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Fic: broke free on a saturday morning (1/2)
Title: broke free on a saturday morning
Fandom: Glee
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel; Rachel Berry/Finn Hudson, Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce, Tina Cohen-Chang/Mike Chang, Mercedes Jones, Quinn Fabray, Noah Puckerman/Lauren Zizes, Artie Abrams, Sam Evans, teachers, parents, various OCs
Summary: Kurt wants to go to homecoming, but Blaine has reservations. This predictably leads to: New Directions schemes.
Warnings/spoilers: Homophobia; one "blink and you'll miss it" vague spoiler for the 2x14 "Blame It on the Alcohol" promo.
Count: 16,464 total words; 6604 in this part
Notes: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
guest_age, who gave me the prompt I know how important dances are to teen gays a month ago and was probably not expecting a belated word-explosion. This is really supposed to be one complete fic, but LJ's word-limit is killing me. Title from "This Year" by the Mountain Goats.
It all starts on a Monday.
"So," Kurt says out of nowhere. They've been sitting in silence for at least a half an hour, Blaine using Kurt as a back rest (perched sideways on the couch with his back pressed against Kurt's side and his knees tucked up) while he works on his pre-cal homework. Kurt's vociferous protests about not being a piece of furniture, thank you very much, hadn't gotten him very far. Primarily because Blaine knows he didn't mean it and that he not-so-secretly loves it when Blaine drapes himself over him.
"So?" Blaine asks, both fond and a little absent. He jots a number into the notebook balanced on his knees before he can forget it.
"Homecoming," Kurt says, and he sounds matter-of-fact, but Blaine knows him well enough to hear the hint of uncertainty in his voice. "We need to decide if we're going."
"Why?" Blaine asks casually, willing his back not to tense up against Kurt. He starts copying the next homework question out of his math book. He feels like the world's biggest jerk. "Do you want to?"
There is silence, and then Kurt tersely says, "Yes," like Blaine is an idiot, which, granted -- that was a really stupid question.
"I do realize," Kurt continues, when Blaine doesn't say anything because while he knows that Kurt knows him better than anyone and that he doesn't have to internalize his weaknesses and project calm, it's a bad habit by now, "that it's a high school dance and, as such, will be full of streamers and hideous ruched dresses from JC Penney and the unwashed masses squeezed into their fathers' moth-eaten suits, but--"
Kurt must see something in Blaine's face, because he suddenly stops dead and then blurts, all at once, "Oh my God you don't want to go."
"No," Blaine protests, guiltily.
"That's why you've been changing the subject to the genius of John Galliano's spring collection all week when I mentioned homecoming. You were trying to distract me." His eyebrows lower even farther. "You wanted to let me down easy?" Kurt looks mortified, which is both a little funny (Kurt pulls amazing faces and Blaine isn't made of stone) and completely heart-breaking, because he's very clearly hurt, too, and Blaine never wants to cause that.
"No," Blaine says firmly, turning around on the couch so he can grab both of Kurt's hands (nearly stabbing himself on Kurt's pencil in the process). There is a beat, the two of them staring at each other. Blaine admits, "Well, maybe. Just on the distraction part."
"You could have just informed me that you don't want to go, Blaine," Kurt snaps, and while he is letting Blaine hold his hands, he's obviously angry with wounded pride. Blaine has to reconsider whether the near miss from the pencil was actually an accident. "I can take it."
"Kurt, seriously, no." He tightens his grip on Kurt's hands, which at least seems to get Kurt to stop for a minute. He's earnest but not without a hint of exasperated humor when he asks: "Can I talk now? Please?"
He eyes him beadily, then sighs. "Proceed." The fact that he's playing at being superior makes Blaine feel a little less sick; like maybe he's not quite as hurt as Blaine had first thought.
"So you know things weren't great at the school I went to before Dalton," Blaine says without preamble, and he sees Kurt's eyes widen faintly and Kurt sit up straighter. Does he really talk about Bellefontaine that little, that Kurt peers at him and starts silently brushing his thumb across the back of Blaine's hand when he mentions it? Apparently. "I don't have the best track record with dances," he admits, and he's trying to be better about lowering the façade with Kurt because he doesn't have to pretend that he knows what he's doing, but saying that sentence feels like pulling teeth. "I want to go, but I don't know--" It's so stupid. This shouldn't still get to him.
Blaine didn't finish the sentence, but Kurt seems to get it. "10 Things I Hate About You not-the-best or Jawbreaker not-the-best?" Kurt asks thoughtfully, and Blaine half smiles.
"Carrie not-the-best," he says, rueful. "But with punch instead of pig's blood. And I didn't kill anybody with my brain afterward."
The set of Kurt's mouth hardens around the edges, then softens again. "Far be it from me to insist on reliving a traumatic incident involving fruit punch," he says tightly, but it's careful, not acid-tongued or tart; he's giving Blaine the chance to take it lightly and change the subject.
Blaine is so ridiculously head over heels for this boy.
"Dalton didn't hold a lot of dances," he says. Blaine feels like an idiot. Worse, he feels like a complete coward. "So the rampant humiliation at Bellefontaine is -- kind of my last association with them." He says it wryly because that's the best way to soften it. “And, God I hate to say it, but – we don't even know if they would let us in together, Kurt.” Coward, he thinks. Coward, coward.
It's frustrating and infuriating and not doing the greatest things for his sense of self-worth, but it's also the truth. Blaine knows he has teachers who don't approve of him holding Kurt's hand in the halls and that there are parents who feel the same way, and it's a total crap shoot when it comes to who'll be selling the tickets during the school week and who will be manning the door at the dance. He is having flashbacks to the girl in Mississippi who had to sue the school to be allowed to attend prom with her girlfriend, and who showed up on the evening of the event to find that no one was there because parents had set up a top-secret, gay-free prom.
"Then we," Kurt says determinedly, "will just have to have a much more fabulous night of our own." He scoffs, dismissive: "Not that it'll be hard to beat an event held in a gym that reeks of sweaty socks and despair."
Blaine immediately cups Kurt's jaw in his hand, and he gets to watch Kurt light up with the force of his smile for a couple seconds before he's too close to see Kurt's face at all.
At his locker in the morning, Kurt comes up and -- with absolutely no preamble, not even giving Blaine time to comment on the killer vintage scarf he's wearing -- says, "What about making a new association?"
"--Uh, what?" Blaine asks, laughing and letting his voice go high on what, half-turning out of his locker so he can properly stare at Kurt.
"A new association," Kurt says, doing that thing he does when he's impatient and excited where he talks really, really fast. "With high school dances, to overpower the old one."
"Um," says Blaine diplomatically, and he pulls his physics book out of the locker and shuts the door. "What exactly did you have in mind?"
"What would you say," Kurt says, his eyes shining, "if I said that I could guarantee a mostly-harassment-free high school dance experience?"
"I'd say you're a magician," Blaine says warily. Dave Karofsky may have come to terms with his sexuality and McKinley may now have an official anti-bullying policy, but the jackass behavior didn't transfer out alongside Karofsky or graduate with Azimio, and the introduction of new policies hasn't made the administration any less spineless.
There are plenty of mutters of fag in the hall (from what Kurt has said, the fact that they're mutters rather than shouts marks an improvement) and they get shoulder-checked when they hold hands within enough of a crowd that shoves can be played off as accidents, and Blaine now knows what grape slushie tastes like after it has dripped down his face. From what he has seen, a bunch of other kids take abuse, too. There are no dumpster tosses, though, for anyone; no one gets jumped in the parking lot. Some of the teachers try to help as much as they can. It's a start, but Principal Figgins will have to do a better job of enforcing policy before any real change is made in the general mindset of what is and isn't acceptable behavior. Blaine has only been a student at McKinley for a month and a half, but he'll believe that when he sees it. So far, fellow glee club students have been doing a better job of enforcing the rules than the principal's office has.
"I'm no magician," Kurt says, stepping away from the lockers and trusting that Blaine will follow (he always does). He looks and sounds like the cat that swallowed the canary. Or the voracious online shopper who found a limited edition Balmain jacket for a steal. Self-satisfied and lofty: "Just your friendly neighborhood logistical genius."
"How would you do this?" Blaine asks, curling his fingers around Kurt's palm after Kurt reaches out for his hand. They don't kiss in the halls or in open places on school property, by unspoken don't-poke-the-pit-of-angry-vipers agreement, but they do hold hands and walk to class, and fix each others' hair in public, and sing and dance together in glee performances, and they catch shit for it, but Blaine doesn't give a damn and he knows Kurt doesn't either. He feels like he's eight feet tall and can breathe lightning bolts, as long as Kurt is standing beside him.
"Do you trust me?"
"That's a pretty unfair question," Blaine says, frowning, but instead of taking umbrage, Kurt just squeezes his hand.
"Trust me," repeats Kurt, softer, and when Blaine opens his mouth to respond, he catches a flash of red letterman jackets and then finds himself dripping with raspberry-flavored ice.
Kurt flicks slushie out of his own eyes and then shouts after the two high-fiving hockey players as they strut away, his hand clamped around Blaine's in a vise grip and his other hand balled up at his side; he's hollering something about sweeping hair off the floor at Supercuts. Blaine tilts his head to the side and taps it a couple times, and he can feel stinging cold slushie trickle out of his ear.
Kurt is breathing hard beside him, his face red-stained and furious; Blaine doesn't even want to think about trying to clean his T-shirt and Kurt's jacket. "Do you regret transferring here yet?" Kurt asks dryly, thrumming with outrage, but with an undercurrent of that seriously dark sense of humor that Blaine loves (and another undercurrent, one that sounds a little like guilt).
"Nope," Blaine says, and screw all of them, he kisses Kurt square on the cold sticky lips, right there outside Ms. Hoffmeier's biology classroom. Kurt is wide-eyed when he draws back. Blaine says: "Kurt, I would be honored to gay up homecoming with you," and Kurt grabs his hand so hard that it feels like he might break Blaine's fingers.
Kurt won't tell Blaine his plans. It's maddening; Blaine hates not being in control of what's going on, which is, he strongly suspects, why Kurt seems to be getting such a kick out of keeping him in the dark.
Blaine keeps walking in on conversations where people stop, peer at him, and then awkwardly pretend they were talking about the weather or a movie or Jacob Ben Israel's latest blog post. Blaine is pretty used to that reaction when it comes to the rest of the student body; there was a whole lot of gossip when Blaine first showed up in September. He's not really used to it in glee, though. He and Kurt are among the most drama-free (apart from Kurt's natural dramatic tendencies, which mostly manifest themselves through song selections and wardrobe choices and the occasional diva face-off with Rachel) of the club's couples, and there just isn't a lot to say about them behind their backs.
Until now, apparently.
Blaine walks into rehearsal and Finn says, "Uhh, spiders! Spiders. They're gross," or Mike throws himself away from the small huddle and abruptly starts dancing to no music, or Quinn has a fit in which she is clearly coughing words too quietly for Blaine to hear them. He is trying to take it all with good grace (his personal favorite response so far is stopping in the doorway and saying, "What? Do I have something on my face?") and he knows that they all mean well and have undoubtedly been pulled into Kurt's mysterious machinations, but it's hard.
It's especially hard because it feels like Blaine hasn't seen his boyfriend all week.
Kurt has been deep in conversation with Mercedes or conferencing with Sam, Dan, and Rachel. Blaine walks past the guidance office one morning on his way to Spanish and sees the back of a familiar head through the glass wall, Ms. Pillsbury-Howell nodding encouragingly and looking serious behind her desk. There are days when Blaine can't find Kurt at all; when he isn't in any of his classrooms or at the piano or his locker or even in the auditorium, and Blaine tries not to feel too frustrated or concerned -- they are, after all, two separate people with two separate lives, and they do plenty of things independently -- but it's always still a relief when Kurt turns a corner or shows up at rehearsal.
Even while they're together, Kurt is distracted and clearly plotting. The worst comes when they're taking advantage of Wednesday's extended football practice and the rare, all-too-brief window between extracurriculars finishing and Kurt's parents coming home from work. Blaine is thoroughly pinned by Kurt's warm weight and his mouth, and he's seriously considering the effort of figuring out how to get Kurt out of all of the straps on his shirt; the only downside to the plan is that they'll have to stop kissing to accomplish it, and Blaine can't quite bring himself to do that.
That is, until he hears the tinny opening bars of "Telephone," and Kurt abruptly stiffens mid-lazy-makeout and lunges to grab his iPhone. Blaine throws up his hands, rolls out from under Kurt, and gets right out of the bed. By the time that Kurt has convinced him to come back, Carole is shouting a cheery hello from downstairs.
On Friday, Blaine spots Kurt having a low, intent conversation with Santana over her newly-regained place at the Cheerios' lunch table, and she looks very, very unhappy and obstinate when Kurt finally pivots away to join Blaine.
“What was that about?” Blaine asks, settling in beside Finn (who greets him with a friendly clap on the shoulder without glancing up from his discussion with Artie and Whitney; it sounds like they're talking videogames) with his lunch tray at the glee table.
Taking the seat across from him, Kurt shrugs airily and Blaine frowns. Kurt relents, twisting the cap off his bottle of water, and says, “You'll find out tonight, ideally.”
Blaine opens his mouth, but Kurt knows him well enough to recognize that he has reached his breaking point with all the secrecy and the cloak and dagger stuff, and with the fact that everyone at this table is listening to this conversation while pretending they don't notice it. “My preparations are airtight,” Kurt promises, and he presses his boot against Blaine's sneaker under the table. “We're going to have a 100% drama-free homecoming.”
Finn looks like he wants to say something beside him, but then Blaine indignantly hisses, “Ow!” because someone just kicked him.
Sitting across the table, Rachel's eyes widen. She stares at him for a guilty split second, and then she abruptly turns toward the rest of the table and says, "While we're all gathered together, I really think it's high time that we discuss potential songs for sectionals. As you're all well aware, we have to place at regionals again this year in order to keep the club alive, so we cannot afford to become complacent." Everybody groans or rolls their eyes; Tina flicks a tater tot at her.
Blaine is so busy peering at Rachel suspiciously that he only catches the tail end of what must have been a truly epic face from Kurt at his stepbrother. Finn looks appropriately cowed, anyway. When he notices that Blaine is looking at him, Kurt smiles sunnily.
Blaine feels unnerved.
On Friday night, Blaine sits on the Hummels' couch and he watches with bemusement as Finn gets more and more frustrated trying to beat Blaine's high score at Burn Zombie Burn! “Dude, how did you even do this?” Finn asks, yelping as a zombie leaps out and claws him. “You're like a stone-cold killer.”
Blaine laughs. “It's all about the reflex; the second you see one, you have to hit--” and then the door bell rings, and Finn says something desperate that really shouldn't be said in polite company. They're in the front room and Kurt and Tina are still doing something upstairs that, from the sounds of it, involves a whole lot of hairspray and shouts that Blaine can only go up there under pain of death, and the Hummels are in the kitchen with the Cohen-Changs.
“I can get it,” Blaine says; Finn mutters something grateful, his eyes glued to the screen, and Blaine hauls himself up and goes to the door. He finds Rachel there with two men who can only be her fathers, one white dad and one black dad and both smiling fit to beat the band. Blaine, though, mostly has eyes for Rachel and the dress that she is wearing under an incongruous red peacoat. The gown is a showstopper, that's for sure, and that's undoubtedly why Rachel picked it; it's floor-length in a shiny purple fabric (potentially taffeta), with a sweetheart neckline and – and this is the real kicker – a cascade of unbelievably tacky giant rosettes running from one hip all the way down to the hem.
Kurt is going to shit bricks.
Rachel is beaming, though, and her hair has been pulled up off her face, and Blaine is very fond of her even after (maybe because of?) the entire drunken debacle that took place last spring, so it's easy to say warmly, “Rachel, you're gorgeous.”
Her smile only widens; she says, “Thank you, I know," and motions as if she's going to toss her hair gaily -- but then laughs and lets her hand fall because it's up in a chignon, so there's no hair to toss. "You look quite handsome yourself."
"Thanks," Blaine says, shrugging it off modestly but grinning. He feels a little James Bond in his black suit, though Bond would definitely not have paired it with black and white saddle shoes or a burgundy bow tie. "I kind of figured I'd have to step it up so I don't get totally outclassed by my date." It's homecoming, not prom, so most guys -- Finn included -- are going to turn up wearing black or khaki pants with a dress shirt and a tie (Kurt has stated his willingness to lay money on the ratio of Dockers-to-other-pants being 70% or higher), but Blaine isn't dating most guys.
Rachel laughs again, her eyes dancing knowingly, but she doesn't elaborate on what Kurt's wearing; she just says, "Dad, Daddy, this is Blaine.”
“It's very nice to meet you,” says the smiling father on Rachel's right, and he reaches over to shake Blaine's hand in a strong grip; Blaine shakes the other dad's hand, too, and steps aside so they can come in. They help each other out of their coats while Blaine takes Rachel's. Blaine doesn't know a whole lot of adult gay couples; there's something weirdly fantastic about watching them do something that easy and couple-y. Like there will be life beyond when going to a simple high school dance requires wariness and a week's worth of ... whatever exactly it is that Kurt has been doing.
The doorbell rings again while Blaine is collecting everybody's stuff to put in the closet (sometimes, Blaine feels like he lives here; this is one of those times), and he winds up taking Mike's and Mrs. Chang's coats, too. By the time he makes it back into the living room, the adults have all been greeted by Burt and Carole and have moved into the kitchen, and Mike has dropped onto the couch and taken over Finn's Xbox controller.
Finn, meanwhile, is standing awkwardly and staring at Rachel. "Wow," he's saying. "Just -- wow."
"Thank you," Rachel says to Finn, beaming and blushing, and doing a spin in front of Finn to show off the full effect of her dress. Finn is still staring, but he's starting to smile softly. It's very sweet. Blaine privately thinks that the seven months spent single or dating other people did them some good.
He perches on the arm of the sofa and watches them out of the corner of his eye. "Sweet kicks," he says to Mike.
Mike happily wiggles his black and blue high-top sneakers. "Totally worth the fight with my mom," he pronounces. A zombie leaps on his avatar on the TV, and the screen goes red and then black. Mike throws up his hands and sets the controller aside. "Are they still getting ready?" he asks, pointing a questioning finger up at the ceiling.
"We're not allowed up there," Blaine confirms, which is when somebody else raps at the door and then it opens before anyone can get up; a few seconds later, Mercedes and Quinn turn the corner together in a flurry of skirts and smiles. Everybody starts talking all at once, laughing and chattering, the three girls (Mercedes in floor-length electric green that Blaine is pretty sure nobody else in the world could pull off; Quinn in demure-but-short pale pink with a pair of white flats) exclaiming over each other's dresses.
"Okay," says Mercedes, cutting into the commotion, "where are my boy and girl?"
Blaine wordlessly points at the ceiling, Mike following his lead. "If we leave them up there, they're never coming down," Quinn says to Mercedes, who gathers up her green skirts and heads for the stairs.
"We'll give 'em a little shove," she promises, Quinn hot on her heels. "C'mon, ladies."
Rachel's look of astonishment (followed rapidly by joy) at being included almost hurts to watch; her whole face lights up and she rustles along after them, beaming, and the three of them clomp up the stairs in heels.
"Hello?" calls a new voice from the foyer, and Finn mutters, "Crap," and then hollers, "Come in!"
Blaine says, "I don't know if you can fit many more people in this house," and Mike laughs beside him as they hear the front door close again.
There's a burst of talking in the kitchen and another one from upstairs, but above it all, Blaine can very clearly hear Kurt's scandalized voice say, "Oh my God," and Blaine has to start laughing, even if it makes him look like a lunatic in front of whoever just came in, because Kurt obviously just got his first look at Rachel's dress.
"Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Jones," Finn says to the black couple who have stepped into the living room doorway. Mercedes doesn't really resemble her tall, sharp-faced dad, but she looks just like her mom, who's smiling and shaking out her umbrella.
"Hi boys," says Mrs. Jones, and Mike waves; Blaine smiles.
Several voices laugh all at once in the kitchen, and Finn says, "I think the parents are hanging out in--" and then he points.
"Uh huh," Mrs. Jones says, and she tosses a critical, bemused eye over the three of them and the TV. " 'Cause I see you three are real busy in here, killing the undead and all." Finn shuffles his feet and mutters something sheepish, and Mrs. Jones throws her head back and laughs. "Come on, Frank; we'll leave them to it."
In their wake, Finn says, "Do you guys really th--" and then the doorbell rings. Again.
"Seriously?" asks Mike.
Finn's eyebrows are furrowed. "I don't think anybody else is coming," he says slowly, and then the door creaks open and heels slowly click toward them, and a classically pretty blonde in a trench coat appears.
"I'm sorry," she says softly; she looks like she's about ready to start twitching. "No one came to the door, and I heard voices--"
Finn is frozen with obvious shock and potentially some terror and Mike isn't saying anything, so Blaine smiles as kindly as he can and says, "It's okay. It's pretty loud in here." (Between the game's ambient rock music on the pause screen, and the groups both upstairs and downstairs, that's actually true.)
"Mrs. Fabray," says Finn, like he just got jarred loose. "Um -- hi."
"It's actually Ms. Landry n--"
"Finn?" calls Carole's voice, which is rapidly getting loud as she comes down the hall from the kitchen. "Did I hear the door--" She stops short when she sees Ms. Landry standing awkwardly in her living room. The smile fades off Carole's face. "Judy."
"Hi Carole." Quinn's mom is holding her purse with both hands, her knuckles white with her grip. "I'm sorry; I don't want to intrude. It's just that Quinn said that parents would be taking pictures, and she got ready at the Joneses, so I wasn't able to--"
"No," says Carole; Blaine can tell it's kind of a reflex. "No, no. Of course."
Mike is glancing from mom to mom, his eyes a little wide. Finn looks kind of like he wants to sink into the sofa.
Blaine very, very slowly leans in close to Mike and then mutters, "What's ... going on?" right in his ear.
"So -- Quinn lied, last year, and said that Finn was the father of her baby?" Mike says in a quiet aside, barely moving his mouth, like that's going to keep him from being noticed here; Blaine nods his awareness of the baby daddy drama. "And her parents threw her out of the house, so she lived with Finn and his mom for a while. I don't ... think anybody's parents have talked since then."
Blaine's eyes flick from one woman to the other.
"Please, come in," says Carole, and her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes the way that it usually does, but she reaches out and takes Quinn's mom's hand. "We're having a parent gathering in the kitchen before we make the kids pose for about a million pictures."
Quinn's mom looks like she's blinking back tears. "Thank you," she says, and Kurt's stepmom pulls her into the kitchen.
There's silence.
"Your mom," Blaine tells Finn, "is seriously awesome."
Finn whooshes out a heavy breath, loud enough that it sounds like he's been holding it. He glances across Mike, at Blaine. "I know," he says, and he gives a small, tentative smile.
"Okay, boys," proclaims Mercedes's voice, and she clatters down the stairs. "We got the hairspray away from your dates. You better be ready for this."
"Don't light a match near either of them," Quinn says dryly, accepting Mercedes's hand down off the staircase. "You'll blow up half the county."
"Lies," says Kurt's voice. "Filthy lies."
Blaine sees his feet first, and the outfit initially looks subdued by Kurt Hummel standards. He's wearing matte black loafers (doubtless vintage and real leather, beautiful but classic) with skinny black dress pants. Then the rest of him comes into view as he keeps descending the stairs. Kurt's tailored suit jacket has satiny lapels, but the rest of the jacket -- the entire thing -- is made up of black sequins that flash in the light with every move he makes. He has paired it with a white dress shirt and a shiny black tie, and his hair has been swept into new heights of perfection, but seriously, that jacket. It fits perfectly, emphasizing the breadth of Kurt's shoulders and his trim waist and oh, God, he looks so good.
Blaine is vaguely aware of the fact that he's staring. He is made aware of this fact by watching Kurt's nervous-looking narrow smile turn into a flush. Kurt reaches out and tugs on the lapels of Blaine's jacket in an achingly familiar movement (one that no one else here will understand), then smooths them down again. "This is amazing," Kurt says lowly, his eyes shining. "You look amazing."
It's worth it. They haven't even left Kurt's house yet, and right now, everything, all of this -- how long it took Blaine to figure out what to wear, the ugly scenarios he's been envisioning for days, the potential messiness waiting for them at the school -- he doesn't care. He would do it all again ten times if it meant he would get to see that awed look on Kurt's face.
Neither of them is much for PDA, even when they're in front of their friends in the chorus room or in the Hummel household, which is basically like Fort Knox in terms of places where it's safe for them to get handsy with each other; public groping and grabbing is just not their style. But seriously, in this case -- screw that. Blaine reaches up and cups the side of Kurt's neck in his hand, thumb brushing his jaw and fingers barely touching the hair at the nape of his neck. "I have the hottest date here," he says quietly, and Kurt huffs a laugh. "Kurt, you look incredible, seriously."
Kurt smiles enormously, his face a little blurry due to proximity, and then Blaine hears Rachel giggle and he abruptly realizes that the world has continued spinning while he and Kurt gawked at each other; Tina and Rachel came downstairs and everybody is talking and laughing and kindly ignoring Kurt and Blaine.
Kurt apparently reenters the real world right when Blaine does. "Have you seen what Rachel's wearing?" Kurt mutters, sounding offended. "It took everything that I had not to ask her who flayed Barney and made flowers out of his skin." Blaine tries to muffle his laughter in Kurt's sequined shoulder, but it isn't an entirely successful attempt.
"You're terrible," Blaine accuses merrily, putting his hands on Kurt's upper arms so he can push himself back up again.
"I only say what everyone else is thinking," Kurt replies, light and faux-disdainful.
Blaine's hands are still on Kurt's shiny shoulders, and as he's about to let them fall back to his side, he realizes. "Is this--?" he asks, eyes narrowing in sudden suspicion, and Kurt's airy brush of his fingers across his perfectly sculpted bang wordlessly confirms it. "Oh my God, it is! How did you get your hands on the sequined tuxedo jacket from the Dolce and Gabbana fall collection?"
"I have my ways. Too much?" Kurt asks breathlessly, and Blaine laughs. "The decision came down to this or the same jacket in magenta."
"It's just enough," Blaine promises, and they grin at each other.
Quinn says, "Frankly, this is gross. All of you." Blaine belatedly realizes that Finn is still stealing awed glances at Rachel, and that Tina (who's wearing a vintage-looking short black dress with black combat boots that have blue laces) has been carefully pinning a boutonniere on Mike's sport coat. "Pictures!"
Carole wasn't kidding when she told Quinn's mom that they were going to take about a million pictures. First there are pictures of all of them together lined up in front of the fireplace, then just the guys, then just the girls, then dates -- it's crazy. It's nice, though. Blaine's parents couldn't be here to be part of the parental paparazzi, but Carole assures him that she will take plenty of photos for them. Everybody's talking and laughing, and Blaine is more than happy to take picture after picture with his friends around him and with Kurt tucked warm against his side.
Nobody so much as blinks when it's their turn to take couple photos; Blaine wraps his arm around Kurt's waist and smiles in front of what feels like at least 30 cameras but can't actually be more than four or five. The flashes are bright, but Blaine isn't blind. He sees Mrs. Jones's enormous wobbly smile, and the way that Rachel's dads are looking at them, and Rachel grabbing Mercedes's arm, and Carole's eyes going a little shiny as she snaps photos, and Kurt's dad keeping the brim of his cap tugged down low over the upper half of his face but his tiny smile clearly visible.
So maybe they're not treated just like the other couples, but Blaine can live with that.
Blaine's nerves don't return until they're in the car. Rachel prodded Finn into singing along with the radio and now they're crooning "Grenade" to each other in the front seat. As the car pulls up to the stop sign around the corner from the high school, Blaine can feel his skin start to prickle. He breathes calmly; steadily, easy. He tells himself that this is different. He isn't standing alone, desperately trying to fit in. There are two carloads of students here who will stand behind him, and one who'll be right beside him (and probably in front of him, knowing Kurt, if anyone takes so much as a step toward them). He's more than willing to stand out. But Blaine still thinks that whoever invented high school dances did so just to create an event with the maximum potential for humiliation and jackassery.
When he glances over, he finds Kurt looking at him through the moving stripes of light provided by streetlamps as they drive past. There's something about the moment, silent and totally theirs across the backseat of Finn's crappy car, that makes Blaine's heart feel like it's swelling in his chest.
"Courage," Kurt says, very quiet, and Blaine laughs softly.
Rachel cuts off right in the middle of singing to Finn that she'd jump in front of a train for him, and she turns around in the passenger seat. "I would just like to reiterate that the Glee Club will be 100% behind you once we've arrived." They both start at her voice; apparently, Rachel has impeccable hearing, even while singing.
"You're a moment killer," Kurt tells her sharply. "That's what you are."
"The Glee Club will be 100% behind us, huh?" Blaine asks wryly, glancing at Kurt, who gives a tiny shrug at him.
"We totally are," Finn says earnestly, glancing at them in the rearview mirror as he pulls the car into the parking lot. "Don't worry, guys. We've got this."
"Kurt, are we going to have bodyguards?" Blaine mutters with great misgivings, aiming a broad, leery smile at Finn and Rachel. Kurt chuckles maddeningly, unbuckles his seat belt, and slides out of the other side of the car.
Frowning, Blaine follows his lead. Thankfully, the rain let up while they were on the way over; they're left with a chilly October Ohio evening. The gym entrance is lit up and there are a number of silhouettes making their way in that direction across the parking lot. Some of said silhouettes look a little wobbly -- pre-gaming must already be happening.
Blaine jumps when Finn double-taps the horn as Tina parks in the spot beside them. The doors open and the others start spilling out of her car, and then Blaine belatedly realizes, as he shuts Finn's door, that two girls have stepped out of an SUV in the next row and are coming toward them.
"Took you bitches long enough," says Santana Lopez, and she and Brittany step into the ring of light provided by the nearest lamppost. Santana is in something long and slinky with an over-the-top pattern in reds and purples and yellows; it's the kind of thing that no one should be able to rock, and yet there she is. Whatever Brittany is wearing, meanwhile, is so short that Blaine can't see it under her coat.
"Yeah," says Mercedes, " 'cause you mind sitting in the backseat of a car with Brittany."
"We weren't sitting," says Brittany, stating the very obvious. Her hair was probably once styled into loose curls around her shoulders and is now sticking up all over the place. "Rachel, I like your flowers."
Blaine can both feel and hear Kurt hiss beside him at the compliment to Rachel's dress; Santana momentarily looks like she can't even fathom what is the matter with Brittany, but she shakes it off. "Whatever," says Santana grimly. "Let's do this." And then, much to Blaine's astonishment, she wraps her hand around Brittany's and marches across the parking lot toward the school.
Everyone else follows, Rachel tugging at Finn as he laughs, Mike and Tina swinging their hands, and Quinn and Mercedes companionably linking arms and joking about something, but Blaine can't stop staring after the backs of Brittany and Santana's heads.
"Problem?" Kurt asks, patiently waiting but looking a little concerned.
Blaine turns on him. "Did you do this?" he asks. "Are they here as each others' dates?"
Kurt gently pulls on his sleeve, and Blaine, still gobsmacked, automatically follows him toward the entrance. "Yes," Kurt says, "they are, and I merely pointed out to Santana that the entire school is already aware of the fact that they're dating all but in name."
Blaine has spent the last month and a half watching the two of them cuddle during glee rehearsals, and listening to Santana angrily insist that they're "not lesbos." From what he understands, the situation has been going on a whole hell of a lot longer than a month and a half, and from what he knows of Santana (and her response when he tried to gently -- condescendingly, in retrospect -- tell her that coming out would be okay), he's stunned that this is happening right now.
"You merely pointed it out," he says slowly, disbelieving.
"You're just jealous because I succeeded where you crashed and burned," Kurt says smugly, and Blaine blinks and then lightly shoves at his shoulder, laughing. Kurt snorts but doesn't retaliate; he slips his hand into the crook of Blaine's elbow. "I may have also mentioned that it could potentially be helpful if we weren't the only same-sex couple at the dance," he says. "And that it would no doubt make Brit very happy. I'm not sure which argument swayed her."
"I'm gonna go ahead and guess that it was the Brittany one," Blaine says, and he holds the door open.
He loves doing stuff like holding doors. In the past, Kurt has been irritated by it and said a lot of things about how he isn't a girl (a fact that, Blaine pointed out, he was well aware of). They got into one of their biggest arguments yet over it, but Blaine has toned the guy-chivalry down to a level that's acceptable for both of them and he lets Kurt reciprocate, and as much as Kurt fought him tooth and nail over it, he isn't unappreciative. Blaine is addicted to the glances that Kurt tosses him when he does stuff like this; the way that he still looks startled and pleased that someone would open a door for him or move through a crowd with a hand in the small of his back.
Kurt does it again now, glancing at Blaine as he steps past like he's the most amazing thing on school grounds, which is totally untrue, because Kurt is.
Go to part 2
Appendices!:
(1)
(l to r) Rachel, Mercedes, Quinn, Tina, Santana, Brittany
Mike's sneakers
Kurt's Dolce & Gabbana jacket
(2) Songs: "Grenade," by Bruno Mars
(3) Movie prom scenes: Jawbreaker; 10 Things I Hate About You (starting at about 7:00); Carrie
Fandom: Glee
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel; Rachel Berry/Finn Hudson, Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce, Tina Cohen-Chang/Mike Chang, Mercedes Jones, Quinn Fabray, Noah Puckerman/Lauren Zizes, Artie Abrams, Sam Evans, teachers, parents, various OCs
Summary: Kurt wants to go to homecoming, but Blaine has reservations. This predictably leads to: New Directions schemes.
Warnings/spoilers: Homophobia; one "blink and you'll miss it" vague spoiler for the 2x14 "Blame It on the Alcohol" promo.
Count: 16,464 total words; 6604 in this part
Notes: For
guest_age, who gave me the prompt I know how important dances are to teen gays a month ago and was probably not expecting a belated word-explosion. This is really supposed to be one complete fic, but LJ's word-limit is killing me. Title from "This Year" by the Mountain Goats. It all starts on a Monday.
"So," Kurt says out of nowhere. They've been sitting in silence for at least a half an hour, Blaine using Kurt as a back rest (perched sideways on the couch with his back pressed against Kurt's side and his knees tucked up) while he works on his pre-cal homework. Kurt's vociferous protests about not being a piece of furniture, thank you very much, hadn't gotten him very far. Primarily because Blaine knows he didn't mean it and that he not-so-secretly loves it when Blaine drapes himself over him.
"So?" Blaine asks, both fond and a little absent. He jots a number into the notebook balanced on his knees before he can forget it.
"Homecoming," Kurt says, and he sounds matter-of-fact, but Blaine knows him well enough to hear the hint of uncertainty in his voice. "We need to decide if we're going."
"Why?" Blaine asks casually, willing his back not to tense up against Kurt. He starts copying the next homework question out of his math book. He feels like the world's biggest jerk. "Do you want to?"
There is silence, and then Kurt tersely says, "Yes," like Blaine is an idiot, which, granted -- that was a really stupid question.
"I do realize," Kurt continues, when Blaine doesn't say anything because while he knows that Kurt knows him better than anyone and that he doesn't have to internalize his weaknesses and project calm, it's a bad habit by now, "that it's a high school dance and, as such, will be full of streamers and hideous ruched dresses from JC Penney and the unwashed masses squeezed into their fathers' moth-eaten suits, but--"
Kurt must see something in Blaine's face, because he suddenly stops dead and then blurts, all at once, "Oh my God you don't want to go."
"No," Blaine protests, guiltily.
"That's why you've been changing the subject to the genius of John Galliano's spring collection all week when I mentioned homecoming. You were trying to distract me." His eyebrows lower even farther. "You wanted to let me down easy?" Kurt looks mortified, which is both a little funny (Kurt pulls amazing faces and Blaine isn't made of stone) and completely heart-breaking, because he's very clearly hurt, too, and Blaine never wants to cause that.
"No," Blaine says firmly, turning around on the couch so he can grab both of Kurt's hands (nearly stabbing himself on Kurt's pencil in the process). There is a beat, the two of them staring at each other. Blaine admits, "Well, maybe. Just on the distraction part."
"You could have just informed me that you don't want to go, Blaine," Kurt snaps, and while he is letting Blaine hold his hands, he's obviously angry with wounded pride. Blaine has to reconsider whether the near miss from the pencil was actually an accident. "I can take it."
"Kurt, seriously, no." He tightens his grip on Kurt's hands, which at least seems to get Kurt to stop for a minute. He's earnest but not without a hint of exasperated humor when he asks: "Can I talk now? Please?"
He eyes him beadily, then sighs. "Proceed." The fact that he's playing at being superior makes Blaine feel a little less sick; like maybe he's not quite as hurt as Blaine had first thought.
"So you know things weren't great at the school I went to before Dalton," Blaine says without preamble, and he sees Kurt's eyes widen faintly and Kurt sit up straighter. Does he really talk about Bellefontaine that little, that Kurt peers at him and starts silently brushing his thumb across the back of Blaine's hand when he mentions it? Apparently. "I don't have the best track record with dances," he admits, and he's trying to be better about lowering the façade with Kurt because he doesn't have to pretend that he knows what he's doing, but saying that sentence feels like pulling teeth. "I want to go, but I don't know--" It's so stupid. This shouldn't still get to him.
Blaine didn't finish the sentence, but Kurt seems to get it. "10 Things I Hate About You not-the-best or Jawbreaker not-the-best?" Kurt asks thoughtfully, and Blaine half smiles.
"Carrie not-the-best," he says, rueful. "But with punch instead of pig's blood. And I didn't kill anybody with my brain afterward."
The set of Kurt's mouth hardens around the edges, then softens again. "Far be it from me to insist on reliving a traumatic incident involving fruit punch," he says tightly, but it's careful, not acid-tongued or tart; he's giving Blaine the chance to take it lightly and change the subject.
Blaine is so ridiculously head over heels for this boy.
"Dalton didn't hold a lot of dances," he says. Blaine feels like an idiot. Worse, he feels like a complete coward. "So the rampant humiliation at Bellefontaine is -- kind of my last association with them." He says it wryly because that's the best way to soften it. “And, God I hate to say it, but – we don't even know if they would let us in together, Kurt.” Coward, he thinks. Coward, coward.
It's frustrating and infuriating and not doing the greatest things for his sense of self-worth, but it's also the truth. Blaine knows he has teachers who don't approve of him holding Kurt's hand in the halls and that there are parents who feel the same way, and it's a total crap shoot when it comes to who'll be selling the tickets during the school week and who will be manning the door at the dance. He is having flashbacks to the girl in Mississippi who had to sue the school to be allowed to attend prom with her girlfriend, and who showed up on the evening of the event to find that no one was there because parents had set up a top-secret, gay-free prom.
"Then we," Kurt says determinedly, "will just have to have a much more fabulous night of our own." He scoffs, dismissive: "Not that it'll be hard to beat an event held in a gym that reeks of sweaty socks and despair."
Blaine immediately cups Kurt's jaw in his hand, and he gets to watch Kurt light up with the force of his smile for a couple seconds before he's too close to see Kurt's face at all.
At his locker in the morning, Kurt comes up and -- with absolutely no preamble, not even giving Blaine time to comment on the killer vintage scarf he's wearing -- says, "What about making a new association?"
"--Uh, what?" Blaine asks, laughing and letting his voice go high on what, half-turning out of his locker so he can properly stare at Kurt.
"A new association," Kurt says, doing that thing he does when he's impatient and excited where he talks really, really fast. "With high school dances, to overpower the old one."
"Um," says Blaine diplomatically, and he pulls his physics book out of the locker and shuts the door. "What exactly did you have in mind?"
"What would you say," Kurt says, his eyes shining, "if I said that I could guarantee a mostly-harassment-free high school dance experience?"
"I'd say you're a magician," Blaine says warily. Dave Karofsky may have come to terms with his sexuality and McKinley may now have an official anti-bullying policy, but the jackass behavior didn't transfer out alongside Karofsky or graduate with Azimio, and the introduction of new policies hasn't made the administration any less spineless.
There are plenty of mutters of fag in the hall (from what Kurt has said, the fact that they're mutters rather than shouts marks an improvement) and they get shoulder-checked when they hold hands within enough of a crowd that shoves can be played off as accidents, and Blaine now knows what grape slushie tastes like after it has dripped down his face. From what he has seen, a bunch of other kids take abuse, too. There are no dumpster tosses, though, for anyone; no one gets jumped in the parking lot. Some of the teachers try to help as much as they can. It's a start, but Principal Figgins will have to do a better job of enforcing policy before any real change is made in the general mindset of what is and isn't acceptable behavior. Blaine has only been a student at McKinley for a month and a half, but he'll believe that when he sees it. So far, fellow glee club students have been doing a better job of enforcing the rules than the principal's office has.
"I'm no magician," Kurt says, stepping away from the lockers and trusting that Blaine will follow (he always does). He looks and sounds like the cat that swallowed the canary. Or the voracious online shopper who found a limited edition Balmain jacket for a steal. Self-satisfied and lofty: "Just your friendly neighborhood logistical genius."
"How would you do this?" Blaine asks, curling his fingers around Kurt's palm after Kurt reaches out for his hand. They don't kiss in the halls or in open places on school property, by unspoken don't-poke-the-pit-of-angry-vipers agreement, but they do hold hands and walk to class, and fix each others' hair in public, and sing and dance together in glee performances, and they catch shit for it, but Blaine doesn't give a damn and he knows Kurt doesn't either. He feels like he's eight feet tall and can breathe lightning bolts, as long as Kurt is standing beside him.
"Do you trust me?"
"That's a pretty unfair question," Blaine says, frowning, but instead of taking umbrage, Kurt just squeezes his hand.
"Trust me," repeats Kurt, softer, and when Blaine opens his mouth to respond, he catches a flash of red letterman jackets and then finds himself dripping with raspberry-flavored ice.
Kurt flicks slushie out of his own eyes and then shouts after the two high-fiving hockey players as they strut away, his hand clamped around Blaine's in a vise grip and his other hand balled up at his side; he's hollering something about sweeping hair off the floor at Supercuts. Blaine tilts his head to the side and taps it a couple times, and he can feel stinging cold slushie trickle out of his ear.
Kurt is breathing hard beside him, his face red-stained and furious; Blaine doesn't even want to think about trying to clean his T-shirt and Kurt's jacket. "Do you regret transferring here yet?" Kurt asks dryly, thrumming with outrage, but with an undercurrent of that seriously dark sense of humor that Blaine loves (and another undercurrent, one that sounds a little like guilt).
"Nope," Blaine says, and screw all of them, he kisses Kurt square on the cold sticky lips, right there outside Ms. Hoffmeier's biology classroom. Kurt is wide-eyed when he draws back. Blaine says: "Kurt, I would be honored to gay up homecoming with you," and Kurt grabs his hand so hard that it feels like he might break Blaine's fingers.
Kurt won't tell Blaine his plans. It's maddening; Blaine hates not being in control of what's going on, which is, he strongly suspects, why Kurt seems to be getting such a kick out of keeping him in the dark.
Blaine keeps walking in on conversations where people stop, peer at him, and then awkwardly pretend they were talking about the weather or a movie or Jacob Ben Israel's latest blog post. Blaine is pretty used to that reaction when it comes to the rest of the student body; there was a whole lot of gossip when Blaine first showed up in September. He's not really used to it in glee, though. He and Kurt are among the most drama-free (apart from Kurt's natural dramatic tendencies, which mostly manifest themselves through song selections and wardrobe choices and the occasional diva face-off with Rachel) of the club's couples, and there just isn't a lot to say about them behind their backs.
Until now, apparently.
Blaine walks into rehearsal and Finn says, "Uhh, spiders! Spiders. They're gross," or Mike throws himself away from the small huddle and abruptly starts dancing to no music, or Quinn has a fit in which she is clearly coughing words too quietly for Blaine to hear them. He is trying to take it all with good grace (his personal favorite response so far is stopping in the doorway and saying, "What? Do I have something on my face?") and he knows that they all mean well and have undoubtedly been pulled into Kurt's mysterious machinations, but it's hard.
It's especially hard because it feels like Blaine hasn't seen his boyfriend all week.
Kurt has been deep in conversation with Mercedes or conferencing with Sam, Dan, and Rachel. Blaine walks past the guidance office one morning on his way to Spanish and sees the back of a familiar head through the glass wall, Ms. Pillsbury-Howell nodding encouragingly and looking serious behind her desk. There are days when Blaine can't find Kurt at all; when he isn't in any of his classrooms or at the piano or his locker or even in the auditorium, and Blaine tries not to feel too frustrated or concerned -- they are, after all, two separate people with two separate lives, and they do plenty of things independently -- but it's always still a relief when Kurt turns a corner or shows up at rehearsal.
Even while they're together, Kurt is distracted and clearly plotting. The worst comes when they're taking advantage of Wednesday's extended football practice and the rare, all-too-brief window between extracurriculars finishing and Kurt's parents coming home from work. Blaine is thoroughly pinned by Kurt's warm weight and his mouth, and he's seriously considering the effort of figuring out how to get Kurt out of all of the straps on his shirt; the only downside to the plan is that they'll have to stop kissing to accomplish it, and Blaine can't quite bring himself to do that.
That is, until he hears the tinny opening bars of "Telephone," and Kurt abruptly stiffens mid-lazy-makeout and lunges to grab his iPhone. Blaine throws up his hands, rolls out from under Kurt, and gets right out of the bed. By the time that Kurt has convinced him to come back, Carole is shouting a cheery hello from downstairs.
On Friday, Blaine spots Kurt having a low, intent conversation with Santana over her newly-regained place at the Cheerios' lunch table, and she looks very, very unhappy and obstinate when Kurt finally pivots away to join Blaine.
“What was that about?” Blaine asks, settling in beside Finn (who greets him with a friendly clap on the shoulder without glancing up from his discussion with Artie and Whitney; it sounds like they're talking videogames) with his lunch tray at the glee table.
Taking the seat across from him, Kurt shrugs airily and Blaine frowns. Kurt relents, twisting the cap off his bottle of water, and says, “You'll find out tonight, ideally.”
Blaine opens his mouth, but Kurt knows him well enough to recognize that he has reached his breaking point with all the secrecy and the cloak and dagger stuff, and with the fact that everyone at this table is listening to this conversation while pretending they don't notice it. “My preparations are airtight,” Kurt promises, and he presses his boot against Blaine's sneaker under the table. “We're going to have a 100% drama-free homecoming.”
Finn looks like he wants to say something beside him, but then Blaine indignantly hisses, “Ow!” because someone just kicked him.
Sitting across the table, Rachel's eyes widen. She stares at him for a guilty split second, and then she abruptly turns toward the rest of the table and says, "While we're all gathered together, I really think it's high time that we discuss potential songs for sectionals. As you're all well aware, we have to place at regionals again this year in order to keep the club alive, so we cannot afford to become complacent." Everybody groans or rolls their eyes; Tina flicks a tater tot at her.
Blaine is so busy peering at Rachel suspiciously that he only catches the tail end of what must have been a truly epic face from Kurt at his stepbrother. Finn looks appropriately cowed, anyway. When he notices that Blaine is looking at him, Kurt smiles sunnily.
Blaine feels unnerved.
On Friday night, Blaine sits on the Hummels' couch and he watches with bemusement as Finn gets more and more frustrated trying to beat Blaine's high score at Burn Zombie Burn! “Dude, how did you even do this?” Finn asks, yelping as a zombie leaps out and claws him. “You're like a stone-cold killer.”
Blaine laughs. “It's all about the reflex; the second you see one, you have to hit--” and then the door bell rings, and Finn says something desperate that really shouldn't be said in polite company. They're in the front room and Kurt and Tina are still doing something upstairs that, from the sounds of it, involves a whole lot of hairspray and shouts that Blaine can only go up there under pain of death, and the Hummels are in the kitchen with the Cohen-Changs.
“I can get it,” Blaine says; Finn mutters something grateful, his eyes glued to the screen, and Blaine hauls himself up and goes to the door. He finds Rachel there with two men who can only be her fathers, one white dad and one black dad and both smiling fit to beat the band. Blaine, though, mostly has eyes for Rachel and the dress that she is wearing under an incongruous red peacoat. The gown is a showstopper, that's for sure, and that's undoubtedly why Rachel picked it; it's floor-length in a shiny purple fabric (potentially taffeta), with a sweetheart neckline and – and this is the real kicker – a cascade of unbelievably tacky giant rosettes running from one hip all the way down to the hem.
Kurt is going to shit bricks.
Rachel is beaming, though, and her hair has been pulled up off her face, and Blaine is very fond of her even after (maybe because of?) the entire drunken debacle that took place last spring, so it's easy to say warmly, “Rachel, you're gorgeous.”
Her smile only widens; she says, “Thank you, I know," and motions as if she's going to toss her hair gaily -- but then laughs and lets her hand fall because it's up in a chignon, so there's no hair to toss. "You look quite handsome yourself."
"Thanks," Blaine says, shrugging it off modestly but grinning. He feels a little James Bond in his black suit, though Bond would definitely not have paired it with black and white saddle shoes or a burgundy bow tie. "I kind of figured I'd have to step it up so I don't get totally outclassed by my date." It's homecoming, not prom, so most guys -- Finn included -- are going to turn up wearing black or khaki pants with a dress shirt and a tie (Kurt has stated his willingness to lay money on the ratio of Dockers-to-other-pants being 70% or higher), but Blaine isn't dating most guys.
Rachel laughs again, her eyes dancing knowingly, but she doesn't elaborate on what Kurt's wearing; she just says, "Dad, Daddy, this is Blaine.”
“It's very nice to meet you,” says the smiling father on Rachel's right, and he reaches over to shake Blaine's hand in a strong grip; Blaine shakes the other dad's hand, too, and steps aside so they can come in. They help each other out of their coats while Blaine takes Rachel's. Blaine doesn't know a whole lot of adult gay couples; there's something weirdly fantastic about watching them do something that easy and couple-y. Like there will be life beyond when going to a simple high school dance requires wariness and a week's worth of ... whatever exactly it is that Kurt has been doing.
The doorbell rings again while Blaine is collecting everybody's stuff to put in the closet (sometimes, Blaine feels like he lives here; this is one of those times), and he winds up taking Mike's and Mrs. Chang's coats, too. By the time he makes it back into the living room, the adults have all been greeted by Burt and Carole and have moved into the kitchen, and Mike has dropped onto the couch and taken over Finn's Xbox controller.
Finn, meanwhile, is standing awkwardly and staring at Rachel. "Wow," he's saying. "Just -- wow."
"Thank you," Rachel says to Finn, beaming and blushing, and doing a spin in front of Finn to show off the full effect of her dress. Finn is still staring, but he's starting to smile softly. It's very sweet. Blaine privately thinks that the seven months spent single or dating other people did them some good.
He perches on the arm of the sofa and watches them out of the corner of his eye. "Sweet kicks," he says to Mike.
Mike happily wiggles his black and blue high-top sneakers. "Totally worth the fight with my mom," he pronounces. A zombie leaps on his avatar on the TV, and the screen goes red and then black. Mike throws up his hands and sets the controller aside. "Are they still getting ready?" he asks, pointing a questioning finger up at the ceiling.
"We're not allowed up there," Blaine confirms, which is when somebody else raps at the door and then it opens before anyone can get up; a few seconds later, Mercedes and Quinn turn the corner together in a flurry of skirts and smiles. Everybody starts talking all at once, laughing and chattering, the three girls (Mercedes in floor-length electric green that Blaine is pretty sure nobody else in the world could pull off; Quinn in demure-but-short pale pink with a pair of white flats) exclaiming over each other's dresses.
"Okay," says Mercedes, cutting into the commotion, "where are my boy and girl?"
Blaine wordlessly points at the ceiling, Mike following his lead. "If we leave them up there, they're never coming down," Quinn says to Mercedes, who gathers up her green skirts and heads for the stairs.
"We'll give 'em a little shove," she promises, Quinn hot on her heels. "C'mon, ladies."
Rachel's look of astonishment (followed rapidly by joy) at being included almost hurts to watch; her whole face lights up and she rustles along after them, beaming, and the three of them clomp up the stairs in heels.
"Hello?" calls a new voice from the foyer, and Finn mutters, "Crap," and then hollers, "Come in!"
Blaine says, "I don't know if you can fit many more people in this house," and Mike laughs beside him as they hear the front door close again.
There's a burst of talking in the kitchen and another one from upstairs, but above it all, Blaine can very clearly hear Kurt's scandalized voice say, "Oh my God," and Blaine has to start laughing, even if it makes him look like a lunatic in front of whoever just came in, because Kurt obviously just got his first look at Rachel's dress.
"Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Jones," Finn says to the black couple who have stepped into the living room doorway. Mercedes doesn't really resemble her tall, sharp-faced dad, but she looks just like her mom, who's smiling and shaking out her umbrella.
"Hi boys," says Mrs. Jones, and Mike waves; Blaine smiles.
Several voices laugh all at once in the kitchen, and Finn says, "I think the parents are hanging out in--" and then he points.
"Uh huh," Mrs. Jones says, and she tosses a critical, bemused eye over the three of them and the TV. " 'Cause I see you three are real busy in here, killing the undead and all." Finn shuffles his feet and mutters something sheepish, and Mrs. Jones throws her head back and laughs. "Come on, Frank; we'll leave them to it."
In their wake, Finn says, "Do you guys really th--" and then the doorbell rings. Again.
"Seriously?" asks Mike.
Finn's eyebrows are furrowed. "I don't think anybody else is coming," he says slowly, and then the door creaks open and heels slowly click toward them, and a classically pretty blonde in a trench coat appears.
"I'm sorry," she says softly; she looks like she's about ready to start twitching. "No one came to the door, and I heard voices--"
Finn is frozen with obvious shock and potentially some terror and Mike isn't saying anything, so Blaine smiles as kindly as he can and says, "It's okay. It's pretty loud in here." (Between the game's ambient rock music on the pause screen, and the groups both upstairs and downstairs, that's actually true.)
"Mrs. Fabray," says Finn, like he just got jarred loose. "Um -- hi."
"It's actually Ms. Landry n--"
"Finn?" calls Carole's voice, which is rapidly getting loud as she comes down the hall from the kitchen. "Did I hear the door--" She stops short when she sees Ms. Landry standing awkwardly in her living room. The smile fades off Carole's face. "Judy."
"Hi Carole." Quinn's mom is holding her purse with both hands, her knuckles white with her grip. "I'm sorry; I don't want to intrude. It's just that Quinn said that parents would be taking pictures, and she got ready at the Joneses, so I wasn't able to--"
"No," says Carole; Blaine can tell it's kind of a reflex. "No, no. Of course."
Mike is glancing from mom to mom, his eyes a little wide. Finn looks kind of like he wants to sink into the sofa.
Blaine very, very slowly leans in close to Mike and then mutters, "What's ... going on?" right in his ear.
"So -- Quinn lied, last year, and said that Finn was the father of her baby?" Mike says in a quiet aside, barely moving his mouth, like that's going to keep him from being noticed here; Blaine nods his awareness of the baby daddy drama. "And her parents threw her out of the house, so she lived with Finn and his mom for a while. I don't ... think anybody's parents have talked since then."
Blaine's eyes flick from one woman to the other.
"Please, come in," says Carole, and her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes the way that it usually does, but she reaches out and takes Quinn's mom's hand. "We're having a parent gathering in the kitchen before we make the kids pose for about a million pictures."
Quinn's mom looks like she's blinking back tears. "Thank you," she says, and Kurt's stepmom pulls her into the kitchen.
There's silence.
"Your mom," Blaine tells Finn, "is seriously awesome."
Finn whooshes out a heavy breath, loud enough that it sounds like he's been holding it. He glances across Mike, at Blaine. "I know," he says, and he gives a small, tentative smile.
"Okay, boys," proclaims Mercedes's voice, and she clatters down the stairs. "We got the hairspray away from your dates. You better be ready for this."
"Don't light a match near either of them," Quinn says dryly, accepting Mercedes's hand down off the staircase. "You'll blow up half the county."
"Lies," says Kurt's voice. "Filthy lies."
Blaine sees his feet first, and the outfit initially looks subdued by Kurt Hummel standards. He's wearing matte black loafers (doubtless vintage and real leather, beautiful but classic) with skinny black dress pants. Then the rest of him comes into view as he keeps descending the stairs. Kurt's tailored suit jacket has satiny lapels, but the rest of the jacket -- the entire thing -- is made up of black sequins that flash in the light with every move he makes. He has paired it with a white dress shirt and a shiny black tie, and his hair has been swept into new heights of perfection, but seriously, that jacket. It fits perfectly, emphasizing the breadth of Kurt's shoulders and his trim waist and oh, God, he looks so good.
Blaine is vaguely aware of the fact that he's staring. He is made aware of this fact by watching Kurt's nervous-looking narrow smile turn into a flush. Kurt reaches out and tugs on the lapels of Blaine's jacket in an achingly familiar movement (one that no one else here will understand), then smooths them down again. "This is amazing," Kurt says lowly, his eyes shining. "You look amazing."
It's worth it. They haven't even left Kurt's house yet, and right now, everything, all of this -- how long it took Blaine to figure out what to wear, the ugly scenarios he's been envisioning for days, the potential messiness waiting for them at the school -- he doesn't care. He would do it all again ten times if it meant he would get to see that awed look on Kurt's face.
Neither of them is much for PDA, even when they're in front of their friends in the chorus room or in the Hummel household, which is basically like Fort Knox in terms of places where it's safe for them to get handsy with each other; public groping and grabbing is just not their style. But seriously, in this case -- screw that. Blaine reaches up and cups the side of Kurt's neck in his hand, thumb brushing his jaw and fingers barely touching the hair at the nape of his neck. "I have the hottest date here," he says quietly, and Kurt huffs a laugh. "Kurt, you look incredible, seriously."
Kurt smiles enormously, his face a little blurry due to proximity, and then Blaine hears Rachel giggle and he abruptly realizes that the world has continued spinning while he and Kurt gawked at each other; Tina and Rachel came downstairs and everybody is talking and laughing and kindly ignoring Kurt and Blaine.
Kurt apparently reenters the real world right when Blaine does. "Have you seen what Rachel's wearing?" Kurt mutters, sounding offended. "It took everything that I had not to ask her who flayed Barney and made flowers out of his skin." Blaine tries to muffle his laughter in Kurt's sequined shoulder, but it isn't an entirely successful attempt.
"You're terrible," Blaine accuses merrily, putting his hands on Kurt's upper arms so he can push himself back up again.
"I only say what everyone else is thinking," Kurt replies, light and faux-disdainful.
Blaine's hands are still on Kurt's shiny shoulders, and as he's about to let them fall back to his side, he realizes. "Is this--?" he asks, eyes narrowing in sudden suspicion, and Kurt's airy brush of his fingers across his perfectly sculpted bang wordlessly confirms it. "Oh my God, it is! How did you get your hands on the sequined tuxedo jacket from the Dolce and Gabbana fall collection?"
"I have my ways. Too much?" Kurt asks breathlessly, and Blaine laughs. "The decision came down to this or the same jacket in magenta."
"It's just enough," Blaine promises, and they grin at each other.
Quinn says, "Frankly, this is gross. All of you." Blaine belatedly realizes that Finn is still stealing awed glances at Rachel, and that Tina (who's wearing a vintage-looking short black dress with black combat boots that have blue laces) has been carefully pinning a boutonniere on Mike's sport coat. "Pictures!"
Carole wasn't kidding when she told Quinn's mom that they were going to take about a million pictures. First there are pictures of all of them together lined up in front of the fireplace, then just the guys, then just the girls, then dates -- it's crazy. It's nice, though. Blaine's parents couldn't be here to be part of the parental paparazzi, but Carole assures him that she will take plenty of photos for them. Everybody's talking and laughing, and Blaine is more than happy to take picture after picture with his friends around him and with Kurt tucked warm against his side.
Nobody so much as blinks when it's their turn to take couple photos; Blaine wraps his arm around Kurt's waist and smiles in front of what feels like at least 30 cameras but can't actually be more than four or five. The flashes are bright, but Blaine isn't blind. He sees Mrs. Jones's enormous wobbly smile, and the way that Rachel's dads are looking at them, and Rachel grabbing Mercedes's arm, and Carole's eyes going a little shiny as she snaps photos, and Kurt's dad keeping the brim of his cap tugged down low over the upper half of his face but his tiny smile clearly visible.
So maybe they're not treated just like the other couples, but Blaine can live with that.
Blaine's nerves don't return until they're in the car. Rachel prodded Finn into singing along with the radio and now they're crooning "Grenade" to each other in the front seat. As the car pulls up to the stop sign around the corner from the high school, Blaine can feel his skin start to prickle. He breathes calmly; steadily, easy. He tells himself that this is different. He isn't standing alone, desperately trying to fit in. There are two carloads of students here who will stand behind him, and one who'll be right beside him (and probably in front of him, knowing Kurt, if anyone takes so much as a step toward them). He's more than willing to stand out. But Blaine still thinks that whoever invented high school dances did so just to create an event with the maximum potential for humiliation and jackassery.
When he glances over, he finds Kurt looking at him through the moving stripes of light provided by streetlamps as they drive past. There's something about the moment, silent and totally theirs across the backseat of Finn's crappy car, that makes Blaine's heart feel like it's swelling in his chest.
"Courage," Kurt says, very quiet, and Blaine laughs softly.
Rachel cuts off right in the middle of singing to Finn that she'd jump in front of a train for him, and she turns around in the passenger seat. "I would just like to reiterate that the Glee Club will be 100% behind you once we've arrived." They both start at her voice; apparently, Rachel has impeccable hearing, even while singing.
"You're a moment killer," Kurt tells her sharply. "That's what you are."
"The Glee Club will be 100% behind us, huh?" Blaine asks wryly, glancing at Kurt, who gives a tiny shrug at him.
"We totally are," Finn says earnestly, glancing at them in the rearview mirror as he pulls the car into the parking lot. "Don't worry, guys. We've got this."
"Kurt, are we going to have bodyguards?" Blaine mutters with great misgivings, aiming a broad, leery smile at Finn and Rachel. Kurt chuckles maddeningly, unbuckles his seat belt, and slides out of the other side of the car.
Frowning, Blaine follows his lead. Thankfully, the rain let up while they were on the way over; they're left with a chilly October Ohio evening. The gym entrance is lit up and there are a number of silhouettes making their way in that direction across the parking lot. Some of said silhouettes look a little wobbly -- pre-gaming must already be happening.
Blaine jumps when Finn double-taps the horn as Tina parks in the spot beside them. The doors open and the others start spilling out of her car, and then Blaine belatedly realizes, as he shuts Finn's door, that two girls have stepped out of an SUV in the next row and are coming toward them.
"Took you bitches long enough," says Santana Lopez, and she and Brittany step into the ring of light provided by the nearest lamppost. Santana is in something long and slinky with an over-the-top pattern in reds and purples and yellows; it's the kind of thing that no one should be able to rock, and yet there she is. Whatever Brittany is wearing, meanwhile, is so short that Blaine can't see it under her coat.
"Yeah," says Mercedes, " 'cause you mind sitting in the backseat of a car with Brittany."
"We weren't sitting," says Brittany, stating the very obvious. Her hair was probably once styled into loose curls around her shoulders and is now sticking up all over the place. "Rachel, I like your flowers."
Blaine can both feel and hear Kurt hiss beside him at the compliment to Rachel's dress; Santana momentarily looks like she can't even fathom what is the matter with Brittany, but she shakes it off. "Whatever," says Santana grimly. "Let's do this." And then, much to Blaine's astonishment, she wraps her hand around Brittany's and marches across the parking lot toward the school.
Everyone else follows, Rachel tugging at Finn as he laughs, Mike and Tina swinging their hands, and Quinn and Mercedes companionably linking arms and joking about something, but Blaine can't stop staring after the backs of Brittany and Santana's heads.
"Problem?" Kurt asks, patiently waiting but looking a little concerned.
Blaine turns on him. "Did you do this?" he asks. "Are they here as each others' dates?"
Kurt gently pulls on his sleeve, and Blaine, still gobsmacked, automatically follows him toward the entrance. "Yes," Kurt says, "they are, and I merely pointed out to Santana that the entire school is already aware of the fact that they're dating all but in name."
Blaine has spent the last month and a half watching the two of them cuddle during glee rehearsals, and listening to Santana angrily insist that they're "not lesbos." From what he understands, the situation has been going on a whole hell of a lot longer than a month and a half, and from what he knows of Santana (and her response when he tried to gently -- condescendingly, in retrospect -- tell her that coming out would be okay), he's stunned that this is happening right now.
"You merely pointed it out," he says slowly, disbelieving.
"You're just jealous because I succeeded where you crashed and burned," Kurt says smugly, and Blaine blinks and then lightly shoves at his shoulder, laughing. Kurt snorts but doesn't retaliate; he slips his hand into the crook of Blaine's elbow. "I may have also mentioned that it could potentially be helpful if we weren't the only same-sex couple at the dance," he says. "And that it would no doubt make Brit very happy. I'm not sure which argument swayed her."
"I'm gonna go ahead and guess that it was the Brittany one," Blaine says, and he holds the door open.
He loves doing stuff like holding doors. In the past, Kurt has been irritated by it and said a lot of things about how he isn't a girl (a fact that, Blaine pointed out, he was well aware of). They got into one of their biggest arguments yet over it, but Blaine has toned the guy-chivalry down to a level that's acceptable for both of them and he lets Kurt reciprocate, and as much as Kurt fought him tooth and nail over it, he isn't unappreciative. Blaine is addicted to the glances that Kurt tosses him when he does stuff like this; the way that he still looks startled and pleased that someone would open a door for him or move through a crowd with a hand in the small of his back.
Kurt does it again now, glancing at Blaine as he steps past like he's the most amazing thing on school grounds, which is totally untrue, because Kurt is.
Go to part 2
Appendices!:
(1)
(l to r) Rachel, Mercedes, Quinn, Tina, Santana, Brittany
Mike's sneakers
Kurt's Dolce & Gabbana jacket
(2) Songs: "Grenade," by Bruno Mars
(3) Movie prom scenes: Jawbreaker; 10 Things I Hate About You (starting at about 7:00); Carrie
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