Oh Don't You Understand, I'm Never Changing Who I Am

God I wish Kurt was here, Blaine thought, pacing back and forth in his bedroom. His fiancé—fiancé!—boarded the plane back to New York less than twenty-four hours ago, and already Blaine felt his absence like a lost limb. Kurt had offered to delay his return until after Blaine's parents' homecoming from their trip to Tokyo, but Blaine had refused. "You don't worry about me," he assured Kurt, a falsely confident smile on his face. "You focus on finding a way to game the system so I'm with you at NYADA next year."

Kurt had rested their foreheads together, right in the middle of Concourse C of Port Columbus International Airport. "I don't need to game anything. You're going to sweep those admissions judges off their feet. Just like you swept me off of mine." They exchanged a thoroughly physical goodbye before they left—multiple times.

But Blaine could hardly think about the feeling of Kurt's lips around his dick—well, maybe just a little—when in less than fifteen minutes he was going to break some serious news to his parents. In retrospect, he perhaps should have consulted them first before popping the question, but his head was so caught up in the whirlwind of finally calling Kurt his again that he sort of completely forgot he even had parents.

Well he certainly remembered now.

He hadn't even told Cooper yet. Ideally, he would have told his brother first—Cooper was entirely supportive of his relationship with Kurt and would have probably screamed LA to the ground in excitement—but he didn't trust him not to go blabbing to his parents before Blaine had the chance.

So here he was, listening to his father's Escalade roll into the driveway and to his heartbeat sped up like a fleeing rabbit. The door creaked open—"Blaine, dear, are you home? We're back!"—and Blaine took a deep breath to steel himself. He descended the stairs slowly but surely until he faced his parents in the foyer. "Mom, Dad. I'm glad you're back." His smile was as sincere as he could make it.

His mother seemed charmed. "Oh darling, come here." She hugged her son tightly, kissing his cheeks. "Were you okay by yourself? I hate leaving you alone for so long, but you're a grown man now, you're fine, aren't you?"

"You know me, Mom. I'm pretty self-sufficient." He gave her a wink, and then wanted to slap himself. Tone it down, Anderson.

Blaine helped his parents carry their luggage into their bedroom while his mom chattered away about Tokyo. He nodded and made interested noises in all the right places, but his mind was still swirling around the words sitting heavy on his tongue.

His father noticed his preoccupation. "Blaine? What's on your mind, son?"

Blaine took another deep breath. "Could we—could we maybe go to the living room? I've got something to tell you."

His mother immediately began to worry. "What's wrong? Is it something at school? Are you being bullied again? Oh, I knew we shouldn't have let you leave Dalton, you were so safe there—"

"Mom, no!" Blaine laughed nervously. "No, I'm, I'm not being bullied. It's good news, I promise."

His father looked skeptical, but nodded. "Come on, Celia. Let's hear what the boy has to say."

The family made their way into living room, where his parents sat on the couch and Blaine perched tensely on an armchair. Blaine's father frowned. "Are you sure this is good news? You look very anxious."

"I—I am, because I don't know how you're going to react. But I promise this is a good thing."

"Blaine, just tell us," his mother insisted, an encouraging smile on her face.

"Right, well, um, a few days ago, I—I proposed to Kurt."

Silence. Neither of his parents' faces changed at all. Blaine rubbed his palms on his jeans nervously. "I—I know this is sudden—"

"I'm confused," his mother interrupted, brows furrowed. "I thought, well, I thought Kurt broke up with you."

"He did!" Blaine exclaimed, relieved to have something to respond to. "He did, but we got back together about a week ago."

"And you just…proposed?" his father asked incredulously.

"I—well, yeah."

His father leaned forward and rested his forehead in his hands. "Look, Blaine, I know you…you've always been a romantic, I know this. Hell, when you were four you almost ran away from home to go live with Prince Eric." Blaine's face colored bright red, and he was very grateful that Kurt had not stuck around to help him tell his parents. "But this is serious. I have no doubt that you love Kurt—"

"I do, Dad, I really do. He's it for me. He's all I want out of this life."

His father was stunned into silence, so his mother spoke up. "Blaine, you're eighteen. You're far too young for this. And what about Kurt? Doesn't he have a life in New York?"

"That's one of the reasons I proposed," Blaine explained, desperate to make his parents understand. "When he left the first time, we didn't really have any concrete reason to believe we'd survive the separation. Now we do." He smiled wryly to himself. "I liked it, so I put a ring on it."

His dad was not amused. "Blaine, this is very serious. Marriage isn't something to throw around." He sighed heavily. "Look, I know the whole…gay marriage thing—"

"Oh, Dad, don't—"

"—I know it's in vogue right now, but you don't have to jump on the bandwagon to prove a point—"

"Prove a point?" Blaine leapt to his feet. "I'm not jumping on a bandwagon here, Dad. Like you said, I've known since I was four that I wanted to spend my life with a man. I came out when I was fourteen! I didn't make this incredibly complicated, incredibly adult decision just because it's new and exciting—although I'd be lying if I said the marriage equality movement didn't affect my decision-making process at all—I made it because I am stupid in love with a man whom I want to spend every day loving with every fiber of my being."

His parents were speechless again, so he collapsed back into his chair. "Look, I get your concerns, I do. We're so young, and we just got out of a pretty bad break-up. God, we live eleven hundred miles away from each other! And the last time we were apart, I did something incredibly, incomparably, unforgivably stupid. I understand this. I thought all of this over, for weeks, months! I talked to Cooper, I talked to Sam, I talked to Burt—"

"You asked Kurt's father but you didn't talk to me?" His dad sounded hurt.

"I didn't want you talking me out of it," Blaine whispered.

"Well we should have!" his mother exclaimed, looking frazzled. "You may be eighteen, and you may be graduating, and you may be able to take care of yourself, but you are a baby, Blaine, you're so young, you don't even know it."

"Mom, come on—"

"No Blaine, you listen to me. You are so mature, so very mature. More mature than you should be, and I know that you had to grow up fast. I'm so sorry for that. But that does not mean that you can just assume this incredibly adult responsibility so young. You don't have a clue how to be someone's husband!"

"And? You didn't know how to be someone's wife when you and Dad got married. Isn't that the point? I trust Kurt enough, love Kurt enough to undergo this huge transition with him. I mean, it's not like we're getting married tomorrow. We don't have a set timeframe for our wedding. We just want to pledge ourselves to each other, now, in any way we can."

"But what's the rush?" his mom begged of him brokenly. "If you don't want to get married right away, why get engaged?"

"Because time on this earth is fleeting," Blaine tried to explain, pleading with eyes for his parents to understand him. "Because I could die tomorrow, or—or Kurt could, and if we have even a day together like this, it's worth it. I spoke to Burt, and he said his biggest regret in life was not marrying Elizabeth sooner, and they got engaged six months after meeting! I know, down to the very marrow in my bones, that I will die, tomorrow or in a hundred years, madly, hopelessly, blindly in love with Kurt Hummel, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

"So why get engaged? Because there just isn't any point in waiting. My soul has belonged to him since the day I met him and if getting engaged at eighteen is how I can prove that to him, to the world, then god is that an easy price to pay."

Blaine was surprised to see tears in his mother's eyes. Before she could say anything, though, Blaine was engulfed in a hug, his father holding him tight. "I'm not going to pretend that I've always been the most supportive of you," he murmured into his son's hair. "I'm not going to insult you by saying that I'm the greatest father. But somewhere between the little boy head-over-heels for a Disney prince and now, you grew into a spectacular man. I don't know how big a part I played in that transition, if any, but I know I am unbelievably proud of you. You and Kurt, you deserve each other, and you deserve happiness. I'm so glad you're getting married, son. I'm so glad you've found that special someone so young."

Blaine buried his face into his father's chest, the weight of those words hanging heavy over him like sunshine after a storm. He tried to choke back the tears, but failed, crying earnestly into his dad's shirt. "That's all I ever wanted," Blaine whispered brokenly. "That's all I ever wanted to hear from you."

"I'm sorry it took me so long to say it."

After a minute, Blaine felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned away from his father to see his mom's shiny eyes smiling down at him. "Oh baby boy, come here." He fell into his mother's embrace, arms wrapped around her tightly. "I'm sorry I couldn't understand. You have to realize, even when you're as old and wrinkly as your father is—"

"Hey!"

"—you will always, always be my baby, the little boy who couldn't reach the sink to brush his teeth and who came in every other day with his knees scraped up and grass stains all over his clothes. And now that you're getting married, even to someone has wonderful as Kurt—well, you have to understand, I just couldn't believe I let time slip away from me so quickly."

"I always love you, Mom," Blaine murmured into her chest. "I'll always be your little boy."

"And don't you forget it."

And so the little family sat on the couch together to listen to Blaine tell the story of his admittedly eccentric proposal, which ended with him showing his parents a picture of the ring on Kurt's finger. Then, after a dinner of Chinese take-out—"I am far too emotional to cook right now, and if you two boys think I'm letting you anywhere near my stove you've got another thing coming."—they huddled around Blaine's laptop to Skype the fourth Anderson, who, upon hearing the good news, screamed and jumped up and down on his bed so fervently that he knocked his laptop off, breaking something internally and resulting in the need to continue the conversation on FaceTime.

And that night, before he went to bed, Blaine called Kurt (Rule #3 of Being Engaged and Far Apart: We take turns calling each other every night, without fail.) to let him know that his parents knew. And when he proudly said, "Kurt, they're really, really happy for us," he reveled in the response: "Then I'm happy for us too."

So, I don't know what happened. Usually, when I try to write something fluffy, I end up with Blangst. This time, I set out purposefully to write Blangst and...got a happy ending? THIS IS WHAT 5X01 HAS DONE TO ME. IT HAS COMPLETELY COMPROMISED MY ABILITY TO TORTURE BLAINE VIA FIC BECAUSE THAT LITTLE PUMPKIN IS GONNA GET MARRIED AND THEREFORE CANNOT UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF SADNESS.

PERSONAL TUMBLR: nothingbutgoneness
FANFICTION TUMBLR: kqwriting
FANFICTION BANK TUMBLR: klaineficneeds