This chapter is from Blaine's point of view, and tells us how he fell in love with Kurt (the 1920s version, that is).
Chapter 2: You Moved MeNew York, September 1925
Blaine was walking to his dressing room after his set when he heard someone clear his throat behind him.
He turned around and saw an impeccably dressed young man, who was nervously spinning his hat around in his hands.
"Hey," said Blaine.
"Good evening," the man said. "My name is Kurt Hummel, and I just wanted to say I really enjoyed your singing. You have a wonderful voice."
Blaine grinned. "Thank you."
"It… You moved me," Kurt continued. "I just had to come and tell you."
"That's really nice of you," Blaine said.
"Kurt? Kurt, where have you run off to?" came a booming voice, and Kurt sprinted away like a startled deer, without even looking back once.
Blaine smiled and shrugged, continuing on to his dressing room.
K&B
A week later, Blaine stood outside the hotel, glad to breathe in some fresh air during his break, when Kurt came up to him again.
"Hey," Blaine said cheerfully, and he got a shy "Hey" in return.
"You came to listen to me again?" Blaine asked.
"Yes," Kurt admitted. "My whole family. They want me to find a nice girl to marry."
Kurt grimaced at the 'nice girl'.
"And you don't really like that thought?" Blaine surmised.
Kurt shook his head.
"If you want to talk about it, feel free to come to my dressing room after my set. They say I'm a good listener."
A slow smile stole over Kurt's face, lighting up his features, and Blaine caught his breath.
He's so beautiful!
"I'd like that," Kurt said. "Thank you."
Later that night, when Blaine returned to his dressing room, he found Kurt already there.
"Is this okay?" Kurt asked anxiously. "I… I didn't want to be seen walking in here, so I came while you were still singing."
Blaine laughed. "That's fine. So, Kurt Hummel, tell me about yourself."
Kurt needed no more prompting, and launched into his tale.
As Blaine had deduced from Kurt's reluctance to marry 'a nice girl', Kurt liked men the way he was expected to like women. He said so haltingly, in a hoarse whisper, his eyes flitting to Blaine's with so much fear that Blaine automatically grabbed Kurt's hands and said, "Me too. Me too."
That earned Blaine a blinding smile and a fluttering of Kurt's lashes, and Blaine was a goner, now hanging onto Kurt's every word and wondering if he'd dare to steal a kiss from Kurt before he left.
New York, October 1925
Kurt kept coming back week after week, as the autumn days slipped away like the leaves from the trees. He was a good storyteller, talking about his family, who'd arrived in America several generations back.
"They never really fit in, you know," Kurt said. "They lived in Strasbourg, in the Alsace Region. That's right on the border between France and Germany, and those two countries were always and forever fighting for that region. So one day, it would belong to France, and our family would be shunned for our clearly German name, and the Hummel children would get teased and bullied at school and called all sorts of names, and then the next day, Alsace would belong to Germany, and we'd get grief for not speaking proper German and for having married into French families."
"So that's why your family came here?" Blaine asked.
"That's one part of it," Kurt answered. "The other part… You probably won't even believe it. Sometimes I have trouble believing it myself."
"Believing what?" Blaine pressed on, curious.
"One day, when my great-grandfather was about sixteen, he was walking down the street when he came across his bullies. They jeered at him and taunted him, and then pushed him from the sidewalk into the middle of the street, just when a carriage was coming that way with the horses in full gallop. The worst was that it wasn't just him that was pushed onto the street. He collided with a tiny beggar girl, who fell onto the street along with him, and my great-grandfather tried to shield her from the rearing horses' wildly kicking legs and ended up getting kicked in the head and blacking out.
When he came to, a woman was trying to pry the girl from his arms and hissing and yelling at him. "You think it's funny, yes? We Roma are not people to you? You can play with us and try to kill us and not get punished because we're not real people? I'll show you. I'll show you what happens when you mess with us! I'll curse you, I will!"
And the woman then switched to another language, not speaking so much as chanting, and it lulled my great-grandfather to sleep. He was just about to doze off when she started to talk in German again, and said in a biting tone, "There. Now you and your family will never be truly happy again. Not until you've shown true bravery to make up for what you did to my sister."
"But I didn't do anything," my great-grandfather protested. "I was pushed onto the street, and I'm really sorry I bumped into your sister. I did try to protect her from the horses. I don't think she's hurt."
The woman's eyes widened and she clapped a hand over her mouth. "No…"
"I'm telling you the truth, I swear," my great-grandfather insisted.
"That's terrible," the woman said, and then she started to sob, and my great-grandfather tried to comfort her, but that only made her sob harder. It took him a long time and several handkerchiefs to calm her down enough that she could explain what was so terrible.
When she told him she'd cursed him, and none of his family would ever be happy again until one of them had shown true bravery, he laughed. He didn't believe her.
A week later, though, his father suddenly died of a heart attack, though he'd never shown any sign of illness, and that shook my great-grandfather up greatly. Suddenly, he wasn't all that sceptic anymore, and he looked up the beggar woman and her sister on the market square and told them what had happened.
"Isn't there any way out of this?" he pleaded.
The woman shook her head regretfully. "I'm sorry, but there isn't. The only thing I can do is stay close by and watch over you and your family. That's the least I can do."
And true to her word, she no longer travelled from place to place, but stayed put in Strasbourg. My great-grandfather ended up marrying her. She's my great-nana Miri. And she vowed she'd always continue to watch over us, even after she died, until we'd finally manage to break the curse."
Blaine exhaled in a huff. "Wow. That is some story. So what happened to make your great-grandfather unhappy, and then your grandfather, and then your father, and now you?"
"When my great-grandfather married my great-nana Miri, he took in her little sister Malina as well. And after a few years, Malina got ill, wasting away, and no doctor could cure her. She died. That was the first bad thing to happen to them. Then it was their children. Miri gave birth to ten children, but only two survived to adulthood. Two were born dead. Several died of infectious diseases. One drowned. Another fell from a horse and broke his neck."
"That's sad," Blaine whispered.
"Yes. And in the end, my great-grandfather couldn't bear to stay in Strasbourg anymore and came to America. It wasn't plain sailing here, either. He became a farmer, but he would regularly lose his harvest to floods or crop pests."
"To be fair, that also happens to people who aren't cursed," Blaine reasoned.
"Mm-hm… And then there was my grandfather, who was also called Kurt, by the way. It's like our family knows only two male names: Herbert and Kurt. My great-grandfather's name was Herbert, and my father got that same name, though he tells everyone to call him Burt."
"Burt and Kurt," Blaine repeated. "It has a certain ring to it."
Kurt rolled his eyes. "Funny. Anyway, my grandfather fell in love when he was eighteen only to see her marry his best friend and live happily ever after. So then my grandfather married another woman, but they were always and forever quarrelling because he couldn't forget about his first love and he slowly developed an alcohol problem. I think he beat my nana too. He died when I was four."
"Okay…" Blaine said. "And what about your dad, then?"
"My dad hated his father and didn't want to be a farmer, so he ran away to New York City when he was fifteen. He did all kinds of odd jobs and saved up the money until he could open up a shop. And his great unhappiness in life was that my mother kept having miscarriages. And then when she finally had me, she died in childbirth. He's always resented me for that. He idolised my mother. She was really beautiful."
"I bet you look just like her," Blaine sighed, his chin in his hands and his elbows on his dressing table, gazing at Kurt dreamily.
Kurt's cheeks flushed and he ducked his head, a small smile playing on his lips. "Flatterer."
Blaine got up and took Kurt's hand in his. "Don't sell yourself short, Kurt. You are the most gorgeous man I've ever seen. I could look at you for hours and never grow tired of it. For days, even."
Kurt's smile widened. "I could say the same about you."
Blaine beamed at the compliment.
Kurt's smile faltered. "And that's exactly where my unhappiness lies. I'm… homosexual, and if my dad were ever to find out…"
Kurt shuddered, and Blaine reached out to pat his arm.
Kurt shot him a grateful look, and continued haltingly, swallowing with difficulty. "I don't know… what he'd do… or say… but… it would be bad. He… He hates homosexuals."
That look of utter fear was back in Kurt's eyes, and Blaine couldn't help but wrap his arms around Kurt in silent sympathy.
"So I'll never be able to truly be myself. If I ever fall in love, it will have to remain a crush from afar. I can't give in to it. You know what they do to people like us. No-one must ever suspect. So I will have to put a mask on every single day of my life, and I'm expected to marry a woman and produce children and continue the line, down to those stupid names of Herbert and Kurt. Ugh."
Blaine nodded. He'd had a few discreet encounters with hotel guests, and knew that every minute of those had been nerve-wracking, his every thought, Must not get caught. He and Kurt hadn't exchanged more than a few chaste kisses so far, yet he'd never felt about anyone the way Kurt made him feel. He was helpless against it, drawn to Kurt like he was attached to him with invisible string.
Is this love? Soaring when he smiles at you, hanging on his every word, not noticing anything or anyone else while he's in the same room as you?
Whatever it was, he found it as frightening as it was exhilarating, and when Kurt left that night after kissing him shyly, he sighed and wished they could love each other out in the open, instead of having to hide from everyone and constantly being terrified at the thought of being found out.