Title: Difficult Truth
Words: ~2,500
Rating: PG-13 (swearing)
Summary: Kurt and Blaine continue on their journey, Kurt faces insecurity head on and finally makes a decision. Burt remembers when Kurt was small.
Disclaimer: I don't make any claim to these characters.
A/N: Sorry this took so long, I was on vacation and had no internet.

By Sunday night, when Kurt and Blaine were turning in, Kurt had yet to compose a reply to the message he had received from Finn. Blaine had cooked dinner and they had eaten quietly together, as comfortable conversing as they were comfortable enjoying each other's silence. After eating, they had done dishes together and watched the news. All in all, it was a relatively quiet evening, yoga sex notwithstanding. Kurt was undressing, gently dropping his dirty clothes into the hamper, when Blaine decided to ask about the e-mail. He hadn't wanted to bring it up and upset his partner, but he also felt that maybe sending the e-mail could give Kurt some sense of closure. Maybe having to think of an answer would assist him in figuring out if he really wanted this. He looked up from where he laid on the bed, and smiled lightly in the dimness of their bedroom. "So, are you going to get back to Finn?" he tried not to sound like he was pressuring, just as if he were curious, but he knew it came out all wrong when Kurt's body stiffened.

Blaine glanced down at the novel in his hands, tried to seem nonchalant about the whole conversation. But the truth was that there was nothing nonchalant about this. They had both been on edge since Kurt's admission, neither one knowing where the next day might take them. Blaine didn't know how to be there for Kurt when Kurt couldn't even be there for himself. He sighed and shrugged his shoulders a few times, still waiting for an answer from Kurt, who was peeling off his socks. "I told you Blaine, I don't know what to say to him," he finally answered quietly. It was almost a whisper.

"Kurt, I want to ask you a question. I don't want you to get…mad at me though." Blaine put his bookmark on the page he was reading, shut his book, and set it down on the nightstand. He swallowed past the thickness of the fear in his throat and waited for permission to continue.

Kurt shrugged, too, but it was stiff and difficult to read – his back was still to Blaine as he pulled off his underwear. Finally he turned around, moving to get into their bed. "I promise I'll try not to."

"I guess that's the best I'm going to get?"

Kurt nodded and moved to turn off his bedside lamp and they were suddenly both swallowed in darkness. Blaine wasn't sure if that would make things easier, or more difficult for him. But he had started the conversation, and there was no way that he wasn't going to finish it now. "How can you not know?" his voice was higher than usual in his nervousness, his discomfort buzzed between the two of him. He didn't want to hurt his fiancé, his didn't want to insult Kurt, but he was confused and trying to find something, some life line, to grab on to, so that he could understand.

Luckily Kurt seemed to take the question the way Blaine had meant it. When he replied, he didn't sound angry, or hurt, just contemplative. "The truth is," he said, his hand searching for Blaine's under the blankets, "the more I think about it, the more I think I'm just…lost. Did you ever think about being a girl?"

Blaine squeezed his hand back. "Don't just give me the answer you think I want to hear."

"I'm not."

"Yes," Blaine turned to look at Kurt's face, even though the room was pitch black, and he couldn't even see the man's silhouette. "I thought about it once or twice. But never seriously."

"I thought about it a few times, too. But today, when I was with you, I was thinking back on all the times we've been together. I don't feel uncomfortable in this body, Blaine. I don't feel wrong. I think…I think I'm just not your traditional male."

"Kurt, are you telling me that you don't want to get a sex change?"

"I'm telling you that I don't know." Kurt's breath hitched and his hand fumbled for a moment with Blaine's. Suddenly his head was resting solidly on Blaine's chest. "I'm telling you that I don't know, and I'm confused. I'm so confused."

Blaine ran his free hand through Kurt's hair and murmured shushing sounds. "It's gonna be okay," he mumbled, wanting to believe himself, "we'll figure this all out."

At four o' clock in the morning, so his alarm clock said, Blaine rolled over to find Kurt's side of the bed empty and chilled to the touch. He heard the clicking of keyboard keys in the living room, and saw an electric glow underneath of their closed bedroom door. He pulled his pillow to his face and tried to ignore the twisting in his gut. He blinked, biting his lip, and rolled to face the wall, closing his eyes. He could get out of bed and go to see what Kurt was doing, but it was clear to him, no matter how it hurt him, that this was something Kurt needed to do completely and utterly on his own. Whatever it was that he was doing on the other side of that closed door, he clearly wanted his privacy. Blaine closed his eyes and willed himself back into a restless sleep.

They had been seeing the therapist for 2 months when she offered Kurt the opportunity to begin HRT. He was hesitant at first, but after a lengthy discussion that cost far more than Blaine liked to think about, it had been agreed that it was the best course of action to take. Blaine had rushed off to work after therapy that day, already late for his classes. He had promised Kurt that he would come straight home after work, so that they could continue their discussion. When he opened the door to the apartment, he found his partner sobbing on the couch. Bawling in the way that small children cry when it is all they know how to do. Crying so loudly and unabashedly that his breath came in dry heaves, snot and spit on his face, shoulders shaking. Kurt was sobbing so fiercely, Blaine feared that he might vomit from the force of it all. He dropped his briefcase on the floor, not even bothering to shut and lock the door, and ran over to the couch, wrapping his arms around Kurt.

He swiped gently at the man's cheeks. "What is it, Kurt? Oh, God, what happened?" Kurt looked at Blaine and looked at his own hands, seemingly incoherent. He shook his head and let out a shuddering gasp before collapsing in on himself. "Kurt, please, tell me," Blaine begged him, rubbing slow circles on the small of his back anxiously. "Please, honey, what is it?"

"I can't do it!" Kurt dragged out the words, each one punctuated by a painful sounding sob. "I thought I wanted this, but I. Don't." He gripped onto Blaine's jacket, and pressed his head against his fisted hand, knocking his forehead against his knuckle.

"What don't you want Kurt?" Blaine didn't want to ask the question. Was Kurt talking about their marriage? Things had been strained recently, yes, with work being so busy for both of them, but Carole was planning on coming out soon to help with some of the planning, and everything had seemed normal enough. Smooth enough. They were still talking and communicating, even if Kurt had been a little more closed off than usual. Blaine tried to ignore the sudden sensation that he had to vomit, his stomach trying to claw its way out of his body through his mouth. He put a hand to his mouth and mumbled through his fingers, "What can't you do?"

"This whole sexual reassignment."

Blaine couldn't help it. He swallowed the anxiety and with his relief came a bark of happiness. "You, you don't want the surgery? That's what you mean?"

"Yes!" Kurt bellowed and began crying anew. Blaine leaned back on the couch and let out a gentle breath.

"That's alright," he said, unsure of how else to respond.

"We've spent all this money, told these people, now what? What will they think?"

"Who cares what they think?" Blaine asked, reaching to grasp Kurt's chin and tilt his head up to face him. "Who gives a shit?" He wiped once more at his lover's face. "You do what feels right to you Kurt Hummel. And if you finally know exactly how you want to live your life, if you feel like this is the body you were meant to be in, if you don't feel lost anymore, and they aren't happy for you? Fuck them. They don't deserve you in their lives."

"I feel like everyone will think I was lying. Or making light of this kind of thing. I didn't mean to."

"Nobody will think that." Blaine kissed him, tasting the saltiness of tears on his lips before leaning back to pull Kurt with him so that they were reclining on the couch. "Nobody will think that."

~1999~

Burt felt his small son's hand gripping tightly onto his as they walked through the overcrowded mall one evening, just before Mother's Day. The five year old was determined to find the perfect gift this year and for the last three nights had begged his father to drive him to every mall in Lima until they found it. Burt could hear something and felt a tugging in the palm of his hand, but the chatter of the hoard of people blocked out what his son was saying. He tugged the young boy over to the wall, so as to be out of the way, and crouched down. "What was that?" he asked, "I couldn't hear you?"

"I said," he put his hands on his hips, attitude evident from the day he was able to hold his head up, "can I have that dress?"

"No. Wait, what? What dress? You want a dress?" Kurt pointed emphatically across the walkway, to a small pink princess gown in the window of a dress up store. The manikin wearing it was adorned, also, in a tiara and bright pink shoes. Burt would be kidding himself if he didn't guess that Kurt would be wanting those as well. "Kurt, you don't want that dress. Dresses are for girls. You're not a girl, are you?" He asked, shaking his head.

Kurt glanced at his father and back at the dress, before looking once again into Burt's eyes. "No, I'm not." Burt nodded and took his son's hand, continuing down the walkway. They didn't end up finding a gift for Elizabeth, it seemed all the fun was out of the shopping after that.

That night, once Kurt had been put to bed and was snoring lightly with his teddy suffocating in his grip, Burt sat across from his wife at the kitchen table, trying to sort out their finances so that they wouldn't have to give up the garage. "Kurt did something strange today," he told her suddenly. She looked up from the pile of credit card statements sitting in front of her.

"What?" she asked him, raising an eyebrow slightly.

"He asked me to buy him a dress," Burt commented, trying to sound as if it hadn't bothered him the way that it did. "A pink dress."

"I didn't see a dress," she remarked, "when you brought him home today. Was it too expensive?"

"Elizabeth," he put down his calculator, "you can't be serious."

"I am. Where's the dress? How much was it? I'm sure we can find a way to get it for him. His birthday's coming up."

"I told him he couldn't have it. He's not a girl."

"Burt!" She didn't shout, lest she wake their lightly sleeping son, but her husband knew she was seething, none the less. "What the Hell?"

"What? He's not a girl! Girls wear dresses! We'll have a daughter one day, and you can put her in all the dresses you want, Elizabeth."

"Don't you dare! This is not about my yearnings as a parent, this is about your closed mindedness. Kurt can wear whatever he wants to wear. The world is a cruel place Burt, he will be teased for being small, or for having the name Kurt, or for liking the color pink, but I never, never want my son to feel uncomfortable being himself in his own home. He should feel like he can be himself here more than anywhere else."

"Of course he feels like he can be himself here!" Their voices were rising of their own accord.

"Well, he won't anymore, not now that you've told him he can't wear what he wants."

"You know I didn't mean it like that."

"Well that's how I would have taken it, and I'm sure he took it that way, too." Realizing she was standing, muscles tense, Elizabeth forced herself to sit back down. "This isn't up for discussion, Burt. He is our son, no matter what he wants to wear, say, or do. We love him, no matter what. Tomorrow, you are going to go back to that store and buy him that dress. I don't care if you have to use the emergency card."

Burt shrugged but knew arguing back was moot. "Okay."

"I refuse," she said, swallowing at a lump in her throat, "to be part of a marriage with you if you won't encourage Kurt to be everything he wants to be."

Burt looked up and tried to ignore the burning behind his eyes. "Don't worry, Elizabeth," he spoke slowly, "it won't be a problem again. You're right." So many times, arguments had ended that way: Burt conceding defeat to his wife. The difference was, this time he actually meant it.