John Franklin Anderson is not an important person in Kurt’s life. He is a name, a faceless name, meaningless in all but one regard.

That regard is Blaine Devon Anderson.

 It’s hard to remember a time when Kurt and Blaine weren’t friends. They had passed each other on the sidewalk in strollers, played together in the sandbox at the park, and eventually were hauled across the two-house distance to each other’s homes any time their mothers were busy.

“Melissa, I need to run to the store for a moment. Can Kurt take his nap here?” Elizabeth would ask one afternoon.

Then, the next day: “Cooper, go drop Blaine off at the Hummel’s. You know how fussy he gets when I bring him to your soccer games.”

It’s an odd arrangement, but it works. Melissa and Elizabeth, both busy working mothers, prove to be a valuable resource for one another.  Then they prove to be a valuable friend to one another.

Ask a five-year-old Kurt Hummel whether Blaine is his friend, and you’d get a different answer every day, depending on how much time he’d been expected to spend with the younger boy. Ask four-year-old Blaine Anderson the same question, and you’d get an in depth rant about why exactly Kurt is the best person in the entire world.

Some things never change.

Some things do.

* * *

No one on the street forgets the afternoon that Elizabeth Hummel is found dead. Police cars and ambulances line the street, and for almost a full hour there is complete panic because no one can find Kurt. There’s no reason not to believe that he’d been home alone with his mother when it happened.

They check everywhere, in every house and behind every bush in the neighborhood. There’s an ongoing attempt to contact Burt, and in the shade of Ms. McAllen’s porch one neighbor voices what everyone else is thinking. With a mutilated wife and a missing son, maybe it’s best that Burt never pick up the phone.

They find Kurt eventually. The puzzle falls into place when another piece goes missing: Blaine. A hysterical Melissa Anderson comes home to find out her best friend is dead- a best friend who had been watching her son at the time of her murder.

“They’re not kidnapped!” Cooper yells over all the chaos. “I’m telling you, Blaine’s smart! He’s been in karate classes since he was four! There’s no way someone got him.”

The seventeen-year-old is easily dismissed, and that is the police’s first mistake. To never mistrust a mother’s instinct is rule number one. To always consider a big brother’s instinct is number two.

The phone rings ten minutes later.

“C-cooper,” Melissa sobs. “W-where are you calling from?!”

“I’ve got them! I told you!”

“You- let me hand you to the police.”

“They’re fine, mom. They’re at the park. Mrs. Hummel told them to run there and stay until someone came.”

A man’s voice answers. “Which park? What’s the address?”

“It’s just a few blocks over. Different subdivision though. I think that’s why you missed it. I’ll drive them back.”

“Do they know what’s happened?”

“I…didn’t think that would be a good idea. I know Mr. Hummel well, sir. He’d want to tell Kurt himself.”

It will be a long time before anyone understands what happened that afternoon, but that’s not the important part. The important part is that Elizabeth Hummel, a great friend, wife, and mother, master of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich and tea party extraordinaire, is dead. What’s important is that a household once full of love and joy is now littered with crime scene tape and blood.

That night Kurt and Blaine sleep in the same bed. It will not be the first time.

* * *

One of the advantages to being Kurt Hummel is that he never really has to come out. His father knows his sexuality, and Cooper tells Kurt as much as soon as Kurt tells Cooper. The boys at school call him gay from the moment they know what the word means, and Kurt never bothers to deny it. The important people don’t care, and that’s all that matters.

For Blaine it’s a little different. Sure, he’s taunted for being friends with Kurt, but there’s nothing about Blaine himself that really merits teasing. He gets along with the other boys in a way Kurt has never been able to, yet never looks out of place with the girls. He’s popular at recess, since having him play House means no girl is forced to be the dad. Kurt always insists on being the family stylist, garbing everyone in daisy chains and whatever else he can find.

Maybe Blaine likes playing with Barbies an unusual amount, but he also does martial arts. Maybe he insists that his dance class do Britney Spears, but he also almost cries out of joy when Burt takes him to see a real football game.

Blaine is worse than flamboyantly gay, he’s ambiguously gay, so when he’s twelve and the hormones hit, he knows he has to come out. Not right at that moment, maybe, and not to everyone, but eventually.

He announces it first to Kurt, who simply raises his eyebrows and responds, “Well, I knew that.”

“You did not know!” Blaine shouts indignantly.

“Did too!”

“Did not!”

“Did too! Cooper doesn’t think so, though, so you just earned me ten bucks!”

“You were not betting on my sexuality,” Blaine protests, though knowing Kurt and Cooper they probably were.

Kurt grins. “Call him.”

Blaine does so. As soon as Cooper answers Kurt’s slender hand darts out and grabs Blaine’s newly acquired cell phone, putting it on speaker.

“Cooper, guess what Blaine just told me?”

A groan issues from the other end of the line, drifting across the country from California.

“Are you hung over?” Blaine asks.

“…Is Mom on the line with you turds?”

“No. We’re walking home from school.”

“Then yes. Whisper please.”

“You didn’t guess, Cooper,” Kurt complains.

“Just tell me, or I’ll hang up.”

“You owe me ten dollars.”

“Fuck!”

“Hey!” Blaine protests.

“Oh, not you, squirt,” Cooper assures. “You can fuck whoever you want, you know I’m cool with it. Tell you what though, you and Kurt better not go clubbing together, or no one will ever glance in your direction. I may not be gay, but even I can see that our little Kurt’s going to be quite the twink in a couple of years.”

The boys pull faces at each other. “I’m hanging up now, Cooper,” Kurt announces purposely close to the speaker. “I expect my ten dollars at Thanksgiving!”

“Fuck! Yeah, yeah.” The line goes dead, and both boys burst into laughter.

Coming out isn’t nearly as bad as Blaine had expected. Not with Kurt as a best friend.

* * *

John Franklin Anderson may be just a name to Kurt, but to Blaine he is a picture on the mantle, a card at Christmas, the ghost in his mother’s eyes.

To Blaine he is more, but still not much.

* * *

For fifteen years, things are not perfect. There are huge swatches of blackness that cover up the light: Melissa’s murder, the bullying both boys face, fights, and countless other bumps in the road.

However, despite it all, when the boys think of childhood they think of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a walk to the park. They think of Friday night dinners, just the five of them bickering and Cooper throwing food as they squeal and Melissa scolds. They think of afternoons climbing trees and reading books out loud to one another. They think of love. For fifteen years, they are fully surrounded by love.

Some things never change.

Some things do.

As muscles fill out and Blaine begins to use hair gel, as Kurt grows taller and his pants get tighter, tree branches cease to be a place for reading and become a place for kissing, for whispered promises and love songs sung. The park is a place to reunite when bullies chase them and they’re forced to split up. Friday night dinners get postponed and cancelled as high school keeps first Kurt, then Blaine busy.

Melissa is still a friend to Burt, Burt still a father to Blaine, Cooper still a brother to Kurt, but something important shifts when Kurt and Blaine start dating. They are still friends, yes, but no longer brothers. They are nowhere even close to brothers. The phrase soulmates passes  their lips every once in a while, and at the ages of fifteen and sixteen, it’s an easy word to believe. It’s an easy love to live.

All of that changes the night John Franklin Anderson becomes a man.