Disclaimer: I don't own any of Glee.
A/N: It cannot have been, but it feels like forever since I have written and posted last. I am at my parents', have been a lot lately, absolutely no wonder I do not feel inspired. Just desperate. And I am not even sure for what. So while I am here there is junk food to fill the void, and good movies if I am lucky. :(
Soaked
„I can feel it seeping into me again, I didn't think … I didn't know it still could, they still could get back into me like this …." Blaine's wide open eyes brim over then. „I feel so sick."
Kurt feels sick too, on the other end of this skype call. 'I knew I should not have let you go back alone. Why the fuck did I do that?' But Kurt knows why. He is so swamped with work lately, and Blaine had insisted he would be fine … . It had taken no more than two sentences into the call for Kurt to know Blaine is ' … fucking far from it.'
"I want to come home," Blaine sobs, sudden and harsh, knowing he sounds like a four year old away for the first time at summer camp, but he has no energy left to care. "I want to come home."
And for a second Kurt sees a flash of a boy in a Dalton blazer, remembers feeling that way in his first days at Dalton, knows too Blaine himself never had felt that way back then. Dalton was his home for a long while, more than any other place – before Kurt and his family, their home had come along and slowly become his too, for a while.
Kurt is wiping tears from his own eyes as he says softly, "Blaine, Sweety, I'll call Carole and ask her to pick you up, okay?"
"She said in an emergency, this is hardly …," Blaine starts hesitant.
But Kurt cuts him off, "Sweety, this is an emergency. You being miserable is not okay, and it matters, you matter to Dad and Mom just as much as I do."
Blaine has grown quiet, head hanging, and Kurt watches him sniffle and try to calm himself with deep breaths, still cut short by half-sobs, hiccupped.
When Blaine looks back up, eventually, and finds Kurt's steady gaze on him, he gives a short nod, a whispered "Okay."
"Want me to stay on with you till she can get there?"
Another whisper, "Please."
So Blaine watches on as Kurt calls Carole, hears him ask her to call him again when she is at the city hall, a janitor's closet of which Blaine is currently sitting in, has locked himself away in, from prying eyes.
Blaine had gone there proud, to his first family reunion after four full years in New York, the ring Kurt has only recently gifted Blaine with glinting new on his finger, Blaine excited and happy answering every time he had been asked, "Yes, I am engaged." He has had to watch, all afternoon, his relatives' faces fall every time he had answered the next question too, "No, my boyfriend and I have not set a date yet." Boyfriend – a single word cutting every conversation short.
Blaine's breaking point though had been reached only when his father had come over to him, "Take that thing off, Blaine!"
'That Thing,' Blaine's heart had instantly begun to hammer wildly with sickness, his father's words echoing in his head. To Blaine, far worse than having to hear his father speak these words is that Blaine knows that his father does not know nor understand, or even care to try and do so, that he is asking Blaine to rip his heart out. Like he has never known he has been doing for so much of Blaine's life already, "Take off that bowtie." "Put down that magazine." "Stop dancing around the house." "Stop singing." "Stop baking." "Stop breathing."
That last one Blaine knows his father has actually never said, but he might as well have, every single other command he had given out meaning to Blaine … just that. And more. "Piss of already, we are all better of without YOU anyway." That he had said to Blaine, once, years ago, when Blaine had told them first he was engaged now "… to Kurt. I will always love him."
So there had been Blaine's parents, his family. And then there had been Dalton, Kurt, and New York. And Blaine had almost forgotten what it had felt like, choking on your every breath.
And so he had thought he could come to this family reunion, even alone. After all, he has grown, he has changed, he knows that, is absolutely certain. As much as he knew before coming that these people here might very well try to make him doubt all that, doubt himself all over again, and everything new and old he has learned.
Others, settled into their lives here for decades already, have not changed, not one bit. Blaine has always loved that about Burt and Carole most, their will to keep learning, and growing with it, not least for Kurt, '…for us.'
Ohio. The atmosphere here, no matter how clean and lovely the air, downright enjoyable, does feel colder and gloomier than it ever has. It is the downside to being happy now, in New York, with Kurt. A downside Blaine had not known could, would exist, before feeling it today.
"Sweety? Blaine?" Kurt had watched quietly as his fiancé had slipped into thoughts, unsure if ripping him from them was the right thing to do. But now that Carole has called Kurt he needs to speak up, "Blaine. Carole is outside in her car. She is asking if she should come and find you or … ."
Blaine's voice is rough, "I'll be right out."
Blaine hears Kurt echo his response to Carole, as he gets onto shaky feet. Saying goodbye to Kurt is a blur, as is the grab for his duffle bag from the floor, storing the laptop away in it again. Blaine feels sick knowing he could not even make it through half a day around his father without being reduced to a sobbing mess.
Everything feels colder here.
Probably more so because Blaine knows different now, has over the years had enough time to allow it to truly sink in, replace the chill he had been so used to almost all his life in Ohio. Today he truly can see the things missing from the home he has today not even gotten to set a single foot into, encountered only in the people making and breaking it for him.
He does not look up when he rushes outside, pushing through the crowds past people, decidedly keeping his head down, even when his name is called once, … twice. 'I don't belong with you.'
Carole is standing outside her car when Blaine approaches, lets him put the duffle bag into the back before pulling him into a bone-crushingly tight hug. "Burt will be home in a couple hours, ready for a family Friday night dinner? You will stay for the weekend right? We are so excited to have you here again, Sweetheart."
Blaine sniffles, chocked up nods into Carole's shoulder wordlessly.
"Great," Carole says, warm and enthusiastic.
The drive is quiet, Carole keeps playing her favorite instrumental music. "Relaxes me after work," she explains beaming at Blaine's surprised look.
It is only after another bone-crushing hug, this time from Burt, and a wonderfully long hot shower, curls free, that Blaine is truly breathing calmer again.
Eyes still red from crying that hard in the shower Carole had heard and knocked once asking if he needed something, anything, Blaine sits down at the dinner table.
It is the moment that he reaches for the bread for the first time, not four minutes into dinner that Burt says before Blaine can even take the first bite of it, "So my boy finally got you that ring he has not been able to shut up about for the last two years."
"Two years?" Blaine had known Kurt had had to safe up for it. He had after all always told Blaine he would not want to buy him any less than the perfect ring. 'Two years,' however, Blaine had not known that.
Burt laughs at seeing Blaine's wide eyed expression. "Don't tell me you are surprised.
Blaine shakes his head, eyes still glued to the ring on his finger, tears gathering but smile soft.
"Sweetheart," Carole says, hand reaching softly for Blaine's not bearing the ring.
When Blaine looks up at her, the first tears fall without even a single blink of the eye, Blaine reaching up quickly to wipe them away with the sleeve of his shirt.
"It's okay," Blaine hears Carole say before finding her gaze again, then Burt's as he feels the man cover his other hand with one of his own.
Blaine wordlessly nods, allows all the tears to fall as they sit for a while longer just like this, holding each other, at the family table.