“So Blaine,” Dylan started. “How are the chimps?”
Everyone erupted into seemingly endless laughter as Kurt struggled to keep a hold on himself.
“I... I... Oh come on!” I couldn’t think of a good comeback, but hoped that I could get Dylan to shut up. He was always the first to embarrass me. We were close, but he knew exactly how to make things awkward. And it didn’t help that Kurt was writhing in uncontrollable laughter beside me.
“Kurt!” I tried to get his attention to get him to calm down. “Kurt! Could you not?”
“I’m sorry!” Kurt gasped in between loud bouts of laughter, “I didn’t know your... chimp fascination... extended beyond... us...”
“’Extended beyond us’? Ooh, are chimps a turn on for you, Blaineyboy?” Dylan teased, knowing that my face would soon resemble a beetroot if he continued.
“I’d rather not hear about my son’s private life,” Dad piped up from where he was seated in his recliner, albeit still smirking from Dylan’s initial question.
“Yeah. Little Peanut is a little freaked out over here,” Katherine said, rubbing her belly to indicate her unborn baby’s pet name.
“Let’s change the subject, shall we?” I attempted a segue despite Kurt’s muffled laughter beside me. It was my goal to shift the attention away from my chimpanzee tendencies. “Donovan, tell me about your life! I haven’t heard from in you in ages!”
Donovan shifted in his seat awkwardly, gripping the armrest so hard that his knuckles whitened from the force. “Uh... nothing’s really happening... my life is, uh... pretty boring...” Donovan said, looking as if he was avoiding eye contact with me as he spoke.
“I’m sure it’s not boring,” I said as politely as possible.
“It’s not!” Dad said, “Tell them about your football achievements, Don!”
“What achievements?” I was bewildered. Pride was huge in the Anderson family, and no one was an exception. To not have heard about a big achievement was a pretty big indicator that there was some tension and that there were some underlying issues to conquer.
“It’s nothing...” Donovan mumbled before Dylan intervened.
“He got selected for the varsity college team, and there’s some scouts coming to his next game. They’ve indicated that they want him for the NFL.”
“What? That’s incredible!” Kurt had managed to calm down and start actively participating in the conversation, which was good seeing as I was speechless. Kurt said what I couldn’t while I was just sitting there with my jaw wide open.
“It’s alright...” Donovan mumbled.
“Don’t play it down, son, it’s something to be proud of!” Dad said in his deep, “I’m so proud” voice.
“Dad’s right,” I managed to say. “That’s so awesome, Don. Congrats.”
“Thanks...”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, desperately wanting to know why, despite our tense relationship as brothers, Donovan didn’t break through that barrier and tell me his exciting news.
“Because you... I mean... God...”
“What?”
“All I heard were stories about you being so happy!” Donovan started speaking rapidly, his hands now assuming the position of clenched fists and his face showing signs of exasperation and slight anger. “It was ‘Blaine is so happy at Dalton!’ and ‘Blaine’s new friend is making him so happy!’ and ‘My god, Blaine is doing so well with the Warblers!’. God forbid I do something right. I didn’t want to take the coveted Anderson spotlight off of you!”
I sat there for a moment, taking it all in, before carefully choosing my words in an effort to sort it out and understand the entire situation. “What... Uh... I know I’ve been vocal about how happy I’ve been lately, but I would’ve been so happy to hear your news, Don. You’re... You’re my brother and regardless of how you feel about me, I love you. I do. I don’t know why you... why you’re so distant. I wish we could be closer.”
I felt Kurt’s hand grip mine and turned to see him just looking at me with encouraging eyes and a small smile to keep me at ease.
“To be honest,” Dylan interrupted, “I wish you guys were closer too. I love you both but it’s so awkward between you.”
“If you knew why,” Donovan started in a small voice, “You’d never want to speak to me again.”
I sighed and looked him directly in the eye. “Is this another one of those ‘my brother is gay and I resent it’ things?”
“No!”
“And if it was, he wouldn’t be welcome here,” Dad said loudly. “It shouldn’t matter if you’re gay or not. You’re brothers.”
“Exactly! So please, please, tell me what’s going on between us. I just want us to be friends.”
“You won’t understand...”
“Try me.”
“You won’t... I don’t want to... just... God...”
“Tell me, Don.”
“I’m gay.”
Everyone sat there in silence, unsure of what to say and how to feel about the situation. It was a shock to us all, but for me especially. After my coming out, Donovan had been the least supportive, the least understanding and the least welcoming towards me. He wasn’t a brother to me after I’d finally come out of the closet. So for Donovan, my seemingly homophobic brother, to announce the reason behind our tense relationship was in fact his sexual orientation, was more shocking than the number of chemicals in Kurt’s facial products.
“What?” Dad asked.
“I can’t even... What?” Dylan asked too.
“Wow...” Katherine trailed off.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yeah... Well. Yeah. I have a boyfriend. So yeah. I’m sure.”
The new information had us reeling. Donovan, with his busy life at college, far away from any of us, was gay. For me, it wasn’t the fact that he was gay that made me feel such anger. It was the lack of trust and honesty that made my blood boil.
“Why wouldn’t you tell me something like that?” I said rather viciously.
“Because of the way I treated you when you came out! I’d always been surrounded by those guys that call you gay or call you a fag if you mess up. It was an insult. It was always a bad thing to be considered gay. That’s how I saw it, too. The whole idea of being gay was so... wrong. So I thought you were wrong for being gay before I found myself feeling things that scared me and...”
“...and then you realised that you were gay too,” I finished for him quietly.
“Yeah...”
“You could have told me. Of everyone in the world, I would have understood perfectly.”
“I didn’t want to. After the way I treated you.”
I scoffed. “Do you think I actually give a crap about that? Brothers are supposed to give each other a hard time. You didn’t make my life hell, you never shoved me into lockers, you never spat in my face, you never threatened me with a knife in a deserted hallway and you never sent me death threats. You weren’t anything like the bullies I had to deal with for being gay.”
Donovan looked shocked and sad at the same time. He looked as though he had a million things to say but something was stopping his lips from uttering those words. He fidgeted and squirmed in his seat before looking me directly in the eye.
“Is that... the real reason you moved to Dalton?”
“Yes.”
The room was once again silent, with only the distant sound of Charlotte laughing in the kitchen with Mom heard. I looked over to see Dylan’s hands tightly intertwined with Katherine’s. I felt Kurt grip my hands even tighter than they were before as I saw Dad stare at his feet, his eyes glazing over as though he wasn’t really looking at anything.
We all heard Charlotte’s Mary Janes skipping down the hall towards the living room before seeing her wild mane of curls poke out from around the corner.
“Dinner’s ready and it’s on the table. Mom said to come and get you.”
“Thanks, honey,” Dad said, finding the strength to stand up and walk towards Donovan. He wordlessly motioned to Dyl and Katherine to go ahead before clapping Donovan’s back and urging him to stand and leave with him. As everyone left the room, Charlotte noticed Kurt and I still sitting there in the same positions.
“Blaine?”
I shook myself back into the moment. “Yeah, honeybee?”
“What’s wrong?” she asked as she skipped over towards me and sat on my lap.
“Nothing, sweetie. Nothing to worry about.”
“BLAINE ANDERSON!” Charlotte’s sudden yell startled both Kurt and I so much that we both retracted our hands to cover our ears.
“Whoa! Calm down, missy!”
“I know when you’re upset. It’s a gift. I’m psycho.”
I laughed, “That’s psychic, honeybee.”
“Whatever. Point is, something’s wrong and I want to know what I can do to make you feel better.”
I didn’t know whether or not to tell Charlotte about Donovan. I decided against it, knowing that it was Donovan’s news to share. But I still struggled with how to approach the request.
“Why don’t you just give your brother a massive hug? I think he’s just overwhelmed with seeing you all again,” Kurt stepped in, throwing me a smile as I gave him a thankful look.
“Oh. Okay!” Charlotte’s happy, bubbly personality came again as she wrapped her arms around me tightly and gave me the biggest hug she could. I knew that I’d feel a bit better as time went by, but nothing helped cheer me up more than a hug from the cutest little sister in the world. Yeah. I loved that girl.
“Thanks, honeybee. Can you run into the dining room and tell everyone we’ll be there in a minute?”
“Okay. But I have to give Kurt a hug too!” she replied before jumping out of my lap and tackling Kurt backwards into the sofa and giving him the same, big hug she gave me.
“That is adorable,” I said before I could stop myself. There was just something about seeing your two favourite people in the world get on. It felt like my heart was smiling – and that’s a ridiculous analogy but that’s the only way to describe it. Everything about me was happy in that moment. And as Charlotte unwrapped herself from Kurt and skipped back into the dining room, I turned to Kurt with the biggest, cheesiest grin on my face.
“Wow, quite a turnaround. You looked mighty depressed just a moment ago,” he noted.
“Do you know how much I love you?” I asked, catching him off guard with such a random statement.
“I have an idea. A general ballpark,” Kurt teased, intertwining our fingers once more.
“I really, really fucking love you, Kurt Hummel.”
“I’m rather fond of you too, Mister Anderson.”
“Hey!”
“I mean, I really fucking love you too, Blaine.”
I leant in to kiss Kurt. It was sweet and it was deep; we were lost in the moment, as if the rest of the world melted away and it was just Kurt and I floating together. Our tongues found their usual rhythm, moving together slowly and gently. We broke apart at our own pace, just gazing into each other’s eyes, before Kurt interrupted the glorious silence.
“What brought this on?” he asked.
“I just... You and Charlotte being so adorable made me realise how lucky I was.”
“How so?”
“I looked at you both, when Charlotte gave you that hug... I couldn’t help but think about how my two favourite people in the world were just so beautiful. I remembered just how much I love you both.”
“In different ways, I hope,” Kurt joked.
“Oh, dear god, YES!” I retorted, wanting every innuendo coming from that statement to disappear and never enter my thoughts again. “We should get to dinner.”
“Yeah. Let’s go,” Kurt said, pulling me up by the hands and dragging me towards the dining room to face yet another infamous Anderson dinner.
Xxxxx
Sitting at the table with Kurt on my left, Charlotte on my right and Donovan, Dyl and Katherine directly opposite, the small talk echoing through the room, I found myself struggling to stop smiling. I couldn’t stop thinking that it was as if I slept with a clothes hanger in my mouth. Or as if I slept with a banana in my mouth. A banana? Chimps eat those. Bananas look like penises. Ooh, penises.
As I was thinking those rather bizarre, amusing thoughts, Kurt’s hand gripped my thigh underneath the table as he turned to look at me and winked. Oh shit, I thought. He just had to do that. Now I’m fucking... Oh shit. This isn’t good. Now I have this problem and he.... stop winking Kurt!.... holy shit. He knows. He’s doing this on purpose. Are you kidding me?
I was very aware that my thoughts and feelings and... current mood were wildly inappropriate to be having whilst sitting next to my baby sister. I did everything I could to snap out of it, from imagining naked girls to chimps to car accidents to old men in cardigans. But it was the image of a naked Sue Sylvester that helped ease my... problem... and helped me get back to a normal, appropriate state. I made a mental note to thank Kurt for showing me last year’s McKinley yearbook before joining in on the boring small-talk regarding Mom’s book club.
The dinner went as the usual dinners did: Charlotte would always talk about school, music, ballet and her friend Corey; Dyl and Katherine would insult each other but then kiss each other in a way that made us swoon and want to throw up at the same time; Donovan avoided saying much at all; and Dad and Mom talked about their various activities, mostly consisting of Book Club and Dad’s golf tournament.
Mom’s cooking was superb, as always, and we’d all stuffed ourselves so much that we’d resembled pregnant women. Except for Katherine, who seemed to be bursting out of her maternity clothes and resembling a woman due for birth any moment. We finished our dinner and waddled to the living room after Mom refused to let anyone help with the washing up. She offered to make us all coffee, an offer of which we all excepted (save for Charlotte, opting for a hot chocolate instead). Again, we found ourselves in the same awkward seats we were in before, lost for ideas as to how to converse. Thankfully, Charlotte decided to play her latest song on the upright piano against the wall of the room.
Charlotte’s musical talent had always astounded me. I’d always had to work at my skills to get songs right, but she could write songs and perform them flawlessly without any effort. And her latest song, while the lyrics were still well within the butterflies and rainbows genre, was so beautifully seamless. I found myself humming harmonies while Kurt joined in with a higher harmony to compliment Charlotte’s voice. The others were silent, but the room no longer had the sense of awkwardness about it. Everyone was feeling the music. Everyone was appreciating the moment we were in.
After the song, we applauded Charlotte as she bowed and curtsied like the true performer she is.
“That was beautiful, Char,” Dad grinned, as proud as he could be. “You’re just like your brother. Incredibly talented.”
“I think this one beats me in the talent competition, Dad,” I said, as Charlotte came to sit in my lap.
“So,” I said, wanting to break the tension with Donovan, let bygones be bygones and be as supportive as possible, “Tell us about your boyfriend.”
“Yeah,” Kurt said, “Tell us, is he cute? Can we approve of him? Does he wear good clothes?”
Dyl and Katherine laughed, and Donovan smirked just the tiniest bit before answering. “Yeah. He’s a good dresser. A very good dresser.”
“Oh. I sense innuendos,” Dyl said, resulting in a laugh and a soft hit from Katherine.
“No innuendos,” Donovan laughed genuinely for the first time in years. “He’s just... amazing.”
“What’s his name?” Katherine asked warmly.
“Josh,” Donovan replied as I felt Kurt’s hands grip mine tightly.
“I’m sure... it can’t be the same Josh, Blaine. There’s thousands of Josh’s around the place,” Kurt whispered in my ear, desperately.
“Yeah,” I whispered back. It couldn’t be him, I thought.
Donovan forgot himself and started gushing about his Josh, actually looking happy for the first time in however many years. Charlotte interrupted and asked a lot of questions, supposedly cranky at Don for not actually telling her before anyone else. After finishing the washing up, Mom came in and sat on Dad’s lap where they gazed into each other’s eyes. I looked over and Dyl and Katherine were doing the exact same thing. It was beautiful, romantic and just so nice to see everyone happy again. I pushed out the suspicions I had in relation to the identity of Don’s boyfriend to concentrate on my own, beautiful boyfriend. We were gazing into each other’s eyes, too. But then he winked at me as the tip of his tongue quickly licked his lower lip. He knew what he was doing to me.
The problem I had previously was growing. I moved Charlotte off of my lap, because that was so awkward, before taking both of Kurt’s hands in both of mine and squeezing them tight. Too tight.
“If you can stop now,” I whispered in his ears, too quiet for anybody but Kurt to hear, “you may find yourself in a rather amazing position later tonight.”
“Oh really?” He whispered back.
“Yeah, only if you’re good.”