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fadagaskiTitle: If I Wear A Mask I Can Fool The World
Author: Allocin
Fandom: Glee
Wordcount: c.2220
Rating: G
Keywords: cross-dressing, transphobia, gender lines, heteronormativity
Characters: Kurt/Blaine + Beiste
Disclaimer: No profit is made from this work of fiction and no infringement is intended.
Summary: Because Kurt is really out there, and Blaine really isn't, and sometimes they're going to fight about it. Luckily Beiste can coach them on their way.
A/N: Glee is doing wonderful things for the LG side of America, but the BTTIQQ2SA? Not so much. So here's my small contribution. No offence intended to anyone. Title from Mulan's Reflection as sung by Christina Aguilera.
When Blaine gets to the end of his first week at McKinley, he's frankly stunned. No dumpster tosses, no locker slams, no slushies, no homophobic slurs in the hallways. He's just - the new kid, a little short and a little bewildered and easily dismissed.
It helps, he supposes, that Kurt seems to be going out of his way to draw as much attention to himself as possible. On Monday it had been the crown - the tacky plastic Prom Queen crown - perched at a jaunty angle on his head all day. People stared, whispered, but no one came anywhere near Kurt that day. On Tuesday it had been fishnets under his shorts. Wednesday was a glitzy gold feather boa - even Kurt didn't look pleased with his ensemble that day, but Blaine took one look at the determined lock of his jaw and chose not to say anything. Thursday was platform shoes that had Kurt at eye-level with Finn; Blaine privately thought Kurt looked like an especially masculine sixth member of the Spice Girls circa 1994.
No one's said anything to Kurt about his clothing, not the student body or Glee club or any staff members. Blaine wonders if this is how he always dressed before Dalton, and hates himself a little for the thought is it any wonder they picked him ....
And now it's Friday. Blaine always knew he would spend his mornings in giddy anticipation at seeing his boyfriend before homeroom, but today it's accompanied with a sick feeling of dread too. Because Kurt's antagonising those who might otherwise strike at Blaine, and Blaine knows it, and a guilty part of him is just so grateful that he doesn't have to take the flack. He wonders what it'll be today.
As if summoned by Blaine's thoughts alone, Kurt strolls around the corner. His eyes light up when he sees Blaine, and he grins. Blaine's breath leaves his body in one long rush, because his boyfriend is stunning in all the right ways, perfect skin and big blue eyes and pink lips. He looks - more, than usual. Watching Kurt approach, Blaine tries to figure it out. He's spent hours staring at Kurt's face, knows it better than his own, but there's something about it today, something more defined in his features. Blaine can't quite put his finger on ...
Make-up. Kurt's wearing make-up. Not a lot, nothing as bright as Brittany or as smoky as Santana, but there's definitely a slick of gloss on his lips and his eyes are ringed with dark liner. He's gorgeous. Blaine's hands itch to touch him.
He also looks a little bit like a girl, and Blaine can't reconcile the two.
"Hi!" Kurt says, coming to a bouncy stop at Blaine's open locker. He presses a quick kiss to Blaine's cheek, leaving a phantom sticky impression behind.
"Kurt ..." Blaine trails off, gaze caught on pink lips shining so temptingly in the hall lights. He finds himself wondering if it's flavoured gloss. Wonders if it's cherry like Rachel's had been.
All at once, he shakes off the lust and looks Kurt in the eye. Kurt just looks amused.
"You like?" he asks in a breathy voice that doesn't help Blaine's situation at all.
"Kurt, what are you - why - you can't really want to wear that all day," he says.
"Excuse me?" Kurt splutters, glancing down at his attire. By the standards of the week, today's ensemble is utterly unremarkable (though still unbearably fashionable for WMHS, and far too attractive when modelled by Kurt) - just skinny jeans and a buttoned shirt and soft leather shoes. It's alarmingly inoffensive.
But the make-up ...
"Not your clothes. The - the make-up." Blaine gestures vaguely at Kurt's face.
And this is the thing about Kurt. When he's hurt - when you've really hurt him - he doesn't get angry. He closes down, walls off, face chilling like the coming of an ice age.
"I'm sorry you feel that way," he says stiffly. He's straightened his spine too, giving him that extra couple of inches over Blaine. "I hadn't realised you were so ... heteronormative." He gives Blaine the once-over that makes his skin want to crawl right off his body.
"Hey, c'mon, that's not fair," Blaine protests. Kurt's already backing away though, so Blaine reaches out to catch him by the arm. "Kurt, don't. Please."
"Don't want? Dress how I want? Am I too flamboyant for you? Too gay? Or too girly?" Blaine winces, partly at the pitch and partly at the words, and Kurt zeroes in. "That's it, isn't it? You think that make-up makes me a girl, but you're gay so you can't possibly find that attractive." He nods once to himself, and his jaw gets that steely lock to it.
"Kurt ..." Blaine tries again, but he can't deny the words, and Kurt knows it.
"I'll see you at lunch," he mutters. His head is high when he walks away, but Blaine knows it's only through sheer pig-headed willpower.
*
Blaine's first Friday at McKinley doesn't really get any better. After drifting through AP History and English, he lucked out for gym class and got trampolining, which any Warbler could attest was the sport most suited to Blaine. And yet, he can't find the energy to be enthusiastic, and is barely focused when Susie O'Rourke bounces right into him, turning his lacklustre spotting into a successful impression of a safety net. He gets a bloody nose for the trouble though, so he sits the rest of class out and isn't even upset at the lost opportunity to jump on something.
Coach Beiste catches him in the changing room, inspecting his nose with a sort of gruff tenderness that reminds him weirdly of Santana. He's stuck half into his shirt whilst sat on the bench as she prods at his swollen face, and all he can focus on is the bright red of her lipstick.
"It's not broken," she says at last, and steps back. He nods, offering her a small smile as he pulls his shirt on fully. "You're lucky nothing worse happened. Spotters can't afford to be distracted; it's dangerous. Understand?"
"Yes ma'am," he says, demure. She sighs, and the last boy bangs out the door.
"C'mon kid. Something's obviously bugging you. What's on your mind?"
The thing is, Blaine thinks Beiste is probably both the best and absolute worst person with whom he could discuss his issues about Kurt. Beiste's got good relations with the Glee kids and Mr. Schue, and she seems like one of those genuinely nice people.
But Blaine is gay and his boyfriend wore make-up to school today in part to keep Blaine out of the line of fire, and Blaine found him absurdly attractive with eyeliner, and Coach Beiste really doesn't deserve to have Blaine's issues with all of it dumped on her like that.
"Blaine," she says, soft and encouraging. Her voice is about half an octave lower than Kurt's when at rest.
"I had a fight with Kurt," Blaine admits. "This morning, when he first got in."
"What about?"
Blaine opens his mouth to speak, but the words get stuck behind his guilt and shame. He glances up awkwardly at Beiste, and her bright red lips curve into a smile.
"He - I -" Blaine swallows. "He's wearing make-up today. And I - I didn't react well." He can feel a flush blooming over his cheeks under the steady throb of pain radiating out from his nose.
"Show make-up? Or ...?" Beiste prods.
"Girl make-up. Lipgloss. Eyeliner. Probably some blusher, I'm not sure. I don't - It isn't something I ..." Blaine trails off.
"And, what? You didn't like it?" The Dalton student in him is horrified, but all Blaine can think to do is shrug in response.
"I don't know," he mumbles.
"Mmm." There's quiet, nothing but the muffle of feet beyond the door and the steady drip-drip of a leaking shower head. Blaine aches all over from Susie's impact, and he aches all under his skin from Kurt's. Beiste is watching him, he can tell, and it just makes everything more acute. He hates that he's probably offended her, because even if she's not anything but a woman, she's still different and he can see that.
"I'm sorry," he says, directly to the floor.
"Oh, kid," Beiste says, amusement in her voice. Blaine dares to glance up. Her face is sympathetic, the carved lines around her eyes smoothed out a little. "You're seventeen. Give yourself a break." He blinks at her.
"But -"
"In a place like this, it's easy to get all muddled up in your head. These kids, they see girls and they see boys and that's all there is. Even the teachers aren't much better." Blaine thinks suddenly of the many times Kurt has ranted about Mr. Schue's inability to see Kurt's penchant for songs by female artists as anything but an abnormality. "Kurt's - different. In a lot of ways. He doesn't fit in a place like this."
"Because he's gay." A part of him whispers too gay, too flamboyant and he's worried it sounds like his father.
"That's not just it. I - Look." Beiste takes a deep, fortifying breath. "Let me put this a way you'll understand. You're a performer, right? Part of Will's Glee club?" Blaine nods. "So you act a part. If you're singing a love song with a girl, you act it. Of course it's not real, because it's just a performance. Well, being a girl or a boy is like that too. The script is all around, everyone's the director, and most people choose to play the part because that's just how it is. But people like Kurt - people like me ..." She shrugs. Blaine admires the strength in her, the roll of her shoulders like lifting the world back into place. "We don't fit."
Blaine chews over his thoughts for a moment, picking his words carefully before he lets them out. "Do you ... Do you think Kurt is - maybe trans?" Beiste gives him a flat look.
"How the hell should I know?" she bites. "I'm not him, and he's not me. Maybe if you went and talked to him instead of sitting here moping you'd have more of a clue." She heaves herself to her feet, ambling off to her office.
Blaine wipes at his eyes, careful of the blooming bruises, and stands. He's late for Spanish.
"Blaine?" Beiste calls, out of sight. "Sometimes people just want to feel pretty."
*
Kurt's in a different coloured shirt and there's a speck of red on his white skinny jeans that hint at a rough morning. Blaine makes a beeline for him through the cafeteria, dodging cheerleaders and skater-boys and geeks with his gaze fixed on Kurt. Kurt, with his lips still shiny pink. Kurt, whose eyes are huge in his face when ringed by the pencil liner.
Kurt, who barely has a chance to squeak before Blaine swoops down and kisses him right there in front of God and everybody. He tastes like strawberry.
The cafeteria is deadly silent when Blaine pulls back just a little, to see Kurt looking cross-eyed and dazed up at him. His fingers clutch at Blaine's arm.
"You're gorgeous," Blaine breathes right against Kurt's strawberry-flavoured lips. "You're gorgeous and I love you."
Kurt smiles then, the sweet shy one Blaine loves (as much as any of his other smiles), and then they're kissing again, lips sticking together with gloss. The noise in the cafeteria picks up again, slow at first, then faster and louder, and Blaine just doesn't care.
Eventually the angle begins to hurt his neck and back, and Blaine has to sit. He keeps hold of Kurt's hand and can't help the goofy grin on his face, even as it pulls the swollen skin. His eyes flutter shut when Kurt reaches out to brush over the bruises.
"Jock?" he asks.
"Susie O'Rourke." There's a beat of silence.
"Really? She's like the only person in the school shorter than you."
"And she weighed a ton when she landed on me in gym." He winces when Kurt presses a little firmer. Kurt pulls back with a murmured apology. "It's fine. Coach Beiste checked it out, and it's not broken, so."
"So you get to look like a badass for the next week while it heals," Kurt says, and the tone is light but there's a gleam in his eye that does funny things to Blaine's stomach.
"Your badass," he says, pressing a kiss to the back of Kurt's knuckles. Kurt flushes a delicate pink, and there's the shy smile again. "I'm sorry, about before."
"Water under the bridge," Kurt says, dismissing the whole episode with a wave of his hand. Blaine reaches up to capture that too, holding both over the table. A flash of panic comes to Kurt's eyes.
"No, listen. I'm gay, okay? I am sexually attracted to guys." Kurt's eyebrows climb so high they're almost to his hairline. "But I love you. You. Kurt Hummel. In make-up. In drag. In biker boots and bondage gear. In jeans and sneakers. Just - you. Okay?"
There are tears brimming close to the surface in Kurt's eyes, and Blaine spares a quick prayer that his eyeliner is waterproof or Kurt will kill Blaine, but he sniffs and forces them down. His smile is watery and beautiful.
"Okay," he says.
*
On Monday morning, Kurt strolls into school wearing biker boots and leather pants.
Author: Allocin
Fandom: Glee
Wordcount: c.2220
Rating: G
Keywords: cross-dressing, transphobia, gender lines, heteronormativity
Characters: Kurt/Blaine + Beiste
Disclaimer: No profit is made from this work of fiction and no infringement is intended.
Summary: Because Kurt is really out there, and Blaine really isn't, and sometimes they're going to fight about it. Luckily Beiste can coach them on their way.
A/N: Glee is doing wonderful things for the LG side of America, but the BTTIQQ2SA? Not so much. So here's my small contribution. No offence intended to anyone. Title from Mulan's Reflection as sung by Christina Aguilera.
When Blaine gets to the end of his first week at McKinley, he's frankly stunned. No dumpster tosses, no locker slams, no slushies, no homophobic slurs in the hallways. He's just - the new kid, a little short and a little bewildered and easily dismissed.
It helps, he supposes, that Kurt seems to be going out of his way to draw as much attention to himself as possible. On Monday it had been the crown - the tacky plastic Prom Queen crown - perched at a jaunty angle on his head all day. People stared, whispered, but no one came anywhere near Kurt that day. On Tuesday it had been fishnets under his shorts. Wednesday was a glitzy gold feather boa - even Kurt didn't look pleased with his ensemble that day, but Blaine took one look at the determined lock of his jaw and chose not to say anything. Thursday was platform shoes that had Kurt at eye-level with Finn; Blaine privately thought Kurt looked like an especially masculine sixth member of the Spice Girls circa 1994.
No one's said anything to Kurt about his clothing, not the student body or Glee club or any staff members. Blaine wonders if this is how he always dressed before Dalton, and hates himself a little for the thought is it any wonder they picked him ....
And now it's Friday. Blaine always knew he would spend his mornings in giddy anticipation at seeing his boyfriend before homeroom, but today it's accompanied with a sick feeling of dread too. Because Kurt's antagonising those who might otherwise strike at Blaine, and Blaine knows it, and a guilty part of him is just so grateful that he doesn't have to take the flack. He wonders what it'll be today.
As if summoned by Blaine's thoughts alone, Kurt strolls around the corner. His eyes light up when he sees Blaine, and he grins. Blaine's breath leaves his body in one long rush, because his boyfriend is stunning in all the right ways, perfect skin and big blue eyes and pink lips. He looks - more, than usual. Watching Kurt approach, Blaine tries to figure it out. He's spent hours staring at Kurt's face, knows it better than his own, but there's something about it today, something more defined in his features. Blaine can't quite put his finger on ...
Make-up. Kurt's wearing make-up. Not a lot, nothing as bright as Brittany or as smoky as Santana, but there's definitely a slick of gloss on his lips and his eyes are ringed with dark liner. He's gorgeous. Blaine's hands itch to touch him.
He also looks a little bit like a girl, and Blaine can't reconcile the two.
"Hi!" Kurt says, coming to a bouncy stop at Blaine's open locker. He presses a quick kiss to Blaine's cheek, leaving a phantom sticky impression behind.
"Kurt ..." Blaine trails off, gaze caught on pink lips shining so temptingly in the hall lights. He finds himself wondering if it's flavoured gloss. Wonders if it's cherry like Rachel's had been.
All at once, he shakes off the lust and looks Kurt in the eye. Kurt just looks amused.
"You like?" he asks in a breathy voice that doesn't help Blaine's situation at all.
"Kurt, what are you - why - you can't really want to wear that all day," he says.
"Excuse me?" Kurt splutters, glancing down at his attire. By the standards of the week, today's ensemble is utterly unremarkable (though still unbearably fashionable for WMHS, and far too attractive when modelled by Kurt) - just skinny jeans and a buttoned shirt and soft leather shoes. It's alarmingly inoffensive.
But the make-up ...
"Not your clothes. The - the make-up." Blaine gestures vaguely at Kurt's face.
And this is the thing about Kurt. When he's hurt - when you've really hurt him - he doesn't get angry. He closes down, walls off, face chilling like the coming of an ice age.
"I'm sorry you feel that way," he says stiffly. He's straightened his spine too, giving him that extra couple of inches over Blaine. "I hadn't realised you were so ... heteronormative." He gives Blaine the once-over that makes his skin want to crawl right off his body.
"Hey, c'mon, that's not fair," Blaine protests. Kurt's already backing away though, so Blaine reaches out to catch him by the arm. "Kurt, don't. Please."
"Don't want? Dress how I want? Am I too flamboyant for you? Too gay? Or too girly?" Blaine winces, partly at the pitch and partly at the words, and Kurt zeroes in. "That's it, isn't it? You think that make-up makes me a girl, but you're gay so you can't possibly find that attractive." He nods once to himself, and his jaw gets that steely lock to it.
"Kurt ..." Blaine tries again, but he can't deny the words, and Kurt knows it.
"I'll see you at lunch," he mutters. His head is high when he walks away, but Blaine knows it's only through sheer pig-headed willpower.
Blaine's first Friday at McKinley doesn't really get any better. After drifting through AP History and English, he lucked out for gym class and got trampolining, which any Warbler could attest was the sport most suited to Blaine. And yet, he can't find the energy to be enthusiastic, and is barely focused when Susie O'Rourke bounces right into him, turning his lacklustre spotting into a successful impression of a safety net. He gets a bloody nose for the trouble though, so he sits the rest of class out and isn't even upset at the lost opportunity to jump on something.
Coach Beiste catches him in the changing room, inspecting his nose with a sort of gruff tenderness that reminds him weirdly of Santana. He's stuck half into his shirt whilst sat on the bench as she prods at his swollen face, and all he can focus on is the bright red of her lipstick.
"It's not broken," she says at last, and steps back. He nods, offering her a small smile as he pulls his shirt on fully. "You're lucky nothing worse happened. Spotters can't afford to be distracted; it's dangerous. Understand?"
"Yes ma'am," he says, demure. She sighs, and the last boy bangs out the door.
"C'mon kid. Something's obviously bugging you. What's on your mind?"
The thing is, Blaine thinks Beiste is probably both the best and absolute worst person with whom he could discuss his issues about Kurt. Beiste's got good relations with the Glee kids and Mr. Schue, and she seems like one of those genuinely nice people.
But Blaine is gay and his boyfriend wore make-up to school today in part to keep Blaine out of the line of fire, and Blaine found him absurdly attractive with eyeliner, and Coach Beiste really doesn't deserve to have Blaine's issues with all of it dumped on her like that.
"Blaine," she says, soft and encouraging. Her voice is about half an octave lower than Kurt's when at rest.
"I had a fight with Kurt," Blaine admits. "This morning, when he first got in."
"What about?"
Blaine opens his mouth to speak, but the words get stuck behind his guilt and shame. He glances up awkwardly at Beiste, and her bright red lips curve into a smile.
"He - I -" Blaine swallows. "He's wearing make-up today. And I - I didn't react well." He can feel a flush blooming over his cheeks under the steady throb of pain radiating out from his nose.
"Show make-up? Or ...?" Beiste prods.
"Girl make-up. Lipgloss. Eyeliner. Probably some blusher, I'm not sure. I don't - It isn't something I ..." Blaine trails off.
"And, what? You didn't like it?" The Dalton student in him is horrified, but all Blaine can think to do is shrug in response.
"I don't know," he mumbles.
"Mmm." There's quiet, nothing but the muffle of feet beyond the door and the steady drip-drip of a leaking shower head. Blaine aches all over from Susie's impact, and he aches all under his skin from Kurt's. Beiste is watching him, he can tell, and it just makes everything more acute. He hates that he's probably offended her, because even if she's not anything but a woman, she's still different and he can see that.
"I'm sorry," he says, directly to the floor.
"Oh, kid," Beiste says, amusement in her voice. Blaine dares to glance up. Her face is sympathetic, the carved lines around her eyes smoothed out a little. "You're seventeen. Give yourself a break." He blinks at her.
"But -"
"In a place like this, it's easy to get all muddled up in your head. These kids, they see girls and they see boys and that's all there is. Even the teachers aren't much better." Blaine thinks suddenly of the many times Kurt has ranted about Mr. Schue's inability to see Kurt's penchant for songs by female artists as anything but an abnormality. "Kurt's - different. In a lot of ways. He doesn't fit in a place like this."
"Because he's gay." A part of him whispers too gay, too flamboyant and he's worried it sounds like his father.
"That's not just it. I - Look." Beiste takes a deep, fortifying breath. "Let me put this a way you'll understand. You're a performer, right? Part of Will's Glee club?" Blaine nods. "So you act a part. If you're singing a love song with a girl, you act it. Of course it's not real, because it's just a performance. Well, being a girl or a boy is like that too. The script is all around, everyone's the director, and most people choose to play the part because that's just how it is. But people like Kurt - people like me ..." She shrugs. Blaine admires the strength in her, the roll of her shoulders like lifting the world back into place. "We don't fit."
Blaine chews over his thoughts for a moment, picking his words carefully before he lets them out. "Do you ... Do you think Kurt is - maybe trans?" Beiste gives him a flat look.
"How the hell should I know?" she bites. "I'm not him, and he's not me. Maybe if you went and talked to him instead of sitting here moping you'd have more of a clue." She heaves herself to her feet, ambling off to her office.
Blaine wipes at his eyes, careful of the blooming bruises, and stands. He's late for Spanish.
"Blaine?" Beiste calls, out of sight. "Sometimes people just want to feel pretty."
Kurt's in a different coloured shirt and there's a speck of red on his white skinny jeans that hint at a rough morning. Blaine makes a beeline for him through the cafeteria, dodging cheerleaders and skater-boys and geeks with his gaze fixed on Kurt. Kurt, with his lips still shiny pink. Kurt, whose eyes are huge in his face when ringed by the pencil liner.
Kurt, who barely has a chance to squeak before Blaine swoops down and kisses him right there in front of God and everybody. He tastes like strawberry.
The cafeteria is deadly silent when Blaine pulls back just a little, to see Kurt looking cross-eyed and dazed up at him. His fingers clutch at Blaine's arm.
"You're gorgeous," Blaine breathes right against Kurt's strawberry-flavoured lips. "You're gorgeous and I love you."
Kurt smiles then, the sweet shy one Blaine loves (as much as any of his other smiles), and then they're kissing again, lips sticking together with gloss. The noise in the cafeteria picks up again, slow at first, then faster and louder, and Blaine just doesn't care.
Eventually the angle begins to hurt his neck and back, and Blaine has to sit. He keeps hold of Kurt's hand and can't help the goofy grin on his face, even as it pulls the swollen skin. His eyes flutter shut when Kurt reaches out to brush over the bruises.
"Jock?" he asks.
"Susie O'Rourke." There's a beat of silence.
"Really? She's like the only person in the school shorter than you."
"And she weighed a ton when she landed on me in gym." He winces when Kurt presses a little firmer. Kurt pulls back with a murmured apology. "It's fine. Coach Beiste checked it out, and it's not broken, so."
"So you get to look like a badass for the next week while it heals," Kurt says, and the tone is light but there's a gleam in his eye that does funny things to Blaine's stomach.
"Your badass," he says, pressing a kiss to the back of Kurt's knuckles. Kurt flushes a delicate pink, and there's the shy smile again. "I'm sorry, about before."
"Water under the bridge," Kurt says, dismissing the whole episode with a wave of his hand. Blaine reaches up to capture that too, holding both over the table. A flash of panic comes to Kurt's eyes.
"No, listen. I'm gay, okay? I am sexually attracted to guys." Kurt's eyebrows climb so high they're almost to his hairline. "But I love you. You. Kurt Hummel. In make-up. In drag. In biker boots and bondage gear. In jeans and sneakers. Just - you. Okay?"
There are tears brimming close to the surface in Kurt's eyes, and Blaine spares a quick prayer that his eyeliner is waterproof or Kurt will kill Blaine, but he sniffs and forces them down. His smile is watery and beautiful.
"Okay," he says.
On Monday morning, Kurt strolls into school wearing biker boots and leather pants.
