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Chapter 3

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Two months, that's all the time it had taken before Kurt's world completely changed. Carole and Burt decided they were going to get married, they were in love and didn't see any reason to wait any longer.

Carole had moved in with Finn in tow a week later. After an initial argument with the Hummels, Finn was allowed to come back. Finn and Burt got along extremely well normally but Burt had not accepted Finn's words about Kurt, despite all appearances that Burt wouldn't have cared; that he'd be the first one throwing those kinds of terms around.

It just undercut how little everyone truly knew each other. About three weeks after that, Finn finally figured out that Burt was Kurt's biggest supporter and had gone out of his way to help Kurt be who he was, had taken him to the fabric stores, to the thread stores, to the knitting shop, the art stores, the craft stores. Had gone with him to every musical theater showing that he could his hands on when tickets became available. He supported his son and if his son hadn't showcased who he was at school, it didn't mean the same had been at home or when they left town to go to those events, a mutual promise between the Hummels that they would be totally ok with that part of Kurt – outside of Lima.

Burt hadn't murmured a single word against Kurt no longer able to hold up his part of the deal, but Burt held up his and then some. He agreed, that part of Kurt could be supported and was totally ok with him in Lima too. They had only agreed to that caveat in the first place to protect Kurt and if Kurt felt ok about it being known in Lima, then Burt would too. He was never embarrassed or ashamed of his son. His love was so deep and encompassing, that he couldn't.

He loved Blaine too, Finn realized with a start when the curly haired boy had shown up for dinner one Friday night and both Carole and Burt appeared as if this was a totally normal event. The fact that he stayed over the weekend also surprised Finn. He had also come over on Wednesdays after Kurt's PFLAG and Glee Club days.

"Maybe you should join something that interests your future brother." Carole suggested one night when he and his mom talked. He wasn't embarrassed to say that he talked to his mom, it's part of the reason Puck came over so often, they had a great relationship and Carole extended that to nearly everyone who entered her home.

"I'm not joining PFLAG!" Finn had shouted in complete shock that Carole would have even suggested that.

"It might be good for you to learn more about something that you find uncomfortable, but no, you don't have to. I wouldn't make you."

When Blaine returned the next weekend, Finn had stared at the male couple with wide eyes. "How often do you come over here?" He demanded, he'd only just met Blaine.

Kurt shrugged. "We switch up weekends. I've been going over to his place a lot more since you moved in, trying to respect how distressing I am to your equilibrium and know how unsettled you are currently." Blaine had laughed and covered his face and laughter into Kurt's shoulder and Finn know that Blaine was laughing at him,but he couldn't figure out why, but it was something Kurt had said.

Finn just didn't understand what was so funny.

He sighed, totally uncomfortable with the fact that those two cuddled like they'd always done it. Finn had no idea Blaine existed, he'd suspected what Kurt's leanings were but hadn't known there was a real to god boyfriend in the wings. Now he had no doubt that they were more than close male friends. He'd caught them kissing on more than one occasion and he thought Kurt was incredibly stupid. How could he choose a mate that was even weaker than he was? If Kurt had been an alpha male type who could protect Blaine, then it might have been a different story but Kurt was the one others picked on because they viewed him as an easy target. His new height hadn't afforded him much in terms of perceived strength, it just made him look scrawnier and unlikely to get any bigger. Kurt had made himself an easy target between his size and his new fashion choices. He could have gotten through high school without a single incident had he just kept his head down and continued on as he had.

There were so many students that attended their school that nobody even knew about, just bodies in a crowd. Sure, Finn would have become Kurt's brother without ever knowing who he was until then, knowing his particular fondnesses. He'd have found those out eventually having lived with Kurt for the next 2-3 years but unlikely to have known much about the other boy had he not been so forceful with this part of himself recently both at home and school. Eventually Kurt would have brought home a boy who might have stayed, had already found a boy, actually and Finn would have been surprised and disturbed by it, having had shared a room with a boy he'd thought was straight...

Finn sighed, he'd have learned Kurt was gay eventually, their lives were about to become cemented together through marriage. Even after high school ended, they'd have seen each other during holidays and even if he could have held that part of himself back through school, eventually he'd meet someone he loved and would have brought him home. Probably better Finn found out before their parents were even engaged. Why should Kurt have to put his life on hold for everyone else's benefit? He'd eventually have to be true to himself or miserable for forever and who was the one to say when it was ok to start being yourself?

Finn gave his mother's words some careful consideration that night. Why couldn't he be half as brave as Kurt? There were parts of himself that he wanted to explore and investigate himself. He heard Kurt and Blaine and that girl, Rachel, when she was over and even Mercedes, and now Tina and Artie when he came, singing in the basement whenever he passed. Sometimes they were all together, often it was one or two at a time. Always Blaine on Wednesdays and now more often on weekends.

He liked to sing too.

Which then totally upset the apple cart, apparently, as Finn joined the Glee Club and soon followed Puck, Quinn, and two more cheerleaders – Santana and Brittany. They effectively doubled the current Glee Club's member list.

Finn thought Kurt would have been happy.

Kurt... didn't know how he felt. Sure the numbers were great, sure he was glad that his soon to be step brother was interested in learning more about his life and participating. He'd tried to get people to join his club, to listen to him, to participate. It was just the wrong one. Then he heard Finn and Puck sing and then Quinn and Santana and Brittany and he sat back down, his protests died in his throat. This was fine. He could handle this.

Blaine could not.

He didn't care about the Glee Club stuff. That was fine, he was glad Kurt's Glee Club was finally getting off the ground, it was almost 5 months into the school year. They probably wouldn't participate in competition this year but they were getting closer, maybe next year. Regionals, Sectionals and Nationals all took place within a couple of months of the last one toward the end of the year, the rest of the time they were training and practicing and getting better to showcase the best of themselves and getting their set lists in order so they could best woo the judges at each event. Why would they want to judge people who just started out together at the beginning of the year? It made no sense, so all the competitions were toward the end of the year when the teams had time to refine themselves and adjust accordingly, knowing each other well enough to be able to do so; also enough time to earn enough money to go to competition. There was a longer gap between Sectionals and Nationals so they could earn enough money to travel several states away if needed and to fine tune their last chances of winning.

That's why the Warblers didn't worry about it too much, they saved themselves a lot of money by not worrying about costumes, just wore their same school uniforms to competitions; they already had that unity down.

No, what Blaine could not handle was the fact that the five... well 'athletes' would have to be a close enough term to encompass all of them, joining the Glee Club that Kurt and Rachel had basically started together meant that Kurt got a lot more hate than ever by the other bullheaded jocks outside of it.

Blaine hadn't known about the bruises covering Kurt's body, he had kept them hidden well, had pretended they didn't hurt, even as Blaine snuggled into them. They were just bruises, Kurt had insisted when Blaine did discover that by total accident when he found out about the split lip and bruise covering his jaw. They'd done a good job making sure nothing was visible when they hurt Kurt. That no longer seemed to be the case, now.

Blaine ran fingers lightly against the tender flesh of Kurt's jaw, it was going to turn all sorts of nasty colors before it got better. The lip would heal and would unlikely leave a scar. It wasn't deep enough to need stitches. Kurt had basically forgotten it had happened which had made Blaine suspicious, it looked like it should hurt, a lot. If it didn't, the only times Kurt made a sound about it was when he tried to smile and got a painful reminder, then it meant this wasn't the worst injury Kurt had gotten.

Furious to learn that the pale perfect flesh had been marred not just this once – which was more than Blaine liked already, but to find Kurt's entire torso covered in bruises of different colors and stages of healing was the last thing Blaine could stand. He roared at Kurt without meaning to and that had caught Burt's attention who came down to kick Blaine out for talking to his son in that tone, even if the words themselves were lost and not actually hurtful, just the words of a hurt male scared and angry for his partner. Burt was telling Blaine off for yelling at Kurt, no matter what Kurt did, there was no reason to raise his voice in that manner or volume when he caught site of Kurt desperately trying to cover himself up again and Burt at first had stared in shock and then his voice had matched Blaine's earlier tone and volume, except this time it was at Blaine. "What the hell did you do to my son?"

"Me? I just discovered them myself, that's why I was so upset!" Blaine forgot about what Burt had just said about appropriate ways to speak to Kurt, he ignored it because the older Hummel had broken his own stance and had turned it on him, now he was defensive too.

Kurt rubbed his fingers over his eyes and leaned back against the pillows on his bed. He tried to tune out the shouting match from his two favorite people living on this planet. They weren't listening to each other and then they did and they both started shouting at him to tell them what they wanted and needed to know. It took them awhile to realize that he wasn't going to respond while they were like that, he had no interest in trying to be heard over their combined force.

"Kurt?" Burt asked a lot more even-tempered and calm and Blaine slid onto the bed to take Kurt's hand in his own, trying to offer his own encouragement to opening up to them and accept their support.

Squeezing Blaine's hand a little, Kurt slowly cracked opened his eyes to look at his father. "Yes?"

"Who did this?" Burt waved towards Kurt's chest, just realizing that his face was also the recipient of at least one fist.

"Jocks at school, it's fine. I was just being too lippy, too insistent that just because someone likes to sing, doesn't make them gay or weak." He rubbed his tender jaw thoughtfully. "I think I surprised them when I proved myself right."

"Did you fight back?" Burt looked doubtful while Blaine grinned knowingly.

Kurt sighed and laid his head back on the cushion again. "Not in the way you mean, no, but I gave as good as I got. They'll remember what I've said forever."

"People can forget words." Burt chided.

"Not as well as people forget injuries. I'll forget all of these bruises in a week, something someone said to me, can nag at me for years and may pop out at the most random times, when I think I'm happy or I am happy. I did that to them, they just don't know it yet." He was right, there were so many times people went to the doctors with a list of physical aliments but by the time they got there, they forgot all their complaints if it didn't last long enough or wasn't bothering them right at that time. People didn't forget words or feelings quite as easily or readily.

Kurt was not completely truthful with what he said though, his bruises happened all the time, constantly and lasted for a lot longer because of that and yes, he mostly forgot about them but he also made sure no one else had seen them or reacted to them. He had changed his behavior because of them and he would remember them for a long time into the future, know that they hurt and remember all the instances as a whole as one bad instant and would flash back to it occasionally in the future but it wouldn't be all the times, just viewed as one instant but the memory would be there and might have fear with it too, maybe a fear of the pain but the memory of pain would be very dull compared to when it actually happened.

"Why haven't you told us about this?" Blaine asked after a moment of consideration.

"I... I kind of forgot about it. I was focused on a million other things."

One of those things was that they'd gained their last two members, both dancers, one was from the football team and the other just wanted to dance. They'd attended invitationals and were on their way to regionals, just in time. That meant that they were getting serious and cracking down on rehearsals and Blaine had to go to Kurt's house or wait for him outside in the parking lot if he waited for Kurt and the rehearsals were longer and they all had boot camp for different areas that they were weaker in. Which meant Kurt had dance lessons in how to be looser and groove more and jive and Finn needed the lessons to help him not trip over his own feet and learn what a beat was and how to dance with and on it and Mike, one of the dancers, got singing lessons. Others had their own weaknesses that they were working on and they had to learn how to work all together and appear like a group rather than just individuals who all wanted attention or to sing or dance.

"You know what this means, right? Blaine asked with a teasing note in his voice, his anger abated now but Burt was still silently simmering, vowing to get to the bottom of this. Blaine had his own way with dealing with his fear for Kurt, he channeled it in a different way. Burt wanted to take care of this for his son, fix it. Blaine knew how to help Kurt fix it for himself, and if he couldn't, then he would just be there to listen to Kurt. He wasn't the typical boy either, he didn't just see a problem and try to fix it, he knew sometimes there were feelings that needed to be expressed and that's what was what was really bothering the other person, the need to express their feelings rather than have the problem just dealt with, because that wouldn't change things in the long run.

Kurt looked over at his boyfriend, knowing far too well and dreading it. "Training?"

"Training." Blaine agreed with a smile and nodded, knowing that Kurt wasn't going to accept lessons on how to fight back, he wasn't a fighter; but Blaine could teach him how to avoid things.

Blaine never actually put any force into his hands when he reached out for Kurt, mimicking the other boys when they reached out and pushed him into lockers, but Kurt still ended up in the wall a few times when he didn't avoid Blaine's hand. He was too easy to move, even when he was prepared for it and braced himself against it.

The next day he avoided the hands. He avoided the slushies. He could not avoid their new way of dealing with him though, as he was forcefully body-checked into the lockers or when they surrounded him and all dumped a different flavor of slushy on him. So much for his bravery when it came to thanking them for buying him something delicious, they'd purposefully made sure the combination was nasty and all those drinks on him at once was freezing.

Especially since it was the height of winter and he'd just come inside from the cold.