Notes: Please know that I am from the San Francisco Bay Area in California, and the things said here are not meant seriously. I love it here, I swear! On terms of where this will end episode-wise, it will most likely end on "Born This Way" when Kurt goes back to McKinley. But fear not, gentle readers, for there will be an epilogue!
"I stood by the strange cradle for a long time, pondering while the snow fell and the cats purred prophecy."
He stopped, and Molly said eagerly, "You took the child home with you, of course, and raised it as your own."
Drinn laid his hands palm up on the table. "I chased the cats away," he said, "and went home alone." Molly's face turned the color of mist.
Wes decides that he doesn't like Blaine's father, before they've even met, because Blaine never talks about him. He talks to him, of course. There are references to "my parents" that most would accept as talking about. There are vaguely detailed red-herrings like "So Lydia called on her vacation and she accidentally sideswiped someone in Dad's car - god, I could hear him yelling at her."
Blaine's mother is a dentist, a naturalized citizen for twenty-three years, and possibly a wrathful goddess considering how terrified Blaine gets at the thought of making her mad. Blaine's oldest sister Lydia is studying at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, and vehemently opposes Blaine coming to visit because of all the Catholics and conservatives. His brother Kyle tries to be there for him outside of photography shoots.
But Blaine's father is like an important prop - always there, frequently referenced, but never really doing anything.
Blaine makes the third call, praying aloud that someone picks up this time. Wes is starting to shiver in his drenched clothes, his breath as misty as the alcohol-induced fog in his brain, and David is barely coherent. Finally his face lights up, and words spill gratefully from Blaine's mouth.
"Dad? Dad, I need you to - oh. Kyle?" Under the surprise in Blaine's voice, there is disappointment - the old, weary kind, like this has happened before. "Dude. Promise you won't tell Mom about this?"
After fifty-thousand repetitions of that, just when Wes thinks he's dead of alcohol poisoning, a blessed change comes: "It wasn't me! It was Wes and his freaky 'predict the future with every bet he makes' thing! ...Okay, it sounds stupid when you put it that way, but -"
"You freaking traitor!" Wes lunges over and punches him in the face. Or attempts to, since his fist meets air and he lands messily on the ground. Blaine's somehow five feet too far - does that mean he knows magic, like Harry Potter? I knew it! He thinks triumphantly. But why is the ground so wet? ...Right, the rain.
Blaine hauls him upright and drags him back to the bench.
"When did you learn how to Apparate?" He asks. "You had to get Hermione to take you everywhere in Book Seven!"
"Not again." Blaine tells Kyle to wait. "Wes, I'm not Harry Potter. You're drunk and close to hypothermia, so what you think is magic is either the whiskey talking or hallucinations."
"I knew there was a reason you're the only sober one!" Wes continues hotly. "Your dad's probably Sirius under Polyjuice Potion or - no, Sirius would've come on his awesome flying motorcycle or fricking Buckbeak by now. Your dad is Uncle Vernon because he's such a bastard -"
"Oh my god, Wes, where did you get that from?"
"- bet you're only getting good grades to keep him from getting worse." He finishes. "If you forget the homework for Stahl's class, I'll totally let you paraphrase my stuff or something! I am not giving Vernon another reason to lock you up!"
Blaine gives him a flabbergasted look and after a moment, he runs his hands through his hair. With the gel washed off in the rain, it's obscenely curly - ie messy, like a certain Boy Who Lived. "Why can't you be a quiet, sobbing drunk? Or at least cooperative like David?"
"I love you, too, dude," David slurs at the mention of his name. "Not in the -"
"David - you've said that, like, eight times already!"
"You're so right, it doesn't even need saying."
"See? Cooperative!" Blaine points in emphasis as David dissolves into content laughter, then goes back to his phone. "Okay, so you won't tell Mom?" His face falls. "Kyle, please stop laughing."
"He's totally Sirius in disguise," Wes insists. "Vernon's exploiting the no-magic-in-front-of-Muggles rule, but Sirius is cool so he's gonna -" Another frustrated groan, and Wes shuts up because he doesn't want to be the recipient of one of Harry's bottled-up angry rants.
Half an hour later Kyle arrives in his Mustang, and the three of them stagger into the back. David needs Blaine to put his seatbelt on, and they don't head back to Dalton for ten minutes because Kyle's laughing so hard.
"Wait..." Wes says, and realizes something awful. "Wait, Harry, does this mean you're not actually gay?"
"Wes, we said to never talk about Rachel's party - oh." He takes a breath and lets it out. "I'm not Harry Potter and I'm gayer than Elton John."
"BRIT! Americans would say Neil Patrick Harris or John Barrowman!" Wes says, and realizes something awful (again). "So you are only leading Kurt on? Oh my god Harry, you can't do that to him! He's got enough to be miserable about!"
Blaine's eye twitches. "Regardless of what my name is, will you please listen to me? I. Like. Dudes. Especially Kurt, my boyfriend, whom I am not leading on and am very happy with!"
The feeling has returned to Wes' fingers, and he flexes them carefully as David speaks. "This explains why you're such a gentleman. 'Cause one - you're British. Two - you had a shit life, and three - you have to go back to Vernon's every summer because Sirius is still a fugitive. Dude," he adds to Kyle, "you don't have to worry about Obliviating us because we won't remember anything anyway."
"Not you, too!" Blaine practically tears his hair out as Kyle shuts the engine off for another fit of laughter. "I'm not Harry Potter! I know Dad isn't the most accepting guy alive, but not everyone's parents are like Mr. Hummel! And he's not that bad! Right, Kyle?"
Kyle is suddenly quiet, and Blaine repeats the question. His voice is fierce, but his eyes betray him with desperate hope. "Right?"
"He could be worse," the photographer says; Blaine leaves him alone, but he is still disappointed. Kyle leans over and grips his shoulder in a peace offering, though his laugh is thinner than mist. "Don't take them too seriously, little bro. They think you're Harry Potter, for Christ's sake."
"You're only fine because they think you're Sirius Black," Blaine counters, but the hurt in his voice is not from who's compared to which fictional character. It is from not getting the answer he wants, and one that opens an old wound instead. One that didn't heal properly, but well enough that Blaine can walk and sing and avoid it every morning.
Wes imagines what goes on under that hair: Hi, I'm Blaine! My dad doesn't abuse me, he just doesn't do anything with me anymore! Luckily I have my mature and considerate friends, Wes and David, to fill the emotional void! Wes is especially awesome because he never tells anyone I stay up staring at photos from when my dad wasn't an estranged jackass! Sometimes Wes finds me asleep on the floor like a puppy waiting for my owner/dad to come back from that dumpster/private school he left me in, and now I'm busy taking care of Kurt because seriously guys, it's not that bad-
"SHUT UP!"
"Oh god, you heard that?" He flounders in terror - sweet god, he promised not to tell anyone! He needs to apologize before Blaine kills him or has an aneurysm-
"Wes, Legilimency isn't real. I can't hear your thoughts, and you can't hear mine." Blaine tells him, then turns away. "David, I get that you 'love me but not in the gay way.' Stop. Saying. It."
And Wes is grateful that David's short-term memory is nonexistent at the moment, but there's a coldness in his bones that has nothing to do with the rain.
"They deserve their fate, they deserve worse. To leave a child out in the snow-"
"Well, if they hadn't, he couldn't have grown up to be a prince. Haven't you ever been in a fairy tale before?"
Kurt wonders what Blaine's dad is like, and why Blaine never really talks about him. Wes and David don't like him - they don't say it aloud, and Blaine is thankfully too oblivious to notice, but on the occasions he mentions something about his dad, Wes' mouth thins and David's hands curl like he's about to crack his knuckles.
He doesn't really want to know what Blaine's dad is like, though. He'd rather continue assuming that he's scum of the earth, because otherwise it means Blaine has no reason to be so polite and upstanding and considerate. And he knows this is real life and people don't always have a reason for being what they are, but he still feels stupid for being afraid to have his fairy-tale romance brought down into normal, everyday life.
Then he wonders where he would be right now if he hadn't been feeling so lonely, so sick of McKinley, so tired of having to hide things from his friends. Because as selfish as they seemed on the outside, worrying more about Prom Queen and glee club and who got which solo as opposed to "why is Kurt so down lately," he kind of likes that they don't have very big problems. They don't deserve the weight on their chests that Kurt has (even if Rachel and Santana come really, really close).
Blaine finds him on a couch in the sophomore's common room, trawling Google at lunch on Friday. "What're you doing?"
He shrugs. "Looking for Dalton's website. It's weird that I haven't seen it before." As he clicks and types, types and clicks, Kurt is increasingly worried that 'Dalton Academy, Ohio,' 'Dalton school for boys,' and even 'private schools in Ohio' aren't getting any results, but then Blaine gives an embarrassed laugh and types 'Ohio schools.' Dalton Academy is the first result. Now Kurt feels kind of stupid, but he takes solace in the fact that he'd have given up and typed that in eventually.
There it is, right on the home page: A pink triangle in a green circle.
Blaine looks at it with a strange expression on his face. "My sister Lydia goes to the Academy of Art in San Francisco, but she takes some classes at a community college - Laney College, in Oakland. Those signs are on every bulletin board they can find."
"Really? It's California, though."
"That's what I said, too." Blaine laughs, but a little sadly.
"Did you want to pack up and head to greener pastures?" Kurt teases, though inwardly he's a little frightened - how would he have met Blaine if he hadn't been at Dalton? It's not like Blaine doesn't have the money to go to California. "Or golden, more like."
"California's the most Catholic state besides the Vatican," Blaine says, "and half of Lydia's classmates make jokes when the teachers can't hear them. 'We need more designers, let's scope out the Pride Parade' or 'I'm not going to be a model for the art classes, I might turn some of them on.' That sort of thing. So it's not much better than here," he finishes apologetically.
"She doesn't stop them?" Part of Kurt's indignance is from his usual 'don't just sit there and take it' response, and part is from the shattering of his expectations.
"She tries." He shrugs and sighs. "When she told Mom, she said Lydia was being too sensitive, so now she jokes about Lydia getting overprotective. Like, 'Lydia, I hope you didn't get into any fights this month about Blaine.'"
"What?" He asks. Blaine's mimicked patronizing is frightfully real, but Kurt's met his mom before! She had to take him to the hospital for a checkup, but she was completely civil and she said Kurt's skin was perfect, and now Kurt knows why Blaine is so short because Mrs. Anderson is Rachel's height.
"She taught us not to complain!" Blaine explains defensively; when Kurt gives a blank (and still mortified) stare, he chases the words down. "Okay, so Mom's really traditional. A lot of older Asians have this mentality that if you're not sick or literally hurt, there's nothing wrong. Mom said -" he stops. "Never mind. It... it's hard for most people to understand if they're not Asian or -" he chuckles, distracted at something, "or British."
"Try me," Kurt offers.
"Mom said that the only reason I got bullied was because they knew I'd complain about it," he begins, and that is understandable. "And that if I ever got teased or made fun of again, I should do it back instead of just ignore it, or figure out why they're doing it so that I can help them instead."
"Wait, wait, wait," Kurt says as things click together in his head. Blaine's suicidal attempt to out Karofsky makes sense now. "So is that -"
"This is why I don't tell people." Blaine halts the discussion at the sight of Kurt's face, twisting his hands. "They'll connect it to something stupid I did and go, 'Blaine, why do you listen to her if you know she's old-fashioned?' I can't not listen to her! She'll just think I'm being a teenager and she'll guilt-trip me into things for the next week." He continues fidgeting - a nervous, undignified, young action that never fails to surprise Kurt.
He doesn't do that in public, he realizes. There is something he likes about that, but Kurt's own hands start twitching. How has Blaine not broken all his fingers yet? He reaches over and tugs him onto the couch. "You need one of those puzzle rings or something."
Blaine laughs and curls his free hand up in embarrassment. His hands aren't delicate like Kurt's; even piano-playing ends up tightening the muscles into wire. But they're big and soft and warm. "So, why were you looking for Dalton's site?"
He sighs. "I can't remember." But he does, so he scans the home page more casually than he feels.
This place
RESPECTS
all aspects of people, including race, ethnicity, gender expression, sexual orientation, socio-economic background, age, religion, and ability.
And as he heads over to Facebook, Kurt feels selfish about being relieved.