Blaine helped Kurt carry the last of the plates and cutlery to the dinner table, just catching the end of another one of Cooper's stories.
'Are these stories even true?' Kurt whispered to him as they passed the plates around.
'I think they started off as true and then became overly embellished.' Blaine replied with a wink.
'And it set the record for the longest field goal ever scored at my high school.' Cooper grinned, taking his plate from Blaine.
'That wasn't you, that was your friend Simon in his junior year.' Blaine scoffed, taking his seat next to Kurt.
'Yeah, but I was there.' Cooper replied, as if that gave him claim to the victory.
'Kurt set the record in our high school.' Finn said, eyeing the mashed potatoes Carole had just brought in hungrily. 'He was only on the team for a week.'
'Kurt was on the football team? I thought he was a cheerleader?' Cooper asked.
'I only played one game for the football team and I was a cheerleader later in the year.' Kurt replied.
Cooper eyed his little brother jealously for a moment.
'You're dating a cheerleader and a footballer?'
'Ex footballer and cheerleader, but yeah.' Blaine grinned.
'Oh.' Cooper seemed a little lost for words for a few moments before he spoke up again. 'So why only one game?'
'I didn't feel like it was for me.' Kurt said, serving up some mixed vegetables for both him and Blaine. 'In fact it was after that game I came out to my dad.'
Something sparked in Cooper's eyes that made Blaine's stomach clench uneasily. He didn't think he'd like where this was going. He reached over to take a sip of water to settle his stomach.
'Hey, did Blaine ever tell you how he came out to me?' Cooper smirked.
Blaine almost chocked on his water, placing the glass down a little more forcefully than he intended.
'No Cooper, that story isn't for the dinner table.' He said.
'Oh come on squirt, we're all family here.'
Blaine groaned and sank down in his chair. It had been bad enough when Cooper had told their own family this story, let alone Kurt's.
'Go on then, what's the story?' Burt asked, looking genuinely interested and probably thinking it was a nice story about brotherly love.
'Well it was a few days after Blaine's thirteenth birthday.' Cooper started.
'Please don't Cooper.' Blaine whispered, resting his head in his hands.
'And I was looking for a CD of mine in Blaine's room. I knew he had it but I couldn't find it anywhere. I was looking in all the drawers, under the mattress, everywhere he could have hidden it and nothing. I couldn't find it anywhere.' Cooper's smile grew; this was where the story changed from being a normal story to one Blaine didn't want repeating ever, let alone at the dinner table.
'I was only afterwards when I had given up that I noticed something else I hadn't found. I mean, there was no porn anywhere in his room.'
Burt, Finn and Carole laughed, apparently they didn't mind hearing about this over dinner.
'There was nothing, no girly magazines, not even the lingerie section from one of Mom's catalogues. I figured he was just too embarrassed to get something himself so like any good big brother I went out and bought him that months Playboy.'
Cooper looked quite proud to have taken it upon himself to introduce his little brother to porn.
'Well he was thirteen, I figured he needed something and I thought that might be the reason he had been all moody recently.'
Burt chuckled and Kurt ran his hand soothingly over Blaine's back.
'So that evening, after our parents go out I go up to Blaine's room to give him the magazine. I expected him to be overjoyed, after all I have just presented him with his first ever pair of boobs. If I were him I'd have been doing cartwheels around the room.'
Finn laughed loudly, obviously empathising with the job the gift of boobs could bring.
'But Blaine just looks up at me with those big puppy dog eyes and says nothing. I sit down next to him on the bed and ask him what's wrong and he just starts to cry, so I hug him and wait for him to calm down. I thought maybe he wasn't ready for boobs and I had scared him or something.'
Blaine's lips reluctantly quirked into a smile at that. True, he hadn't been ready for boobs; he still wasn't if he was being honest. But that hadn't been why he was crying, he had been scared. For months he had wondered if he was gay. There were no girls at school he fancied, the raunchy cheerleading routines didn't titillate him like all the other boys and he had had more than one wet dream featuring his maths teacher Mr Hyde.
As soon as Cooper had presented him with the magazine, with the picture of the perky young blonde posing topless on the cover, and genuinely felt no attraction towards her he knew he was gay.
The sudden confirmation was a little daunting, now he could no longer hide behind doubt he had to face up to the reality and all of its consequences. Plus the fact he would have to tell Cooper and possibly get rejected by his older brother.
All of the realizations in the few seconds he had stared at the page had been overwhelming and he had done the only thing he felt he could do; he cried in his brother's arms, taking solace in the safety of his embrace for a few moments before his life was sure to come tumbling down.
'Eventually he stopped crying and he looked up at me and told me he thought he was gay. I didn't say anything, I was a little taken back I guess. I had just never really thought about it before. Anyway, I think Blaine took the silence as something bad and told me to leave the room. I did and I could hear him crying through the door. It was quite upsetting.'
'What did you do?' Burt asked.
'I went down to the nearest garage I knew stocked gay magazines and bought him one.' Cooper replied.
The sombre mood that had fallen over the table suddenly lifted as they began to chuckle again. Blaine knew Cooper had this story perfectly formed in his mind, able to tell it to take his audience through the highs and lows to get the best reactions from them.
'I took it to his room and he was spread out on his bed looking miserable. I gave it to him and told him that if he wanted to be gay then it was fine with me, I still loved him and if our parent's had a problem with it then they'd have to go through me.'
'Ah that's sweet.' Carole smiled.
'It was a lovely moment.' Cooper nodded. 'Then he took the magazine off me, kicked me out of the room and locked the door.'
'Cooper! That did not happen!' Blaine cried out, his face heating up as the table roared with laughter.
'Ok, that didn't happen. We did go through the magazine and give all the guys names though.' Cooper laughed.
'I think Daryl was my favourite.' Blaine smiled, remembering the cowboy on page thirty two fondly, earning another laugh from the table.
Everyone was silent for a moment as they tucked into their food.
'You know if you take away the porn that's actually a really sweet story.' Kurt said.
'It is.' Blaine nodded. 'I'm lucky to have a great brother. I still don't think it should be shared at the dinner table though.' He added, kicking Cooper affectionately under the table.
'Oh that's nothing squirt, wait till I include it in my best man's speech at your wedding.'
