It's Mother's Day, a day that happens every year but still manages to catch Blaine Anderson off guard. He wakes up and pulls the date off of his day-to-day calendar, but today he's momentarily taken by surprise. He can feel the guilt, the sadness and the grief coming on but he's shaken out of it when a bigger thought comes to his mind. Kurt.
Hastily, he shrugs on a pair of loafers and a light jacket, coerces his hair to look relatively tame, and runs out the door. The campus is mainly empty today, most students went back home given the occasion this weekend holds but he catches Kurt in the dining hall by himself, apple in one hand and a messenger bag around his shoulder.
"Blaine," he says, a small weak smile gracing his lips. They're still in the honeymoon stage of their relationship, but not even that is enough to draw a full smile out of the blue eyed boy who just wants his mother today more than any day. He wants to make her breakfast in the morning (with the help of his father), surprise her with flowers, and do whatever he can to make sure she knows he loves her and appreciates her. But he can't, he doesn't have the luxury that everyone else does, and he since his extremely pious and cold grandmother is being catered to by his father, he doesn't have the ability to visit him either.
Blaine lets out a dramatic breath from his sprint and wraps his arms around him, "Kurt," he breathes. Kurt drops his apple in favor of hugging his boyfriend back and settles his head on Blaine's shoulder.
They stay like that for a few minutes, Blaine is content to forget about what today entitles and focus on how nice Kurt smells and Kurt is just relieved to know he won't have to spend the day alone. The thought both soothes and worries him, he's never asked Blaine about his parents and realizes he doesn't know much about Blaine in general. Has he really been that selfish, making both their friendship and relationship just about him? Kurt has never heard anything from Blaine about his mom, just about his disapproving dad, and it causes him to tense a little bit.
He pulls away and asks, "Why are you still here?" only after the words are out of his mouth he realizes how harsh they sound and quickly corrects himself, "I-I mean, you're not spending the day with..." Kurt doesn't want to finish, doesn't want to upset Blaine.
"No, I'm not," Blaine says, voice cold and eyebrows drawn. He's looking past Kurt's shoulder at the floor, desperately and silently willing Kurt not to ask the questions he knows are coming.
"Why not?" And there it is.
It's the question that Blaine's older brother, Cooper, has asked him in regards to the same thing the first year he moved out. His teachers in middle school asked why he never wanted to make a card, and his father the same thing when Blaine wouldn't leave his room. He answered them all the same way, "It doesn't matter."
Kurt doesn't even try to hold in the horrified noise he makes, the dramatic step back he takes, or the hand he forcefully drags across Blaine's face. "You..." he rasps out, tears welling in his eyes. He was worried that his mother may have shared the same fate as his own, that she possibly left him and his father for another man, or even that his parents went through a painful divorce and he never saw her. But the fact that Blaine just didn't care, that his mother didn't matter, and that he's just too wrapped up in his own life to give her the time of day is low. And it hurts Kurt in a way that maybe isn't fair because it has nothing to do with him, but hurts him all the same.
"Do you have any morsel of an idea of how selfish you are," He asks rhetorically, "Do you have any idea what I," he chokes, "and a lot of people would give just to have their mother alive today?"
"Kurt," Blaine tries to explain, cradling the stinging side of his cheek, but he knows deep down Kurt is right.
"No. You don't, you don't have any idea. Because you're too busy in your own rich-boy little world to realize what a gift you have," Kurt finishes and turns on his heel storming away and feeling worse than he has in a long time. He hoped today would go better than the other Mother's Days he's had, but he clearly had hoped wrong.
What he doesn't realize, is that while Mrs. Anderson was Blaine's mother, the farthest thing she had ever been to him was a gift.
A few hours later finds Blaine laying on his bed and staring at his ceiling, unblinkingly. The feelings he'd been rebelling all day, all year even, have knocked him down with extraneous force. He blames this, in part, on Kurt because his earlier words had single-handedly detonated the wall he had put up, separating him and regards of his mother. With a sigh he stops putting off the inevitable, reaches under his bed, and pulls out a velvet, light pink, photo album. It's a little dusty, the pages a little yellowed, and with his sleeve rolled up to the palm of his hand, he wipes off the cover photo. With a little elbow grease, the picture can clearly be made out to be a little infant dressed in a plaid onesie, and a similar-looking, middle aged woman cradling him. Despite himself, Blaine smiles.
Kurt frowns, lingering outside the door of Blaine's dorm. He made the foolish mistake of putting off his chemistry homework until just now, and dammit if Blaine wasn't the only one who actually knew what was going on in that class. He also feels a bit bad about blowing Blaine off, because even if Blaine didn't care nor appreciate his mother, he still tried to be there for Kurt. He feels stupid because if only he hadn't blown him off, he might not feel so hollow now, more alone now than he was before. But Kurt is nothing if not determined, and even if Blaine doesn't want much to do with him romantically he'd still rather be in his presence.
His tentative knock receives a feeble yet polite, "Come in."
And he walks in to what now feels like a too-sterile dorm, so forceful it nearly leaves him breathless. Everything looks so neat and tidy (he knows Blaine must have cleaned it all to prevent himself from going into an over-thinking stupor) and it feels cold. Too cold for a mid-May spring day. The only sense of warmth is radiating from the bed where Blaine is now standing, not sure what to say. He's firmly grasping a book that demands Kurts attention.
Rather then demanding answers, or making assumptions, Kurt notes the faded picture on the cover and lightly says, "Mama's boy after all?"
Blaine lets out a little laugh and looks at the book in his hands like its a foreign object, "At point, I guess I was."
Gently, Kurt walks over to him (without unnecessarily asking permission to step inside) and pries the book from Blaine's hands. Blaine makes himself comfortable on the side of the bed near the wall, and invites Kurt next to him.
"This is you and your mother?" Kurt asks for clarification as he settles next to Blaine.
A timid smile makes its way on to Blaine's face and he nods.
Kurt begins to look at the pictures, that date from hospital pictures until second grade, with Blaine explaining every meaning behind every little detail of the pictures. Blaine rests his head on Kurt's shoulder, knowing that Kurt can slap but probably won't bite. As they turn through the pages, Kurt can feel two things; envy and confusion. Envy for all of the memories Blaine can probably still make with his mother, and confusion for why he doesn't.
When they reach the last page, Kurt says, "I don't understand."
"My father is a rich man, which I guess makes me a rich little boy," Blaine says solemnly, the hint of a joke lost in the sadness of his tone, "Everyone just assumes that being rich means being happy, and that may have been the case for my dad but not for my mom." he laughs bitterly, "He was always cheating on her, I didn't realize it then, I didn't see a problem in the way he was always home alone with a different woman whenever my mom was out. But she knew some nights she would even sleep in my room with me when he had another girl in his bed," He shakes his head as if to say 'do you believe it?' "Before they got married, she signed a pre-nupt, so if she left him, she'd lose everything. She was trapped and the only way she found the tiniest bit of freedom was through alcohol."
"Every night she would either down a bottle of wine and giggle until she fell asleep at the foot of my bed, or she'd cry herself to sleep. I was only seven when this started and I...I didn't understand. I didn't understand why mommy-why my mother had to be either really happy all the time or really sad. Of course I asked my dad and when he found out about her drinking he was furious...he didn't allow anymore liquor to be brought and he kept a hidden stash for himself. This didn't stop her, of course it didn't, she just went out drinking and he was too occupied with...other matters to even notice. And then one day she had too much to drink and she was driving home," Blaine is shaking now, trying to hold back a break down, "when she crashed into a minivan and nearly killed a family of six. She experienced major head trauma and," this is worst part for him to get out, "she's been in a coma for eight years."
As simple as a leaf falling from an autumn tree, a floodgate had been opened after those words fell. Suddenly, Kurt was all around him, embracing him whole-heartedly and hugging him as if his life depended on it. Through breathes of sobs Blaine managed to say, "I don't want to visit her, I don't want to visit her and know that nothings changed and she's not awake, I don't want to visit her and bring flowers and cards to a mother who can't even see them." Kurt hushed him with sweet nothings every time, "I don't want to see a vegetable, I want my mom." And he sobs harder, because his father never let him cry. His brother doesn't understand, and still thinks every day she's closer to waking up. Neither of them understand that she stopped being a mother a long time ago, too blind in denial and false hope.
"And it makes me feel so guilty, because I can't even be brave enough to see her. She stopped being a mom when she started drinking but just seeing her like that, all
wrapped up in tubes and wires artificially living, I just can't..." And Blaine continues to cry dryly, rasping on explanations and regrets he never got to say. Kurt just listens and holds him because he knows, he understands to his own extent. He had to watch his own mother wither away to cancer, and realizes thats what Blaine has to continue to do. Eventually Blaine's calmed down, eyes bleary and red, and Kurt stands up.
Kurt offers Blaine a hand, embraces him like Blaine had done to him earlier, and they go out to the local diner. There they dine amongst other families and their mothers, and have as good of a time as any of the tables sitting next to them. They spilt a strawberry milkshake, a favorite among both of them, and together they decide that they wound up having a good mother's day after all. Mrs. Hummel and Mrs. Anderson, who had spiritually sitting next to them the entire time, decided the same thing.
I don't like to talk about my childhood
I get all weepy
like a drunk mom
on the edge of my bed
at night