The Proper Way to Exist in the Eye of the Storm

It's weird to remember a time when I had no idea what crazy shit was about to come…

Dinner with the Kurt's family was… interesting I guess is the word.

Carole did a pretty good job of keeping the conversation always going, even though the only real contributors were Kurt, Logan, and Carole herself. Finn was too busy shoving as much food in his mouth as he could between minimal gasps of breath for air.

Burt stayed quiet throughout dinner and spent most of his time staring at me with this pained, kind of confused expression on his face, like he was trying to understand how I had gotten to be at his dinner table and what the hell his son saw in me. From the frustrated twinge that made his left eye twitch every so often, I deduced that he was having a difficult time finding an answer to either question.

Everly sat ramrod straight in her chair, her eyes focused intently on the laptop that sat in front of her. Every so often her hand would travel out from behind the computer to shovel some food onto her fork and then disappear behind the computer at the midway point of its journey to her mouth.

Logan kept looking at the strawberry-blonde with an annoyed expression on her face, a twinge very similar to Burt's plaguing her as well, only at her right eye rather than her left. Eventually she broke with a frustrated groan and called the other woman out.

"Do you have to do that during dinner?" she snapped at Everly, stopping herself in the middle of a conversation with Carole to do so.

Everly glanced up at her, but didn't pause in her work. "I wouldn't be doing it if it weren't important, Logan."

"But it can wait, don't you think?"

"No."

Logan huffed and I saw Carole discretely pat her hand. Logan rolled her eyes as if to say 'it's whatever.' Carole gave her a sympathetic smile and they continued their conversation.

I watched them all as discretely as I could, fascinated by their whole family dynamic. I doubted my fascination with them would ever dwindle. I couldn't ever see them becoming less of an enigma in my eyes.

After dinner I decided it was time I left. After telling Kurt my entire fucked up life story I really needed to clear my head. Fear might have had a small something to do with it, too, but I was trying not to acknowledge that too openly.

Kurt didn't look too happy about the news when I told him, which made me feel kind of good.

He walked me outside, stopping me on the front porch to wrap his arms around my neck. He had caught me by surprise, so I kind of just stood there awkwardly for a few seconds before I slipped my arms around his waist and let my head drop forward until my forehead was resting somewhat uncomfortably against his collar bone.

I had been trying not to get too caught up in my own head, but it was difficult not to wonder how long it would take for everything I told him to really sink in.

"I keep waiting for you to freak out," I admitted quietly.

"Is that why you're…"

"Leaving?" I supplied for him when he couldn't say it himself. "No. Not really. I don't know."

He laughed a little at that, his voice full of emotion for some reason. His arms tightened around me. "Have I freaked out yet?" he asked, obviously trying to make a point.

I got the meaning, but it did nothing to placate my growing nerves. "Maybe you haven't processed it all yet."

"Explain it to me then."

"There's not much left to explain. You pretty much know everything there is to know about me now." Even some things Cooper didn't know.

"What about the good things?"

"What good things?" I shot back, quiet.

"Tell me your favorite childhood memory."

I frowned, trying to come up with one. I eventually came up with something I hadn't thought about probably since it happened, but remembering it made me want to smile so I decided it was better than nothing. "Cooper spilled soda on my favorite white bow tie once," I said, and for a moment I got so stuck in the remembering part that I forgot to elaborate further.

Kurt's eyebrows shot up. "That's your favorite childhood memory?"

"Oh. No. Not that exactly. What happened after. I basically cried for like an hour and he felt so bad about it that he promised he would get me a new one. Neither of us had any money, though, and we couldn't drive anywhere even if we managed to find some, so he came up with 'Operation Make Blaine the Best Bowtie Ever,'" I said, complete with air quotes and a roll of my eyes. "So he totally got a pair of scissors from his desk and dragged me to the living room where he then proceeded to cut out the sorriest excuse for a bowtie ever created from the four hundred dollar curtains hanging in the living room."

"Oh my god."

"Yeah. The nanny flipped her shit. And I mean, screaming at the top of her lungs, face ten kinds of purple, psycho crazy kind of flipped. It probably would have been really intimidating if Cooper hadn't been laughing his ass off the whole time she was yelling at us. He actually told her she looked like Violet from the Willy Wonka movie. You know, the one who blew up into that giant purple grape thing." I laughed at little at the memory, remembering the struggle to keep a straight face and look properly chastised as I stared at the floor while Cooper held my hand and cracked up in a snorting fit next to me.

"I haven't thought about that day in a really long time," I murmured, still mostly stuck in the memory.

"See?" Kurt prompted, voice soft, bringing me back.

I did see, actually. I saw pretty clearly that Kurt was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I didn't know how to say that, though, so I just held him tight and mumbled a thank you into his neck. Then I surprised myself by adding, "I'll miss you." The affectionate stuff was getting a bit easier, I guess. I had the 'I miss you' thing down, at least, given how easily it had slipped past my lips.

Kurt responded in his silent way, squeezing back gently so I would know the sentiment was returned.

I was about to kiss Kurt goodbye before heading to my car when Carole's voice drifted outside to us from the kitchen window.

"…leaving now, Burt, so I hope you're happy." I hope you realize how ridiculous you're being.

"How does this get blamed on me? Were we supposed to just let him stay forever?" Burt grumbled back.

Kurt looked at me with wide, embarrassed eyes then opened his mouth, probably to call out and let Burt and Carole know we could hear every word but I slapped a hand over his mouth.

"Hey, don't give me that look," I whispered. "They're the ones talking about me and I want to know what they have to say."

I caught Carole's response somewhere in the middle. "…were practically staring him down during dinner. I don't think you looked at anyone else but him."

"So?"

"So you probably made him uncomfortable," she told him in an annoyed, exasperated tone.

"I was just trying to get a read on the kid," Burt defended himself. "It's not like we know anything about him other than his first name, which, incidentally, is because he flat out refused to give us his last name."

Carole groaned. "That's his personal information, Burt. You can't really expect him to tell us his whole life story the second he meets us."

"I can too if he's gonna be staying in my house."

"Yes, well, I doubt he'll want to come back after the way you behaved tonight."

"Fine by me. Everly says she's got a bad feeling about him anyway."

Kurt pulled away from my hand to glare dangerously in the direction of the kitchen window.

"And besides," Burt continued, "something is going on with those two. I know they got up to something in Kurt's room last night. They looked like they had spent an hour rolling around on the bed."

"So what if there is something going on? Kurt isn't a baby anymore, Burt. He's growing up and teenage romance is a normal part of life that we have to deal with as parents. Kurt is supposed to have 'something going on' with a special someone at this age."

"Ugh. Carole, I don't want to talk about this."

"Well, we've got to," she insisted, not backing down. "You can't just ignore it."

"Well, why not?" Burt threw back, raising his voice a little. "I wasn't supposed to have to deal with this crap until he went off to college. We're in Lima, Ohio for crissake. How many out, gays kids can there possibly be around here?"

"What are you saying? That you were hoping Kurt would be alone until he left for college so that you wouldn't have to deal with him falling in love?" Carole asked, incredulous.

"No! No, I—No. That's not it. It's just… I miss my little boy, you know? I miss all the 'hi, daddies,' and the 'can you tuck me ins' and stuff like that. All that stuff is gone now and I don't know when that happened, Carole…"

There was a slight pause before he continued, "And then all of a sudden out of the blue this boy shows up and he keeps looking at my kid like Kurt put the stars in the damn sky and then I look at Kurt and he's looking back at this kid the same way and I just… I don't know what to do with that."

I felt embarrassment creep up the back of my neck and settle like hot fire in my cheeks, but I didn't worry too much about it because when I looked at Kurt he was looking down at the ground with this shy, adorable look on his face and a redness in his cheeks that matched my own.

"Burt… honey, you don't have to do anything. You just have to get to know him and hope for the best."

"But Everly—"

"It doesn't matter what Everly said. I know she means well, but she's just as overprotective of Kurt as you are. You have to remember that Kurt trusts him. Your son, who trusts no one, trusts that boy and that has to mean something, don't you think?"

"Is that true?" I asked, nudging Kurt's toe with my own and no longer paying attention to the conversation going on in the kitchen. Everly had asked him something similar the night before, to which he indicated that he did trust me, but this felt different. This was something someone else had noticed in him.

"Which part?" he asked, a small, shy smile on his face.

"All of it."

Slowly, with his smile still in place, Kurt shook his head no and I grinned. I couldn't stop myself from leaning in and pressing a quick kiss to his lips that he not only returned, but turned into something more. Our lips moved together easily before I pulled reluctantly away.

"See you tomorrow night," I whispered. I gave him one last kiss and left with a smile on my face.

Instead of driving back to Dalton Saturday night I went to see Santana. Her house was only twenty minutes away from Kurt's and I figured I would have less separation anxiety if I went there than if I went all the way back to Dalton.

I didn't want to deal with her parents, or more specifically her father, who reminded me too much of my own, so I climbed up to her window on the second floor and got in that way. Neither of us batted an eye at the fact that I walked in on her changing since it was nothing I hadn't seen before (we had never particularly cared who saw what), but the broken look on her face gave me pause.

"Hey," I said carefully.

"Hey," she said back and finished pulling on the oversized nightshirt she had in her hands.

"You okay?" I asked even though I knew the answer.

Her face crumbled but she stubbornly kept the tears in her eyes from spilling over. "They had to sedate her again. Third time this week."

We both knew what that meant. It wasn't good for a D4 to have to be sedated too often. It was grounds for re-evaluation and Brittany's fits induced by her visions were getting habitually worse. She was hardly ever lucid anymore for more than a few hours at a time. It didn't turn into a major problem unless she saw something that scared her, in which case she would start screaming and lash out at anyone who came near her.

"It's only one bad week," I reminded her as gently as I could.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she snapped, dashing the back of her hand furiously over her eyes.

"I was hoping it would," I admitted. "It's also the truth."

Her face crumpled again and that time I didn't hesitate to close the distance between us and wrap my arms around her. She fell against me without a fight but didn't lift her arms to hug me back. They dangled uselessly at her sides.

"It's only the beginning of the month," she said, voice miserable. "What if it gets worse and they increase her Division level?"

If that happened Brittany would be place in a D5 facility Santana would never see her again.

There was nothing I could say to make Santana feel better and we both knew it. False promises of hope were bullshit and neither of us would ever do that to the other anyway. So instead I maneuvered us both to the bed without letting her go and lowered us down. She fell asleep fitfully in my arms.

By Sunday morning Santana was bitchier than ever and snapped at me for the stupidest shit. I rolled my eyes and griped at her a bit but otherwise let her verbally abuse me, knowing that it was just her way of coping with everything. My own way was similar so I understood.

When I left to go back to Dalton later that night she stopped me and hugged me tight enough to make breathing a chore. She whispered a 'thank you' in my ear before shoving me off her damn stoop. I nearly fell flat on my ass but caught myself just in time and flipped her off with a scowl, which she promptly returned.

The first thing I did when I got back to school was look for Kurt. Thankfully I found him in the first place I checked, which saved me from going to his dorm and having to deal with Sebastian.

From one of the back tables in the student lounge, Kurt smiled at me when he looked up from one of his textbooks. I tried my best to smile back but given how exhausted as I was, it was a halfhearted attempt at best. He noticed, of course, if the curious look on his face was anything to go by but he waited patiently for me to sit down in the chair next to him, which I did.

"Do you ever wish your life was different?" I asked once I was sat down and leaning heavily against his shoulder. He took my weight without complaint.

"All the time," he lied. My life isn't so bad, his truth told me, taking me by surprise. It could be worse.

"Well, yeah, but I'm talking about making it better," I explained. "Wouldn't you want to be normal?"

"I don't know," he said, sounding odd. It would be nice, I guess, but it doesn't really matter what I want because that won't ever happen.

I frowned; confused with the unpredicted direction the conversation was headed. "But what if there was a way to eliminate our abilities?"

Kurt sighed impatiently. "SIIPA has been searching for a way to do that since the beginning of time." They've been searching for a way to 'cure' us for years.

"Yeah, I guess," I relented with a shrug. "It would be nice if they found a way, though, don't you think?"

"Yes," he said, his voice tight, almost angry, and completely unexpected. It was of course followed by a resounding, No, in my head.

Shocked, I leaned back so I could look at him fully. His lips were drawn in a thin line and he was staring intently at his textbook, though I doubted he actually saw the book in front of him. "Why 'no'?"

"Do you honestly think it would solve anything?" he asked in a meaningful tone, as if I was supposed to derive something significant from such a stupid question.

"I think Cooper wouldn't have to be stuck in a D5 facility for the rest of his life," I said forcefully, hoping to shove the significance of that down his throat. "I think I wouldn't have to be my father's plaything anymore."

Santana could actually be happy for once in her life, I added silently to myself. Brittany could experience the world through her own eyes for a change instead of getting stuck looking at it through visions.

"So, yeah," I bit out harshly, "I honestly think life would be a whole fuck of a lot better if there was a cure."

Kurt's mouth fell open. "Blaine, I… I didn't…"

"Didn't what?"

He looked at me with sad eyes. "I don't know." I didn't mean it like that.

"And that's supposed to—what? Make me feel better?"

"Blaine…." His eyes were pleading with me, saying something I didn't know how to interpret.

I fell against my chair, anger suddenly gone. "I just don't understand why you would think that way…" I had been hoping for a cure to be found ever since I was a kid. Sometimes I tried not to think about the possibility too much because the idea seemed too perfect and so farfetched, but it was always there in the back of my mind no matter what.

Kurt gave me his 'I don't know' lie again. It's not that I don't understand that there are people who really want to eliminate their abilities it's just… what if a cure comes at a price?

"Then I'd pay it," I insisted firmly. "I don't care what it is. I would do anything for my brother."

"Even if that meant…?" he trailed off.

"What?" I asked, helping him along when I sensed that he was unable to continue because of his condition, which, I added bitterly in my mind, would no longer be a problem for him if a cure was found. Even some questions held too much truth in them for him to handle. I couldn't understand why he wouldn't want to be able to speak freely, without so many restrictions.

"Nothing." Even if it meant giving SIIPA the power to do whatever they wanted? SIIPA locks people up in the D5 facilities because they pose a threat to an corrupted chain of command. If you take away the abilities of all the people they've locked up then the only ones left with power are the corrupt commanders.

"I don't care," I argued stubbornly. "I don't give a shit about people I don't know. If there is ever a chance that my brother doesn't have to suffer for the rest of his life then I'm going to take it."

Suddenly Kurt's arms were around me, pulling me close. "Okay," he said gently. "Okay."

I hugged him back tightly, not realizing how much I needed the contact until I had it. I gripped his shirt in my hands, crumbling it in my fists.

"Okay," he said a final time, his way of saying sorry. At the time, I thought I understood why.