Kurt Hummel was tired. Tired of hiding, tired of pretending, tired of everything.
He was respected well enough at school; his father owned a tire shop and a soda shop, both of which were pretty popular amongst his classmates. He was a good looking young man, he had a beautiful "girlfriend," his grades were good enough, and he could sing like a dream. Aside from the occasional snigger from some of the guys that he had a girly voice, everything would have seemed just fine to anyone else. But it wasn't.
Kurt Hummel was gay. He was gay in a small town in Ohio in 1961; a town where he was expected to marry a nice girl and have lots of children, and that occasionally aired television ads warning children and their parents to "beware of homosexuals."
Just when he thought he had things under control, he had to go and fall in love with a boy-and not just any boy, mind you, but Blaine Anderson, one of the biggest badboy heartthrobs at McKinley.
Imagine his surprise, this poor, lonely, boy who never imagined he would find love, when it turned out Blaine loved him back?
In his relationship, Kurt was no stranger to problems and was even able to come up with quick fixes every now and then. While he and Blaine may have, unbeknownst to anyone else, referred to themselves as "boyfriends," they both had a string of girls just dying for their affections.
The solution they came up with was to take themselves off the market. Of course, he couldn't be seen walking the halls hand in hand with the boy he loved. Oh, no, instead word had gotten out that he was the boyfriend of Brittany Pierce, a girl who was in a situation not much different from his own with another girl named Santana (whom Blaine was presumably going with).
Although Brittany was one of his best friends, he certainly didn't harbor any romantic feelings for her. While it wasn't too hard to be sure and give her a quick kiss every now and then, it hurt to watch Blaine press his lips to Santana's in a kiss that should have been meant for him.
This, to Kurt, was a problem. For obvious reasons, they couldn't stand too close at school or in public, they couldn't go on dates, they couldn't do the little couple-y things they'd seen their friends do, and it really limited their time together.
Well, Kurt thought he had a solution. If he couldn't be Blaine's boyfriend in public, at the very least he could be his pal. But no one would ever think that Goody-Two-Shoes Hummel and Badboy Blanderson were suddenly best buddies. Nope. Not a chance, so Kurt Hummel's solution was... he needed a makeover.
Monday morning, Kurt sauntered cooly and confidently into the tire shop, coke in hand, and took his place behind the desk, propping his feet up on it and flipping on the radio. A boy about his age walked in. Kurt instantly recognized him from school, someone he never talked to but knew for a fact Blaine did. In other words, the perfect test subject for his experiment.
"The name's Russo, I'm here to pick up my ride." the boy smiled broadly, sweeping his cigarette to the left side of his mouth.
Kurt took a swig from his coke bottle and flipped through the notebook until he found the page he was looking for. "Johnny Russo? Your car's not ready 'til tomorrow"
"Look, okay, I can't wait until tomorrow. I was s'posed to take Lisa to the drive in tonight." Russo explained, shoving his hands cooly into his leather jacket pockets.
"Then tell her you'll take her tomorrow." Kurt shrugged, reaching again for his soda.
The boy laughed dangerously, as if it were a warning. "I don't think you understand. You said it'd be ready today, so where is it?" he asked, his jaw clenching.
"Cool it chickenhead, I said it's not ready 'til tomorrow." Kurt said smoothly, looking straight into his eyes, daring him to question him.
Johnny raised an eyebrow and gave him a look. "You sure you're the right Kurt Hummel?"
"Well I dunno. Maybe there's two of us. Have you tried the yellow pages?" Kurt smirked.
"You think you're bein' funny? 'Cause I don't got time for funny." Johnny said, smirk falling from his face.
"Well, that's just too bad because I consider myself a part time comedian." Kurt said, sitting back in the chair he sat in soda in hand.
"That's it." Johnny took a step forward and grabbed Kurt by the shirt, pulling him up to eye level and then shoving him against a wall.
"Hey!" a familiar voice growled from behind. Both boys looked up, startled by the interruption.
"Anderson? Hey, what's the deal?" Johnny greeted, nodding in Blaine's direction.
"What do you think you're doing?" Blaine stepped closer and eyed where Johnny had Kurt pinned. There was something in his tone that screamed 'back off' and it caught them both off guard.
"Whoa, now, take it easy, I was just teaching Hummel here a lesson about keeping your word."
"You're gonna put him down and get outta here before I hurt you." Blaine threatened, eyes piercing dangerously.
The muscular teen blinked stupidly as he glanced between Blaine and Kurt. Kurt smiled sweetly at the boy, which only aggravated him further. Johnny scowled, pulling his fist back as if to punch Kurt right in the nose, but he stiffened again at Blaine's voice.
"I said beat it, Russo."
"Aw, come on man, what-"
"Leave."
And Johnny walked away without another word, aside from one last glare at the two that seemed to say "I'll deal with you later" with different meanings to each of them, respectively.
Kurt pulled Blaine into an empty garage and closed the door.
"What was that?" Blaine asked skeptically.
"What was what?" Kurt said innocently.
"That." Blaine repeated.
"Oh, yes, that." Kurt rolled his eyes. "I appreciate your help but I don't need a bodyguard."
"Right, 'cause you had that, uh, situation there under control?" Blaine chuckled humorlessly.
"Oh, I was fine." Kurt huffed, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
"Sure didn't look that way to me. Anyway what's with the get up, switch clothes with your brother or somethin' ?" Blaine asked, eyeing Kurt's outfit.
Instead of Kurt's usual button-down shirt tucked neatly into blue jeans, he was wearing a brown leather jacket (that looked suspiciously big on him) over a black T-shirt, and had added extra grease to his hair.
"What, you don't like it?" the taller boy smirked.
Blaine responded by giving him a pointed look, and Kurt let out a frustrated sigh.
"Well I dunno what you want me to do here anymore. You were right, it's not fair that we can't officially announce that we're going steady, and it'd be nice if I could go to school wearing your jacket and hold hands with you like all the girls do with their guys." Blaine smiled sadly in agreement, Kurt had brought up this topic many times during some of their more intimate moments behind closed doors. With another deep breath, Kurt continued, a little calmer this time, "But I'm not a girl, Blaine, and you aren't neither. And I know we see each other whenever we can, but mostly we can't and it's never enough. So I thought maybe if I was more like you or your friends we could at least spend a little more time together at school. But if I can't pull that off..." unable to find the right words to end the sentence, Kurt trailed off with a shrug.
Blaine just looked at Kurt for a minute, his expression an unreadable mix of emotions, before pulling him in for a rough kiss. Kurt let out a tiny squeak of surprise at the sudden ferocity of it, but quickly got over it and found himself kissing back eagerly, his hands flying up to Blaine's hair.
Blaine fisted the back of Kurt's jacket, pushing Kurt back and pressing him against the car. There was no battle for dominance as he slipped his tongue into the other boy's mouth; Blaine simply took the lead and Kurt followed, no questions asked. As Blaine aggressively attached his mouth to his neck, Kurt was too busy making other sounds anyway. Blaine allowed himself a brief moment to admire his handiwork (a reddish-purple bruise that was already beginning to form just below Kurt's jaw line) before going back to Kurt's lips. When he pulled back his eyes were dark with lust and determination; his voice was rough when he spoke, "I don't want you to be a girl, Kurt. That's kinda the whole point. And I definitely don't want you going around acting like me."