Chazzam
Dec. 17, 2012, 1:22 p.m.
Midnight Confessions: Epilogue
E - Words: 2,320 - Last Updated: Dec 17, 2012 Story: Complete - Chapters: 21/21 - Created: Dec 06, 2012 - Updated: Apr 13, 2022 681 0 1 0 0
Five years later
New York / Melbourne
Trent looked up and smiled when the front door to the bar swung open.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” he smiled, leaning against the bar. “And how is my favorite neighborhood P.I. this lovely winter’s eve?”
Santana smiled back. “I’m fantastic, actually. Just nailed some deadbeat dad’s balls to the wall - four years worth of back child support he was claiming he couldn’t pay, meanwhile he was hiding away close to a million dollars in overseas accounts.” Her laugh turned into a cackle. “You should have seen him in court. He fucking cried.”
“Oh, Santana, no one else can balance morality and vindictiveness like you,” Trent mused. “You here to pick up Britt?”
“Yeah. Let’s just say ex-Mrs. Deadbeat was very happy with my services, and I’ve got an enormous check burning a hole in my pocket. Thought I’d treat my best girl to dinner.”
“I thought I was your only girl,” Brittany said, coming out of the back freshly changed from her work uniform. She slipped her arms around Santana’s waist when she reached her, and gave her a warm kiss.
“Well, you are. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t also the best,” Santana murmured, kissing Brittany again.
“So,” Trent said, reaching a hand out to stop Santana before she and Brittany could head out the door. “Um, any word from Caleb and Harry?”
“Yeah, actually,” Santana answered with a smile. “You heard about the law just passed by the Australian Parliament, I presume?”
Trent grinned. “Yeah. That’s what I was wondering actually. Are they...?”
“They are. I could practically hear Catalogna weeping through the email when he told me. It was ridiculous.”
“Wow,” Trent breathed. “I really need to get out there and visit them. To say ‘I told you so’ if nothing else.”
“I think they’d really appreciate that,” Santana said, her voice taking on the soft quality that it sometimes did when she talked about those particular boys. “Britt and I were talking about going too. Maybe you two could find someone else to run the bar for a few weeks and we can all go.”
“Hmmmm. Are Australian men really as hot as everyone says?” Trent mused.
“Hotter,” Brittany said automatically. “But...uh...not as hot as Santana though,” she amended when Santana raised an eyebrow at her.
“Well. I’ll ask them when they might be ready for guests again and we can start planning,” Santana said. “though I may need you to confirm my superior hotness in writing first,” she added, looking at Brittany pointedly.
“Wait...again? They’ve had other guests? But I thought no one else...you know...knew where they were exactly.”
“They didn’t,” Santana confirmed. “But that will only be true for about another six hours.”
Trent smiled curiously. “Really, now. Do tell.”
Santana shrugged innocently. “All I know is that some particular people may have happened to win all-expenses-paid trips to Melbourne. But you didn’t hear that from me.”
“Do I ever hear anything from you?” Trent deadpanned.
“Not on the record you don’t,” Santana replied with a wink, linking her arm with Brittany’s and leading her toward the door.
~000~
Blaine watched as Kurt bustled around their Fitzroy terrace house at top speed, radiating a nervous energy that seemed to permeate the entire house.
“Kurt,” Blaine said, coming up behind him and wrapping his arms around him as Kurt rearranged the flowers on the table for probably the dozenth time. “It's going to be fine. The flowers look beautiful. Everything looks beautiful. You just need to relax.”
“But what if they hate it? What if they're too angry to want to see us? What if they gave their tickets away? What if–”
“Kurt. Santana put them on the plane herself yesterday. They're going to be ecstatic.”
“I'm scared,” Kurt confessed quietly. Blaine lifted his hand and kissed it.
“I know. Me too. But we've done much scarier things than this before. Aren't you excited?”
Kurt nodded, but his heart was beating hard and fast. Blaine rocked him slowly, humming their song.
Kurt smiled, closing his eyes and letting Blaine's rich, sweet voice wash over him.
“Are you sure this is the right address? It doesn't look like a bed and breakfast to me,” came a loud American voice from outside. Both men froze.
“Th-that's – they're here,” Kurt said weakly.
“They are,” Blaine agreed, swallowing a sudden lump that seemed to have formed in his throat. “Let's – we should go outside.”
Kurt and Blaine opened the front door of their terrace house, gasping almost simultaneously at the sight – however anticipated – that greeted them.
Finn was the first to turn around.
“Kurt? “ He asked in wide-eyed astonishment. “B-Blaine? Kurt?”
Two suitcases crashed to the ground as Carole and Cooper turned as well.
“Blaine!” Cooper screamed, not pausing for even a second before he was running to his brother, hugging him so hard he actually lifted him off the ground. Carole and Finn stood frozen, staring in disbelief.
Kurt walked toward them. “Finn, Carole, I–”
Carole burst into tears, and would have sunk all the way to the pavement beneath her feet if Finn hadn't caught her.
“Kurt,” she sobbed, and then he was in her arms.
They didn't care how it must have looked to the neighbors. Finn and Carole and Kurt clutched at one another, a cluster of sobs and hugs and disbelieving stares. Blaine was crying so hard he almost sounded like an animal in pain, and Cooper was almost definitely bruising Blaine’s ribs.
“I knew – I can't believe we didn't figure out the connection,” Cooper finally said, laughing through his tears as he looked over to Finn and Carole.
“How the did you – what – I mean, God, Kurt, we thought you were dead,” Carole sobbed, clutching at him.
“I didn't,” Finn countered fiercely. “They never found your bodies. I knew you had gotten away.”
Kurt gave Finn a watery smile. “I've missed you both so much,” he said, barely able to get the words out, his voice was shaking so hard.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Carole said, smoothing back Kurt's hair, “you have no idea.”
~000~
The group finally managed to get the suitcases and themselves into the house, and Kurt busied himself making tea while Blaine showed them to the sitting room.
When Finn unceremoniously asked “so what happened? Did you actually kill that guy or what?” upon sitting down, Blaine flinched. He and Kurt had talked about this - how much to share, how to remain honest without going into unnecessary detail, but now that he was faced with their families, staring up at him with sincere, curious (and perhaps a bit judgmental? Was he imagining that?) eyes, he found himself tripping over his own words.
“I...we...it’s complicated. But...we didn’t intentionally...I mean, we didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” Blaine stammered.
“Things got bad and I don’t think you’re going to like a lot of what we have to tell you,” Kurt said softly, walking into the room carrying a tray of tea and scones. “Is it all right if we save the more unpleasant aspects of our adventure for later? Right now I just want to - I don’t know about Blaine, but I’m not quite ready for things to grow that somber just yet.” Kurt sat down next to Blaine on the loveseat and gave his hand a squeeze.
Blaine knew what Kurt wasn’t saying, what Kurt had whispered into Blaine’s neck through his tears in the small hours of the night. “I’m not ready to see the way they’ll look at me when they find out I’m a murderer.” Blaine understood. His fear wasn’t the same, but he didn’t relish seeing Cooper’s reaction when he told him what Sebastian had done, how weak it had made him feel, and how reckless he had let himself become as a result.
The reasons for waiting so long to reunite with their families were varied, but if they were being entirely honest, neither man could deny that fear was a measurable part of it.
“Well, I can't say I'm sorry about the fact that we'll be spending Christmases in Australia from now on,” Carole said with a warm smile, shifting the topic tactfully. “But how on earth did you boys end up here of all places?”
“We–” Kurt looked at Blaine and smiled. “We managed to get into Canada and secure new identities with some help from a friend. We started out in Winnipeg and then moved to Montreal after a few months, but it was too close to the border. All the cities we liked were too close to the border. I saw a woman who used to come into Songbirds once on rue Sainte-Catherine, and I kind of freaked out.”
Blaine chuckled, rolling his eyes fondly. “Kind of?”
Kurt pretended to ignore him. “Anyway, we started looking overseas and then Blaine got offered a job at The Age so we ended up here. And we really liked it, so we decided to stay.”
“Kurt’s designing fabric,” Blaine added proudly. Carole’s eyes lit up in obvious interest.
“Well,” Cooper said, “Whatever happened, when you sell the movie rights I call dibs on playing you, Blaine.”
“Dibs on Kurt!” Finn added quickly. Blaine opened his mouth to respond, looking back and forth between Finn and Cooper, who sat grinning at them obliviously. He finally shrugged, glancing at Kurt, and closed his mouth with a smile.
“We would have contacted you sooner,” Blaine said apologetically, “but we, um, had to be careful. We wanted to wait until we were relatively certain it would be safe.”
“Also,” Kurt added, clapping his hands together and bouncing slightly with excitement, “we have news. And we really wanted our family around us for it.”
Blaine slipped his arm around Kurt’s waist. Cooper, Finn and Carole looked at them expectantly.
“Um. I don't know if you've heard about the law that was just passed here, but–” Blaine began.
“Holy shit, you're getting married?” Finn demanded. Carole squealed, her hands flying to her mouth to try and contain her excitement. Cooper took the same approach that he had on the sidewalk, and leapt off the couch, yanking Kurt and Blaine to their feet and sweeping them both into a bone-crushing hug.
“Yes,” Kurt confirmed, laughing. “We're getting married. Next week, actually. You will come, won’t you?”
As soon as Cooper had loosened his hold, Carole pulled both boys into her arms. “Up until a half hour ago I thought I had lost a son, but now I find out I’m getting two back instead of one? You just try and keep me away,” she murmured, tears beginning to flow once again. She kissed each of their foreheads before letting Finn have his turn, bending down to wrap his long arms around them both.
“I'm really glad we found you, dudes,” Finn sighed.
“Me too, Finn,” Kurt agreed.
Blaine moved away to let Kurt and Finn hold each other, leaning into Cooper's side.
“Hey,” Cooper murmured, low enough so only Blaine could hear. “You happy, Squirt?”
Blaine rolled his eyes. “Do not call me squirt. And yeah, Coop, especially now that you guys are here, I didn't think I could ever be this happy.”
“And...you will tell me what happened, won’t you?”
Blaine swallowed. “Yeah. I promise.”
Cooper wrapped his arm around Blaine, and then Kurt swatted at Finn for messing up his hair, leading Carole to fuss over Kurt's hair, and Kurt just looked so irritably, exasperatedly full of joy that Blaine thought his heart might burst. Their eyes met and Kurt smiled, his eyes crinkling in that way that always made Blaine fall in love a little bit more.
Blaine smiled back at his fiance before taking his brother's hand, and walking over to join the rest of his family.
Saturday, 9:48a.m. - 10:12a.m.
New York
“God damn it, Tyler, did you put that almond milk shit in my coffee again?”
Tyler sighed. “You know what the doctor said, Dave, you–”
“I don't give a fuck what the doctor said. And I don't need to hear you yapping about my cholesterol first thing in the morning, okay?”
Tyler narrowed his eyes but cast them down to the floor. “I was just trying to help.”
“Yeah, well all you're doing is helping to piss me off. If you – what's that?”
Dave picked up a package from the kitchen counter where it sat alongside the mail.
“Oh. That came for you yesterday. It's kind of weird, though, there's no postmark. Are you expecting something?”
Dave grunted by way of reply, ripping the brown paper off the outside of the box as he walked out of the kitchen and toward his bedroom. He didn't need Tyler watching his every move and asking him shit all the time. Maybe it was a present from that cute intern.
Dave opened the shoebox that the paper had been concealing, and abruptly froze in his tracks, his jaw falling open in surprise.
Inside the box was a gun.
His gun. His gun that he hadn't seen in five years. And with it was a note.
Dave stared at the gun, and then at the note, and then back at the gun again.
“Sweetie? Is everything okay?” came Tyler's voice from the kitchen.
“Yeah, uh – yes. Yes, everything is–” Dave stuffed the gun and the note back into the box and hurried back into the kitchen.
“Hey,” he said, walking up to Tyler and giving him a hug. Tyler's breath hitched in obvious surprise. “I'm sorry. I'm just having kind of a crappy morning, but I shouldn't take it out on you.”
Tyler stared at him incredulously when they pulled away. “Um. Okay?”
“Look, how about I take you out tonight. We can go to that new restaurant you wanted to try.”
“I – that sounds great, Dave, but don't you usually work late on Saturday nights?”
“Yeah,” Dave acknowledged. “But, uh – I think maybe it's time I tried something new.”
Before he left the apartment, Dave grabbed the box, because holy shit did he need to get rid of that thing as soon as possible. He paused before putting the lid back on the shoebox, reading the note in his ex-husband's neat scrawl one last time.
Dear Dave,
Here is your gun back. I used up all the bullets - sorry about that.
Hope you are well,
Blaine
End Notes: Thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed the fic!
Comments
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Thank you so much for giving Klaine a happy ending! I read about Thelma & Lousie on Wikipedia and I was worried about how this would end. this ending is much better, especially since they got to see their families again :)