So somehow, after a long hiatus, I find myself writing fanfiction again. Here's hoping I've still got it and all the fics I started years ago that I'm now trying to finish are still relevant.
I don't own Glee.
Kurt sits on the bench outside the small office, kicking his feet, trying to ignore the stupid ugly sneakers that are too big for him even as he looks down at them.
They think he can't hear them through the cracked door, but he's gotten really good at listening in on whispered conversations. They're about him far too often. He can only make out snippets, though, so he tries harder, listens closer.
"...behavior problems..." he hears before the murmurs lower again, and his eyes sting. He's so sick of hearing those words, but he's even more sick of them being said behind his back, like they were afraid to say them in front of him or even *to* him. Especially to him.
He hates to feel grateful for the too-big, too-old gray hoodie he has wrapped around himself, but it's cold in the office, and it actually helps to wrap it more tightly around himself. It's always cold in these offices. Always.
Then the murmuring stops, and Kurt quickly looks away from the door as it opens, then glances back at the sound of his name.
"Kurt," the woman says-she probably told him her name at some point, but all the social workers have kind of blended together in his mind by this point and now they all look pretty much the same to him. "Kurt, say hello, okay?"
She says it like she expects him to say something else, like she's worried he's going to curse or refuse to say anything or something, but he's learned better than that by now.
"Hello," he says dully, looking up at the large gruff-looking man above him. He looks kind of nervous but he has kind eyes under his ratty baseball cap.
But that doesn't mean anything, Kurt reminds himself. Another thing he's learned-it's not nearly as hard to fake kindness as most people think.
The man-Burt Hummel, as his social worker introduces him-tries hard on the drive to the house. He asks a lot of questions, but they're not too probing and he doesn't get mad when Kurt gives him monosyllabic answers, so it's not too bad.
They pull up in front of a house-kind of small, but with a large yard, painted in a somehow comforting shade of yellow, and with an actual picket fence, the kind you read about in books, the kind houses are supposed to have.
Kurt hesitates as Burt opens the back of the car and takes out the small suitcase that holds everything Kurt owns, and when Burt comes up to his window, he says suddenly, "Do I have to call you dad?"
"What?" Burt asks, pausing, hand on the door handle to let Kurt out.
"The last house I was at, we had to call them mom and dad, and they got mad when we didn't want to," Kurt says, avoiding eye contact, but he does see Burt's shrug.
"You call me whatever you want," he says. "Just...try to keep it PG."
Kurt actually cracks a small smile at that, and when the door is opened for him, he says carefully, "Thanks. Burt."
"No problem," Burt says.
The room Burt shows him is kind of...bare. But it has its own bathroom attached to it, and a bigger bed than he's used to - as big as the one he'd shared with his mom when they lived in that motel for a while.
"This is just for me?" Kurt asks dubiously.
"I didn't really know what kind of stuff you'd want," Burt says, nodding and scratching his head awkwardly. "I mean, when I was your age I just had posters of bands you kids probably haven't even heard of."
One of the first homes he'd stayed in after his mother went away, back when he was just eight, Kurt had shared a room with two teenage boys who plastered the walls with posters of half -naked girls on motorcycles and car hoods. Kurt hated those posters.
"It's fine," Kurt says.
"I thought we could order pizza or something," Burt says. "Maybe tomorrow go shopping, you can tell me what kind of food and stuff you like."
"Pizza's good." He walks over to the window above the empty desk and sees he has a view of their neighbor's backyard. Up in a large tree, level with Kurt as he stares out the window, there's a treehouse. He thinks he sees light shining through the gaps in the boards, and wonders if there are kids in there.
"The neighbors have two kids about your age," Burt says, as if he can read his thoughts. "They'll be at the same school as you, I think in the same grade too. They're good kids."
Kurt no longer trusts adults' assessments of other kids. Kids are just as good as adults at faking kindness.
Later that night, Kurt takes a shower in his own bathroom, and he uses this coconut shampoo that Burt must have bought for him and put there. It looks new.
Then he opens his suitcase, and with his pajamas, he takes out the silk scarf that he keeps hidden. If any of the kids at the last house saw it, they'd take it without a second thought.
After all this time, it doesn't really smell like his mom anymore. But he still holds it tight against his cheek as he curls up in the big empty bed and falls asleep.
He's woken up the next morning by the smell of bacon and coffee.
He tucks his mother's scarf deep down in his pillowcase, where nobody will find it unless they're really looking, pulls on too-big jeans and a too-small sweater, and hesitantly makes his way downstairs.
"Hey," Burt says when he sees Kurt enter the kitchen. "You want some eggs? Or bacon?" He hesitates, then adds, "Coffee?"
Kurt wrinkles his nose. "Coffee's gross," he says. "Bacon's bad for you."
"Eggs, then?" Burt asks again, looking faintly amused.
"Okay," Kurt agrees, watching as Burt scoops some out onto a plate and sets it on the small table in the corner of the kitchen, then sits down and pokes at them with a fork.
"They're one of the only things I'm good at cooking," Burt admits, sitting down across from Kurt with his own plate. Kurt eats a few bites, and they're actually not too bad.
He's almost cleared the plate when the doorbell rings. He jumps, but doesn't move when Burt gets up to get the door.
When the door opens, he hears an excited girl's voice, and a quieter boy's voice. He can't make out much from a couple rooms away, but before he knows it the girl's voice is getting louder, and then she's in the kitchen with him.
She has straight brown hair and wide brown eyes, and is wearing a gaudy pink dress, but he probably can't judge other people's clothing given his own. At least hers look new.
"Hi!" she says, grinning, and then a boy appears behind her, also with wide brown eyes but he has wild, curly black hair and is wearing a polo shirt and bowtie that Kurt actually kind of likes.
"Rachel," the boy says. "Rachel, we weren't supposed to just run in the house, Dad said we should just ask-"
"Do you want to come over to our house?" the girl - Rachel, Kurt supposes - says excitedly, as Burt appears behind her. "We're right next door."
"Rachel," Burt sighs, "Kurt is just settling in, I don't know if he feels like-"
"Okay," Kurt says. He's not looking at Rachel, but at the boy behind her, who has been worrying his lip between his teeth, but is now grinning widely at Kurt's agreement. "But...just for a little bit."
"You sure?" Burt asks, and Kurt actually isn't totally sure, but at least with these kids, if they're faking in front of Burt and all they want is to hurt him, he can run straight back to his own empty bedroom where they won't be able to touch him. So he nods. "Okay. We'll go out later, okay? Get some food. Healthy stuff."
"Okay," Kurt says again, and while he does jerk away when Rachel tries to grab his hand, he follows as she bounds out of the house.
The boy - her brother, Kurt guesses-hangs back with Kurt, and they walk more slowly out the door. "I'm Blaine," he says shyly, looking up at Kurt through his long eyelashes, and Kurt swallows, kicks a rocks out of the way with his stupid too - big sneakers.
"I'm Kurt," Kurt says after a minute.
They approach the gate to Rachel and Blaine's backyard to find Rachel waiting for them impatiently.
"Come on, I want to show Kurt the treehouse!" she says, and grins again when Kurt finally reaches her. "We heard you were coming. We didn't know what you'd be like though. How old are you?"
She leads him over to the big tree Kurt had seen through his bedroom window. She gestures for Kurt to go first, but Kurt's too smart for that, he knows that going in someplace first is how you get cornered.
Rachel doesn't seem to get why he isn't going up the ladder, but Blaine runs past her and climbs up himself, then looks down at Kurt from the top of the ladder.
"It's safe," he promises.
Kurt carefully puts a hand on the first board nailed to the tree, and climbs.
Once they're all inside, and Kurt has taken a seat closest to the entrance so he'll be able to get out first if he needs to, he remembers Rachel's question.
"I'm twelve," he says, and Rachel claps excitedly.
"Us too!" she says, gesturing over to Blaine. "We're twins. I'm older though."
"By, like, one minute," Blaine says, frowning, and Rachel rolls her eyes.
"Still older. Are you going to go to school with us?"
"Oh." Kurt remembers what Burt said the night before. "Yeah, I think so."
"Are you an orphan?"
Kurt bristles, and Blaine elbows her, hissing "Rachel!" He turns to Kurt. "You don't have to tell her. She's just nosy."
And even though Kurt agrees that he doesn't have to answer Rachel's questions, he does feel like he should set the record straight.
"No," he says, firmly. "I'm not. I have a mom. She just had to go away a while, and when she comes back I'm going to live with her again. And I have a dad, but he lives really far away. I'm not an orphan."
"Oh." Rachel somehow seems to not have noticed Kurt's chagrin at her questioning. "How long are you going to be here with Mr. Hummel?"
"I don't know," Kurt says, frowning, because he's getting tired of all the questions. "Until he sends me back."
It's quiet for a minute, then Blaine nudges Kurt's foot with his own.
"We don't know our mom," he says. "I'll bet yours is nice."
Kurt conjures up the fuzzy images he still has of his mom - he hasn't seen her in a long time, and he always makes sure to think of her every day so he never forgets what she looks like.
"Yeah," he says. "She is."
Fortunately, Rachel pipes up again, and while it's usually annoying when people only talk about themselves, right now it's a welcome break from having to answer her questions.
"We had a surrogate," she says. "They thought it was just going to be me but then it turned out we were twins. Our dads always say they got so lucky because they got two for the price of one."
Kurt frowns. "You have two dads?"
"Yes," Rachel says, once again not appearing to notice his expression, and says, with a grin, "We got two for the price of one, too. That's what we always say. Did you meet your dad?"
Kurt looks away from her, and Blaine once again nudges Rachel.
"Rach," he says, and Rachel rolls her eyes but falls silent.
"Do you want to meet our dads?" Blaine offers. "They'll like you."
Kurt looks out the treehouse's one small window. He can just make out the inside of his bedroom.
"I should go," he says, and pushes himself carefully over to the entrance. "I mean, I have to go now."
"Oh." Both Blaine and Rachel look disappointed.
"Wait," Rachel says as Kurt lowers himself down onto the top rung of the ladder. "Do you want to come over tomorrow? We can tell you about our school. And you can meet our dads!"
After a second, Kurt says, "Okay."
Then he lowers himself down further and leaves them in the treehouse, heading quickly towards the gate to their backyard and Burt's house and his blessedly empty room.
That afternoon, Burt takes him to the mall.
"So...good time at the Berrys'?" Burt asks as he tries to navigate the parking garage. Kurt's confused for a minute until he realizes that must be Rachel and Blaine's last name.
"Yeah," he said. "It was okay. They want me to go over again tomorrow."
"That's good," Burt says. "They're nice kids. It'll be good to start off at school with some friends. New schools are hard."
Kurt stares out the window and doesn't tell Burt that new schools actually aren't that hard. Not anymore. They got easier when he figured out that there wasn't any point trying to make friends, because he wouldn't be at any school very long anyway. All he had to do was keep his head down to avoid the bullies and wait it out.
"We should get you some school clothes," Burt says. "We can't get too much, but we'll at least find you some stuff that fits, okay?"
"Okay," Kurt says, pulling his too-big hoodie tighter around himself.
At his last school, a couple other kids from his home had been in the same grade as him. They weren't really *friends*, but they all sat together at lunch and paired up in classes when necessary. There was safety in numbers - as long as they all knew they weren't *really* friends.
But here, he realizes as he walks into his first class - pre-algebra - he realizes that he doesn't have anybody.
Anybody except Blaine, who's sitting in the first row, whose face lights up when he sees Kurt and waves him over.
"Here, sit here," he says, moving his backpack over to make more room at the other side of the two-person desk. "It's so cool you're in this class. We can study together."
"I'm not very good at math," Kurt admits quietly, sitting down, but scooting his chair away from Blaine.
"I'll help you get caught up," Blaine promises. "I like your shoes."
Kurt glances down at the shiny lace-up oxfords Burt had bought him. He'd never gotten to pick out so many of his own clothes before.
"I like your bowtie," he says, looking away.
Neither Blaine nor Rachel are in his English class. He sits in the back and keeps quiet, even when he knows the answer and nobody else does.
He sees them both at lunch, though, and they both wave him over to a table where they're sitting together.
"Kurt!" Rachel says. "I'm so glad you're here. Blaine said you have art with us next period, which is great. Nobody here understands the importance of art in public schools. Although I wish we had a music program. Mostly we just draw. Do you like to sing?"
"I like to draw," Kurt says. "I don't really sing. It makes too much noise."
"I think that's the point," Blaine says with a small smile.
"Hey!"
The greeting is sharp and loud. For a split-second, Kurt thinks the boy that has approached their table is a friend of Blaine and Rachel's, but their shoulders tense just as much as Kurt's, and the smile Rachel gives the the boy when she turns to him is fake and ironic.
"Hello, Stephen," she says.
"If it isn't the fairy twins," the boy says mock-pleasantly. "Or is it triplets now?"
He locks eyes with Kurt, who just stays still and wills himself to breathe.
"Leave him alone." Blaine's voice is quiet, controlled, but Stephen stops to glare at him anyway before speaking again.
"Maybe I should," he says. "He could be dangerous." He turns back to Kurt, looking pleased at the attention he's gathered from neighboring tables. "I mean, you do know about him, right? You know why he came here?"
Kurt stays silent. He wants to speak, to shout even. He wants to run. But he can't, and he can't bring himself to look at Rachel and Blaine.
"I mean, we've all heard about him. And his mom."
"Stop it," Rachel says. "You don't know anything about him."
"I know more than you," Stephen says. "You wouldn't be defending him if you knew. Psycho mom, psycho kid."
"Shut up." It's a whisper, soft enough that Kurt doesn't think Stephen even heard him.
"Only difference is that he hasn't gotten locked up yet."
"Shut up!" It's louder, and Stephen actually notices. Blaine and Rachel, who have been looking at Stephen, look back to Kurt with those identically wide eyes.
But before he can respond, before any of them can, Kurt's up, pushing through the gathered crowd and running.
He knows they'll look in the bathrooms. They'll think he won't think of that, though. So instead, he finds the stairwell, and he climbs until he finds a roof. They never think to look on the roof.
Unfortunately, there's already somebody up there, sitting near the edge, smoking what actually looks to be a cigar.
Kurt turns to go, but she's already seen him - her beautiful face turned toward him, eyes narrowing under heavy mascara.
"Which one are you running from?"
"I'm not," Kurt says, his throat dry. "I'm not running."
"Right. You came up here to smoke." She tilts her head. "Or maybe to jump. You kind of look the type. But you should know that two stories isn't nearly enough to kill you, you'll just get yourself too paralyzed to try again."
"I'm not here to jump," Kurt says, now indignant. "I was just-"
"Stevie, right?" the girls says, looking amused. "He's been talking shit about you all morning. All about your mother."
Kurt feels really awkward standing, but only feels slightly less awkward when he sits down next to the girl. "You call him Stevie?"
"You can call him that if you want to piss him off," the girl explains. "And you're hot enough that he can't do anything about it." She smirks. "Santana."
Kurt wrinkles his brow at her, confused, until he realizes that she's introducing herself.
"Kurt."
"I know."
"Right," Kurt says, looking away, down at the courtyard, the kids milling around looking like ants from up here.
"Just for the record, I know it's all bullshit. What he's saying."
Kurt stares at her. Nobody's ever believed him, let alone believed him without even asking if it's true. "How do you know?"
"You're not nearly cool enough to have the killer gene in your family. You want my advice though?" Santana says. Kurt doesn't, but she continues before he can say so. "If you want to get left alone here, I'd drop the wonder twins, deny nothing, and play up the dangerous angle." She ignores his silence, standing, dropping her cigar and stomping down on it. "See you later. I mean, I won't talk to you, but I'll see you. Good luck."
"...Thanks," Kurt says as she opens the door back into the stairwell. He doesn't even know what he's thanking her for.
He makes himself go to art class. Missing a class on the first day isn't what he needs right now.
When he gets there, he sees stools set all along a classroom-wide table. At the very end, Blaine and Rachel sit, a backpack placed on the stool next to Blaine.
"Over here," Rachel calls, and Kurt slowly approaches them. "We saved you a seat."
"Oh. Thanks."
"Sorry about Stephen," Blaine says, giving him a half-smile, half-grimace. "He might have left you alone if you weren't with us."
"I don't think he would," Kurt says, sitting down and hugging his arms around himself, a habit he's prone to reverting to when he can't physically get away from someone.
"Well, still, ignore him," Rachel says, rolling her eyes. "Nothing he says is true. He's been making incest jokes for years."
"Which don't really mesh with the gay jokes," Blaine says thoughtfully.
"I-" Honestly, Kurt is a little weirded out by how frankly they talk about it all, but he's really not in a position to find anybody else weird. "What are we doing today?"
"We don't really get assignments," Rachel says, shrugging. "The art teacher got fired so now the baseball coach just kind of watches us."
"Oh."
"There's paper over there, though," Blaine says, pointing. "And pencils and stuff. In case we actually want to draw."
Kurt gets up, then pauses and looks back at Blaine. "Thank you."
"For what?" Blaine asks.
"For not caring if it's true," Kurt says, then walks away, dodging paper airplanes as he tries to get to the stack of printer paper.
When he gets home that afternoon, having avoided any incidents on the bus, he goes straight up to his room. Burt had promised to be home not long after school ended - he had to close up his tire shop.
He goes upstairs, looks at the blank walls of his room - Burt had let him pick out a comforter, and some things for his desk, but Kurt hadn't wanted any of the posters they'd come across.
Then he opens his still-packed suitcase and finds the small cigar box he's had for years, opens it, and takes out one postcard, just one.
And he goes into his backpack for the sketch he'd done earlier that day - they hadn't had to hand anything in, so he'd placed it, careful not to bend it, into one of his textbooks and took it home with him.
He tapes both up, right above his desk.
For dinner, Burt makes spaghetti and salad - the noodles are overcooked and there's too much dressing on the salad, but Kurt can tell he tried.
After, Burt asks, "Are you going over to the Berrys'?"
"Yeah, I think so," Kurt says, scraping patterns with his fork into the leftover sauce on his plate.
"Okay," Burt says, and looks at him over the table for a minute before speaking again. "Look, I want you to be with your friends, but I want you to be home when it gets dark, okay? And make sure to tell me when you're going to out, especially later."
"I don't like being out at night," Kurt says, stomach twisting.
"I just, the social worker told me some things about your last-"
"I'm not going to sneak out," Kurt says firmly. He tries not to be too rude - - it's actually nice here, and not getting sent back for a little longer wouldn't be too bad.
"All right," Burt says, and doesn't push any harder.
When Kurt knocks on the door, he hasn't thought of the possibility that neither Blaine nor Rachel would answer. Instead, it's answered by a tall man with a nose that bears a striking resemblance to Rachel's and a wide smile that bears a striking resemblance to Blaine's.
"You must be Kurt!" he says, an enthusiastic greeting that bears a striking resemblance to both of them. "I'm Leroy. Come in. Blaine and Rachel are in the basement."
Kurt's brow wrinkles - he can't imagine why a basement is somewhere kids would want to hang out.
But when they descend the stairs, Kurt sees that it's not really a basement at all - more like a miniature theater, with a full stage and sound system and two kind of eerie paintings of Rachel and Blaine hanging side-by-side on the wall.
And Blaine and Rachel are singing - a song Kurt's never heard before, something about being sixteen - and dancing around each other, managing to carry out the motions of laughing without letting it affect their voices.
When they stop, Leroy claps loudly, as does another man that Kurt just now notices sitting in the corner.
"Wonderful," the other man says, then notices Kurt. "This must be Kurt! I'm Hiram."
"Hi," Kurt says faintly. He's still not used to the two dads idea, or even just the level of enthusiasm in this family that seems to grow exponentially whenever another member shows up. "Um. That was good. What was that?"
Rachel stares at him, alarmed. "Just an iconic song from one of the best musicals of all time," she says, and it should sound condescending but it's more just amusing to watch her utter confusion at Kurt's ignorance.
"Sound of Music," Blaine supplies, hopping down from the stage and setting down his sparkly microphone.
"I've...I've never seen that," Kurt admits. He hasn't seen many movies he's actually enjoyed, really. Usually when he does get to see movies, the older kids get to pick, and it's either a stupid teen comedy with a sex-laden plot or a loud action movie that also manages to be sex-laden.
Rachel's expression goes from horrified to excited. "That's what we'll do tonight!" she says. "Sound of Music sing-along!"
"I don't really know how to sing," Kurt says, and Rachel just smiles more.
"We'll show you," she promises. "And Blaine and I will cover everything, promise."
"And there's a character named Kurt," Blaine says, eyes also widening with excitement. "You'll love it."
And that's how Kurt finds himself wedged between Hiram and Blaine on one side and Leroy and Rachel on the other side, watching a movie with a lot of cheerful singing considering how much of it is about Nazis.
After a few songs, Rachel's nudging finally convinces him to sing along with them, quietly, then louder, concentrating on the words bouncing across the screen. It isn't until the song ends that he realizes that Blaine and Rachel stopped singing with him at some point. And then all four of them are clapping.
"You're great," Blaine says, bumping their shoulders together. "That was amazing."
"Really?" Kurt asks, flushing.
"Really," Blaine confirms, smiling.
That night, Kurt burrows all the way under his comforter, holds the scarf he's procured from his pillowcase to his cheek, and dreams.
There's shouting - loud, sharp. It's dark inside the closet, just small hints of light peeking through the slats on the door, but he shuts his eyes tightly anyway, as if it'll make his hands over his ears more effective.
More shouting, two voices now, getting closer to the closet, and Kurt curls up smaller on the floor.
His fingernails dig into his scalp as he presses his hands even tighter to his head.
He can still hear the shouting like this, but he can't understand what they're saying, so he just keeps his eyes closed and waits and breathes.
Then his eyes fly open again at the loud, sudden crack of a gunshot.
"Kurt!"
Kurt doesn't know where he is, just that his eyes are open and it's dark and there's a man looming over him, a hand on his arm, so all he can do is jerk away and scramble to the other side of the bed.
"Kurt." It takes a second, but then he remembers, and he makes out in the darkness Burt standing by his bed, brow wrinkled in worry. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you, you were just yelling, and I though something was wrong-"
"I'm okay," Kurt says faintly, willing his heart to stop pounding so fast and hard that Burt can probably just hear it and know he's lying. "Just - bad dream. I'm okay."
Burt watches him for a minute, then relaxes. "You wanna talk about it?"
Kurt shakes his head, and Burt rubs his own forehead.
"You gonna be able to get back to sleep?"
Kurt thinks about lying again. He knows the answer, that after those dreams he can't go back to sleep, he has to just lie in bed and wait for the day to start.
"Maybe I could make you something?" Burt offers. "I dunno. Hot chocolate?"
The words come out before Kurt can censor them. "When I was little my mom made me warm milk."
"Warm milk." Burt considers this. "Okay. I can probably do that."
It turns out Burt can't do that.
The first cup is practically scorched, and when he tries it Kurt makes a face at the bitter taste.
So they try again, this time with Kurt trying to help with hazy memories he has of his mother making it. And they manage to make a cup that tastes okay but is barely above room temperature.
"This should be way easier," Burt sighs, taking the carton out of the fridge again. "Geez, it's just milk warmed up, isn't it?"
"Yeah, I think so," Kurt says, and they try again, this time giving up on getting it done in the microwave and using a saucepan.
It comes out okay. Not as good as his mom's, but it's actually warm, so Kurt accepts the cup and sits down carefully on the living room couch, hugging his legs to his chest with his free arm.
Burt sighs, looking kind of relieved, and sinks down into his regular armchair.
"Still don't want to talk about it?" he asks. Kurt shakes his head, looking around until his eyes settle on the photo on the side table next to him, one of the many photos of the same red-haired woman he's seen throughout the house.
"Who's that?" he asks, and Burt follows his gaze to find what he's looking at.
"Oh. That's Lizzy." Burt sighs and reclines further into his chair. "She was my wife." He laughs. "She would know how to do all this stuff. She'd laugh at me for having so much trouble with it, I think."
"What happened to her?"
Burt continues to look at the photo. "She died," he finally says. "A few years ago."
His eyes have gone kind of far away so Kurt just looks at the photo again, locking eyes with the frozen, grinning woman staring back at him. "You guys never had any kids?"
"No," Burt says, smiling sadly. "We got married right out of high school. After a while, we decided to try. Lizzy always wanted a big family. She loved kids. But, uh, after a few years, it just wasn't happening."
"Oh."
"Then Lizzy decided that it was a sign from the universe. She liked that, thinking the universe was always sending her signs. She said it was a sign that we weren't supposed to bring a kid into the world, we were supposed to help kids that were already here, kids who needed us."
"Kids like me?" The question is quiet, but Burt hears it, and he nods.
"Pretty much," he says. "So we started looking into this whole thing, and then...then she got sick. And then she was just gone."
It's quiet for a long time before Kurt speaks again.
"But you brought me here anyway."
"Yeah," Burt says, looking away from the photo and back at Kurt. "Uh, for a long time I couldn't really do anything. Hell, I didn't even really know how to feed myself. Then I just realized that, just because she was gone, she wouldn't want me to give up. She'd want me to do all the things we promised we would, even if she couldn't be here for them."
Kurt closes his eyes again. "Do you think she would've been a good mom?"
"Oh, yeah," Burt says immediately. "The best."
"My mom's coming back for me," Kurt says, eyes trained on Burt's face, watching for a reaction. "She promised. But...I guess I like it here. For now. Until she does."
Burt cracks another small smile. "I'm glad."
He reaches out like he's going to clap Kurt on the shoulder, but seems to change his mind, and ends up just finding Kurt's hand and squeezing, just once, in his own.
Blaine comes over to Burt's house for the first time one weekend when Rachel has a big ballet competition in Columbus.
Kurt hesitates when they reach the doorway to his bedroom, then says, decisively, "You can come in."
With a wide smile, Blaine follows him inside and turns in a circle, taking in the room.
It's becoming progressively less empty and bare - almost every day Kurt comes home from school with a carefully - preserved sketch from art class and puts it up with the others above his desk, and he has clothes hanging up in the closet, and homework laid out neatly on his desk.
"These are all really great," he says, and Kurt feels his cheeks heat up. He doesn't think they're exactly great works, mostly just quick drawings of things and people he sees around the art room and gets down on paper.
There's one of Blaine himself, bent over a textbook, staring intently because he'd totally forgotten about his biology test that afternoon and had only that period to cram. Kurt flushes when he sees Blaine studying it.
"Rachel would get really mad if she knew you didn't have one of her, too, you know," he says lightly, and Kurt laughs, grateful for the distraction.
"I'll do one," he promises, though he's not sure how he'll get an extended period of Rachel sitting still and not talking.
"What's this?"
Blaine's fingers brush up against the postcard, still prominently hung up among the pictures. Kurt fights the urge to reach out and pull his hand away, because he knows, logically, that Blaine isn't planning on stealing it from him.
"It's from my mom." Blaine's hand falls, and he looks back at Kurt, who avoids his eye contact and sits down on his bed. "She sent it to me. Right after she - she went away."
"Do you see her a lot?" Blaine asks, pushing himself up on the bed to sit next to Kurt.
"No." Kurt still doesn't look at Blaine, but he can feel his gaze anyway. "But she's going to come get me. As soon as she can. As soon as they - as soon as she can."
"What about your dad?"
Kurt looks back at him, not sure if he should be upset at all the questions, but Blaine isn't looking at him nosily, or even pityingly. He's just...looking at him.
"He sends me cards for my birthday," Kurt says after a minute. "And Christmas. I mean, he used to. I think when I started moving around he just didn't know where to send them anymore."
"That's nice, though," Blaine says. "That he did. While he could."
"Yeah," Kurt says, swallowing around a lump in his throat and looks around, desperate for an idea to change the subject.
"I like your room," Blaine says suddenly, like he can read Kurt's mind.
"It's nice having my own," Kurt says as way of agreement.
"I shared a room with Rachel," Blaine says. "A long time ago, but it's probably good they separated us when they did. Even though dad had to clear out the home gym. I think he was kind of tired of pretending he used it."
Kurt laughs at that, and lets himself fall back onto his fluffy comforter.
"At my last house, I shared with five other boys," he says, wrinkling his nose.
"Like at Hogwarts?" Kurt looks over at Blaine and raises an eyebrow. "From, you know. Harry Potter."
Kurt just keeps staring because he's heard vaguely of Harry Potter but he's pretty sure he has no idea what Blaine is talking about.
"I never read it," he admits.
"I'll show you," Blaine promises.
"Kids!" Burt calls up the stairs. "Do you want dinner? We have...hot dogs, I guess?"
Kurt closes his eyes and sighs. It's the third time this week they've had hot dogs.
"You should just come over for dinner every night," Blaine says, chuckling. "Or at least let my dads teach Mr. Hummel to cook. They've been wanting to for years, they're really determined to save him from becoming a hopeless bachelor."
"Pretty sure it's too late for that," Kurt mumbles, and Blaine laughs again.
Kurt's not sure exactly how it happened, but about a week after he arrived, people started ignoring Stephen's attempts to call attention to rumors about Kurt's mom. Apparently, for some reason, a lot of people started calling bullshit on it.
It doesn't stop him and his friends from pushing at him, especially since he never let up on Rachel and Blaine at all.
Still, it's kind of amusing watching him try to come up with new names for their tiny group. He's been stuck on the twin thing for a long time now, and he's having to adjust.
"He knows that being the Three Musketeers isn't actually a bad thing, right?" Blaine says quietly as Stephen walks away one day with a smug grin. "Like, they're adventurers. They're awesome."
"He could do a lot better," Kurt agrees. Rachel looks thoughtful.
"Maybe he meant the candy bar," she suggests.
"That's even better," Blaine says, rolling his eyes.
Kurt's getting better at staying over at the Berrys' - they're right next door, which helps, and they all get to spread out sleeping bags on the basement floor and watch movies from the long list Rachel has made of musicals Kurt hasn't seen, and Hiram and Leroy let him help with dinner and try to learn how to make food with less than 150% daily recommended sodium intake.
One night, he wakes up suddenly with the DVD menu to My Fair Lady playing indefinitely on the TV screen, and he sees in the faint light that Blaine's sleeping bag is empty.
He gets up gingerly, trying to avoid waking Rachel, and climbs the stairs - Blaine has a habit of eating half the leftovers from dinner as a midnight snack, and Kurt's pretty sure he's not going to be able to fall back asleep anyway - so he looks in the kitchen first.
He isn't there, and Kurt is just turning to look in the living room when he catches sight of the treehouse through the window, lights flickering inside.
When he reaches the back door, he hesitates. It really is the middle of the night, and it's pitch black out.
But when he opens the door, he just fixes his eyes on the light in the tree, where he knows Blaine is, and speedwalks across the yard until he feels the wood of the ladder beneath his fingers.
Blaine doesn't look up when Kurt's head pokes through the entrance, not until Kurt whispers, "Blaine."
Blaine's head shoots up, his eyes wide.
"Kurt," he says, relaxing after a second. "Why are you up?"
Kurt laughs. "Why are you out here in the treehouse?"
"Couldn't sleep," Blaine says, shrugging and folding down the page corner of the book he's holding. Kurt climbs into the house, careful of the lantern in the center of the tiny room. "You didn't have to come out here. If you didn't want to, I mean."
"I'm okay." Kurt looks away, down at the dark yard, for what feels like a long time, then looks back to Blaine, suddenly speaking before he consciously decides to. "Um, at my old place, the guys I was in a room with, they didn't - like me. They thought I was-" He cuts himself off, and amends, "They didn't like having me in the room. So sometimes they'd, like, push me out into the hallway at night, and lock me out, and I'd get in trouble because we weren't supposed to be out of our rooms at night. So I started just hiding in the bathroom, and then when it was morning I was good at making it look like I came out of the room at the same time as all of them." Blaine watches him with wide eyes, bright in the faint light of the lantern, but he doesn't say anything, so Kurt swallows and continues. "And they got sick of me not getting in trouble, I guess, so one night they pushed me outside into the backyard and locked me out there, and it was really cold and dark but I didn't know what to do so I just...sat there until the sun came up. And our...our parents - they found me and they thought I had snuck out and tried to run away or something, then I got scared so I came back. And that's why they sent me back. And I came here. And nobody believes me."
Blaine is quiet longer, and when Kurt also stays silent, he says, quietly, "I believe you."
"I wouldn't have run away," Kurt says, blinking rapidly as he just spills all the words that nobody else has ever been willing to listen to. "There were worse places. I was...okay there."
"Are you okay here?"
"Yeah," Kurt says, after just a moment's hesitation. "I'm better here. But Burt could still make me leave, if he wants to. If I do something wrong. And I could go somewhere worse."
"I don't think he would," Blaine says, inching his hand over to brush against Kurt's. Kurt closes his eyes but doesn't pull away.
"What if there was something wrong with me? And he found out?" Kurt asks. The questions are in a whisper, so soft Blaine only hears it because of the silence of the night surrounding them.
"There's nothing wrong with you," Blaine says, and his eyebrows wrinkle like they do when he's really worried, an unasked question plain on his face.
But Kurt is suddenly exhausted, too exhausted to answer, to continue the conversation at all. He glances down, and smiles slightly when he catches sight of the book on the floor between them.
"So I guess sharing rooms at Hogwarts was more fun?" he asks, an attempt at lightness.
"Most of the time," Blaine agrees. "I mean, not always. Sometimes there were rats. And mass murderers. Well, alleged mass murderers." He catches Kurt's expression and laughs. "You should just read it already."
"Will you read it to me?"
Blaine's smile is one of victory, and he nods, flipping back to the first page, losing his place in the book but not seeming to care.
"Chapter one," he starts, and Kurt closes his eyes and listens. "The Boy Who Lived."
Kurt awakens to the next morning to the disembodied face of Leroy Berry three inches from his own.
He's pretty sure his own loud cry startles Leroy just as much his appearance did Kurt, if the way he almost falls off the ladder is any indication.
"I found them!" he calls back when he's regained his balance. "Come on, Blaine, you promised you'd stop falling asleep out here. One day you're going to just roll through the doorway and break your neck, you know."
"Sorry," Blaine says, yawning, not looking particularly startled at all. "You've been saying that since I was, like, five, though. I think I'm too big to fall out now."
"You're never too big to break your neck," Leroy points out grimly, then is suddenly smiling again when he looks back at Kurt. "Come on, Kurt, we're making crepes."
It's not until several weeks later, when he and Hiram are alone in the kitchen together, working on a surprise all-vegan dinner to celebrate Rachel's appointment as head soloist of her tap class, that he manages to bring it up again.
"I think-" he says, and Hiram pauses in his stirring the dairy-free cheesecake filling. "I think there's something wrong with me."
Hiram sets the bowl down on the counter. "There's nothing wrong with you, Kurt."
"You don't even know-" But one look at Hiram's knowing half smile tells Kurt that he does know. "How do you know?" he asks anxiously. Is that an adult thing? Or is it that obvious? Does Burt-
He tries to stop the train of thought before it can go further, and fails.
"There's nothing wrong with you," Hiram repeats, sounding eerily like his son in his firmness.
"What if people think there is?"
"Forget people," Hiram says, shrugging and picking up the bowl again. Kurt fights the urge to scowl and roll his eyes, and Hiram adds, "Okay, I know it's not that easy. But me, Rachel, Blaine-we'd all know there's nothing wrong with you. And the world can be...rough. But you'll always have that."
"What if Burt thinks there's something wrong with me?" Kurt asks in a rush. "What if..."
"I've lived next to that man a long time," Hiram says slowly, thoughtfully. "And I haven't seen him love anything as much as he loves you for a long time now. I'm pretty sure there's nothing in the world you could do to change that for him."
Burt's never told Kurt he loved him. But it's just then that Kurt realizes he's never said it either.
And maybe, after all this time, he's learned to just...wait. Wait for Kurt to approach him first.
When he gets home, he finds Burt unpacking groceries.
"Hey, bud," he says. "I know you wanted to try that souffle thing tonight, I'm pretty sure I got everything on the list. And hopefully the right...what are they called?'
"Ramekins," Kurt says.
"Ramekins," Burt repeats with an amused smile.
"Um," Kurt says suddenly, apparently sounding urgent enough to make Burt look up from unpacking the bags. "I," he starts, and immediately chickens out, and settles for "I'm happy. That I'm here, with you. I like it here."
The slow smile on Burt's face grows into one of the biggest he's seen since they met.
"I'm happy, too," he says, somewhat awkwardly, and reaches out as if to clap his hand on Kurt's shoulder like he does sometimes, but seems to change his mind at the last second and guides him into an - also somewhat awkward - hug. Kurt just closes his eyes and lets him, breathing in the now familiar and somehow now comforting scent of motor oil that seems to always come from somewhere on Burt's person.
For Blaine and Rachel's birthday, they have a joint party, which is really just another night of Kurt spending the night over at their house but with way too much cake and punch, and somehow even more karaoke.
Kurt doesn't really have much money - Burt still buys him lots of things his never owned before, and keeps them in fresh ingredients, but there isn't a lot of disposable income after that, and Kurt can only earn so much extra with his attempts to mow the lawn and organize the garage.
But when Blaine opens his envelope, and pulls out his present - they still haven't finished the first Harry Potter, it goes slower when they take turns reading out loud, but Kurt still thinks he managed to make the drawing of Blaine grinning at him from his position on a broomsticks, Gryffindor scarf flying behind him, accurate and detailed enough, and Blaine's face breaks into a grin even wider than the one in the picture.
"It's not a lot, I mean, I tried really hard on it, but-" Kurt starts quickly.
But he's cut off by Blaine throwing his arms around him, and he just manages not to shiver when he whispers, "I love it."
Kurt thinks it's pretty funny that with any other girl he knows - not that he knows may other girls, but still - would take serious offense as being drawn as a bright green witch, but she just stares at it and the giant clock in the background, just like the one in the bootleg of the live show her dads showed them, then laughs delightedly.
"I'm Elphaba," she says, happily. "Blaine! I'm Elphaba."
Then she hugs him too, and it doesn't make him shiver, but he still revels in her arms practically crushing his torso. He's pretty sure he's been hugged more in the time since he moved into Burt's house than in all the rest of his life put together.
It's not too long before it's Kurt's birthday, too, and he's receiving new cookbooks from the Berrys and a blank sketchbook and new pencils - the really good ones, that come in a bunch of different levels of hardness - from Burt, and a wrapped package from Blaine that he's not supposed to open until later.
Burt, apparently, has this weird thing about Kurt not having to bake his own birthday cake, so he brings home cupcakes from that place Kurt loves. Rachel, like always, refuses to share any of hers, and Blaine and Kurt just roll their eyes and give each other half of their own so they both have half a chocolate and half a vanilla.
They can't really fit thirteen candles on a few cupcakes, but they get those number candles so they only have to fit one on each of two of the cupcakes.
When Kurt goes to blow out the candles, he looks around, at Blaine and Rachel and Burt and he closes his eyes and he thinks, I wish I could stay here forever.
And he blows the candles out.
Later, when they're all somehow sick of cake and Kurt's up in his bedroom, carefully organizing his desk drawer to accommodate his new art supplies, Blaine appears at his door.
"Hey," he says, waiting for Kurt to respond before he enters. He's good at that, knowing that Kurt doesn't like people just appearing in his space.
"Hey," Kurt says back, and looks down at the still-wrapped package he's set on his desk, smiles. "Do I get to open it now?"
"Oh, yeah," Blaine says, running a hand through his hair, looking away. "Um, it's not that much, I just...thought you'd like it."
Kurt gingerly unties the ribbon - he hates ripping off wrapping paper, it just seems wrong somehow - and peels off the tape, and the paper falls away to reveal a picture frame, sort of plain, but Kurt's eyes are on the picture within it. He remembers the moment, even though he has no idea who took the picture, doesn't remember a camera at all, but he'd been admittedly pretty distracted.
Burt had taken them to the lake one morning, and they'd stopped at an ice cream cart - Rachel had been stuck with sorbet, a fact that made Blaine laugh obnoxiously before finishing his cone in about thirty seconds. They're sitting on a bench, Blaine's cone gone, trying to grab a lick off Kurt's barely eaten vanilla, while Kurt glares at him and tries to fight him off, half-scandalized, half-amused, and Rachel just laughs at both of them, and they're all just...together.
"Thank you," Kurt whispers, blinking rapidly, as he's crushed into another hug - for being so tiny, Blaine and Rachel are both surprisingly strong.
He has a lot of pictures of them all up with his drawings now - snapshots of Rachel and Blaine having a sing-off, of Kurt trying to help Rachel with her first foray into actual, grown-up makeup, a strip from when all three of them had somehow squished into the photo booth at the mall, too distracted with squabbling over room to actually smile. But he places the frame on his nightstand, where he can see it every night, resolving to keep it forever, so he can hold on to this as long as he can.
The end of the school year comes quickly. Kurt isn't nervous about the finals, Blaine has him all caught up in algebra and he's actually doing well in the other classes as long as the assignments don't involve talking too much.
And he just can't stop thinking about how soon, so soon, he'll have a break from all the bullying and the school nights and the people he's too afraid to even talk around, and he'll be able to just be.
It's a few days into summer when he's cooking dinner, and Burt is chopping the vegetables, because he always tries to help when he actually can, and suddenly Burt speaks.
"So," he says, and his voice already sounds so rehearsed so Kurt puts the pan he's been working with down, but doesn't turn. "You've been here awhile."
A lump rises in Kurt's throat. "Yeah," he says in a small voice.
"And..." Burt sighs. "God, I am not good at this, but...I know you love your mom." He must see Kurt's shoulders tense up because he quickly adds, "And I know you don't like talking about her, okay, but you know that she's not getting out for a while. She's just...not here right now. And right now, you should have a life, and I, you know, I hope you're getting that here." There's another long silence, but Kurt just stares down at the counter, not responding, so Burt continues. "And I guess I was thinking that maybe you'd like to...keep it here."
Kurt blinks, and his heart tightens, and he honestly doesn't know what emotion is behind it.
He knows, he's always known, that it's so much harder for teenagers to be adopted. He's seen it in action. And he's known for years that if he couldn't find someone who'd want him for good while he was still a cute little kid who wasn't quite as awkward and jaded, he was almost certain to spend the years all the way up until eighteen being shuffled around.
"You want me to stay here?" he asks.
"Yeah," Burt says, and Kurt's still not looking but he can practically hear how Burt's scratching his head like he does when he's anxious. "If you want."
Kurt's eyes squeeze shut and his heart pulls in so many different directions, and all he can think is that if there's a time he should, a time he's practically obligated to, it's now.
He finally turns around, and, without preamble, because he hadn't really thought to rehearse it, says, "I'm gay." It's silent for a moment, when he can't quite reach Burt's eyes, before he adds, "If...that matters."
Another pause, then Burt makes a weird half-laughing noise.
"No, that doesn't...matter, Kurt, god." Kurt just stares at him. "God," he repeats. "I know that, Kurt, you thought that would make a difference-"
He stops when he sees Kurt's face, must see that there's still worry there, and crosses the room to pull Kurt into one of his semi-awkward hugs.
Kurt just lets himself be hugged, swallows hard, and mumbles, "Love you."
Burt pauses, and reaches up to ruffle Kurt's hair, which he's done for a while now but lately it's more tiresome as Kurt's been using his allowance on more expensive hair products lately and it's really hard to get it right, and says, "Me too." There's another long silence before he says, "Is that a yes, or..."
There's just a moment's hesitation, during which Kurt decides that, if they're laying all the cards on the table here...
"I," he starts slowly. "I still have a dad. Somewhere, and I don't think I can call you-"
"Rule still stands," Burt says, and Kurt's lucky he doesn't have to go out again today because his hair is totally ruined now. "Just keep it PG."
Kurt laughs and closes his eyes and stays there, just a little while longer.
Later, he finds Blaine up in the treehouse, reading again.
They've been growing - Kurt has, at least - and it's starting to be a tight fit, and they can hardly ever stand to deal with all three of them up there at the same time now. But Blaine's pressed into a corner, eyes intent on his book, so Kurt has room to climb in.
"Hey," he says softly. He doesn't have to, it isn't even late, but the room feels so small somehow that he feels like he should whisper.
"Hey," Blaine repeats, putting down his book with a folded-down corner like always. "What's going on?"
"I," Kurt starts, carefully situating himself into the opposite corner, then starts over. "Burt wants me to stay here. With him. Like, for good."
"Really?" Blaine doesn't actually sound surprised or disbelieving, just excited, eyes wide and bright.
"Yeah," Kurt says. "And I said, you know. I would."
"God," Blaine says, shaking his head. "God, Kurt, that's so...that's awesome."
"So I guess you're stuck with me for a while," Kurt adds, and Blaine's huge smile is infectious as ever. "Um. But I...I need to tell you something. Something big. Well, something else big."
He frowns when Blaine's smile softens into that knowing smile that can be pretty infuriating sometimes because it usually means he really does know.
"God," he says, letting his head fall back against the wooden wall. "Does everyone know already? Did Jason stick a post-it on my back again?"
"I'm still sure nobody but me and Rachel saw it," Blaine says. "I mean, we got it off before you even went back into the hall."
"Still."
"Maybe I just know you too well," Blaine suggests.
"Yeah. You, and Burt, and your dads," Kurt grumbles. "But...it's okay?"
And Blaine actually laughs, only stopping when he sees Kurt's indignant expression.
"You know I have two gay dads, right?"
"I know," Kurt says. "I just... You know. It might be different."
Blaine stretches out his leg to bump his foot against Kurt's.
"Nothing's different," he says.
I'm pretty sure this is going to have 3 parts, but this one took a while and it might be a while before the next part. I hope you liked it so far and stick around anyway.