For no reason more sensible than spending the drive in each other's company, Kurt had ridden to the latest after-school meeting of McKinley's PFLAG in Blaine's car. Kurt's recent return to the campus of his hometown had put a strain on the link between them - a mild tug, barely perceptible if one or the other was feeling confident, but difficult to ignore on days like today: an unexpected, out-of-sync meeting of the organization's members to discuss a summer fundraiser.
They'd argued, in the tender and accommodating way arguments happened between them, just before leaving Kurt's house. Now, the lack of a resolution hung between them, an unwelcome third party. Kurt was vigilant in his undertaking of Dave Karofsky as a project in redemption, and Blaine privately, perhaps even obliviously, resented that he'd be left on his own so that his boyfriend could spend time 'bettering' someone they both should've hated.
One way or another, it encroached on an afternoon they would otherwise have spent together, and though neither could determine where the friction began, it was clear when they hung together outside the car for a tight-lipped goodbye.
"It won't take long," Kurt promised, passive and coaxing at first, trying to smooth the gravel between them. But when Blaine was poised to relent, powerless to that particular tone, Kurt decided better of being apologetic, and declared righteously, "This is important, Blaine. You should be proud that we're making a difference, here. You should be supportive of what I'm trying to do."
A ghost was hiding behind that 'we,' and when it came time for Blaine to challenge it out loud, his resolve dried up and he hid from the implications. His eyes found the ground, a gesture of submission, head nodding in pretended amicability. Kurt was aware he'd aimed too well, but still bristled, cat-like, in defense. He wasn't about to admit he was wrong. Instead he left a kiss on the corner of Blaine's mouth, which Blaine answered with a smile, and crossed the parking lot to the school's front entrance.
Blaine leaned at the hip against his car's trunk as he disappeared, watching long after there was nothing to watch, and debated the ways he ought to spend the next 90 minutes. If he wasn't careful, 'in miserable anxiety' would be the answer.
David Karofsky was becoming a rot on his relationship.
He and Kurt would spend days at a time enamored with each other, limbs locked in a tangle down Kurt's couch, watching questionable sitcoms on mute and creating their own voice-overs, or trading trivialities on the phone. Moments of privacy from family and friends were coveted with such eagerness that their first kisses, whenever they were alone, began painfully, teeth colliding and skin pinching against more skin, until they found a rhythm and relaxed. It was all either of them ever wanted.
Then the first and third Thursday of each month would come, Kurt would attend his PFLAG meetings, and an insecurity would begin in Blaine that he could neither articulate or ignore. He tried to reason with himself, assuming it was simple jealousy, because it felt so very similar, but even at his most honest he knew that the word fell flat.
In the midst of frustrating self-analysis and the uncomfortable feeling David's name gave him every time it came up, Kurt announced that the group would be holding their first fundraiser within the next 6 weeks, and would meet today, a Sunday, to organize. A Sunday. His Sunday. Their Sunday.
A Friday would've been fine - a Friday could be a movie with the boys from Dalton, or dinner in town with Mercedes and Sam. A Friday could be catching a game with Burt. Even a Saturday - Saturdays might be family time for the Hummel/Hudson clan, or they might be spent with each other. Blaine could've handled losing a Saturday.
But not their Sunday. They'd established a tradition of Sundays. Wile the rest of the world ran their last minute errands before another week began, Kurt and Blaine met early in the day, drank coffee, walked circles around the rural town, teased each other's tastes in clothing stores or read poetry aloud with ludicrous accents at Barnes & Noble. Sundays belonged to them.
"It's one Sunday," Kurt had told him at first, patiently. Then, later, when Blaine couldn't shake the dismay, it was, "Your problem isn't that I'm going, is it? It's who else will be there." And this wasn't patient at all, but sharp and sour, a tone from Kurt he'd heard used on others a thousand times, but that rarely visited him.
He'd answered simply but with characteristic honesty, "It's not unreasonable for me to dislike him."
"You have to be kidding me," Kurt had told him. He said it with more disappointment than upset, but it hurt worse for its weakness. Blaine wanted to explain it to him, that Kurt was like this, sometimes - he fell in love immediately, for instance, where Blaine had taken months. It was part of the fundamental difference between them.
Kurt could change on a whim, and hold dearly to convictions that were brand new, while Blaine was still struggling to catch up and be certain each fresh development worked with his mind's existing landscape. He wasn't ready to believe that Dave was a changed kid, even if Kurt had already decided it was so. He might've been calmer, and he might've been inspired by extenuating circumstances not to be violent any longer, but it wasn't enough to convince him that the current wasn't still running just beneath the surface. As long as Kurt spent time around him, Blaine worried - worried that an off-handed comment on a bad day might make him snap, and how.
A car door slamming shut from two rows over pulled him from his mindless lack of action. He turned to the sight of a slump-shouldered David Karofsky, talking lowly with his father. A cold, cold feeling crept through Blaine.
His father. A bully's father. The man who'd raised another man and watched him turn into a delinquent. Kurt had mentioned Paul Karofsky to him once or twice - the conversations in Figgins's office, the explanations he gave, the agreeable remorse. Even from here, a few yards away, Blaine could see the expressions that moved across Mr. Karofsky's face as he talked to his son - each of them strained, each of them caring. Whether he felt shame at his son's actions, pride at their momentary lapse or fear for his future, he cared. It was all Blaine could see. His own dad's face occurred to him like a week-old dream, and he ached.
Whether he was motivated to approach as Dave made his way across the parking lot by that particular ache, or by the frustration of an argument with Kurt, Blaine didn't give himself a chance to determine. Rather than strap himself into the driver's seat and head into town to find a way to entertain himself for 90 minutes, he found his feet disobedient and brazen, treading over painted white lines on their way to Paul Karofsky.
"You look familiar," he lied when he approached the man, who'd just opened his door to leave.
Paul gestured with his chin at Dave, who slipped through McKinley's entrance and was gone. "Dave's father, Paul Karofsky." He extended his hand with the fluidity of someone who'd done so a thousand times before; his face was a stone, his body still, only the fingers moved.
Blaine introduced himself with a first name, nothing more, then included a pointed, "Ah," as pretended as not recognizing Paul for who he was. Paul was perceptive to the sound, or to the quick twitch at Blaine's brow that suggested disdain.
"Not a friend of yours, then." "Not a friend of anybody I know." He chastised himself privately for the disrespect, but didn't amend it. And he refused to call David a friend of Kurt's.
"I'm sorry to hear that," Paul returned, distracted, half-aware. He eyed the door again, watching the spot his son had just flooded, as if he'd still be there to study and observe.
Blaine's rebellious alter ego, the unhealthy little twinge inside him that refused to be silenced by propriety, asked, "Do you buy this? This change in him, 'the new Dave?'"
Paul's shift when he answered wasn't a physical one, but something in his demeanor hit a roadblock and turned back. "I have to." He started a second sentence that hung thick on his mouth. At the last second, he changed his mind, and repeated with a painful simplicity, "I have to. He's my son."
Blaine tasted the copper sting of envy and, without warning, without meaning to, he hated David Karofksy freshly. "Fair enough."
"You don't, then? Don't, uh - 'buy it?'"
"I'd like to, I just don't think it happens that quickly. Apparently I'm the only one." Sarcasm burned from Blaine, and he twisted his lip into a derisive sneer that suited his eager features not at all.
"You seem to have more than a bit of hostility towards me," Paul announced, aware of Blaine's anger as he'd be of a sudden downpour, but unmoved.
Blaine's tongue was a hard thing to hold, these days - was Kurt unraveling him, unpinning the little ribbons that kept him mannered and in control? His confidence had become verbal, it had lost its sense of play. "I just don't like your son."
Paul looked toward the road nearby, watching cars as they passed, and slid his hands into his pockets. It was a tick, by now - he might as well have kept his courage in those pockets, for as often as his fingers found them when he felt tense. "It seems to be a popular opinion."
The vulnerability in the gesture made Blaine regret his lapse in tact. Here was a man whose son caused the people around him nothing but upset, and he seemed, if anything, resigned to it, ruefully accepting. With a teenager's naivety, Blaine tried to imagine Paul's position. Did he still love Dave? Was he concerned about him, as he seemed to be, or did he punish him behind closed doors? Did he blame himself? He couldn't help comparing Paul with his own father, remote and stony, and the similarities between them were slight at best.
In deciding that Paul's defeated acceptance was a kind of fatherly loyalty, Blaine became bitterly jealous. He'd been a good kid, and his father slipped further and further from him every year. What had David done right that he'd done so wrong? He muttered an awkward apology, watched the cars with Paul, and kept quiet for a couple of heartbeats.
"So am I," Paul said. "He was a good boy, you know. I still have faith in that side of him."
"I'll believe it if it lasts, I guess," was the best Blaine could muster. He shouldn't have come over here. It hurt, and felt far away from him - one of those conversations adults were meant to have in a low voice two rooms away when they thought you were sleeping.
Paul changed, then, a sad, solitary man no more, looking Blaine's veiled dismissal dead in the eye. He was confident, certain - Blaine could've sworn he looked taller.
"Blaine? That was your name, right? Blaine, I'd like to take a walk, if you don't mind. I don't want there to be any misconception, here - what David did is inexcusable. I don't understand it, I don't condone it. But there -is- more to him. Would you walk with me for a while, hear me out?"
"I don't mean to be difficult, but I'm not the best candidate for long, educational talks about the secret wonders of Dave Karofsky."
"A few minutes of your time. I've heard just about everyone's side of the story, so far, and I'd like the opportunity to reciprocate. And if I'm not entirely off the mark, here, you've got more than old anger staked in your feelings about him?" His voice broke upward, leading, encouraging, feeling around between the lines of Blaine's refusal to consider, looking for the soft spot where he guessed it became more personal.
Blaine was powerless to the intrusion. He agreed with a half-hearted lift of his shoulder, a gesture his friends recognized as playful and all-welcoming, but was paler and less significant, here. Paul lead with his hands still pocketed, chest out and his steps measured; he directed Blaine's attention like an employer as they moved away from the parking lot, the older man explaining, the younger man raptly attentive.