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Kurt comes home to find Blaine reading on the couch. He’s so handsome in those glasses, even if he doesn’t think so. “Hey, babe,” Kurt says. “How was your day?”
Blaine rolls his eyes. “You need to talk to your daughter.” When one of them says it like that — your daughter — it means he’s past being able to deal with Katharine’s particular combination of teenage angst and bullheadedness that day.
Kurt’s heart sinks. “Oh, God. What is it this time? The party?” The invitations to a teenage girl’s birthday party are an order of magnitude more complicated than those for a teenage boy. There are layers of social nuance that even Kurt was blind to at that age. And of course with Katharine every misstep, every perceived slight, is turned into a soap opera.
“I don’t know,” Blaine says. “She’s been moody and miserable all day, and she snapped at me when I asked her opinion on where we should go for dinner. So I told her that if she was going to sulk, she should go do it in her room where she wouldn’t have to interact with anyone else.”
“Ugh. Well, thank you for taking one for the team.” Kurt kisses the top of his head. “Where are we going for dinner, anyway?”
“Your dad’s train gets in at six, so I made reservations at Cent’Anni for seven.”
“Perfect. I’ll go check on the monster.”
The door to Katharine’s room is closed, and Kurt can hear the angsty guitar music she likes playing inside. She isn’t playing or singing along, which usually means that she’s either studying or wallowing. Probably the latter. Kurt knocks on the door.
“Daddy, I said to leave me alone!”
“Sweetheart? It’s me. Can I come in?”
The music turns off and Katharine opens the door. Her expression is sullen and forbidding, but her eyes are red and watery. “Go away.” It clutches at Kurt’s heart to see her sad, the same as it always has.
“Oh, baby.” Kurt reaches up and smoothes down her rumpled blonde hair. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
She stares at him like she’s considering her options, but then she grudgingly opens the door wide enough to let him in. He wants to hug her but she’s still making a face that suggests that’s a bad idea. Instead, he guides her to the vanity that once sat in his room, long ago, and gets to work. A little rosewater toner, a moisturizing mask, and by the time he really gets going brushing the knots out of her thick hair, he can feel her beginning to relent. He keeps brushing, half-humming almost to himself: it’s a ritual that relaxes them both, if he’s honest. It’s not until he looks up again that he realizes that she’s crying, silent tears slipping down her cheeks and leaving tracks in the moisturizing mask.
“Katharine. Honey. Whatever it is, it’s okay.” Kurt puts his hands on his daughter’s shoulders and meets her eyes in the vanity mirror, trying to radiate paternal empathy and understanding.
“No, it’s not.” She grabs a tissue and angrily starts wiping the mask off her face. “It's never going to be okay.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“You wouldn’t understand.” She says it with so much vehemence, he thinks it has to be a girl thing.
“You could try me.”
She slumps and sighs the sigh of the long-suffering. “I’m turning eighteen in two days.”
“That’s not good? Grandpa is coming especially so he can take his only granddaughter out to register to vote.”
“I’m turning eighteen,” she repeats, like he should know why that’s so dire. When he’s still confused, she looks defeated. In a much smaller voice, she adds, “I’ve never been in love.”
Kurt blinks. This is new information: she’d certainly seemed infatuated with Zach during the three months their relationship lasted, and when she came out to them as bi, he figured there was a specific girl who’d prompted the revelation. “Well, okay. But that’s hardly a tragedy, is it?”
“Papa! How old were you when you met Daddy?”
“Is this a quiz?”
“Seventeen. You were seventeen years old. And Daddy was sixteen. And now I’m going to be eighteen and I don’t have a date to my own birthday party so I’m never going to find true love and I’ll die alone.” She wipes her face with the back of her sleeve. “You wouldn’t know what it’s like.”
Kurt is absolutely not going to laugh. “I felt just like that, I promise, right up to the first time your dad kissed me.”
“Which he did when you were seventeen.” She sighs again: it’s more annoyed this time. “I know you’re going to think it’s stupid, but I always thought that it would happen like that for me, too — that I would just meet someone and know. And now I’m going to be eighteen and it hasn’t happened and what if it never does?”
Kurt takes a moment to curse their past selves. Katharine had loved the story of how her fathers had met, and they figured it made her feel secure and special. They never meant it as a how-to guide. He comes around to face her, leaning back against the vanity's tabletop.
“Kat. My little kitten girl.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“Kat. There are so many ways I'm happy your life isn't like mine and Daddy's were. Mostly because we left out the parts of that story where our lives sucked.” His shoulders ache a little just thinking about it. “I was hassled at school every single day for being out. I almost lost your grandpa when he had that heart attack, and I didn't want to tell him what was going on because I was literally afraid it would kill him. Your dad was beaten up for being gay, and he had his own problems with his dad and Gammie. When we met, it was such a relief to find someone who understood.” Kurt remembers teenaged Blaine, serious and resigned, shaking his head at the idea of talking to his parents about his problems. “But you would tell us if there was something wrong, right? You know you can always tell us anything.”
She turns her head away and rolls her eyes at how lame he is. It’s oddly reassuring.
“I like to think that if I’d met your dad at NYADA, or a casting call, or.... whatever, I still would have fallen in love with him. But maybe not. Maybe we would have been too different by then, and we would have ended up with other people. But that’s not the end of the world.”
“Except you wouldn’t have had me.”
“Well,” Kurt agrees gravely, “that would be a kat-astrophe.”
“Papa, stop. It’s Katharine.”
“I know. I'm sorry.” He takes her hand and swings it back and forth. “Maybe it didn't happen on your schedule, but I know you’ll fall in love someday, and I can't imagine anyone not loving you back. It will happen. And maybe not even just once.”
“Right, because my relationships are doomed to fail.”
“No, because life isn't fair.” He swings their arms again. “I mean, back then, Aunt Rachel was going to marry Finn. Everyone knew it. They were just as much in love as your dad and I were, maybe more. Does that mean she isn't allowed to love anyone else?” Rachel and Brian’s wedding last year had been the talk of Broadway, and Katharine had been allowed to wear a borrowed vintage Zac Posen dress. They'd all toasted each other with champagne, and Blaine swore that he was only tearing up because weddings made him sentimental.
“That’s different.” Katharine was squirming a little on the bench, a sign that he was winning her over.
“It’s always different. For everyone. Your story won’t be like ours, and thank goodness. It would be so boring to have to sit through all that again.” He tugs at her hand and she comes grudgingly to her feet. “And don’t forget, you already have two people who love you madly.”
She manages a half smile. “It’s always the gay guys.”
“Hey, I'm the funny one in this family, young lady.” He can't resist pulling her in for a hug, feeling her fragile but solid against his chest. He hopes it's as reassuring for her as it is for him. “Now, do you want to stay in here till Grandpa arrives, or are you ready to come out and rejoin civilization?”
Blaine looks up again as they walk into the living room, Katharine a hesitant half-step behind Kurt. Kurt steps aside so she can look her dad in the eye, or as close as she’s going to come right now.
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”
“Thank you, baby. I appreciate that.” Blaine smiles generously up at her, and Kurt smiles too.
Katharine sits down next to Blaine on the couch, and at first Kurt thinks she’s going to continue the conversation. But instead she leans against him and snuggles into his side like she did when she was little. She’s not much of a cuddler these days, so it’s a surprise. Blaine rolls with it, lifting an arm around her shoulders to pull her in closer. He shifts his book a little so she can see it.
“Oh, I liked that one,” she says.
Blaine looks over at Kurt, a dozen questions in his eyes. Kurt shakes his head reassuringly, mouths the word Later. Blaine nods.
“Don’t tell me how it ends,” Blaine says, and kisses the top of her head.
The Acela is the most reliable way to travel from DC to New York, so it’s not much of a surprise when Burt buzzes their intercom right on schedule. Katharine runs to the door to meet him, and they hug like they haven’t seen each other in years. Kurt feels a strange sense of relief at the sight, like his dad could still fix things with a well-placed word.
“There’s my girl,” Burt exclaims. “All grown up and everything.”
There’s enough time for Burt to put down his suitcase and have a drink before they have to head out for their reservation. Blaine pours his latest sparkling water concoction for all of them. Burt’s still beaming at his granddaughter.
“Eighteen,” he says. “My God, where does the time go? Seems like it was just yesterday these two were eighteen, and I was waiting up for Kurt to come back from ‘doing homework’ at the Anderson’s.” He sketches big scare-quotes in the air.
Blaine somehow has the grace to blush. Kurt steals a look over at Katharine, who seems like maybe she’s wilting again. His dad doesn’t know what he’s stepping into: this could get ugly again fast.
“Dad, don’t be a bad influence. Didn’t you say once that sex should wait until you’re thirty?”
“I did, I did. And now I finally get you to agree with me.” Burt looks at him over his water glass, far too amused. “Funny how things change when it’s your kid, right?”
“That’s not what I —”
“Sex and love, the whole shebang, it’s very difficult for parents,” Burt says to Katharine conspiratorially. “I met his mom when we were twenty-two, and her father, your great-grandfather, he nearly threw me out of the house on my ear the first time I walked in.”
Katharine blinks. “You were twenty-two?”
“Yeah.” Burt seems surprised he’s never told her this story before. “You know, I dated in high school and college, but nothing too serious. Not nothing, but — I don’t know, they were nice girls, but I hadn’t found anyone special. Then she came along, and that was it for me. Boom. Six months later, I asked her to marry me, and we were happy together for the rest of her life.”
Katharine is staring at her grandfather in amazement. “Really?”
“You never know when love will come along,” Burt says in his best parental voice.
“Twenty-two,” Katharine says almost to herself. Kurt can practically see the clock resetting in her head.
“Some people even wait until they’re thirty,” he tries.
“Papa.” Katharine uses her don’t-be-ridiculous voice, and there’s no arguing with her when she gets like that.
“It’s just a suggestion,” he says. “Now, aren’t we going to be late for dinner?”