Fic (Complete): The Muse (NC-17, Glee AU, Kurt/Blaine) 6/7
Previous
***
Santana had to go out of town for what she called ‘Operation Hail-Mary’, so Blaine had his first meeting with SFPDs finest without the benefit of his lawyer present.
“Detective David Martinez, San Francisco Police Department.” The man at his door was around his age, so handsome he looked like Hollywood’s idea of a plainclothes cop, all polished, perfect teeth and coiffed hair-all he needed was a crotchety-but-lovable older partner played by Morgan Freeman. “I was wondering if I could come in, maybe ask you a few questions?”
Blaine made some split-second calculations. “It’s a beautiful morning-how about I bring some coffee out here, and we can talk?”
A flash of dark eyes, a quirk of the corner of his mouth-so the man was pretty, but not stupid. “That’s just fine, Mr. Anderson.”
***
“The thing is-wow, okay, you make good coffee, thanks-there’s all this stuff going on, and it all started with this Kurt Hummel kid, and he’s… nowhere to be found.”
“I had noticed that,” Blaine admitted dryly.
Detective Martinez tilted his head at the house. “He lived here? With you?”
“Yes.”
“Is he still here?”
“No.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
“Do you have some idea of where he might be?”
“No.”
“Did you two have a fight?”
“No.”
“Did you have a sexual relationship?”
“No comment.”
“Mr. Anderson.” Martinez nodded at a black and white unit parked across the street. “That car parked over there? That’s for you. There’s a kid missing, a kid you were living with. A kid you apparently painted a bunch of pictures of, and may or may not have been sleeping with. You’re a wealthy man, no problem for you slipping away, if you wanted to go. So those guys, in the car over there? They’re just going to… keep an eye out. For now.”
“I didn’t hurt him,” Blaine said, reflex, automatic. He bit his lip, but it didn’t help. “I would never hurt him.”
The eyes on him were flat, level, intense. “Listen, Mr. Anderson-”
“Blaine. If you’re going to be openly tailing me, I think we can drop the formalities.”
“Okay. Blaine.” Martinez looked across the street at the car, silent for a long moment, then turned back. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, softer. “Look. I have a son. He’s sixteen.”
Blaine’s stomach dropped a little. “Oh.”
“He’s a great kid, his name’s Jesse.” Martinez sipped his coffee. “He’s gay.”
“Oh.”
“The thought of him… ending up in a place like that, the thought of someone doing to him what that doctor did to those kids-it makes me sick.” Dark eyes, straight at him. “You’re trying to find him-Kurt. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
A nod. “That’s why I don’t think you killed him.” Martinez shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what I think, though-I just need to find him.” He handed Blaine his empty cup, and got to his feet, brushing his pants off. “I’ll leave you my card. I’d appreciate it if you would let me know if he gets in touch with you.”
“I… okay.”
Considering that he didn’t get dragged off and jailed, he figured it was a win.
***
He worked with Quinn on the exhibit details: the catalogue, the space plan, the artist’s statement (hard), exhibition statements (easy), website, price list. He got the finished paintings ready for hanging, then stared at his abandoned Artist and Model III for a long, long time before he finally took it down off the easel, leaning it carefully, face-in, against the wall.
He didn’t want to look at it any more. Not until this was all over, one way or another.
***
Given everything that had been in the news, interest in the exhibition launch was intense, even among serious art patrons. Quinn shook her head over the RSVP list for the initial, private launch-the one that was invitation-only for collectors. “This… is crazy. I have five other clients who are established painters, and none of them have ever gotten this sort of crowd.” She shook her head, frowning, flipping pages. “Tate Modern is on this list, Blaine. MoMA is on this list. Art critics-who matter. People with collections better than what most museums have-”
“Don’t panic, Quinn,” he told her, taking the list out of her hand and tossing it on the table. He smiled. “Chances are most of them are only coming for the fun of excoriating me for my pretensions, anyway.”
It was meant as a mood-lightener, but Quinn went pale and her eyelids drooped, and Blaine sat her down and got her some wine and told her everything was going to be absolutely awesome.
***
It was all over the news, trumped only on the day the charges against Bryant were announced (various counts of fraud, conspiracy, misuse of public funds, assault, reckless child endangerment, and patient endangerment). The exhibit catalogue had included detail shots from most of the paintings, and full shots of two of them. For Blaine, seeing those captures on his television screen was a shock, simultaneously thrilling and terrifying: pieces of his art, his heart, writ large. And, of course, Kurt-Kurt framed in a whole new context, haunting and gorgeous and eerie even when he was being delivered digitally, an incandescent ghost glowing through the plasma.
Santana had her elegantly-booted feet crossed at the ankle and propped on the kitchen table, leaning back in her chair while she munched out of a giant bowl in her lap. On the screen, two women coming through two different satellite feeds were bellowing at each other, while in the middle Ed Schultz looked kind of afraid to interrupt.
“What’s that?”
“Battle of the network lesbians,” Santana said with her mouth full. “A sex-positive one versus an idiot, arguing about whether or not you’re a child molester.” She held out the bowl. “Popcorn?”
With the exhibit statements on the website he’d put up some film clips, and to his surprise and pleasure those started showing up on the news as well: Kurt accompanying himself on the piano, dancing in the kitchen, teasing Blaine ruthlessly and laughing-beautiful, vital and happy.
“Obviously a very talented young man,” one newscaster said, “with a bright future ahead of him. Or, we can only hope so.”
Soon that was everywhere too: conjecture, or breathless concern, or barely-not-couched-in-tragic-terms solemn speculation. He received an interview request from Nancy Grace, and wondered for a moment how she’d respond to a step-by-step description of the makeover Kurt wanted to give her.
With all that going on, it wasn’t exactly shocking when Detective Martinez came back.
“Hi, Blaine,” he said when Blaine opened the door. “I thought maybe we could have another little chat. Maybe indoors, this time?”
Blaine rolled his eyes. “Hold on-I’ll ask my mom-” That was as far as he got before Santana moved him aside, stepped out onto the stoop and then closed the door behind her, shutting him out of it.
“Okay,” Blaine said to the closed door, scratching his jaw. “I’ll just… stay in here, then.”
But only until he saw Detective Martinez walking away, and Santana coming back. Then he opened the door. “Detective Martinez?”
“Do not talk to him-”
“I just want to ask him one question.” Martinez turned around. “If you saw Kurt-if he just came walking up the sidewalk here-would you take him? Knowing who would get him-legally, who would get him- and what she would do, what she wants to do to him? Would you take him? Could you do that?”
Martinez blinked. A muscle in his cheek jumped. “Maybe it’s best if he doesn’t show up here right now.”
Blaine nodded, his fists clenched, his stomach cold and low and sick. “I guess so.”
***
The only interview he granted was to a young reporter from the local news affiliate. “I’m glad to be doing this show. And of course I’m glad that so many people want to see it-but the one who should really be there is Kurt. These paintings celebrate him, who he is, the person that he’s become. He’s the strongest, bravest person I know. I hope that comes across in the work, and I hope he gets to see it.”
The girl interviewing him didn’t look much older than Kurt was. “Any regrets about your career? The movies? The books?”
He smiled. “I’m doing what I want to do. Kurt made that possible for me.”
She tilted her head, squinting. He wondered if she’d picked up that technique from Katie Couric. “Did you love him?”
“I do love him.” Still. He still couldn’t say it without his throat squeezing up on him. “He’s the love of my life.”
***
“You have to go, Blaine! You’re the artist, it’s your work, you need to-”
“I went down to the place on the corner for groceries this morning,” Blaine said evenly. “And Mutt and Jeff out there were with me, every step of the way. I got them each a cruller. But I really don’t think this particular event would be improved by the company of the artist and his police escort, do you?”
“Oh fuck,” Quinn said, squeezing her temples. “No, of course not.”
“I’ll go to the public launch,” he said, smoothing her Dior dress over her shoulders. “That’ll be a madhouse, it won’t matter so much.” He kissed her on the forehead-he had to get up on his toes to do it, her Jimmy Choo pumps were deeply stylish and terrifyingly high. “You look amazing. You are amazing. You’ve been so incredibly amazing, through this whole thing-”
“Billable hours, Blaine,” she said bitterly, twisting a knuckle into his bicep, sniffing a little and blinking with her head tilted back, so her makeup didn’t smudge. “You’re paying for my dream six-month vacation in Majorca.”
“Just make sure I write you a check before they bust me.”
“Oh shut up. I’m leaving.”
***
Tina looked spectacular in Alexander McQueen-nearly piratical, very dramatic. “You’re going?”
“Yeah, I…” She stopped, brushing her hair back on one side. “There might be some people there it would be good for me to talk to.” She shrugged. “I decided that I want my next piece to be about places like Lost Lambs. Not a short, a full-length doc.”
He reached out for her hand. “Tina, that’s… perfect, it’s perfect for you.”
She nodded. “But it’s risky, and research-heavy, and I’ll need funding-”
“I’ll fund it.”
She squeezed his hand. “I know you would. But there are other people who might want to-people who don’t have staggering lawyer and agent-slash-manager bills to pay.” She kissed his cheek. “I promise I’ll deal you in, okay?”
“Okay.” He wrapped her up. Her hair smelled like jasmine. “I promise I’ll let you live on my couch as long as you want.”
***
With no current emergencies underway, Santana packed up her notes and headed home for the day. “I should probably remind my wife what I look like.”
That caught him. He sat down at the table and looked at her. “I didn’t know you were married.”
She nodded. “Tied the knot in June 2008, before the Mormons gave us all a collective ass-fucking with no reacharound.”
She turned her laptop towards him, pulling up a picture of a stunning blonde with a happy smile, one arm around a giant, grumpy-looking cat and the other wielding… an angry-looking puppet. “That’s Brittany. That’s my girl. Champion of children’s television programming-she’s a genius.”
“The puppet, um. It kind of looks like…”
“She based it on me, that’s why. Apparently four-year-olds think angry feminist lawyer puppets are the shit.”
He was exhausted and overwrought and he could not stop laughing. Every time he started to get it under control, one glance at the cat or the blonde or the puppet would set him off again. He felt kind of bad about it, but Santana was smiling at him-not a lawyer-smile. A friend-smile. He was still wheezing a little when she flipped her laptop shut and smacked him on the shoulder. “Good night, short stack. I hope nobody upchucks their wine on your pervy pictures.”
***
Alone. Quiet. The house empty-achingly so, the paintings gone from upstairs; the paintings gone forever. Blaine sat at the kitchen table until he couldn’t anymore, then went upstairs to Kurt’s room.
It felt like a shell, like a set, like a stage after the actors had taken their final bows and moved on. Lying on Kurt’s bed felt like trespassing, and it was all too easy for all the details and all of the questions to race through his mind: everything that could go wrong, if everything didn’t go just right.
He didn’t cry. He hadn’t cried since he’d found Kurt’s journal. Not since he decided to act, not since he started the whole ball rolling.
With supreme irony, he realized what he wanted to do most right now was pray.
Instead, he got up off Kurt’s bed, and went back downstairs to make himself a drink.
***
The exhibition website e-mail was dreary and predictable and monotonous, and he hoped that wading through it might actually let him sleep for the first time in three days.
…you fucking hellbound child molesting faggot i hope you
…You don’t know me but I’m the biggest fan of Fabulous Monsters and I just wanted to know when the next book
…was his ass tight when you fucked him? Did he call you Daddy?
…very disappointed, this is pornography. Please go back to the books, my children
…love the books and movies, and the art is great. I have a script I think you’d go nuts for
…your cock and balls should be cut off and fed to dogs
…can’t you please think of the children?
…It comes across, Blaine. And I’ll get to see it. At least one time.
He sat bolt upright, feeling like electricity was running through him, like his hair must be standing on end.
8392Ganymede02903.
He hit ‘reply’, then ‘send’ without even adding anything, because he was an idiot and because his hands were shaking.
Immediate bounce: undeliverable.
He put his head down on his folded hands, and breathed.
***
He was still sitting there, staring at the message, when Quinn came in. She didn’t bother turning the lights on. She closed the door, locked it, then leaned back against it and kicked her shoes off, sighing.
“I kind of hate you a little right now.”
Blaine got up from the table. “That bad?”
Her head rolled toward him, and he realized she was drunk. “It was insane.” She walked towards him, taking her earrings out, barefooted and girlish in her full-skirted dress. “Everything went, Blaine. Everything.”
He blinked. “Everything… sold? All of it?”
“To some extremely prestigious institutions and individuals,” she drawled, enunciating with drunken deliberation. “Congratulations. You’ve gone from ‘that guy who got canned by Disney’ to ‘the most exciting and bold representational artist of this generation’ in one goddamn night, and for the rest of your life if you so much as scribble on a cocktail napkin, that cocktail napkin will create a fucking bidding war.”
She was right there. She curled into him and he put his arms around her, moving with her when she rocked a little, dancing with him. “I can’t believe you pulled it off. I can’t believe it, Blaine. I thought… oh, you know what I thought.”
“I… yeah. I know. I’m sorry I worried you.”
“Ha. You should be. I’ve been a wreck.”
He’d held on to it as long as he could. “Kurt sent an e-mail to the exhibit website.”
She pulled back immediately. “What?”
“He’ll be at the public launch. Tomorrow.” Just saying it made him dizzy, made his heart clutch up in his chest. “He said he’d be there.”
“Oh my God-are we ready? We need to-”
“Shh,” he told her, pulling her back in. “We’re ready.” He swallowed. “We’re as ready as we can be on our end. Everything else is… well, all we can do is try.”
She blinked up at him, her eyes wide. “Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.”
***
“Listen to me.” Santana’s hands were heavy on his shoulders. “I’m going to be really, really honest with you. If you mess this up, I won’t wait for the cops to throw down-I will insert my foot in your ass and wear you like a bowtie-covered boot.”
Blaine blinked. “Me? But I’m-”
“You’re crazy, you’re a crazyman, you’re a crazy artist and you’re crazy about that boy. But for this to work, you have to be calm, you have to be steady, you have to keep it under control. Can you do that?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Maybe I should ask Quinn for a Valium.”
She patted his arms, smiling with lovely, gentle menace. “I’ll shoot you full of horse tranquilizers if that’s what it takes, Blaine.”
No Valium, but her words stayed with him, and despite everything he realized they probably weren’t misapplied, because the street outside the exhibit venue was packed, wall-to-wall people all crowding around the ropes that ran to the street from either side of the doors-a huge crowd, like no art launch he’d ever seen before. So many people, and one of them had to be Kurt, and yes, he started scanning the moment he got out of the car. A yell, screams, and he thought Kurt must have been spotted-but no, the yell was for him, apparently, and he smiled and waved and wondered how fucking weird his life was going to get.
He’d chartered a car and driver for the evening. He handed Santana, Tina and Quinn out, then closed the door and tried to not be really super obvious about parsing the crowd. Santana slipped her arm through his, smiling, and leaned towards his ear. “Walk slowly. Mutt and Jeff are pulling up right now. Do not panic.”
“Not panicking.” The people crowding the ropes were young, mostly; girls and boys and quite a few who looked like they could be either, both or neither-so many young, excited faces, pens and autograph books extended, quite a few sketchbooks, too. He saw a handmade t-shirt in the crowd that said I Am Kurt Hummel, then another, and-oh, God, there were a bunch of them, all through the crowd, and despite the insanity and the pressure he had to laugh when he realized that his police escort was scrutinizing each one of them in turn.
Santana steered him over to the ropes, where a man he recognized as one of the art editors for the San Francisco Chronicle was waving them down. “Make it quick,” she murmured in his ear.
“So, Blaine,” the guy yelled. “By the looks of things here today, it seems that once again you’ve somehow tapped into a cultural zeitgeist, this time fusing fine art with pop culture. Is that what you set out to do?”
“Um, no,” Blaine said, because honestly. “I didn’t even know I’d done that until, uh, just now. I just… made the art I wanted to make. The art I wanted to see in the world. About a person who inspires me.”
“He seems to be an inspiration to many,” the guy said dryly. “But the politics that inform your work, here, this revolution of sexual and gender expression is just-”
Santana tugged on his arm. “Look,” Blaine said, grabbing pens and signing books as fast as he could. “Call me, and we’ll set up an interview, okay? I need to keep moving.”
He was on the other side of the line, signing, signing, smiling at all the happy, young faces, when a voice a little further down made him clamp down on the Sharpie in his hand so hard he thought it might snap in half. “Ms. Cohen-Chang? Ms. Cohen-Chang-over here-”
One glimpse, one brief, head-up-head-down glance, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek. Long, wavy, blonde hair, bangs, sunglasses and a scarf-that was all he’d gotten, but if his police escort was looking for the boy who was in all the paintings and all over the television coverage, they were shit out of luck. “Ms. Cohen-Chang, I came to your premiere, and we talked-hi, yes-I’m so glad you remember me, can I come in with you? Can I?”
Tina, bless her, seemed as calm and composed as ever as she helped Kurt duck under the ropes, embracing him fondly. “She’s with me,” she said to the guy at the door, and then they disappeared.
He floated through the rest of the line. Signing. Smiling. A young person of indeterminate gender, feathers and beads and bracelets and visible scars on their arms, was the last person he signed for. “Thank you,” Blaine said. “Thank you for being here today.”
And then Santana tugged his arm again, and they were in.
***
“This is crazy,” Quinn said in his ear, handing him a glass. “This is an art launch, not a Hollywood premiere-there are celebrities all over the place. For God’s sake, Robert DeNiro is here-”
“Steady, girl,” he said, clinking plastic glasses with her. “You can tell your mom about it when it’s all over-”
“Oh, I’m going to,” Quinn murmured, draining her glass in one quick swallow. “I’m going to have rub-it-in rights over this for years-if we don’t all end up in the slammer, that is.”
Kurt was still with Tina, moving calmly from one painting to the next. Black skinny jeans, black Chucks. A black bodysuit with a red, cropped bolero over it, hiding the lack of breasts. A red and black cotton scarf looped twice around the neck. Cotton-candy lipgloss and all that blonde hair and the red-framed sunglasses-heart-shaped, smoky grey-to-pink lenses and oh, Kurt, really, the Lolita glasses were what was killing him, that little touch, because it was so Kurt. Because it was really, really him.
He moved away quickly, taking his police detail with him, so neither he-nor they-could see when Tina and Kurt slipped out of the room.
Quinn was the next to go. One moment she was there, effervescent and polished and wonderful, making introductions and talking about the show and discreetly herding people to him or away from him, depending, and the next minute she was gone. He moved to the crowd around the bar to compensate, accepted congratulations and champagne, and exerted himself to be social and gracious and mellowly happy. He thought he maybe did a slightly better job than a reanimated corpse would have, but he wasn’t sure.
“I just got a text from Tina,” Santana said in his ear, one hand on his shoulder. “They’re all set. Now look at your watch.” He did. “Make your move in exactly five minutes. No more, no less. Don’t panic, and don’t rush. I’m out.”
He didn’t watch her go. The next part was one of those things that they’d decided to leave loose, as there were too many variables to calculate, and the best decision would be made on the fly.
The problem was, it was his on-the-fly decision. He kind of wished that part had occurred to him before just now. Quinn or Santana or Tina winging it? No problem-they were all experts. But he didn’t feel quite like an expert. He felt more like a nervous, fumbling dork.
Mutt and Jeff. He called them that for expediency’s sake, although they changed all the time, and he was never entirely sure whether the two following him around or watching his house from across the street were ones he’d met before or whether they were new to the detail, because all of them seemed so similar: frowning and serious and manly and entirely coplike.
Which… of course, was what he’d been waiting for his brain to point out to him. He glanced at his watch. He had one minute left. Then he turned to Mutt and Jeff. “Hey-you guys want to meet Robert DeNiro?”
***
Robert ‘Call me Bobby’ DeNiro turned out to be an incredibly nice man, and very gracious about being fanboyed over in a serious and manly and coplike way. “I’m gonna hit the bathroom,” Blaine told Jeff, slapping him on the shoulder, and Jeff just nodded and went back to describing his favorite scene in Goodfellas.
Mike was in the bathroom, the screen was off the high, small window, and Blaine’s stomach was doing cartwheels. “You ready?” Mike asked him once the door was closed. “We need to move fast.”
They moved fast. Mike boosted him up and halfway through, and on the other side was the alley and an open, running catering van and Santana, in jeans and a t-shirt and a baseball cap. “Okay, fugitive from justice-here we go.” He half-climbed and half-fell into the alley, a little scraped and banged up, but just fine.
Mike’s face popped up in the window. “See you guys up there. Be safe,” he said, and then he was gone. Blaine got in the van and got the door shut, sitting on the floor between two empty industrial racks. Quinn was driving, ponytailed and baseball-capped, and he noticed vaguely beyond the thunder of his heart that it was a really good look on her.
Santana pitched a backpack at him from the passenger seat. “Suit up.”
Santana had packed him a NASCAR t-shirt and a ‘World’s Best Dad’ baseball cap. “Oh, you suck so bad.”
Her laughter pealed out, high and happy and free, and he went over onto his side when Quinn took the corner from the alley into the street, and then they were off.
***
They swapped vehicles in the Civic Center garage, backing in and parking close to the waiting van so that when both side doors slid back they could make the transfer without parading around in front of the surveillance cameras. Tina was there when he slid the door open, waving him in and towards the back seat-which was where Kurt was, the wig gone, wearing just the jeans and a plain white t-shirt, his wet hair combed straight back and his face rosy from scrubbing. “Blaine-”
He didn’t remember falling onto the seat. He remembered Kurt’s cool, still-damp face in his hands, and two furious, devouring kisses before he started to cry. Kurt held him and shushed him and kissed him back, then gave up on the shushing and just held him. Blaine didn’t sob, but he was shaking, crying softly and he couldn’t stop, pain draining from him like a dam had broken somewhere that had been holding everything back.
“Is he okay?” he heard Santana ask.
“He’s fine,” Kurt said, his voice hoarse and broken-sounding, and then there were more kisses, soft and sorry kisses, dropping one by one on his mouth until he could breathe again.
When he pulled back (not letting go, he honestly didn’t know if he’d ever be able to let go again), Kurt looked at him, his eyes wide and blue and full of light. “Blaine. You look… terrible.” His eyes darted up to the hat. “And completely ridiculous.”
“I know.” He sniffed. “Will you marry me?”
Kurt took the packet of tissues that Quinn was waving at them from the seat ahead, pulled some out, and pressed them into Blaine’s palm before he handed the packet back. “Yes-but not while you’re wearing that hat. It would be weird.”
Blaine grinned. His stupid eyes were leaking again. “Okay.”
***
“Okay-okay-okay,” Kurt said, holding up his hands. “Wait, I need to… I need to go over that all again, because about half of it was in legalese, and the other half was in yelling.”
“Sorry,” Blaine said. “I’ve just… been waiting a long time to tell you all this.”
Kurt nudged Blaine’s knee with his own. “I know. Okay, so-” he ticked off a point on his fingers. “The first thing was, Ohio Juvenile Justice dropped the charges, right?”
“Yeah-they’re kind of scrambling with the whole corruption scandal thing, so Santana finally got them to listen to reason-”
“More like ‘fear’,” Santana said from the shotgun seat, where she was filing her nails. “For some reason, the threat of going public with proof of trumped-up charges against a gay teen didn’t seem to appeal to them right now.”
“Okay,” Kurt said. “Thank you.”
“De nada,” Santana said, blowing on her nails. “It was my pleasure.”
“It really was,” Quinn drawled. “I was there when she made the call-her eyes got big and she was breathing funny when she hung up.”
“Vengeance gets me hot,” Santana said, shrugging.
Kurt’s mouth twisted. “Okay. So, now we get to the part I actually knew about-Ohio has no emancipation law for minors.”
“Right,” Blaine said.
“Which is crazy,” Tina mumbled, downshifting. “And sucks.”
“And the other part I knew about,” Kurt said, nodding, “the only way around custody is through either marriage or enlistment.”
“Please don’t join the Army,” Blaine said.
“I’ve been keeping that particular option in reserve,” Kurt said dryly. “Which brings us to…”
“Washington.”
Kurt was looking at him. “Where same-sex marriage is legal.”
“For now,” Santana said darkly.
“But not…” Kurt bit his lip. “Not for minors, not unless you have a-what is it?”
“Special circumstances exemption.” Blaine said. He’d called it a ‘special dispensation’ in strategy sessions until Santana had thrown a pen at him.
“From a Judge, right?”
“A Superior Court Justice,” Santana said.
“And you found one? Who’ll do it?”
“I found one who’ll listen,” Santana replied, half-bitterly. “And I had a hell of a time finding even that. But yeah, I found someone who’ll at least hear us out.”
“The ‘special circumstances’ can take into consideration the mental and emotional state of the parent,” Tina added, looking at Kurt in the rear-view mirror.
“Oh.” He shook his head. Took a breath. “So, we’re going to Washington.” He looked at Blaine. His face was flushed. “And you… you were serious. You meant it.”
“I meant it.” Blaine swallowed. “I would have meant it even without all this… other stuff.”
Kurt looked down, his lips pressed together.
“It’s a lot to take in, I know. And… no pressure, Kurt, okay? If you don’t-really, we don’t have to, there are other options-”
“Blaine.” Kurt’s voice was soft. “Stop.”
Blaine stopped.
Kurt reached over and took his hand, then laced their fingers together. He turned his head away, looking out through the window, leaning back in the seat.
Blaine squeezed his hand, and watched Kurt, watching the miles pass by.
***
Next
***
Santana had to go out of town for what she called ‘Operation Hail-Mary’, so Blaine had his first meeting with SFPDs finest without the benefit of his lawyer present.
“Detective David Martinez, San Francisco Police Department.” The man at his door was around his age, so handsome he looked like Hollywood’s idea of a plainclothes cop, all polished, perfect teeth and coiffed hair-all he needed was a crotchety-but-lovable older partner played by Morgan Freeman. “I was wondering if I could come in, maybe ask you a few questions?”
Blaine made some split-second calculations. “It’s a beautiful morning-how about I bring some coffee out here, and we can talk?”
A flash of dark eyes, a quirk of the corner of his mouth-so the man was pretty, but not stupid. “That’s just fine, Mr. Anderson.”
***
“The thing is-wow, okay, you make good coffee, thanks-there’s all this stuff going on, and it all started with this Kurt Hummel kid, and he’s… nowhere to be found.”
“I had noticed that,” Blaine admitted dryly.
Detective Martinez tilted his head at the house. “He lived here? With you?”
“Yes.”
“Is he still here?”
“No.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
“Do you have some idea of where he might be?”
“No.”
“Did you two have a fight?”
“No.”
“Did you have a sexual relationship?”
“No comment.”
“Mr. Anderson.” Martinez nodded at a black and white unit parked across the street. “That car parked over there? That’s for you. There’s a kid missing, a kid you were living with. A kid you apparently painted a bunch of pictures of, and may or may not have been sleeping with. You’re a wealthy man, no problem for you slipping away, if you wanted to go. So those guys, in the car over there? They’re just going to… keep an eye out. For now.”
“I didn’t hurt him,” Blaine said, reflex, automatic. He bit his lip, but it didn’t help. “I would never hurt him.”
The eyes on him were flat, level, intense. “Listen, Mr. Anderson-”
“Blaine. If you’re going to be openly tailing me, I think we can drop the formalities.”
“Okay. Blaine.” Martinez looked across the street at the car, silent for a long moment, then turned back. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, softer. “Look. I have a son. He’s sixteen.”
Blaine’s stomach dropped a little. “Oh.”
“He’s a great kid, his name’s Jesse.” Martinez sipped his coffee. “He’s gay.”
“Oh.”
“The thought of him… ending up in a place like that, the thought of someone doing to him what that doctor did to those kids-it makes me sick.” Dark eyes, straight at him. “You’re trying to find him-Kurt. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
A nod. “That’s why I don’t think you killed him.” Martinez shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what I think, though-I just need to find him.” He handed Blaine his empty cup, and got to his feet, brushing his pants off. “I’ll leave you my card. I’d appreciate it if you would let me know if he gets in touch with you.”
“I… okay.”
Considering that he didn’t get dragged off and jailed, he figured it was a win.
***
He worked with Quinn on the exhibit details: the catalogue, the space plan, the artist’s statement (hard), exhibition statements (easy), website, price list. He got the finished paintings ready for hanging, then stared at his abandoned Artist and Model III for a long, long time before he finally took it down off the easel, leaning it carefully, face-in, against the wall.
He didn’t want to look at it any more. Not until this was all over, one way or another.
***
Given everything that had been in the news, interest in the exhibition launch was intense, even among serious art patrons. Quinn shook her head over the RSVP list for the initial, private launch-the one that was invitation-only for collectors. “This… is crazy. I have five other clients who are established painters, and none of them have ever gotten this sort of crowd.” She shook her head, frowning, flipping pages. “Tate Modern is on this list, Blaine. MoMA is on this list. Art critics-who matter. People with collections better than what most museums have-”
“Don’t panic, Quinn,” he told her, taking the list out of her hand and tossing it on the table. He smiled. “Chances are most of them are only coming for the fun of excoriating me for my pretensions, anyway.”
It was meant as a mood-lightener, but Quinn went pale and her eyelids drooped, and Blaine sat her down and got her some wine and told her everything was going to be absolutely awesome.
***
It was all over the news, trumped only on the day the charges against Bryant were announced (various counts of fraud, conspiracy, misuse of public funds, assault, reckless child endangerment, and patient endangerment). The exhibit catalogue had included detail shots from most of the paintings, and full shots of two of them. For Blaine, seeing those captures on his television screen was a shock, simultaneously thrilling and terrifying: pieces of his art, his heart, writ large. And, of course, Kurt-Kurt framed in a whole new context, haunting and gorgeous and eerie even when he was being delivered digitally, an incandescent ghost glowing through the plasma.
Santana had her elegantly-booted feet crossed at the ankle and propped on the kitchen table, leaning back in her chair while she munched out of a giant bowl in her lap. On the screen, two women coming through two different satellite feeds were bellowing at each other, while in the middle Ed Schultz looked kind of afraid to interrupt.
“What’s that?”
“Battle of the network lesbians,” Santana said with her mouth full. “A sex-positive one versus an idiot, arguing about whether or not you’re a child molester.” She held out the bowl. “Popcorn?”
With the exhibit statements on the website he’d put up some film clips, and to his surprise and pleasure those started showing up on the news as well: Kurt accompanying himself on the piano, dancing in the kitchen, teasing Blaine ruthlessly and laughing-beautiful, vital and happy.
“Obviously a very talented young man,” one newscaster said, “with a bright future ahead of him. Or, we can only hope so.”
Soon that was everywhere too: conjecture, or breathless concern, or barely-not-couched-in-tragic-terms solemn speculation. He received an interview request from Nancy Grace, and wondered for a moment how she’d respond to a step-by-step description of the makeover Kurt wanted to give her.
With all that going on, it wasn’t exactly shocking when Detective Martinez came back.
“Hi, Blaine,” he said when Blaine opened the door. “I thought maybe we could have another little chat. Maybe indoors, this time?”
Blaine rolled his eyes. “Hold on-I’ll ask my mom-” That was as far as he got before Santana moved him aside, stepped out onto the stoop and then closed the door behind her, shutting him out of it.
“Okay,” Blaine said to the closed door, scratching his jaw. “I’ll just… stay in here, then.”
But only until he saw Detective Martinez walking away, and Santana coming back. Then he opened the door. “Detective Martinez?”
“Do not talk to him-”
“I just want to ask him one question.” Martinez turned around. “If you saw Kurt-if he just came walking up the sidewalk here-would you take him? Knowing who would get him-legally, who would get him- and what she would do, what she wants to do to him? Would you take him? Could you do that?”
Martinez blinked. A muscle in his cheek jumped. “Maybe it’s best if he doesn’t show up here right now.”
Blaine nodded, his fists clenched, his stomach cold and low and sick. “I guess so.”
***
The only interview he granted was to a young reporter from the local news affiliate. “I’m glad to be doing this show. And of course I’m glad that so many people want to see it-but the one who should really be there is Kurt. These paintings celebrate him, who he is, the person that he’s become. He’s the strongest, bravest person I know. I hope that comes across in the work, and I hope he gets to see it.”
The girl interviewing him didn’t look much older than Kurt was. “Any regrets about your career? The movies? The books?”
He smiled. “I’m doing what I want to do. Kurt made that possible for me.”
She tilted her head, squinting. He wondered if she’d picked up that technique from Katie Couric. “Did you love him?”
“I do love him.” Still. He still couldn’t say it without his throat squeezing up on him. “He’s the love of my life.”
***
“You have to go, Blaine! You’re the artist, it’s your work, you need to-”
“I went down to the place on the corner for groceries this morning,” Blaine said evenly. “And Mutt and Jeff out there were with me, every step of the way. I got them each a cruller. But I really don’t think this particular event would be improved by the company of the artist and his police escort, do you?”
“Oh fuck,” Quinn said, squeezing her temples. “No, of course not.”
“I’ll go to the public launch,” he said, smoothing her Dior dress over her shoulders. “That’ll be a madhouse, it won’t matter so much.” He kissed her on the forehead-he had to get up on his toes to do it, her Jimmy Choo pumps were deeply stylish and terrifyingly high. “You look amazing. You are amazing. You’ve been so incredibly amazing, through this whole thing-”
“Billable hours, Blaine,” she said bitterly, twisting a knuckle into his bicep, sniffing a little and blinking with her head tilted back, so her makeup didn’t smudge. “You’re paying for my dream six-month vacation in Majorca.”
“Just make sure I write you a check before they bust me.”
“Oh shut up. I’m leaving.”
***
Tina looked spectacular in Alexander McQueen-nearly piratical, very dramatic. “You’re going?”
“Yeah, I…” She stopped, brushing her hair back on one side. “There might be some people there it would be good for me to talk to.” She shrugged. “I decided that I want my next piece to be about places like Lost Lambs. Not a short, a full-length doc.”
He reached out for her hand. “Tina, that’s… perfect, it’s perfect for you.”
She nodded. “But it’s risky, and research-heavy, and I’ll need funding-”
“I’ll fund it.”
She squeezed his hand. “I know you would. But there are other people who might want to-people who don’t have staggering lawyer and agent-slash-manager bills to pay.” She kissed his cheek. “I promise I’ll deal you in, okay?”
“Okay.” He wrapped her up. Her hair smelled like jasmine. “I promise I’ll let you live on my couch as long as you want.”
***
With no current emergencies underway, Santana packed up her notes and headed home for the day. “I should probably remind my wife what I look like.”
That caught him. He sat down at the table and looked at her. “I didn’t know you were married.”
She nodded. “Tied the knot in June 2008, before the Mormons gave us all a collective ass-fucking with no reacharound.”
She turned her laptop towards him, pulling up a picture of a stunning blonde with a happy smile, one arm around a giant, grumpy-looking cat and the other wielding… an angry-looking puppet. “That’s Brittany. That’s my girl. Champion of children’s television programming-she’s a genius.”
“The puppet, um. It kind of looks like…”
“She based it on me, that’s why. Apparently four-year-olds think angry feminist lawyer puppets are the shit.”
He was exhausted and overwrought and he could not stop laughing. Every time he started to get it under control, one glance at the cat or the blonde or the puppet would set him off again. He felt kind of bad about it, but Santana was smiling at him-not a lawyer-smile. A friend-smile. He was still wheezing a little when she flipped her laptop shut and smacked him on the shoulder. “Good night, short stack. I hope nobody upchucks their wine on your pervy pictures.”
***
Alone. Quiet. The house empty-achingly so, the paintings gone from upstairs; the paintings gone forever. Blaine sat at the kitchen table until he couldn’t anymore, then went upstairs to Kurt’s room.
It felt like a shell, like a set, like a stage after the actors had taken their final bows and moved on. Lying on Kurt’s bed felt like trespassing, and it was all too easy for all the details and all of the questions to race through his mind: everything that could go wrong, if everything didn’t go just right.
He didn’t cry. He hadn’t cried since he’d found Kurt’s journal. Not since he decided to act, not since he started the whole ball rolling.
With supreme irony, he realized what he wanted to do most right now was pray.
Instead, he got up off Kurt’s bed, and went back downstairs to make himself a drink.
***
The exhibition website e-mail was dreary and predictable and monotonous, and he hoped that wading through it might actually let him sleep for the first time in three days.
…you fucking hellbound child molesting faggot i hope you
…You don’t know me but I’m the biggest fan of Fabulous Monsters and I just wanted to know when the next book
…was his ass tight when you fucked him? Did he call you Daddy?
…very disappointed, this is pornography. Please go back to the books, my children
…love the books and movies, and the art is great. I have a script I think you’d go nuts for
…your cock and balls should be cut off and fed to dogs
…can’t you please think of the children?
…It comes across, Blaine. And I’ll get to see it. At least one time.
He sat bolt upright, feeling like electricity was running through him, like his hair must be standing on end.
8392Ganymede02903.
He hit ‘reply’, then ‘send’ without even adding anything, because he was an idiot and because his hands were shaking.
Immediate bounce: undeliverable.
He put his head down on his folded hands, and breathed.
***
He was still sitting there, staring at the message, when Quinn came in. She didn’t bother turning the lights on. She closed the door, locked it, then leaned back against it and kicked her shoes off, sighing.
“I kind of hate you a little right now.”
Blaine got up from the table. “That bad?”
Her head rolled toward him, and he realized she was drunk. “It was insane.” She walked towards him, taking her earrings out, barefooted and girlish in her full-skirted dress. “Everything went, Blaine. Everything.”
He blinked. “Everything… sold? All of it?”
“To some extremely prestigious institutions and individuals,” she drawled, enunciating with drunken deliberation. “Congratulations. You’ve gone from ‘that guy who got canned by Disney’ to ‘the most exciting and bold representational artist of this generation’ in one goddamn night, and for the rest of your life if you so much as scribble on a cocktail napkin, that cocktail napkin will create a fucking bidding war.”
She was right there. She curled into him and he put his arms around her, moving with her when she rocked a little, dancing with him. “I can’t believe you pulled it off. I can’t believe it, Blaine. I thought… oh, you know what I thought.”
“I… yeah. I know. I’m sorry I worried you.”
“Ha. You should be. I’ve been a wreck.”
He’d held on to it as long as he could. “Kurt sent an e-mail to the exhibit website.”
She pulled back immediately. “What?”
“He’ll be at the public launch. Tomorrow.” Just saying it made him dizzy, made his heart clutch up in his chest. “He said he’d be there.”
“Oh my God-are we ready? We need to-”
“Shh,” he told her, pulling her back in. “We’re ready.” He swallowed. “We’re as ready as we can be on our end. Everything else is… well, all we can do is try.”
She blinked up at him, her eyes wide. “Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.”
***
“Listen to me.” Santana’s hands were heavy on his shoulders. “I’m going to be really, really honest with you. If you mess this up, I won’t wait for the cops to throw down-I will insert my foot in your ass and wear you like a bowtie-covered boot.”
Blaine blinked. “Me? But I’m-”
“You’re crazy, you’re a crazyman, you’re a crazy artist and you’re crazy about that boy. But for this to work, you have to be calm, you have to be steady, you have to keep it under control. Can you do that?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Maybe I should ask Quinn for a Valium.”
She patted his arms, smiling with lovely, gentle menace. “I’ll shoot you full of horse tranquilizers if that’s what it takes, Blaine.”
No Valium, but her words stayed with him, and despite everything he realized they probably weren’t misapplied, because the street outside the exhibit venue was packed, wall-to-wall people all crowding around the ropes that ran to the street from either side of the doors-a huge crowd, like no art launch he’d ever seen before. So many people, and one of them had to be Kurt, and yes, he started scanning the moment he got out of the car. A yell, screams, and he thought Kurt must have been spotted-but no, the yell was for him, apparently, and he smiled and waved and wondered how fucking weird his life was going to get.
He’d chartered a car and driver for the evening. He handed Santana, Tina and Quinn out, then closed the door and tried to not be really super obvious about parsing the crowd. Santana slipped her arm through his, smiling, and leaned towards his ear. “Walk slowly. Mutt and Jeff are pulling up right now. Do not panic.”
“Not panicking.” The people crowding the ropes were young, mostly; girls and boys and quite a few who looked like they could be either, both or neither-so many young, excited faces, pens and autograph books extended, quite a few sketchbooks, too. He saw a handmade t-shirt in the crowd that said I Am Kurt Hummel, then another, and-oh, God, there were a bunch of them, all through the crowd, and despite the insanity and the pressure he had to laugh when he realized that his police escort was scrutinizing each one of them in turn.
Santana steered him over to the ropes, where a man he recognized as one of the art editors for the San Francisco Chronicle was waving them down. “Make it quick,” she murmured in his ear.
“So, Blaine,” the guy yelled. “By the looks of things here today, it seems that once again you’ve somehow tapped into a cultural zeitgeist, this time fusing fine art with pop culture. Is that what you set out to do?”
“Um, no,” Blaine said, because honestly. “I didn’t even know I’d done that until, uh, just now. I just… made the art I wanted to make. The art I wanted to see in the world. About a person who inspires me.”
“He seems to be an inspiration to many,” the guy said dryly. “But the politics that inform your work, here, this revolution of sexual and gender expression is just-”
Santana tugged on his arm. “Look,” Blaine said, grabbing pens and signing books as fast as he could. “Call me, and we’ll set up an interview, okay? I need to keep moving.”
He was on the other side of the line, signing, signing, smiling at all the happy, young faces, when a voice a little further down made him clamp down on the Sharpie in his hand so hard he thought it might snap in half. “Ms. Cohen-Chang? Ms. Cohen-Chang-over here-”
One glimpse, one brief, head-up-head-down glance, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek. Long, wavy, blonde hair, bangs, sunglasses and a scarf-that was all he’d gotten, but if his police escort was looking for the boy who was in all the paintings and all over the television coverage, they were shit out of luck. “Ms. Cohen-Chang, I came to your premiere, and we talked-hi, yes-I’m so glad you remember me, can I come in with you? Can I?”
Tina, bless her, seemed as calm and composed as ever as she helped Kurt duck under the ropes, embracing him fondly. “She’s with me,” she said to the guy at the door, and then they disappeared.
He floated through the rest of the line. Signing. Smiling. A young person of indeterminate gender, feathers and beads and bracelets and visible scars on their arms, was the last person he signed for. “Thank you,” Blaine said. “Thank you for being here today.”
And then Santana tugged his arm again, and they were in.
***
“This is crazy,” Quinn said in his ear, handing him a glass. “This is an art launch, not a Hollywood premiere-there are celebrities all over the place. For God’s sake, Robert DeNiro is here-”
“Steady, girl,” he said, clinking plastic glasses with her. “You can tell your mom about it when it’s all over-”
“Oh, I’m going to,” Quinn murmured, draining her glass in one quick swallow. “I’m going to have rub-it-in rights over this for years-if we don’t all end up in the slammer, that is.”
Kurt was still with Tina, moving calmly from one painting to the next. Black skinny jeans, black Chucks. A black bodysuit with a red, cropped bolero over it, hiding the lack of breasts. A red and black cotton scarf looped twice around the neck. Cotton-candy lipgloss and all that blonde hair and the red-framed sunglasses-heart-shaped, smoky grey-to-pink lenses and oh, Kurt, really, the Lolita glasses were what was killing him, that little touch, because it was so Kurt. Because it was really, really him.
He moved away quickly, taking his police detail with him, so neither he-nor they-could see when Tina and Kurt slipped out of the room.
Quinn was the next to go. One moment she was there, effervescent and polished and wonderful, making introductions and talking about the show and discreetly herding people to him or away from him, depending, and the next minute she was gone. He moved to the crowd around the bar to compensate, accepted congratulations and champagne, and exerted himself to be social and gracious and mellowly happy. He thought he maybe did a slightly better job than a reanimated corpse would have, but he wasn’t sure.
“I just got a text from Tina,” Santana said in his ear, one hand on his shoulder. “They’re all set. Now look at your watch.” He did. “Make your move in exactly five minutes. No more, no less. Don’t panic, and don’t rush. I’m out.”
He didn’t watch her go. The next part was one of those things that they’d decided to leave loose, as there were too many variables to calculate, and the best decision would be made on the fly.
The problem was, it was his on-the-fly decision. He kind of wished that part had occurred to him before just now. Quinn or Santana or Tina winging it? No problem-they were all experts. But he didn’t feel quite like an expert. He felt more like a nervous, fumbling dork.
Mutt and Jeff. He called them that for expediency’s sake, although they changed all the time, and he was never entirely sure whether the two following him around or watching his house from across the street were ones he’d met before or whether they were new to the detail, because all of them seemed so similar: frowning and serious and manly and entirely coplike.
Which… of course, was what he’d been waiting for his brain to point out to him. He glanced at his watch. He had one minute left. Then he turned to Mutt and Jeff. “Hey-you guys want to meet Robert DeNiro?”
***
Robert ‘Call me Bobby’ DeNiro turned out to be an incredibly nice man, and very gracious about being fanboyed over in a serious and manly and coplike way. “I’m gonna hit the bathroom,” Blaine told Jeff, slapping him on the shoulder, and Jeff just nodded and went back to describing his favorite scene in Goodfellas.
Mike was in the bathroom, the screen was off the high, small window, and Blaine’s stomach was doing cartwheels. “You ready?” Mike asked him once the door was closed. “We need to move fast.”
They moved fast. Mike boosted him up and halfway through, and on the other side was the alley and an open, running catering van and Santana, in jeans and a t-shirt and a baseball cap. “Okay, fugitive from justice-here we go.” He half-climbed and half-fell into the alley, a little scraped and banged up, but just fine.
Mike’s face popped up in the window. “See you guys up there. Be safe,” he said, and then he was gone. Blaine got in the van and got the door shut, sitting on the floor between two empty industrial racks. Quinn was driving, ponytailed and baseball-capped, and he noticed vaguely beyond the thunder of his heart that it was a really good look on her.
Santana pitched a backpack at him from the passenger seat. “Suit up.”
Santana had packed him a NASCAR t-shirt and a ‘World’s Best Dad’ baseball cap. “Oh, you suck so bad.”
Her laughter pealed out, high and happy and free, and he went over onto his side when Quinn took the corner from the alley into the street, and then they were off.
***
They swapped vehicles in the Civic Center garage, backing in and parking close to the waiting van so that when both side doors slid back they could make the transfer without parading around in front of the surveillance cameras. Tina was there when he slid the door open, waving him in and towards the back seat-which was where Kurt was, the wig gone, wearing just the jeans and a plain white t-shirt, his wet hair combed straight back and his face rosy from scrubbing. “Blaine-”
He didn’t remember falling onto the seat. He remembered Kurt’s cool, still-damp face in his hands, and two furious, devouring kisses before he started to cry. Kurt held him and shushed him and kissed him back, then gave up on the shushing and just held him. Blaine didn’t sob, but he was shaking, crying softly and he couldn’t stop, pain draining from him like a dam had broken somewhere that had been holding everything back.
“Is he okay?” he heard Santana ask.
“He’s fine,” Kurt said, his voice hoarse and broken-sounding, and then there were more kisses, soft and sorry kisses, dropping one by one on his mouth until he could breathe again.
When he pulled back (not letting go, he honestly didn’t know if he’d ever be able to let go again), Kurt looked at him, his eyes wide and blue and full of light. “Blaine. You look… terrible.” His eyes darted up to the hat. “And completely ridiculous.”
“I know.” He sniffed. “Will you marry me?”
Kurt took the packet of tissues that Quinn was waving at them from the seat ahead, pulled some out, and pressed them into Blaine’s palm before he handed the packet back. “Yes-but not while you’re wearing that hat. It would be weird.”
Blaine grinned. His stupid eyes were leaking again. “Okay.”
***
“Okay-okay-okay,” Kurt said, holding up his hands. “Wait, I need to… I need to go over that all again, because about half of it was in legalese, and the other half was in yelling.”
“Sorry,” Blaine said. “I’ve just… been waiting a long time to tell you all this.”
Kurt nudged Blaine’s knee with his own. “I know. Okay, so-” he ticked off a point on his fingers. “The first thing was, Ohio Juvenile Justice dropped the charges, right?”
“Yeah-they’re kind of scrambling with the whole corruption scandal thing, so Santana finally got them to listen to reason-”
“More like ‘fear’,” Santana said from the shotgun seat, where she was filing her nails. “For some reason, the threat of going public with proof of trumped-up charges against a gay teen didn’t seem to appeal to them right now.”
“Okay,” Kurt said. “Thank you.”
“De nada,” Santana said, blowing on her nails. “It was my pleasure.”
“It really was,” Quinn drawled. “I was there when she made the call-her eyes got big and she was breathing funny when she hung up.”
“Vengeance gets me hot,” Santana said, shrugging.
Kurt’s mouth twisted. “Okay. So, now we get to the part I actually knew about-Ohio has no emancipation law for minors.”
“Right,” Blaine said.
“Which is crazy,” Tina mumbled, downshifting. “And sucks.”
“And the other part I knew about,” Kurt said, nodding, “the only way around custody is through either marriage or enlistment.”
“Please don’t join the Army,” Blaine said.
“I’ve been keeping that particular option in reserve,” Kurt said dryly. “Which brings us to…”
“Washington.”
Kurt was looking at him. “Where same-sex marriage is legal.”
“For now,” Santana said darkly.
“But not…” Kurt bit his lip. “Not for minors, not unless you have a-what is it?”
“Special circumstances exemption.” Blaine said. He’d called it a ‘special dispensation’ in strategy sessions until Santana had thrown a pen at him.
“From a Judge, right?”
“A Superior Court Justice,” Santana said.
“And you found one? Who’ll do it?”
“I found one who’ll listen,” Santana replied, half-bitterly. “And I had a hell of a time finding even that. But yeah, I found someone who’ll at least hear us out.”
“The ‘special circumstances’ can take into consideration the mental and emotional state of the parent,” Tina added, looking at Kurt in the rear-view mirror.
“Oh.” He shook his head. Took a breath. “So, we’re going to Washington.” He looked at Blaine. His face was flushed. “And you… you were serious. You meant it.”
“I meant it.” Blaine swallowed. “I would have meant it even without all this… other stuff.”
Kurt looked down, his lips pressed together.
“It’s a lot to take in, I know. And… no pressure, Kurt, okay? If you don’t-really, we don’t have to, there are other options-”
“Blaine.” Kurt’s voice was soft. “Stop.”
Blaine stopped.
Kurt reached over and took his hand, then laced their fingers together. He turned his head away, looking out through the window, leaning back in the seat.
Blaine squeezed his hand, and watched Kurt, watching the miles pass by.
***
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