An amused Jim watched as his adorable wife raced about their house in a cleaning frenzy, swiping imaginary dust bunnies from every surface before readjusting all of their bric-a-brac just so. He looked around in appreciation.

In the past two weeks, Melinda had repainted walls, brought home inventory from the store to freshen the décor, and reupholstered the sofa. He had barely managed to stop her from refinishing the floor. Granted, the house looked great, but she had been in a manic state for almost a month and, frankly, he was getting a little worried.

"Don't say it," she sang, as she skipped toward the kitchen closet to grab the vacuum.

He got up and shot after her, beating her to the door and wedging himself between it and her.

He arched a brow. "So don't make me."

She pouted and at last sighed. "Okay, so I might – I stress might – be going a little overboard."

His brow arched higher.

She deflated. "Or maybe a lot." She rolled her eyes. "But come on! I'm so excited!" Her eyes turned pleading. "Just be happy for me?"

He grinned. "I am. I know how much you've been looking forward to Kurt moving to Grandview."

She whirled on her heel and dashed over to the stove to wipe it down again. "He's the only family I have," she said quietly. "Well, that counts, at any rate. I just want him to see how happy I am, how happy you make me, and how well we're doing."

Jim frowned. "Is there any reason he'd think otherwise?"

"Well, no," she admitted, "but I guess I just want to impress him. And, okay, I know he's not the only family I have, but he's the only one with whom I'm in regular contact. We're spread out all over the country and almost never get to see each other."

Jim nodded. He remembered how lonely Melinda's side of the aisle was at their wedding. Friends she had in abundance; she made them just by walking into a room. Family had always been more difficult for her.

"He's my favorite cousin," she added, "and we've always been very close, even if we hardly see each other." She turned toward him, eyes dancing. "And of all the places he could have to school, he picked Rockland!" She bit her lip. "I just hope he doesn't come to regret it."

"Why would he?"

"He turned down Harvard, Jim. He turned down all the Ivy League schools, and Oxford and the Sorbonne. Rockland is a great school, yeah, but it's still … Rockland."

Jim bobbed his head. "Okay, I understand what you're saying, but Kurt is the kind of kid who puts thought into what he says and does. I don't think he'd come here if he didn't truly want to."

"But what if it's horrible and he comes to resent it and me?"

He crossed the room and placed his hands on her shoulders. "Honey, I love you, but you're being ridiculous. Kurt chose Rockland because they pursued him. Hard. They really wanted him and he responded to that.

"He may have applied just because the school is near you but, and please don't take offense, would he really spend the next four years in a place he didn't want to be, studying at a school in which he had no interest, just because it's close to you? There are better schools two hours away in the city. And he applied to and was accepted at those."

She gnawed on her lip. "He's lived in a small town his entire life. He always looked forward to getting out of Lima. What if Grandview suffocates him just as much?"

"Grandview isn't Lima," he said reasonably. "You know Kurt didn't want to move too far away because he's still worried about his father, even though Burt's health is just fine. Ohio is within driving distance, Grandview is larger than Lima and more sophisticated, and if he really feels deprived of culture, he can drive into the city whenever he wants."

"But what if …"

"Mel," he said sternly, "stop dreaming up scenarios in which Kurt will be miserable here and just be happy he's happy. You know why he chose Rockland. They gave him a full ride, are allowing him to design his own major and even some of his own classes, and he's looking forward to learning from Payne."

She scoffed. "That'll change once he meets Rick."

Jim snickered. "Okay, probably, yeah, but Rockland is allowing Kurt to write his own ticket. They also agreed to let him take as much time as he wants to earn his degree. You know he doesn't want to go to school full-time. He wants to travel and do other things. He has the money and the intelligence to do that, so just support him, okay? That's all he needs."

Melinda scowled. "You know what his friends said to him."

"Then they're not really his friends," Jim argued. "They're jealous and tried to hide it by picking apart his plans. I'm just glad he had the sense to tell them off and do what he wants. Not everyone's college trek is the same. Kurt knows what he wants to do with his life. He doesn't even have to work if he doesn't want, but he does. He just wants to pursue a field that means something to him."

He blinked. "Although Comparative Mythology and Folklore is a rather … eclectic and … obscure field." He shook his head. "I don't pretend to understand his interest, but I know he'll do well."

She looked away.

"Mel?"

She winced. "There's something I never told you about Kurt."

He felt his heart rate increase for some unknown reason. "Which is?"

Melinda was silent for several long moments. Jim waited with feigned patience.

She looked up and into his eyes. "He sees them too."

A flabbergasted Jim sat on the sofa and stared into space as Melinda paced before him, trying to justify herself.

"I know I should have told you," she repeated, "but we all agreed a long time ago not to tell anyone without Kurt's permission. At the time, he was a child and didn't understand what that meant, how it would change how people look at him."

She plopped down next to him. "After a while, we just stopped talking about it. I know it sounds stupid, but I honestly never thought to mention it. I wasn't trying to hide it from you; I just put it out of my mind a long time ago, worried about what it meant and what it meant for him." She shook her head sadly. "I should have paid closer attention."

He snapped out of his fog, now concerned. "Why? Is Kurt okay?"

She slowly exhaled. "Jim, Kurt's abilities are … considerable. We try not to dwell on them, on what they'll mean for him later in life, as well as his children, if he ever has any."

"What does that mean?" he demanded. "Is he more powerful than you or something?"

She eyed him. "I know you're not accusing me of being jealous."

"Of course not, but you have to admit that you safeguard what you can do rather zealously. Is he less powerful than you? Is that it?"

She shook his head. "You never met his mother, Suzanne. She died right before I started college, but her abilities were on par with mine." Her eyes turned distant. "Kurt has her abilities – my abilities – but those aren't the only ones he possesses."

His brow furrowed.

"Kurt can see ghosts like I do, and he crosses them over, but that's a very small portion of what he does." She looked down. "He also has Allison's gifts."

He paled and swallowed heavily. "Jesus."

He'd never met Allison. She lived in Phoenix with her family and was older than Melinda by almost ten years. He knew the woman enough to hold a polite telephone conversation. He knew Allison had three girls, all of whom had shown some psychic talent, and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't concerned about what that meant for any children he and Melinda might one day have.

He also knew Allison's abilities were darker than those of his wife. Her dreams and visions were always littered with rape and murder, extreme violence. She had gone to work for the District Attorney's office to try and bring justice to those spirits who sought her out, but they had taken their toll. Allison had been stalked and harassed by different offenders. She had been outed by a remorseless hack journalist who'd had an audience far greater than the blogger who had fixated on Melinda.

Christ, the woman had even had a stroke.

"Mel," he whispered, "he's only eighteen."

"I know," she said, closing her eyes, "and the things he's seen, Jim … they're horrible. I know I've been the recipient of some truly heinous visions, but he was a child dreaming of rapists and murderers in all their savage glory. He was a baby. I know it devastated Allison."

"It's not her fault!"

"Of course not," Melinda agreed, "and neither Kurt nor his father ever blamed her, but she's always been very close to Kurt. She was worried how much of her abilities the girls would inherit, and Kurt started showing signs very early. He is much more powerful than the girls. He's almost at Allison's level now and is less than half her age."

His face softened. "You're worried about what he'll see here."

She gave a bleak nod. "It's getting weird around here, Jim, even for me, and you know that. The accidents, the signs, the tunnels under the town … Kurt has certain sensitivities that I don't. I don't know what he'll see or how he'll react. This is supposed to be his time, Jim. He's finally out of that hellhole and can live his life on his own terms. What will he walk into?"

"Did you tell him?"

"He wouldn't have listened. If anything, it would have encouraged him to leave Ohio before hanging up the phone. He'd want to help me, protect me. I need to be the one to do that for him."

He knew she was at her wit's end and decided it best to detour the conversation. "Who else knows?"

She shrugged. "All of the usual suspects: Allison, of course; Camille, Brenda, Myka, and Megan. Rick and Jessica at least suspect. We kept it from Patrick for obvious reasons, but Kurt saw him when he went out to California to look at schools and told him. And Alex and Olivia know. We've tried to limit it to those who either have their own abilities or are in some position to protect him if he were ever compromised."

He nodded. It made sense. "I still think you're worrying too much, honey. Kurt is a smart kid. He knows what you can do and I think he'd ask for help if he needed it. Just relax and enjoy having him here."

She nodded, though it was strained.

He prayed she was overreacting.

Melinda's joy and anxiety only increased over the next week as Kurt's arrival drew near. Everyone noticed and questioned it, but she kept mum, as did Jim at her insistence. It was one thing for them to know she could see and talk with the dead, but she wasn't outing her cousin. Even if her friends would be understanding, it wasn't her decision to make.

She knew Kurt had kept his secret from even his closest friends. Inevitably, it had interfered with some of those relationships. His stepbrother Finn, whom Melinda had never met, sensed that Kurt was holding back, decided Kurt didn't really like him, and now was not speaking to him. Melinda had never heard anything so childish in her life.

If she knew the other boy, she would have booked down to Lima to smack him hard across the face. From some of the things Kurt had told her, Finn really needed a good smack.

His former best friend Mercedes suspected Kurt was keeping secrets from her and had allowed her imagination to run away with what those secrets might be. She had accused him of all sorts of ridiculous things, all of which were designed to hurt her. This had only reinforced his belief that Mercedes should not be told about what he could do. Instead, he had walked away from the friendship. It had been hard at first, very hard, but he had become stronger for it.

"What's going on in that head of yours?" Delia asked.

Melinda startled, torn from her thoughts. She turned and smiled, rolling her eyes. "Nothing. You know that!"

Delia grinned and shook her head. "Seriously, Mel. All of this over a cousin?"

Melinda immediately went on the defensive and had to force her mouth to close lest she say something she would regret.

Delia saw the resultant anger and widened her eyes. "Wow. He must be some kid."

"He is," Melinda ground out. "I don't have a lot of family, Delia. Kurt has always been very important to me." She raised a brow. "And after the commission he just gave you, he should be important to you."

Delia colored. That commission had been a beautiful thing, ensuring she would be able to cover Ned's prep school tuition until he graduated. So, yes, she was grateful and would certainly do her part to make Kurt Hummel's tenure in Grandview a happy one.

"Sorry," Melinda murmured, wincing, "that was out of line."

Delia blew out a breath. "No, I don't think it was." She smiled. "In fact, it sounds like something I would've said in response to an obnoxious statement like the one I made."

Melinda's lips twitched. "You know what they say. The more time you spend with someone …"

Delia laughed. "What? The more you start to look like them? If that's the case, honey, I'm moving into your house immediately and handcuffing myself to your side."

Melinda rolled her eyes and swatted at her friend.

They fell into a companionable silence for several minutes.

"Delia?"

Delia turned around and frowned when she saw the look on Melinda's face. "What is it, sweetie?"

"Kurt … he knows about me, about what I can do." She took a deep breath. "And he knew Andrea."

Delia's eyes softened. Despite how close she and Melinda had become, Andrea was someone they didn't often discuss. From what she had gathered, Melinda and Andrea had been closer than best friends; they had been sisters. Melinda was still grieving the loss more than a year later, and she was grieving hard. So was Jim, for that matter.

Their relationship with Andrea had been one of those rare ones between a couple and a single person. Andrea and Jim had loved each other like siblings, never jealous of the time either spent with Melinda. They had never competed for her attention or resented the other.

Delia knew that even though Melinda had watched as Andrea crossed over into the Light, she would never truly get over her friend's death.

It must have been so hard, coming into the shop every day where she had been partnered with Andrea. Walking past Andrea's old apartment, still vacant. Even though they had been like sisters, Melinda couldn't grieve with Andrea's family. They loved her dearly and kept in contact, but family was family. It was sometimes hard to reconcile blood with the families you choose for yourself.

Delia loved Melinda and knew she was loved into return, but she couldn't be Andrea. She didn't want to be, nor did Melinda expect her to be, but the woman's figurative ghost lingered between them. Delia also felt sad and guilty for not being able to evince the total belief and support in Melinda's abilities that Andrea had.

She now understood why Melinda was so looking forward to her cousin's arrival. She had never met Kurt. He had found the house online and everything was done through banks and representatives. They had spoken on the phone frequently up through closing, and what Delia knew of him she liked, but she didn't really know him.

"What's he like?" she asked with honest curiosity.

Melinda's eyes lighted with joy, which Delia was pleased to see.

"He's wonderful!" Melinda enthused. "He's very smart, a genius-level IQ. He's funny; no one can make me laugh like he can. He's sweet and kind, at least once you know him. If you don't, well, he can be kind of a bitch."

Delia blinked.

"He's witty and sarcastic. He can be cold and aloof with strangers, but always polite." She sighed. "He's had it really hard, Delia. His mother died when he was very young. The town in which he grew up was very … unkind to him. He's gay."

Delia refrained from saying she had suspected as much during their phone conversations. She wasn't that crass. She frowned. "What did they do to him?"

Melinda's face became etched with fury as she detailed the campaigns of verbal harassment and abuse which Kurt had endured, the vandalism and phone calls, the physical altercations.

Delia was thunderous. What kind of backwater was this place that almost the entire town felt no compunction about attacking a child for something he couldn't control? Something which was of ultimately no consequence or danger to anybody? She felt a surge of protectiveness toward Kurt, unable to keep from imagining how she and Ned would have fared in Burt and Kurt Hummel's predicament.

Ned wasn't gay, at least not that he had told her, but mob mentality could have picked out any trait which they deemed undesirable and made life miserable for her son. She knew how lucky she was that Grandview was as lovely as it was, that she had friends like Melinda and Jim to help her.

"I stopped over at the house this morning," she said.

Melinda perked up. "How's it going?"

Delia smiled. "The renovations are complete! It looks terrific. I think Kurt will be pleased with the results." She paused. "But it's pretty bare. I noticed the things he sent ahead won't really fill a house."

Melinda nodded. "He wants to look at our stock and then visit some estate sales in the area after he gets here. I expect you to come with us and work your magic with the sellers."

Delia grinned, always ready to seek out good bargains. "From what I could tell, his taste is almost exactly like yours: classy and romantic."

Melinda blushed. "Kurt is romantic, but my style is very girly and he's not. I'm lucky Jim lets me get away with as much as he does. Kurt favors Neoclassical, so we'll be looking for lots of white everything."

"Mel, not to be insensitive, but how can he afford all of this? I mean, he paid cash for the house and he's only eighteen!"

Melinda nodded. "Trust funds. Suzanne was the only child of only children for as far back as anyone can remember. She's a direct descendant of Charlemagne by Eleanor of Aquitaine. She inherited all of her family's money, and then Kurt inherited it from her."

"But you have so many cousins."

"Yeah, but we're distantly related. We feel much closer emotionally than we are biologically." She frowned. "Now that I think about it, most of us are only children. I think that's why our parents and grandparents kept such close track of who was born when and to whom, and made sure the kids all felt close bonds. Kurt and I are fourth cousins, but we never think of each other in those terms."

Delia nodded. "It's such a big house, though. Won't he be lonely?"

Melinda sighed. "I don't know. I know that he craves solitude. He didn't have many friends in Lima, but he was always living in a fishbowl. He never felt like he was a part of the community. His mother died when he was a child, he's gay, he's an atheist …"

Delia held up a hand. "Wait, atheist?" She cocked her head. "Yet he knows and believes in what you can do?"

Melinda shrugged. "Kurt doesn't disbelieve the supernatural, only that there's some deity watching over all of us."

Delia frowned and needed to sit down. "And you don't have a problem with that?"

"Not really. I don't know if there's a god or, if there is, whether he or she is magnanimous. I do believe in the Light. I've seen the faces of those who see it when it comes for them. They radiate serenity and joy. That doesn't necessarily mean there's a god overseeing it."

"I don't understand."

"I'm not sure I do, either. You should talk to Kurt about it when he gets here. He believes that what I can do isn't a mystery or anything esoteric. He thinks it's forgotten science, that it's just an extra sense everyone has the ability to possess, but is only … activated … in certain people for whatever reason."

"Like an expressed gene?"

"Exactly."

Couched in those terms, Delia was suddenly not so unsettled about Melinda's, er, talents.

"Kurt believes in balance," Melinda said. "He believes that there are no such thing as coincidences, that whatever energy you put out returns to you eventually, and that the universe operates according to physical laws."

"That for every reaction …"

"There's an equal and opposite reaction, yes, but he reduces it even further: for every force, there is an equal and opposing force."

And, just like that, Delia was unsettled once more. She may not have understood her friend, but she knew Melinda was a good person. If Melinda was right and there was a force in Grandview that meant her harm, it also meant that force was just as strong.

That was terrifying.

Kurt had called ahead and told Jim he was arriving early to surprise Melinda. Considering his wife wasn't easily surprised, Jim decided it necessary to be there and see the look on Mel's face. He knew Melina wasn't exactly a fan of surprises, but felt that this would be a good one.

For once he was working the day shift and popped over to the shop on his break.

"Hey, you!" Melinda squealed, rushing from behind the counter to give him a hug. "I didn't know we had plans."

"We didn't," he said, throwing a wink over her shoulder at Delia, who smiled, "but I thought I'd surprise you." He grinned as he heard a car pull up to the curb. He shifted them so that he was blocking the door. "And here it is now."

The bell chimed a new arrival and Melinda peeked around her husband to see …

"Kurt!"

Kurt beamed and rushed toward her, wrapping his arms around her, lifting her up, and spinning them in a circle. "I've missed you, Mellie," he whispered.

She giggled and blushed. "Since when are you so tall? And so strong! Speaking of, put me down!"

He laughed and complied, returning her to the floor. "I had a growth spurt last year."

"It looks good on you," she said. "You're gorgeous!"

His entire face flushed and she wanted to coo. "I guess it runs in the family."

"I've always thought so," Jim said.

Kurt's eyes lighted. "Jim!"

Jim smiled and gave Kurt a strong hug. He knew the hell the boy had been through, and visions on top of all of that? His respect for Kurt knew no bounds. He dropped a kiss on top of Kurt's head, chuckling when Kurt burrowed against him.

Delia cleared her throat.

"Oh!" Melinda exclaimed, tugging her cousin's arm. "Kurt, there's someone I'd like you to meet. This is …"

"Delia Banks," Kurt said, smiling and holding out his hand. "It's so nice to finally meet you and, may I just say, your picture on the real estate website doesn't do you justice."

A charmed Delia smiled and took his hand. "You may say it. Loud, often, and in public."

They laughed, turning when the bell chimed yet again.

Kurt clucked and raced over toward the door, holding it open and tugging someone inside.

Melinda raised a brow in interest. Could it be, perhaps … a boyfriend! Kurt had a boyfriend!

And a cute one.

Cute and hot, not that she was surprised.

He was slightly taller than Kurt and built like a Greek god. His tight t-shirt made it plain that exercise had done his body good. His hair was a mop of bleached blond that worked with his pale skin and sea-green eyes. He had the most luminous smile she had ever seen.

And it was all directed at Kurt.

She saw so much in that smile, in this boy's eyes, such perfect love and trust. It was so beautiful it stole her breath.

"Mel, Jim, Delia," Kurt began, grinning from ear to ear, "I'd like you to meet Sam Evans, my husband."

End Note: So, I finally wrote a story where Hevans is endgame. They're together and they'll stay together. No missed chances, no stupid misunderstandings, no one coming between them. I'm not killing Sam this time!