Courage doesn't always roar.
Sometimes courage is the quiet voice
at the end of the day saying,
"I will try again tomorrow."
-Mary Anne Radmacher

When the world shifts, when its axis tilts, when your entire existence seems full of false information, what do you do? Do you stop? Do you cry? Do you hide? Do you run? Do you fight?

Perhaps, instead, you should flow.

That’s what Blaine does.

The night after dinner at Rachel’s house, Blaine goes to church.

The place is empty and without the usual abundance of his congregation, everything seems larger and more ominous. It’s weird that the church should seem ominous because he had always seen church as calming and familiar. Church is supposed to be a sanctuary, a place you can go when nowhere seems right.

Which, quite possibly, is why he’s here now.

Everything smells the same but the wooden pews have never looked more uninviting. He trails his fingers along the edges of the pews as he takes slow, measured steps toward the front. It’s almost sad, like he’s saying goodbye to an old friend. But he isn’t saying goodbye, he remembers. He’ll still come to church. He’ll still believe in God.

He still has his faith.

But things are different now. Everything is more complicated, life is more muddled and now, more than anything, he wishes he could turn to God. Except…maybe, the last time he prayed for guidance, God had given it in the form of Kurt, in the form of Ms. Pillsbury, and in the form of Rachel’s fathers. Before moving to Lima, Blaine had always thought that, when God gave you an answer, the answer would come and show itself to you in a shower of gold and red sparks, in a fantastic display of obvious realization.

He had always hoped for something more miraculous than a guidance counselor, a potential Atheist love interest, and a couple of gay dads.

However, Blaine thinks as he takes a seat in the second pew nearest to the front, now he thinks that God’s more like a teacher; he can show you the way to the tools, but you have to fix the problem yourself.

Blaine bows his head, resting his forehead on his clasped hands as he prays.

“Dear God,” he begins, “I don’t know if this is what you had in mind when I asked you for guidance. I don’t know if the people I’ve spoken to were the right ones but…they were the ones I had. So I wanted to thank you for them and I wanted to thank you for giving me something when I felt like I had nothing. But I’m – I’m growing up now. I’ve gotta do what’s right for me. I’ll always love you and I’ll always believe in you and have faith in you but I think – I think I have to do the rest on my own. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.”

When Blaine enters his room to go to sleep that night, he sees a single flower upon his pillow.

A Lily of the Valley.

He glances around the room, as if the giver of the flower might still be there. It’s quite odd because he’s pretty sure this isn’t the season for this particular type of flower to grow naturally and who ever would put one on his pillow? Its perfect, white little bulbs are stark against his navy blue pillowcase. He’s almost afraid of touching it for fear it might vanish but no, when he plucks the delicate stem from its place, it remains solid and very, very real.

He places it on his nightstand.

Blaine sleeps peacefully for the first night in what seems like ages.

The constant worry in the back of Blaine’s mind eases somewhat, albeit rather slowly over the next couple months.

The first weeks back at school after finding the flower on his pillow are horrible. There are days when Blaine wants to lock himself in his room and cry. He overhears boys in his class talk about how hot some girl looks and he keeps thinking, “Why can’t I be normal like them?” For a long while, he desperately wishes he could change. He catches himself staring at Kurt for just a few seconds too long and he immediately berates himself, chiding his own inner, sinful thoughts.

As time passes, the self-hatred wanes. Blaine begins to see his sins as mere blunders in his daily routines, small offenses against the background of an ultimately good life. It becomes easier, day by day, to accept himself for the way he is.

Kurt is fantastic about it all. Blaine never says anything outright about his problems, but Kurt seems to sense some sort of inner struggle and keeps silent. Blaine’s sexuality becomes somewhat of a nonissue. That isn’t to say they don’t recognize the fact that there’s something between them beyond friendship. No, in fact they recognize it completely. They simply don’t act on it. While they may share long, lingering looks at one another at their lockers or over coffee, they don’t voice their thoughts and Blaine is silently thankful for Kurt’s tact.

Also, besides praying, Blaine begins to keep a journal. He doesn’t feel comfortable running to Ms. Pillsbury every time he has trouble coping with these contradictive thoughts he can’t quite comprehend just yet. So instead…he writes. He writes about how beautiful Kurt looks and then he apologizes to God for whatever transgressions he might have committed. The apologies are painful and long, taking up more pages than his description of Kurt’s eyes and flawless skin. Some days, he reads over the entries and cries himself to sleep but ever so slowly, with every page, the pain subsides and the apologies become shorter in length.

His latest apology simply reads:

I’m sorry, Lord, for I am not made perfectly in your image.

But maybe I wasn’t supposed to be.

He still prays every night. He still attends church with his parents. He still believes.

But he still cannot to himself that he’s gay. He can’t write it. He can’t speak it. He won’t even whisper it.

A cold December Saturday morning dawns, just before Christmas, and Blaine sits in his favorite reading chair by the fire in his parents’ living room. It’s the first weekend of winter break. The front door opens and Blaine peers around the corner out of curiosity. His parents bustle into the doorway, biting their lips as if keeping smiles at bay.

“What’s going on?” Blaine wonders.

“We have a few visitors for Christmas,” his father announces. “We just brought ‘em back from the airport.”

“…Who?”

His father steps aside and there, just behind his parents, are two smiling faces that he remembers entirely too well from his life before Lima.

“S-Skylar? Jadey?”

“Heya, B!” Skylar nearly shouts into the warm room, shoving past Blaine’s mother who looks on at the scene with a passive smile.

“What – how-” Blaine says, fumbling for something appropriate to say as he sets aside his book and stands to hug his friend.

“Your parents made us keep it a secret,” Jadey says with a grin.

The room suddenly seems very full with all five of them in there, and Blaine takes a moment to stare in awe at his friends. Skylar looks almost exactly as Blaine had left him in Missouri, his blonde hair peeking out from beneath his snow cap and his eyes just as blue grey as he remembers. He’s still far taller than Blaine and still just as lanky. Jadey, his younger sister is nearly a mirror image of her brother, save for her age and long hair which is just a shade more blonde than Skylar’s.

“You grew,” Blaine blinks as he looks at Jadey.

“And I obviously stole your growth spurt,” Jadey says, patting the top of Blaine’s head.

Blaine shoves her hand away but his eyes are filled with laughter.

“You really didn’t know we were coming?” Skylar asks as he shrugs off his coat.

“No,” Blaine says honestly. “I actually had no idea.”

“That’s why it’s called a secret,” Jadey says with a roll of her eyes.

“Really? I didn’t know,” Skylar remarks.

“Alright,” Blaine’s father interrupts with a chuckle. “I’ll stop this before the battle of the sarcastic wit ensues and show you two to your rooms. Skylar, you’ll have the guest room down here and Jadey’ll have the one upstairs…”

Their voices fade as Blaine’s father leads them and their suitcases away to stow their belongings. Blaine laughs as he hears what is most likely Jadey smacking her brother in the face with her hat. That’s when he sees his mother still standing by the doorway, looking Blaine over with a strange glint in her eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me they were coming?” Blaine asks.

His mother shrugs and takes a seat next to the fire. “Your father – your father and I have noticed how quiet you’ve been,” she says. “I’ll admit, you seem to be acting a bit more like yourself now, but for a while you’d barely talk at dinner and it was a miracle if you’d eat even half your meal.” She clears her throat. “Your father thought it was probably because you were homesick. He spoke to me about it so we called up Linda and asked if it was okay if they came up for the holiday. We just wanted to surprise you.”

Blaine’s eyes soften as his mother speaks. He’s been so wrapped up in his own thoughts lately that he didn’t even stop to wonder if his parents had noticed anything at all. He abruptly leans down and hugs his mom tightly.

“Thank you,” he says into her ear.

His mother hugs back slowly, as if the simple action was foreign to her for some reason. When Blaine pulls away, ready to join he friends, she stops him by framing his face with her hands.

“You’re happy, then? They make you happy?” she asks quietly.

“Of – of course they make me happy,” Blaine says, gently prying his mom’s hands from his face. “Why wouldn’t I be happy?”

“I just wasn’t sure if that was the reason you were so sad,” she admits. “You’ve always talked to us about everything and it was…unsettling when you stopped.”

Blaine nods and stands upright once more. “I didn’t, you know, want to seem like a baby or something just because I missed my friends, I guess,” he lies.

“It’s okay to miss them, Blaine,” his mother says with a soft smile. “We just want you to be happy. No matter what.”

Swallowing hard, Blaine does his best to plaster some sort of grin on his face. “I know.”

The next few days are spent having some seriously intense snowball fights and catching up on each other’s lives as the three friends devour plates of Christmas cookies. There’s also a fair amount of smacking as Jadey continually beats her brother over the head with whatever fluffy yet firm object is nearest.

“I think she’s become even more abusive,” Blaine notes as he and Skylar sit on the back porch steps with cups of cocoa. Jadey walks around the backyard, kicking at the snow as she talks on her cell phone. “And I was there with you when we were nine and she was seven and she hit you over the head with your nerf gun for breaking the legs off two of her Barbie dolls.”

“I know, right? Ugh, so unfair. She had to sit in the corner for ten minutes and apologize to me. But I got grounded for a week.”

“But you were older,” Blaine recalls. “So you-”

“Yeah, I know, I knew better,” Skylar sighs, plucking a marshmallow out of his cup. “Wow, we really have been friends forever.”

“Going on twelve years, I think,” Blaine nods.

“We miss you back home, y’know,” Skylar remarks as he leans back on the step. “Everyone does.”

“I’m sure you get along without me,” Blaine says softly because while he misses his old friends dearly, he’s quite sure his presence isn’t that big of a loss.

“Are you serious, B? We talk about you like, every day. I don’t know if a week or two can pass without someone bringing up that one story about that time we were in Chuck’s truck.”

“Oh no, the one where I was sitting in the back without a seatbelt? When he took that dip in the road at forty five miles per hour and I flew up so high that I hit my head on the freaking roof?”

“The very same,” Skylar says with a grin. “That was a good night.”

“People laughed at me for days.”

“Still do.”

“It wasn’t that funny.”

“It’s pretty funny, especially considering how short you were at the time. The fact that you flew that high is purely amazing.”

“I hate you,” Blaine mumbles.

“Nah, you love me,” Skylar replies.

“Whatever.”

“So, you got a girlfriend up here?”

“…What?”

“A girlfriend. A lady friend. A better half,” Skylar expounds. “One of those annoying yappy things that we keep around to make us look better when we go out in public.”

“I know what a girlfriend is,” Blaine says, shoving his friend lightly.

“So…?”

“So what?”

“Do you have one?” Skylar asks again, exasperated.

“Nope,” Blaine says bluntly. “Living the single life.”

“Still? Dude, you haven’t had a girlfriend since…who was it? Wasn’t it Marnie? In eighth grade?”

“If you can even call that a girlfriend,” Blaine snorts. “We kissed like, maybe twice. We dated for a month. If that.”

“Which is exactly my point,” Skylar says, nudging Blaine’s leg with his knee. “C’mon. There’s gotta be some fresh meat at your new school. Someone’s gotta catch your eye.”

Unbidden, thoughts of Kurt swirl to the forefront of Blaine’s mind. He does everything in his power to push them aside because now is definitely not the time to deal with his sexuality crisis.

“Not one,” Blaine says truthfully.

“That sucks, man,” Skylar says, mourning the lack of Blaine’s love life.

“Yeah,” Blaine sighs. “Sucks a lot.”

Christmas comes and goes with barely a word from Kurt. He’s sent Blaine a few text messages over the course of the week but it’s mostly to complain about how horrid a time he’s having at his grandparents’ house. Apparently he’s supposed to be coming back to Lima tomorrow morning, the same day that Skylar and Jadey are supposed to head back to Missouri.

Blaine sits in his bed, covers up to his waist while he writes his journal entry for the night.

He misses Kurt a lot.

On some level, he thinks that maybe he should be ashamed of himself for missing Kurt’s presence so much. However, it’s okay for friends to miss each other, especially those he hasn’t seen in a week.

So why then, when he hasn’t seen Skylar in months, is he more excited about the prospect of Kurt returning home than he was to see Skylar and Jadey in his living room on Saturday morning?

His bedroom door opens. Skylar pokes his head inside Blaine’s room.

“Score, you’re still awake,” Skylar says, entering Blaine’s room and closing the door with a soft click.

“Uh, yeah,” Blaine says, hastily closing his journal and shoving it and the pen inside his nightstand drawer. “I was just about to go to sleep.”

“Well don’t,” Skylar says. “Let’s go down and raid the kitchen for leftovers. Turkey sandwiches totally trump sleep. What were you working on?”

“N-nothing,” Blaine says, closing the drawer. “Nothing important.”

“Aw, is it your diary?” Skylar teases, plopping stomach first on the end of Blaine’s bed. “Did you write about how much you miss me? Do tell, I love romantic comedies.”

“It’s nothing like that, it’s just a journal,” Blaine says quickly.

“Whatcha got to journalize about?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, it’s gotta be something good. You always start journals when you feel all emotional and crap,” Skylar presses.

“It’s nothing, man, just leave it,” Blaine snaps.

Skylar gives Blaine a peculiar look, eyeing the nightstand drawer like a vulture.

“Is there something wrong, B?” Skylar asks, sitting up on the bed and tucking his legs under him.

“No, there’s nothing wrong.”

“…Listen, I know we’re not as close as we used to be since you live up here and all but…I’m still your best friend, dude. You can talk to me about whatever’s going on.”

“There’s nothing going on,” Blaine says. “I’m just tired.”

Nodding once, Skylar spares him one last look before climbing off the bed. “Okay. Well, I’ll just raid the kitchen myself. See you tomorrow, B.”

“Night,” Blaine says faintly.

“Yeah. Night.”

When Skylar leaves and closes his door, the back of Blaine’s head collides with his headboard as he sighs irritably into his bedroom.

The next morning, Blaine steps out of the shower and towels himself off. They have to leave to take Skylar and Jadey to the airport in fifteen minutes. He expects it’ll take him maybe ten minutes to throw on the rest of his clothes, fix his hair, and bundle up.

When Blaine return to his room, clad in a pair of jeans but no shirt while he towel dries his hair, he doesn’t expect to see Skylar inside.

With his back to him.

In front of his nightstand.

“What are you doing?” Blaine asks fearfully.

Skylar doesn’t respond. Instead, he turns slowly. In his hands, Blaine recognizes the red cover to his journal but he definitely doesn’t recognize the look of disbelief and revulsion on his friend’s face.

“Who…is Kurt?” Skylar asks flat out.