A/N: Hey guys! i hope no one minded the two week wait too much. i know it sucks. i'm sorry. but it'll probably stay like this for at least the next few chapters. I also just want to point out that there is some more unfavorable mention of finn in this chapter and no one seemed fussed last time but i still just wanted to put a little disclaimer in here and say that this has nothing to do with cory (even though there are similar themes) and blaine's opinions are harsh and not necessarily mine. so i hope no one is bothered by the finn stuff. it's not very big so i don't think it'll be an issue but i just wanted to be safe. and as always, i'd love to hear from you all.

thanks for reading
-Katie


August 1993


After getting Kurt from the car, Blaine stepped inside the trailer, his boyfriend in tow. Rachel had disappeared to her bedroom and it was eerily quiet. To his right was the living room and kitchen and to his left a narrow hallway that presumably led to the bedrooms. It was small but nothing about it felt cozy. The wallpaper was yellowing like the grass outside. There were a few dishes scattered about, mostly empty mugs, a pile of presumably clean clothes on the couch amongst the dirty ones everywhere else. The furniture was all mismatched, old brown chair, really old and saggy blue couch and the kitchen table and chairs were plastic, forest green lawn furniture. Blaine had spent several hours the previous day outside sitting in the car with nothing else to do but stare at the browning, sparse, gravel pit and he suspected that the table and chairs were better off in here. It was a startling sight. Dating Kurt, Blaine thought he knew what living on a modest income looked like. But Kurt's apartment, although probably no bigger than the trailer, was clean and every piece of second-hand furniture looked deliberate instead of like a tornado had simply picked it up and dropped it down in the living room after adding to its used look. He tried not to judge. Kurt wasn't a single parent after all. But it still looked like Rachel had truly given up.

Catching his eye on the couch, Blaine took a step towards the neon orange baseball hat. Its colour popped amongst its drab surroundings. He picked it up. Across the front, in brown thread, the words 'Waffle Hut' were stitched and perched on top was a stuffed squirrel. It was telling that the brightest thing in this place was the obnoxious uniform of a chain breakfast diner.

"That is the tackiest thing I've ever seen," Kurt whispered, leaning over his shoulder. "Why do the owners of these places think this is a good way to attract customers?"

Blaine smiled at Kurt's disdain. "I don't know," he said placing the cap on his head and turning to face his boyfriend. "It's kinda cute."

"Oh my god."

He stepped closer to Kurt, reaching out for his hips. "You can't tell me you wouldn't want to come in for a treat," he said with a wink.

"Well," Kurt said, reaching up to fiddle with his bowtie. "Maybe if you were serving me and this treat involved some sort of afterhour's activity."

"Ech em!" Blaine turned around to see Rachel had finished getting changed. She was standing at the end of the hall way with her eye brows raised in an unamused way. "Could you maybe not mess with my uniform?"

"Oh," Blaine said in surprise. He had thought the cap belonged to one of his nieces, not his thirty six year old sister. Stepping away from Kurt, he removed the cap from his head. "Sorry."

"Tea?" Rachel asked, turning to the kitchen.

"Sure," Kurt answered. "That would be great."

"So this is yours?" Blaine asked gesturing towards the cap in his hand.

"Yup. Eight years next months."

Blaine didn't know how to respond to that but luckily Kurt did for him. "That's longer than any of my friends have held down a job." Blaine noticed the stutter in his words towards the end though as they watched Rachel fill mugs with tap water, pop in a tea bag and stick them into the microwave. He then watched Kurt's wide eyes dart around the small kitchen in desperate search for a kettle.

"Yeah, you'd think it would count for something, wouldn't you. With all these young kids quitting after a couple months and then they have to train new ones. But no, my boss still gives me shitty shifts and runs me off my feet. I don't even get paid more than the idiots who can't figure out how to keep track of which coffee craft is decaf." It seemed to Blaine that Rachel was ranting more to herself than to them.

"So, uh, where are the girls?" he asked.

"Oh, uh," Rachel answered, her scowl breaking as she pressed a hand to her forehead as if she was trying to remember. "Oh I don't know. Boyfriend's place, friend's place. Who knows?"

The microwave beeped and she pulled two mugs out and passed them to Blaine and Kurt. Blaine had to contain a laugh at the disgust on Kurt's face as he looked at the mug in his hands after Rachel had turned around to get her own. It looked like he was being forced to drink some sort of exotic insect soup when he took a sip, winced up, questioning eyebrows and all. Blaine took a sip of his own and maybe it wasn't as good as when Kurt made him tea but it certainly wasn't terrible. Even still though he had a feeling that Rachel's Christmas present from them this year would be a kettle with explicit instructions.

"So how are you guys? I didn't know you were back together?"

"Oh, yeah," Blaine smiled. "About six months now. It's going pretty well." Kurt looked up from the tea he still seemed skeptical of and gave a nod of approval. "Work's been keeping us pretty busy too. Kurt just finished a seven shows a week run of Peter Pan."

"Sounds nice," Rachel answered with a forced smile.

"How about you? Are you finding any acting jobs around here?"

"What do you think, Blaine? Jesus. This is literally the middle of nowhere. And when would I have time or how would I pay bills with it?"

"Well some of those bills aren't yours to pay."

"Oh my god. You're just jumping right in this time, aren't you? What was that, maybe a full two minutes of pleasantries before ripping into my life," she said setting her mug down hard onto the counter, some of the liquid sloshing over the edge.

"Rachel, I'm just concerned."

"Oh so this is some kind of intervention, is it?"

"I'll be outside," Kurt said excusing himself. Blaine noted that he took his tea with him.

He waited until the front door shut behind Kurt before beginning again. "Look. Why don't you come live us? You and girls would all have your own bedrooms and you could start paying off his bills."

"Our bills," Rachel corrected.

"And Kurt's really into the theatre stuff. He writes his own stuff and I'm sure he could help you get back into it."

"You're kinda delusional for a lawyer. I'm not moving in with my brother so he can take care of me and attempt to fix what he deems destructive about my life. Because in case you haven't noticed, Blaine, you're gay. And that right there gives me a thousand and one more reasons to judge you but I don't and I never have so why don't you just back off for once."

"Rach, I'm just trying to help."

"You realize Finn's, dead right? You storm into his house and say horrible things about him without any care that he's dead and that I loved him. Why would I ever accept help from you?"

"He was plastered, like he was every night, and crashed his truck. It was his own fault, Rachel. And he left you a single mother, up to her ears in his debt after stripping you of any chance of an education or a future."

"See, you have no clue. None. Why would I want help from some uptight lawyer who knows nothing about love and his AIDS riddled boyfriend?"

Blaine set his own mug down with a harsh thunk this time. He couldn't believe his sister would ever say something like that. He seethed, his eyes blowing wide from shock. Everything about the accusation was wrong. It was made simply because Kurt was gay and treated like an insult on his character, like he had called out to the demons of the night to bring him disease and death so that he could spread it to others. And he knew his sister was not the lone person to think this, that the sick were not simply victims of biology but the perpetrators of crime against human flesh. Hearing it from someone so close though about someone else even closer was different though. It made his skin crawl with an intensity he had only experience once before on the night he saw the sores on the man across the street.

"See. It doesn't feel good, does it? To be judged."

"Me thinking that you made a mistake marrying a loser turned broke ass drunk is not the same as you accusing Kurt of having AIDS out of spite." He said slowly as if each word was followed by a period. "Understand?"

"Alcoholism is a disease too. Just for once, could you get off your high horse?"

Without answering, Blaine turned and headed for the door. Kurt's head popped up at the sound of the slamming door. Blaine could tell he was about to ask what was wrong but he didn't give him a chance. "We're going."

"Okay," Kurt answered calmly and quietly, no hint of judgement or protest in his voice. Blaine climbed into the driver's seat and gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white as he waited for Kurt to set down his mug somewhere in the gravel and get in the passenger seat. He didn't though, instead walking up to Blaine's door and opening it. "I'm driving."


Blaine didn't say much as Kurt drove. He spent most of the time glaring at the dust on the windshield clenching his jaw. His arm was resting on the open windowsill, his hand pressed against the side of his head in some attempt to calm himself down but mostly to keep the morning sun shining in the passenger window out of his eyes. Every now and again little bursts of swirling thoughts would boil over and out his mouth. "She doesn't know anything about anything so how could she think she was in her right to bring it up." "It's not the same. It's not remotely close. It's just not and if she had any idea she would know it's not." "Of course she doesn't know though. Nobody does. Because everyone's so fucking dumb." "How can she be so blind?" For the most part Kurt let him rant, nodding along with hums of agreement. Blaine knew Kurt had more to say about it all but he was being smart about what he said and when he said it. Right now there was no use. His head was too busy playing the scene over to process anything new in any sort of meaningful way. He was so trapped within the dizzying maze of his mind that it took him over an hour to realize the sun was in the wrong spot. Home was east, into the still rising sun but the sun was on his right.

"You're going the wrong way."

"Welcome back," Kurt said with a far too proud smile. "And no, I'm not."

"Home's that way," Blaine said gesturing out his window.

"Going the way not initially intended is not that same as going the wrong way."

"Oh jeez. Is there actually intention behind this new route or did you take a wrong turn."

"So cynical."

"Then where are we going?" he asked, swiveling in his seat to look for road signs.

"Think. Forget about Rachel for a second."

Blaine glowered at Kurt, although the left corner of his lips turned up into the hint of a smile. He didn't care for surprises or guessing games. He looked ahead again at the highway paved north and not a moment later it clicked. Besides cheap meds in Canada, the only thing worth a detour north of the little town where Blaine grew up was where he went to school.

The sun was flooding in low through Kurt's window by the time they pulled onto the campus. He'd been back since graduation but it'd still been many years. The grandeur of the old, ornate buildings, built a century ago out of stone and brick, complete with arched windows and door ways and topped with steeples amazed Blaine the way they had when he'd first seen them. The most wonderful thing about the amazement though was that it was the calming, comforting sort. They walked under the old tree canopied paths that weaved between brick buildings and green courtyards towards the lake. The campus was empty and silent aside from the echoing click of their foot step and the rustle of leaves and Blaine wished now that he had taken summer courses one year. They passed the library and its coffee shop and he let out a squeal of sorts when he saw that there was no line before dragging Kurt in and proudly stating that if there was any such thing as good coffee, this was it. He beamed as Kurt sipped his caffeine with approval and didn't even question if he was simply being humoured. Because really, it didn't matter if Kurt humoured him over little things because all it meant was that Kurt wanted to see him happy.

They meandered down the paths to the lake and then continued along the water's edge. About half way around Blaine pointed out a joining path that led to St. Mary's College and how, although he had never ventured down it, it was definitely well used before Notre Dame allowed female students.

By the time they made it around and were walking back past the clock tower, eight o'clock began to chime its way into the evening. Blaine slowed his pace and eventually stopped and looked up at the tower that had been keeping the time and bringing it forth in a very unforgiving manner since 1842. And as scary as time could seem now that Blaine had been made aware of its ticking, the calm held, and a sense of euphoria hit him.

"I want to go home," he said once the bell blended back into the summer silence of the campus.

"Okay," Kurt nodded, giving his a hand a squeeze where they were clasped.

"No. I mean Ireland. I want to go to Ireland."