“Kurt - oh God, I - I’m sorry! I didn’t... mean to... I mean, I did, I absolutely did. I have been thinking about this for so long - too long. I didn’t mean for it to happen like this... I shouldn’t have... I shouldn’t have done it, Kurt, just please, please never mention this to anybody!”

Kurt appeared frozen in place, hand still at his mouth, staring at Blaine as though a thousand things were running through his mind but he hadn’t the ability to voice a single one. “Oh Kurt, please say something.”

Blaine’s hand was trembling, and his stomach bore an unsettled sickly feeling bought on by nervousness.

It was unfamiliar to Blaine - the feeling of powerlessness when stood beside a servant. Of course Kurt could walk out of the room and proclaim to everybody what Blaine had done, and at first there would be scandal. But who would believe a footman over the word of an Earl’s son? Blaine would roll his eyes nonchalantly, would appear offended if anybody dared so much as to question him on the subject. Kurt would be fired for spreading lies, Blaine would marry a lady and the entire thing would be swept under the rug; forgotten - by society at least.

But, no - that wasn’t what had unsettled Blaine. More concerning to him was the idea of Kurt simply walking out; out of the room, out of Dalton Abbey and out of Blaine’s life forever. Kurt had, somehow, introduced Blaine to a side of him that he had never before discovered and was now impossible to ignore. Blaine was not prepared for there to be no more Kurt Hummel.

Kurt seemed to breathe at last - an achingly long and horribly shaky breath - and his expression, though not altogether relaxed, was less fearful than it had been.

“Have you really been meaning to do that for a long time?”

They were not the words Blaine had been expecting of his valet, but, allowing himself the tiniest hint of relief, he happily accepted them.

“Yes. Yes. And I didn’t even realize it until just now. But I realize now that I’ve wanted it - I’ve wanted you - almost from the first.”

Kurt’s breath was still shaky as he replied. “From when, exactly? Tell me when.”

“From... from the moment I caught you playing at my pianoforte. Your skill with music, your voice. That, I think, is when I realized that you were different. You were special.”

Blaine was entirely baffled by Kurt’s response. Perhaps, he thought, when Kurt got over the shock he would be far more disgusted by what had happened. Instead, the edge of Kurt’s lips twitched upwards slightly.

“And would you... would you ever consider doing it again? Kissing me, I mean?”

“I’d kiss you forever, if you’d let me,” Blaine said without hesitation.

Suddenly Kurt’s lips were on his again, Blaine’s hands clasping desperately around the other boy’s back, pulling him closer, closer until it was impossible for the two of them to be any closer. Their breathing became quick, heavy, so unnaturally paced and yet, Blaine noticed, so in synch with one another. It was as though their lips were meant to be together, their bodies together - their souls together - regardless of what society said, regardless of what the law said. If the two of them harboring feelings for one another was so damned wrong then how was it possible for it to feel so right?

They eventually broke apart, Blaine’s shirt slightly askew from where Kurt’s fingers had grabbed ahold of it. Blaine released him from his grip, his hands trailing from his back to his waist and then eventually clenching beside himself, fists forming as he tried to control the overwhelming sensation of euphoria. Blaine was speechless - what did everything mean? What kind of feelings did Kurt have for him? What were they going to do about it?

“You...” Blaine cleared his throat. “You don’t seem quite as, um... repulsed as I was expecting.”

“Repulsed?” Kurt exclaimed. “I’ve wanted to do this for quite a while, too, milord.”

“Kurt,” Blaine said with a chuckle. “You don’t have to call me that. Not in private, anyway, not anymore. Do you remember my first name?”

Kurt nodded. “Of course I do.”

“Call me by my name.”

Kurt hesitated, as though, after everything, calling Blaine by his forename was some dirty, forbidden thing. “Blaine...” Kurt whispered finally, and after a few moments his lips curled up into a smile.

Blaine smiled, too. “What are you thinking about?”

“I’ve wanted to call you that for so long. I always had to fight with myself that I wouldn’t be the first of us to call the other by name. And I wasn’t.”

Blaine laughed, his hand coming up to rest against Kurt’s pale cheek. “No, it was me. I’m always the first to make a mistake.”

“Your mistakes usually pay off though,” Kurt said, leaning his forehead against Blaine’s.

“Kurt...”

“Blaine...”

And the two of them kissed again.

* * *

Kurt left Blaine’s room a little later than usual, the kisses they’d shared whilst putting away Blaine’s evening wear lasting minutes at a time, elongating their brief moment together.

Kurt still had Blaine’s letter to Miss Fabray tucked inside his pocket, and, with a great deal of reluctance, he took it to the postbox to stamp and ensure it was ready for the morning post collection. He had half considered not posting the letter at all; why should Blaine need Miss Fabray if he was clearly so interested in Kurt? But of course he hadn’t. Not sending the letter would mark him as unreliable, suspicious - not to mention the fact that Kurt still wasn’t sure that his own senses hadn’t deceived him. He was convinced that he could wake up at any moment, the entire thing a dream. Surely it was the only believable explanation?

“Good God, Hummel!” Puck’s voice seemed to appear out of nowhere, and Kurt jumped, turning abruptly to the origin of the noise. Kurt’s first notion was that he knew somehow, and he tried his utmost to abandon the guilty look that was no doubt affixed to his face.

“Tell me you haven’t been with Master Anderson half the evening looking like that?”

Kurt’s eyes widened. “Like what?”

Puck came closer to him and pulled at his the back of his jacket where Blaine’s hands had been not a quarter of an hour previous.

“Your clothing all crumpled. The back of your jacket was folded in on itself; I could see your waistcoat.”

Kurt’s brow furrowed in mock-confusion and turned to make his way closer to the stairs to the servant’s quarters. “I don’t know how that must have happened. Besides, Puck, I didn’t think you cared much about that sort of thing.”

Puck grabbed the back of Kurt’s jacket, halting his movement abruptly. “Lord Dalton spent more money than you’re like to see in your lifetime on our liveries so that we can uphold their family name. One day I’ll be the butler here, and it’ll be my job to keep up that name, Hummel. You should appreciate what you have and respect the people who provided them for you.”

Kurt pulled himself away from the grasp and began to ascent the stairs backwards, his eyes still on Puck.

“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again,” he said, before turning his way up toward his bedroom.

Sam was already asleep when Kurt entered the room. He noticed yet another pile of abandoned letters and crumpled paper littering the desk the two of them shared, and Kurt resolved to figure out a way to help Sam with his troubles the following day. In the meantime, he got ready and into bed, blew out the single remaining lit candle and fell to sleep, smiling for his own happiness.

*

For the first time in Kurt’s life, morning did not come fast enough. He awoke constantly throughout the night, each time glancing at the window to be disheartened that it was still nighttime. The moon glowed especially bright, as though it were exerting all of it’s energy to ensure the night would last forever. Kurt was already wide-awake with the sounds of the birds bringing in the dawn and he sped through his morning duties with more haste than was necessary.

Eventually he found himself finished - a full half and hour before he was to wake Blaine. The result was an agonizingly long wait at the breakfast table, nibbling at his food so as to make it last.

By the time he could go upstairs to Blaine, a sudden anxiety had settled itself within Kurt, and he caught himself worrying his bottom lip through his teeth.

What if Blaine had changed his mind? What if he’d realized the stupidity of becoming involved with a servant - worse, a man? What if the entire thing were part of Kurt’s restless and addled sleep during the night, and it had all been but a very vivid dream? Or what if - very worst of all - the whole thing had been some terrible joke? A trick Blaine had played on him to get him into trouble? Was it possible for Blaine to be that cruel?

The thought went round and round in Kurt’s mind as he ascended the stairs that led to Blaine’s suite. No, he thought vehemently. No, Blaine could never be that cruel.

Blaine answered the door himself as soon as Kurt knocked. It was unprecedented that Blaine should do that - that any gentleman should open the door for a servant - but Kurt thanked him and walked inside the room anyway. Blaine’s lips were on his the instant the door was closed behind him and Kurt’s sigh of relief disappeared into the kiss with a soft and satisfied hum.

The kiss was gentle, and if it wasn’t the most passionate thing that Kurt had ever done he might have described it as chaste, almost. It was as though neither of them knew what they were doing, both of them following the other’s lead and guessing things, feeling things by instinct. Blaine’s tongue flecked across Kurt’s for the briefest of moments and Kurt gasped, the sensation almost too passionate to bear.

When at last they parted - Kurt’s chest rising and falling heavily - they laughed a little together, Blaine’s cheeks coloring slightly as he touched his own fingers to his reddened lips.

“Isn’t this wrong?” Kurt dared to ask eventually.

Blaine seemed contemplative for a moment. “Is it wrong for people to care about one another? To kiss one another?”

“Blaine...” Kurt pressed a hand to Blaine’s soft cheek, running a thumb across his cheekbone to his hairline. Blaine leant into the touch. “We’re not just two people. And we’re not just a gentleman and a servant. We’re two men. This isn’t... this isn’t accepted. It’s so far from it that I daren’t think what anybody would say if they knew.”

Blaine put his hands around Kurt’s waist and tugged him closer. “Nobody will ever know about this. We can keep this a secret forever, can’t we? If you’ll agree to always be my valet then we shall always see one another.”

“You’re to be married.”

The words silenced Blaine for a moment. His eyes lost their spark, glanced down somewhere beyond Kurt, who felt his heart drop with the reality that Blaine’s promises were little more than idle fantasies for a life that they two of them could never even dream of sharing.

But Blaine cocked his head back to Kurt and smiled, playfully.

“No. Not yet, I’m not.”

And with those five simple syllables, Kurt’s mouth was claimed by Blaine’s and all of their promises were sealed.

Kurt was laughing when again they parted.

“You’ll be late for breakfast, Master Anderson. We wouldn’t want that, now, would we?”

* * *

“Blaine.”

His parents were already sat at the breakfast table by the time Blaine arrived, a little later than he ought to have been.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” Blaine said, offering no kind of explanation. Kurt had arrived on time, of course. He stood where he usually did, to the side of the room ready to serve if anybody needed him. Breakfast was such a casual affair compared to dinner that Blaine hardily knew why they kept servants in the room at all - but he was glad, now, that Kurt was there.

Blaine had held back before coming to breakfast, even after Kurt had gone down himself. He’d composed himself in the mirror and waited for the swell of his lips to go down so that when he finally arrived - ten minutes later than he usually did - he could convince his observers that he was every bit the innocent and respectable gentleman they all assumed him to be.

“It isn’t much like you to be tardy,” his mother said, and though she hadn’t worded it as such, her tone indicated that she required an explanation for his delayed appearance.

“I was reading.”

“Always with your head in some book. Kindly take you place so that we can eat,” Blaine’s father said, folding up his newspaper as Blaine hastened to follow his instruction.

No sooner had Blaine taken his seat when his parents began to help themselves to various slices of toast and egg. Blaine’s appetite seemed to have disappeared entirely. With his eyes hardily focused on what was laid before them on the table, he took a slice of bread with lazy fingers and buttered it slowly. Kurt was just visible in his peripheral vision, and Blaine had to fight the temptation to look at him and give an obscenely obvious smile.

“Did you send Miss Fabray your reply?” Blaine’s mother asked.

The feeling that took ahold of Blaine’s insides was as unpleasant as it was unwelcome; his stomach clenched uncomfortably at even the mention of her name.

“The letter was in this morning’s post,” he assured her with a strained voice.

“Good. Good. Things are back on course at last. In a few short months Miss Fabray and yourself will be married and we can forget about out little hiccup with Miss Berry.

Blaine raised his eyebrows. “I was unaware that the friendship between Miss Berry and I was considered a ‘hiccup’.

His mother did not grace him with a response.

*

Blaine left the breakfast table as soon as he could excuse himself. His vision was a little blurred from tiredness; he had spent his entire night thinking over things. Some of his thoughts were obscenely delicious - the taste of Kurt’s lips the, way his back curved inwards a little at the bottom just enough for Blaine to rest his hand there, the thought of Kurt’s hands finally clasped around Blaine in an embrace. Some of his other thoughts were less so appealing; an overwhelming and crushing reminder of reality. Thoughts such as how he could possibly continue a relationship with Kurt when the very notion of it was enough to have them both imprisoned. Like how he was meant to endure his meeting with Miss Fabray - this potential marriage - when he abhorred the very idea of being intimate with anybody besides Kurt.

Mostly he’d wondered what it was about Kurt that had so changed him - or had he always been this way? Homosexuality was a criminal offense, was abnormal in the eyes of society. So if Blaine was not supposed to feel this way for Kurt then why did he? And, indeed, why was Kurt not entirely repulsed by it? Why did Kurt feel the same way?

His mind had been torn for most of the night between asking Kurt the following morning if he would mind terribly the two of them pretending that it hadn’t happened so that Blaine could go on leading a normal life, and fantasizing about the places he would most like to plant kisses on Kurt’s body, the ways in which they could keep themselves a secret for the rest of their lives. Blaine kept on thinking of Oscar Wilde - fantastic writer that he was, condemned for his homosexuality - to convince himself that he was not only normal, but that he was in good company.

His body had eventually succumbed to sleep, though the slumber had not lasted long. Naturally, though, fresh air would wake him up more thoroughly, and Blaine had Kurt called up to his room to pick out his riding gear. Any mere excuse to see the boy’s face yet again.

* * *

Sam was sitting on the floor when Kurt came into their bedroom to change clothes for the evening. He was shuffling through various pieces of crumpled paper on the floor and seemed to be arranging them out on their tiny amount of floor space so as to compare them.

“Are you writing letters?”

Sam didn’t make a verbal reply. His head seemed to nod - only ever so slightly - in the affirmative, and Kurt rolled his eyes a little, though Sam didn’t notice. He was mumbling to himself, his words barely-there and seemingly nonsensical, and as Kurt unbuttoned his shirt and folded it up on his bed he couldn’t help but feel his heart ache for poor Sam.

“Aha!”

Kurt jumped at the sudden noise, and Sam picked up three of the crumpled sheets of paper, held together with tense hands, and walked over to the desk, placing them in front of him and picking up his pen once again to start afresh.

“What have you found?” Kurt asked, pulling his evening shirt over his pale shoulders and noticing how his skin really was the color of porcelain. He was sure he’d looked a little darker when he’d been working on the farm.

“The right way to word it. This letter. I think I have it. Perhaps.”

“Sam...”

But Sam didn’t reply. His pen was already racing across the paper, clearly paying no attention to his badly scripted handwriting. Kurt supposed he’d written so many drafts of the proposal letter by now that he had stopped even trying to put together his elegant scrawl in case it was all for nought.

Kurt buttoned up his shirt hastily and walked over to Sam, placing one hand on his shoulder and the other on the paper that Sam was writing on. Sam stopped, looking up at Kurt with a mixture of annoyance and sadness.

“Kurt I have to write this letter.”

“No. You don’t.”

“Yes! Yes, I do!”

Kurt sighed and pulled the paper away from Sam, scrunching it up. Sam winced, as though the destruction of the letter he had not yet had the chance to discard of himself was physically painful to him.

“Do you love Louisa, Sam?”

Sam appeared baffled for a moment, and then furrowed his brows, raising his voice in irritation, “Yes! Of course I do, what do you think I’ve been so pent up about for the past week?”

Kurt shook his head and leaned in closer to Sam. “Do you love Louisa? Really love her?”

“I...” Sam began, before inhaling deeply, letting the stale air of the room fill his lungs and calm him. “Yes, Kurt. I do. Of course I love her.”

Kurt smiled and nodded encouragingly.

“Then go to Mr Wood yourself, Sam. Ask him in person. Show him how much Louisa means to you.”

“I can’t... I can’t do that Kurt, you know that. I’m just-”

“You’re just scared. Don’t be. I promise you that if you care enough, if you want enough for it to happen, then it will. It will happen.”

“What makes you so certain?” Sam asked, the tiniest hint of a smile on his face.

“Good things happen to good people. That’s just a fact, Sam,” Kurt said, nudging Sam comfortingly and throwing the dozens of sheets of wasted paper in the basket in the corner of the room. “I am one hundred percent confident that you will get exactly what you deserve when it comes to Louisa because you’re one of the nicest, truest men I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. These things happen the way that they’re supposed to.”

Sam chuckled. “‘God works in mysterious ways?’” he quoted, his eyes seeming light up as though Kurt were watching the notion of possibility seep back into Sam’s conscience. “What on Earth’s made you so optimistic all of a sudden?”

Kurt turned away from Sam, feeling his smile stretch across his face as he pulled on his waistcoat. He could think of no answer, so he made no reply, continuing to smile, his face away from Sam’s, until the question drifted away.

* * *

Dear Master Anderson,

I am so pleased that you have accepted out invitation to Crawford. We expect your arrival on the 27th August, if you would. Do let us know if this date is at all inconvenient to you. You are more than welcome to bring a valet with you, though naturally if you do not one of our footmen will be assigned to your care.

We anticipate your arrival keenly.

Yours Sincerely,

Miss Lucy Fabray.

Blaine had little to say once the letter arrived, a full three days after his own had been sent in the post. His parents watched him as he folded the letter and placed it back onto the table.

“Well?” Blaine’s mother asked, rather too enthusiastically. “When are you expected?”

“The twenty-seventh of the month,” Blaine replied without elaboration.

“Oh a week away. We’ve plenty of time to arrange things then. We shall have Hudson drive you and your valet down to the station. If you catch the night train you’ll be there good and early the following morning and I’m certain they’ll extend to you the use of a motor car and chauffeur - I’ve heard Lord Crawford has two cars you know! You will have to tell us if that is true...”

Blaine let his mother’s talking trail off into the background, and he dared to glance across to Kurt, who was offering him as much sympathy as his typically blank face could allow.

This was, as far as Blaine was concerned, the beginning of a double life that he would simply have no choice but to live.

His day continued as usual. He changed into his riding gear, then into afternoon clothes, and finally into evening attire, neither Kurt nor Blaine daring to be the first to mention the visit to Crawford.

It was after dinner, when Blaine had retired early with a complaint of head ache, that he eventually broached the topic with Kurt.

“Are you... excited?”

Kurt smiled, looking up at Blaine as he assorted Blaine’s cufflinks correctly. “It will be an experience. I am mostly just pleased that I shall be going with you.”

Blaine couldn’t help but be touched by the compliment, and he reached out to clasp Kurt’s hand in his own. He held it there, his thumb caressing the back of his pale hand softly.

“But if this entire visit is to the purpose of making Miss Fabray my fiance, then what is to become of us, Kurt?”

Kurt’s hand stilled in Blaine’s, and his eyes seemed full of a kind of sadness all of a sudden.

“You don’t believe that we can be together?”

“I honestly don’t know what to think, Kurt. We are so good with our secrets and we both know that my feelings for you can never be replaced by any misguided sense that I am supposed to care for Miss Fabray.”

Kurt placed his second hand on top of Blaine’s and his own. The movement was comforting, reassuring, and all at once the fact that Kurt was a servant and the fact that he was male seemed entirely irrelevant. They were but two people in a difficult situation, holding one another, promising one another that things would be okay.

“Blaine,” Kurt said, and Blaine moved in closer so as not to miss a single word, “there are so many standards that you have to meet, so many people that you have to please. It’s as thought you’re on a pedestal with the weight of everything on your shoulders. If you make a single mistake, if you make a mess of your situation in front of all these people then people will begin to suspect things about you, spread rumors and lies and hatred, until your family name is little more than a joke to your peers.”

Blaine winced at the harsh truth - the fact that everything he did and did not do reflected back on Blaine, his parents and the name and estate that had been passed down to him by ancestors.

“But, Blaine, I can assure you that there’s not a single person in the world, upper class or otherwise, who is what they say they are. The scandals, the rumors. They’re not so few and far between as you would imagine. And they’re just the ones who get caught.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m suggesting that marriage to Miss Fabray would be the perfect coverup for a relationship that we can keep so secret that nobody will ever suspect a thing. I’m saying that we could do this Blaine. We could do this for the rest of our lives if we wanted. And nobody need suspect you of anything.”

The smile that broke out on Blaine’s face was nothing short of spectacular. He freed his hand from Kurt’s grasp and used it to pull Kurt’s face into his, sliding his lips into place effortlessly.

They eventually broke apart with giggles of happiness, the two of them almost giddy with the excitement of a future that could work; that would work, because they wanted it to, needed it to.

Blaine dressed for bed, his mind whirring with all of the ways their future could pan out. It was a given that Kurt would formally become valet, rather than footman-come-valet, when Blaine was the master of the house. He’d become butler, maybe, when Ryerson eventually retired or passed away. The children that Blaine had would look up to Kurt, the almost fatherly staff member that had been there since before their births.

The two of them would live well into the 1960’s - seventy years of age, the both of them - with King Edward VIII about to leave the royal throne to a son of his. Dalton Abbey would be the epitome of class, the house through which all worthy society must pass. Blaine’s wife would be entirely oblivious to Blaine’s affairs, as any good wife should be - the two of them would host parties, would hold ceremonies, would find their children good marriages, all in exactly the same way that Blaine’s own parents had. The world would go by and none of it would matter so long as Kurt and Blaine could live as happily as two men ever could away from the eyes of society.

Blaine allowed the thought to carry him to his bed after Kurt had kissed him and bid him goodnight, and his dreams were as happy and delightful as ever they could be.

------------------------
End of Part One