Chapter Nine

October 2014

Kurt mirrored his master mime class professors movements as Adam  "walked in place" beside him.  Adam was a great guy.  Kurt cared about him.  Applying logical principles, this relationship should work - - and would work, if Kurt had anything to say about it.  

He'd decided to spend more time with Adam in hopes of strengthening the relationship.  In fact, he had made a point of registering for all the same classes as Adam and redoubling his commitment to the Apples.  He was determined to get past this infatuation with his sixteen-year-old roommate, no matter what it took.  

He turned to "pick a flower" and jumped with a yelp at the sight of Blaine just outside the glass paned door to the classroom, frantically gesturing for him to come outside.  Kurt's eyes bulged and he tilted his head, trying to figure out what on earth Blaine was doing here, instead of at one of his million-and-one after-school activities.

The professor barked, “Monsieur Hummel!  Eyes on me!  I should never need to express myself to you in other than the language of the human body in this class!”

“Er - - excuse-moi,  Monsieur  - - it's just -- my friend is trying to get my attention out there - -”

While miming “climbing the imaginary rope”, Adam muttered,  “Can't that kid even wait until after class to bother you?”

“Hes not bothering me,” Kurt hissed.  Blaine would never interrupt class if it wasn't important.  And he was still out there, looking really upset and like this was, in fact, very important.  Kurt slipped out of his row,  sparing Adam a guilty look before going outside and shutting the door behind him.

“What is it, Blaine?  Is something wrong?”

“Kurt … yeah.  Yeah, something is wrong.  Come here.”  Blaine gently pulled Kurt by the wrist to a nearby hallway bench, and sat him down. He sat next to Kurt and took his hand.  

“I'm … I'm getting scared.  What is it?”

Blaine winced as he answered, reluctantly, “It's your dad.  I'm so sorry.  He … he had another heart attack.  Carole called me and asked me to find you and tell you in person.”

Kurt felt the air closing in on him.  He couldn't breathe, but just sat in shock staring at Blaine.

“He's alive.  But … Carole said it looks... bad.  The doctors said you should come home.”  Blaine squeezed  Kurt's hand as he  choked out, “He … he may not make it.”

Kurt was still paralyzed, but he kept his eyes fixed on Blaine's face. Patting a duffel bag on the bench, Blaine continued, "Here's your bag.  I packed it for you.  I ordered two plane tickets home, but you have to leave now to be sure to make it.”

“Thank you, Blaine,” Kurt whispered hoarsely as Blaine helped him to his feet.  He looked around shakily.  “But where's your bag?”

“I'm not going.  They only had two tickets available for this flight.”  Blaine stood next to Kurt, supportively stroking his back.  “I'll be there as soon as I can to help out, though.”

“Then … who's the other ticket for?”

“Adam, of course.  Cmon. Let's call him out of class, so he can take you to the airport and go to Lima with you."

"You ... bought a ticket for Adam?"

"It was no trouble. I knew you'd want your boyfriend with you at a time like this.”

Kurt felt something break inside.

A time like this.

A time when his father was dying.  

His father was dying.  Burt was going to die this time.  He'd escaped the first heart attack. He'd beaten cancer. He couldn't cheat death a third time; it wasn't possible.  This was the end, and Kurt knew it in his very soul.

“No! No, you have to come with me!”  He threw his arms around Blaine's neck.  “I need you.  You've been through this - - you know how this feels. You have to come with me and … and help me- - they'll be telling me things and Ill need help. I need someone who knows my dad and loves him too. Please, Blaine …. please, I can't do this without you.  You're my best friend, more than anyone, even Rachel," he sobbed. “Please.”

He was so upset that he hardly knew what happened next, only that somehow Blaine was supporting him down the stairs and out the door of the school, dragging the duffel bag behind them.  Outside, Blaine kept Kurt standing and hailed a cab for them.  The next thing Kurt knew, he was in the back seat of a yellow taxi, his face pressed against Blaine's neck. He continued to cry in aching, burning sobs.  Blaine was holding him, keeping him from flying apart into a million pieces.  And ... he hadn't told Adam he was leaving, and he didn't care, not as long as Blaine was there to hold him tight.

~ * ~ * ~

It was a clear, sunny fall day at Lima's town cemetery.   Kurt and Blaine both carried large bouquets of flowers arranged by Kurt earlier, as they walked, quietly, through the gate.  

“We'll do your mother and father first,” Kurt offered.  “That section's first on the path.”

“Okay,” Blaine agreed.  They headed toward a section of older graves near the gate, winding their way among them quickly.  They stopped at a large headstone marked with the names of Blaine's biological mother and father.  Blaine knelt down and laid a bouquet of yellow daisies in front of the stone.  Kurt helped him up and they looked down at the grave together for a long moment.

“What were they like?” Kurt asked softly.  

“I was so young,” Blaine said.  “I only remember a few things now.”  He smiled.  “My mother was beautiful.  She sang me songs in Tagalog.  I still remember those songs.  My dad was really tall, and he had blue eyes like Cooper's. He used to give me piggyback rides.”

“Is that all you remember?”

Blaine paused. “The main thing that I remember is how safe I felt back then.  Like they were the strongest, best people in the world and they'd never let anybody hurt me."  He passed an arm through Kurts.  "You know how that was, probably, from before your mom died.  When you think your parents are superheroes and will always be there."

Kurt couldn't speak, but he nodded, and Blaine squeezed his hand.  

“C'mon, we have a lot of stops between the two of us,” Blaine murmured.  He looked back at the grave, putting a hand on the stone.  “Bye Mama and Dad.”

Kurt led Blaine by the hand to a grave a few rows over.  It was his mother's, and he laid down a spray of lilies with reverence.  There was a line carved on the stone for “Burt Hummel, beloved husband and father” with a blank space for Burt's death to be filled in someday.  Kurt fervently hoped that day was still a long way off. He looked up at Blaine, who was smiling down at him.  “I cant thank you enough for being here this week.  Im so happy my dad pulled through and will be okay.  He's got more lives than a cat, I guess.”

“I'm so glad… for your sake, of course, but for your dad's too.  He's such an awesome guy.  You're lucky to have a dad like him, Kurt.”

“I know.”  Kurt got up and dusted off his slacks, smiling happily.  “We'd better hurry up and finish here so we can get back to the hospital for one last visit before our flight.”

The older part of the grounds was separated from the newer section by a wooded area, slanted shafts of light sifting down onto the path through the red and bright yellow leaves overhead.  Kurt looked over at Blaine in the dappled sunshine,his heart swelling with love and admiration.Blaine turned his head and caught him looking,  and Kurt fumbled for something to say.  “I … I don't know how you survived it,” he finally said.  “If my dad had died, I don't think I could be as strong as you were.  I don't think I could ever be happy again.”

“Sure you would,” Blaine said.  “You lived through losing your mom… you managed to be happy again eventually.”

“But I had my dad.  You - -”

“I had my dads, after my first parents died.  I had you and Rachel after I lost my dads.  If you're willing to reach out and let yourself, you can always find love and family again.  And it's always worth it, no matter how it ends.  I know what I'm talking about.”

Kurt suddenly realized that Blaine had pulled him to a stop in the middle of the woods as he spoke.  The light was beautiful here, and Blaine was more beautiful than everas he looked earnestly into Kurt's eyes.  “Kurt, the main thing is that we live every moment of our lives like it was our last, because it could be.  That we always tell the people we love how we feel, because we never know when they might stop being able to hear it.  I have no regrets--my last words to my fathers, and theirs to me, were ‘I love you.'  I know it's the same with you and your dad.  I think we should live that way always, don't you?”

Kurt saw that Blaine was searching his eyes, that he wanted Kurt to say something.   It was obvious enough how Kurt felt, he supposed.  He'd asked for Blaine, not anyone else, to be there for him at his darkest hour.  Blaine had been there, holding him for hours at a time, never wavering in his support, over the last harrowing week when things had been touch-and-go.  And Blaine had helped get him through it without losing his mind.  

Blaine was smart and intuitive, and Kurt was sure that his feelings had been read at many points over the last seven days.  But they had remained unspoken, for all the reasons they had remained so since he first realized what Blaine meant to him.  Because as pure as he knew his love was, he had to resist it.  He had to.  

But it was getting harder and harder to resist.

They were alone in the woods now.  There were no sounds except for the whispering breeze rustling the leaves on the trees, the late birds twittering overhead.  No one would see them here.  And everything in him wanted to take Blaine in his arms, for real, to touch him, press him up against one of the towering trees around them, and kiss him. In truth literally ached, with a desire so intense it was painful, to sink to the ground with this boy in this most inappropriate and public place, to tell him he would love him forever, to  make him feel how loved he really was.

Blaine inched a little closer, almost touching, and Kurt felt a tingling in his hands and lips, a physical urge to close the slight gap and touch his mouth to Blaine's.

Just before he was about to give in to that urge, a family of mourners rounded the bend in the path and Kurt jerked away, starting down the path again as Blaine reluctantly followed.  The moment was broken.

They  emerged from the woods into the newer section of graves.  Blaine pointed toward his fathers' graves, also marked by a single stone, and they approached it in subdued silence.  Blaine went ahead, around the front of the stone, to lay down the cut lavender Kurt had chosen.  When he bent down, Blaine drew a sharp breath and stared at the stone.  Alarmed, Kurt came around the headstone and looked at it.

Kurt nearly gagged at the sight of the spray-painted slurs scrawled across the stone of the two loving husbands and fathers.  His stomach twisted with sympathy and anger, and he raised his eyes to Blaine's, searching for something to say.

Blaine had dropped the flowers heedlessly at his own feet and backed away, his face first pale and then red.  “Those mother fucking - - I'll - - I'll kill whoever did this,” he gasped, his voice low and trembling, rage twisting his face. “I'll kill them!”  He was panting and shaking.

“Blaine,” Kurt pleaded, frightened for him.  “Blaine, please, try to calm down - -”

“Calm down?” Blaine shouted.  “Do you see what they … they fucking dared to write on my fathers' grave?  Those -- those ignorant -- sons of bitches,” he spat, turning and half-running back to the path.  “The cemetery has to fix that, they have to take that off there right now,” he cried, tears of rage starting now.  “And the police.  I'm calling the police."  He pulled the phone out of his pocket and tried to open it, but it slipped from his trembling grasp and fell on the ground.  He stopped and squatted down to pick it up.  

Kurt caught up and knelt in front of Blaine.  He looked into Blaines eyes, holding the sides of his face.  “You need to calm down first, Blaine.  We'll call the police, we will get the stone fixed, I swear, but you need to take a deep breath for me.”  He took Blaine's hands in his and kept his eyes on Blaine's, breathing with him slowly, and to Kurt's relief, Blaine tried to do as he advised, taking long, calming breaths and squeezing his eyes shut.  Kurt kept holding his hands tight, watching him closely.

“How could they write that?” Blaine finally asked, his voice small.  “How could anybody hate my dads?  They never hurt anyone, ever.  They just loved each other--so much--how could that be wrong?  How could that be a reason to hate them?”

Kurt helped Blaine up and took him in his arms.  Now wasn't the time to hold back, fear of his own feelings be damned.  Blaine needed his physical and emotional support, and he would have it.

He whispered in Blaine's ear, “They're jealous, and ignorant, and will never know that kind of love.  They can't … nobody with that much hate in their heart ever will be happy like your dads were.”

Blaine put his head on Kurt's shoulder.  “All they wanted was to be together, to be married and in love.  That's what everybody wants, isn't it?”

“Yes.  And what everybody deserves.”

Blaine pulled back a little, looking down sadly.  “If it's up to those people, you and I … well … we'll never have that legally.  My dads weren't legally married and … and those people want to make sure people like you and me never are.”

“You will be, Blaine.  You will have love like that, and you'll have a life like they built, someday.  I promise.”

Blaine looked into his eyes again, and this time Kurt didn't look away.  “I promise,” he whispered.  “Some day.”