I’d once told Burt Hummel that I was blown away by his relationship with Kurt.

This was not a lie.

A week previous, I’d been fortunate enough to witness the stunning ensemble that encompassed Kurt’s “Hummel Tires and Lube” attire. Even in a simple gray, long-sleeved shirt and khaki coveralls, the boy got my heart racing – which honestly, wasn’t a hard thing to do. Kurt breathing made my heart pound nowadays. But once I’d seen that glorious outfit – even as it was smudged with grease, grime, and flecks of dirt – I knew I needed that side of Kurt in my life.

So when he’d casually mentioned during lunch that his father had asked for his help after school that day, I tagged along. Which is also why I was currently cramped at the front desk, hunched over on a metal stool, pretending to do my homework while in reality I was shamelessly ogling my insanely gorgeous boyfriend from across the shop.

I couldn’t hear their conversation from where I was sitting. Burt was standing next to a table that had an array of tools laid out next to each other, and he and Kurt were heatedly debating something. Burt grunted at Kurt and picked up a wrench, then slid underneath the car next to them while Kurt put a hand on his hip and shook his head in disgust. A few seconds later, Burt let out a yell that overcame the whir of the drill being used on the car behind them, and he came up with oil splashed across his chest, an annoyed look on his face. Kurt took one glimpse at him and immediately burst into laughter.

Burt, instead of glaring at Kurt like my father would have done if he’d been the one doused in oil and I’d been the one blatantly laughing at him, glanced down at his chest and started laughing. He deposited the wrench back on the tray, swiped half-heartedly at his shirt with his oil rag, and then calmly took the smaller wrench Kurt picked up and handed him. They smiled at each other before Burt disappeared under the car again.

Yup. To this day, I was still amazed by Burt’s relationship with Kurt.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my Dad, I do. And I know he loves me. But there is something amiss in our relationship, an emptiness that prevails despite the fact that we’ve often tried to spend quality time in each other’s company.

I thought about last night’s dinner. I’d actually been home for once – Warbler practice had ended early because most of the seniors had to buckle down and study for a huge chemistry test that was bound to hand their asses to them if they didn’t know what they were doing. Kurt had been up the entire night before practicing his recitation on Robert Frost so he could get an A on his oral presentation and was totally wiped out, so I’d gone home for dinner so he could rest.

It was fine, it really was. Mom cooked, Dad worked late and came in halfway through the meal, and I blathered on about my newest idea for an impromptu performance to shake Dalton’s common area up, because we hadn’t done it in a while. It was the usual. It was quiet. It was what we were used to. And if it’s not broken, you shouldn’t fix it…right?

I thought about the dinner I’d had at Kurt’s two nights before. Burt and Finn were holed up in the living room, hooting and hollering over a game. Carole and Kurt were in the kitchen, and Kurt was instructing Carole on a new recipe he’d wanted to try for dinner. I was floating between both groups, helping to slice carrots on the counter (“On the cutting board, Blaine, thank you!” as Kurt kindly reminded) and then wandering out to watch Burt’s favorite team score a touchdown, eliciting high fives all around.

At the dinner table, Finn excitedly filled everyone in on how well his team was “finally” doing. I say it in quotes because I really wasn’t there to witness how horrible McKinley’s football team was before, but I believed him, since he was the quarterback. Everyone praised Kurt on his dinner. I don’t even know what the hell it was, but it was delicious. Burt talked about two new cars that had come in the shop that day and needed a “crap-ton of work” done on them, and Carole happily served up seconds when they were requested.

Then it was my turn. Dinners at my house and I talked about one thing: the Warblers. Or my grades. Dinners at Kurt’s house and I talked about…pretty much everything else.

Kurt embarrassed me by re-telling the story of how I accidentally showed Mr. Collins up in our advanced geology class that day. I hadn’t meant to make him mad, but the man didn’t know petrified wood from a hole in the ground. So I’d politely corrected him during his lesson – after he’d argued with me – and a couple other students backed me up, which made him even angrier. I’d received celebratory claps on the back from my friends afterward, and honestly, I was surprised Mr. Collins hadn’t asked me to leave the classroom. Then Kurt and I discussed the latest indie movie that had come out, a mess of a film that wandered all over the place and had no discernible plot. Then I talked about the Warblers, and finally Kurt and I told everyone how we were planning to go to the local community center in Lima to see what kind of LGBT outreach programs (if any) needed volunteers for the weekend.

And that’s when it hit me. I was sitting on a cold, metal stool inside Hummel Tires and Lube pretending to do my homework, and suddenly I realized what had been wrong this whole time.

When I’d first come out, my parents listened, and they seemed to understand. But as time went on, it became clear to me that they didn’t understand at all. My dad practically made a T-shirt with a slogan on the front that said: “You can change your mind,” as if my sexual orientation was a conscious decision on my part. Like one day, I woke up and tuna fish was gay, and all I wanted to eat for the rest of my life was tuna fish. Though the straight ham and cheese sandwich was right there next to the tuna, and all I had to do was pick a different dish.

And then he really drove it home when he asked me to build that car with him. I hadn’t realized it at the time, and it took me all the way up until I actually said the words out loud to Burt, but Dad totally didn’t want me to be gay. He didn’t want me to be myself.

Sure, Dad still loved me, and we still spent time together, but all I had was his tolerance. I had from him what I’d had from estranged classmates who didn’t want to deal with the bullies who taunted me before I’d transferred to Dalton. They seemed to understand that I needed to be honest about myself and they didn’t hassle me for who I was, but they didn’t completely accept me either.

Dad didn’t completely accept me. Mom tried harder than Dad, but she wasn’t much further along than he was. I was merely tolerated in my own house.

That was when Kurt’s voice shook me out of my thoughts.

I blinked at him, not realizing that I had been staring aimlessly, the sounds and movements of the shop forgotten, totally lost in my head.

Kurt’s voice was laced with concern. “Blaine? Are you okay?”

I crinkled my brow at him and managed to reply, “Yeah. Why?”

Kurt hesitated, and I put a hand up to my face. I felt my cheek with the pads of my fingers, and my fingers came away wet.

I’d been crying, and hadn’t even known.

I cleared my throat and opened my mouth to assure Kurt that I was okay, but Burt’s hand clapped down on my shoulder at that moment and I looked up at him instead.

“I think Blaine’s blood sugar must be low,” Burt said then, which didn’t make any sense at all. “Why don’t you get him a coke from the office, Kurt?”

Kurt was analyzing me with piercing blue eyes, worry written across his face, but he didn’t argue. He nodded quickly and swept off to the office behind us.

“Everything all right, Blaine?” Burt asked then.

I nodded at him, then averted his eyes.

He seemed to know that I didn’t want to talk about it. “Good,” he said simply, but his tone was gentle. He patted my shoulder congenially and moved off to a Ford in the corner of the shop.

I quickly dried my face with the back of my hand, though honestly, I kind of felt like crying more. Burt didn’t know my family history. He didn’t really know who I was, deep down. He probably didn’t worry too much about me, and he wasn’t concerned with how my day-to-day choices affected my life.

But when I was upset – without even having to explain anything to him – he was there for me, and he didn’t make it a big deal. He offered support to me even though I was really only the guy who was dating his son and nothing else. He accepted me, and never once did I have to work for his acceptance.

Kurt came back with the soda can and handed it to me wordlessly, his eyes traveling over my face, searching out any detail he could find to determine what had caused my tiny breakdown. I smiled back at him and clicked the tab on the can open, hoping to reassure him that I was fine. Before I took a sip, Kurt reached out and ran one hand through my hair, then smiled sweetly and headed off to join his father again.

I thought about how Kurt whispered to me in the car at night sometimes, how he told me that he’d waited a long time to find someone like me, how I had helped him in so many ways. I thought about how he snuggled against me in the dark, the scent of his hairspray gently teasing my nose as he spoke. He truly believed that I’d been the one to bolster him, that I’d been the one to always have his back.

And I had. But he didn’t realize that he’d done the same for me, ten times over. He was clueless to the fact that maybe I’d helped him cope with those terrible Karofsky-ridden days at McKinley, and probably boosted his confidence a bit back then, but he’d been there for me in more ways than one since I met him, and he had supported me in more ways that counted without even knowing.

And things would go on as they were. My family would still be my family, and they would still be who and how they are. The Hummels would also be the way they are, and I’d probably remain in their presence for as long as I was physically able. I’d probably always unconsciously want to be at Kurt’s house with him, where I was an equal contributing member of family dinner conversation, and a knowledgeable companion as the Hummel clan watched the game on TV. It probably would never change until I got out of Westerville and explored other parts of the country, hopefully with Kurt still by my side.

Blaise Pascal called it “the God-shaped hole”. He likened it to a hole in a man’s soul that could only be filled by God. But somewhere online, in a fleeting search for anecdotes for a philosophy paper, I once read it described as a feeling of being abandoned, cut adrift in space and time. You can try to fill it up with songs, family, and faith, by living a full life. But when things are silent, you can still hear the hissing of what’s missing.

I supposed for me, I would always hear it: that constant reminder that something from my life - from my family - was missing, even though I tried, with the aid of the Hummels, to drown it out every day.