Spoilers: Up to 2.16
Warnings: Mild homophobia.
Disclaimer: RIB and FOX own everything ever.
Beta: rdm_ation on LJ

Enjoy, and by all means review should it strike your fancy, my best beloveds.~

So the whole thing sounded kind of sappy, but actually it started because Kurt was a vindictive bastard. There were, to be fair, times when Kurt offered to do things out of the goodness of his heart; this just wasn't one of them.

Finn had a headache, and it wasn't awful but it was super annoying and all he wanted was to go to bed early, before it turned into a stomach ache too. Except when he said, "I think I'm gonna turn in early" over dinner, his mom gave him this oh really raised eyebrow.

"To study for that English test tomorrow, you mean?"

"How do you know about that?" Finn protested, which okay, maybe wasn't his best tactic for defense.

"We parents can talk to your teachers," she said. She was way more amused than the situation called for. "Yes, I know about the test tomorrow. I also know that it's not something you can expect to show up unprepared for, honey."

Kurt, who had spent the last week shuffling around the house going over flashcards about the Civil War of 1936-39 (and Finn could have sworn the Civil War was earlier than that but whatever) and muttering to himself, smiled. "He really can't," he said, taking one of his freaky tiny bites of salad. "Miss Tyrone is murderous with those tests, I remember. I liked her."

Burt frowned at his soup. "Wasn't she the one you wouldn't let me talk to on parent-teacher nights?"

"Yes," Kurt said airily, "but that was just because I'd insulted her in French over one of her tests and I didn't want her to tell you. I pulled my grade up before I left!"

Burt shared one of those weird parent looks with Finn's mom. "Okay, good for you, buddy," he said, and tried to turn a chuckle into a cough. It didn't even fool Finn, so all things considered it probably didn't work on Kurt, who didn't like being laughed at and was promptly put into an even bitchier mood.

"How were you planning on studying?" Kurt asked, narrowing his eyes at Finn. "Because you know she gets insanely detailed on the questions. You're going to be completely doomed if you can't put every quote to a name and context and then write a short essay on it."

"I just thought I'd go over the book one last time," Finn mumbled, and tried to remember whether he'd ever finished the assigned portion. What was the book even called again?

Kurt sipped his water ostentatiously and then asked, "Which book are you reading?" God, he was like a heat-seeking missile, if a heat-seeking missile sought Finn's weaknesses instead of heat.

"Yeah, the thing is," Finn muttered, "I kind of have a headache. I just really want to lie down."

"Oh, sweetie." His mom's face softened. "You don't think you're getting a migraine, do you?"

Finn, who hadn't had a migraine in over a year, shrugged. "I don't know," he hedged, trying to look noble and long-suffering. "It just really hurts and I want to lie down before it gets worse."

She sighed. "Take your book up with you, in case you feel up to it? I don't want you to get a migraine, but your grade is really going to take a hit if you fail another English test this year."

Kurt smiled, and Finn winced because it was one of those angelic ones that meant Kurt was about to endear himself to their parents and also ruin Finn's life in some small way. "I'll read it to you," he offered sweetly. "I have a booklight; we can kill the overhead, pull the curtains, get you a cold cloth for your forehead… You can relax and study. It's win-win."

"Oh, Kurt," his mom said. "Finn doesn't want to put you out. You don't have anything else you'd rather be doing?"

"Yeah, I really don't want to put you out," Finn said, and actually meant it, just because this was all totally Kurt's fault, but Kurt would still blame Finn if he forgot his homework or missed a phone date with Blaine because of this.

"I finished my homework, and I can always call Blaine later," said Kurt, who was plainly a mindreader. "I'll just help Carole with the dishes and be right up."

"It's real good that you two are learning to help each other out," Burt said approvingly.

Finn, who knew a trap when it closed on him, smiled. "Sounds great. Thanks, Kurt."

The gratitude act lasted until he was sacked out on his bed and Kurt managed to storm in, but do it really quietly. There was a lot of contained irritation in the way he twitched the curtains closed and threw Finn the cold washcloth.

"Why are you doing this?" Finn asked. "You can't seriously be this pissed off about my English grade, dude. I was bringing it back up, anyway. I've been doing way better in all my classes lately."

"Which is why it would be such a pity to let it drop now," Kurt agreed. "You have really got to grow up, Finn. You can't study just when you feel like it if you want to get into a halfway decent college and succeed at that college despite an active sports life."

"You're only doing this because you hate that I can get away with not studying and you can't."

"Thank you so much for that insight. Where's your book?"

"I don't know."

"Finn…"

"In my backpack? It's a stupid book anyway."

"That's not going to make the test any easier."

"It might. I don't know how hard the test on a kids' book can even be."

"I'm sure Miss Tyrone isn't having you read a kids' book," Kurt said condescendingly, shifting through Finn's backpack gingerly, like he was afraid something in there might bite him. He pulled out the work in question – the only book in there that didn't weigh ten pounds – and clicked on his pen light. "…Oh."

"I told you. We're doing a unit on children's literature for some reason. I bet she's just tired of hard books. Look, it'll just be super boring. Why don't you go moisturize or whatever and I'll take a nap."

"Oh no. No, you are going to listen, and you are going to learn. Put your washcloth on," Kurt snapped, and dragged Finn's video game chair over next to the bed. "There will be questions at the end, so don't fall asleep."

"I have a headache," Finn said, dragging the syllables out long enough and high enough that technically, if he weren't seventeen, he might have been whining.

"Man up," Kurt said cruelly, and settled into the chair, clicking his light back on. "Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling."

"I know what it's called, dude."

"Immaterial. How much of it are you being tested on?"

"The first six stories. They're boring, Kurt, they're little kid stories." Finn dragged the washcloth over his eyes, retreating into chilly darkness. "You'll fall asleep."

"Not if I have to pinch myself every ten minutes," Kurt said grimly, and started. "First story: 'How the Whale Got His Throat.' And pay attention, Finn, or so help me. 'In the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouth—so! Till at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was a small 'Stute Fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale's right ear, so as to be out of harm's way.' "

So, plainly, it wasn't like the story was getting any more adult. It was still a kids' story. The thing was, it didn't actually… seem totally boring when Kurt read it. He did this kind of sing-song thing with his voice so that it sounded like poetry, and the all the rhyming was pretty instead of embarrassing. Plus Kurt was like the most mature guy Finn knew, so if he was reading it, then it was probably okay to like it. There was a flaw in this logic somewhere, but whatever. Finn didn't remember if the Mariner, who had been eaten and was a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity, got out of the Whale's belly, and he was kind of concerned.

Oh. I guess I never did finish it, then.

And then Mariner got out, so that was good.

"Now, what have we learned, Finn?" Kurt asked, way too seriously.

Finn regained his senses and did not sound enthusiastic. "Um, that the only reason whales don't eat people anymore is that a sailor tied a raft in one's throat after it tried to eat him without chewing? Really, dude, I don't get why we have to read these."

"I'm not clear on that either. Maybe she thinks this is the most natural history you'll get, going to that school."

"I know whales don't eat people because they don't have real teeth and stuff. And that you can't like… inherit a raft in your throat through your genes, so it doesn't even make sense." Though that was too bad. This version was actually kind of badass. Finn would totally scare a whale into dropping him off at home if one tried to swallow him, too. And then tie a raft in its throat for the good of humankind. Yeah. Awesome.

"Just… remember what happened in that one," Kurt said helplessly, and then went on to elaborate upon "How the Camel Got His Hump."

The stories weren't actually bad, Finn reflected. Childish, but it was kind of… nice, even. It was like the person writing the story was talking right to you and liked you. It was even kind of condescending, so when Kurt read it, it sort of just sounded like Kurt telling a funny story the way he normally would only with more rhyming words.

" '…and he has never yet learned how to behave,' " Kurt finished. "Oh, joy, there's another little poem, too. Good god, the poems are morals. This is exactly like Aesop's Fables, except maybe twenty percent less infuriating."

"Well, I learned that camels got their humps from a genie," Finn offered, "and that it's important to do your chores with a good attitude."

Kurt scoffed. "Yes, and that animals were 'destined' to serve man, which relies upon the fallacious and often outright harmful idea that just because something is a certain way, there's some reason that it's supposed to be that way, which is absolute pap – wait, say again?"

"It's important to do your chores," Finn said. "And have a good attitude about it. Even homework, okay, I get it, Kurt."

"And all I had to do to drive that point home was throw some imperialistic twaddle your way?" Kurt sniffed, and the chair creaked, presumably as he stood up. "Well, fine. I hope you feel up to educating yourself now."

He did, actually. Like, he could. But Kurt had said he wasn't doing anything else. "Actually." Finn pushed the washcloth, which wasn't cold anymore anyway, off his eyes and grabbed Kurt's arm. "Would you mind… I think I'm better at listening than I am at reading, you know, a little, and my head still really hurts, so…"

Kurt hesitated, and Finn wished he could see his face, but the room was too dark. "Sure," he said, finally. "Let me get you a fresh cloth, okay? Then we'll finish."

Finn snuggled into his pillows. Easiest studying ever. "Deal."

He pretty much aced the test, mostly because of Kurt and partly because he remembered to go over Mike's notes right before class and remind himself of what she wanted them to take away from the book, which was stuff about how people always preferred the glitzier version of how things worked to the true-but-boring version.

Finn even read most of the rest of it by himself, despite the fact that it wasn't any fun without Kurt. He was back to sneaking it in like porn because seriously, why not just assign them like – The Little Engine That Could or something. There were even little illustrations in the margins and at the beginnings of chapters. And sure, everyone else was assigned the same book, but how many of them were reading it? Karofsky would have a field day, truce or no truce, if he saw Finn reading a kids' book.

He had to be better about time management anyway, though, because he'd started helping out at the garage some afternoons after school. For now Kurt was training him, but Burt said once he could do stuff on his own he'd get paid, which was a totally sweet deal. And working here beat Sheets-N-Things by a long shot, except that Mrs. Schuester had liked him and Kurt was way more tyrannical than was strictly necessary.

"Finn, what are you doing?"

Sometimes he was also… right. And back a full ten minutes early from a coffee run.

"Uh, well I finished changing that tire, so there wasn't anything else to do…"

"There is always something else to do."

"But you weren't here and last time I tried to start something without you I blew it up."

"Fine," Kurt sighed. "What are you doing, though?"

"Reading. I got stuck. What does 'behappened' mean?"

"Behappened isn't even a word. What are you reading?"

Finn, shamefaced, handed over his increasingly beat-up copy of Just So Stories, open to "The Cat That Walked by Himself."

"Well, that explains it. At least it's not Shakespeare. 'Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild.' No wonder you were having trouble."

"Yeah, I mean, is befell a word?"

Kurt inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. "Yes. Yes, it is, Finn."

"Oh. Cool, never mind then. It makes sense when you read it, though. I'm supposed to pay attention because whatever this is, it went down before we had domesticated animals and stuff?"

"By George, I think he's got it!" Kurt tossed the book back. "Now, shall we take a look at how much damage you managed to do?" He walked over to the car Finn had been practicing on; it belonged to one of the guys who worked there, either James or Tyler, Finn couldn't remember. They both had blond beards and looked the same to him.

Kurt, on the other hand, looked weird. Finn was never going to get used to seeing Kurt in overalls with his name sewn on his lapel in a font Finn had a feeling was probably "tacky." And while Kurt was the only one in the garage capable of getting under a car and tearing its insides out without displacing a hair on his head or getting grease on his face, even he couldn't protect his hands. The sight of Kurt with grime in his nail beds was just wrong, and sure it was sad that Finn had started noticing things like that, but shit happens.

"Finn," Kurt said. "I could kick the wheel off this car. In fact, I think I could blow the wheel off this car, and I'm no Pippi Longstocking. Come here and we'll do it again."

Finn groaned and tossed the book on a shelf with a bunch of plugs.

"How do you always know everything?" he complained when they collapsed onto the couch post-respective showers. He had the remote in hand already, and Kurt raised an eyebrow with a pointed look in its direction, then waved the French textbook from the top of his pile. "I study."

"I don't mean school stuff. How do you know everything about cars?"

"I've been around them since I was six. And I've been working on them since I was ten, at the latest. I spent a lot of time at the garage until I was old enough to be home alone. You'd know everything too if you'd started that young." He smiled. "You'll catch up."

"I guess. That's weird, though. That you had a – like a job when you were little."

Kurt shrugged, opening his textbook and curling his legs under himself. He never sat like that anywhere but at home, Finn thought; but maybe it was just because other places weren't comfy like a couch. "You know what it's like, though," he said. "We had to pick up the slack."

"I guess," Finn repeated, but it hadn't been like that for him. His mom had been twice as determined as normal moms that he should have a normal childhood; he hadn't even been held responsible for his room until he was fifteen. And then she mostly just stopped cleaning it; she didn't really make him start. There had been no question of him getting a job until… Drizzle.

He tossed the remote on the cushion between them and dug out the stupid English book. "Hey, Kurt?"

"Mm-hm?"

"What's 'fenugreek'? And 'grenadillas'?"

"A plant," Kurt said, looking intrigued – at least enough to tear himself away from his French – "and a fruit. Why, are you interested in cooking now?"

"Nah, they're in here." He waved the book. "I thought maybe he made them up, too. He uses all these freaky words and it's super distracting." He poked the page. "What is 'nenni'?"

"Okay, give it to me," Kurt said, and leaned over to swipe the book. "I don't know what nenni means, but," he scanned the page for a second, "it looks like an exclamatory phrase."

"Oh. Sure." Finn squirmed. "Hey, when you finish your French homework –"

"Do you want me to read it out loud?" Kurt asked, in his very best mostly-kind-but-kind-of-condescending voice.

"I mean. If you're not super busy."

Kurt shut his French book. "It can wait. Where did you leave off?"

Finn pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and settled in. "Where the Cat was pretending to be sorry." Because it wanted to get inside the Cave without having a spell put on it; the Woman had invented domesticity and sweeping and stuff for the Man and was like enchanting the animals one by one to make them domestic too. Finn had a feeling Quinn was going to have an impassioned diatribe about this in English by Friday.

"Right." Kurt stole half the blanket. " 'Then Cat pretended to be sorry and said, "Must I never come into the Cave? Must I never sit by the warm fire? Must I never drink the warm white milk? You are very wise and very beautiful. You should not be cruel even to a Cat." ' "

Kurt wasn't joking about keeping house, either. He kept having run-ins with Finn's mom over who was supposed to do what, because she said Kurt did too much and now that he had a two-hour commute he had to lay off and give himself time to breathe. Kurt said she worked too many hours and he was perfectly capable of whipping up dinner in half an hour so that she could sit down for ten minutes at the end of the day. And then they'd started arguing but usually while smiling at each other and folding laundry or dusting or whatever.

So basically this made Finn look bad and meant he was supposed to help out around the house too. And he totally always meant to, but it was super boring to take out the trash and help with the dishes, so sometimes he'd put it off too long and then when he went to do it Kurt would already have taken care of it. He didn't even use it as blackmail like the Internet History Debacle either, so it was easy to forget about. Except when his mom caught it happening.

"Finn," she said, coming into his room without even knocking, and okay the door was open, but come on. "Sweetie, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's your turn to help, and that Kurt just finished doing all of the dishes alone anyway."

"I helped clear them?"

"Finn…"

"I'm sorry, I'll help tomorrow."

"I know you will." She smiled, one of those warm-but-disappointed ones. Damn. He really would help tomorrow, though.

When Kurt walked past Finn's door to get to his room, a pile of laundry in hand, Finn promised himself five more minutes to beat his high level before he went and helped fold it. Five turned into ten with seductive ease, but then he totally got on it.

"Hey," he said when he got to Kurt's room. Kurt was halfway done folding anyway – score. "Want some help?"

"Do you have any idea how to fold socks?"

"You could teach me," Finn offered, kind of hoping Kurt wouldn't want to, because he was this close to moving up a level.

"Sure." Kurt shrugged and gestured to the bed. "Have a seat."

"Great!"

Kurt sniffed. "You don't have to do this stuff, you know. I don't mind taking care of it. Anyway, I'm aware that you're terminally incapable and probably consider it beneath your manly notice."

Finn's eyes widened. "Uh, I think you just insulted both of us." He considered. "Me twice."

"…Sorry." Kurt went back to folding socks, with exaggerated slowness now.

Finn tried his best to copy him and figure out which pile the socks went in – everyone had one pile except for Kurt, who had like three, and Finn wasn't sure if it was by material or color or what, and anyway Kurt would probably just refold the ones he did.

"My mom said I have to help you with stuff," he said eventually.

"Tragic."

"No, I… because you do too much and she says you're missing out on your childhood. Or you missed out on it already or something, I don't know. She just doesn't want you to have too much grown-up stuff to do."

"I keep trying to explain –"

"And," Finn barreled ahead, "she says I have to help because it's time for me to start growing up – like learning to take care of myself and stuff. Because I'll be going to college and getting an apartment eventually and – you know. I have to be more self-sufficient. Look, it's not like I don't like doing this stuff because it's not manly. It's kind of… too manly? It's too grown up." He thought that over. "Well, and it's super boring."

"Oh," Kurt said. "Okay, then."

"I still don't get how to fold napkins, though."

"I offer free tutorials in napkin-folding every Friday evening."

"Yeah? I'll show for that, then. Hey, um. So do you – have you ever read Peter Pan?"

"No, but I've seen the movies. Why?"

"Well, we're doing it in English right now, and some of the words were confusing me."

Kurt looked at him funny. "We have like four dictionaries in the house."

"Oh. Yeah. Right."

"I could help you out, I suppose," Kurt said. "If you want."

"That'd be pretty cool. Just with the words."

"Uh-huh."

"This is almost as sexist as the cat story," Kurt commented pleasantly, mid-chapter three.

"Keep reading." Finn poked him in the side and pulled the couch blanket up to his chin.

"That's ingratitude for you," Kurt huffed. " 'Then Wendy saw the shadow on the floor, looking so draggled, and she was frightfully sorry for Peter. "How awful!" she said, but she could not help smiling when she saw that he had been trying to stick it on with soap. How exactly like a boy!

" 'Fortunately she knew at once what to do. "It must be sewn on," she said, just a little patronisingly…' "

Kurt got halfway through chapter five before Finn fell asleep. The problem was Kurt's voice. Finn knew Kurt had a nice singing voice, but he hadn't really thought about his speaking voice aside from how it was weird and high. But when you really listened, it was sort of amazing, like it was really pretty and stuff. And it made the story more interesting, but it was also super soothing, which tricked him into the sleeping thing.

The next day they picked up where they'd left off.

The evening after that, Kurt picked his warm milk routine back up at a really inconvenient moment. It was inconvenient partially because all moments were inconvenient for warm milk, as warm milk was weird; and it was inconvenient partially because Finn was looking at something embarrassing on his laptop and Kurt totally caught him, like with a full-on view of the screen and everything. Finn was sitting with his back to the door like an idiot.

"What are you –" Kurt said, and stopped. "You still have that?" he asked quietly.

"I forgot about it," Finn lied, and shut his laptop on the swirls of color on black that had been as close as he came to being a father. "I've really got to stop looking at it," he joked, "every time I do someone comes in."

"I can go," Kurt said. "Finn, I didn't know."

"No, it's cool. I don't think about it that much anymore." That was true, mostly – just until lately. "I mean, maybe dating Quinn isn't a great combination with worrying about growing up and making decisions and college and stuff."

"I'm not sure dating Quinn is a great combination with anything," Kurt said, but smiled. "Here." He set the glass of warm milk by Finn's elbow on the desk.

There was something fundamentally wrong with milk being warm. It made him think it must have gone bad or something.

Kurt saw his dubious look and huffed, sitting down on the bed. "You know it tastes amazing. I swear you have to re-learn it every time, you're like a puppy."

"But the idea is still gross."

"Finn Hudson, I have seen you eat a sandwich made out of cold onion rings and mustard. I don't want to hear it about warm milk." Kurt looked at his shoes. "Do you ever wish… you know, that she'd really been yours?"

Finn looked at his closed laptop. "No? Yeah. I don't know. I would have to have… where would I be right now? You know? Would our parents have gotten married? Quinn could be your sister-in-law right now. You could be an uncle." Kurt laughed a little, obligingly. "I don't… I miss how I felt about her. I liked the idea of being a dad. I don't think I would have been very good at it yet, though. I can't even decide where to apply for college next year."

"You're thinking about it," Kurt said. "You plan on it. That's enough for now. Finn, we're not even done with junior year yet."

"It wouldn't be if I had a baby. I'd have to have a job, and – it's just weird. My mom worked so hard to make sure I could be a kid, and then – I was going to have to grow up overnight. But… I didn't have to, and I keep thinking, it's a good thing. Because I couldn't have handled it then." He nodded to himself. "I'm getting there now, though. I mean, I'm totally trying. I'm going to be one hundred percent more responsible."

"I'm sure you are."

Not to be totally cynical, but he might break out the fake-pregnancy scare more often if it got him this much sympathy. Kurt sounded like he might cry. Oh.

"Sorry," Finn said. "I didn't mean to dump all of this on you."

"Are you joking?"

"Uh."

"Finn, I've been trying to get you to talk to me about something meaningful ever you since we moved in here. You don't have to apologize for it."

"Oh… yeah?"

"Why do you think I take time out of my day to give you warm milk that you don't appreciate and then hang around in your room until you finish it? You don't seriously think that I'm just sitting here to take your mug down for you every time."

"No! Obviously." Finn looked very sincere. He was good at looking sincere. "So anyway, about Peter Pan…"

"Yeah, about Peter Pan." Kurt toed his shoes off and pulled his legs up to sit on the bed. "Finn, do you really have this much trouble reading? Because I don't mind helping out, but if hearing stuff out loud makes that big of a difference, we should talk to our parents about it."

"I can read okay," Finn said defensively. "Look, you don't have to help, it's just that I want to do well and some of the vocab –"

"And you do know that if you want me to read to you, you can just ask without making up excuses about needing help with insignificant words that are perfectly obvious in context."

Finn scrapped the idea of applying to spy college. "I do kind of like it. That's not super immature or anything?"

"Oh, it is," Kurt said, grinning. "Not the kind that matters, though. Finn, if there is anyone in the world who will see your innate manliness despite a few non-traditional activities, it's me."

"Okay, so." Finn picked the book up and threw it at him, but wide because Kurt sucked at catching stuff and he didn't want to knock him out with a kids' book. "Kurt, will you read to me?"

"I can do that." They were almost done with the book anyway, now, and Kurt had left a bookmark in. Finn hauled his chair over and sat down next to the bed, which Kurt had pretty well co-opted.

Kurt settled back against Finn's pillows. He was totally mushing the best one out of shape, but fair was fair. " ' "Peter," said Wendy the comforter, "I should love you in a beard;" and Mrs. Darling stretched out her arms to him, but he repulsed her.' "

Finn snuggled down into his chair, closing his eyes. He could totally see everything happening when Kurt read it; it was all different from just reading. It was more like watching a movie (but like if the screen was sort of fuzzy, because he wasn't great at imagining stuff).

" ' "Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a man."

" ' "But where are you going to live?"

" ' "With Tink in the house we built for Wendy. The fairies are to put it high up among the tree tops where they sleep at nights."

" ' "How lovely," cried Wendy so longingly that Mrs. Darling tightened her grip…' "

They finished the book before their parents had even started yelling at them about it being a school night. Kurt was starting to read funny, like he'd pause for a while in the middle of a sentence or repeat a word a few times. When he reached the end, he dropped the book onto his stomach and closed his eyes.

"That was actually super depressing," Finn whispered. "The ending, I mean."

"Mm-hm."

"We're reading The Secret Garden next."

Kurt patted his hand. "Me too, then, if you want." He opened his eyes and hauled himself up. "Right now, though, I'm going to bed."

"Okay. Hey, Kurt?" He debated five different ways of saying "goodnight" and "thank you" and "I love you" and settled on holding his fist out.

Kurt stared at it, rolled his eyes, and then gave him a fist bump. "Goodnight, Finn."