AN: I don't know where this came from, honestly. It floated down out of the sky in the middle of APUSH and I ended up writing half of it on the back of one of my old quizzes. The canon of it is probably going to be smashed to bits when "Big Brother" airs. But, ah well. And in case you're questioning the categorization, it is Blaine/Kurt centric, although from the POV of Blaine's father. Enjoy.
It's nine o'clock on a Friday night, and Everett Anderson wishes he knew where he went wrong.
He knows that his father would probably have blamed it on his love life. His father was an old fashioned man, believing in pocket watches and white virginal dresses and bouquets of roses in May, not divorces or new beginnings. He had expected thirty year anniversaries out of his marriage with Lori. Not talks with lawyers and documents that now sat yellowing in the file cabinets.
It was a relief, though, the moment his fountain pen put the last flourish on his signature. The signature that sealed the end of a brief, unhappy affair. Although to be fair, it wasn't an affair. The word affair means passion, recklessness, abandon lurking around the corner. He and Lori meant stiff dinners and nights spent on opposite sides of the bed. They had met at the Columbia school of business in New York. She was blonde and trim with pearls around her neck and tasteful cardigan sets, born and bred in a red-brick mansion with ivy creeping up the walls. He was raised much the same, living in Brooks Brothers suits and cars with leather interiors.
Just as there was an implicit acknowledgement by the rest of the world of their shared status, there had been an implicit acknowledgement between the two that this was it. The two of them together would be the dream couple, the pinnacle of their parents' dreams; an attractive, rich WASP couple that would rule the business world with an iron fist. But somewhere after the first month, it crumbled. People moaned and wailed and flapped their hands, but neither he nor Lori cared. There was little love lost between the two of them, but that much, at least, they respected about each other; neither fought to salvage it.
Lori is somewhere west, now, presiding over a glass and metal complex in Los Angeles with the waiter she ran away with. And he is in Westerville. Same family. Same man. Same business. But different wife.
I'm Lilly she had said, on their very first date. Not of the valley, though, she had added dreamily, swirling her champagne in the glass flute. Of the sea. I like the sea. There's no such thing as a lily of the sea, he had told her. But he bought her the necklace just the same, a silver thing on a filly chain that gleamed against the delicate curve of her brown throat.
His father never hits. His father never shouts. But his father disapproves, and he does exactly that when he brings Lilly home, in all of her dark-haired almond-eyed beauty. A Catholic, we could work around, his mother tells him later. But Asian, Everett? Why? Is this that 'yellow fever' the boys in school talked about? This is the day that he discovers his spine. He puts on the face that always meant business when his father wore it, and he tells them, in no uncertain terms, that he is going to marry Lilly, and that is that. And eventually, his parents accept it. Not right away, of course. The first Christmas, there are no presents. But on her birthday, in April, a card arrives, a lovely thing with gold filigree and pressed flowers. And in November, they all sit around the same table for turkey.
He wishes he knew where that spine went.
It's a delicious irony, he thinks, that Cooper was born out the awkward marriage of him and Lori. Cooper is half an inch shy of six feet, with eyes of ice and a sculpted face. In grade school, he is a Michelangelo statue sprung to life and prowling the halls in perfectly fitted Abercrombie and Fitch. He is effortless, breezing through life like a dandelion on the wind, and wherever he goes he leaves people breathless.
And out of the effortless marriage, a love as natural as breathing, of him and Lilly springs Blaine. He is an awkward sparrow of a child, with unruly hair, an unrulier nature, and wounded hazel eyes that telegraph every flicker of emotion. He isn't a natural. He doesn't instinctively know the right things to wear, do, say. He blurts out the wrong things at the wrong time. He blots food on his children's suit vest and gives a headache to every nanny that watches him.
There's a fine line in the sand between him and Blaine. He doesn't see it but he feels it. He feels it when Blaine doesn't want to go golfing with him. Blaine would rather play football in the yard with Cooper. Blaine would rather sing with Lilly. Blaine hugs the nanny. Blaine never hugs him. The line in the sand only deepens as time ticks by.
Junior high comes, and Blaine is as awkward as ever. He rolls his pants too short. He enjoys himself in English class. He brings home girls, but the girls are equally awkward, with little-mouse voices and at least three library books tucked into their backpacks. There's no hand-holding with the girls. Shoulder punching, hair touching, singing, but no hand holding.
He wonders if his son is ever going to get a date.
He's surprised but gratified, then, on a dusky May evening, when Blaine announces that he's heading off to a Sadie Hawkins dance. Blaine doesn't want a ride from him up to the school. Blaine asks Cooper instead. He thinks nothing of it. He chalks it up to adolescent embarrassment over parental units.
It's with no small amount of bewilderment, then, when he arrives at the hospital two hours later. His son looks smaller than ever, curled up on the steel bed under fluorescent lights, wrapped in a powder blue hospital gown. A car accident? he asks.
You don't get a precision black eye like that from a car accident, Cooper points out in that cool, cold way of his.
He looks at his son. Really looks at him. Two broken ribs, a pair of matching black eyes, scrapes and cuts littering his skin, and he is not surprised, somehow. But something is still missing. Why? he asks.
Because I'm gay, that's why, Blaine spits from the hospital bed, and the room goes quiet. He doesn't know if the loathing in that word is directed inward or outward.
In that instant, the line in the sand becomes a moat. He think of Greenwich Village brownstones, Broadway, domestic partnerships, things he never understood, things he learned to cringe away from on reflex. The moat becomes an ocean.
He realizes that Cooper and Lilly are still looking at him, looking expectantly. Waiting for him to say something, anything. But he looks down at Blaine and Blaine is looking away. He leaves the room without a word.
He only ever drinks little glasses of dry wine at company dinner parties, but that night, he fixes himself a strong drink and sits on the couch, eyes on the cold and empty fireplace.
When Blaine comes home from the hospital, he says nothing. He only slides a Dalton Academy pamphlet across the granite-topped counter, and that is that.
Scarcely a month later, and the whole family is at dinner with Senator Something-or-other. The appetizer, the salad, the soup, and the entrée courses go smoothly. Halfway through the crème brulee, though, the atmosphere changes. Senator Something-or-other gets on the topic of gay rights. He sees Blaine tense up two seats down, the ghost of a bruise still decorating his jaw. The good senator is ranting now, gesticulating forcefully and talking about God's law and sins and things that should be illegal. Then Senator Something-or-other pauses in his rant and looks at him expectantly. He freezes, for a moment. He feels Blaine's eyes prickle the back of his neck. Then he nods, and endorses Proposition 8.
Blaine excuses himself to the restroom and doesn't come back until it's time to leave.
The next year wears on, and Dalton Academy seems to work the change that years of living in high society never seemed to work on Blaine. He wears a blazer, even when outside of uniform. That wild hair is firmly gelled back. He spends time with heterosexual, wealthy, polite prep school boys with names like Wesley and Thaddeus. Certain things don't change, though. He sings louder than ever. He decorates his room with glossy posters of male pop idols. And in that year, Blaine doesn't speak more than five words in a row to him.
He knows most other fathers would have initiated a conversation. But he won't, he can't. The gulf between them cannot be crossed. And whenever he looks into his eyes, he can only think that word, gay, and his skin is prickling.
One afternoon, he comes home from work early. Cooper has long since left for college. Lilly is out shopping. The house should be quiet. But he steps inside and he hears talking, giggles, the wet smack of a kiss and the thundering of feet down stairs. Two boys come racing downstairs, then stop short when they see him and socked feet go skidding across marble tiles.
Even under that olive skin tone, he can tell Blaine is pale.
The boy next to Blaine, the boy whose elbow Blaine is clinging on to for dear life is somehow everything that he expected: slick hair, fine bones, a heather-grey sweater he's positive he saw on the cover of the Vogue magazine that sits on Lilly's nightstand.
Some things surprise him, though. Like the fact that this boy is tall enough to look him in the eye. Discomforting blue eyes are meeting his, judging him, in the way that only a Fortune-500 man has ever dared stare at him. A stubborn chin lifts.
And as quickly as they appeared, the two boys have disappeared, and the front door is slamming before he can say anything.
The tire on his tasteful Lexus goes flat somewhere around Lima. Lucky for him, he is stuck mere yards from an auto-repair garage. Hummel Tires and Lube, the peeling sign reads. The man at the front is rough-hewn but polite, blue overalls smudged with oil and a baseball cap covering a bald pate. He gives his name to the man, and then something shifts. Burt Hummel's eyes are shuttered, his face impassive. But disapproval rolls off of him in waves. There's something forebodingly familiar in that gaze, he thinks. Perhaps the man was related to someone steamrollered by his company. He drives home slightly shaken.
A few nights later, pressed up against Lilly's bare shoulder blades, he remembers the boy who left with Blaine. He mentions it to Lilly. That was Kurt, she says. Kurt Hummel. Did he tell you? he asks her. No, she admits, and her voice is soft and bruised like falling petals. He left his Facebook open.
Hummel. Hummel Tires and Lube. His brain finally makes the connection. His dreams are haunted by a father and son, shuttered eyes following him.
He's been away on a business trip for weeks. Lilly calls him at some point. She mentions West Side Story as casually as she can, mentions that Blaine has the male lead. She tells him that she has an extra ticket. He can come watch, if he's home by the next night.
Five thirty in the morning, exhausted and with stubble dotting his chin, he slips in the front door. The jet lag hasn't gone away. In his tired daze it occurs to him that he could slip upstairs, give Blaine a kiss on the forehead in his sleep. He hasn't done that since Blaine was still in diapers.
He pads upstairs, pushes open the cracked door, and stops. Bathed in the watery light of a coming dawn, two boys are cocooned in the sheets, bare limbs all tangled together. They are breathing deep and slow, and a little smile is on Blaine's face, the kind of smile he's never seen before. He reels back from the door.
Back in his own room, he takes two Tylenols with a tall glass of water and sinks into the mattress, into a deep, dreamless sleep. He forgets what he saw. He forgets about West Side Story.
It's six thirty Friday evening, and he, Lilly, and Blaine are waiting on the doorstep of a modest suburban house, cheesecake in hand. Lilly is the one with the courage to ring the doorbell, not him. He's more thankful than he would have believed possible when shuttered eyes don't answer to door. Instead, it's a woman with neat brown hair and a kindly face. She introduces herself as Carole. Lilly immediately takes to her.
They are invited in, and he can't help it, can't help but judge on reflex all the furnishings he knows that added together don't cost as much as his bookshelf, a living room the size of his bathroom. Lilly can read his thoughts, somehow, and she is frowning at him.
Blaine is frowning, too, but the same pale boy materializes at the top of the stairs and Blaine's eyebrows un-knit, and Blaine has that little smile again. He has to turn away. It's too much for him to comprehend.
Dinner is a near-silent affair on his part. Lilly and Carole keep a constant, comfortable banter, and that unlikely jolly green giant of a boy is clearly trying to make the other two boys relax, but nothing can un-glue his own shut jaw. The cheesecake is served, and Blaine picks at it only half-heartedly. Blaine once ate an entire strawberry cheesecake by himself.
He knows Lilly's frown is following him when he excuses himself to the restroom. He's almost afraid to come out. The fact that he's afraid to leave the bathroom doesn't escape him as ironic, when his son was afraid to leave the closet.
When he leaves the bathroom, the stepbrother has retreated upstairs. The pew-pew of an old fashioned video game ever so faintly filters down through the ceiling. Lilly and Carole have claimed the living room, nestled in the squashy couches that wouldn't be caught dead in his own house and chatting about nothing and everything. There is the clink of silverware, and he knows that the other two and Burt must be cleaning the table.
The kitchen door is open, though, and he pauses. He peeks in. Burt Hummel is there. He's not gruff and authoritative anymore, but as soft a man as any could be. His large, square hands are resting on Blaine's shoulders. And then Blaine is ducking his head and Burt Hummel has pulled him into a loose hug.
He hears footsteps come to a halt in front of him, and the other boy is standing there, arms full of plain plates and sturdy silverware. Those eyes are fixed on him again, a malediction.
He looks back into the kitchen, and it hits him with a spiraling blow. That his son is standing there with a man whom he's known scarcely a year. Blaine is standing there with Burt Hummel and he looks so much more like a boy with his father than he ever looked with Everett Anderson.
He looks back to the boy standing in front of him, and the eyes are still there, the jaw is still set firmly. That blue is burning, burning a hole right through him, letting the hot air he's filled himself with steam out, and his shell is left behind, empty and ashamed.
He doesn't know why he's saying this, doesn't know why he's telling this to a boy who wasn't yet an embryo when he'd lived two decades and then some, but he knows he means it when he says
I've failed.
It's nine o'clock on a Friday night and Everett Anderson has failed.
Hopefully the present tense wasn't too awkward?