AN: Last flashback before we pick up after Kurt and James meeting with their lawyer. Starting in chapter 8, the rest of the story will be told chronologically.

PART 2

CHAPTER 7

December 2021

“So if you've loved him for nearly two months, why didn't you say something sooner?”

Kurt fidgets in his chair.

“He broke up with his boyfriend. They've only been dating six months, but I thought they'd make it. So why make a decision over someone that would probably never be available. But now he is, and he's really warmed up to Lexy over the past few months, and I can't stay with someone I will always love in some way, when the person that I can't stop thinking about could return my feelings. The way I feel about Blaine, I could see myself do something really stupid should he offer and even though I don't love James the way I used to anymore, I could never do that to him. It's bad enough that I'm in love with another man, but for me it'd be even worse if I acted on my feelings while I'm still with James.

Burt sighs. “No, kiddo. Really stupid would be to end your marriage because you have the hots for some guy and are afraid you won't be able to keep it in your pants.”

“Dad,” Kurt groans, because that's not what he meant.

Everything would be so much easier if this thing with Blaine were just about sex. But no, he had to fall in love and realize in the process that maybe he still loves his husband, but isn't in love with him anymore and had stopped caring about James' work related absences a while ago. God, breaking up would be so much easier if he'd never gotten married in the first place.

It's the morning after Kurt had dropped the bomb and apparently his dad is still reeling from it.

“Why did you let me get married when I did?” he whines, because now he'll have to get a divorce instead of just moving out of the shared apartment like unmarried couples breaking up can.

“Because you wouldn't have listened to me if I'd told you that you are making a huge mistake.”

Kurt sighs because unfortunately his dad is right. He probably would have gotten married even faster out of spite.

“So you're sure you're in love with this guy? This isn't just a sex thing?”

Kurt sinks further into the couch and buries his head behind his hands. His voice sounds muffled when he replies.

“Yeah, Dad, I'm sure.”

October 2021

Kurt doesn't even realize that he's fallen in love until it's too late. He and Blaine have been working together for a few months, gone out with the whole cast at least once a week so they could all bond and usually met in Central Park on Sundays even when James was in New York, but claimed to have too much work to do for a trip to the park. At some point his innocent crush has developed into more and now he is doesn't know which way is up anymore.

And of course he has to realize he's in love with Blaine because of a fucking song. Like his life is a musical.

Blaine had written a new song for him and in today's rehearsal had sung it for Kurt so he'd get a feel for what it should be like. And listening to the lyrics and Blaine's performance it hit him like a ton of brick. James wasn't the first person he thought of anymore when something happened in his life; his first instinct had become to call Blaine. He thought about Blaine and what he was doing at the moment constantly when they weren't together and he was insanely jealous of Blaine's boyfriend Cameron. At first he had justified his feelings with having nothing in common with the pre law student and therefore not getting along, but now he can't do it anymore. He doesn't like Cameron, because he gets to go home with Blaine while Kurt has to say goodbye in front of the theater and because he gets to kiss Blaine when all Kurt gets are hugs. Not that the hugs are bad, but he wants more. It isn't just feelings, he desires Blaine as well, which is understandable though because Blaine is gorgeous.

He's still sitting on a chair in the back of the studio they are renting for rehearsals, when the last of the dancers leave the room with their choreographer Dakota Stanley, leaving Kurt alone with Blaine.

“You never told me what you thought of the song. Did you hate it?” Blaine drops into the seat next to Kurt's and stares at him wide eyed with those puppy dog eyes of his.

“What, no, I, I, lo-, liked it. It's great,” Kurt stutters, caught off guard. He'd gone through the rest of rehearsal in a daze, not even realizing when it was over. Otherwise he'd have left before Blaine got a chance to talk to him.

He's actually surprised Blaine's doesn't know immediately what's going on, because he feels like he has a neon sign spelling Kurt loves Blaine on his forehead. He's certain that he's blushing for no apparent reason and his hands are sweaty. In fact he feels like he did when he was twelve years old and looked up shirtless pictures of his favorite movie stars on the Internet; guilty about his feelings and certain that everyone around him can read his dirty mind. His stomach in knots, Kurt gives Blaine his best show smile.

“But you know that already. You wouldn't have sung it in front of the whole cast if you didn't think it was a good song.”

“Yeah, but I wasn't concerned about their reactions, I needed to know that you liked it. After all, you'll be the one who has to perform it on a stage,” Blaine winks and the butterflies in Kurt's stomach summersault.

“I, I have to go. I told Katie I'd be home by nine,” he excuses himself because he needs to get away from Blaine before he does something stupid like kiss Blaine or tell him about his feelings.

“Um, okay. Do you want to share a cab? I'm meeting Cameron uptown anyway,” Blaine offers and any other day he'd taken him up on it but today he needs to be alone with his thoughts.

“That's okay, thanks. I'll probably be faster taking the subway and I don't want to be late again.”

Blaine looks disappointed (or maybe Kurt's just imagining things now) but nods.

“See you tomorrow then. I want to work with you on the song while Dakota teaches the dancers the new choreography.”

Kurt swallows hard, because spending time one on one with Blaine is exactly what he doesn't need right now. Not when he feels like he's losing his mind, because how else would you describe what's happening to him. After all, married people aren't supposed to fall in love with people who aren't their spouses.

***

“You all right?” Katie asks when Kurt walks through the front door and unceremoniously drops his workout bag. “You look a little pale.”

Kurt waves her off and quickly checks that he's on time. Katie's been staying late a lot in the past few weeks and Kurt feels bad about it, because twenty-two year olds shouldn't spend their nights with babies that aren't their own.

“I'm fine. Dakota was being his usual slave driving self, so I'm just bone tired.”

“If you say so. Lexy went to bed around seven thirty thankfully without a fuss after you talked to her, so why don't you take a bubble bath and relax,” she suggests and Kurt has to admit that Katie always has the best ideas.

“I think I will. Enjoy your free day and I'll see you Friday at one.”

He closes the door behind her before slumping against it. James isn't due to return from Shanghai for another eight days, so the apartment is quiet apart from the street noises that are a constant in the city. For a moment he considers calling his dad, but he can just imagine what he'd say. That Kurt made a commitment, promised to stay faithful till death and had to stick to it no matter how hard things got. And he wasn't so sure anymore if he could stick it out and just hope that his feelings for Blaine would pass and he would fall back in love with his husband.

Desperate for some kind of advice, he pulls his tablet from his bag and types ‘married but in love with someone else' into the search bar. Immediately, he's bombarded with webpages offering him discreet one night stands but at the bottom of the page he finds a forum that looks promising.

The first replies to a similar question, aren't however. One person writes that you should only cheat if you're certain you won't get caught, because adultery can still cause you trouble in the following divorce, while another one thinks that a threesome with the new person would be the best solution to the problem. The consensus on the page however seems to be that one should be honest with the partner about the feelings one developed to either find a way to make the marriage/relationship work in spite of them or to start a dialogue about possibly breaking up or getting a divorce. Neither of those solutions seem very appealing to Kurt, because for one, he really doesn't want to tell James about falling in love with someone else and secondly, divorce sounds way too drastic. After all, it's not like Blaine has feelings for him as well and there's a chance that they could be together.

Kurt drops his tablet on the coffee table and walks into the bathroom. Once he's got the water running, he quietly opens the door to Lexy's bedroom. The nightlight her grandpa Burt had gotten her illuminates her sleeping face and Kurt softly kisses her forehead before closing the door behind him again. With how busy he is these days, he's always happy about the mornings they spend together before either Katie comes by or he drops her off at her aunts' like he'll do tomorrow. It's also the only time he ever gets things done in the apartment, making him incredibly grateful that James had hired a cleaning lady who comes by once a week.

In the bath, he tries not to think about Blaine, because it's bad enough that he's developed feelings for his best friend, but actually thinking about him while he masturbates would be so much worse, because he would never be able to look Blaine in the eye again if he indulged. So he keeps his hands to himself and thinks about dirty diapers and the household chores he'll have to do tomorrow before rehearsal to keep his mind from wandering.

What he keeps coming back to however, is the question of what to do with his realization. Should he just ignore it and hope that things will go back to normal eventually? Or should he follow the online community's advice and talk to James about how he's feeling? Maybe if James were aware of it they could work on fixing their marriage together. But what if James is happy with the status quo and doesn't want to change anything? What if James has a secret lover somewhere in China and that's why he's always happy about his assignments. Kurt shakes his head, because what right does he have to accuse James of cheating when he's the one in love with another guy.

In the end, he settles on ignoring the problem and hopes that his feelings for Blaine are like a nasty cold, strong while it lasts, but over eventually.

Thanksgiving 2021

“I'm sorry, Dad, but Lexy still hasn't gotten over her cold and the doctor doesn't think flying is a good idea until she's 100 % fit again,” Kurt tells his dad two days before Thanksgiving.

The plan had been to fly out Thursday morning and get back to New York late Sunday, but Lexy's persistent cold are thwarting it. Just like his feelings for Blaine, her cold just won't go away, so Kurt has to cancel the trip to Lima.

“That's okay kiddo. Her health comes first. It's just too bad Carole's already volunteered for the soup kitchen and I've given the guys the day off to be with family. Otherwise, we would've come to you.”

It won't be his first Thanksgiving on his own because his first year of college it hadn't been in the budget and his first year out of college he'd been in a small Off Broadway play and had told his family that he'd spend it with the cast anyway. But it's different this year, because James is in Beijing (“The Chinese don't give a damn about your American holiday”) and Lexy is old enough now to be part of the festivities that she now will be missing out on. Unless, unless he organizes a little Thanksgiving party of his own for all his friends who are staying in New York as well. It will be just like the orphans' dinner a few of his classmates had organized his first year at NYU.

A few phone calls later, he knows that Rachel and Jesse are spending Thanksgiving in New York because her dads won tickets for a cruise and Jesse's parents are in Europe, Santana and Brittany are staying as well because they aren't fans of dinners with disapproving family members, a few of the dancers are from the other side of the country and won't fly back home either and Nick agrees to come if he can bring his new girlfriend, who's from Italy and curious about American Thanksgiving. Only Blaine declines his invitation.

“I'd love to come Kurt, but Cameron's parents are in town and he wants me to meet them. So we'll have Thanksgiving at his place and on Friday I promised to go shopping with him and his mom,” Blaine says when Kurt calls to invite him, reminding him that Blaine has a life outside of the theater and that that life includes his boyfriend of six months that Kurt kinda loathes even though he's probably a really nice guy. A guy who's also the reason, why Kurt hasn't said anything to anyone about his doubts about the future of his marriage brought on by his feelings for Blaine. Because as long as Cameron is in the picture – which he'll probably be for a while if Blaine's already meeting the parents – there's no chance Blaine will ever return his feelings, and Kurt isn't ready to call it quits on his marriage just because he loves Blaine instead of James.

“That's great Blaine,” he lies convincingly while wishing he could be a better person and be actually happy for Blaine. “Tell me how it goes.” Unless it goes well, he adds in his mind.

“I'm actually quite nervous,” Blaine admits. “I've never met any boyfriend's parents before.”

Now he feels even worse for hoping it won't go well.

“They're going to love you,” he assures his best friend.

“What's not to love,” he adds after Blaine has hung up the phone.

***

The party is in full swing, or as much as in full swing a party can be with a seventeen months old in attendance, when the doorbell rings. Kurt's not expecting anyone else and as far as he knows neither of his friends is bringing any more guests, so he uses the intercom before buzzing the unexpected guest up.

“Who is it?” he calls over the noise as Jim, one of the dancers, tries to make Lexy squeal. His friends and coworkers have been fawning over his daughter from the moment they came over, and Kurt's quite happy about all the additional baby sitters in the apartment. At least this way, he doesn't have to constantly worry about her getting too close to one of the candles or even worse, the carving knife.

“It's Blaine. Do you have room for one more?”

“I'll buzz you up.”

Instead of waiting for Blaine inside the apartment, Kurt steps out into the hallway, because Blaine's surprise appearance can surely mean only one thing.

“Are you okay?” he asks as soon as Blaine gets off the elevator, dressed in a dark blue pea coat covered in freshly fallen snow.

Blaine furrows his brows. “Why wouldn't I be?”

Kurt's confused. “Weren't you supposed to have dinner with Cameron's parents?”

“Oh,” Blaine shrugs. “We broke up yesterday, so meeting his parents would have been kinda awkward. I'm only late, because Cooper remembered that he has a brother living in the same city and insisted we go out for drinks when he couldn't get last minute dinner reservation. Don't tell anyone though that the famous Cooper Anderson couldn't get a reservation,” he adds jokingly.

“Where is he now?” Kurt asks though he'd much rather find out why Blaine and Cameron broke up.

“Probably trying to pick up some bimbo. He was talking to a barely legal blonde when I left,” Blaine shrugs again.

Kurt can't have that because Thanksgiving is for family, even if James doesn't understand that. People should be with their families or friends.

“We have more than enough to eat. Invite him over,” he tells Blaine, who grimaces.

“You're only saying this because you want to meet my ‘hot' brother.”

Kurt shakes his head. He may have found Cooper Anderson very attractive when he was younger and didn't know his much cuter brother yet.

“Just being a good Samaritan.”

“Fine,” Blaine grumbles before he sends a text to his brother. When he looks up again, he's smirking at Kurt.

“Go ahead, ask. I know it's killing you not to know.”

Kurt does his best to appear like he's got no clue what Blaine is talking about, but fails miserably. Apparently, he's only a good actor when there's a stage involved.

“Why'd you break up?”

“He got his early admittance letter to law school in California yesterday. Stanford's his first choice and neither of us thinks a long distance relationship would be a good idea for us, so we decided it'd be better to break up now than drag it out till next fall when we don't have a future together,” Blaine explains.

It's nearly impossible for Kurt to imagine that someone doesn't want to be with Blaine and that someone most definitely doesn't deserve Blaine's love.

“I'm sorry,” he says nevertheless because it seems like the right thing to say in a situation like this. “Come in, we have cookies and way too much booze for a party that includes my daughter. Everything you need to get over a break up.”

Blaine laughs and Kurt nearly swoons when Blaine smiles at him.

“You had me at cookies.”

***

After Kurt puts Lexy to bed around nine, an hour past her usual bedtime, the party quiets down, but no one leaves for quite some time. After making sure that his daughter really is asleep, he lets Blaine make him a drink, his first of the night, and joins the grown up party.

“She's so cute,” Nick's girlfriend Alessa gushes when Kurt sits down next to her and Nick, waiting for his drink. “If she were mine, I'd never let her out of my sight.”

“Tell that to her other dad,” Kurt mumbles under his breath, but Blaine seems to catch it because he looks at Kurt curiously as he hands him a shockingly pink cocktail. He refrains from asking what's in it and tentatively takes a sip. The colorful concoction tastes surprisingly good, though Kurt still can't tell what's in it. He suspects copious amounts of alcohol and vows not to have more than one, because someone has to stay sober in case anything happens.

“Where is the famous husband?” Blaine asks and squeezes in between Nick and Kurt, nearly ending up in Kurt's lap because there really isn't space on Kurt's couch for a forth person even though Alessa is tiny and barely takes up space. “I thought we were finally going to meet him tonight.”

“You already met him,” Kurt reminds Blaine even though it had been very briefly. “When you dropped off Lexy's birthday present.”

They'd only been working together a few weeks at the time of Lexy's first birthday, so Kurt had been beyond surprised when Blaine had shown up at his front door with a teddy bear from ‘Build a Bear' which had Kurt singing a lullaby when you hugged it. At least it had explained why Blaine had asked him to sing a lullaby during rehearsal the previous week.

“That doesn't count. He didn't even introduce himself,” Blaine says. “So where is he?”

“James is in China for work. His British so Thanksgiving doesn't mean anything to him and the rest of the world doesn't care either, so he had to go and negotiate some stuff I don't understand,” Kurt explains though he wishes they would change the subject. He doesn't like the look of pity in his friends' eyes, especially from the couples that have curled up together in a corner of the living room. He didn't think he'd see the day when Rachel and Jesse had a more harmonious relationship than he and James.

The doorbell rings and Kurt's saved by the bell. He buzzes the newcomer up, suspecting it to be Blaine's brother and waits by the open front door for the elevator to reach his floor. Suddenly, he's face to face with Cooper Anderson, one of his high school crushes when Cooper was still doing commercials and Kurt had one of them set as his ringtone.

“Hi, hi I'm Kurt, please come in,” he stutters and Cooper smiles at him with his charming 1000 watt smile.

“It's a pleasure, Kurt. Say, your friend Santana Lopez isn't here by any chance? I hear they're casting a new role for her show.”

Kurt blinks at him. “Um, yes. Last I saw her she was making out with her girlfriend on my piano bench. But aren't you on a different show already?”

Just as with Santana's show he's watched Cooper's soap opera ‘One hand, one heart' when he was staying home with the baby and had plenty of free time in the afternoon while Lexy napped.

“Can you believe they have plans to kill Dr. Ben Rogers in an elevator shaft and not bring him back this time around. Just because I accidentally hit on the producer's wife. But don't tell anyone. I could get sued if it ends up on ‘Spoiler Watch'.”

Kurt frantically shakes his head. Blaine was right, his brother is slightly crazy.

“Cooper!” Blaine's yell saves Kurt from being sucked deeper into Cooper Anderson's universe. “Behave or I'll never take you anywhere with me again.”

Cooper mock salutes his brother, before he makes a beeline for Santana, who fortunately seems to know who he is. When Kurt returns to his seat, nearly ending up in Blaine's lap himself this time, he takes a long drag from his drink, his eyes moving swiftly from Blaine to Cooper and back, because how are those two relate? Apparently, he said the last part out loud because Blaine answers the question.

“Every time my mom is mad at my dad, she insinuates that the postman is responsible for Cooper, which is a lie of course, because the only reason my parents got married very young is because my mom got pregnant with Cooper her sophomore year of college after she and my dad had been dating for only a year. Cooper was such a handful they never wanted a second kid, but then nine years later they had another accident and I was born. Apparently, I was such a well behaved baby that my mom said that had she known she'd have a kid like me, she'd have had me years ago. They loved Cooper and I very much, even though neither of us had been planned and they like to joke that Cooper got my dad's wild college years genes and I got his settled, successful businessman genes,” Blaine explains while his brother is fruitlessly flirting with Santana who luckily seems amused by his attempts.

“Must be nice to have a brother,” Kurt says unthinkingly, but fortunately his high school friends aren't paying him any attention.

“You're a single child then?” Blaine asks and Kurt nods, because now is neither the time nor the place to get into the business of his stepbrother who died.

“Trust me, there are days I wish I'd be an only child too,” Blaine jokes, not knowing that Kurt isn't an only child once again by choice and Kurt wonders whether he shouldn't just tell Blaine the whole story because if he knows Blaine at all, then his best friend will feel incredibly guilty for joking about that kind of thing in front of Kurt once he finds out about Finn.

“Some day soon I'll tell you why you don't really mean that,” Kurt replies and Blaine studies him quietly for a moment.

“You know that you're my best friend, right? It's weird because we haven't even known each other for that long but with you I always feel like I can tell you anything. So I want you to know that you can tell me anything as well; that I would never judge you and would always try to help you should you need help.”

Kurt only realizes that they are alone on the couch when Blaine stops talking and Kurt forces himself to look away from Blaine's sparkling brown eyes.

“You're my best friend too,” he says then because he can't say what he really wants to say. Can't respond with ‘I love you' because it isn't his place and Blaine would probably think he'd mean it as brotherly love; and there's nothing brotherly about the way he feels about Blaine, which has become a problem more and more.

It's also become increasingly clear to him over the past month that he isn't satisfied with the state of his marriage anymore; that he deserves more than a few affectionate gestures every time his husband graces Kurt with his presence and that Lexy deserves a second father who will fawn over her and keeps reminding people at a party to keep it down so they won't wake her. He deserves someone who treats him like Blaine treats him, even if it turns out that he and Blaine will never be together. In short, he deserves more and it's high time to make some decision about his future.

Out on his little balcony, Kurt books two tickets to Lima for the following weekend. Because one thing is certain; he won't do anything until after he's spoken to his dad. Because if he's really going to get a divorce, he'll need his family's full support.

End Note: Because most people I know celebrate Christmas on the 25th, I will try to update on the 22nd, 24th, 26th and 28th if I can finally finish chapter 9 which seems to hate me (thats what I get for not writing chronologically either) Im visiting friends in London from the 29th to the 4th of January without my laptop because Ryan Airs luggage restrictions suck, so there wont be any updates while Im gone, but Im hoping to finish writing and uploading the story as soon as Im back home.