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The night after Blaine tells them about his new boyfriend, Serena can’t sleep. “I am calling that headmaster tomorrow,” she says. “I want to make sure he remembers that zero-tolerance policy he was so happy to brag about during our campus tour.”
“Hmm.” Bradley just wants to sleep. It was a long trip home, and the missions aren’t getting any easier as they get older. Driving to Dalton to get Blaine for the weekend had been about the extent of the energy he has left.
“And who is this boy, Bradley? Blaine’s been talking about him on the phone for months, but I don’t really know anything about him, except that he can sing.”
“Hmm.” Bradley sits up a little against his pillows and yawns. This, he can answer: he’s done basic background checks on everyone Blaine mentions more than twice since he started at Dalton. It may be overcareful, but Cooper once unwittingly made friends with a Chinese sleeper agent’s daughter, and they’re not living through that mistake again. “Kurt Hummel. Junior in high school. Mother deceased, father a local mechanic, recently remarried. Well-liked local business, no sign of trouble there. The kid’s got no record, no arrests, just some trouble at school last year around public drunkenness and some show choir performance that got the kids riled up.” The principal had called it a ‘sex riot,’ but his reports all read a little florid: Bradley discounts it.
“And the bullying Blaine talked about?”
“Yeah, there’s some mention. Most of that would be in the other kid’s record.”
Serena’s quiet for a moment, deliberating. Then, “He’s a junior?”
Bradley nods.
“A junior, Bradley. An older boy.”
He shrugs. "Only a year.”
“You have to talk to him,” Serena decides.
“The Hummel kid?”
She swats him on the arm. “Blaine! You have to talk to Blaine about this.”
“About what? We had the talk.” It should have been easier with the second son, but it was harder. He’d waited too long. He didn’t know what to say. Then after the attack, it barely seemed worth saying. Blaine was different too: all smooth surfaces and rote phrases he’d learned from the therapist. Bradley figured that would be enough.
“About having an older boyfriend.”
“What’s the problem? You and I worked out.” Serena had been twenty-six to his twenty-four when they met. Funny how that seemed like such a big deal then.
“And what did you like about me then?”
Your ass, he doesn’t say. “You were wonderful. Still are.”
“Oh, hush. I was experienced,” she says. “I mean, a different sort of experienced than a seventeen year old boy in Ohio is going to be, obviously. But Blaine is so much your son. I’m not surprised he chose an older boy, now that I think about it. It just means we have to make sure he doesn’t feel... pressured.”
Bradley isn’t sure what she means until he is sure, and then he feels a little weird. He was sixteen once; no girl would have had to pressure him for anything. But after the attack, the therapist had told them Blaine might have issues down the line when he was ready to try dating again. It doesn't seem like there are issues: the kid looked happy when he told them. But trauma’s a funny thing, and it hides. Bradley sighs. He’s going to have to speak to his son about sex. Again. Tomorrow.
*****
Blaine practices the piano in the morning after breakfast. Bradley takes a moment to listen before he interrupts. Blaine looks up at him expectantly, bright-eyed.
“Your friend’s coming over for dinner,” he says.
Blaine’s mouth tightens into a thin line. “My boyfriend Kurt is coming over for dinner.”
Bradley’s done hostile interrogations that have started better. “Good. Your mother and I are looking forward to meeting him.” Blaine softens a little at that. “I wanted to have a chance to talk to you, just the two of us.”
“What about?” Blaine shifts towards him on the piano bench. His hands are clasped in his lap. He’s so young.
Bradley takes the side chair closest to the piano, pulls it a little closer. “Well. You have a boyfriend. And that’s good,” he adds quickly. “But it’s different. Because it’s two people, making decisions together.”
Blaine nods enthusiastically. He’s positively moon-eyed over this kid. Serena has a point.
“Now sometimes, those two people want different things. Or expect different things. And it’s easy, if you care about someone, to let what that person wants be more important than what you want. Or you’re ready for.”
Blaine looks worried. “Dad? I don’t...”
“It’s not a race,” he says. “You don’t have to have done certain things by a certain age, or a certain point in a relationship. An older boy might have different experiences —”
Blaine bursts out laughing, and for a moment, Bradley is furious. He’s trying his best, and none of this is easy.
“Dad,” Blaine says. He’s stopped laughing, but it’s clearly an effort. “Do you think that Kurt is pressuring me for sex?”
Bradley’s not going to say yes or no if he doesn’t know for sure. “It’s my job to look out for you.”
“You don’t have to worry. Kurt is... Kurt is not that guy, Dad. You’ll see.”
“All right.” The way Blaine says it makes him wonder if someone else at Dalton had been that guy, or tried to be. It’s not the sort of thing he can pull up on a background check.
The first rule for getting information out of people is to wait. Most of the time, if you’re silently listening for long enough, people will find something else to tell you. Bradley’s never had a problem with waiting or silence.
“I mean, if anything... I kissed him first.” Blaine’s expression is somewhere between embarrassed and proud.
“Did you.” The idea of his kid kissing anyone makes his stomach twist, and that it’s a boy — well, he’s mostly fine with that now. “And you knew he was okay with that?”
Blaine nods. “Since Valentine’s Day. He told me he liked me.”
Valentine’s Day was over a month ago. He wonders what’s been in his son’s mind since then. “I see. Well, the advice works the same both ways, then.”
There’s more he wants to tell Blaine, if he could find the words. Listening to no and waiting for yes and all the things he’s learned about being honest with your partner in a world full of lies. But Blaine’s already shut down, gone sullen and remote.
“It’s not like that,” Blaine says, biting off each word.
It’s the same feeling in the pit of his gut when an op goes south and there’s nothing he can do about it. “I’m sure it’s not.”
His son looks unconvinced.
“Well.” Sometimes, you have to cut your losses. Bradley stands up to go. “We’ll look forward to dinner.”
Later, meeting Kurt Hummel, Bradley finds himself impressed. The boy has fire in him, and steel, and yet there’s a gentleness about him too. Blaine is smitten, and it seems to be mutual: they blush at each other like the kids that they are. Serena beams at the sight.
When she takes Bradley’s hand under the table, he knows she’s remembering the first time she came back to Ohio to meet his family. They’d been so young then, everything still in front of them. So few secrets to keep, and so little weighing them down. He wouldn’t trade the life they’ve had together for anything, not even a second chance, most days. But he carries the weight of the choices he’s made in ways he hopes Blaine never understands.
“Good to meet you,” he tells Kurt at the door, and his son looks so happy and proud. Maybe today was a success after all.
*****
After Kurt drives off, they’re in the kitchen together, tidying up. Serena likes to make sure everything’s squared away at day’s end, just like Bradley does a perimeter check before bed every night. It’s part of what makes them a good team. Blaine dries the dishes while Bradley washes.
“So, you and Kurt are singing a duet at your competition?” Serena asks. She’s wiping down the stovetop as she talks.
Blaine grins. “It’s called ‘Candles.’ It’s going to be great.”
“I’m sure it will be,” she says. Bradley will be away for work, but Serena will probably be at the show this time. “Are you rehearsing enough, dear?”
It’s a simple question, but Blaine turns bright red and looks down. “We’re... yeah, we’re practicing,” he says.
“Working together is a very different thing than doing something on your own,” she reminds him.
“I know,” Blaine says earnestly. “But we’re going to be all right. Kurt has an amazing voice; you’ll see.”
“The way he talks,” Bradley says, “I’m sure he sounds great on the girl’s part in your song.”
Blaine stares at him like he just cursed in church. “The original song is a solo. I arranged it as a duet myself. For tenor and countertenor, which are both men’s voices.” He puts the dishcloth down and stalks out of the room.
Serena sighs when he’s gone. “Bradley.”
“What?”
“You upset him.”
“I don’t see why.” Adolescence is when boys start locking doors and sneaking out past curfew; he knows this from Cooper, and his own memories. Blaine makes scenes, which is different.
Serena shakes her head. “He’s very sensitive. Probably too much so.”
The world is hard, and has been hard on Blaine already. They can’t protect him, and some days it seems like they can’t even help him anymore. Maybe a different man would have another talk with Blaine now, or on the drive back to Dalton tomorrow. But Bradley’s tired of words, which never get him where he needs them to. He’s a man of action. So he does what he knows how to do, and he takes his wife in his arms.
“Blaine will be fine,” he says. She tucks her head against the side of his neck, the way she always has, and he holds her until they both believe him.