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rmTitle: More Honored Than the Other Animals
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Kurt/Blaine
Word Count: ~3,150
Summary: Waiting not quite as long as previously intended.
The series so far:
Boston: Following Home | These Thousand Names for Gratitude | All the Honesty of Politics | Circles as the Dark Winds Down | The Distance Between Ohio and Boston | All the Pretty Little Horses | Languages You Don't Even Know | Fauna and Flora | Where Water Doesn't Speak | Under Glass We Are Expected to Blossom | You Were Someone Else Before We Came Here
D.C.: Strategies and Tactics | The Many Shades of Sugar | When Sea Levels Rise | The History of Sand | Tales of Minor Gods | A Little Bit Ruined | The Numbers Held by Ghosts | Weights and Measures | Anamnesis | Hello, I Must Be Going | And I Have Heard You Speaking
“I think I'm going a little crazy,” Blaine says, picking at the label on his beer bottle.
“Who's surprised?” Kate asks. They're sitting hunched over a tiny table at the back of the bar and mostly ignoring the singer.
“Me, I guess,” Blaine says.
“Seriously?” Kate asks, making a face.
“You got that eyebrow thing from Kurt.”
She smirks at him. “Whatever works.”
“I'm not gonna think about that too hard.”
“For which you have my thanks.”
“I went to Shanghai once, when we were in college,” he says, ignoring her banter. “It... a lot of stuff happened.”
“Study abroad?” she asks, just to offer punctuation.
Blaine nods. “But I had no idea why any of it was happening. It made Kurt so angry.”
“Can I ask you something?” Kate says, leaning back abruptly and taking a long pull on her beer.
Blaine shrugs at her to go ahead.
“What's wrong with you?”
Blaine barks with laughter.
“No, no, no, I don't mean in a rhetorical way. I mean, you're very mellow for a guy who's an open wound, but what is up with you?”
“How long have you wanted to ask that?” he asks, still faintly entertained.
“Since we met,” she says, reaching up to tuck a slightly stray curl behind his ear.
*
Kurt asks Blaine not to come to his opening in Schenectady, and Blaine obeys because, despite everything, he understands; eventually, Kurt will have a proper opening on Broadway and no one wants to mistake this for that.
But Blaine does have flowers sent to the theater and smiles when Kurt calls him full of breathless thanks from the chaos after the show.
Their apartment is dark as he takes the call, and Blaine has been sitting up straight on their couch, eyes closed and listening since five minutes before curtain.
*
When they all get back to the hotel that night, Kurt clutching his bouquet, he regrets just a little having asked Blaine to stay away.
He's having the extra taken out of his pay to have a room to himself, and watching two of the dancers-who-sing kiss in the lobby as Jay, surrounded by half the cast, beckons to him with his chin since he has six-pack in each hand, is just hard.
But Kurt just shakes his head, unable to face the festivities. It's not that he needs to do this without Blaine; it's that he needs to do it alone.
*
The next afternoon, Jay grabs his arm in the drugstore by the hotel as Kurt stocks up on Vitamin Water for his room.
“Friendly advice?” he offers, and Kurt tips his head at him in acknowledgement. “Don't give anyone a reason to think you think you're better than them.”
“That's not --”
“Nope. Don't say it. Not true.”
“I'm --”
“You're not here by the skin of your teeth, Kurt. And I know this,” he adds, grabbing Kurt by the ring on his finger, “is complicated. But when we celebrate, we all to celebrate. One drink. Fifteen minutes. Your life will be easier; trust me.”
Kurt nods, wide-eyed, a little scared, and desperately relieved when the other man finally lets go of him.
“Jesus, why are they always out of the pink one?” Jay asks then, looking askance at the refrigerated case.
*
After six days in Schenectady, with Kurt falling asleep each night to Blaine's rumbling affection over the phone, the tour flies on to Raleigh, changing planes at Dulles.
“This is the worst thing,” Kurt says into his mobile. It's 7am and they are all exhausted and surrounded by businessmen, while Blaine is bleary and at home in their bed.
“I thought about buying the cheapest random ticket I could find, just to get through security to see you,” he says.
Kurt smiles and huffs out a little breath. “Stupid,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Are you doing all right?” he asks, not for the first time.
“I just wish the girl at the dry-cleaners would stop giving me the pity look.”
“Why is she giving you the pity look?”
“I think she thinks we broke up.”
*
Blaine flies down to Raleigh on Friday night, meeting Kurt outside the theater after the show. He stands by the stage door dopily clutching another bouqet of flowers and wearing a hopeful grin.
“You besotted fool,” Kurt laughs as he launches himself into Blaine's arms.
Blaine kisses him hard, and it's sloppy enough to feel like high school.
*
“No. Bed,” Kurt says, trying to be playful and pushing Blaine away from trying to maul him against the hotel room door. “I need a shower --”
“I can help with that,” Blaine volunteers.
“I'm sure you can, but I'm disgusting and I need to... I need to let it go a little,” he says, quieting.
Blaine nods. “Sorry, I --”
“You're excited,” Kurt says, pulling off his shirt. “I'm excited. But... new thing. I need you to help me figure it out, okay?”
Blaine nods, open-mouthed as Kurt strips, casual and exhausted.
*
Blaine propped up in bed reading is more or less what Kurt expects when he gets out of the shower. Blaine propped up in bed reading and naked, not so much.
“This is tragic,” Kurt says as he towels his hair.
“What is?” Blaine asks in a tone that makes Kurt realize that anything he says is going to be interpreted by his horny, lonely boyfriend as flirting right now.
“I haven't eaten dinner yet, and you're...,” he doesn't say it, just gestures instead.
“Tell me there's room service.”
Kurt shakes his head, and then watches as Blaine tries to figure out if he should laugh or apologize.
“Oh, don't,” he says, sitting beside him on the edge of the bed, still wrapped in a towel. “I missed you, and I can eat later.”
“Thank you,” Blaine breathes.
“Shhhhhhhhhh.”
*
Waking up with Blaine again is worth having skipped dinner for, but if he doesn't eat something not from a vending machine soon – Kurt can't believe what this tour has reduced him to already – he's not going to survive.
So he shoves at Blaine, who startles incoherently.
“Up,” Kurt says, steering them out of bed. “You're taking me to breakfast before I'm trapped in the theater all day.”
Blaine blinks. “God, I'm not going to see you all day,” Blaine says, because he's still too asleep to stop himself.
“Yes you will,” Kurt says good-naturedly. “You'll just be out there.” He points to the other side of the room, and Blaine wonders if this is the home Kurt always carries around with him, a sense that he always is, and has always been, on stage.
*
They find an hour and change to spend together between the matinee and evening performances, and Kurt is more precise than Blaine feels perhaps ready for.
“I hate that it feels like you're just visiting,” Kurt says as he picks at a salad and tries not to comment on the fairly revolting spectacle of Blaine dipping french fries into his vanilla milkshake.
“Well, I am just visiting.”
“Raleigh,” Kurt says. “You shouldn't be just visiting me.”
Blaine tilts his head.
“I shouldn't be doing this before a show,” Kurt says, his voice tight with frustration and fear.
“Doing what?” Blaine asks, feeling cold and flushed all at once.
Somehow it must show on his face.
“No, no, no, hey,” Kurt says, sliding out of his side of the booth to scoot in next to Blaine and gather him up in his arms. “Nothing like that. Nothing like that.”
Blaine feels himself take a breath and shudder back into existence. It's weird, and it's scary, and he's not sure what's just happened, to him or to them.
Kurt pulls back just enough to really look into his eyes. “I am not used to dating you. I am not used to not sharing a home with you. We've never done this by choice before, and I don't know how, and sometimes I hate it. I may hate this entire year. And when you're not here, I don't have to think about it and when you are.... it's hard.”
“I don't have to come visit, if that's not what you want,” Blaine says quietly out of some reflexive generosity.
“You idiot,” Kurt says, curling up small against him. “It's what I want. The problem is I want more.”
*
Even as part of a chorus, Blaine can tell when Kurt is performing pain.
*
After the show, Blaine wraps Kurt up in his arms when he comes out of the theater. He doesn't say anything, and when Jay, the man playing Kurt's role most nights – because yes, that is how Blaine thinks of it – catches his eye over the top of Kurt's bent head, Blaine reads it as a challenge.
They don't socialize with any of the cast that night, going back to the room instead, with Kurt pulling at Blaine's hands and arms until he finally figures out that what his boyfriend needs is anything but gentle.
*
“Someone should write a book about how to do this,” Kurt says after, lying on his back next to Blaine, their hands entertwined.
Blaine snorts. “We'll figure it out, you know.”
“Why are you so okay, and I'm so not?”
“Not normally how it works, is it?” he asks.
Kurt shakes his head against the pillows.
“I'm thinking of going to Ohio next weekend,” Blaine says, seemingly at random.
Kurt hums curiously.
“I... I feel like if I can do that I should be here, instead but....”
“You're allowed to have other things going on, Blaine. Although that one boggles just a bit,” he says, his voice going from desperate to amused.
“Don't worry,” he says. “I know.”
*
Kurt goes with Blaine to the airport before dawn on Monday morning and presses a hundred kisses to his face in front of the security line as he says two weeks, I love you and you are perfect, and then, as Blaine finally has to turn to go, don't be scared.
*
But Blaine is damn scared as he locks their front door, throws his duffle in the back of their car, and slides into the driver's seat to begin the trek to Ohio just a few days later.
It's stupid, he knows, to drive for such a short duration trip, but he feels like he needs the nowhere of the road to pull himself together, and it's true, because by the time he enters Pennsylvania his hands have at least stopped shaking.
He turns up the volume on his ipod and sings along, pressing against the top of his range more often than he should because of the way it reminds him of trying to keep up with Kurt back when they'd first met.
*
When he swings the car around into the gravel of his parents' driveway, Blaine's hands start trembling again, because he hasn't slept a night in their house since he was eighteen.
He's more grateful than he'd like to be welcomed back. And he can't help but wonder if that's because he's taken this trip necessarily alone, but even his father smiles when he hugs his mother, his bag still slung on his back.
“How's Kurt?” his father asks, and while Blaine can hear how it's awkward in his mouth, he can also hear how his father's proud that he has someone. It's both galling and lovely.
“I....” He stammers, because he had really inteded to have a shower and some sleep and some preparation before doing this, but an opening is an opening. “That's why I'm here, actually,” he says, straightening up.
“Is everything okay?” his mother asks.
“It's fine, isn't it?” his father says, and Blaine laughs, because he can't believe his father knows.
“I'm going to ask him to marry me,” Blaine says simply. “And I wanted you to know first.”
“Having lunch in Lima tomorrow?” his father says, a bit stern now, a bit terse.
“That's the plan.”
He knows Kurt would prefer that he waits. But right now, he almost doesn't care.
*
The weird thing is, despite it being late, once he says it, no one wants to go to bed.
His mother makes cocoa and spikes it with Baileys for all of them, even as it's not remotely far enough into the year. She pulls out photo albums, filled with pictures that make his father laugh at her, but not unkindly.
It occurs to Blaine, for the first time, not only that his parents were once in love, but that they still are, and it shakes him a little bit, because suddenly he understands just why they've never quite had room for him in their hearts.
*
In the morning, he makes coffee in their kitchen, the muscle memory of where everything is still present even after six years of exile.
His father clears his throat behind him, and Blaine doesn't tense, but sighs.
“Can we talk?” his father asks.
“Would you mind if I got dressed first?” Whatever confrontation is coming, Blaine would rather look neat and sharp and ready to leave than be in sweats and a rumpled t-shirt as his father treats him as a child for whom and how he loves.
But his father says, “You don't need to,” his voice too kind, and Blaine turns to find him sitting down at their kitchen table, hands clasped in front of him.
“Did you want some coffee?” Blaine asks to stall.
*
The spoon is too loud in his own mug as he stirs, but his father started this and so now he knows all he can do to maintain any hand in this is to wait out the silence.
“I don't know if you have a plan, with Kurt --”
“I --”
His father holds up his hand. “Let me finish,” he says. “I don't know if you've got a ring picked out or if that one he's already got suffices or how any of this works. But I want you to have this, for him, if you want it,” his father says, and shoves a small box across the table to him.
Blaine is so stunned he fumbles the spoon out of his coffee and watches as the milky brown of it splatters the wax-coated yellow-checked tablecloth. He stares at the colors of it, and thinks of Kurt and their current apartment and falls in love all over again.
“It was my grandmother's. She wore it all the time. It's not traditional, I know; I always thought I'd be giving you other things for some bride I imagined. But I think Kurt – I'm fond of him in a way I can't stand, Blaine – would appreciate this more.”
Blaine opens the box, to find a small brooch, a honeybee, made of gold and diamonds.
*
When he's composed enough to go, Blaine hugs his father goodbye at the door, and calls out to his mother at the kitchen that he'll be home in time for dinner.
He gets into his car, flips on the radio, and heads out to Hummel Tire & Lube. He wants to call someone to distract him on the way there. He is so goddamn elated, but he also knows this is one of those moments he has to have alone.
*
“Someone's giddy,” Burt says with intense amusement as Blaine shakes his hand more firmly than he ever has before, and Blaine has always had a good, solid handshake.
“I stayed with my parents last night.”
Burt raises both eyebrows. “And that wasn't a disaster?”
Blaine shakes his head.
“So what're you doing out here, instead of following my kid around on the road.”
“You know he'd kill me if I did that.”
“I do,” Burt says. “I also know you.”
Blaine laughs at that. “He's really good. I mean, I know you know but, I saw it last weekend, just his ensemble role. He's really good.”
“We can't wait,” Burt says, but it's just small talk. “So cut to the chase here, before I have to start doing it for you.”
Blaine rubs his sweaty hands nervously over thighs. “I know we've already talked about this. About how it's weird and Kurt wouldn't approve and all that, but I'm going to ask him to marry me. Soon. And I'd like your blessing.”
Burt narrows his eyes a bit. “Ask soon or marry soon?”
“Ask soon.”
“Okay. Well, that's better. I thought you two agreed it would wait until after you graduated.”
“We did, and then --”
“And then the tour happened.”
“Yeah,” Blaine admits.
“And now you're both going a little crazy.”
Blaine nods.
“He give you permission to do this sooner? He know this is coming?”
“Yeah. I want to wait, as long as I can, but I don't think --”
“No. No, that's right,” Burt says, thinking about it, and sighing. “He may have wanted you to wait, but now he'll wonder what's wrong with him if you do.”
“So....” Blaine says, hopeful and still wanting Burt to formally give them his blessing.
“What'd you get him?”
Blaine fumbles the box out of his pocket and hands it to Burt. “It was my great-grandmother's,” he says.
Burt whistles low when he opens it. “You done good. And you've always had my blessing, Blaine. Both of you,” he says, clapping him on the back.
“Oh, thank god.” Blaine nearly crumples in nervous relief as he lets out a long breath. “Can I sit down for a minute?”
Burt laughs and steers him towards an old battered couch. “Don't pass out on me, 'cause there's no way I'd be letting you live that down.”
*
When he gets back in his car Sunday afternoon to head back to DC, Blaine knows the hardest part is over, although it doesn't really feel that way.
He still has to tell Wes, and he doesn't know how to make that not weird, eventhough it's not weird. And he should tell Kate and Henry too....
Suddenly, Blaine feels like he needs everyone's permission, and imagines asking them all – Alex and Rachel, Santana and Mercedes, Tina and her deep reason, Brittany and all her secret knowledge; William Schuester and his ignorance, and Sue Sylvester and her years of constant certainty in Kurt's ferocity.
If Blaine thought any of them could keep a secret, he knows, suddenly, that he would ask them all.
He wonders if this is why Kurt had insisted that this wasn't even on the table until national legalization; there have always been so many claims on them.
So Blaine jabs at his iPhone up on the dash. He has a lot of calls to make, and really, there's no time like the present.
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Kurt/Blaine
Word Count: ~3,150
Summary: Waiting not quite as long as previously intended.
The series so far:
Boston: Following Home | These Thousand Names for Gratitude | All the Honesty of Politics | Circles as the Dark Winds Down | The Distance Between Ohio and Boston | All the Pretty Little Horses | Languages You Don't Even Know | Fauna and Flora | Where Water Doesn't Speak | Under Glass We Are Expected to Blossom | You Were Someone Else Before We Came Here
D.C.: Strategies and Tactics | The Many Shades of Sugar | When Sea Levels Rise | The History of Sand | Tales of Minor Gods | A Little Bit Ruined | The Numbers Held by Ghosts | Weights and Measures | Anamnesis | Hello, I Must Be Going | And I Have Heard You Speaking
“I think I'm going a little crazy,” Blaine says, picking at the label on his beer bottle.
“Who's surprised?” Kate asks. They're sitting hunched over a tiny table at the back of the bar and mostly ignoring the singer.
“Me, I guess,” Blaine says.
“Seriously?” Kate asks, making a face.
“You got that eyebrow thing from Kurt.”
She smirks at him. “Whatever works.”
“I'm not gonna think about that too hard.”
“For which you have my thanks.”
“I went to Shanghai once, when we were in college,” he says, ignoring her banter. “It... a lot of stuff happened.”
“Study abroad?” she asks, just to offer punctuation.
Blaine nods. “But I had no idea why any of it was happening. It made Kurt so angry.”
“Can I ask you something?” Kate says, leaning back abruptly and taking a long pull on her beer.
Blaine shrugs at her to go ahead.
“What's wrong with you?”
Blaine barks with laughter.
“No, no, no, I don't mean in a rhetorical way. I mean, you're very mellow for a guy who's an open wound, but what is up with you?”
“How long have you wanted to ask that?” he asks, still faintly entertained.
“Since we met,” she says, reaching up to tuck a slightly stray curl behind his ear.
*
Kurt asks Blaine not to come to his opening in Schenectady, and Blaine obeys because, despite everything, he understands; eventually, Kurt will have a proper opening on Broadway and no one wants to mistake this for that.
But Blaine does have flowers sent to the theater and smiles when Kurt calls him full of breathless thanks from the chaos after the show.
Their apartment is dark as he takes the call, and Blaine has been sitting up straight on their couch, eyes closed and listening since five minutes before curtain.
*
When they all get back to the hotel that night, Kurt clutching his bouquet, he regrets just a little having asked Blaine to stay away.
He's having the extra taken out of his pay to have a room to himself, and watching two of the dancers-who-sing kiss in the lobby as Jay, surrounded by half the cast, beckons to him with his chin since he has six-pack in each hand, is just hard.
But Kurt just shakes his head, unable to face the festivities. It's not that he needs to do this without Blaine; it's that he needs to do it alone.
*
The next afternoon, Jay grabs his arm in the drugstore by the hotel as Kurt stocks up on Vitamin Water for his room.
“Friendly advice?” he offers, and Kurt tips his head at him in acknowledgement. “Don't give anyone a reason to think you think you're better than them.”
“That's not --”
“Nope. Don't say it. Not true.”
“I'm --”
“You're not here by the skin of your teeth, Kurt. And I know this,” he adds, grabbing Kurt by the ring on his finger, “is complicated. But when we celebrate, we all to celebrate. One drink. Fifteen minutes. Your life will be easier; trust me.”
Kurt nods, wide-eyed, a little scared, and desperately relieved when the other man finally lets go of him.
“Jesus, why are they always out of the pink one?” Jay asks then, looking askance at the refrigerated case.
*
After six days in Schenectady, with Kurt falling asleep each night to Blaine's rumbling affection over the phone, the tour flies on to Raleigh, changing planes at Dulles.
“This is the worst thing,” Kurt says into his mobile. It's 7am and they are all exhausted and surrounded by businessmen, while Blaine is bleary and at home in their bed.
“I thought about buying the cheapest random ticket I could find, just to get through security to see you,” he says.
Kurt smiles and huffs out a little breath. “Stupid,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Are you doing all right?” he asks, not for the first time.
“I just wish the girl at the dry-cleaners would stop giving me the pity look.”
“Why is she giving you the pity look?”
“I think she thinks we broke up.”
*
Blaine flies down to Raleigh on Friday night, meeting Kurt outside the theater after the show. He stands by the stage door dopily clutching another bouqet of flowers and wearing a hopeful grin.
“You besotted fool,” Kurt laughs as he launches himself into Blaine's arms.
Blaine kisses him hard, and it's sloppy enough to feel like high school.
*
“No. Bed,” Kurt says, trying to be playful and pushing Blaine away from trying to maul him against the hotel room door. “I need a shower --”
“I can help with that,” Blaine volunteers.
“I'm sure you can, but I'm disgusting and I need to... I need to let it go a little,” he says, quieting.
Blaine nods. “Sorry, I --”
“You're excited,” Kurt says, pulling off his shirt. “I'm excited. But... new thing. I need you to help me figure it out, okay?”
Blaine nods, open-mouthed as Kurt strips, casual and exhausted.
*
Blaine propped up in bed reading is more or less what Kurt expects when he gets out of the shower. Blaine propped up in bed reading and naked, not so much.
“This is tragic,” Kurt says as he towels his hair.
“What is?” Blaine asks in a tone that makes Kurt realize that anything he says is going to be interpreted by his horny, lonely boyfriend as flirting right now.
“I haven't eaten dinner yet, and you're...,” he doesn't say it, just gestures instead.
“Tell me there's room service.”
Kurt shakes his head, and then watches as Blaine tries to figure out if he should laugh or apologize.
“Oh, don't,” he says, sitting beside him on the edge of the bed, still wrapped in a towel. “I missed you, and I can eat later.”
“Thank you,” Blaine breathes.
“Shhhhhhhhhh.”
*
Waking up with Blaine again is worth having skipped dinner for, but if he doesn't eat something not from a vending machine soon – Kurt can't believe what this tour has reduced him to already – he's not going to survive.
So he shoves at Blaine, who startles incoherently.
“Up,” Kurt says, steering them out of bed. “You're taking me to breakfast before I'm trapped in the theater all day.”
Blaine blinks. “God, I'm not going to see you all day,” Blaine says, because he's still too asleep to stop himself.
“Yes you will,” Kurt says good-naturedly. “You'll just be out there.” He points to the other side of the room, and Blaine wonders if this is the home Kurt always carries around with him, a sense that he always is, and has always been, on stage.
*
They find an hour and change to spend together between the matinee and evening performances, and Kurt is more precise than Blaine feels perhaps ready for.
“I hate that it feels like you're just visiting,” Kurt says as he picks at a salad and tries not to comment on the fairly revolting spectacle of Blaine dipping french fries into his vanilla milkshake.
“Well, I am just visiting.”
“Raleigh,” Kurt says. “You shouldn't be just visiting me.”
Blaine tilts his head.
“I shouldn't be doing this before a show,” Kurt says, his voice tight with frustration and fear.
“Doing what?” Blaine asks, feeling cold and flushed all at once.
Somehow it must show on his face.
“No, no, no, hey,” Kurt says, sliding out of his side of the booth to scoot in next to Blaine and gather him up in his arms. “Nothing like that. Nothing like that.”
Blaine feels himself take a breath and shudder back into existence. It's weird, and it's scary, and he's not sure what's just happened, to him or to them.
Kurt pulls back just enough to really look into his eyes. “I am not used to dating you. I am not used to not sharing a home with you. We've never done this by choice before, and I don't know how, and sometimes I hate it. I may hate this entire year. And when you're not here, I don't have to think about it and when you are.... it's hard.”
“I don't have to come visit, if that's not what you want,” Blaine says quietly out of some reflexive generosity.
“You idiot,” Kurt says, curling up small against him. “It's what I want. The problem is I want more.”
*
Even as part of a chorus, Blaine can tell when Kurt is performing pain.
*
After the show, Blaine wraps Kurt up in his arms when he comes out of the theater. He doesn't say anything, and when Jay, the man playing Kurt's role most nights – because yes, that is how Blaine thinks of it – catches his eye over the top of Kurt's bent head, Blaine reads it as a challenge.
They don't socialize with any of the cast that night, going back to the room instead, with Kurt pulling at Blaine's hands and arms until he finally figures out that what his boyfriend needs is anything but gentle.
*
“Someone should write a book about how to do this,” Kurt says after, lying on his back next to Blaine, their hands entertwined.
Blaine snorts. “We'll figure it out, you know.”
“Why are you so okay, and I'm so not?”
“Not normally how it works, is it?” he asks.
Kurt shakes his head against the pillows.
“I'm thinking of going to Ohio next weekend,” Blaine says, seemingly at random.
Kurt hums curiously.
“I... I feel like if I can do that I should be here, instead but....”
“You're allowed to have other things going on, Blaine. Although that one boggles just a bit,” he says, his voice going from desperate to amused.
“Don't worry,” he says. “I know.”
*
Kurt goes with Blaine to the airport before dawn on Monday morning and presses a hundred kisses to his face in front of the security line as he says two weeks, I love you and you are perfect, and then, as Blaine finally has to turn to go, don't be scared.
*
But Blaine is damn scared as he locks their front door, throws his duffle in the back of their car, and slides into the driver's seat to begin the trek to Ohio just a few days later.
It's stupid, he knows, to drive for such a short duration trip, but he feels like he needs the nowhere of the road to pull himself together, and it's true, because by the time he enters Pennsylvania his hands have at least stopped shaking.
He turns up the volume on his ipod and sings along, pressing against the top of his range more often than he should because of the way it reminds him of trying to keep up with Kurt back when they'd first met.
*
When he swings the car around into the gravel of his parents' driveway, Blaine's hands start trembling again, because he hasn't slept a night in their house since he was eighteen.
He's more grateful than he'd like to be welcomed back. And he can't help but wonder if that's because he's taken this trip necessarily alone, but even his father smiles when he hugs his mother, his bag still slung on his back.
“How's Kurt?” his father asks, and while Blaine can hear how it's awkward in his mouth, he can also hear how his father's proud that he has someone. It's both galling and lovely.
“I....” He stammers, because he had really inteded to have a shower and some sleep and some preparation before doing this, but an opening is an opening. “That's why I'm here, actually,” he says, straightening up.
“Is everything okay?” his mother asks.
“It's fine, isn't it?” his father says, and Blaine laughs, because he can't believe his father knows.
“I'm going to ask him to marry me,” Blaine says simply. “And I wanted you to know first.”
“Having lunch in Lima tomorrow?” his father says, a bit stern now, a bit terse.
“That's the plan.”
He knows Kurt would prefer that he waits. But right now, he almost doesn't care.
*
The weird thing is, despite it being late, once he says it, no one wants to go to bed.
His mother makes cocoa and spikes it with Baileys for all of them, even as it's not remotely far enough into the year. She pulls out photo albums, filled with pictures that make his father laugh at her, but not unkindly.
It occurs to Blaine, for the first time, not only that his parents were once in love, but that they still are, and it shakes him a little bit, because suddenly he understands just why they've never quite had room for him in their hearts.
*
In the morning, he makes coffee in their kitchen, the muscle memory of where everything is still present even after six years of exile.
His father clears his throat behind him, and Blaine doesn't tense, but sighs.
“Can we talk?” his father asks.
“Would you mind if I got dressed first?” Whatever confrontation is coming, Blaine would rather look neat and sharp and ready to leave than be in sweats and a rumpled t-shirt as his father treats him as a child for whom and how he loves.
But his father says, “You don't need to,” his voice too kind, and Blaine turns to find him sitting down at their kitchen table, hands clasped in front of him.
“Did you want some coffee?” Blaine asks to stall.
*
The spoon is too loud in his own mug as he stirs, but his father started this and so now he knows all he can do to maintain any hand in this is to wait out the silence.
“I don't know if you have a plan, with Kurt --”
“I --”
His father holds up his hand. “Let me finish,” he says. “I don't know if you've got a ring picked out or if that one he's already got suffices or how any of this works. But I want you to have this, for him, if you want it,” his father says, and shoves a small box across the table to him.
Blaine is so stunned he fumbles the spoon out of his coffee and watches as the milky brown of it splatters the wax-coated yellow-checked tablecloth. He stares at the colors of it, and thinks of Kurt and their current apartment and falls in love all over again.
“It was my grandmother's. She wore it all the time. It's not traditional, I know; I always thought I'd be giving you other things for some bride I imagined. But I think Kurt – I'm fond of him in a way I can't stand, Blaine – would appreciate this more.”
Blaine opens the box, to find a small brooch, a honeybee, made of gold and diamonds.
*
When he's composed enough to go, Blaine hugs his father goodbye at the door, and calls out to his mother at the kitchen that he'll be home in time for dinner.
He gets into his car, flips on the radio, and heads out to Hummel Tire & Lube. He wants to call someone to distract him on the way there. He is so goddamn elated, but he also knows this is one of those moments he has to have alone.
*
“Someone's giddy,” Burt says with intense amusement as Blaine shakes his hand more firmly than he ever has before, and Blaine has always had a good, solid handshake.
“I stayed with my parents last night.”
Burt raises both eyebrows. “And that wasn't a disaster?”
Blaine shakes his head.
“So what're you doing out here, instead of following my kid around on the road.”
“You know he'd kill me if I did that.”
“I do,” Burt says. “I also know you.”
Blaine laughs at that. “He's really good. I mean, I know you know but, I saw it last weekend, just his ensemble role. He's really good.”
“We can't wait,” Burt says, but it's just small talk. “So cut to the chase here, before I have to start doing it for you.”
Blaine rubs his sweaty hands nervously over thighs. “I know we've already talked about this. About how it's weird and Kurt wouldn't approve and all that, but I'm going to ask him to marry me. Soon. And I'd like your blessing.”
Burt narrows his eyes a bit. “Ask soon or marry soon?”
“Ask soon.”
“Okay. Well, that's better. I thought you two agreed it would wait until after you graduated.”
“We did, and then --”
“And then the tour happened.”
“Yeah,” Blaine admits.
“And now you're both going a little crazy.”
Blaine nods.
“He give you permission to do this sooner? He know this is coming?”
“Yeah. I want to wait, as long as I can, but I don't think --”
“No. No, that's right,” Burt says, thinking about it, and sighing. “He may have wanted you to wait, but now he'll wonder what's wrong with him if you do.”
“So....” Blaine says, hopeful and still wanting Burt to formally give them his blessing.
“What'd you get him?”
Blaine fumbles the box out of his pocket and hands it to Burt. “It was my great-grandmother's,” he says.
Burt whistles low when he opens it. “You done good. And you've always had my blessing, Blaine. Both of you,” he says, clapping him on the back.
“Oh, thank god.” Blaine nearly crumples in nervous relief as he lets out a long breath. “Can I sit down for a minute?”
Burt laughs and steers him towards an old battered couch. “Don't pass out on me, 'cause there's no way I'd be letting you live that down.”
*
When he gets back in his car Sunday afternoon to head back to DC, Blaine knows the hardest part is over, although it doesn't really feel that way.
He still has to tell Wes, and he doesn't know how to make that not weird, eventhough it's not weird. And he should tell Kate and Henry too....
Suddenly, Blaine feels like he needs everyone's permission, and imagines asking them all – Alex and Rachel, Santana and Mercedes, Tina and her deep reason, Brittany and all her secret knowledge; William Schuester and his ignorance, and Sue Sylvester and her years of constant certainty in Kurt's ferocity.
If Blaine thought any of them could keep a secret, he knows, suddenly, that he would ask them all.
He wonders if this is why Kurt had insisted that this wasn't even on the table until national legalization; there have always been so many claims on them.
So Blaine jabs at his iPhone up on the dash. He has a lot of calls to make, and really, there's no time like the present.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-02-03 06:09 am (UTC)Burt and Blaine, well that was wonderful. Especially Burt teasing him.
Well done.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-03 02:59 pm (UTC)And yes, Blaine's dad has always gotten Kurt. Kurt's, weirdly, never been the problem as an individual. In some ways he likes Kurt more because Kurt will stand up to people and Blaine really won't. The issue has always been Kurt as he proves Blaine's homosexuality.
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Date: 2012-02-03 06:27 am (UTC)Guy sure doesn't waste any time. ;)
“I'm going to ask him to marry me,” Blaine says simply. “And I wanted you to know first.”
Yay! It's about time. We all know Kurt and Blaine will have such a fierce wedding. Everything will match perfectly/stylishly and Kurt will be wearing some sort of amazing designer. Alexander McQueen?
Suddenly, Blaine feels like he needs everyone's permission, and imagines asking them all – Alex and Rachel, Santana and Mercedes, Tina and her deep reason, Brittany and all her secret knowledge; William Schuester and his ignorance, and Sue Sylvester and her years of constant certainty in Kurt's ferocity.
Resist, Blaine. Half of these people are blabber mouths, which will ruin your element of surprise.
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Date: 2012-02-03 03:02 pm (UTC)The wedding will be exceptionally well-designed, but more mellow than perhaps people tend to associate with Kurt.
On the plus side, Blaine doesn't have all of those people's phone numbers! Although he really needs to stay away from Rachel and Santana on this one.
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Date: 2012-02-03 09:53 am (UTC)This:
"It occurs to Blaine, for the first time, not only that his parents were once in love, but that they still are, and it shakes him a little bit, because suddenly he understands just why they've never quite had room for him in their hearts."
Broke my heart. But the rear of this part just made me so giddy, especially the very end.
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Date: 2012-02-03 03:02 pm (UTC)That thought about his parents, while a hard one for Blaine, is actually good for him. Something that actually makes sense and isn't really about him? Sort of cathartic.
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Date: 2012-02-03 10:55 am (UTC)(The bee! I love the meta upthread. Also is there a bee in the myth of Persephone? I had a feeling there was, but now I can't find anything about it so I probably made that up.)
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Date: 2012-02-03 03:03 pm (UTC)No bee in Persephone that I remember, but I may just not be remembering.
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Date: 2012-02-03 01:49 pm (UTC)I wish I had more to offer, but my brain has been scrambled this week; your fic always makes me want to sit down and formulate a proper response, because it's so wonderfully written. I can't wait to see what happens next!
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Date: 2012-02-03 03:04 pm (UTC)Also, OMG, I had no idea, NONE AT ALL that Hummel means "bumblebee." You win my Internets today for that trivia.
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Date: 2012-02-03 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-03 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-03 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-03 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-03 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-04 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-04 12:34 pm (UTC)Now, I am so giddy to read the proposal.
By the way, it was lovely to chat with you at brunch before Darren's final performance. Trust Rae to introduce me to someone whose LJ I've been reading for a while!
-- Jenna
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Date: 2012-02-11 01:58 am (UTC)And yes, Rae knows everyone and always proves that it's a very small world after all.
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Date: 2012-02-05 09:17 pm (UTC)Ugh ugh ugh...reinforcing my belief that some loves are not meant to include more than two. I'm glad there's Blaine but no one should have to realize that about their parents.
“No. No, that's right,” Burt says, thinking about it, and sighing. “He may have wanted you to wait, but now he'll wonder what's wrong with him if you do.”
And this would be the counter-example, no matter what your headcanon for Kurt's mother is.
I'm kind of surprised Blaine's going for it. I'm not surprised that he wants to, but I figured it would be outweighed by Kurt's insistence on keeping it for after graduation. I'm surprised and pleased, 97% of fic writers would've had it happening in the first year they were on their own and this has been a long, delicious wait.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-11 02:00 am (UTC)Well, Blaine wants to, and he's set it in motion, but he's terrified. Right now the biggest obstacle isn't Kurt though, but himself.
(no subject)
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From:no subject
Date: 2012-02-10 09:57 pm (UTC)At first, I couldn't decide whether I loved or hated what you've done with Kurt and Blaine. It's... It's incredibly other-worldly. Your writing has this ethereal quality but it's so damn visceral that you break my heart with one sentence and then make it grow three sizes with the next. It makes me look at my own writing with some disdain, I won't lie.
At times I've found it so difficult to read this and believe that they're still together out of love, rather than habit. But I think that's much, much more the fault of the canon with which we have to work than yours. This whole verse is so... Honestly, I can barely put it into words. It's unsettled me. It's been on my mind almost constantly for the past couple of days that I've been reading and that's another thing I can't decide whether I love or hate. I feel shaken by it, changed somehow. It's made me think.
Coming to the end of this part, I know that I will definitely keep reading because the urge to hate this has fallen away, leaving only a desperate affection and an almost pathetic need for more. Damn you.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-11 02:03 am (UTC)It's a hard story, because they don't have an easy path. Meeting at the age they do is hard, then making the choice is fight it out and be together is really hard and their ambitions are complicating. They don't have the room to learn about themselves as separate people as they perhaps need to, and it's hard to get advice from others when your situation is so weird, but they are so in it.
Anyway, I'm hoping to update again before I start traveling next week (I actually will be updating on the road, but it's going to be somewhat complex for the next couple of months).
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Date: 2012-02-11 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-11 02:31 am (UTC)Baby steps forward, baby steps back, sometimes big leaps forward, no matter how uncomfortable.
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Date: 2012-02-21 02:30 pm (UTC)Blaine's disappearing from the story was sort of intentional, and he's now fumbling back into existence over the next few parts, so we'll be spending quite a bit of time with him now.
I'm hoping to have the next part done RSN, but probably won't post before Thursday, since fandom is legitimately preoccupied (I know I am!) with tonight's episode.
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Date: 2012-02-21 03:58 am (UTC)So I will say the obvious: I'm fascinated. By watching them negotiate each other, watching Kurt negotiate living in the sort of closed community of his touring company; how to prioritize his relationship without compromising his day to day life. By Blaine's nervous/pleased ridiculousness with his family and Kurt's.
But I also think these stories, these boys, scare me. And I'm not sure if it's a old-world-fairy-tale scary, or a tantalizing-thing-you-can-never-posses scary. Maybe both.
And maybe related, or maybe not, I also treasure your stories because you're probably the only writer in this fandom (well, almost any fandom, but I think it matters in this one), who's actually, sucessfully, writing about my world. Reading about Rachel taking a job for her equity card, I felt not unlike the first time I went to a service at St. Clements and heard the Episcopal mass of my childhood while looking at the stage lights hanging over the altar. It made me want to cry a little.
thanks.
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Date: 2012-02-21 02:28 pm (UTC)I've had to fudge various industry things to make moments I've wanted to have work, but I've tried to do it unobtrusively, so I'm always relieved when it works for anyone who would see those cheats.
I'm almost done with the next piece, but probably won't post until Thursday-ish, just because there's so much going on in the fandom right now.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2012-02-21 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-22 11:01 am (UTC)Stunning, as always - and oh my heart the brooch was perfect