[A/N: A video of the poet performing If I Were a Love Poet (featured in the last chapter) can be found linked in my profile. I highly recommend you check out some of his other work.

Now, let us have some mother son time.]

"Darling, they'll be here soon. Are you ready?"

Blaine turned away from his mirror to face his mother, fixing his sleeve unnecessarily. "I...yeah. Yeah, I'm – I'm good. I'm – why? Don't I look okay?"

"You look fine, dear," she soothed with a small smile. "I appreciate the effort, but it is just dinner. You don't usually get this excited about dinner."

"I am not excited," he lied, practically buzzing as he turned back to fix his hair. "Have you seen my comb? Where's my comb? This sweater looks okay with this shirt, doesn't it?"

Beverley hurried over to pick a piece of lint off of his shoulder, which may or may not have been imagined solely as an excuse to give him a hug. "You look darling."

"I'm not trying to look darling," he insisted. "I want to look..."

"Dashing?"

He blushed, but didn't respond.

"Isn't that the sweater you were wearing when you got here? The one you got for christmas?"

"It's clean. Do you think a tie would be too much? It would. Maybe I should change."

"Haven't you met Kurt's family before, dear?" She had a soothing hand on his arm.

"Yes, but … now they're coming here," he shrugged. "For dinner," he elaborated. His eyes widened. "What if they didn't like me?"

"Why on earth wouldn't they like you, dear? Besides, you said you got on splendidly."

He pulled away and went to pick up his phone. "I hope they don't get lost. Do you think they'll get lost?"

"Kurt has driven here before, darling."

"Yes, but I was with him, or gave him directions." He started walking around the room, holding his phone up. "I only have three bars, if he tried to call me and my reception dropped..."

"It would be the first time, and he'd call the house." When her son showed no signs of slowing down she sighed. "Blaine..."

"Hmm?" He kept fidgeting. "Maybe I should text him."

"Blaine."

"Yes?" He still didn't look over. She grabbled his sleeve and pulled him in, sitting him down firmly on his bed. "You need to sit down before you work yourself into a frenzy. Your friend and his family will get here when they get here, and everyone will be charming, and your father will be eccentric, and maybe I will too. It will all be fine."

He looked at her for a moment. "I'm... I'm nervous."

"I don't see why you should be. They're just coming for dinner because they happen to be driving past here on their way to –" She saw his attention wandering. "Kurt will stay, so you can drive you both back to school tomorrow... by the way, did you see the blankets? I'm not sure where you two are sleeping, but..." She saw his face. "Blaine, your father has promised to behave himself. And," she added brightly, "I made chocolate cake for dessert."

He could see their reflection in the large mirror that doubled as his closet door. His eye drifted over the lyrics scribbles in dry erase marker around the edges, or even the doodles that Wes and David had left (Wes' had been edited after the fact). His eyes flicked automatically to the lower left hand corner. The last time they'd all been at his house (the weekend Wes had spilled paint all over Kurt, resulting in the shirt incident that was the reason that Blaine hadn't quite been able to bring himself to wear that shirt again just yet) Blaine had cleaned off the mirror, and they had spent an hour redecorating, adding lyrics, notes, and, in the case of Wes and David, an intricate stick figure drawing of two people holding hands. They had been subtlety labeled 'K' and 'B'. Kurt had retaliated by drawing on Wes' face, while Blaine had accurately and artistically portrayed the scene that had unfolded the previous year, when David had gone home for the weekend, Blaine had been studying for S.A.T.s, and Wes had been discovered in the common room, knee deep in empty ice-cream cartons, where Blaine insisted to this day that he had been talking to the gavel. Blaine's drawing had been erased one the giddiness subsided, but Blaine had left the stick figure picture there.

He just kind of liked it, is all.

He liked even better the neat, measured cursive underneath it, which read "At least your hair looks good. It seems that stick figure you knows how to use the appropriate amount of hair product. Or maybe Stick figure 'K' got sick of his hands getting stuck in it, and confiscated it all. Either way, everyone wins. Learn from your inky alter-ego. :) - Kurt (on behalf of stick-figure 'K', and the human race)."

Underneath that David had asked whether stick figure 'K' found his hands running through stick-figure Blaine's hair very often, to which Kurt replied that he had no idea, and they should ask him themselves. He'd also blushed.

Blaine's eyes followed the message, the lyrics the four of them had contributed. David had gone 90s – Vanilla Ice and Backstreet boys, Wes had, unsurprisingly, gone Queen -We are the Champions – and All American Rejects, and while Blaine had added a line from each song that came to mind – Ricky Martin, Aerosmith, Colbie Callait, Neon Trees, and a long string of Joshua Radin - Kurt had contributed the opening lines of 'First Day of My Life', followed by an ellipse, and had then paused to consider his next choice, joking that he quite enjoyed the poetic quality of Nickleback's 'Animals'.

Blaine, who had been sitting on his bed at that point, nearly fell off as that song, and its lyrics, wormed their way into his head and refused to be dislodged. 'Animals' was not a subtly crafted song. It was not only suggestive, it was downright obscene. The guy and his girlfriend were sneaking her out of the house, and then they were driving, and she was – well, he recalled the chorus mentioning screaming, and never stopping. And at least one verse talking about flicking switches and driving into ditches. And hands. Lots of hands.

He totally had a new appreciation for that song.

It had taken significant effort to drag himself back to watching Kurt finish the lyrics to 'The Way I Was' by Maroon 5. He liked that song. They both did. A lot. He continued on a theme with 'Infatuation' and 'Little of Your Time', ending with 'Shiver'. Blaine forced himself not to read into those choices, and definitely did not listen to those songs on repeat for weeks. Definitely.

God, he loved that band.

Kurt had also added commentary to everyone else's lyrics, and Blaine fully intended to leave it, along with the intricate doodle of Pavarotti in the corner, until the ink spontaneously combusted under his gaze.

As his mother settled behind him, wrapping an arm around his shoulder, he considered their reflections, leaning into the embrace.

"Mom..." he trailed off, then looked her in the eye.

She kissed him on the forehead. "Yes?"

"Do you think that -" he hesitated. "Do..."

"I think," she murmured," that you are a wonderful, intelligent, beautiful young man, and you have excellent taste, which, with your upbringing, was sort of a given. I think you are the best thing about your father and I, the best of both of us, and... I think you have chosen someone equally wonderful to love."

He held his breath for a few seconds. "That's what Dad said."

"You had to get your intelligence from somewhere."

"It feels like..."

She smiled slightly in understanding. "It feels like the end of the world whenever he leaves the room without kissing you goodbye."

He closed his eyes. "Yeah."

"Blaine."

He pulled away. "Yeah?"

"So kiss him goodbye."

"I... don't know if I can." He sounded scared, desperate, anything but calm.

Beverley smiled at him sadly. "Then there's nothing to be done, is there?"

The doorbell rang, and Blaine leapt up, racing to the door. He turned quickly.

"Mom, is the sweater too much?"

Bev rolled her eyes and glided towards him, taking his hand and using it to spin herself.

"Come on, darling. Let's go meet the parents."