“What are you doing, Blaine?” asked Kurt, pausing for a moment over his homework to glance over his shoulder, from whence were coming curious squeaking noises.

“Shining my shoes”, replied Blaine. Kurt sat up on the bed and turned around. Sure enough, Blaine was sitting cross-legged on his bedroom floor, a leather sham in one hand, a black dress-shoe in the other. He was rubbing the toe so vigorously that it squeaked with each pass of the cloth. “What?” asked Blaine, as Kurt continued to look. “It’s important. I like to look well turned-out, even if I’m not quite the clothes horse you are”.

“I know it is”, said Kurt softly. “I love that you bother. I’ve never seen Finn shine a shoe in all the time we’ve lived together. Though to be fair, he wears sneakers pretty much all the time and Carole only buys ones you can put through the wash…”

“What shoes were you wearing today, again?” asked Blaine. “If they’re shineable, I’ll do them for you if you like. I find it therapeutic, actually.”

“My black docs. I warn you, they take ages”, Kurt replied.

“Well, you can’t leave without any shoes, so the longer they take, the longer you’ll have to stay. I think I’ll be extremely thorough”, said Blaine, grinning. Kurt grinned back at him, unable to help himself, and hopped up off the bed. He trotted downstairs, retrieved his long black boots, and reappeared, holding them aloft.

“What’s your fee?” asked Kurt, dropping them in front of Blaine’s crossed legs.

“A kiss,” said Blaine.

“Predictable,” said Kurt, who didn’t look in the least disappointed. He knelt down at Blaine’s side and touched the corner of Blaine’s mouth with his lips.

“That was not remotely proportionate to the length and intricacy of the job,” complained Blaine, catching Kurt’s wrist as he stood up again.

“Consider that a down payment,” returned Kurt. “If you do a good job, you’ll get the balance”.

Blaine tried and failed to look sulky, and returned his attention to the shoe in his hand. Once satisfied that it was gleaming, he put it down on the newspaper he had spread out and picked up one of Kurt’s boots. He turned it thoughtfully in his hands, before speaking again.

“Hey, Kurt?”

“Yeah?”

“When you wear these boots, and…other stuff, like…” he paused, seeming unsure how to continue. Kurt followed his eyes as they took in his leopard-print cardigan, and took pity on him.

“Stuff like this?”

“Yeah… stuff that most guys don’t wear. Do you think it makes you… does it bother you...” he trailed off again, looking uncertain.

Kurt put down his book again; he had an idea where this was going. “Are you asking if it bothers me that people see me as effeminate?”

Blaine looked relieved. “Yes, I am”.

“That was a classic Finn-style question delivery, Blaine. You know you can ask me anything and you don’t have to get flustered.”

“I thought it might seem….disloyal, coming from me.”

“I kind of see what you mean. But it’s ok. If you’d asked me this a few weeks ago, I would have said no, I am who I am and I’m proud to be. But all this stuff with the musical and me being too ‘delicate’” – Kurt pulled an ugly face – “made me realise that the way I look and sound might present some obstacles that can't be overcome just by people being accepting, which is what I thought the big battle was. I’m not out of the same mold as most guys, I know that.”

Blaine listened with intense interest. He had wondered about this so often. Every time he admired Kurt’s prettiness, his fragility, his style, he was struck by the boy’s otherness. In the best possible way, obviously. He was the most beautiful thing Blaine had ever seen. But Blaine knew Kurt’s self-esteem wasn’t particularly high, and he had never really got to the heart of the question of what Kurt thought of himself, his soft, unusually high voice, his doe eyes. He was terrified Kurt would drop the subject, so he prompted him with another question:

“But your clothes are a choice you make; you could dress differently if you wanted to give a different impression. Obviously you shouldn’t,” he added hurriedly. But Kurt didn’t seem offended. He looked totally calm.

“Alas, Blaine, it wouldn’t make any difference. You missed my brief “straight” phase. I was still me, and the things that make me different weren’t any less obvious. Dressing like the other guys just made me a weird, dislocated, false version of myself. I had Brittany fooled, but no one else.”

Blaine marveled, once again, at Kurt’s maturity and his clarity of insight. He knew, better than most people, how deep still waters ran in Kurt’s case, how closely he observed everything and everyone while appearing detached, even self-absorbed.

“So do you like the things about yourself that make you different, � la Mr Schuester’s “Born This Way” teachings, or do you just know you can’t change them and get on with it?” pursued Blaine, aware that they were right at the heart of the question now.

Kurt paused. He glanced at himself in the mirror, unconsciously, looked down at himself. Blaine was suddenly acutely aware of what personal questions he was asking, but he was too invested to backtrack. So he waited quietly for Kurt to speak. When Kurt began, Blaine had the sense he was very much feeling his way, as if voicing these things aloud was new territory for him. Which, Blaine reasoned, it probably was – no normal person would demand answers this intimate from anyone except themselves.

“Well, Blaine, I don’t really know. I have a - a smooth face – a ‘porcelain’ face." He meets Blaine's gaze and smiles wryly, then he's serious again. "And, like, big eyes. My mom's eyes." Kurt picks up his wallet off the bed beside him where it's fallen out of his pocket, and flips it open. Blaine knows what he's looking at- he's been allowed to see it before. An old but perfectly preserved photo of a smiling woman and a little boy, each gazing adoringly into the other's face with the same large, expressive eyes. "My dad says all the time how much I remind him of my mom, and I'm glad about that, but at the same time it... it doesn't make me feel very masculine. He's never said I remind him of him, you know?" Kurt paused, looking down at his lap. Blaine wondered whether this was the moment to say how often he had looked at Burt, at his no-nonsense forehead and his loving smile, and seen Kurt in every contour. But before he could open his mouth, Kurt was speaking again.

"Then, obviously, I have an... unusual voice. High-pitched. Soft. Whatever you'd call it. Not that versatile and, again, totally unmasculine. I sometimes think my voice is a good thing, because I sing differently from the other guys, you know?” Blaine nodded quickly and seriously. “But sometimes, lately, I've been wishing I could sing as well as I do but in a different... register? More Gene Kelly, less Patti Lupone... You know, so I could play the great male roles. Singing 'girl songs' is all very well for making a point in high school, but obviously convention is going to be more difficult to circumvent in the real world." Kurt sighed. "So to conclude, I really don’t know how I feel about those things, despite the big show I make of owning them." Then something else seemed to occur to him. He said, "But I guess it depends… it depends….” and with that he looked up shyly to meet Blaine’s gaze, “I somehow managed to attract you. But I don’t know whether it’s in spite of, or because of, those things. So I guess, now, how I feel about them kind of depends on how you feel about them.”

Blaine looked straight into Kurt’s eyes. The potential for vulnerability when you really loved someone never ceased to amaze him. Kurt had offered him everything he had asked for here, just dug straight into his closely-guarded soul and found what Blaine was after. Blaine wanted to give Kurt something in return. He smiled at him and said,

“I hope you know I was asking those questions because I want to understand everything about you. I’ve literally never met anyone like you. No one has ever met anyone like you because there is no one like you.” Having begun well, he realized he was sounding silly and circular now. But he ploughed on. “Kurt, your voice is so beautiful. When you sing, but when you speak too. It’s so sweet, and clear, and - and musical.” He looked pleadingly into Kurt’s eyes, willing him to see how sincere he was. Kurt had not blushed while he was speaking, but now he was turning an intense pink under the weight of Blaine’s compliments. “And your face….” Blaine moved his hands, momentarily unable to find the words. “Every time I see your lovely face… your lovely, masculine face… it makes me think of angels by the Italian masters. And they were all men,” he added as an afterthought. “The angels, not the masters. But they were also men.” Oh, what are you saying? he asked himself, feeling like an idiot. Luckily, Kurt knew him well, and waited patiently, his hands folded in his lap. “What I mean is…” Blaine gathered himself up, determined to be clear at last. He needed words that honestly described Kurt without being overtly feminine in their connotations. “I mean, your face and voice, their sweetness, their grace, are wonderful, Kurt. I admire every day the way you emphasize them with your clothes and hair and attitude. They’re part of what made – makes- me love you so very much. But only part, because there’s so much to you… I wouldn’t know where to start.” Blaine stops, wrung out.

“So you like my not-very-manly face, and my girl voice?” Kurt asked baldly, a quizzical little quirk to the corner of his mouth, still blushing furiously.

“I love them. LOVE them. And don’t call it that, Kurt. It’s a guy voice. Just an extraordinary one,” finished Blaine.

“Well then I think I'm glad of them”, Kurt said simply.

The two looked at each other for a long moment. Blaine was totally absorbed in digesting everything he had just heard and thought. Kurt was gazing at him, a strange expression on his face. Then Kurt seemed to snap out of whatever it was. He nodded at Blaine. “You seem to have done an extremely good job on that boot, Mr Anderson. Perhaps you’d like to collect partial payment now?”

Blaine looked down at his lap. He had been unconsciously polishing the boot vigorously throughout the whole conversation, and its velvety shine was satisfactory even to the exacting Kurt. He smiled.

“Yes please. I can’t be sure you'll be good for the whole debt. Part payment now is an excellent idea.”

Kurt crossed the room and flopped into Blaine’s lap, taking his face between his hands. Blaine kissed him immediately, trying to put into the kiss all the gratitude and love he felt for Kurt for having been so open with him. As they broke apart, Blaine smiled that same lazy smile that had accompanied all the best moments of Kurt’s young life.

“You’re amazing,” said Blaine.

“You’ve got a whole other boot to polish”, said Kurt.



FIN