Kurt flits around the vast open space of their apartment, trying to rearrange their scarce possessions so they don't look so pitifully cheap and used. But there's no use, no matter how carefully he drapes the crocheted throw over the saggy old couch, it won't make it any more classy or comfortable. He gives up eventually, looking around with resignation. The best thing he can say about the place is that it's clean – and theirs. At least for now, it's home.

When Kurt told Blaine that he should visit them, he didn't quite expect it to happen so soon. He wanted it of course – in an abstract way. It was something nice to look forward to – once they got the place painted and better furnished, once the money wasn't quite so tight, once they could offer their guest something more than cheap black tea and half-decent coffee.

Now that Kurt actually thinks about it, he's not sure what he imagined instead. Long walks in the biting fall cold while he and Rachel told Blaine their story, shouting against the never-ending background noise of New York traffic? Crowding Blaine's tiny dorm room, with his roommate trying to study a few feet away? God knows they can't afford to sit in cozy coffeeshops for hours at a time, talking, like Kurt dreamt they would one day. Not to mention with Kurt's schedule, a trip downtown is a rare luxury.

As he takes a batch of sugar cookies out of the oven, Kurt remembers the wild swarm of butterflies that took off in his stomach when Blaine called last night. It was the first time they've ever spoken on the phone, and it felt so close and intimate to have Blaine's voice right in his ear as he lay in bed that Kurt didn't even hesitate before saying yes when Blaine asked if he could come see them today. By the time he realized what he'd done, it was too late to back out, no matter how unprepared he felt to show Blaine the mess of their reality.

Back in Ohio, Blaine only saw what they had allowed him to see – fantastic clothes and beautiful half-truths of their lives, their tastefully furnished bedrooms and their impeccable tastes. He saw the smiles, but not the tears, because that's what they chose to show him. Despair and hopelessness aren't sexy. Poverty isn't pretty no matter if it's caused by actual lack of money or the fact that your parents choose to donate half of what they earn to an organization that surely doesn't need it half as much as they do.

But they now agreed to let Blaine in. To tell him everything, like they never have before to anyone. Including the ugly parts – and there are a lot of them.

What if they freak Blaine out? What if he can't accept them when they are more human and so much less perfect than the kids he knew in high school?

By the time there's a knock on the door, Kurt is a nervous wreck.

Blaine doesn't seem to be freaked out in the slightest. He hugs Rachel long and tight when she opens the door, looks around curiously upon entering and comes right into the kitchen where Kurt is trying to occupy his shaking hands, wiping their solitary counter. Blaine's embrace is tight and warm and so very real that Kurt has trouble keeping his head on straight.

They barely reconnected two days ago, and that night (and morning) is a blur in Kurt's head – a blur of Blaine's smiles and his voice and his sparkling eyes, a few hours high on adrenaline and happiness. But now Blaine is here, at their place – and it feels different. He isn't a disconnected dream anymore – a fresh memory that feels too good to be true, or a voice in the speaker of Kurt's phone. By coming here, to their apartment, he officially stepped back into their lives, creating a space for himself in their current reality. Tomorrow, when Kurt gets up before five and stumbles into the kitchen, he will look at their ratty couch and smile, the picture of Blaine sitting here in his black cardigan over white polo shirt seared into his brain.

But first, he has to survive tonight.

He promised Blaine they would start telling him their story – and it was relatively easy to decide and plan and think about it when it was just in theory, in the undetermined future. One day. Now they are about to cross that bridge and it's terrifying. There's no way to put it off now – Kurt has used up all the distractions already. The coffee is made, the cookies stacked neatly on a plate, Rachel is done squealing over how grown up and handsome Blaine is and telling him about her most recent auditions. They showed him around the apartment already. Kurt considers another bathroom run, just to calm down and splash cold water on his face, but it would look like he has stomach problems, so he just sits in the overstuffed armchair and tries not to look anxious.

"Okay, enough about me," Blaine laughs, cutting short the story of his fellow acting students and their shenanigans and putting two cookies on his plate. "I am stuffing my mouth full of cookies to keep myself from interrupting, and you can tell me everything about yourselves. Or however much you want."

The silence that falls is sudden and awkward, and eventually, it's Rachel who starts, because Kurt can't find the words, paralyzed by the importance of this moment.

"Okay, we talked about it and we decided it's best if you just ask questions. We will tell you everything you want to know. Some of it may not make immediate sense without a wider background, and the whole story will take a lot longer than tonight to tell properly. But throw your questions at us and we'll do our best."

The wide smile fades from Blaine's face immediately, substituted by an intense, serious look.

"Okay. Tell me why. Why did you go like that?"

Kurt inhales sharply. Blaine surely isn't starting with the easy questions, is he?

"Because we were supposed to get married." Rachel says it lightly, like it's nothing much more than noticing the weather. "To each other. That's why we ran. If we didn't, we would have been forced to go through with it."

Blaine's face is a picture of confusion. "What? But... you're siblings, even if not blood-related! How– What even–"

"Actually, we're not," Kurt hears himself say and oh, okay. Looks like the ball is rolling now. "Not really, not in any way but emotional."

"But... who would have forced you? You were underage." Blaine is clearly struggling to compute it all.

Rachel reaches for a cookie, answering calmly as she settles back with a plate on her knees. "Our parents. It was decided a long time ago, when we were still kids. We grew up knowing we would be husband and wife one day. You could say we were groomed for it all our lives."

She shrugs and takes a bite of the cookie, and there's a pause in the conversation then, a moment where Blaine tries to get his head around it. And that's still such a tiny fraction of it all.

Eventually, he looks between them. "I still don't understand – how could your own parents have been forcing you into an arranged marriage? And since you were kids, too? I mean, I've heard about stuff like that happening in some cults but–" Blaine blinks slowly, his mouth a perfect O. "Wait. It was a cult, wasn't it? You were in a cult?"

"Sort of." Kurt nods. "They don't like the word cult, though. Or sect. Both of these have religious connotations, and religion has nothing to do with this. They call themselves a community, where we grew up. Or simply The Harbor, among the members – short for The Safe Harbor. But yes, cult is close enough."

Blaine shakes his head, astounded. "So... that night, you were told you would have to get married soon, so you ran away?"

Suddenly, Kurt can't look him in the eye. "Actually... no. We–"

Rachel takes one look at him and continues. "It wasn't a sudden decision. We'd had it planned for months. Almost a year, actually. It was supposed to happen a year later, but we had to agree to have the ceremony as soon as we were both seventeen if we wanted to continue with Glee and other extracurriculars at McKinley. When we escaped, it was just a day before Kurt's seventeenth birthday."

"May 26." Blaine whispers. "So you were born on May 27." Kurt nods wordlessly.

Blaine nibbles a bit of his cookie, his eyes distant. When he looks at Kurt again, the pain is back there, more intense than ever.

"Why didn't you warn me then? If you knew you were going, why didn't you tell me so that I wouldn't have to think you were–" He swallows the last word, his eyes glimmering with tears, but he pushes on. "You must have known I would have never told anyone, you could have trusted me."

"Actually–" Kurt tries to silence Rachel with a glare, knowing what she's going to say and not ready for that part to be revealed yet, but it's no use. She deliberately avoids his gaze. "The plan was... we were going to die, Blaine. We would have died, if everything went according to our plans. But Kurt–"

"I couldn't go through with it." If it's out in the open, he wants to say it himself. "I couldn't. So we ran instead. We'd discarded the idea before, because it was too risky and it could have gone wrong in a hundred different ways, but... somehow, here we are." He finishes lamely, glancing at Blaine – Blaine, whose jaw is set, hard, and his hands in tight fists by his sides, the plate perched precariously on his knee. Rachel reaches to put it away on the table.

Blaine's eyes are on Kurt, an intense, steady weight. His voice sounds choked when he speaks, and it settles heavy in Kurt's chest with every word.

"So you knew you were going to die and you still let me get close to you? I thought it was special, what we had, Kurt – I thought you cared for me. But you made me fall for you only to leave me there alone to grieve, without looking back." Blaine's eyes are full of tears by the time he's finished, the mood in the room changed drastically, and Kurt scrambles to do something. But there isn't much he can do, not when so much of Blaine's accusation is painfully true.

"I did look back, all the time, I swear–" he tries.

But Blaine is up and reaching for his coat already, his bag slung haphazardly over his shoulder. He only looks up at Kurt once more before striding to the door.

"I need air. I'm sorry."

And with that, he's gone.

--------------------------------------------------

Chapter art: Back then...

The next chapter will be posted on Monday 23 September.