Just the Way You Are
Spoilers: Up to 2.08.
Warnings: Homophobia.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5, 361
Disclaimer: RIB and FOX own everything ever.
This prompt. Kurt is an awesome brother and Finn loves him, he really does. He just wishes Kurt weren’t gay.
Finn isn’t homophobic. He knows he has a problem being to one hundred percent okay with Kurt being so gay, but the truth is, it’s kind of what he admires about him, too. It makes him stand out at school, and not in a good way, and sometimes, okay, sometimes it still makes Finn flinch a little because he knows what people are thinking, that they might think it about Finn if he’s too close to Kurt. But he’s a lot better about that. It took a red curtain-dress and a bromantic dance in front of everyone at the wedding, but he’s getting there. He can think this stuff over and realize when he’s being a douche. Anyway, his problem is that he cares too much what other people think, not that he actually thinks there’s anything wrong with it. So Kurt’s got a high voice and dresses funny, and reads glossy magazines between classes. So he occasionally decides that he should be on the girls’ team in assignments and wants to sing girls’ songs. So he watches chick TV shows and wears skirts. Finn’s fine with all of that. He’s starting to really like it, on its own merit, not just because it means Kurt’s so brave all the time.
It's just. Everything would be so much easier if Kurt weren't.
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It’s as Christmas break ends that it occurs to Finn that he, but not in a gay way, loves Kurt. Like, really. A lot.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
Christmas morning they’re finally all together at home, after Dalton and visiting Mr. Schue and everything, and Finn sets his alarm for five like always. This is the one day of the year that he doesn’t mind getting up before noon, and even if the presents aren’t always spectacular (with a single mom and not enough money for anything ever), it’s more the idea of them that’s the important thing.
He scuttles instantly to Kurt’s room. His mom said last night that the adults would get up when the kids did, and Finn realizes that this is fair but thinks Kurt may need some persuading. Or a lot of persuading. Kurt, he remembers very clearly from the first time they lived together, is fine to get up early on school days, but without the pressing concern of getting dressed to impress, he can be violently opposed to getting up before eight.
“Kurt,” he hisses. “Hey. It’s Christmas!” There’s no response. Which is cool; Finn doesn’t expect it to be that easy. He uses his cell phone as a flashlight and creeps over to the bed, which is kind of huge. There are at least three lumps in it that could potentially be Kurt. He pokes a shoulder-looking place on the lump nearest to his side. “Kurt?” No, too soft; a pillow or something. He leans over and tries the next one, which collapses completely. Okay, no way he’s climbing on the bed to reach the last one. He takes a breath, braces himself for Kurt’s possible fury, and tugs the blanket down.
The bed is empty.
The new house isn’t all that big. If Kurt were on the second floor and not in their parents’ room, Finn would pretty much know about it.
He tries to rush quietly downstairs, but he does rush, because he’s kind of thinking oh shit what if he ran away or someone kidnapped him or Mercedes called him in the middle of the night because she’s being held hostage at the mall by an axe-toting maniac, but there’s a light on in the kitchen and a cookie smell. Kurt is asleep at the table, head on his arms.
“Kurt? What are you doing?”
Kurt jerks up, hair mussed, and blinks at Finn. “Did I set the house on fire?”
“Uh, no? I hope not?”
Kurt checks his phone. “No. I did not. Cookies will be done in four minutes and forty-three seconds.” He drops his head back onto his arms.
“Kurt?”
“No fire, no getting up.”
“Seriously, dude, what are you doing down here?”
Kurt lifts his head again, fixing Finn with a baleful stare. “You said last night that you get up at five-thirty on Christmas morning, yes?”
“Um. Yeah?”
“And you also said that you’d always wanted to eat cookies fresh out of the oven while opening presents, yes?”
“Maybe?”
“There you go then, Finn. Now shut up for my last four minutes.”
“You got up and made cookies because I said that?”
“Give the boy a shiny nickel.”
“That’s really awesome,” Finn decides, even though baking is super girly.
“So glad you think so.” Kurt puts his head back on his arms.
Four minutes later, Finn’s the one who takes the cookies out of the oven, after a close call where Kurt says into his sleeve-pillow, “I know you’re wearing oven mitts, because you’re aware that the metal you’re about to touch is heated to three hundred degrees and will hurt you if you touch it with your bare skin.” So he has to wear oven mitts, which is weird and girly and he takes them off again very quickly. But Kurt helps him get their parents up and arranges the cookies on a platter so they’re all pretty and stuff, and Finn was right: oven-warm cookies during presents is pretty much as good as it gets. And if Kurt dozes on and off with his head on Finn’s shoulder, well, Kurt just doesn’t know from personal boundaries; he doesn’t mean anything by it. And he lets Finn open his presents, which is totally cool, because Finn likes unwrapping presents possibly even more than getting them.
“That your phone, kiddo?” Burt asks at one point, mouth full of the one cookie Kurt has allowed him, due to the extenuating circumstances of It Being Christmas.
“Oh! Yes, I forgot I set it to vibrate…” Kurt fishes around in the discarded wrapping paper and produces his phone. He breaks into one of those ridiculous grins he gets when it’s to do with a guy he has a crush on, and Finn, who would know, shifts away from him a little. “It’s just Blaine,” Kurt says, oblivious, and starts texting back. He still looks all giddy, like… like a girl in a romantic comedy, it’s just kind of embarrassing to watch. Why did Blaine have to text right now, anyway? This is supposed to be family time.
When Kurt’s done with his text, Finn swipes his phone and pockets it.
“Finn!”
“No phones during presents! It’s a new rule.”
Kurt is too-plainly trying not to smile; victory is Finn’s. “You don’t get to make rules.”
“You’re in charge of like food and clothes and stuff, so I get to be in charge of present-rules. That’s just fair.”
“Oh, very. We have another Solomon the Wise here, plainly.” But he laughs and gives up on the phone, and Finn gets kind of a power rush because, wow, he really is Kurt’s family now, and Kurt’s always been pretty clear on how he’ll do anything for family. Sweet deal.
He doesn’t say anything when Kurt’s phone goes off in his pocket. And if Kurt hears it, he doesn’t bring it up either.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
“Finn?”
“Uh-huh?” Finn doesn’t bother to sit up. One of the downsides of being so invested in Christmas is the post-holiday letdown. It’s only the day after and already he can’t summon the energy to do more than lie on his bed and toss a baseball at the ceiling.
“I want to propose a joint venture, to be undertaken by us as a… brotherly unit, if you will.”
It occurs to Finn that the nervous tone probably doesn’t bode well for him. Now he sits up. Kurt has his hands clasped in front of him and is twiddling his thumbs. Not good signs for the relative sanity of his project. “Uh, yeah?” he says weakly.
“You don’t have to,” Kurt says. “It’s just a suggestion. But I thought… in order to make up for certain transgressions and bad judgment calls I may have made in the past…”
“Yeah?”
“I want to help you decorate your new room. Emphasis on help, and you, and your.” He recovers some of his… Kurtosity with, “And also on me because I refuse to live in a house with cowboy wallpaper in any room.”
“Uh,” says Finn. “I don’t know, like, decorate it as what?”
Kurt’s eyes widen with horror. “Decorate it as a room, Finn, as an expression of your personality.”
“Like the paint color? I kinda thought I’d leave it white. And I have posters somewhere…”
Kurt looks physically pained. “Oh, god, Finn. Please let me help you. There is so much more to a room than the color of the walls, and we are not leaving your room off-white; that says absolutely nothing about you.”
“So... we’d make it look all cool and stuff? Like the Batcave or something?”
“We’d make it look all cool and stuff, but not like the Batcave. This is where you need me. You do presumably want to be able to have a girl over - at some point, in the distant future - without driving her giggling right back out again. We’re aiming for a grown-up room.”
“But not one that looks like a harem, this time?” Finn checks.
Kurt flushes and looks at the ceiling. “Right. Strictly conventional. Far fewer red draperies.”
“…Okay. Sure.” Finn even, belatedly, remembers to add, “Thanks,” even though it’s pretty plain who’s doing who the favor here when Kurt’s face lights up like a Christmas tree.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
Kurt wasn’t kidding, and Finn gets, now, how he threw together the Basement Incident Décor in about a day and a half; the guy is like some kind of mad shopping demon. He forces Finn out of bed and out the door inside of ten minutes and from there on, the day is kind of a blur of colors, most of them with names Finn’s never heard of.
The last thing on their list - Kurt’s list, because he always makes Finn choose, but Finn never knows what to choose from until Kurt gives him a set of options - is a set of curtains for Finn’s windows. Apparently the curtains he has now, the ones the last owners left, are not good enough. When he suggests keeping them, Kurt looks appalled. “Have you looked at those things? Finn, they have little baby ducks along the bottom. Ducks. And they are bright yellow. You are not four years old, and you may not keep those curtains.”
This is just not something dudes are supposed to worry about, but dudes are also not supposed to have yellow duck curtains at seventeen, so Finn follows Kurt into the last store, promising himself a lengthy, sports-related bonding session with Burt this evening to make up for all the girly crap he’s done today.
Which isn’t to say it’s all bad. They’re far enough from town at this point that Finn’s not too worried about seeing someone they know as he literally picks out curtains with the local gay kid, and he does like hanging out with Kurt, who’s funny and doesn’t mind when Finn feels the need to ride the cart down an empty aisle like he’s on a roller coaster.
“Okay, Finn, so: We want the curtains to complement the walls, but not match them exactly. Which means we’re looking for…?”
“Green.”
“Yes, good, but dark green, alright? And more of a forest than an olive.” Kurt looks him over. “Let’s not get into materials right now.”
“Cool.” Finn’s getting kind of into this - not so much the shopping, but the setting up after. He does like getting new stuff, and it’ll be neat to have a room that’s not just new, but his.
Kurt starts comparing colors with his freaky, memorized color tablet of the paint and blankets they’ve gotten already. “Oh, what do you want for dinner tonight?” he tosses off, peering between two sets that look identical to Finn but are probably a different thread-count or something.
“I get to choose?” Finn perks up. He is walking backwards in front of the cart and trying to step on only the red tiles; whenever he misses one he pretends he loses another point. He started out with one hundred and is only down to ninety.
“Mm-hm.” Kurt smiles when Finn hits another white tile and swears. “We’re going to be the ones doing all the hard work on your room, unpacking and painting and all. What’ll it take to keep your energy up?”
“Can we have grilled cheese and bacon burgers?”
Kurt makes a face like he just threw up in his own mouth, but nods. “You and Carole can, anyway.” He bends over the cart to grab their list. “We’ll need bacon, and more cheese. Cheddar, or do you want Velveeta?”
“Huh? Uh… both…” Finn is watching the employee who just walked by the end of their aisle, did a double-take at Kurt’s ass, and is now advancing upon them. “I like Velveeta on the grilled cheese but cheddar on the burgers.”
“I’ll make a note of that.” He does an eyes-at-the-ceiling, Finn-is-insane face.
“Yeah, good, let’s go.”
“What?”
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” says the employee. He’s tall, though not as tall as Finn, and he’s got arms as big around as Puck’s. He’s looking pretty exclusively at Kurt, who turns quickly, startled. “Is there anything I can help you with?”
“No, thank you,” Kurt says smoothly, “we’re just about done.” He’s gone way too public-face, his knuckles white on the cart, and Finn realizes that Kurt thinks the guy’s up in his personal space for kind of the opposite reason than the one he actually is, probably thinks he’s about ten seconds from being told to get his f-word self out of their store.
He does think, for a second, that maybe he should say something to clear that up, but what the hell do you say about that, and - the thing is. If it were him, would he want to get to flirt with a cute girl in a maroon apron for a few minutes? Sure, but it’s not him, it’s Kurt, and it’s not a cute girl, it’s a guy. And Kurt’s a guy, and… it’s just weird and kinda gross. Plus Kurt is spastic and awkward when he flirts and Finn doesn’t want to see it.
So he doesn’t say anything to clear that up, and he doesn’t wait to see if the guy (Leon, his nametag says) catches on and clears it himself. He reaches forward and tugs the cart, and Kurt with it, away from the guy. “Yeah,” he says, “we were just leaving.” He grabs the curtains Kurt was looking at the most favorably and drops them in the cart. “Let’s go, Kurt,” he says, glaring at freaking Leon.
“Let’s,” Kurt says. He sounds tired, and Finn feels bad, but they head off and that’s that, no harm, no foul. He glances over his shoulder once at Leon, who gives him a bro-to-bro “you won that one” nod and oh gross he thinks Finn - Finn and Kurt - oh, gross.
In the car, Kurt sits too straight and looks deliberately superior, and this is Finn’s fault. Except. Except - freaking Leon wasn’t a saint either, trying to hit on a seventeen-year-old; the guy had to be at least twenty. And did Kurt really have to wear jeans that tight to go shopping? But mostly it was Leon. So he was being a different kind of creepy; it was still creepy and now Kurt feels bad and it’s Leon’s fault.
“Hey,” Finn says, “they’re the ones with the problem, dude, not you.”
“I know that,” Kurt says airily. Then he looks sideways at Finn and smiles, soft and warm. “Thank you, though.”
“No problem,” says Finn, and grins back. This is a good feeling. The two of them, brothers, against the world. They don’t need anyone else. They’re united, and special, and getting out of Ohio, unlike ignorant homophobic jerks who try to make them feel uncomfortable but fail because these jerks are looking at promising careers in retail. And freaking Leon could have been one of them. Give it another ten minutes, they would have run across one, in this hick town. It doesn’t even matter that he wasn’t one really; in Kurt and Finn’s little world he was, and that’s all that matters. Kurt feels like Finn was helping him out, which pretty much means Finn has helped him out. So… it’s fine.
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They move Finn’s boxes into Kurt’s room for the painting, and Kurt makes him up a bed on the couch because of the fumes. Burt and Finn’s mom just kind of let them do their thing, though Carole pats Finn’s arm a lot. By twelve o’clock the next day, two of Finn’s walls are painted, and Kurt has this cool trick with tape so that it doesn’t get on the ceiling or anything.
“Lunch?” Kurt suggests, turning away from the wall he’s painting and arching his back. “Oh, ow. Break, either way.”
“Lunch sounds awesome.”
“What’s your fancy?”
“Huh?”
“What do you want to eat, Finn?”
“Do we still have bacon?”
“Incredibly, despite your game attempt to eat all of it last night, yes we do.”
“Can we have BLTs?”
“Absolutely. I can leave the bacon off for my dad, too; very convenient. Try to occupy yourself without breaking anything until I call you down.”
“Oh, very funny.” Finn flicks his brush, splattering Kurt’s shirt, which is okay to do because it’s not actually Kurt’s; it’s a raggedy old thing of Burt’s.
Kurt shrieks. “Oh my god, if that got on my face or in my hair you will die a thousand painful deaths.”
“I didn’t! I know better.” He does mess Kurt’s hair up when he goes past him to leave, though, just on general principle. He makes funny sounds and it’d do him good to loosen up about his hair anyway.
Lunch is indeed awesome, even if Kurt eats some dinky salad instead of a sandwich, which reminds Finn of Quinn and makes him squirm because a) Quinn, and Rachel, and… Puck and everything… and b) why can’t he eat like a normal dude. They decide to sack out for a while after, and Kurt sets Finn’s video game up in his room. Finn gets the bed and concentrates on killing zombies; Kurt takes one of his weird chairs and starts writing cards.
“Isn’t it kind of late for Christmas cards?” Finn asks once he’s in the rhythm of the game enough where he won’t kill his character by talking.
“Well, yes, which would be why I’m not writing any. These are thank-you notes.”
“Oh. Yeah, my mom used to make me write those when I was little.”
“Mine too.” He’s very quiet.
“Is that… why you still do it, like…?”
Kurt looks up, appalled. “Um, no, Finn, I still do it because it’s polite. Within three days of receiving a gift. Are you saying you don’t do it anymore?”
“I’m busier now!”
“Plainly.” Kurt looks at the zombie he just beheaded.
“I don’t have a lot of people who give me presents anyway. Our family isn’t all that big. And giving my mom a thank-you card seems weird when I always thank her right there and then.”
Kurt sniffs disapprovingly.
“Dude, seriously, I didn’t get presents from anyone but you guys and my mom this year. Well, and Rachel tried, but I turned her down. It’s not like you, with your grandma and uncle and great-aunt and stuff.”
“Oh. I didn’t… oh.” He shifts in his chair. “You know, by next Christmas you’ll have met them, and they’ll be giving you presents too.”
Finn smiles. “Great, now you’ve set the bar too high. I suck at remembering cards.” He really does, though. This is getting less funny. “I’m going to be an awful step-grandson and nephew and stuff.”
Kurt laughs. “These here are on Dad’s behalf,” he says, brandishing a few of the cards. “He doesn’t like to write thank-you notes either. Just… add yourself to the list, I’ll write them, you sign them.”
“Sweet! Thanks. You totally rule, you know that?”
“I do try.” Kurt smiles brilliantly at him, and then points at the screen. “You just died.”
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
His new room is almost done drying, all green with white trim, when Blaine calls. He just happens to be in Lima (yeah right, how transparent can you get) and wonders whether Kurt wants to hang out. Of course Kurt does. The only part of this that’s surprising is that he asks Finn to come along too. Finn laughs, and Kurt says, “No, seriously - you’ll like Blaine, he’s nice. We can get something to eat and then go find you some grown-up posters because seriously, Finn, some of those? You cannot put back up on the walls.”
Finn is not a fan of this plan for several reasons, and those reasons start and end with Blaine. He can’t figure out how to articulate them without sounding mean, though, so he says sure and they end driving to meet Blaine at Breadstix.
Finn remembers Blaine from sectionals - if he had ever been unsure which one was Blaine, Kurt’s certainly found enough ways to drop into otherwise casual conversation that Blaine was the lead on “Hey Soul Sister,” and hadn’t he just done a marvelous job and didn’t he have the most amazing stage presence, and stuff, so… yeah, Finn recognizes him when they get there.
Blaine hurries over to them and grins at Kurt. “I’ve got us a table,” he says, and holds his hand out for Finn to shake. “It’s great to finally meet you properly. I’m Blaine.”
“Finn,” Finn says, and shakes his hand.
“Yeah… um, sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, you’re just really tall. I feel -”
“Like a woodland creature?” Finn supplies, because hey, Dakota Stanley should be good for something.
“Actually, yes.” He takes Kurt’s hand and guides them over to the table he’s just vacated. “Kurt, you should probably have mentioned earlier than this that your brother’s a giant.”
“You haven’t even met his dad yet,” Finn says. “You should save the fear for then.”
“Oh, stop it, Finn. Blaine, don’t worry, he’s the absolute nicest guy I know, unfortunate stature aside.”
Finn blinks a bunch because he is a nice guy, really, it’s just sometimes maybe a little bit he could see why Kurt would be one of the top people to not think so. But here he is saying it, like the dumpster dives and f-words never happened.
“Good to know,” Blaine says. “But is your dad taller or something?”
“No,” Kurt says with a quelling look at Finn. “Never mind my dad right now. Do you want to go shopping with us after? We’re finding complements for Finn’s new room, and you combine my good taste with Finn’s regrettable interest in sports.”
“Oh, absolutely. You guys are redecorating?”
“Well, we did just move. What better excuse?” And they’re off. Kurt tries to draw him into the conversation three separate times, and it’s not even like Finn couldn’t get into it; it is his room, and he understands most of what they’re talking about. It’s just that he doesn’t want to get into it. Doing this stuff, decorating, is one thing, but why do they have to talk about it so much? And in public? He’s pretty sure the guys in the booth behind them are starting to eye them all funny.
“Finn,” Kurt says, a little desperately, once they’ve all got their food, “you like college football, right?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, totally.”
“So does Blaine! That’s great, you have something in common.” He smiles sappily at Blaine, and that’s the other problem. Even if they talk about sports or whatever (and then Kurt’ll be left out, because he hates sports and seriously doesn’t even understand the one he played), Kurt will still be looking at Blaine like that, and sitting too close to him, and finding excuses to touch him, and in general acting like a thirteen-year-old girl. They’re so weird together, all distracting and both guys but Kurt’s like ten times more girly around Blaine, and just… it’s just weird.
“Oh. Cool. What’s your team?”
“Buckeyes, all the way,” Blaine says eagerly. “I’m open to either a bonding experience over how great they are or a heated debate over whether or not they suck.”
“They’re pretty awesome,” Finn allows, and smiles.
Kurt looks at them proudly and opens his mouth to say something.
“Freakin’ fags,” is what gets said. Finn guesses those guys were looking at them funny after all.
He’s not clear on how it happens exactly. Maybe this is how Puck feels all the time? Because he’s suddenly so irritated that it feels like rage, that hot and blinding, and he’s yelling and looming and the creepy hick who used that word looks pants-pissing scared.
“Don’t you ever,” he finishes, since those are the words still in his head. “You don’t - you don’t have any right. They’re just… being and you’ve got a problem with that, you’re -” He pulls out his wallet and throws some money on their table. “Come on, Kurt. Blaine. Let’s get out of here.”
They follow him.
“Sorry,” he says outside. “I don’t know if they’ll ever let any of us back in there.”
“That’s okay,” Kurt says quickly.
“Yeah, I don’t make a habit out of going places I get insulted in anyway,” Blaine says. “I’ll… I’ll meet you guys at the mall? Or would you like to ride with me, Kurt?”
“Oh,” Kurt says, plainly torn, which irritates Finn more, because he’s the one who just had a massive blow-up, so could he get a little more automatic sympathy than the guy whose ass Kurt wants to tap? “No, I think… we’ll probably call it a night, actually.”
“No,” Finn says. “Let’s get the posters and stuff.”
“Finn, I think we should go home.”
“No. We had a plan, they can’t wreck it. Wreck… more of it. We’ll meet you there,” he adds in Blaine’s general direction, and pulls Kurt over to the car.
As soon as the doors shut behind them, Kurt says very calmly, “Maybe I should call Carole.”
“I’m fine.”
He makes no move to start the car. “I appreciate your defense more than I can say, but you’re genuinely frightening when you yell, and I think you could use some time to calm down.”
“Yeah, well, they deserved it, dude.”
“I agree.”
“Good.”
“Your hands are shaking.”
“I’ll be okay by the time we get there.” He looks over at Kurt. “Look, dude, seriously. They don’t get to change - anything. Let’s just do our thing.”
Kurt looks back at him. “Alright. Finn, really, thank you.”
“But next time, not so much screaming and getting us banned from restaurants?”
“A happy medium, ideally, yes.” Kurt smiles and Finn feels it again, that warmth and us-versus-them thing. They are losers and homophobes. Us, Kurt and Finn, we are different, special. He smiles back.
So they go shopping and get stuff to make his room really kick-ass awesome. Blaine does make cool suggestions. And Finn grits his teeth and ignores the people who give them funny looks when they hear Kurt’s voice; and ignores his increasing desire to punch Blaine’s smug, well-intentioned face; and ignores the fact that Blaine and Kurt together are just ridiculous.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
Finn offers to drive Kurt back to Dalton. Burt usually does this, and Finn gets that that’s their time together and he wouldn’t usually interfere. But by the end of break, he has something to say and it’s gotten hard to find time to be alone with Kurt.
Kurt and his dad go somewhere alone for breakfast, and in the afternoon everyone helps Kurt get his excessive amounts of luggage into the car. Kurt says goodbye to their parents, a little tearfully, because he is pretty much a drama queen.
Then Finn makes some painful small talk stretch out over half of the drive before Kurt says abruptly, “I’m sorry.”
“Huh? What for?”
“I’m afraid I took over your room redecoration. I wanted to make up for last time, not repeat it, but I’m used to… I’m used to my dad.” He twists in his seat to look at Finn, which isn’t fair because Finn can’t really look back since he gets to drive for once. “Finn. The thing is.” He takes a breath. “My dad doesn’t care about the stuff I do - decoration, clothes, healthy foods - so he lets me make decisions for him. I’m used to expressing affection by…”
“Being controlling?”
“Not to put too fine a point on it.”
“No, it’s cool, though. This time. You did listen to me. That’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about.” He clears his throat. “When I broke up with Quinn, Mr. Schue had this whole thing about how I needed to find the new person I was without her, and it was really cool of him because it gave me something to work on, and stuff, you know? So I wasn’t thinking about… Quinn.”
“I hope I was more subtle than Mr. Schuester.”
“Yeah, ’cuz you never actually said. And vacation would totally have sucked if I just thought about Rachel the whole time, especially since I hate Christmas being over, so, you know. Thanks. And my room is super awesome, so for that too.”
“You’re welcome,” Kurt says, settling into his seat with a smug, all-is-right-with-the-world-now-that-it- acknowledges-my-correctness smirk.
“Kurt,” Finn blurts, “I never wanted a brother.” He doesn’t look at Kurt, whose face was hand designed by God Himself to throw every bit of pain you cause the dude back in your face and, belatedly, he realizes that that was not the opportune way to start this conversation. “I mean, I never - I liked being an only child. I didn’t want… a brother. In the abstract, like? I don’t want a brother. I want you. I’m really glad that I have you as a brother. Specifically. Because you’re really awesome, and I meant that song at the wedding. That’s all.”
Now he risks looking at Kurt. He has a handkerchief out and is dabbing at his eyes.
Finn smiles and adds, softly, “I am different.”
“I know,” Kurt says. “I know you are.”
When they get to Dalton, Finn helps Kurt unload. So does Blaine. Who’ll be staying there. With Kurt. Alone. Finn knows Kurt’s lonely and probably wants a boyfriend, but he kind of hopes he was scary at the restaurant. He hopes Blaine remembers his warning about Burt. This could be because he is a good brother and doesn’t want Kurt to get his heart broken. It’s not, but it could be, and it only takes a few minutes to convince himself that it is.
Kurt wouldn’t even be lonely if he were straight. He wouldn’t be at Dalton. He’d be at McKinley with his friends and probably a girlfriend, probably Mercedes. Burt wouldn’t be so worried about him, and their parents could have had their honeymoon. Everyone would be happier if Kurt were straight.
Finn hugs Kurt before he goes, and kisses his forehead. “Don’t blend in too much,” he says, and ruffles Kurt’s hair. “The uniforms are creepy, dude, not gonna lie. You’re too special for all this.” Because if McKinley didn’t break him down, even if he is weird and Finn doesn’t get why he has to stand out so much - hell if Finn’s going to watch Dalton do it.
Kurt raises an eyebrow. “I have a deal with Dalton. No death threats, no McQueen scarves during the school day. And I can show them the light on weekends.” He bumps Finn with his elbow, smooth and smiling, welcoming him into him into their special little world, the one they shouldn’t need and Finn doesn’t deserve to be in.
“Just don’t ever change,” Finn says, and means it, and wishes he didn’t have to.
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Master List
Warnings: Homophobia.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5, 361
Disclaimer: RIB and FOX own everything ever.
This prompt. Kurt is an awesome brother and Finn loves him, he really does. He just wishes Kurt weren’t gay.
Finn isn’t homophobic. He knows he has a problem being to one hundred percent okay with Kurt being so gay, but the truth is, it’s kind of what he admires about him, too. It makes him stand out at school, and not in a good way, and sometimes, okay, sometimes it still makes Finn flinch a little because he knows what people are thinking, that they might think it about Finn if he’s too close to Kurt. But he’s a lot better about that. It took a red curtain-dress and a bromantic dance in front of everyone at the wedding, but he’s getting there. He can think this stuff over and realize when he’s being a douche. Anyway, his problem is that he cares too much what other people think, not that he actually thinks there’s anything wrong with it. So Kurt’s got a high voice and dresses funny, and reads glossy magazines between classes. So he occasionally decides that he should be on the girls’ team in assignments and wants to sing girls’ songs. So he watches chick TV shows and wears skirts. Finn’s fine with all of that. He’s starting to really like it, on its own merit, not just because it means Kurt’s so brave all the time.
It's just. Everything would be so much easier if Kurt weren't.
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It’s as Christmas break ends that it occurs to Finn that he, but not in a gay way, loves Kurt. Like, really. A lot.
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Christmas morning they’re finally all together at home, after Dalton and visiting Mr. Schue and everything, and Finn sets his alarm for five like always. This is the one day of the year that he doesn’t mind getting up before noon, and even if the presents aren’t always spectacular (with a single mom and not enough money for anything ever), it’s more the idea of them that’s the important thing.
He scuttles instantly to Kurt’s room. His mom said last night that the adults would get up when the kids did, and Finn realizes that this is fair but thinks Kurt may need some persuading. Or a lot of persuading. Kurt, he remembers very clearly from the first time they lived together, is fine to get up early on school days, but without the pressing concern of getting dressed to impress, he can be violently opposed to getting up before eight.
“Kurt,” he hisses. “Hey. It’s Christmas!” There’s no response. Which is cool; Finn doesn’t expect it to be that easy. He uses his cell phone as a flashlight and creeps over to the bed, which is kind of huge. There are at least three lumps in it that could potentially be Kurt. He pokes a shoulder-looking place on the lump nearest to his side. “Kurt?” No, too soft; a pillow or something. He leans over and tries the next one, which collapses completely. Okay, no way he’s climbing on the bed to reach the last one. He takes a breath, braces himself for Kurt’s possible fury, and tugs the blanket down.
The bed is empty.
The new house isn’t all that big. If Kurt were on the second floor and not in their parents’ room, Finn would pretty much know about it.
He tries to rush quietly downstairs, but he does rush, because he’s kind of thinking oh shit what if he ran away or someone kidnapped him or Mercedes called him in the middle of the night because she’s being held hostage at the mall by an axe-toting maniac, but there’s a light on in the kitchen and a cookie smell. Kurt is asleep at the table, head on his arms.
“Kurt? What are you doing?”
Kurt jerks up, hair mussed, and blinks at Finn. “Did I set the house on fire?”
“Uh, no? I hope not?”
Kurt checks his phone. “No. I did not. Cookies will be done in four minutes and forty-three seconds.” He drops his head back onto his arms.
“Kurt?”
“No fire, no getting up.”
“Seriously, dude, what are you doing down here?”
Kurt lifts his head again, fixing Finn with a baleful stare. “You said last night that you get up at five-thirty on Christmas morning, yes?”
“Um. Yeah?”
“And you also said that you’d always wanted to eat cookies fresh out of the oven while opening presents, yes?”
“Maybe?”
“There you go then, Finn. Now shut up for my last four minutes.”
“You got up and made cookies because I said that?”
“Give the boy a shiny nickel.”
“That’s really awesome,” Finn decides, even though baking is super girly.
“So glad you think so.” Kurt puts his head back on his arms.
Four minutes later, Finn’s the one who takes the cookies out of the oven, after a close call where Kurt says into his sleeve-pillow, “I know you’re wearing oven mitts, because you’re aware that the metal you’re about to touch is heated to three hundred degrees and will hurt you if you touch it with your bare skin.” So he has to wear oven mitts, which is weird and girly and he takes them off again very quickly. But Kurt helps him get their parents up and arranges the cookies on a platter so they’re all pretty and stuff, and Finn was right: oven-warm cookies during presents is pretty much as good as it gets. And if Kurt dozes on and off with his head on Finn’s shoulder, well, Kurt just doesn’t know from personal boundaries; he doesn’t mean anything by it. And he lets Finn open his presents, which is totally cool, because Finn likes unwrapping presents possibly even more than getting them.
“That your phone, kiddo?” Burt asks at one point, mouth full of the one cookie Kurt has allowed him, due to the extenuating circumstances of It Being Christmas.
“Oh! Yes, I forgot I set it to vibrate…” Kurt fishes around in the discarded wrapping paper and produces his phone. He breaks into one of those ridiculous grins he gets when it’s to do with a guy he has a crush on, and Finn, who would know, shifts away from him a little. “It’s just Blaine,” Kurt says, oblivious, and starts texting back. He still looks all giddy, like… like a girl in a romantic comedy, it’s just kind of embarrassing to watch. Why did Blaine have to text right now, anyway? This is supposed to be family time.
When Kurt’s done with his text, Finn swipes his phone and pockets it.
“Finn!”
“No phones during presents! It’s a new rule.”
Kurt is too-plainly trying not to smile; victory is Finn’s. “You don’t get to make rules.”
“You’re in charge of like food and clothes and stuff, so I get to be in charge of present-rules. That’s just fair.”
“Oh, very. We have another Solomon the Wise here, plainly.” But he laughs and gives up on the phone, and Finn gets kind of a power rush because, wow, he really is Kurt’s family now, and Kurt’s always been pretty clear on how he’ll do anything for family. Sweet deal.
He doesn’t say anything when Kurt’s phone goes off in his pocket. And if Kurt hears it, he doesn’t bring it up either.
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“Finn?”
“Uh-huh?” Finn doesn’t bother to sit up. One of the downsides of being so invested in Christmas is the post-holiday letdown. It’s only the day after and already he can’t summon the energy to do more than lie on his bed and toss a baseball at the ceiling.
“I want to propose a joint venture, to be undertaken by us as a… brotherly unit, if you will.”
It occurs to Finn that the nervous tone probably doesn’t bode well for him. Now he sits up. Kurt has his hands clasped in front of him and is twiddling his thumbs. Not good signs for the relative sanity of his project. “Uh, yeah?” he says weakly.
“You don’t have to,” Kurt says. “It’s just a suggestion. But I thought… in order to make up for certain transgressions and bad judgment calls I may have made in the past…”
“Yeah?”
“I want to help you decorate your new room. Emphasis on help, and you, and your.” He recovers some of his… Kurtosity with, “And also on me because I refuse to live in a house with cowboy wallpaper in any room.”
“Uh,” says Finn. “I don’t know, like, decorate it as what?”
Kurt’s eyes widen with horror. “Decorate it as a room, Finn, as an expression of your personality.”
“Like the paint color? I kinda thought I’d leave it white. And I have posters somewhere…”
Kurt looks physically pained. “Oh, god, Finn. Please let me help you. There is so much more to a room than the color of the walls, and we are not leaving your room off-white; that says absolutely nothing about you.”
“So... we’d make it look all cool and stuff? Like the Batcave or something?”
“We’d make it look all cool and stuff, but not like the Batcave. This is where you need me. You do presumably want to be able to have a girl over - at some point, in the distant future - without driving her giggling right back out again. We’re aiming for a grown-up room.”
“But not one that looks like a harem, this time?” Finn checks.
Kurt flushes and looks at the ceiling. “Right. Strictly conventional. Far fewer red draperies.”
“…Okay. Sure.” Finn even, belatedly, remembers to add, “Thanks,” even though it’s pretty plain who’s doing who the favor here when Kurt’s face lights up like a Christmas tree.
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Kurt wasn’t kidding, and Finn gets, now, how he threw together the Basement Incident Décor in about a day and a half; the guy is like some kind of mad shopping demon. He forces Finn out of bed and out the door inside of ten minutes and from there on, the day is kind of a blur of colors, most of them with names Finn’s never heard of.
The last thing on their list - Kurt’s list, because he always makes Finn choose, but Finn never knows what to choose from until Kurt gives him a set of options - is a set of curtains for Finn’s windows. Apparently the curtains he has now, the ones the last owners left, are not good enough. When he suggests keeping them, Kurt looks appalled. “Have you looked at those things? Finn, they have little baby ducks along the bottom. Ducks. And they are bright yellow. You are not four years old, and you may not keep those curtains.”
This is just not something dudes are supposed to worry about, but dudes are also not supposed to have yellow duck curtains at seventeen, so Finn follows Kurt into the last store, promising himself a lengthy, sports-related bonding session with Burt this evening to make up for all the girly crap he’s done today.
Which isn’t to say it’s all bad. They’re far enough from town at this point that Finn’s not too worried about seeing someone they know as he literally picks out curtains with the local gay kid, and he does like hanging out with Kurt, who’s funny and doesn’t mind when Finn feels the need to ride the cart down an empty aisle like he’s on a roller coaster.
“Okay, Finn, so: We want the curtains to complement the walls, but not match them exactly. Which means we’re looking for…?”
“Green.”
“Yes, good, but dark green, alright? And more of a forest than an olive.” Kurt looks him over. “Let’s not get into materials right now.”
“Cool.” Finn’s getting kind of into this - not so much the shopping, but the setting up after. He does like getting new stuff, and it’ll be neat to have a room that’s not just new, but his.
Kurt starts comparing colors with his freaky, memorized color tablet of the paint and blankets they’ve gotten already. “Oh, what do you want for dinner tonight?” he tosses off, peering between two sets that look identical to Finn but are probably a different thread-count or something.
“I get to choose?” Finn perks up. He is walking backwards in front of the cart and trying to step on only the red tiles; whenever he misses one he pretends he loses another point. He started out with one hundred and is only down to ninety.
“Mm-hm.” Kurt smiles when Finn hits another white tile and swears. “We’re going to be the ones doing all the hard work on your room, unpacking and painting and all. What’ll it take to keep your energy up?”
“Can we have grilled cheese and bacon burgers?”
Kurt makes a face like he just threw up in his own mouth, but nods. “You and Carole can, anyway.” He bends over the cart to grab their list. “We’ll need bacon, and more cheese. Cheddar, or do you want Velveeta?”
“Huh? Uh… both…” Finn is watching the employee who just walked by the end of their aisle, did a double-take at Kurt’s ass, and is now advancing upon them. “I like Velveeta on the grilled cheese but cheddar on the burgers.”
“I’ll make a note of that.” He does an eyes-at-the-ceiling, Finn-is-insane face.
“Yeah, good, let’s go.”
“What?”
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” says the employee. He’s tall, though not as tall as Finn, and he’s got arms as big around as Puck’s. He’s looking pretty exclusively at Kurt, who turns quickly, startled. “Is there anything I can help you with?”
“No, thank you,” Kurt says smoothly, “we’re just about done.” He’s gone way too public-face, his knuckles white on the cart, and Finn realizes that Kurt thinks the guy’s up in his personal space for kind of the opposite reason than the one he actually is, probably thinks he’s about ten seconds from being told to get his f-word self out of their store.
He does think, for a second, that maybe he should say something to clear that up, but what the hell do you say about that, and - the thing is. If it were him, would he want to get to flirt with a cute girl in a maroon apron for a few minutes? Sure, but it’s not him, it’s Kurt, and it’s not a cute girl, it’s a guy. And Kurt’s a guy, and… it’s just weird and kinda gross. Plus Kurt is spastic and awkward when he flirts and Finn doesn’t want to see it.
So he doesn’t say anything to clear that up, and he doesn’t wait to see if the guy (Leon, his nametag says) catches on and clears it himself. He reaches forward and tugs the cart, and Kurt with it, away from the guy. “Yeah,” he says, “we were just leaving.” He grabs the curtains Kurt was looking at the most favorably and drops them in the cart. “Let’s go, Kurt,” he says, glaring at freaking Leon.
“Let’s,” Kurt says. He sounds tired, and Finn feels bad, but they head off and that’s that, no harm, no foul. He glances over his shoulder once at Leon, who gives him a bro-to-bro “you won that one” nod and oh gross he thinks Finn - Finn and Kurt - oh, gross.
In the car, Kurt sits too straight and looks deliberately superior, and this is Finn’s fault. Except. Except - freaking Leon wasn’t a saint either, trying to hit on a seventeen-year-old; the guy had to be at least twenty. And did Kurt really have to wear jeans that tight to go shopping? But mostly it was Leon. So he was being a different kind of creepy; it was still creepy and now Kurt feels bad and it’s Leon’s fault.
“Hey,” Finn says, “they’re the ones with the problem, dude, not you.”
“I know that,” Kurt says airily. Then he looks sideways at Finn and smiles, soft and warm. “Thank you, though.”
“No problem,” says Finn, and grins back. This is a good feeling. The two of them, brothers, against the world. They don’t need anyone else. They’re united, and special, and getting out of Ohio, unlike ignorant homophobic jerks who try to make them feel uncomfortable but fail because these jerks are looking at promising careers in retail. And freaking Leon could have been one of them. Give it another ten minutes, they would have run across one, in this hick town. It doesn’t even matter that he wasn’t one really; in Kurt and Finn’s little world he was, and that’s all that matters. Kurt feels like Finn was helping him out, which pretty much means Finn has helped him out. So… it’s fine.
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They move Finn’s boxes into Kurt’s room for the painting, and Kurt makes him up a bed on the couch because of the fumes. Burt and Finn’s mom just kind of let them do their thing, though Carole pats Finn’s arm a lot. By twelve o’clock the next day, two of Finn’s walls are painted, and Kurt has this cool trick with tape so that it doesn’t get on the ceiling or anything.
“Lunch?” Kurt suggests, turning away from the wall he’s painting and arching his back. “Oh, ow. Break, either way.”
“Lunch sounds awesome.”
“What’s your fancy?”
“Huh?”
“What do you want to eat, Finn?”
“Do we still have bacon?”
“Incredibly, despite your game attempt to eat all of it last night, yes we do.”
“Can we have BLTs?”
“Absolutely. I can leave the bacon off for my dad, too; very convenient. Try to occupy yourself without breaking anything until I call you down.”
“Oh, very funny.” Finn flicks his brush, splattering Kurt’s shirt, which is okay to do because it’s not actually Kurt’s; it’s a raggedy old thing of Burt’s.
Kurt shrieks. “Oh my god, if that got on my face or in my hair you will die a thousand painful deaths.”
“I didn’t! I know better.” He does mess Kurt’s hair up when he goes past him to leave, though, just on general principle. He makes funny sounds and it’d do him good to loosen up about his hair anyway.
Lunch is indeed awesome, even if Kurt eats some dinky salad instead of a sandwich, which reminds Finn of Quinn and makes him squirm because a) Quinn, and Rachel, and… Puck and everything… and b) why can’t he eat like a normal dude. They decide to sack out for a while after, and Kurt sets Finn’s video game up in his room. Finn gets the bed and concentrates on killing zombies; Kurt takes one of his weird chairs and starts writing cards.
“Isn’t it kind of late for Christmas cards?” Finn asks once he’s in the rhythm of the game enough where he won’t kill his character by talking.
“Well, yes, which would be why I’m not writing any. These are thank-you notes.”
“Oh. Yeah, my mom used to make me write those when I was little.”
“Mine too.” He’s very quiet.
“Is that… why you still do it, like…?”
Kurt looks up, appalled. “Um, no, Finn, I still do it because it’s polite. Within three days of receiving a gift. Are you saying you don’t do it anymore?”
“I’m busier now!”
“Plainly.” Kurt looks at the zombie he just beheaded.
“I don’t have a lot of people who give me presents anyway. Our family isn’t all that big. And giving my mom a thank-you card seems weird when I always thank her right there and then.”
Kurt sniffs disapprovingly.
“Dude, seriously, I didn’t get presents from anyone but you guys and my mom this year. Well, and Rachel tried, but I turned her down. It’s not like you, with your grandma and uncle and great-aunt and stuff.”
“Oh. I didn’t… oh.” He shifts in his chair. “You know, by next Christmas you’ll have met them, and they’ll be giving you presents too.”
Finn smiles. “Great, now you’ve set the bar too high. I suck at remembering cards.” He really does, though. This is getting less funny. “I’m going to be an awful step-grandson and nephew and stuff.”
Kurt laughs. “These here are on Dad’s behalf,” he says, brandishing a few of the cards. “He doesn’t like to write thank-you notes either. Just… add yourself to the list, I’ll write them, you sign them.”
“Sweet! Thanks. You totally rule, you know that?”
“I do try.” Kurt smiles brilliantly at him, and then points at the screen. “You just died.”
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His new room is almost done drying, all green with white trim, when Blaine calls. He just happens to be in Lima (yeah right, how transparent can you get) and wonders whether Kurt wants to hang out. Of course Kurt does. The only part of this that’s surprising is that he asks Finn to come along too. Finn laughs, and Kurt says, “No, seriously - you’ll like Blaine, he’s nice. We can get something to eat and then go find you some grown-up posters because seriously, Finn, some of those? You cannot put back up on the walls.”
Finn is not a fan of this plan for several reasons, and those reasons start and end with Blaine. He can’t figure out how to articulate them without sounding mean, though, so he says sure and they end driving to meet Blaine at Breadstix.
Finn remembers Blaine from sectionals - if he had ever been unsure which one was Blaine, Kurt’s certainly found enough ways to drop into otherwise casual conversation that Blaine was the lead on “Hey Soul Sister,” and hadn’t he just done a marvelous job and didn’t he have the most amazing stage presence, and stuff, so… yeah, Finn recognizes him when they get there.
Blaine hurries over to them and grins at Kurt. “I’ve got us a table,” he says, and holds his hand out for Finn to shake. “It’s great to finally meet you properly. I’m Blaine.”
“Finn,” Finn says, and shakes his hand.
“Yeah… um, sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, you’re just really tall. I feel -”
“Like a woodland creature?” Finn supplies, because hey, Dakota Stanley should be good for something.
“Actually, yes.” He takes Kurt’s hand and guides them over to the table he’s just vacated. “Kurt, you should probably have mentioned earlier than this that your brother’s a giant.”
“You haven’t even met his dad yet,” Finn says. “You should save the fear for then.”
“Oh, stop it, Finn. Blaine, don’t worry, he’s the absolute nicest guy I know, unfortunate stature aside.”
Finn blinks a bunch because he is a nice guy, really, it’s just sometimes maybe a little bit he could see why Kurt would be one of the top people to not think so. But here he is saying it, like the dumpster dives and f-words never happened.
“Good to know,” Blaine says. “But is your dad taller or something?”
“No,” Kurt says with a quelling look at Finn. “Never mind my dad right now. Do you want to go shopping with us after? We’re finding complements for Finn’s new room, and you combine my good taste with Finn’s regrettable interest in sports.”
“Oh, absolutely. You guys are redecorating?”
“Well, we did just move. What better excuse?” And they’re off. Kurt tries to draw him into the conversation three separate times, and it’s not even like Finn couldn’t get into it; it is his room, and he understands most of what they’re talking about. It’s just that he doesn’t want to get into it. Doing this stuff, decorating, is one thing, but why do they have to talk about it so much? And in public? He’s pretty sure the guys in the booth behind them are starting to eye them all funny.
“Finn,” Kurt says, a little desperately, once they’ve all got their food, “you like college football, right?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, totally.”
“So does Blaine! That’s great, you have something in common.” He smiles sappily at Blaine, and that’s the other problem. Even if they talk about sports or whatever (and then Kurt’ll be left out, because he hates sports and seriously doesn’t even understand the one he played), Kurt will still be looking at Blaine like that, and sitting too close to him, and finding excuses to touch him, and in general acting like a thirteen-year-old girl. They’re so weird together, all distracting and both guys but Kurt’s like ten times more girly around Blaine, and just… it’s just weird.
“Oh. Cool. What’s your team?”
“Buckeyes, all the way,” Blaine says eagerly. “I’m open to either a bonding experience over how great they are or a heated debate over whether or not they suck.”
“They’re pretty awesome,” Finn allows, and smiles.
Kurt looks at them proudly and opens his mouth to say something.
“Freakin’ fags,” is what gets said. Finn guesses those guys were looking at them funny after all.
He’s not clear on how it happens exactly. Maybe this is how Puck feels all the time? Because he’s suddenly so irritated that it feels like rage, that hot and blinding, and he’s yelling and looming and the creepy hick who used that word looks pants-pissing scared.
“Don’t you ever,” he finishes, since those are the words still in his head. “You don’t - you don’t have any right. They’re just… being and you’ve got a problem with that, you’re -” He pulls out his wallet and throws some money on their table. “Come on, Kurt. Blaine. Let’s get out of here.”
They follow him.
“Sorry,” he says outside. “I don’t know if they’ll ever let any of us back in there.”
“That’s okay,” Kurt says quickly.
“Yeah, I don’t make a habit out of going places I get insulted in anyway,” Blaine says. “I’ll… I’ll meet you guys at the mall? Or would you like to ride with me, Kurt?”
“Oh,” Kurt says, plainly torn, which irritates Finn more, because he’s the one who just had a massive blow-up, so could he get a little more automatic sympathy than the guy whose ass Kurt wants to tap? “No, I think… we’ll probably call it a night, actually.”
“No,” Finn says. “Let’s get the posters and stuff.”
“Finn, I think we should go home.”
“No. We had a plan, they can’t wreck it. Wreck… more of it. We’ll meet you there,” he adds in Blaine’s general direction, and pulls Kurt over to the car.
As soon as the doors shut behind them, Kurt says very calmly, “Maybe I should call Carole.”
“I’m fine.”
He makes no move to start the car. “I appreciate your defense more than I can say, but you’re genuinely frightening when you yell, and I think you could use some time to calm down.”
“Yeah, well, they deserved it, dude.”
“I agree.”
“Good.”
“Your hands are shaking.”
“I’ll be okay by the time we get there.” He looks over at Kurt. “Look, dude, seriously. They don’t get to change - anything. Let’s just do our thing.”
Kurt looks back at him. “Alright. Finn, really, thank you.”
“But next time, not so much screaming and getting us banned from restaurants?”
“A happy medium, ideally, yes.” Kurt smiles and Finn feels it again, that warmth and us-versus-them thing. They are losers and homophobes. Us, Kurt and Finn, we are different, special. He smiles back.
So they go shopping and get stuff to make his room really kick-ass awesome. Blaine does make cool suggestions. And Finn grits his teeth and ignores the people who give them funny looks when they hear Kurt’s voice; and ignores his increasing desire to punch Blaine’s smug, well-intentioned face; and ignores the fact that Blaine and Kurt together are just ridiculous.
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Finn offers to drive Kurt back to Dalton. Burt usually does this, and Finn gets that that’s their time together and he wouldn’t usually interfere. But by the end of break, he has something to say and it’s gotten hard to find time to be alone with Kurt.
Kurt and his dad go somewhere alone for breakfast, and in the afternoon everyone helps Kurt get his excessive amounts of luggage into the car. Kurt says goodbye to their parents, a little tearfully, because he is pretty much a drama queen.
Then Finn makes some painful small talk stretch out over half of the drive before Kurt says abruptly, “I’m sorry.”
“Huh? What for?”
“I’m afraid I took over your room redecoration. I wanted to make up for last time, not repeat it, but I’m used to… I’m used to my dad.” He twists in his seat to look at Finn, which isn’t fair because Finn can’t really look back since he gets to drive for once. “Finn. The thing is.” He takes a breath. “My dad doesn’t care about the stuff I do - decoration, clothes, healthy foods - so he lets me make decisions for him. I’m used to expressing affection by…”
“Being controlling?”
“Not to put too fine a point on it.”
“No, it’s cool, though. This time. You did listen to me. That’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about.” He clears his throat. “When I broke up with Quinn, Mr. Schue had this whole thing about how I needed to find the new person I was without her, and it was really cool of him because it gave me something to work on, and stuff, you know? So I wasn’t thinking about… Quinn.”
“I hope I was more subtle than Mr. Schuester.”
“Yeah, ’cuz you never actually said. And vacation would totally have sucked if I just thought about Rachel the whole time, especially since I hate Christmas being over, so, you know. Thanks. And my room is super awesome, so for that too.”
“You’re welcome,” Kurt says, settling into his seat with a smug, all-is-right-with-the-world-now-that-it- acknowledges-my-correctness smirk.
“Kurt,” Finn blurts, “I never wanted a brother.” He doesn’t look at Kurt, whose face was hand designed by God Himself to throw every bit of pain you cause the dude back in your face and, belatedly, he realizes that that was not the opportune way to start this conversation. “I mean, I never - I liked being an only child. I didn’t want… a brother. In the abstract, like? I don’t want a brother. I want you. I’m really glad that I have you as a brother. Specifically. Because you’re really awesome, and I meant that song at the wedding. That’s all.”
Now he risks looking at Kurt. He has a handkerchief out and is dabbing at his eyes.
Finn smiles and adds, softly, “I am different.”
“I know,” Kurt says. “I know you are.”
When they get to Dalton, Finn helps Kurt unload. So does Blaine. Who’ll be staying there. With Kurt. Alone. Finn knows Kurt’s lonely and probably wants a boyfriend, but he kind of hopes he was scary at the restaurant. He hopes Blaine remembers his warning about Burt. This could be because he is a good brother and doesn’t want Kurt to get his heart broken. It’s not, but it could be, and it only takes a few minutes to convince himself that it is.
Kurt wouldn’t even be lonely if he were straight. He wouldn’t be at Dalton. He’d be at McKinley with his friends and probably a girlfriend, probably Mercedes. Burt wouldn’t be so worried about him, and their parents could have had their honeymoon. Everyone would be happier if Kurt were straight.
Finn hugs Kurt before he goes, and kisses his forehead. “Don’t blend in too much,” he says, and ruffles Kurt’s hair. “The uniforms are creepy, dude, not gonna lie. You’re too special for all this.” Because if McKinley didn’t break him down, even if he is weird and Finn doesn’t get why he has to stand out so much - hell if Finn’s going to watch Dalton do it.
Kurt raises an eyebrow. “I have a deal with Dalton. No death threats, no McQueen scarves during the school day. And I can show them the light on weekends.” He bumps Finn with his elbow, smooth and smiling, welcoming him into him into their special little world, the one they shouldn’t need and Finn doesn’t deserve to be in.
“Just don’t ever change,” Finn says, and means it, and wishes he didn’t have to.
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