Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Blaine wasn’t in love with his son. Burt might prefer it if he wasn’t. Blaine was a nice kid and all, but Kurt, Kurt was his son. He didn’t need some kid with all these problems hiding just under the surface to come in and screw up his kid.

Burt didn’t want to think about Kurt dating, not because Kurt would be dating another guy, but because the meant that somehow Kurt might need him a little less. Maybe Kurt wouldn’t press as hard about Burt’s diet or he’d be less likely to be at their Friday night dinners.

It seemed like only last week that he was having tea parties with his son in their backyard, munching on plastic sandwiches and making small talk with stuffed animals. Why couldn’t Kurt have just stayed that young? That sweet.

The outside world didn’t judge Kurt as much back then. Sure the kid preferred tea parties to games of tag, but the rest of the population could shrug that off as a phase, kids go through phases, and they weren’t as judged harshly for them.

The first call he’d gotten last year had hurt. It hurt him to think that the rest of the world couldn’t open their eyes enough to see that there was nothing wrong with his son, nothing wrong with the way he chose to love, not that he thinks Kurt chose to be gay, he knew that wasn’t true.

He wished for a simpler time, when three-lettered words didn’t make his stomach churn. When slicked up prep boys didn’t come round his shop practically mooning over his son, missing him so much that even the kid’s father is a good enough substitute if he can’t have the real thing.

Burt did like Blaine. He was a good kid and he certainly meant well, but Blaine seemed about as oblivious to his feelings for Kurt as a person could be and that, more than anything else, made Burt nervous about whatever kind of relationship Blaine and Kurt had or might have.

Burt didn’t tell Carole about his revelation, nor did he tell her about the conversation he had with the boy about musicals. This was something he’d like to keep to himself, at least until he had a few more things figured out.

Thursday afternoon descended upon Burt quicker than he thought, but paid little mind to the time as he works under a car. It wasn’t until he slid out from under the car he was working on that he noticed the telltale Lima Bean cup set on his workstation.

Burt’s eyes scanned the shop, finding Blaine sitting at one of the workstations, bent over a textbook, a Lima Bean cup next to his papers. Blaine was lost in the text and Burt didn’t interrupt him.

He wiped off his hands and took a long drink from the cup. The coffee really was much better than what they had at the shop, he should really look into getting his grounds from the Lima Bean instead of the generic crap they usually have.

Blaine must have felt Burt’s gaze on him because he looked up, immediately catching Burt’s eyes. Burt almost looked away, but gave a slight nod in his direction.

“Thanks,” Burt said, tilting his cup slightly in Blaine’s direction. Blaine shrugged, shaking his head.

“It was no trouble.” Blaine glanced between Burt and the pages below his fingers.

“What are you working on?”

“American History, it’s quickly becoming the bane of my existence. My fault for taking AP classes right?” Blaine teased with a soft smile.

“AP classes. You have more than one?” Burt asked. He knew that the class selection was very different between Dalton and McKinley and that McKinley only had a handful of AP classes, and that Kurt had taken all of them by the time he’d started at Dalton.

“Yeah, I’ve got U.S. History, Music Theory, Psychology, Chemistry, Calc AB, and English Comp this year. Next year I’ll be adding French, Econ both micro and macro, Lit, Environmental Science, and Calc BC to that list.”

“Wow,” Burt remarked, a little breathless. So the kid was damn smart, despite any social shortcomings he might have. “That’s…”

“Insane?” Blaine asked, sighing deeply. “Yeah, I know.”

“I was going to say ambitious, but I suppose insane works too.” Burt glanced at Blaine’s backpack, it was practically bursting at the seams with thick textbooks and worn notebooks. Blaine clicked his highlighter closed, drawing back completely from the book in front of him. “Shouldn’t you be at home studying or something? You don’t need to be here.”

“Oh, no. My parents are used to me staying late at Dalton…studying,” Blaine explained. Burt couldn’t help his next question before it came out of his mouth.

“Why didn’t you stay at Dalton to study then?” Burt thought about taking it back, especially after a blush tinged high on Blaine’s cheeks.

“I…I like it here. It’s not as tense as Dalton is sometimes. It’s comfortable here,” Blaine admitted. “It hasn’t really been the same recently.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, it’s, I don’t know, it’s quieter since Kurt left.” Blaine stared off into the distance for the moment as though contemplating what he really meant, before he shook himself of it.

Burt wanted to ask. He did, but seeing Blaine like this, the kid needed to study.

“You should get back to studying,” Burt stated with a soft smile and a pat to the boy’s back.

“You don’t mind if I stay?”

“Whatever works for you.” It seemed to, so Burt would leave him be…for now. The questions would need to be asked, but now didn’t seem the appropriate time. Burt returned to his work, leaving Blaine to pore over his textbook.

Burt wondered whether the issue with Blaine was bigger than Kurt and it worried him. The kid didn’t seem to be comfortable enough at home so he buried himself in work at school and now…now it didn’t seem like he was even comfortable there anymore.

He appreciated the zero tolerance policy at Dalton; it kept him from trying to kill his son’s peers for threatening to do the same to his kid, but he saw how the place changed Kurt.

Yeah, he had Blaine and that was really exciting for Kurt, but it was hard on him. He could tell that Dalton was a lot harder, plus he was away from his friends, and he didn’t get to wear his normal clothes…it was kind of like, like he had to figure out how to fit into their mold when before he was fearless in just being himself.

Burt doesn’t regret sending Kurt to Dalton, not for a second. Kurt wasn’t safe at McKinley with that Karofsky kid running around shoving Kurt into lockers and issuing death threats. Kurt assured him that everything had been resolved with Karofsky when he made the decision to transfer back to McKinley.

There was absolutely no way Burt would have let his son go back to that place if it hadn’t, though he remained uneasy about the situation. Kurt seemed happier and sadder now that he was back at McKinley. He’d made friends at Dalton, sure and he was hitting his stride there, but Burt could tell that Kurt wasn’t completely happy there.

There was a sort of quiet sadness that Kurt exuded now, as though something had been taken from him. If that thing was Blaine…well…he was gonna have to have a conversation with Kurt. And if things…progressed between Blaine and his son, he was gonna have to have a more serious discussion with Blaine.

Six o’clock rolled around faster than Burt had expected and while Burt closed up shop, Blaine remained transfixed by his work. The teen had moved onto another thick textbook, one hand curled into his hair, fingers twisted in the gelled down locks as though he were going to pull at them at any moment.

Burt didn’t entirely blame him; from the sound of his coursework he was amazed the kid even had time to spend on the Warblers, let alone hanging out with Kurt on a near daily basis.

After everyone had packed up for the day, Burt shuffled over to Blaine’s makeshift study station and tapped the kid on the shoulder.

“We’re closing up shop.” Burt informed him. Blaine’s eyes shifted a bit as he looked up from his text, a full-bodied yawn overtaking him. Blaine reminded him so much of Kurt in that moment, rubbing his eyes and stressing over his work. That’s what he would tell himself later when he was wondering why on Earth he did what he did. “Say, kid, you wanna come over for dinner tonight? Carole’s making a rotisserie chicken, we’d be happy to have you.”

“Oh, I-I wouldn’t want to uh im-impose,” Blaine stammered, hastily shoving his textbook back in his backpack.

“It’s alright, with Kurt and Finn gone it’s a little quiet at home.”

“O-okay, I just need to tell my parents.” And it was settled; Blaine was coming over for dinner. Maybe Carole could help him figure out what was going on, two heads were better than one right?