The coffee date ended far too quickly for Blaine's liking, but he had to get back to school or his cover would be blown. LeRoy and Hiram would be furious. And he preferred they not find out he'd stepped off campus, even if he wasn't technically breaking the 'come straight home after school' rule. He might have believed he'd found a loophole, but he doubted that either Hiram or LeRoy would see it that way.
From Chemistry, the teen boy made his way to McKinley's library. He stopped up at the librarian's desk and signed the roster, then headed back to the area he'd claimed as his own on the very first day he'd arrived. He set down his backpack on the seat of a chair, then sat down in the seat right next to it. A minute later, the skinny kid from the previous day appeared from between the stacks.
Blaine looked up only briefly before returning his attention to his notebook. He intended to get his math homework done, except he found his mind kept wandering back to Jeremiah. More than once, he caught himself day-dreaming and smiling to himself. He didn't mind the other guy being around – he'd been quiet company, at least, and he hadn't seemed to pay attention to Blaine, which was how the new kid liked it.
"Blaine!" Hiram called out. He knocked on the teen boy's bedroom door a second time. "Blaine, are you awake?" He pressed an ear to the door, but when he got no answer, he opened the door and peeked inside. What he found made Hiram smile and his features soften. On the bed, Blaine lay sleeping on his stomach, his left cheek pressed into the pillow. His hair, normally messy, was positively wild, sticking up in all directions. One arm lay sprawled across the length of the twin bed. The other hung off he edge. His covers wove around one leg and half of his torso. His other leg lay exposed. He almost hated to disturb the boy, but a punishment was a punishment, and what good was grounding if he let his son sleep in on a Saturday morning?
Schooling his features, Hiram cleared his throat and entered the room. He walked over to the edge of the bed and crouched down. "Blaine," he called. No answer. "Blaine," he called more forcefully. He put a hand on Blaine's shoulder and shook him. Though he hadn't expected his touch to cause his son to violently startle, at least the method was effective at waking him up. Blaine looked around himself blinking, confused for a moment, as if he wasn't certain where he was, before he managed to find his bearings.
The boy pressed his palm into his right eye and rubbed it. He glared at Hiram with his left. "What's going on?" he asked.
Hiram just beamed as if this was nothing out of the ordinary. "Time to wake up."
"What – why? It's Saturday."
"Yes, yes, indeed it is Saturday. And it is also the fourth full day of your grounding. I warned you Tuesday that you would be expected to do some extra chores as part of your punishment."
"Ok, yeah, fine. I'll do them later," he said and let his head plop back on the pillow.
Hiram grabbed hold of the pillow and yanked it out from under Blaine's head. "Oh no you won't. Because I promised a friend you would be helping him at his shop. And that shop opens at 9 am. So you will be there, dressed and ready to work, by 8:45."
Blaine propped himself on his elbow and looked up at Hiram incredulously. "You promised what? Why didn't you tell me that?"
Hiram stood and set Blaine's pillow on his desk chair. Calmly, he responded, "Because you're grounded, Blaine. And when you're grounded, you do what Leroy and I say without the benefit of advanced notice. Now, get up. And get dressed. And be downstairs and ready to go in 15 minutes or less unless you want me to add another week to your detention."
Hiram could feel Blaine's glare on him as he turned and strode out of the room, a satisfied smirk on his lips.
A little way away, another dad was knocking on his own son's bedroom door. "Kurt?" He opened the door a crack, but didn't dare step fully inside. "Kurt, you up?" When he heard nothing, Burt opened the door wide enough for him to peek in, and then wide enough for him to enter all the way. "Kurt, you feeling ok, Kiddo?" There was surprise, and a bit of concern in his voice. It wasn't common for his son to sleep in at all, especially on Saturdays when he had promised to give him a hand at the shop, but anyway, there he was doing just that.
Kurt lay on his side curled up slightly, his back facing the door. The teen boy's breathing was quiet, but slow and even. "I'm fine, Dad," the boy responded flatly. "Just – a cold or something."
Now Burt was really concerned. It wasn't so much what Kurt had said, as how he'd said it. Small and listless, like the words themselves had little meaning for Kurt one way or the other. Burt clodded over, then gently lowered himself on the bed. Kurt adjusted himself inconspicuously as possible. He shifted away, pulled his hands up under his head so he could avoid his father's touch.
"Kurt," the older man started in a hushed grunt. "I know that things are hard for you. They can't be easy. I know I'm not – really the best at this sort of stuff, but I can tell when you're hurting." Burt's voice cracked slightly and the lump in Kurt's throat expanded. Someone had been terrorizing him. He'd been out to make Kurt's life a living hell, and now he'd done something that Kurt could hardly tell his father about, let alone make sense of. He felt violated, like everything about himself, his own integrity as a human, had been shattered. Karofsky's kiss was so much worse than anything he'd ever done to Kurt before, because this was more than just a physical assault. He'd taken something – something that Kurt had never wanted to give him.
Burt continued, as Kurt struggled to keep himself from crying, "I wish that you'd just talk to me, Kurt. I want to help you. I really do – but I can't do that if you don't tell me where this is coming from." For a long minute Burt went silent, and Kurt took slow, even breaths. How could he tell his dad – how could he tell him that he'd lost his temper, that he'd gone after a bully twice his size because he was tired of letting his father down all the time. How could he tell Burt that he'd been beaten down again?
Kurt felt a hand on his shoulder. He tensed instinctively, sucked in a breath and held it. Burt pressed a kiss to Kurt's head, the way he used to do when Kurt was younger. Burt stroked his son's shoulder with his thumb. "I have to go to the shop now, Kid. But we are going to talk about this later, ok?" Kurt said nothing, but Burt released him. The mattress springs creaked as Burt rolled off the edge of the bed. Kurt listened hard as Burt walked out of the room. He waited for the door to slowly close and for the doorknob to click in place before he let the pressure in his throat take over and the tears begin to flow.
In the dimly-lit office in the back of Hummel's Tire & Lube, Burt Hummel pulled off his cap and dabbed his bald head with a clean rag. He replaced his cap on his head and shuffled the papers on his desk into a single pile. Hiram and Leroy would be there soon, and though he didn't know the men well, he knew their daughter well enough. He'd met them both before Kurt's first sleep-over with Rachel. He'd met them again at Parent-Teacher night at McKinley. And only just this week he'd seen LeRoy when he'd brought his Prius in to check the tire tread. He didn't know what made him offer, or how he and LeRoy had even gotten on the topic.
Burt was just too soft for his own good, he'd decided, but now, at 8:42 a.m. on a Saturday morning, with his own son home alone and hurting, the very last thing Burt wanted to be doing was babysitting someone else's kid. I mean sure, he could respect the Berrys tactics, and he totally agreed that idle hands were just the opposite of what a kid that lost his mother needed….
He sucked in a quick breath and released it slowly. The image of his own son's face at his wife's funeral flashed across his mind. That was it, he remembered. That was why he'd offered to help the Berrys.
"Well, if you don't have chores at home for him to do, why don't you bring him by here on Saturday instead? I'll keep him busy. He can sweep, maybe change the oil on a car or two…."
As if on cue, he heard the rapid rapping of knuckles on the glass door at the front. Burt had asked them to be there early, just so he could meet the kid and give him a tour before the garage officially opened for business. Burt looked up and stood. He walked around the side of the desk and headed out of his office and into the lobby. There, on the other side of the door, was LeRoy picking lint off Hiram's shoulder, and beside LeRoy, a boy no older than Kurt with curly hair and arms crossed tightly over his chest. He seemed to be reading the sign beside the door which listed the shop's hours.
All three sets of eyes focused on Burt when the lock flipped open and the man in coveralls opened the door. Burt greeted Hiram and LeRoy, looking them each in the eyes and shaking each of their hands in turn, then he set his sights on the teen in the jeans and beat up jacket. He held out his hand to him. "And you must be Blaine."
When Kurt finally did get up out of bed, the clock read 10 minutes to 12. He groaned. He'd already wasted half the day, and the memory of Burt's warning still played fresh in his mind. "We'll talk about this later." Kurt didn't want to talk about this later, and certainly not with Burt. How could Burt ever understand what this had meant to him? How could Burt even come close to understanding what it meant to have his first kiss stolen away from him? And how on Earth could he explain it all to Burt without outing Karofsky? Being outed was a horrible experience, even for someone as obviously gay as Kurt. He didn't even want to begin imagining what it must be like for someone like Karofsky - someone so clearly straight. Except, of course, for the fact that he wasn't.
Kurt padded his way to the bathroom and settled in front of the mirror. He dragged his fingers down his cheeks. tugging on the bags that had formed under his puffy eyes. He looked miserable. And it was going to take more than coverup to convince Burt just to drop it, for both the sake of his health and Kurt's sanity. That's why at 3 pm, Kurt showed up at Burt's garage, dressed to the nines, his face washed, his hair primped, and fresh baked (heart healthy) cookies in a container. Showtime, he thought to himself, and put on a half-hearted smile before he exited his car and strutted up to the open garage doors. There were only two cars being worked on, and Kurt recognized the his father's voice immediately echoing from under the hood of one.
He walked up, just in time to hear him telling the smaller guy in overalls, "...and you'll want to tighten that bolt there. That's it, not too much..."
Kurt widened his smile. "Hey Dad, need a hand?" he called. Burt lifted out from under the hood of the Oldsmobile, twisted around and grinned. His eyes, always so kind, were lit up even brighter than Kurt remembered.
"Kurt! Hey, you made it! You feeling better, Kiddo?" Burt pulled the rag from the pocket of his coveralls and wiped the grease from his hands. His eyes wandered down to the large tupperware in Kurt's hands. He pointed. "Are those what I think they are?"
Kurt opened his mouth, distracted between his father's question and the very familiar guy that had just backed out from under the other side of the hood. What the hell is he doing here?