The Knight And The Oak Tree: We Get The Lowdown
Jennifer Lowe, Mon 4 Feb 2019

It's been quite a year for Blaine Anderson. Arguably one of the freshest new talents seen in recent years, this bright-eyed young man has had a whirlwind eighteen months since being discovered by well-known Interscope head-hunter Lisa Bristow. Hailing from Ohio, the singer-songwriter has had two top five hits from his debut album and is currently embarking upon a nationwide promotional tour.

I'm sitting in an opulently-furnished Los Angeles hotel suite with the dapper rising star, who is casually dressed in Levi's and a Brooks Brothers polo and looks positively glowing with success. He's dashing, charming, and practically brimming with excitement.

Jennifer: Thanks for being here today, Blaine. You've got quite the schedule right now, huh?

Blaine: You're not wrong, Jennifer. Can I call you Jen?

J: You can call me whatever you want.

B: (laughs) Jen it is. Yeah, the past eighteen months have been crazy. I never imagined everything would happen so fast, it really took me by surprise.

J: I think it took us all by surprise! How have you been dealing with your life changing in such a big way?

B: Honestly, apart from being away from home so often, it hasn't actually changed all that much. I'm still spending my days writing and playing music, only now I'm getting paid for it. There's still a big pile of laundry to do and I can still only cook pasta, despite my fiance's best efforts.

J: Your fiance being upcoming fashion designer Kurt Hummel, right? (Blaine nods, and his smile lights up the entire room. Better luck next time, readers—this is a man in love.) How did you two meet?

B: We're high school sweethearts. We've been together for—wow, coming up for eight years.

J: That's wonderful! In fact, one of the tracks on the album is a duet with him, is it not?

B: It is! The song's called 'Seventeen' and we wrote it together. I'm hoping he'll perform it with me at one of my gigs in New York this month.

J: Rumor has it that the final track on the album was written for Kurt himself...

B: It was a very difficult decision as to whether I'd record The Knight And The Oak Tree or not, and it was Kurt himself who actually pushed me to do it. It's a very personal song, and one that I hold close to my heart for a lot of reasons—but those I'll keep to myself.

J: Critics have mostly been raving about the album, but you have had a couple of not-so-great reviews. How have you been dealing with those?

B: Well, I guess you just have to accept the fact that you really can't please everyone. Not everyone's going to like everything you do, you know? I've read a lot of the reviews including some of the negative ones, and I'm trying to take on board things they've said in order to come back even stronger with the next record.

J: It certainly sounds like you've got the right attitude. No throwing TVs out of hotel room windows?

B: (laughs) No, definitely not. I'm just a happy guy who makes music and wants to do it for a living. Besides, I think Kurt would be mortified.

J: What can fans expect from the album when it debuts?

B: It's a pretty even mix between guitar- and piano-driven songs. I like to think there's a little bit of something for everyone. There's songs about love, songs about loss... And then there's Purple Assassin, which, I barely even know what that's about. It's basically a lesson in why you don't get drunk with The Levels.

J: Well, I know that I'm certainly looking forward to it, and you've got quite the following already. Blaine, I wish you the best of luck with everything. I think we're going to be seeing great things from you.

B: I hope so. Thanks for having me!

The Knight And The Oak Tree is released today.

See the new Kurt Hummel and Westwood spring/summer collections unveiled during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, beginning Monday 11 February 2019. Tickets on sale now.

The water was close to scalding as it pounded down on Kurt's shoulders, and he couldn't help but whimper as he felt the knots of tension gradually dissipate from his aching muscles. It had been nearly nine o'clock by the time he had finally been able to leave the office. He'd collapsed into the back of the first yellow cab he'd been able to flag down, knowing he was entirely unable to deal with the subway that particular evening. Come Monday, he'd be constantly surrounded by a gaggle of entitled catwalk models and having cameras unceremoniously shoved into his face from every conceivable angle whilst simultaneously attempting to deal with no end of inevitable complaints and things going wrong. He was lucky to have this weekend to take for himself. New York Fashion Week was no laughing matter.

“Baby?”

Kurt started at the sound, and ripped back the shower curtain to see Blaine leaning against the door frame, bags strewn haphazardly in the hallway behind him. He was more tanned than usual, probably owing to the fact of playing so many outside shows over the summer, and Kurt's eyes raked over him hungrily.

“None of that's designer, is it?” he asked quickly, pausing for a moment as he caught himself already reaching for Blaine.

“Not a stitch,” Blaine answered, a roguish gleam in his eyes as he bent to slip off his shoes—no socks, and it looked like they would be having words about that. Again.

“Good, then get in here,” Kurt said, taking a handful of Blaine's collar to pull him into the bath and under the spray. “God, I missed you.”

“Missed you too,” Blaine said, threading his fingers together at the back of Kurt's neck.

“Show me,” Kurt whispered, the words almost swallowed by the running him of the shower, but Blaine heard. His lips were warm on Kurt's, the taste of cinnamon lingering at the corners and tingling across Kurt's tongue. He moaned into Blaine's mouth, and although he'd come through the door half an hour earlier, it wasn't until that moment that he felt like he was really home, with Blaine gripping him by the waist and pushing him back against the wall.

“I brought dinner,” Blaine murmured into his mouth, and Kurt groaned again.

“I love you so much right now,” he said, breaking away and letting his head fall back onto the tile. “I haven't eaten all day.”

“I figured.” Blaine's chuckle was light and knowing, and Kurt wrapped himself into the heat and solidity of Blaine's body, some of the hollow feeling in his gut finally abating. “Come on. Let's eat and you can tell me all about your horrible week.”

Clad only in their fluffy terrycloth robes with damp hair and yawning eyes, they sat cross-legged and facing one another on the couch, Kurt twirling his fork into the noodles on his plate and offering it to Blaine whenever he was caught up in the middle of yet another horror story. Blaine refused every time, insisting that Kurt needed to eat, but Kurt offered all the same. It was comfortable and simple, and maybe he was just overly stressed and emotional from his nightmare few days, but it was all Kurt could do not to drag his fiance into their bedroom and cry into his skin.

“So tell me about the tour,” Kurt said abruptly, overwhelmed by a desire to change the subject. They had both been so tired in the evenings lately that all they could manage was to whisper declarations of missing one another and loving one another before they would take the sounds of shallow breathing and rustling sheets to spin into sleeping cocoons.

“I wanted to talk to you about tomorrow night, actually,” Blaine said, setting their plates down on the coffee table and loosely taking Kurt's hand between his own. “I know that this is your weekend off and I want you to be as relaxed as possible before next week starts, but...”

As Blaine trailed off, seemingly struggling for words and looking entirely too young for his years, Kurt squeezed his hand reassuringly.

“I haven't gotten to do Seventeen yet, and since tomorrow night is the last show, I want you to come on stage and sing it with me,” he finally managed. Kurt cleared his throat, mind suddenly racing with questions and fears.

“What does—I mean, is that such a good idea?” he asked. After all, it was one thing to read or watch interviews with a celebrity—because that's what Blaine was becoming: an honest-to-god celebrity—talking about their significant other, but it was quite another to see that significant other in the flesh. Blaine's career was still in its fledgling stages, and while his label were nothing short of supportive, Kurt found himself wondering if performing their duet would do more harm than good.

“I think—no, I know it is. Haven't your followers been Tweeting you about it, too?” Blaine asked, and while Kurt inwardly rolled his eyes—again—at Blaine's newfound obsession with Twitter, he had to concede that there was a point in there somewhere. Seventeen had become a Trending Topic the day after the album's release, and it seemed that a lot of fans were campaigning for a live performance.

“Okay. Okay, just—how many people?”

“Well, the place can hold about three thousand, but it's not sold out,” Blaine told him, and Kurt blanched. Sparsely-populated show choir audiences and crowded yet small bars were one thing. A walk in the park, a Sunday morning, the first sip of the first drink on a night out with friends. Sold out or not, a venue and an audience that size was completely different. “Will you think about it?”

“Of course,” Kurt answered, without hesitation. He'd walk through fire for Blaine if faced with some fantastical situation that called for it. Sometimes it scared him a little if he thought about it for too long, but then Blaine would only have to glance at him with that boundless love, all crinkly eyes and puppy grin Kurt would face down an armageddon to see, and the breath would be stolen from his lungs all over again. “Yes, I'll think about it.”

“I love you, you know.”

“I know,” Kurt said, voice stronger than he felt, and he met Blaine's kiss in the middle. “Take me to bed.”

Kurt probably shouldn't have wondered why Blaine kept his robe on when he'd been so quick to discard his own somewhere on the way out of the living room, and he certainly shouldn't have been surprised when Blaine docked his iPod and switched on an atmospheric song from Spring Break during Kurt's first year at NYU. But history repeated itself and apparently, so did the sex lives of two teenage boys giddy with a rush of adrenaline after three months spent on opposite ends of a phone line.

“Fire up the gun show,” Kurt joked, tucking the covers up beneath his chin and smiling as Blaine exposed one shoulder and looked back at Kurt almost coyly.

“Feel the vibe, feel the terror, feel the pain, it's driving me insane,” Blaine sang in time with the music, an octave lower than the female vocalist, and Kurt couldn't help but let out his first genuine laugh all week as he watched him strut up and down at the foot of the bed, swaying his hips like an old pro. He held out until the first chorus, but then Blaine was looking at him from beneath those thick eyelashes and singing the words “mad about you” with the robe pooling around his hips. Kurt threw off the covers and scrambled forward, kneeling up to crush his mouth to Blaine's and push his robe the rest of the way off.

Blaine climbed onto the bed and gently pushed him back to cover Kurt's body with his own, licking a stripe up his neck before taking his earlobe between his teeth and pulling off slowly, so slowly. “Gonna look so good up on that stage,” he whispered, tracing the planes of Kurt's torso with barely-there fingertips. Kurt shivered at his words, scrambling for purchase in the sheets as Blaine's hand meandered lower, down across his belly and raking fingernails along the inside of his thigh.

“I haven't said yes, yet.”

Blaine chuckled, dark and slow. “Are you open to the idea of sexual favors?

“We could discuss it,” Kurt managed. There it was again; the dark chuckle that rippled across his pulse point before Blaine was licking his way between Kurt's lips and pinning his wrists to the pillows either side of his head. The music playing in the background washed over and through him, warming his bones to the core, and as Blaine began to slowly rut against him, Kurt's last coherent thought was that acquiescence didn't seem like such a big deal after all.

Kurt had awoken with McQueen nestled between he and Blaine, purring happily as Blaine scratched at his belly and smiled blearily. After an admittedly longer lie-in than Kurt had had all week followed by a lazy morning spent in bed with newspapers and trashy Saturday-morning television, they were bundling each other out of the apartment by two, smiling around hot paninis and kissing crumbs from fingertips. A couple of girls on the subway who had their noses buried in copies of Billboard and Harper's Bazaar did a simultaneous double-take as Kurt and Blaine sat down opposite them, and began whispering furiously to one another. Three stops later and Blaine was laughing and chatting with them, Kurt interjecting with the odd witty or self-deprecating remark here and there, as if it wasn't the first time he'd been recognized. By the time they reached their stop they were talking as if with old friends. Kurt was sorry to have to say goodbye to them, and signed the autographs they asked for with a flourish and an affectionate wave as he and Blaine disembarked.

It was when they were inside the Clifton Park venue that he saw just how much work went into one show. There were people everywhere; runners delivering coffee, set lists and lengths of cable; roadies hefting amps and drums; technicians setting up lighting equipment; even Jason was there, standing with arms full of files and talking rapidly into his earpiece.

“All this is for you,” Kurt said, feeling himself swell with pride and looping his arm around Blaine's.

“Crazy, right?”

“Not at all.”

“Guys!” Jason called as he jogged over to them, his smile wide. Kurt supposed that Jason's habit of shaking a person's hand every time he met them—which was, at that point, three times—was something to do with meeting so many new people each and every day, and not wanting to come across rude if he couldn't remember encountering them before. It was endearing. “So we need to get started on sound-check soon, once the guys have finished hooking up the lights. Then we'll bring in the band and do a run-through of the set list, and we should be able to break for an hour around six, six-thirty. Then you go on at seven-thirty.”

“Let's get started, then,” Blaine said, pulling Kurt along with him as he made his way backstage.

The afternoon passed by in a flurried blur, and before he knew it, Kurt was collapsing onto the couch in the dressing room that had been set up for Blaine. It was close to seven o'clock when Zara, Blaine's stylist, came rushing into the room with racks full of clothes and bags full of styling products in tow. She was fashionably dressed, and as she greeted them both before immediately setting to work on Blaine's hair, Kurt noticed that she had a scarf from his latest collection artfully threaded through her belt loops. When he complimented her on it, she told him her boyfriend had bought it for her birthday, and wished she could tell the designer how much she loved it in person. Kurt bit his tongue, happy to silently accept the unknowing praise, but Blaine laughed and pointed at him in the mirror as Zara began working styling wax through his hair.

“What's funny?” she asked.

“You wanted to know who the designer is. That's him right there,” Blaine said, shoulders shaking and pride a warm overtone in his voice.

Zara's hands dropped immediately, and she whirled on the spot to face Kurt.

“Guilty,” he admitted, raising his right hand.

“This is a Kurt Hummel?” she breathed, and Kurt nodded. Her eyes flew wide, and two seconds later she was whipping out her phone to take a picture of them both. “That's going straight on Twitter. As long as you don't mind?”

Kurt waved her off with a smile, and moved to examine the racks of designer clothing lined up against the wall. At Zara's own insistence that he (being the fashion designer) should pick out something for Blaine to wear, he began rifling through them, immediately yet regretfully dismissing anything Westwood—including, with a little thrill at even seeing some of the pieces in there, his own collection. Plenty of people knew that he and Blaine were together; wouldn't it be creating the wrong impression for Blaine to show up on stage wearing his fiance's designs?

“You can put those right back, mister,” Blaine said warningly, his voice accompanied by a matching, pointed look. He gestured to the pair of tailored, vintage-wash jeans from Kurt's 2016 fall collection that had just been pushed aside—the very pair that Kurt had designed with Blaine in mind, and named after him. “I've worn those every show. They're lucky.”

“They're called 'Anderson', you can't,” Kurt weakly admonished him, but he had to concede that a pair of jeans wouldn't necessarily be scrutinized in the same way as a shirt or jacket.

“Well, that's too bad. Because I'm wearing them,” Blaine told him, and Kurt did his best to hide his smile as he turned back to examine the shirts. Eventually, he came to rest upon two, one a deep red and the other a soft sage. Holding up both for Zara's inspection, he raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“Green,” she said in unison with Blaine, and they grinned and high-fived one another.

When he and Blaine were both styled and dressed, Zara wishing them luck as she packed products back into her bag, Blaine lead him by the hand back to stage left. He stood slightly apart from Kurt, stretching out his fingers one by one and rolling his shoulders back and forth. The din of the crowd—two and a half thousand, Jason had told them—was a roaring in Kurt's ears, and he didn't realize quite how badly he was shaking until Blaine cupped his face with both hands and pressed a firm kiss to his lips as every light went out.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” an announcer's voice poured out of the speakers, and the screams of the crowd became deafening. “Please welcome to the stage, Blaine Anderson!”

“I love you,” Blaine said, briefly pressing their foreheads together.

“I love you, too. Break a leg,” Kurt breathed, and Blaine returned his smile before jogging out onto the stage.

*

Watching Blaine work the crowd, sharing anecdotes between songs and playing his music with a passion Kurt hadn't thought possible, was utterly electrifying. West Side Story and the shows at Six Flags were one thing, but Blaine singing his own music, every note and every lyric infused with his own thoughts and emotions... Kurt spent the entire first half of the show trying to swallow around the lump in his throat. The evening was slipping by far too quickly, and he wanted to catalog every last second. Surreptitiously, he recorded a minute or so of every song from his vantage point, grinning every time Blaine shook his hips or threw a wink in his direction.

Before Kurt knew it, one of the roadies was handing him a microphone and attaching a pack and earpiece to the back of his waistband. Blaine was playing the final notes of Iconic to rapturous applause and stomping of feet, and as the noise died down, he wiped across his face with a towel and took a long drink from the bottle of Evian perched on his keyboard. Kurt could see him breathing heavily as he stood, looping his guitar across himself and crossing the floor to the free-standing mic below one of the two spotlights now trained on the stage.

“Ready?” the roadie asked him, and he nodded mutely, steeling himself against the wings beating out a ragtime rhythm in his stomach.

“So, guys, this is the last show,” Blaine was asking as he began to pick out a melody that it seemed to take the audience a moment to recognize. When they did, they went wilder than ever, and Kurt realized just how many dedicated fans Blaine had, the album having only been released the previous week. “Everybody had a good time?”

The answering cheers couldn't have possibly been interpreted as anything other than an affirmation.

“Well, guys, I've got a surprise for you. There's someone very special here to sing this last song with me tonight, and we both hope you like it. This is Seventeen.”

Kurt closed his eyes, took a deep breath, let his mind disappear inside the soft lilt of the love song they'd written together one beautiful summer afternoon beneath a centuries-old silver birch.

“You come around at seventeen
Grace Kelly eyes and corkscrew hips
Blackbirds fly and the ice breaks clean
Oh, what I'd give to kiss your lips,” Blaine sang, before turning his whole body to face where Kurt was standing. “Ladies and gentlemen, Kurt Hummel!”

Courage. One last reassuring glance from Blaine, and Kurt was walking out from behind the curtain, mic raised to his mouth as their gazes locked.

“Darling, it took you long enough
And you're lucky I stuck around
Kidnapped by candles and moments
And oh, what a love I have found.”

Kurt relaxed into the song entirely, his voice clear and pure, and the crowd were practically beside themselves as they sang along and waved phones back and forth. Kurt felt his smile grow impossibly wide as he turned to Blaine for the chorus.

“Let's move to a city and set ourselves free
Let's love 'til our eyes close, we could finally breathe
Let's promise to kiss and to touch and to be
Let's grow into our shoes and stay seventeen.”

“Hey Kurt, you think they like the song?” Blaine asked during the interlude, and the crowd cheered once more.

“You know, Blaine, I think they might,” Kurt answered, and the audience ahh'ed appropriately. Blaine laughed, the beat intensifying as the bass kicked in, and Kurt was swept away in the harmony they had created for themselves.

“Moving mountains to get closer
I've never felt a thing like this
When days end you're leaving your clothes
And it's more than just us that I'll miss
We won't be more than miles apart
But I want to wake up to your voice
So tell me you're holding my heart
And that it was never a choice.”

The music swelled, and Kurt's breath caught as Blaine raised his face to the light, blinking back tears and smiling brighter than Kurt had ever seen. For a single, flying second that seemed to be made of nothing more than the tapestry of time itself, his heart stilled and everything else simply dimmed to black. They were caught in a moment, entirely lost in the music and the gravity of each other.

“Let's move to the city and set ourselves free
Let's love 'til our eyes close, we could finally breathe
Let's ask all our questions down on one knee
Let's grow into our shoes and stay seventeen.”

Blaine and the band finished playing the closing bars of the song, and Kurt closed the gap between them to hold onto Blaine as adrenaline set his veins alight and the crowd erupted.

“You were amazing. I love you so much,” he heard Blaine say, just as he became aware of the crowd chanting something over and over, louder and louder. It sounded like—

“Are they chanting for us to kiss?” Kurt asked, not realizing the microphone had picked him up until it was too late.

Silently, Blaine turned his head and brushed his lips across Kurt's. It was gentle, brief—perhaps even chaste by their standards—but somehow it was the most intense kiss they had ever shared, and they broke apart with shining eyes.

“Give it up for the incredible Kurt Hummel,” Blaine said into the mic, his easy stage smile returning. Kurt took a brief bow, mouthing his thank-yous to the faces he was able to discern in the front row, and squeezed Blaine's arm one last time before leaving the stage.

*

Interscope threw a party for Blaine that evening to close the tour on a high note, and both he and Kurt spent most of it greeting fans with backstage passes, signing autographs and taking pictures. They'd also had a chance to catch up with Kristy, Toby, Stuart and Jeff who had all come to support Blaine. When they finally fell into bed well past two a.m., phones silenced and tired bodies curled against one another, Kurt stole a moment to breathe.

“Okay?” Blaine asked, voice muffled and already halfway to sleep.

Kurt hummed in response, nuzzling into the back of Blaine's neck, feeling like life couldn't possibly get any better. “We're making it, aren't we? You're making it.”

“Yeah,” Blaine whispered in response, hooking his ankle around Kurt's. “I think we are.”

Blaine smiled to himself as he re-read Kurt's words in the interview that seemed like it was published only yesterday.

“The love of a good man, huh?” he chuckled to himself.

“The best,” Kurt's voice came from the doorway, already back from excusing himself to use the bathroom. Blaine held out a hand and pulled Kurt into his lap, resting the book across his thighs. Kurt breathed deeply, turning his wedding ring around on his finger where it had shifted off-center before turning to the next page, grinning when he saw the wedding invitation printed on thick, cream-colored vellum. “I still can't believe you used FedEx. Especially so soon afterward.”

“Would you rather I hadn't invited you? I couldn't very well have married myself, you know,” Blaine told him, resting his head on Kurt's chest.

“Sue did,” Kurt reminded him.

“She still ruling the roost at St Leonard's?” Blaine asked, feeling a pang of nostalgia for the woman who had once likened him to a young Burt Reynolds.

“Last I heard,” Kurt said fondly. “We should look in on her next time we're in Ohio. Maybe we could take the kids up there for Thanksgiving.”

“I think she'd like that.”

“She'll tell us we've gotten fat and then congratulate you again on providing a new home for the small animals that live in your hair,” Kurt joked, thinking of Oliver's messy curls and how he'd never been able to do a single thing with them lest he provoke a tantrum.

“What can I say? I'm a guy who cares,” Blaine deadpanned, and there was a momentary pause before they were both laughing again. “Alright, alright. Back to business.”