste like Smurfs.”
Lauren Zizes, on the other hand, gives a casual shrug. “I still like Slushies,” she says, but then, Blaine can’t imagine anyone throwing a frozen drink at her and not fearing for their own life. Lauren Zizes is kind of a badass.
“Okay, that explains the shirt,” Puck says, “now what about the hair?”
“Seriously, how did you manage to hide all of that?” Mercedes asks, gesturing towards his hair. Blaine unconsciously lifts a hand to try and flatten it back against his head. She looks at him thoughtfully, scrutinizing. “Actually, I kind of like it this way.”
“Yeah, you almost have as much hair on your head as Finn’s mom has on her back,” Puck smirks, and Finn shoots a quick, “Shut up, dude,” at him before finally, finally Mr. Schue intervenes.
“Okay guys, enough,” he says, and places a hand on Blaine’s back that he’s pretty sure has to do with being the new gay kid more than being the new Glee kid, but it’s nice enough all the same. “Are you okay?” he asks, sincere.
“I’m fine.” Blaine tugs ineffectively at his shirt. “I hear it’s practically a rite of passage, anyway.”
“Damn straight,” Mike Chang says, and Blaine smiles a little. “You are now officially one of us.”
“The jury’s still out on whether or not that’s a good thing,” Quinn tells him, and he lets out a laugh.
Either way, it feels pretty good to him.
***
Blaine means to go home after school, except somehow he ends up squeezed next to Mercedes in an ice cream parlor booth somewhere just outside of Lima. He’s not sure how he got from Point A to Point B, but she’d paid for his cone - chocolate chip cookie dough, his second favorite - so he’s not really complaining. Maybe it’s just a ‘get to know your best friend’s new best friend’ thing. Maybe she, like Rachel, is harboring an undeniable attraction to him and thinks the only way to win him over is with food. Or maybe she just wants the chance to interrogate him outside the earshot of Kurt.
When she starts the conversation with “So why exactly haven’t you asked Kurt to be your boyfriend yet?” he’s pretty convinced it’s the latter.
Blaine nearly chokes on a chunk of cookie dough (who knew ice cream could be a health hazard?) and coughs it back down before actually taking her question seriously. “I…” He looks at Mercedes, who is waiting patiently for his answer. “Why are you asking me that? Has he said something?”
Mercedes rolls her eyes. “Of course he’s said something. He’s Kurt. Have you ever known that boy to bite his tongue?”
She has a point.
“What did he say?” Blaine asks, feeling just a little self-conscious. He was very rarely self-conscious. He didn’t much like this newly discovered side of himself.
“What kind of friend would I be if I told you that?” Mercedes licks around her own strawberry cone. Blaine pouts a little, but she ignores him. “Kurt didn’t tell me to ask you that, if that’s what you’re wondering. In fact, he’d probably kill me if he knew.”
“So you take it upon yourself to play matchmaker.”
Mercedes shrugs. “It’s better than staying home and watching Bad Girls Club reruns. Look, I really care about Kurt. And I know you do too. I just - I see the way you two look at each other, and I guess I don’t understand why you’re not together.”
Blaine glances down at his hands. “I don’t know if Kurt’s ready for a relationship…”
“Oh really?” Mercedes can give him a mean look when she wants to. Blaine actually has to force himself not to crawl under the table and hide. “Then when will he be? After graduation? When he’s thirty? I know things with Kurt are different. You have to move slow around that boy sometimes. But he can handle it. He can handle you.” She stops and takes a small bite out of her cone, and they chew in companionable silence for a moment.
“He likes you, Blaine,” she adds, after a beat. “And you don’t have to be afraid about that.”
They don’t talk about it anymore, after that. They talk about silly, inane things. Friend things. Blaine holds the door for her when they leave, and he makes a mental note to ask Mercedes out for ice cream more often, and next time, he thinks, he’ll pay.
***
Kurt invites Blaine over for Friday dinner that week, which is pretty significant for a number of reasons: 1) it’s the first time he’s invited him for Friday dinner, because he’s pretty sure that up until now it’s been a family-only occasion; 2) he informs him that he’s volunteered the pair of them to do the cooking, and Blaine has yet to tell Kurt that he’s actually not very good at cooking at all; and 3) it’s Ohio State’s first game in the March Madness tournament, and somehow, weirdly enough, he and Finn have planned to watch it together.
It’s more an accident than a plan, to be honest. Finn’s lacing up his tennis shoes when Blaine comes over, and he glances up, confused, and goes, “Oh, you’re hanging out here tonight?” and Blaine nods his confirmation and says, “Yeah, Kurt asked me over for dinner,” and Finn asks, “Are you going to stick around and watch the game?” and Blaine doesn’t really have anywhere else to go, because watching sports with his own father isn’t nearly as fun as it should be, so he shrugs and says, “Sure, why not?” and Finn unties his shoes and kicks them aside like he’s deciding to stick around after all.
First, however, Kurt ushers him into the kitchen. “Here,” he says, shoving a brightly-colored apron at him, “wear this.”
Blaine looks at it appraisingly. “What, did they run out of my size in the men’s department?” he asks, but he puts it on anyway. At least he’s not alone in his ridiculousness. Kurt’s apron is matching, except his has floral prints. They are united in their apparel misfortune.
“Smells good,” Blaine says, once he’s tied it correctly in the back. He feels like a less-crazy Paula Deen. “What’re we making?”
“Vegetarian lasagna with cucumber salad and garlic bread. I already put the lasagna in the oven - can you chop up some cucumbers while I get everything else ready?”
Pleased to have been given a relatively simple task, Blaine hunts down a knife and cuts the cucumber into little slivers. Maybe he’ll get through this night without Kurt realizing that everything he tries to bake ends up burnt and that he can just barely boil water, on a good day. Over by the sink, Kurt’s going to town on some tomatoes.
“Hey Kurt.”
Kurt looks over. “Yes?”
“Why’d you invite me tonight? I mean, not that I don’t appreciate it, but I thought Friday was for family.”
He goes a little pink, maybe, and goes back to concentrating on his tomatoes. “I just thought you might want to come over for dinner. It beats listening to Dad and Finn talk about homeruns and three-pointers for two hours straight. Carole and I needed someone else on our team.”
Blaine pops a cucumber square into his mouth and chews thoughtfully. “I guess I’m just surprised you haven’t gotten sick of me yet. We see each other all the time now.”
Kurt lifts an eyebrow. Blaine can tell he’s doing that without even glancing over. It’s something about the inflection in his voice. “Is that a bad thing?”
“That is definitely not a bad thing,” Blaine says quickly, honestly.
There’s a short-lived silence while they work on the salad. “I could never get sick of you,” Kurt says after a moment, pushing the freshly chopped tomatoes to the side.
Blaine smiles and doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t need to.
***
At the dinner table, conversation is fluid and easy. Burt asks about school; Carole asks about his parents. Finn regales the table with a locker room story, but Carole cuts him off when she deems it no longer ‘family appropriate.’ Finn points out that Blaine’s not a member of the family. Burt says he’s been hanging around so much lately that he ought to be, and even though he says it like a complaint, he shoots him a secret wink to show that he clearly doesn’t actually mind.
Kurt brushes his foot against Blaine’s under the table. Maybe it was an accident at first, but five minutes later it’s still there, his toes softly pressed against Blaine’s shin, and that, that can’t be an accident at all.
***
The game starts at precisely 8:05. Finn shoos Blaine into the living room so they can be in their seats for tip-off; Kurt rolls his eyes and calls at their backs, “It’s fine, totally fine that I cooked, I guess I’ll do the dishes, too!” and Finn misses his sarcasm completely and calls back, “Great, thanks, Kurt!”
Blaine resolves to give him a hand in the kitchen at every timeout and commercial break. That makes him feel better.
The game is exciting, because it’s the first, but it’s not that exciting, because they’re playing a team that’s essentially a no-namer, and Ohio State pulls ahead pretty early on. Kurt joins them in the living room sometime during the first half, except he makes bored, deadpanned comments every two minutes until he finally gives up with a sigh. “I can’t take this anymore,” he announces. “Enjoy your Neanderthal sporting events, I’ll be downstairs watching quality entertainment.”
He stands up and looks at Blaine pointedly. Blaine knows the proper thing to do would be to join him in the basement, but - it’s Ohio State. “I’ll come down right after the game ends?” he offers as a sort of compromise, and Kurt rolls his eyes yet again and leaves.
Finn watches him walk away and waits until the door is safely closed behind him before turning towards Blaine. “Rachel does that too,” he says in a half-whisper.
“Does what?”
“Dramatically storms out of a room when she doesn’t get her way.”
“Kurt wasn’t -” Blaine starts to defend him, but then realizes yeah, he totally was. They laugh together, but quietly, like they both feel guilty for doing so.
“Rachel also made kitten calendars with your face on them, I hear,” Blaine says, because even though playing yours-is-worse-than-mine in regards to actual people is terrible, he still feels a little justified.
Finn glances at him over the top of his Mountain Dew bottle. “Kurt had your picture hanging in his locker,” he fires back.
Blaine’s eyes widen slightly. “He did?”
“He did. He took it down, like, two days before you transferred.” Finn looks a little more panicked all of a sudden. “But you can’t tell him I told you that. Seriously. He’s still got blackmail on me for the mayonnaise incident -”
“The mayonnaise incident?” Blaine doesn’t know whether to be intrigued or repulsed.
Finn, however, just shakes his head and edges the volume up on the television. “Don’t ask.”
After a quarter of a bag of potato chips and an easy Ohio State victory and a conversation ranging from foot fungus to Nintendo 64, Blaine dusts the crumbs off his pants and stands up. Finn follows suit, switching the TV off. “I better go find Kurt,” Blaine says, nodding in the direction of the basement door.
“Good luck, dude,” Finn says. “Whenever Rachel got pissed at me, I’d suggest watching a musical or singing about our feelings or something, you might want to try that.”
Blaine laughs. “Thanks,” he says, bracing himself like a soldier going into battle. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
part three.
one | two | three | four
by novelized. ~30,000 words.
fandom: Glee.
pairing: Kurt/Blaine.
summary: In which Blaine and Kurt aren't "Facebook official" and Blaine transfers to McKinley.
part two.
Kurt comes over Sunday night to “help Blaine with his outfit-making decisions.” Blaine feels the need to point out that he’s completely capable of dressing himself - in fact, he did it for the first eight years of his public school career - but Kurt’s so excited that he doesn’t have the heart to. Besides, he needs a little emotional support.
His parents are out, which is a relief; he loves them, he does, but his mom eyes every boy Blaine brings over like she’s already imagining the two of them sending ambiguous Christmas cards from South Beach and adopting Vietnamese children, and his dad walks past his bedroom door every five minutes for inane reasons, like wondering if Blaine had seen his favorite soup spoon lately (“top drawer, Dad, where it’s always been”) or, casually, if he thinks it looks like it’s going to rain.
Kurt sits cross-legged on Blaine’s bed and sifts through his stack of shirts critically. “Can I admit something?” he ventures, and Blaine spins his chair around from his position at the computer to really look at him.
“Go for it.”
There’s a green button-up on top of the stack; Kurt holds it up and squints at Blaine experimentally. “This would be good with your eyes,” he says, and then, getting to the point, “I kind of can’t believe this is actually happening.”
“What,” Blaine says, “you finally on my bed? No, I can’t either.”
Kurt throws the shirt at his face. “Not what I was talking about, jerk.”
“I know, I know.” Blaine clicks out of the Facebook game he was playing (Kurt absolutely hates that he plays those - that might be half the reason he only logs on whenever they’re together) and relaxes back in his seat, stretching out and propping his feet up on the mattress. “I kind of can’t believe it either.”
“You do realize that you’re doubling the gay population at McKinley, right?”
Blaine raises a closed fist in minority solidarity. “I do what I can to help the cause.”
“Oh, I have a suggestion.” Kurt waves in the general direction of Blaine. “This, what you’re doing right now? Try never doing that again.”
Lowering his hand, Blain scowls at him. “Always trying to stifle me,” he mutters, jokingly. “Trying to keep my people down.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And yet you still want to spend every waking moment with me…”
Kurt rolls his eyes and goes back to sifting through clothing selections. “Are you nervous?” he asks, not looking up, and Blaine tilts his head in consideration.
“Yes,” he admits. “And excited. And scared.”
“That’s a whole lot of emotion for one person,” Kurt says, but Blaine just bares his teeth in a cheesy grin and says low, faux-seductive, “I’m a whole lot of man.”
Another eyeroll. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell anyone that I know you.”
“Now that would just be cruel.” Blaine uses the heel of his left foot to scratch idly at the ankle of his right. He’s feeling so many things at once. Part of him is ready to jump out of his body, all restless energy and anxiety in his bones. It was like what he’d experienced before the first day at Dalton but tripled, because no one at Dalton used cuss words during school hours or pushed guys into lockers because they secretly wanted to kiss them. He’s not just opening himself up to new possibilities. He’s opening himself up to all of that. To endless potential, on both ends of the spectrum.
Gathering the hangers that didn’t make the first cut, Kurt carries them to the closet and then arranges them by their colors, starting with dark hues and then working his way to the whites. Blaine watches him silently, amazed. “So should I pick you up for school tomorrow?” Kurt says, not turning around from his careful concentration on his job, tongue poking just slightly out of his mouth.
“Mm, as nice as that’d be, I think maybe I should drive myself. Give myself some time to hyperventilate in the car before I walk in.” Kurt looks at him sharply and he flashes him a grin, to show he’s kidding. Mostly. “And I’m supposed to get my schedule arranged in the office first, anyway.”
“Fine. I’ll meet you at your locker, then?”
Blaine nods. “Number 123.”
“123,” Kurt repeats. “Sequential. I like it.”
“Careful, Kurt, your OCD is peeking through.”
Kurt ignores him. “And then you’re going to Glee club with me, right? I’ve already talked to Mr. Schuester about it.”
This, actually, is news to Blaine. He drops his feet to the ground and sits up a little more, eyebrows raised. “And?”
“And, well, after everything that happened with Jesse St. James” - Blaine curls his lips in a grimace; he knows Jesse St. James, knows that whole story - “he was understandably a little bit skeptical at first. But, then again, Regionals are over, so you have no motivation to sabotage, and he knows you’d be a valuable asset to the team and a great addition to everything we’ve begin preparing for Nationals.”
Blaine looks impressed. “I should hire you to write pamphlets about me,” he teases, and then swivels around, digging through his desk drawer for a pad of paper and a pen. “Can you repeat that, but slower?”
Kurt huffs out an exasperated sigh, which is how Blaine knows he’s walking on thin ice. (He would’ve known that anyway. His jaw tightens when he starts to get annoyed, even if it’s imperceptible to everyone else. He’s spent hours watching - and making - it happen.) “Here,” he says, moving forward and draping a soft blue shirt over his head. Blaine squints at him through an open buttonhole. “Wear this tomorrow. And, Blaine?”
He tucks the notepad away. “Yeah?”
“Remember: it’s hallway, not corridor. Anything in the cafeteria with ‘mystery’ as part of its name is inherently inedible. And, most importantly, no one, I repeat, no one at McKinley cares about the glee club.”
A careless shrug of the shoulders. At Dalton, no one had cared about football. (They didn’t even have a team.) These things happened. “We’ll see about that. They might not care yet…”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Kurt mirrors his shrug and heads for the door; it’s getting late, and Blaine knows he has an entire moisturizing routine to begin. He pauses just outside, arms halfway into his jacket, and flashes Blaine a comforting smile. “Goodnight, Blaine. See you at school.”
***
Locker number 123 is suspiciously difficult to find. Cut through the lobby and turn left, and you’ve got lockers number 100 through 116, but if you turn right, they start at 140 and go upwards. Class schedule clenched painfully tight in his grip, Blaine makes two large and confusing circles around the first floor before giving in to his manly pride and poking his head in the guidance counselor’s office for help.
“Uh, hi,” he says, and she stops dusting her office chair - could leather chairs even attract dust? - to look up at him.
“Oh, hello!” she replies, in a chirpy upbeat voice. She peels her rubber gloves off and gives him a bright, tell-me-all-your-problems kind of smile. “How can I help you?”
“It’s just…” Blaine lifts his shoulders into a helpless shrug. “I’m new here, and I can’t find -”
“Blaine!” someone calls from behind him, and he cuts himself off mid-sentence and turns around. It’s not Kurt, like he’d maybe been expecting. It’s Rachel Berry, knee-length polkadot dress to prove it, and she appears at his side almost immediately. “Hi, welcome to your first day at McKinley!” she says, peppy and measured like maybe she was a high school tour guide in a past life. Clearly she’s been planning this. “Do you need someone to show you around? I can take it from here, Mrs. Pillsbury-Howell.” She leans into the office and whispers pointedly, with a sharp jab of her chin towards Blaine, “Ex-boyfriend,” and he’s far too amused to correct her. The guidance counselor just nods in a sort of politely confused way as they depart. Rachel slides her arm into his.
“Kurt told us you were transferring. I couldn’t be more pleased,” she starts, taking his schedule out of his hand and scanning it quickly before veering them to the left.
“Oh really? Because I was afraid you might be upset about the new competition.”
“Competition?” She looks at him with such an air of feigned innocence that he has to laugh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We aren’t competitors now, we’re teammates. And besides -” They stop short, right at locker 123, so Blaine has to be at least somewhat grateful and impressed that she’d gotten them there that quickly (and he should’ve taken notes, because this is a part of the school he doesn’t recognize). “ -our voices mesh together very well, I think this could be very beneficial for Nationals.”
“Rachel,” he points out gently, like maybe he’s talking to a child, “I’m not even in the glee club yet.”
“The keyword being yet. Really, all you have to do is show up at a meeting. Lauren Zizes became a member and we didn’t even find out for two months straight if she could actually sing.”
Blaine starts in on his locker combination. At Dalton, they didn’t have padlocks on their lockers. They didn’t need padlocks on their lockers. Petty theft was about as common as student pregnancy. “So can she?” he asks, offhandedly.
Rachel waves a hand. “Unimportant.”
“Please tell me,” says a voice from behind them, an unmistakable voice, “that you’re not torturing Blaine already, Rachel.”
The two of them turn around in unison. Blaine’s smile widens. His stomach feels oddly warm. “Kurt,” he says, “hi.”
“I’m not torturing him,” Rachel says defensively, “I’m showing him the ropes.”
“How very Mother Teresa of you.” Kurt leans against the locker next to his, locker 124, very effortlessly. He’s wearing some sort of Kurt Hummel trademarked outfit, and even though Blaine’s seen him in his normal clothes before, it’s still going to take some getting used to. Seeing him like that every day. He looks incredible.
“You look incredible,” Blaine says, and Kurt actually blushes.
“Oh,” he says, looking caught off-guard, but only momentarily. “Thank you. Artistic expression has done wonders for you, too.”
Blaine laughs and shoves his brand new books into his brand new locker. “Kurt,” he says, “you picked this out for me.”
“I didn’t say whose artistic expression.”
“Right, right. How silly of me for thinking you’d actually try to pay me a compliment.”
“You look nice,” Kurt insists, but then his eyes flicker upwards. “Though I notice that you’ve, uh, really gone to town on the hair gel today.”
Blaine’s hand automatically goes up to his hair, carefully flattened against his head. He’d gone a little overboard that morning. Twice he’d started at a new school and been known as ‘the kid with really curly hair.’ He didn’t want to take any chances at shooting for three. It was smooth and flat and every single hair was in place. Until about thirty seconds ago, he’d thought it looked decent. “You don’t like it?”
“No, I do. It’s very New England prep of you. I’m surprised there’s no matching polo shirt or carefully-pressed khakis.”
“That’s tomorrow’s outfit,” Blaine shoots back, scrunching his nose at him.
“Boys, you’ll have to excuse me,” Rachel says suddenly, and Blaine starts, because he’d kind of forgotten she was actually there. “If I don’t go now, I won’t have time to practice a song in the bathroom before first period begins. I’ll see you both after school.”
They watch her flounce down the hall in silence for a moment, and then Blaine shakes his head and hangs his backpack in the locker. Kurt reaches out and straightens it. “I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into, do I?” he says more than asks, and Kurt swings the locker door shut.
“No idea,” he agrees cheerfully, and they head off together down the hall.
***
The first day is mostly uneventful. A kid in his second period class leans over and whispers, “Did you do the homework from Friday?” and Blaine gives him a weird look and whispers back, “I’m new,” and the kid just lifts his eyebrows and goes, “Really? You weren’t here last week?” so that’s something. The girl beside him during fourth period plays Angry Birds the entire time, not even trying to hide it under her desk, but the teacher doesn’t seem to care. That would never fly at Dalton. Neither would what happens in the hallway in the middle of the day, which is Sue Sylvester body-checking two students into a locker and then striding past without a single glance back. She does give Blaine a curt nod and says, “Are you sure you’re not lost, new kid? The Shire is that way,” which may or may not have been spoken as a term of endearment, but he’s not sure, so he says nothing at all.
The best parts of the day are when he gets to see Kurt. They have third period together, which is awesome, even if he fails to write down anything the teacher says because he’s too busy watching Kurt interact with people who aren’t Dalton students, who aren’t as well-bred and well-mannered as the people he’s spent the past three years with. They eat lunch together, too, with Mercedes and Rachel. The conversations are buoyant and comfortable, from who said what in which class to the upcoming Tony Awards to who can rock a good pair of skinny jeans (final assessment: everyone). He’s disappointed when they have to split. The entire lunch hour had gone by in a flash.
They meet, again, at Blaine’s locker after the final bell. Kurt looks positive and cheerful, which is different from the casual nonchalance he’d come to expect after a full day of school. It might have to do with McKinley. Blaine has a sneaking suspicion it has more to do with him. (Or maybe, he thinks but doesn’t say, that’s just hopeful wishing.)
“So?” Kurt says expectantly, adjusting the strap on his messenger bag as he wanders towards him. “How’d the first day go?”
“It was oddly…” Blaine pauses and searches for a word. He thinks about how his math teacher had called him “Blair” four times, even though he’d corrected him after every occurrence, and about how the vaguely attractive boy next to him in English had drooled on his notebook. “Normal,” he finishes, confidently. “It was all oddly normal.”
Kurt looks like he doesn’t know whether or not to smile about that. “Is normal good?”
“Kurt,” Blaine takes a moment to tug his backpack out of the locker and swing it over his shoulders, “normal is great. It was kind of like… Dalton was awesome, of course, but it was so idealistic. Sometimes…” His grin twists into something a little more unsure. “Sometimes it didn’t even feel real.”
“Well,” Kurt says, nodding slowly. He knows that better than anyone. He understands in a way that no one else can. “I can assure you, McKinley is very real. As real as plebeian high school in Ohio can be, anyway.”
“You, Kurt Hummel, are a snob.”
“I’m not a snob. I just have extremely refined taste.”
Blaine looks at him seriously, eyebrows drawn in. Kurt looks just as seriously right back.
“Snob,” Blaine says again.
“Underappreciated debonair.”
Blaine shakes his head and starts down the hall. “Snobby snob snob.”
“What are you, five?” Kurt calls, but he’s holding back a smile.
“No, I’m six. And a half.”
“Is that how you measure your height, too?” Kurt hurries to catch up with him; they walk together, matching stride for stride, towards the choir room. The hallways are slowly emptying, with the sort of dying breath that only seven hours inside a classroom can exude. “Do you say you’re five-foot-four and a half?”
“Hey!” Blaine stops mid-step and wraps his hand around Kurt’s elbow, giving him a little shake. “Totally uncalled for. I am definitely at least five-foot-seven.”
“And a half,” Kurt smiles.
“And a half,” Blaine agrees. He doesn’t let go of Kurt’s elbow until two seconds too late. Kurt looks down at his fingers against the sleeve of his shirt, and then they lock eyes and Blaine drops his grip. “Sorry,” he says, probably unnecessarily.
“For what?”
“I… don’t know.” Blaine shakes his head and tries to make it look like a joke. He doesn’t actually know what he’s apologizing for, so he tries switching tactics. “Hey, Kurt. Make me a promise.”
Kurt looks uncertain, but not unwilling. “Yes?”
“Promise me that no matter what happens… you won’t make me sit next to Rachel Berry.”
“I promise.” Kurt draws a cross over his heart, as solemnly as possible, and then he leads them inside the room, where most of the other members have already assembled. Brittany’s got her legs draped over Artie’s lap; Tina and Mike seem to be splitting one seat between the two of them; Santana’s running her fingers through Sam’s hair but in a bored, idle kind of way, and he’s got his eyes closed like he’s a puppy being petted; Rachel is standing by the piano, shuffling through stacks of sheet music like it’s the most important task in the world; Puck’s numbering his abs out loud, and Lauren’s rolling her eyes after every single count; Mercedes is playing some game or another on her iPhone; Quinn’s not doing much of anything, just sitting there with her legs crossed at the ankle; and Finn’s staring at the ceiling like the answers to the universe are written there. Blaine’s pretty proud of himself for remembering all of their names. The first and only time he’d been introduced to the majority of them had ended in… not one of his finest moments.
Mr. Schuester calls attention to the club by clapping his hands. (It’s so similar and yet so completely different than Wes’s formalistic gavel. They’re not immediately silenced, like at Dalton. In fact, Puck finishes with abs number four through seven before deciding to turn his attention to the front of the room.)
“Hey,” Puck says, “it’s the kid from the party. Weren’t you the one mackin’ on Rachel?”
“Gross,” Santana says, sitting up straight. “Please, Puckerman. I just ate.”
So - not the greatest introduction.
“Guys,” Schuester says, raising a hand to silence them. “I’m assuming you all know Blaine Anderson. He’s just transferred from Dalton, so I think we need to be sure to give him a warm welcome.”
Instead of providing assistance, Kurt detaches himself from Blaine’s side and hurries over to sit next to Mercedes, two rows back. Blaine realizes after a second that he’s maybe supposed to say something. He looks at everyone. They all look back. “Um, hey,” Blaine says. “So, like Mr. Schuester said, I just transferred and -”
“Dude,” Puck interrupts, staring at him with squinty eyes. “I’m pretty sure I’d be able to find the hypotenuse of your eyebrows.”
“There’s a hypotenuse living in my basement,” Brittany says seriously.
Blaine looks around for help.
“Okay!” Mr. Schuester says, too fast, like he’s a little too used to that sort of thing. “We have a lot of work to do, so maybe we should -”
“Wait,” Santana says, leaning forward in her seat. “If Kurt’s boyfriend is joining -”
“I’m not -” Blaine starts, but she completely ignores him.
“-then that means we have fourteen members now.” She shifts her ruthless gaze over to Lauren Zizes, who Blaine mostly remembers because she’d challenged him to a wrestling match after his fourth (fifth? seventh?) shot of tequila that night. “Does that mean you’ll be quitting?” Santana asks, and if she’s trying to look upset about the possibility, she’s failing pretty spectacularly.
“Are you kidding? And miss out on all of this new eye candy?” Lauren says, without missing a beat. “After Kurt said he’d be transferring, I posted a picture of Blaine Downey Jr. on my Tumblr last night and almost immediately gained sixty new followers. No way, I’m in this for the long haul.”
“Wait,” Finn says, bewildered expression on his face. “Kurt, is Blaine your boyfriend now?”
“No,” Kurt says hurriedly.
“I always thought you’d be into taller dudes,” Puck says, giving Blaine a skeptical up-and-down.
“Kurt’s a really good kisser,” Brittany says happily, and Blaine looks over at her, mouth falling open a little.
“Okay, okay, let’s get started,” Mr. Schuester cuts in, finally coming to Blaine’s rescue. He gives him a clap on the shoulder and then gestures for him to sit down, and, head still spinning just a bit, he climbs up and sits down on the other side of Mercedes. She gives him a comforting pat on the leg as Rachel clambers out of her seat, sheet music in hand. He leans forward to catch Kurt’s gaze, but Kurt just flashes him the briefest of shrugs, as if to say “I told you so.”
All in all, though. Not the worst first day.
***
Blaine’s second, third, fourth, and fifth days at McKinley pass smoothly. Almost too smoothly. He keeps bracing himself each morning for something - a muttered comment, a sideswipe on the way to the cafeteria. But nothing happens. He sings a Journey song in Glee club (“the first of many,” Kurt whispers to him) and he learns a shortcut through the school on the way to English class. It’s a pretty successful week, to be honest. His mom calls him precisely five minutes after the final bell each day, and she asks how it was with a timid edge to her voice, like she’s been waiting for bad news for the past eight hours, but every day the only thing he has to report on is a good grade on a test or an extra-long practice, so he’ll be late getting home. She sighs outwardly at the end of each phone call. He hasn’t retconned to his old school. He’s not living each day in fear.
He even learns the protocol of Glee club pretty quickly. It’s nothing like it is at Dalton. If someone wants to sing a song here, for any reason whatsoever - Finn has serenaded two different girls in his first week, Puck keeps singing songs at Lauren with big, moony eyes - then they just go for it, and they do group numbers just because they’re fun, not because they’re rehearsing rigidly for Nationals for the next few months.
Blaine pulls Mr. Schuester aside after practice on Friday, and when he says, “So, um, about Nationals…” Schue looks at him half-distractedly and says, “You’re coming with us, right?” and Blaine blinks in surprise and says, “Well, I just thought - I haven’t really earned a spot…” and Mr. Schue nods and says, “Okay, then, Monday. You can sing on Monday. Earn your spot,” so Blaine only has one weekend to prepare.
He drags Kurt over to his house after his Friday dinner with his family. Blaine’s dad is sitting in his favorite armoire in the living room, watching a documentary on the History channel, and he glances up when the doorbell rings. “You didn’t tell us you were having friends over, Blaine,” he says, his voice clipped.
“It’s just Kurt,” Blaine says, pausing with his hand on the doorknob.
“Regardless, you still have to ask permission.”
His heart skips a beat or two with a surge of annoyance, but he forces it away. “Okay,” he says, “I’m sorry.” The doorbell rings again. Blaine plasters a smile onto his face and says, trying for some humor, “Hey, Dad, can Kurt come over?”
But by now his dad has gone back to his TV show. “Make sure you keep your door open,” he says, settling into the cushions. Blaine takes in a breath through his nose and opens the door.
“About time,” Kurt says impatiently, rubbing his hands together as if he’d been freezing. It’s in the 40s, at least, and Kurt’s wearing a big coat. It’s stupidly endearing, like most of the things Kurt does. Blaine grabs for his hand.
“I need your help,” he says, leading him up the steps. He doesn’t miss the way Kurt curls his fingers into his, fitting loosely, perfectly. He gives Kurt’s hand a little squeeze.
“With what? Not another hair dilemma, I hope, I left my emergency kit in the car -”
“No, nothing like that.”
He pulls Kurt into his bedroom. He knows that disobeying his dad and shutting the door would be stupid; he’d be up in a matter of minutes, armed with some dumb question and an overly distrusting gaze. Maybe he’d offer to check if the ventilation system was working again. Last time he’d managed to stick around for a whole twenty minutes under the thinly veiled guise of that excuse. So Blaine closes the door eighty percent of the way. Compromise, he thinks. That’s how it was done in the olden days.
“I’m singing on Monday,” he starts, turning to face Kurt.
Kurt looks blankly back at him. Polite, of course, but blank.
“Is this where I feign shock and awe?” he asks, one hand settling over his heart for good measure.
“No, come on, cut it out. I mean. In front of everyone. A sort of formal audition, if you will.”
Kurt’s expressions fogs over, a little more disgruntled than five seconds ago. “What? No one auditions. Not a single person in that room had to audition -”
“It’s not really an audition,” Blaine cuts in, before he can go on a civil rights rampage. “And I sort of asked for it. I’m just kind of… nervous, is all. I wanted your help.”
“Blaine Anderson? Nervous? Did I hear that correctly?”
Blaine looks around for something soft to throw at him, but there’s nothing, so he settles for giving him the best impression of a scathing look that he can. Based on Kurt’s reaction, it probably falls somewhere between sleepy kitten and mildly annoyed chipmunk.
Darn him.
“Just sit here and tell me what you think of my song, okay? We have about seven minutes before my mom barges in here with a plateful of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies, and there’s no getting rid of her easily.”
Finally, Kurt does as he’s told, climbing up into his usual position at the foot of Blaine’s bed. He tucks his legs underneath him. “So what song are you dazzling me with, Mr. Anderson?”
“Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
Kurt stares at him. “Excuse me?”
“The song,” Blaine laughs, mostly at the expression on Kurt’s face. “By Rod Stewart.”
“Right.” Kurt is adorable when he blushes. He’s most definitely blushing right now. “I knew that.”
“Feel free to answer the question, though,” Blaine says, and when Kurt gives a shrug of indifference, Blaine gives him a look that’s definitely on this side of angry raccoon. Improvement.
The CD player is already set up and cued. Blaine clears his throat and presses play before turning around to face Kurt. His parents are far too used to his impromptu bursting into song to come running. He figures they’ll leave him alone for a little while, at least until the music stops. The two of them, Blaine and Kurt, lock eyes while Blaine sings; it’s flirty, and upbeat, and Blaine gets into it, really into it, waggling his eyebrows at Kurt as he drops into the chorus. Kurt, sitting cross-legged, looks overly amused.
There is a moment, right near the end of the song, where Blaine has an impulsive feeling that he’s had many times before. He doesn’t know what prompts it, exactly. The fact that they’re alone in his bedroom. The fact that Kurt keeps his eyes trained on him, intently, even when he’s making ridiculous faces and singing ridiculous lyrics. The fact that Kurt both looks and smells really, really good, even when he’s not trying. (Or maybe he is trying. He can’t be too sure.) The thing is, Blaine wants to kiss him. Like, he really wants to kiss him, because he knows how good he is at kissing, and he can hardly think of a reason not to, except -
Except the thing with first kisses is that they don’t always lead to second kisses, no matter how badly you want them to. The one and only kiss they’d shared had immediately been the best kiss Blaine had ever gotten. (In all honesty, he hasn’t had as many as some of his friends seem to think he’s had. He doesn’t ever bother correcting them, though. No harm, no foul, right?) Sometimes Blaine is a go-getter. Sometimes he talks to his friends’ parents behind their backs, and sometimes he sings stupid songs to curly-haired boys in public places. Blaine knows that he does a fine job at acting like he’s got it all together, and that most of the time, he can fool even himself. He can be confident, he can be self-assured. He can make an amazing cheese omelet.
But he can’t make Kurt kiss him.
That kiss had been amazing. That, he knew, was not one-sided. Kurt had even whimpered a little when they finally pulled away, quiet and low, from the back of his throat, and it was the hottest noise Blaine has ever heard in his entire life. Ever. Kurt had held his hand and Kurt had hugged him, and Kurt had looked for a second too long when he’d changed pants after Warblers practice that one time. (For the record, he’d kept his boxers on.)
But he still hadn’t kissed him.
Blaine had been the one to make the conscious decision not to kiss Kurt again. Not to assume that they’re in some sort of relationship of the ages just because they’d had the best kiss since The Notebook. (Blaine tells everyone that he hates that movie, but he owns a copy and keeps it hidden on the second shelf in his closet, right next to the pornos that would give his dad an aneurism should he ever stumble across them.) You don’t just jump into relationships with people. Especially when they’re your best friend, or, the closest thing you’ve ever had to a best friend. If Kurt wanted something more - he could take the initiative - he’s never been shy about what he wanted -
So they’re not dating, and they haven’t even kissed since that first time, which is okay. He likes being Kurt’s friend too much to really jeopardize it. Because they are. Friends. It’s not a bad arrangement. Not at all.
And even though Blaine wants to kiss him, especially now, he doesn’t. Instead, he finishes the song with as much cheese as he can muster and drops down to his knees in a grand flourishing gesture, and Kurt laughs and claps politely.
Blaine reaches for Kurt’s foot. “Well?” he asks, breathing hard, giving it a little shake. He’s not sure if he’s asking for judgment on the song, or on him.
“You,” Kurt says, answering both, “are phenomenal. Truly an inspired performance. Also possibly the gayest thing I’ve seen since Brokeback Mountain.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Blaine shoots back, dropping Kurt’s foot and climbing back to his feet. He collapses onto the bed next to Kurt, sprawled out, hands pillowing his head, legs dangling over.
Kurt rests his hand flat against Blaine’s chest, innocent, for just a brief second. “Not at all,” he says. “That was actually the biggest compliment I could’ve ever given you.”
There’s a sudden noise from the hallway. Blaine lifts his head and sees his dad hovering by the door, arms crossed. Kurt’s hand mysteriously disappears from his chest. “Boys,” his dad says in greeting. “Kurt, how are you?”
“I’m doing fine, Mr. Anderson, yourself?”
“Doing well, thanks.” He leans against the doorframe. “Your mother wants to know if you boys want a snack.”
“We just had dinner an hour ago,” Blaine points out.
“Didn’t ask if you wanted a meal, just a snack. She was thinking about making popcorn.”
“We’re fine, Dad. But thanks.”
His dad nods and strokes his beard for a second. “You guys want to watch some TV?” he asks. “There’s a documentary about UFOs and extraterrestrials coming on in a minute.”
“Mm, tempting, but I think we’re going to sit this one out.”
“Maybe next time,” Kurt offers, in that trying-to-be-friendly way of his. Blaine smirks a little at his effort. “I love me a good alien documentary.”
Blaine’s dad smiles, legitimately smiles, for the first time since Kurt had gotten there. “Me too,” he agrees, “I watched one the other day about Area 51 -”
“On the Discovery Channel? My dad and I watched that too. Pretty fascinating, right?”
“Completely fascinating, there’s some weird stuff in this world that we don’t know about. I’ve got a pretty good one saved on the DVR if you’re ever over and get bored.” His dad nods and then he turns and heads for the stairs, saying over his shoulder as he goes, “Well, you two have fun, let me know if you need anything.”
Blaine can’t help but be a little bit amazed by Kurt. Sine when had one of his guy friends ever managed to charm his dad that quickly, that effortlessly? He shakes his head in wonderment and nudges him in the shoulder.
“Kurt,” he tells him, seriously, “I think my dad just developed a crush.”
***
Monday’s performance goes just as smoothly as that night in his bedroom, except he tones it down a little, doesn’t stare at Kurt the entire time. Everyone gets really into it; they jump to their feet and join him on the floor in the chorus, singing and dancing and laughing. Blaine even gives Kurt a little twirl near the end, and no one notices, or if they do, no one cares.
Afterwards, Mr. Schue claps him on the shoulder and says, pleased, “Welcome to the glee club, Blaine,” and it feels really, really good to be a part of this. A part of them.
***
News travels fast in a public school. That’s one thing Blaine doesn’t forget, doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget. High school is just one big freakishly inbred subculture, and McKinley is no exception. But his first week had gone so well, so swimmingly, that he’d started to believe that the ret of his high school career could be like this. Well-liked and well-adjusted. A member of the Glee club. Headed to Nationals in the spring. Maybe he would try out for the soccer team next year, get to know a few of the more athletic guys -
But the athletic guys at McKinley are far different from the athletic guys at Dalton. These guys have biceps twice the size of Blaine’s head. They walk through the hallways and the other students part like Moses and the Red Sea. (A stupid metaphor, but Blaine thinks it every time.) He almost, almost strikes up a conversation with one of the football players in homeroom, but when Blaine opens his mouth the guy shoots him one of the filthiest looks imaginable, and Blaine clears his throat and pretends he was only doing mouth exercises instead.
Fine, he thinks. He’ll just stay out of their way.
And because Kurt had warned him that no one at McKinley cared about the Glee club - a fact which proves itself more true each day - Blaine doesn’t think anyone actually knows that he’s a member. It’s unremarkable. Unimportant.
How wrong he is.
Tuesday, after his last class of the day, he’s one-armedly wrestling books into his backpack when he hears them. He’s still thinking about calculus functions and Shakespeare’s poems and what he’s going to have for dinner, so it takes a few seconds for his brain to catch up. “Hey,” someone calls out, deep-voiced and manly. “Hey. Short dude.”
With a sense of foreboding, Blaine looks up. That’s a nickname he’s heard before. It’s Azimio, the one Kurt’s told him about, and two other football guys. They’ve got each got one large Styrofoam cup in hand, which is not that unusual, but none of them are drinking out of them, which is.
“Hi,” Blaine says, drawing himself up, back stiff with uncertainty. “What can I do for you?” He’s been waiting for this moment. He knew, deep down, that it was inevitable. That homophobes didn’t always learn their lesson and move on to be better functioning members of society. That high school bullies were still high school bullies, even if they put their behavior temporarily on hold. He’s ready for them. He thinks, vaguely, that expecting them makes it easier. He’ll be impressed if they can find a gay joke he hasn’t heard before.
“We’ve got a tradition at this school, prissy boy,” Azimio says, and they advance on him, cups raised. “Welcome to the Glee club.”
All at once, Blaine is hit with three different flavors of ice-cold Slushie, so fast he doesn’t have time to brace himself for it, and they explode against his face, his chest, his hair, his ears with the sharp pain of some sort of external brain freeze. Blaine can’t stop himself from gasping as it drips into the collar of his shirt, but, weirdly enough, what he can’t stop himself from thinking is that’s it?
The football players had tossed their now-empty cups carelessly onto the ground and strode past, exchanging high-fives as they went.
That’s it?
No offensive jokes, no shoves to the chest, nothing about his sexuality at all? That’s it? That’s not it, though, because once the shock of that wears off, he realizes that the Slushie is every bit the ten kinds of miserable Kurt had told him about. His nostrils are burning and his shirt is drenched in purple stickiness. He stands there, frozen, for a moment, not sure what he’s supposed to do.
“Oh man,” says a voice from behind him, and Blaine slowly turns around. It’s Finn. Not exactly the white knight he’d imagined, but comforting all the same. “They got you, huh?”
Blaine’s teeth are chattering without him even realizing. “They did,” he responds, watching the juice drip down and splatter against the tile floor, “in various colors and sizes. They must’ve been having a sale.”
Finn shakes his head, and then he reaches for Blaine’s shoulder but thinks better of it, considering his shoulder now smells like fruit-flavored gas station. “Well, now you’ve got the first one over with,” he offers, with a trying-to-be-helpful smile. “Now you know what to expect.”
Blaine can’t fathom this happening again. He thinks already thirty-five percent of his body is numb. “Silver lining,” he says, though, flicking ice away from his backpack.
“Come on.” Finn motions towards the locker room at the end of the hall; for lack of better prospects, Blaine follows after him. “Do you have spare clothes?”
So that’s what Kurt had been implying. He’d just sort of assumed Kurt wanted him to stash an extra sweater in his locker in the off chance their outfits clashed. This, he realizes, made much more sense.
“No,” Blaine admits, looking sadly at his ruined-forever polo shirt.
Finn nods. He pulls open the door and steps aside to let Blaine through first. “Go turn the sink on,” he instructs, like this is all second nature to him, heading over to the locker that is presumably his, if the QB sticker on front means anything. Blaine does as he’s told, though bewilderedly, testing out the temperature with his fingertips while Finn digs through what is simultaneously the messiest and most confusing locker Blaine has ever seen. (Why, for instance, is there half a copy of Lord of the Flies, and, behind that, a plastic cow figurine?)
“Where’s the rest of the book?” Blaine asks, for conversation’s sake, letting the water warm up.
Finn furrows his eyebrows. “Huh?”
“Lord of the - nevermind.”
“Here.” Finn looks triumphant as he tugs a slightly-wrinkled tshirt out of a plastic bag in the back. He holds it up. McKinley Football, it says. 2009. It’s huge.
“Um.” Blaine doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be reacting to. “It’s nice,” he says, after a beat.
Finn ignores his look. “It’s for you,” he explains, crossing over to the sink. “Here, you should -” He gestures to the running water with one hand. “You want to get it out of your hair before it kind of… gels. Especially considering, you know, how much gel you already have in there. If you wait too long you’ll be smelling it for weeks.”
“It’s not the worst smell I’ve ever smelled,” Blaine points out, but he bends his head regardless, inserting his hair into the water. Finn stands around awkwardly while he rubs at his curls. The curls he’d tried so hard to keep plastered to his head. His hand feels goopy with hair product and syrupy sugar. “I haven’t worn my hair curly since freshman year,” Blaine tells him, but since he’s speaking into the sink, it comes out muffled and echo-y.
“What?”
“I said -” Blaine shakes his head, giving up. The warm water feels good against his scalp. He splashes some of it against the stickiest parts of his cheeks, his neck.
“You missed a spot,” Finn says, and Blaine meets his gaze in the mirror before cleaning off that spot, too. He admittedly doesn’t spend a lot of time around Finn Hudson, because when he goes over to Kurt’s house, he’s usually holed up in his bedroom. (“Probably looking at porn,” Kurt had explained with a grimace.) But still. This wasn’t the sort of thing he would’ve expected.
When he’s fairly sure most of the Slushie has disappeared down the drain, Blaine shakes the excess water away and straightens. Finn holds out a somehow magically-procured towel. “It’s mine,” he explains after a minute. “But I haven’t really used it yet, it’s not…”
Blaine takes it, half grateful, half a little weirded out. “Thanks,” he says, running the towel over his face first, and then through his hair. He doesn’t point out that it smells like stale corn chips. “For everything. I mean. You didn’t have to -”
“Yeah, I did.”
“No, seriously.”
“No, I know. I did.” Finn looks so earnest that Blaine doesn’t know what to say. Finn shrugs. “You’re a member of the Glee club now. We all have each other’s backs.” He hands him the tshirt and points to one of the closed-doored stalls. “And, besides. You’re. You know. Kurt’s…”
“Friend,” Blaine supplies for him, amused.
“Sure. Friend.” Finn doesn’t look like he believes him; Blaine’s not all too upset about that. “And you’ve been the best - friend - Kurt’s had. You’ve been really good for him. Everyone thinks that.”
Blaine curls the shirt up in his fist. He’s slightly taken aback. “They do?”
“Yeah. He’s a lot happier now than he used to be.”
“Karofsky’s gone,” Blaine says, pointedly.
Finn shrugs again. “Yeah, but he was happy before that. He’s been pretty happy since he met you.”
There’s a pause.
“I’m glad,” Blaine says finally, looking down. “Kurt deserves to be happy.”
“Yeah.” Finn’s starting to look a little uncomfortable; extensive talk about feelings, outside his area of expertise. Blaine feels bad for him, so he drops it. “You should probably change,” Finn says, gesturing again to the stall. “We’re late. Schue’s probably wondering where we are.”
Blaine hesitates. As nice as the gesture is, he’s not sure he should. He’s a practical guy. And he doesn’t want to make things harder for other people than they have to be. “Finn, this is cool of you and all, but do you know what it’s going to look if we walk out of the guys’ locker room at the same time, with my hair wet and wearing your clothes?”
Judging by the expression on Finn’s face, he hadn’t considered that. But a minute later, he shakes his head. “I don’t care, man.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure.” Finn drops down onto one of the benches, waiting for him to change. “Puck steals my shirts all the time. This is no different.”
That, Blaine thinks, is one of the best things he could’ve said. Finn might have a long way to go, a lot to learn, but at least he’s trying. He’ll make it a point to tell Kurt later. He knows that the majority of it has got to be his doing, anyway. Blaine nods and disappears into the bathroom stall, shrugs his soaked shirt off, drapes it over the door, and then pulls on the grey tshirt loan from Finn. He swims in it. It hits halfway to his knees, and the sleeves stop just short of his elbows. He knows he probably looks ridiculous in it, but then, it’s better than being sopping wet and purple. Probably. He pushes the door back open.
Finn looks at him for half a second and snorts out a laugh that he almost tries to turn into a cough, but fails.
“Oh, come on,” Blaine says, beelining straight to the mirror. “It’s not my fault you’re freakishly tall.” He stares at his reflection for a second or two. His hair. His hair was… unruly. Messy. He hadn’t worn his hair without product in so long that he’d almost forgotten just how crazy the curls could be. He looked ridiculous. And, worst of all, he didn’t have any spare gel in his locker.
“You ready?” Finn asks from behind him. “You can put your shirt in that laundry pile over there, but I don’t know when that actually gets washed. And also…”
“It’s pretty much unsalvageable. I know.” Blaine grabs his backpack and heads for the door of the locker room, rolling the sleeves up as he walks. He glances at Finn out of the corner of his eye. “Thanks,” he says, meaning it. “Again.”
“No problem.” Finn trails after him, taking long, easy strides. He clears his throat and jams his hands into his pockets. “You going to keep up with March Madness?”
Blaine laughs. “Of course I am,” he says, and Finn looks impressed, like he hadn’t actually expected him to say yes. “I’ve got thirty dollars riding on my bracket, so…”
“No kidding? Maybe we should watch the games together sometime.”
Imagining the two of them, sharing a couch, talking basketball over handfuls of popcorn - it’s weird, but it’s not the worst image in the world. Blaine doesn’t have many friends who’re into sports. Sometimes he and the Warbler boys would watch golf tournaments on ESPN, but then, that hardly counts. “Yeah. Definitely. That’d be awesome.”
“Kurt makes a really good cheeseball,” Finn says.
“I like cheeseballs.”
“I like pretty much any food with cheese in it. Actually, no. I like pretty much any food period.” Finn tips his head to the side, thoughtful. He puts his hand on his stomach as if simply talking about food has made him hungry. “I just really like to eat.”
“We,” Blaine says, stopping short just outside the music room, “have quite a bit in common, my friend.”
Finn grins at him and motions for Blaine to enter first. They’ve apparently already started, because there’s a steady buzz of chatter that fades into silence when they walk in. Blaine can practically feel thirteen pairs of eyes flicker from his hair to the shirt, and maybe back to the hair again. Puck, of course, is the first to speak.
“Whoa, dudes, have a little after school rendezvous in the showers?” he says, wiggling his eyebrows at them suggestively.
“Oh God,” Kurt says next, his palm pressed flat against his forehead, “oh God, someone pinch me, my greatest fears are materializing right in front of my eyes -”
Sam Evans leans over and, presumably trying to be helpful, pinches him in the arm. Kurt lowers his hands and glares.
“Hey, Finn, why didn’t I get one of your tshirts after we did the dirty?” Santana asks, half-smug and half-insulted. Rachel very pointedly looks down at the floor.
“You took three of mine,” Brittany tells Santana, and Blaine’s eyes widen slightly, but before any of his questions can be answered Puck’s talking over everyone, again, saying, “All these opportunities to switch teams and you wait until this kid arrives? First my boy Kurt, now my boy Finn? What kind of magical sex powers do you have, Anderson?”
“Blaine got Slushied,” Finn says, very loud and very fast.
The talking stops at once. They all wince in unison, in solidarity. Blaine feels a weird sense of belonging.
“That sucks,” Sam says, shaking his head, “I can’t even walk past the Slushie machines at 7/11 without having post-traumatic flashbacks.”
“My mom bought me a Slushie once and I screamed so loudly that my dad thought someone murdered me,” Tina adds, sympathetically. “He actually called 911.”
“I like the blue ones,” Brittany says happily. “They taste like Smurfs.”
Lauren Zizes, on the other hand, gives a casual shrug. “I still like Slushies,” she says, but then, Blaine can’t imagine anyone throwing a frozen drink at her and not fearing for their own life. Lauren Zizes is kind of a badass.
“Okay, that explains the shirt,” Puck says, “now what about the hair?”
“Seriously, how did you manage to hide all of that?” Mercedes asks, gesturing towards his hair. Blaine unconsciously lifts a hand to try and flatten it back against his head. She looks at him thoughtfully, scrutinizing. “Actually, I kind of like it this way.”
“Yeah, you almost have as much hair on your head as Finn’s mom has on her back,” Puck smirks, and Finn shoots a quick, “Shut up, dude,” at him before finally, finally Mr. Schue intervenes.
“Okay guys, enough,” he says, and places a hand on Blaine’s back that he’s pretty sure has to do with being the new gay kid more than being the new Glee kid, but it’s nice enough all the same. “Are you okay?” he asks, sincere.
“I’m fine.” Blaine tugs ineffectively at his shirt. “I hear it’s practically a rite of passage, anyway.”
“Damn straight,” Mike Chang says, and Blaine smiles a little. “You are now officially one of us.”
“The jury’s still out on whether or not that’s a good thing,” Quinn tells him, and he lets out a laugh.
Either way, it feels pretty good to him.
***
Blaine means to go home after school, except somehow he ends up squeezed next to Mercedes in an ice cream parlor booth somewhere just outside of Lima. He’s not sure how he got from Point A to Point B, but she’d paid for his cone - chocolate chip cookie dough, his second favorite - so he’s not really complaining. Maybe it’s just a ‘get to know your best friend’s new best friend’ thing. Maybe she, like Rachel, is harboring an undeniable attraction to him and thinks the only way to win him over is with food. Or maybe she just wants the chance to interrogate him outside the earshot of Kurt.
When she starts the conversation with “So why exactly haven’t you asked Kurt to be your boyfriend yet?” he’s pretty convinced it’s the latter.
Blaine nearly chokes on a chunk of cookie dough (who knew ice cream could be a health hazard?) and coughs it back down before actually taking her question seriously. “I…” He looks at Mercedes, who is waiting patiently for his answer. “Why are you asking me that? Has he said something?”
Mercedes rolls her eyes. “Of course he’s said something. He’s Kurt. Have you ever known that boy to bite his tongue?”
She has a point.
“What did he say?” Blaine asks, feeling just a little self-conscious. He was very rarely self-conscious. He didn’t much like this newly discovered side of himself.
“What kind of friend would I be if I told you that?” Mercedes licks around her own strawberry cone. Blaine pouts a little, but she ignores him. “Kurt didn’t tell me to ask you that, if that’s what you’re wondering. In fact, he’d probably kill me if he knew.”
“So you take it upon yourself to play matchmaker.”
Mercedes shrugs. “It’s better than staying home and watching Bad Girls Club reruns. Look, I really care about Kurt. And I know you do too. I just - I see the way you two look at each other, and I guess I don’t understand why you’re not together.”
Blaine glances down at his hands. “I don’t know if Kurt’s ready for a relationship…”
“Oh really?” Mercedes can give him a mean look when she wants to. Blaine actually has to force himself not to crawl under the table and hide. “Then when will he be? After graduation? When he’s thirty? I know things with Kurt are different. You have to move slow around that boy sometimes. But he can handle it. He can handle you.” She stops and takes a small bite out of her cone, and they chew in companionable silence for a moment.
“He likes you, Blaine,” she adds, after a beat. “And you don’t have to be afraid about that.”
They don’t talk about it anymore, after that. They talk about silly, inane things. Friend things. Blaine holds the door for her when they leave, and he makes a mental note to ask Mercedes out for ice cream more often, and next time, he thinks, he’ll pay.
***
Kurt invites Blaine over for Friday dinner that week, which is pretty significant for a number of reasons: 1) it’s the first time he’s invited him for Friday dinner, because he’s pretty sure that up until now it’s been a family-only occasion; 2) he informs him that he’s volunteered the pair of them to do the cooking, and Blaine has yet to tell Kurt that he’s actually not very good at cooking at all; and 3) it’s Ohio State’s first game in the March Madness tournament, and somehow, weirdly enough, he and Finn have planned to watch it together.
It’s more an accident than a plan, to be honest. Finn’s lacing up his tennis shoes when Blaine comes over, and he glances up, confused, and goes, “Oh, you’re hanging out here tonight?” and Blaine nods his confirmation and says, “Yeah, Kurt asked me over for dinner,” and Finn asks, “Are you going to stick around and watch the game?” and Blaine doesn’t really have anywhere else to go, because watching sports with his own father isn’t nearly as fun as it should be, so he shrugs and says, “Sure, why not?” and Finn unties his shoes and kicks them aside like he’s deciding to stick around after all.
First, however, Kurt ushers him into the kitchen. “Here,” he says, shoving a brightly-colored apron at him, “wear this.”
Blaine looks at it appraisingly. “What, did they run out of my size in the men’s department?” he asks, but he puts it on anyway. At least he’s not alone in his ridiculousness. Kurt’s apron is matching, except his has floral prints. They are united in their apparel misfortune.
“Smells good,” Blaine says, once he’s tied it correctly in the back. He feels like a less-crazy Paula Deen. “What’re we making?”
“Vegetarian lasagna with cucumber salad and garlic bread. I already put the lasagna in the oven - can you chop up some cucumbers while I get everything else ready?”
Pleased to have been given a relatively simple task, Blaine hunts down a knife and cuts the cucumber into little slivers. Maybe he’ll get through this night without Kurt realizing that everything he tries to bake ends up burnt and that he can just barely boil water, on a good day. Over by the sink, Kurt’s going to town on some tomatoes.
“Hey Kurt.”
Kurt looks over. “Yes?”
“Why’d you invite me tonight? I mean, not that I don’t appreciate it, but I thought Friday was for family.”
He goes a little pink, maybe, and goes back to concentrating on his tomatoes. “I just thought you might want to come over for dinner. It beats listening to Dad and Finn talk about homeruns and three-pointers for two hours straight. Carole and I needed someone else on our team.”
Blaine pops a cucumber square into his mouth and chews thoughtfully. “I guess I’m just surprised you haven’t gotten sick of me yet. We see each other all the time now.”
Kurt lifts an eyebrow. Blaine can tell he’s doing that without even glancing over. It’s something about the inflection in his voice. “Is that a bad thing?”
“That is definitely not a bad thing,” Blaine says quickly, honestly.
There’s a short-lived silence while they work on the salad. “I could never get sick of you,” Kurt says after a moment, pushing the freshly chopped tomatoes to the side.
Blaine smiles and doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t need to.
***
At the dinner table, conversation is fluid and easy. Burt asks about school; Carole asks about his parents. Finn regales the table with a locker room story, but Carole cuts him off when she deems it no longer ‘family appropriate.’ Finn points out that Blaine’s not a member of the family. Burt says he’s been hanging around so much lately that he ought to be, and even though he says it like a complaint, he shoots him a secret wink to show that he clearly doesn’t actually mind.
Kurt brushes his foot against Blaine’s under the table. Maybe it was an accident at first, but five minutes later it’s still there, his toes softly pressed against Blaine’s shin, and that, that can’t be an accident at all.
***
The game starts at precisely 8:05. Finn shoos Blaine into the living room so they can be in their seats for tip-off; Kurt rolls his eyes and calls at their backs, “It’s fine, totally fine that I cooked, I guess I’ll do the dishes, too!” and Finn misses his sarcasm completely and calls back, “Great, thanks, Kurt!”
Blaine resolves to give him a hand in the kitchen at every timeout and commercial break. That makes him feel better.
The game is exciting, because it’s the first, but it’s not that exciting, because they’re playing a team that’s essentially a no-namer, and Ohio State pulls ahead pretty early on. Kurt joins them in the living room sometime during the first half, except he makes bored, deadpanned comments every two minutes until he finally gives up with a sigh. “I can’t take this anymore,” he announces. “Enjoy your Neanderthal sporting events, I’ll be downstairs watching quality entertainment.”
He stands up and looks at Blaine pointedly. Blaine knows the proper thing to do would be to join him in the basement, but - it’s Ohio State. “I’ll come down right after the game ends?” he offers as a sort of compromise, and Kurt rolls his eyes yet again and leaves.
Finn watches him walk away and waits until the door is safely closed behind him before turning towards Blaine. “Rachel does that too,” he says in a half-whisper.
“Does what?”
“Dramatically storms out of a room when she doesn’t get her way.”
“Kurt wasn’t -” Blaine starts to defend him, but then realizes yeah, he totally was. They laugh together, but quietly, like they both feel guilty for doing so.
“Rachel also made kitten calendars with your face on them, I hear,” Blaine says, because even though playing yours-is-worse-than-mine in regards to actual people is terrible, he still feels a little justified.
Finn glances at him over the top of his Mountain Dew bottle. “Kurt had your picture hanging in his locker,” he fires back.
Blaine’s eyes widen slightly. “He did?”
“He did. He took it down, like, two days before you transferred.” Finn looks a little more panicked all of a sudden. “But you can’t tell him I told you that. Seriously. He’s still got blackmail on me for the mayonnaise incident -”
“The mayonnaise incident?” Blaine doesn’t know whether to be intrigued or repulsed.
Finn, however, just shakes his head and edges the volume up on the television. “Don’t ask.”
After a quarter of a bag of potato chips and an easy Ohio State victory and a conversation ranging from foot fungus to Nintendo 64, Blaine dusts the crumbs off his pants and stands up. Finn follows suit, switching the TV off. “I better go find Kurt,” Blaine says, nodding in the direction of the basement door.
“Good luck, dude,” Finn says. “Whenever Rachel got pissed at me, I’d suggest watching a musical or singing about our feelings or something, you might want to try that.”
Blaine laughs. “Thanks,” he says, bracing himself like a soldier going into battle. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
part three.
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