"Thanksgiving means family, whether it's with the family you were born with and grow up with, or with the family you acquire, bit by bit, and grow into."
Blaine added another set of creases to the faded, yellowed little letter and placed it carefully in his breast pocket, underneath his red and orange handkerchief square. The bowl of cheesecake scrapings lay between them on the kitchen table, and Kurt dropped his spoon inside so he could clap. "I just love it, Blaine. It's so you. How old were you?"
"I was ten," Blaine said. "My dad's mom, my grandmother, used to do this thing where we'd all write down what we were grateful for and then read it out to each other, over her pecan pie. She died when I was nine."
"So you kept on doing it?" Kurt pulled out a drawer and passed Blaine a clean spoon. "That's lovely."
"That was the last time we did it." Blaine sighed. He ran the spoon's edge through the creamy, apricot-tinted goodness pooling at the bottom of the bowl. Vanilla and spicy nutmeg rode the balmy waves drifting off the oven, folding and wrapping them both in a homey, cozy haze. From out of the corner of his eye, Blaine thought he saw a rosy-cheeked woman mix pecans and eggs and sugar and butter together in an yellow-rimmed plastic bowl; he blinked, and her memory crept away. "My dad was just too torn up to do it again, and my mom didn't want to press him. I re-read this every year after I go back up to my room. I used to love doing the letters – Cooper not so much, but I think he just pretends not to like it."
"That's a shame," and Kurt poured out two mugfulls of warm milk. His blue eyes smiled at Blaine's over the rim, sweet and affectionate. "But you kept all of your letters. You would."
"I've got a scrapbook." His voice flowed and grew stronger as the memories flooded in. "One year I was really, really thankful for my new piano, so I wrote the letter and then played it for everyone. Another year some of my mom's family visited from the Philippines, so they taught us how to make lumpia. We put turkey in it, but it's supposed to be pork." All the parents were watching college ball in the den, and there was laughing and talk and flashes of light bouncing happily off of the wall. "That was, like, all of my letter that year, because I'd never met them before, and my mom's family turned out to be so warm and friendly so I really wanted to thank them for being them." Blaine licked his spoon clean. "This is so good. You might need to make another cheesecake before the day's out."
"Your mom's lumpia, first," Kurt said. "She's going to teach me how to make it tomorrow. I'm so excited. But I have to ask her if there's a vegetable version, for Rachel."
"You'd do better with kare kare," Blaine said. He took a long draught of his milk. "It's an eggplant stew. Mom put Cooper in charge of making it tomorrow. That is, if he doesn't cut his fingertips off. He and his girlfriend are coming in later today. Dad's got the cranberry sauce, Mom the turkey, and stuffing's always my thing."
"Are you asking me to help you stuff?" Kurt wiggled his eyebrows.
Blaine's hand slid up over Kurt's inner thigh, with the faintest of teasing touches, light and deft, and gave it a squeeze. Kurt concealed a delicious little shudder, but Blaine withdrew his fingers just in time to let a knowing smirk dance over his lips. From the middle of the kitchen island, an orange pillar candle flickered, too.
"Only if you return the favor," Kurt whispered, voice pitched low, and Blaine smiled inwardly, letting the want stretch out and then curl up luxuriously and then burn, long and slow, in his gut. "After family. And the best pumpkin cheesecake on earth. And - " The spell wobbled between them and separated, aching, when Michael and Burt yelled in unison at the TV, and their roars, plus the cheers of a far-away, rowdy stadium, broke off that promising line of conversation. Kurt sighed, and Blaine coughed, poked at the remnants of the cheesecakey liquid in the bowl. "This is your mom's recipe, isn't it? I know you miss her."
"I make it every Thanksgiving," Kurt said softly. He curled up his hand in Blaine's, and Blaine let his thumb rub over Kurt's knuckle in tiny circles, spreading his warmth. "My dad – well, you know. He kept everything of hers, except for that. I was nine, and he could barely talk about it – but I made my dad drive me to the store and get cream cheese, sugar, eggs, pumpkin, spices. We made a mess, and it was too sweet, and I forgot about the hot water bath it sits in. But the cheesecake wasn't important. Not that year. So I always make it."
"Last year, too?"
"Drag queens love cheesecake." The white stone on his cat's eye brooch winked at Blaine. "They even ran out and bought more cream cheese when we'd run out. And Rachel couldn't eat it, but I figured out some kind of a vegan version, with the soy kind. It turned out all right."
"I'm sad Finn isn't here," Blaine said suddenly. "He ought to be here. I should give Rachel a call later."
"We will," Kurt replied. "Or we'll get her to come over later tonight. We'll talk about Finn. About the year we let him deep-fry the turkey in the backyard and it went up in flames while our neighbors laughed at us over the fence. Or how he'd toss a ball with Dad in the backyard. Carole would referee and they'd argue with her about the score. Or about the time he walked down the hallway in his boxers for Rocky Horror. I miss him, too."
"He'd have been the best best man." Blaine reached over and brushed Kurt's temple with his lips, a butterfly of a kiss.
"He's gone," Kurt said slowly, "For a long time, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't breathe. I thought I was going to die at the funeral. It's not like what Rachel must have felt. But I'm glad to have known him." Kurt leaned in against Blaine and breathed in: it smelled crisp and citrusy and clean, Blaine's cologne, and in the background, vanilla and nutmeg and laughter and a friendly shadow, Finn's ghost, peeked in to take an inquisitive sniff. Kurt thought he heard the tap of drumsticks against a crashing cymbal. "Did I ever tell you? I thought he was like Superman."
He felt Blaine put his arm, securely, around his waist. "We'll just have to be our own superheroes from now on."
They both fell silent, watching the swirl of rusty red and yellow-spotted brownish leaves swirl and rustle, briskly, beyond the French doors to flatten themselves against the glass. Blaine's yard was huge, and backed up on a woodsy ravine, starred with greenish-brown trees leaning against the wind and poking up holes through a sky dressed with filmy white wisps of cloud. Kurt could hear the echoes of the neighbors' kids, screaming with laughter as they played monster tag. Bright bands of green and pink and blue flashed through the slats in the fence. He stilled his breath slow enough to listen to a little girl's high-pitched giggle; she made him smile, and he found that Blaine, too, was breathing in time with him so he could listen, too.
"What's everyone else up to for Thanksgiving?" Kurt felt a little phlegmy, and he pulled the loose woolly edges of his sweater around him in an unconscious attempt to chase the chill away. It was just below freezing in Lima, but he was still thinking about hot chocolate, and impending cheesecake, and Blaine. Kurt half-closed his eyes and let Blaine's voice wash over him.
"Tina and Sam and Artie and everyone else are going to come over Friday evening." Blaine cheered up, and his eyes glowed, turned to greeny-gold. "They'll want to show you what they got from Black Friday. Unique's mom makes a chocolate pie that melts in your mouth. I forgot to ask Santana, but she'll come – ask her for me, you'll see her sooner than I will."
"Maybe Mike and Tina will talk this time," Kurt mused. The talk of their friends helped dispel his sadness over Finn, just a little, but it was hard. It was always going to be hard, because Finn's chair at the table would now sit empty, year after year, but the thought of their friends being there, for them, with them, warmed him too. His fingers clutched at Blaine's, and he willed his voice to be calmer, steadier. Sam's humorous face floated in front of Kurt's vision, which helped. "But it's not likely. Mike and Sam will talk, as if they don't tweet each other all day, every day. Tina will glare at Mike, and she'll flounce off and talk to that nasty Kitty girl and Quinn, and then all three of them will turn their backs on them. Right?"
"Jake and Puck will play guitar," Blaine chuckled, "and it will get weird when Marley comes over, because Marley and Jake aren't talking. Jake will try to ignore Marley and throw looks at Ryder, and Ryder and Unique will talk about everything except the thing they want to talk about, but it's all awkward because Ryder and Marley dated." Blaine loved peace, but he also knew he wanted all of their friends there, together, laughing and smiling, even if they weren't getting along with each other. "Britt will ask Santana about Dani, and who knows how that will go. Tina will make eyes at Cooper, like she did last Thanksgiving, and then Mercedes will pull her aside and then they'll go giggle in my bedroom with the door shut – "
"- and Artie will film everything he can before he and Kitty disappear into the bathroom and we all ignore the noises coming out of there. Yes."
"Some traditions don't ever change," Blaine smiled, and tightened his hold around Kurt's slender waist. "Rachel will need to sing, and then we can all pull out the karaoke machine and eat pie and sing until we're stuffed. And then Santana will whisper in your ear: she swears there's something between Rachel and Sam and – "
"- and then we'll ask her to shut down the drama for another day, and Mercedes will call Matt in California and put him on speaker so we can all say hi and ask him when we'll hear his single on the radio."
"I like this story you're telling me. And then we can get everyone to help my parents and Cooper and Amanda put up the Christmas tree. It'd be better than last year's Thanksgiving."
"Back when we were trying to talk, and I was trying to say that I still love you."
"I knew," Blaine said simply. "I knew, when I saw you first on that staircase. Every day with you is just another affirmation of something that's always been true."
"Especially Thanksgiving," Kurt finished. "And family, all of our families, and now, that's you, too."
"Thank you for you." Blaine smiled against Kurt's ear.
"And thank you. For you. And for taking the cheesecake out of the oven for me." The oven timer buzzed, and Blaine laughed as he got up from the stool. A dream of the future flew in on silent wings, just then, and chased all of their shadows out of the room.