fic: Tiny Imperfections
Characters: Blaine and Emma Pillsbury, with brief appearances by Sam, Kurt and Asian Persuasion
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: 4.12 "Naked"
Word Count: ~2,000
Summary: 4.12 missing scene +. No teacher tells Blaine to go see Ms. Pillsbury, and his boyfriend doesn't drag him there. But he goes to talk to her anyway, because he wants to.
Warnings: living with/internalizing homophobia (not a central theme of the fic, but it comes up).
Author’s Notes: Thanks to
punkkitten2113 and
lavender_love00 for the encouragement! This one is thrilling and terrifying to post since it's pretty much a freewrite. But I'm gonna be brave like Blaine and do it anyway. Any errors are mine.
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lj / dreamwidth / tumblr
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Given that Blaine goes by Ms. Pillsbury's office several times a day as he darts from class to class, he's probably passed her door at least 500 times. But he's only walked through it on five occasions.
The first time, it was right after his transfer from Dalton when he had to meet with her to plan his course load. She was nice and pretty and Blaine wondered at the fact that Kurt had never mentioned her before, because she radiated this doe-eyed empathy that made him want to tell her everything: how scared he was to transfer; how he'd told Kurt he was doing it for himself, which was true - he wanted to face his old fears, wanted to see if he could survive outside the protective cradle of Dalton - but wasn't the whole truth; how hard it had been to be away from Kurt those first few days of the school year, like his heart had been removed from his chest and the only way the blood kept pushing through his body was by sheer will.
He didn't tell her any of that. He watched as she looked over his transcript and was surprised that she actually paid attention to it when suggesting what courses he should take at McKinley. He was even more surprised when she looked up and said, "So what subjects interest you the most?"
The guidance counselor at his previous public school had never asked him that, just told him what to take based on his grades from the previous semester.
"Um," Blaine said. "I don't know."
The second time in her office was the day after he'd gotten into the fight with Sam. They both sat across from her. Blaine was frowning, and he remembers Sam frowning, too - although Blaine's not sure it's a real memory. Because he also remembers not looking at Sam once the entire time they were in the office.
"You don't have to like each other," Ms. Pillsbury said after each boy had taken a turn saying his piece. Blaine's stomach churned. He hated not liking people, and even more than that, he hated when people didn't like him. "But you guys are both good kids and it's clear from what you've each said that you both want what's best for the glee club. Do you think you can both try to respect that about each other?"
Blaine nodded and, out of the corner of his eye, saw Sam nod, too.
The third time was when Kurt dragged him to Ms. Pillsbury for couple's counseling. Even though he hadn't been in her office much, Blaine was a little more comfortable around her by then. He saw her in the halls at least once a day and she always got the sweetest surprised smile when he complimented her on her outfits. Sometimes she flattered him back in a reserved, professional way, keeping her comments limited to his bow ties and pocket watch. He spent five minutes once showing her the embossing on the back and the spot where one of the legs of the "X" had fallen off on the "IX." He told her how his dad had offered to have it fixed, but Blaine admired that tiny imperfection.
By the end of that visit with Kurt, she was teary-eyed. She moved toward them as they got up to leave the office like she was about to hug them, but if course she didn't. She's a public school teacher, and there are lawsuits to worry about. Instead, she shook their hands. Her tiny hand in his was firm but gentle, the skin only the tiniest bit rough from all that hand sanitizer, and Blaine thought that if he let her, she had the strength to help him through anything.
The fourth time was at the end of his junior year, to plan his course load for his senior year. Every class he'd requested was advanced placement. She looked at him askance. "Blaine, do you actually want to take all these? Or are you just hoping to have so much homework that you'll never miss Kurt?"
He looked down at his lap and mumbled. "I want to take them."
"Well, if that's what you really want," she said. "But seven AP classes is a lot. Maybe you could replace AP Art History with an actual art class?"
He shook his head. "I'm not good at drawing."
She smiled - that sad, sympathetic smile that showed she understood him much better than most people ever tried to. "You don't have to be. That's why they have the class. So you can learn."
This year, he met her in September to talk about colleges, but that's been it. He's thought about going into her office at least a dozen times since. She's the only one in this school who's seen how much he loves Kurt, and back in the fall, all he wanted to do some days was go into her office and put his head on the desk and sob his heart out. She probably would have let him, too, and maybe it would have helped.
But there are those awful glass walls in her office, and Blaine was running for president and then he was president, and the last thing he needed as a gay guy was gossip about him crying at the drop of a hat.
He couldn't go see Ms. Pillsbury to help himself, but he can go see her to help someone else. Which is why, on a Wednesday afternoon, he knocks on her open glass door and asks to talk to her.
"Of course, Blaine," she says. "That's why my door is open. Just give me a minute to finish putting out these new brochures." The Crabs Are Making Me Crabby catches his eye, and immediately his groin starts to itch, even though he didn't - thank every god in heaven - catch them or anything else when he was with Eli. It might have made him feel better for a while if he had, to have a tangible, physical consequence to his actions, a punishment that he would have to live with every day. But in the long-run, it would have been a mess. Because even though Blaine can't hope that he'll ever be together with Kurt again the way he once was, he does hope for it. And Kurt has already paid enough for Blaine's transgressions to add that to the mess.
Blaine closes the door as Ms. Pillsbury smoothes her skirt and sits down at her desk. He takes the chair across from her.
"So how are you, Blaine?" She says it cheerfully, not with the pained look of concern that always crosses Finn's face when he asks.
Blaine thinks before he answers. It's a new habit he's trying to develop. Before, he always would have said fine or great or awesome as a reflex, like jerking his leg when the pediatrician taps his knee with the mallet at every check-up. He's not great at it yet, but he's getting better, especially with people he thinks might want to hear the truth.
"Up and down," he says. "But today I'm pretty good. I'm just - a little worried about Sam. You know about his SATs?"
She nods.
"It's really gotten to him. He doesn't even want to try to go to college anymore." He's about to add, I think he might be seriously considering going back to strip club work, but he's pretty sure that's one of those things that teachers have to report to child welfare if they find out about them, and he doesn't want to get Sam's family in trouble, so instead he says, "He thinks his only career opportunities are to become a model or an erotic dancer."
Her eyes look like they're about to pop out of her head. "That would be … limiting."
"So I was hoping maybe you had some other ideas for him."
"Oh, there are a lot of other choices for him," she says. "He could be a comic book artist or a comedian or a professional superhero or -" She clears her throat. "Why don't I put together some information about colleges that don't require test scores? And maybe scholarships, too, so he doesn't resort to … dancing to make his way through school."
She jots down a few notes on the notepad in front of her. "Was there anything else you wanted to talk about? About Sam or … anything else?" She looks at him meaningfully.
He shakes his head.
"Well, I have something I wanted to ask you about." She tucks her pen neatly beside her notepad. "Have you made any final decisions about where to apply to college?"
"I've been thinking about NYADA." He tries to say it confidently, but it comes out a little sheepish. He hasn't told a lot of people, because he's not convinced they'll understand.
"Oh," she says, her mouth as round as her eyes. She leans forward and straightens the stack of Got Funk in Your Junk? brochures at the edge of her desk. "Have you talked to Kurt about this?"
Even though Blaine's never mentioned the break-up to her, she knows about it. Soon after Blaine first came back from New York, Asian Persuasion tried to recruit Ms. Pillsbury to Operation Boys Should Talk. Blaine knows this because Asian Persuasion reported the details of Operation Boys Should Talk to the Secret Society of Superheroes in one of their not-so-clandestine meetings. He's still not sure how Persuasion convinced him to allow that item on the agenda.
Blaine nods. "I talked to him about it when I saw him at Christmas. Not in detail, but - I think it's okay. I have a couple back-ups, too. But I'm not - I've thought about it, and I want to go because it's NYADA. It's not like when I came to McKinley. I'm not doing it for Kurt."
Her shoulders sag a little. "I always wondered about that. I probably shouldn't have believed you so readily when you said you were transferring because the academics are so much stronger here than at Dalton."
"Yeah." Blaine lets out a sigh that's half-laugh. "They're not."
There's a hesitance to her smile. "But NYADA's different?"
He sucks in a breath and nods. It's hard to explain, because no one would believe it, but he never considered going to NYADA back when he and Kurt were together. If he'd been brave enough to think about it, he would have immediately pushed the thoughts away. Because here, at McKinley, he'd ended up encroaching on Kurt's sunlight - with West Side Story and the New Directions and being the acceptable, passing alpha gay. When Blaine had thought Kurt was a shoe-in, he didn't want to go because NYADA was Kurt's place to shine. And when Kurt got rejected, Blaine didn't want to go because it would break Kurt's heart.
It was only in the aftermath of Thanksgiving, when life became a little more bearable and Blaine could start to think of the future again, that he started to consider what he wanted for himself. He weighed NYADA against other schools, listing the pros and cons of going there without reference to Kurt. He was putting the finishing touches on his audition tape the night that Kurt called to tell him that he'd gotten in.
Blaine doesn't explain all this to Ms. Pillsbury, because he doesn't have the words. Instead, he simply says, "NYADA's different."
"As long as you're clear about that," she says, even though there's doubt in her eyes. "I know from personal experience that it can be hard to be away from someone you care about. But it's also important to follow your own path."
Blaine smiles. It's a real smile, not the one he plasters on when he doesn't want people to know what's going on inside him. His heart feel almost light, and he wants Ms. Pillsbury to know. "I think I'm finally learning how to do that."