Blaine got home from Kurt's house and his heart dropped when he pulled into his driveway. John was home. He forgot he was would be home by dinner - if he'd remembered he probably would've crashed at Mike's that night. He parked his bike and walked into his house, kicking off his shoes in the mudroom and hanging up his coat.

He walked inside to find his cousins, aunt, and uncle sitting on the couch in the living room, Rosie and Ben with bowls of ice cream, John with a beer in his hand. The nightly news was on, and Blaine saw Mary sitting with Ben in her lap, her expression tight and hard. Great. She and John had been fighting. That would explain the beer in John's hand; even though he and Blaine's dad shared no DNA, they were unfortunately similar in their methods of unwinding.

John looked over at Blaine, who wanted to just say goodnight and go upstairs, but something in John's expression made him know that wasn't going to be possible. John was already mad, and his favorite game was picking fights with Blaine, who knew he could never fight back.

"It's late. Where have you been?" John asked.

Blaine stepped into the living room where they all were, sitting down on the couch beside Rosie, as far from John as possible. "At a friend's," he replied casually, wrapping his arm around Rosie and pressing a kiss onto her head. She beamed up at him.

John didn't say anything back, but Blaine looked over to him and saw his eyes narrowed. Okay, he wasn't stupid, he knew John had a feeling about Kurt. not Kurt specifically, they'd never met, but about someone. Which was 100% against their agreement, and Blaine knew that. It wasn't a mystery why Blaine didn't bring Kurt to the house when John was around.

"Daddy?" Rosie said. "Can we go to Blaine's competition on Saturday?"

John looked at her, glancing at his wife for clarification, but she wasn't looking at him, instead combing through Ben's hair with her fingers. "His what?

"Competition, for his music club." Rosie explained.

"Glee club, dummy," Ben corrected, his eyes still on the television.

"Ben, be nice to your sister." Mary chided.

Ben shrugged and John looked at Blaine with a smug sort of smirk. "You're in glee club?" he asked skeptically. Blaine just nodded and continued watching the news, reminding himself to not let John get a rise out of him.

"Wow, kid, that's – that's – I don't know what that is."

Ben leaned over Rosie to get closer to Blaine. "Is Kurt gonna be there?" he asked eagerly.

Blaine nodded and Ben sat back down with a grin. John looked at Blaine and asked, "Who's Kurt?"

Blaine just stared at him, his mouth slightly open, praying for a miracle. But miracles are hard to come by. Ben practically yelled, "He's Blaine's boyfriend!"

Blaine couldn't take his eyes off of John, who'd grown the most stony expression Blaine had ever seen, more so than even when he'd first found out Blaine was gay. "He's your what?" Blaine froze, except for his hands, tightly clasped together, his nails digging into his skin.

The room was completely silent, the air was stiff. Ben looked at Blaine with a perplexed expression, not sure what he did wrong. Mary stood up, "Benjamin, Rosheen, let's go upstairs, okay? Time to take a bath before bed." she said, her voice hushed but with a fake cheeriness so her kids would comply.

They went upstairs, Rosie and Ben not taking their eyes off of Blaine as their mom pushed them up the stairs. As soon as John heard the bedroom door close, John turned to Blaine and said in a deadly low voice, "You have a boyfriend?"

Blaine's head fell into his hands and he took a deep breath. Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. "It's – it's not really-" he took another breath. "It's complicated," he finally stumbled out, his voice begging John to be merciful.

John's jaw clenched. "When we took you in," he started in a low voice. "I said, fine. We can deal with you, so long as you agree to keep all that," he gestured toward Blaine vaguely. "Out of my house, and away from my family."

Blaine took in a deep, shaking breath and tried to find the words to respond, but he couldn't. He had no clue what to say. If he said yes, he had a boyfriend, John would flip out and make sure he never saw Kurt again. If he said no, I don't have a boyfriend, John wouldn't believe him, and still make sure he never saw Kurt again. And neither of those things would be okay by any stretch of the imagination.

"Well?" John asked impatiently, snapping him back to reality. Blaine just blinked, his throat going dry, his stomach tying itself in a knot. He swallowed heavily, and his eyes started to go dry.

It wasn't too hard for John to read his expression. He slammed his fist down on the table and yelled, "Dammit, Blaine!"

Blaine flinched at the tone of his voice. It was way too similar to his dad's voice whenever he was pissed. "We had an agreement," he snarled, glaring at Blaine from under his brow. "You know I can't have you under my roof with all that weirdness. It's hard enough raising my kids with a faggot around, you are not going to make it any harder."

Blaine glanced up at the stairs, willing for Mary to come down and rescue him, but she didn't. He broke the rules, he messed up, he knew he was completely on his own for this one.

"You are done talking to him." John said firmly. "I never want to hear his name out of my children's mouths again, do you understand me?" Blaine nodded mutely. "If I hear anything about your abnormality again… you're out of this house. Understood?"

Blaine nodded again, his insides going dumb. He heard John get up from his chair and leave the room. His eyes burned, and he closed them, letting tears roll down his cheeks, sucking in a shaky, broken breath. This was a nightmare. This wasn't real, it was all a dream. It didn't all go to hell so quickly, it couldn't have.

But it really, really had. Everything was over. At least it had to be. All these months of running around, kissing in the shadows, what did he expect it to come to? A happy ending where his uncle accepts his sexuality and the world stops being homophobic? Fuck, Blaine thought he stopped living in a fairy tale after Dalton. His chest heaved, his breath broken and punctured like he was punched in the chest. He could feel his heart breaking, the tears dripping off his face. He brought Kurt into his dark, blistered world, and now he had to hurt him. He knew from the beginning it would be a mistake to let Kurt in. It would be so hard to let him go.

But as Blaine sat on the couch, gripping his hair tightly, his entire frame shaking, he knew what he had to do. He had to let his heart shatter. He needed to break the fracture to heal it, and he had to let his heart splinter and crack and disintegrate. It was already too entangled for a clean break. He truthfully didn't mean for it to happen. But here he was, months into a relationship, horribly in love with a boy who was too good for him. And he had no one he could the cast the blame onto; he'd damned himself. He was in so deep, he'd made too many mistakes, let himself go too much, let his heart grow too much. It wasn't sustainable now. Blaine had been a ticking time bomb since he let Kurt into his heart. He always knew it, could feel it lying under the surface, he'd just stopped listening to the ticks and hoped they'd go away. Now, it was time for the bomb to go off, and Blaine was going to be a casualty. But maybe he could be the only casualty.

He couldn't have a clean break.

But maybe Kurt could.