Work Text:
The grass is soft below his arms, and he finds himself blindly caressing the strands as if they are hair on top of someone’s head. It’s soothing, if not a bit prickly. It grounds him.
“I wish I wore a sweatshirt,” his partner says.
“Cold?” Blaine asks. It’s fall and there’s a light breeze, but they’re in the sun.
“I feel like there are bugs crawling all over me.”
Blaine likes the feeling.
They are lying on the grass of a soccer field, in the far back corner, and it feels like they are completely isolated, but Blaine knows it’s a false sense of security, so he’s careful not to speak too loudly, lest his voice carry in the wind and snake its way back to everyone else.
They are lying head to head on their backs, staring up at the bright blue sky, freckled with swiftly moving clouds. Their heads are positioned next to each other, ear to ear. He thinks they’re meant to lie like this so they don’t have to look into each other’s eyes. It’s easier to bare your soul when no one is watching. They’re close enough that Blaine can feel Kurt’s presence a mere inch or two away from his head, and any time Kurt twitches stray pieces of hair brush against Blaine’s ear and cheek.
“At least it’s finally stopped raining,” Blaine replies.
“Better weather for you to go on one of your day long hikes.”
It’s said with a bit of malice, Blaine thinks. Perhaps with a whiff of jealousy. There’s definitely a question in his statement.
“I like being out in the world.”
“Better than being in here, I guess,” Kurt laments.
Blaine doesn’t say anything. They’re treading a little too closely to the invisible line that Blaine doesn’t feel comfortable approaching with Kurt quite yet. He doesn’t know Kurt well enough, but he’s starting to think that Kurt might be like him.
“It gets easier,” he divulges.
“How long have you been here?”
“Eight months. A little over.”
Kurt’s only been here for three weeks, and if Blaine believes what he’s heard then he knows that Kurt isn’t settling in well at his new school.
“Easier how?” Kurt asks, a skeptical edge to his voice.
Blaine wants to shrug, but it’s hard in his current position, and Kurt wouldn’t be able to see it anyway. He realizes now that he’s just backed himself into a corner and he can’t just shrug the question away. He has to answer it. He sifts through several responses until he finds one that isn’t incriminating, but that he still thinks will be helpful.
“You start learning what they want...from you. It gets less confusing and you know what’s expected of you.”
“So you’re saying I’ll learn to play the part?”
Blaine swallows, and his heartbeat picks up. He doesn’t think he can answer this question without giving himself away, and he doesn’t know Kurt nearly well enough to do that. He thinks Kurt might be like him, but he isn’t completely sure yet. Kurt might be like so many others: defiant at first but truly a traitor. Quick to turn around and believe what the school tells them.
“Do you want to play the part? Or do you want to be the part?” He asks, hoping to suss Kurt out.
“Psh,” Kurt sighs. “This is so strange.”
“What is?”
“This analogy, I guess. I used to want to be an actor.”
“I can come up with another one if you want me to? An analogy, I mean.”
“There’s no need,” Kurt says. “I think I know what you’re saying.”
They are quiet for a few minutes, and Blaine wants so badly to sit up for a second and see if they’re still alone in this corner of the field, but he’s afraid that popping his head up could mean that he’ll be spotted and someone -- a teacher -- will come over and listen in on their conversation. He checks his watch and notices that there’s still twenty-five minutes left until he and Kurt have to return to their class and sit in a circle and debrief after this activity.
“So you want to be an actor?” He asks instead.
Kurt is quiet for a minute.
“I said I used to want to be an actor. I’m not sure this school would be very supportive of that.”
“We have theatre classes, karaoke.”
“Ha!” Kurt belts a little too loudly. “I’ve seen the karaoke options we have, and I can assure you I’d rather die than be caught dead singing any of those songs.”
Blaine wants to make a joke about there not being any Paula Abdul or Janet Jackson songs, because he thinks that Kurt would understand the reference. He doesn’t though.
“I used to sing,” Blaine admits instead.
Kurt doesn’t say anything, so Blaine continues.
“I don’t do it much here, except sometimes when I’m hiking.”
“Is that why you, Jeff, and Santana always go on hikes? You’ve formed a secret band?”
Blaine smiles.
“The acoustics of the mountains and the open air are obviously far better than in the back room of the rec center where the wood paneling bastardizes my high notes.”
“Freddie Mercury wouldn’t be happy with our karaoke lounge. Of that I’m sure.”
“You know who Freddie Mercury is?” Blaine asks, a bit surprised. Queen is big, but he doesn’t know Kurt’s past, where he’s from, how he grew up. Blaine’s pretty sure that a quarter of the students at this school have never listened to anything other than Christian Rock and Gospel.
“I do,” Kurt says.
Blaine takes in that information and combines it with all of the rumors he’s heard about Kurt. The rumor that he refused to kneel at mandatory Sunday mass -- an event that Blaine only gets out of because he volunteers in the kitchen every Sunday morning instead. The rumor that three weeks into his new school and Kurt hasn’t completed his Skeleton yet; the most important school form for Dalton’s advisors, the Skeleton tells the teachers and administrators what you hope to gain from your experience here and how you hope to change. Most people finish their Skeleton in a week or two at most. Blaine did his in four days, thanks to an unlikely ally in Santana who told him exactly what to put on the form to appease their strict teachers.
Brett, who has a hard time remembering facts correctly, told Blaine during Thursday chores two weeks ago that Kurt got yelled at by Mr. Schuester for spreading blasphemies. He apparently told a bunch of people during lunch that he saw a new movie before coming here, Jurassic Park , where scientists clone dinosaurs and they come back to life and wreak havoc on the human race. Kurt got sentenced to an entire week of cleaning the bathrooms while wearing a sign across his chest that said Heretic for all to see. Blaine knows this is true, having walked into the boy’s bathroom while Kurt was cleaning it. He just didn’t know what Kurt had done to receive that particular punishment, and he wasn’t keen on asking at the time.
He remembers hearing from Joe, an avid believer in the school’s mission, that Kurt told Mr. Ryerson during Science class that he doesn’t have any “behavioral problems” and shouldn’t have been sent to this boarding school in the first place. Joe told Blaine that Kurt alleged to being practically kidnapped and sent here.
Joe thought it was an outright lie from their newest and feistiest student. An apostate, he said.
Now, after speaking with Kurt for a few minutes, Blaine’s pretty sure it’s the truth.
“I never hiked before I came here, but there’s not much to do and hiking is one of the few outdoor activities we can do alone. At first I did it so I could get away for a bit, but now I really like the solitude and the beauty of the woods and the mountains and the farmland.”
“And they’re not afraid you’ll run away?”
“Me personally?” Blaine asks.
“You, Jeff, Santana. You’re usually all together on hikes.”
Santana has been at this school longer than Blaine, but she was Dalton’s original badass. Or at least that’s what she says. Now Dalton think they’ve reformed her, because she’s learned to play the part. She taught Blaine how to, too. Blaine thinks she saw a little of herself in him that first day, and he’s eternally grateful that she chose to take him under her wing. His own fairy godmother.
“There’s really not anywhere for us to go. We’re in the middle of Ohio, and the local towns are so small that everyone knows everyone. They’d know immediately if we were from Dalton, call the school. So hiking is not a big deal, I guess. Just one way for us to experience God’s glory.”
“Are you a believer?” Kurt asks.
“Are you?” Blaine shoots back.
“I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it.”
“To some people it does.”
“Yes, Joe and Roderick have already tried to get me to join their Bible Group for Boys.”
Blaine smiles, his eyes squinching as the clouds pass and the sun shines through. He remembers when they asked Blaine if he would join. He gave a half-assed answer about how great it sounds, and if he could find a way to fit it in his schedule he’d love to join, but he’s just so darn busy trying to learn as much as he can and volunteer as often as he can that he’s just not sure if he can be an active member like they deserve.
He’s only been to a handful of meetings in as many months. Just enough so that Joe and Roderick think he’s a good, knowledgeable Catholic and a kind friend. He goes to just enough meetings so they get off his back about it and tell their teachers that Blaine is astute in the word of God. It’s important to have allies in a place like this.
“We’re not all like them,” he dares to say.
Kurt turns his head a bit, away from Blaine, and Blaine can feel the hairs on the back of Kurt’s head tickle his ear.
“We have twelve minutes left,” Kurt says, ignoring Blaine’s statement. “Anything you want to talk about?”
“We could do the actual assignment,” Blaine suggests.
“Sure,” Kurt says, with just as much enthusiasm as Blaine was expecting.
“Just so you have something to say in your one-on-one session with your advisor,” Blaine explains. “So she can see that you’re giving this a try. Maybe then you can get phone and mail privileges.”
“There’s no one I’d want to call anyway,” Kurt responds defiantly.
Blaine pushes forward. “My mom isn’t American, and she comes from a very Catholic household in the Philippines. Very old fashioned. Everything I know about Catholicism is because of her. She’s why I’m here, really. A good and strict Catholic boarding school that will expunge me of my sinful ways and set me on the path of the Lord. The path of righteousness. Really the path of Heaven. She’s afraid I won’t get there, and that we won’t be together as a family in the afterlife.”
“Because you’re that way ?” Kurt asks, derision clear in his voice.
“Yes,” Blaine says with confidence. At this point at Dalton he’s used to saying this. “Because I like men.”
It’s hardly a confession. About half of the students at Dalton are gay, with the other half being a mix of parentless children, drug and alcohol abusers, religious nutbags, and juvenile delinquents. Though stating it so boldly and with little affliction is uncommon. If their teachers heard him say it like that it wouldn’t go over so well.
“Are you afraid?” Kurt asks. “That you won’t get into heaven?”
Blaine’s thought about this a lot. His answer has changed over the course of his eight month stay here. It evolves every day knowing that he really isn’t one step closer to going home, like some of the other students are. This isn’t a short corrective stay, or a ‘summer camp’ session. He will likely be here until he graduates high school, if not longer. His mother, if she doesn’t believe he is well yet, will want him to stay on as an assistant or a coach or even a cook. Just so he can keep bettering himself for the Lord.
Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out. He remembers her parting words so clearly.
“Every time I’m on a hike I feel like I do have a little piece of heaven. It gets ripped away on the walk back here.”
“I don’t believe in god,” Kurt confesses. “I think I believe in it even less the longer I stay.”
“You shouldn’t tell anyone that,” Blaine replies. “The consequences aren’t worth it.”
“Play the part,” Kurt repeats.
Blaine fingers through the grass some more, but Kurt is totally still beside him.
“If you want, on Saturday, me, Jeff, and Santana are going on another hike.”
The whistle is blown, loud enough that they can hear it in their tiny bubble. It startles them, breaking their peace. They both sit up slowly, Blaine feeling like he’s rising from a deep sleep, and look over to their teacher who is standing a good 100 yards away from them, over past the far end soccer goal. Most of the students stayed close during the activity, but Blaine had cited his need for quiet in order for him to think and vocalize his thoughts. Really he just wanted to get Kurt alone -- learn more about him, see if he really is like Blaine and Jeff and Santana.
He stands up and wipes his hands over the back of his pants to try and get the grass off his jeans. Then he reaches his hand out for Kurt who is still sitting on the grass, reluctant.
“Hiking is a nice way to get away from everything for a little bit,” Blaine adds.
Kurt looks up at him and nods. They clasp hands and Blaine pulls him up.
It doesn’t feel good walking back towards Dalton, and he doesn’t know what he’s going to say during their activity debrief. But before they get close enough for anyone to see them, Kurt grasps Blaine’s pointer finger in his own and squeezes it tight for a few seconds before letting go.
Blaine wants to look over at Kurt, or down at the finger that he still feels Kurt’s grasp on. Instead he looks forward and smiles, letting the sun hit his face as he makes his way across the soccer field.