Honey And Nut Meg

-xOx-

Warnings: Light swearing, Klaine shipping by a non-Klaine shipper, and an authors first attempt at a bit of angst. Reader discretion is advised, especially about the latter warning!

Spoilers: Mentions heavily about about 'Theatricality' from season 1, and 'Duets' from season 2, but as a general rule of mine, I'll say, to be safe, everything from the pilot onwards.

Disclaimer: I don't own Glee, Chris Colfer or Cory Monteith. I do own a killer recipe for warm Honey and Nut-Meg milk.

-xOx-

Finn smiled as he accepted the mug of warm milk from Kurt. The countertenor held his own mug to his chest as he sat down on the couch next to Finn, tucking his legs up under him. Finn grabbed the remote from beside him and hit the button to turn the television off. They were sat in Finn's room on the couch that use to be in Kurt's room in the old house. Since Finn had a single bed, the couch could fit, and it already had a large Finn-shaped dent where the teen had claimed his spot.

The taller teen sipped at his drink and sighed in satisfaction, the whatever sort of spices Kurt had added tasting delicious, Finn guessed cinnomon. "Dude, you have to tell me how you make this."

Kurt clicked his tongue. "Absolutely not, trade secret. Besides, you wouldn't be able to make it anyway, remember when you did try to make it?"

Finn grimaced at the memory of the boiling milk overflowing onto the gas burner. "Well, all the more reason to tell me how to make it" he answered with a sheepish grin.

Kurt just rolled his eyes and changed the subject, starting to talk about his summer plans with Mercedes. The two friends were making up for lost time and had been spending so much time together, Mercedes even having stayed over all week last week. The two diva's were writing a musical about some chick named Pippa, whom Kurt would always refer to as 'the better sister'. Finn listened to his brother with a smile, the unguarded, goofy Kurt that hardly anyone saw.

When Kurt's phone beeped with a new message, Finn waited patiently as his brother checked his phone, a huge smile and blush spreading across the elfin boys face as he typed a reply to whomever had text him. Finn had a fair idea of who the message had been from, and he turned to face Kurt with a curious smile. "Was that from Blaine?"

Kurt coughed and nodded his head. "Yeah" he replied, not looking up at Finn, the red tint still staining his cheeks.

Finn tilted his head as the phone beeped again and Kurt checked it, his blush increasing. Realisation dawned on Finn and he arched a brow at his innocent little (but older) brother. Could the sweet, demure Kurt Hummel be sexting? Finn smiled and waited for Kurt to finished typing before swiftly snatching the phone out of Kurt's hands.

Kurt let out a small yelp and tried to wrestle the phone out of Finn's large hands with no success. Finn chuckled as he tried his best to flick through the contents of Kurt's phone to find the messages. He easily help Kurt at arms length as he scrolled through the messages, ignoring Kurt's protests and threats of itching powder.

He read over the firs message and frowned. "The spaces between my fingers are right where yours fit perfectly?" Finn questioned as he read the message.

Kurt huffed and tried again to swat Finn;s never-ending limb away from him. "You're an ass, Finnigan!"

"And you wrote back 'That's the cheesiest, yet poignantly beautiful thing ever. xoxox Kurt'?" Finn continued, his frown increasing. "What the hell is this? And what does poignantly mean? What an ugly word"

"It is none of your business, now give me-"

"Then he wrote back 'Poignantly beautiful is just another way of pronouncing Kurt Hummel. ILY babe'? What the shit kind of sexting is this?" Finn exclaimed, handing the phone back to Kurt.

Kurt gasped and snatched his phone back. "We were not sexting you moronic buffoon!" Kurt spat, disgusted at the idea, "What on Earth gave you that grotesque idea?"

Finn shrugged his shoulders and scratched at his head. "Dude, you were all blushing and stuff, like you were texting dirty shit to each other. And what does grotesque mean? That's another ugly word."

Kurt pinched the bridge of his nose. "You're such an ignoramus sometimes, I swear."

"Aww, well you love me anyway" Finn teased.

"Unfortunately that is true." Kurt sighed, but gave Finn a small smile. "And love is what you were so insensitively reading, not tainted sexts. Believe it or not, Blaine and I have a much deeper relationship than most. Unbelievably, it's not always all about sex with us. We like the romance of it all, sweet nothings that show us how much we love each other. That will always be more sexy to me than any poorly described way of Blaine telling me how good he would give it to me, or any form of deranged and hilarious anatomical metaphors."

"I absorbed about 20% of that" Finn said, blinking at his brother to try to clear his confusion away.

Kurt huffed and sent a quick message off on his phone. "So what were we talking about before all of this?" he asked.

Finn shrugged. "Something about Mercedes and Blaine finally seeing eye-to-eye."

"Oh yeah" Kurt said, "Well, she just had to realise how much Blaine was like me. We're practically the same person, we have so much in common it's outstanding. It turned out though, Mercedes was only holding Blaine at arms length because she was threatened by his presence as both my boyfriend and my friend. Things between Cedes and I have been rocky ever since last summer, and with me having gone to Dalton for half the year this year, she was feeling a little put out. But, like I said, she only had to look passed that, then she was able to see how amazing he was, and how amazing he was for me, for her to be happy."

Finn smiled, both at the 360 his brother had taken, from being angry at the phone thing to just jumping into conversation animatedly. And he smiled because of what Kurt was saying, about Blaine and Mercedes getting along. It had been an awkward Friday Night Dinner last Friday night when the two had barely said a word to each other at the dinner table.

He also smiled at the fact that Kurt was right, he and Blaine were like the same person. They were both singers, thriving on performing. They were family men, fierce protectors of people they loved. They had the same sense of humor, musical tastes and preferences in movies. Sure they had differences, such as personal style and the fact that Blaine loved sports still surprised Finn, but they were so compatible it was scary.

"Why did you ever crush on me?" Finn asked before he could think about it.

Kurt froze mid-way from taking a sip of his drink. He blinked at Finn and cleared his throat. "What?"

Finn shrugged his shoulders. "It just seems like I'm just not your type, you know? We barely have anything in common" he said, "Just now, thinking about how much you and Blaine are together, makes me wonder why you ever crushed on me."

Kurt tilted his head in thought, debating on whether to answer his brothers question or divert the conversation elsewhere. It was still a sore subject for both boys, but Kurt the most. He had been humiliated and hurt by the whole ordeal. And Finn, nor anyone else for that matter, really truly knew the real answer behind the question. Kurt himself had made sure of that, but this was the first time he had been asked straight-up, and the two boys had made a vow to each other to be honest with each other.

"Honest answer?" the countertenor asked hesitantly.

"Always" Finn nodded.

Kurt took a calming breath and placed his mug down on the table in front of him. "It actually had little to do with you really. I mean, don't get me wrong, you are attractive in a sort of adorable puppy kind of way, and you have the popularity and likability factor working for you, but those things were never what I was attracted to. The reason for my crushing on you had more to do with how everyone else treated me, and how you treated me, than anything."

Finn leant in, curious. "What do you mean?"

"I never was able to get away from anything, no matter what I did. I was completely ignored half the time, as if I were invisible. The other half of the time, I was the biggest target, ridiculed and bullied by everyone, people who didn't even know me. You experienced a little bit of it when you and Quinn went through the whole baby-gate thing, but that's not even close to what I've been through. To be ostracized for something I cannot control, something that is as natural to me as writing with your left hand is for you. Something so asinine as having an attraction to people of the same gender as me, is so so difficult. To be pushed around and shoved into lockers and called cruel names all my life by people who don't know me at all is both humiliating and hurtful."

"Wow" Finn said, for lack of anything better to say.

He knew Kurt was right, the slushies and the whispered words he and Quinn had received during the baby-gate incident sounded like child's play compared to what Kurt was describing. He grimaced at the thought of how he use to be one of those people that Kurt was talking about. He also grimaced at the part about Kurt's homosexuality being natural to him, because if there was anything that Finn had learnt from having Kurt as a brother, was that being gay was just as natural as being straight.

"I can't count how many scars in the shape of locker dials I've had, how many clothes have been torn or ruined by frozen corn-syrup" Kurt continued, completely absorbed in the conversation as he often did, "That kind of stuff is what I dealt with on a daily basis since I was 8 years old. So when, in freshman year, you stopped Puckerman and told him off for shoving me into the locker? I saw a glimmer of hope. Then the football team threw pee balloons at me on my front doorstep. And do you know what I saw then, in my disgusted urine-soaked heartbreak?"

Finn bit his lip nervously. "What?" he asked.

"That same glimmer hope" Kurt answered, eliciting a small sigh of relief from Finn. "I looked up just before the first balloon hit me and saw you standing back, the only one without any balloons in your hand. I saw you standing there and I thought that maybe some people weren't out to hurt me or degrade me. That some people, that you, could possibly care about me. Then you started holding my belongings before I was tossed into the dumpster, and for me, that was literally like you were my knight in shining armor."

"So it was more like a hero-worshipping?" Finn asked.

"You could say that. The fact that you did those things for me was such a relief to me. The fact that one person out of 600 odd students and faculty, cared enough to hold my jacket before throwing me away into the trash, felt to me like you had given me a bunch of roses. For once in my life since my mom died, apart from my father, I felt like someone was on my side."

"That's really messed up thinking, dude" Finn said with a frown.

He hadn't set out to protect Kurt in any way back then, truth be told. He had only done it out of some moral code to himself. But hearing Kurt tell him how much that had meant to him? That tore at the taller jocks heart-strings.

"It is, and I knew that" Kurt replied. "I just wanted to be close to you though, because of it. I literally had no one, and I wanted so badly for that not to be the case. I wanted...to be able to say 'hello' to someone, to ask how their day was, and I thought that that someone could have been you. When Glee Club happened, I finally got that with Mercedes and Tina" Kurt said wistfully.

"But I thought you knew them before Glee."

"I knew them, but we were never friends. Tina and I went to elementary and middle school together, but we had barely spoken 4 words to each other. And Mercedes...I used to hear her crack comments about me, mainly about my pale skin or small teeth or strange nose. It wasn't until we started in Glee that they realised what a fabulous person I am" Kurt said with a small chuckle, trying to ease some of the thick tension that had developed above them.

"Wow" Finn said, again, for lack of anything else to say.

Kurt shrugged and continued. "When we got 12 members, that's actually the time when I began to crush on you. And even then, it was about everyone else. It just seemed that everyone had a boyfriend or a girlfriend, or was actually allowed to like someone without it being condemned. You were with Quinn but liked Rachel. Quinn was with you but liked Puck. Puck was with Santana, and with Brittany, but liked Quinn. Tina had Artie. Matt and Santana had a thing, as did Brittany and Mike, as did Santana and Brittany. I was by myself, and couldn't even like anyone because people thought it was wrong."

"But what about Mercedes? She didn't have anyone."

Kurt sighed. "After Sectionals last year, her and Matt began dating secretly. She didn't even tell me officially until he transferred, but I saw them together at a mall holding hands and sharing a smoothie." At Finn;s questioning stare, Kurt shook his head as he said "Mercedes doesn't share."

"Oh." Finn nodded at that assessment. He shook his head and waved his hand to spur Kurt on. "So you only started crushing on me because you were lonely?"

"That too, but mostly because you let me like you."

"Huh?" Finn asked, confused.

Kurt nodded. "If I had of liked Puck, that would have ended in several broken bones. I didn't know enough about Matt and Mike to crush on them, and Artie and I had build up a comfortable kinship. You were different though, you were safe. And let's be honest Finn, you knew I liked you for a long time."

Finn nodded at that. "I did. It was pretty obvious."

"That was a part of the reason why your words hurt me so much during that whole Theatricality week last year, and they still hurt a little to this day. Not just the words you said during 'the incident' in the basement, but a lot of your words you said to me during that whole week."

Finn grimaced and bit his lip again. "You know that I'm terribly sorry for all of that, right?"

Kurt smiled and nodded. "I know, and that's behind us now. But the reason why it hurt so so much, was because you knew how much I liked you a long time before that happened."

Kurt paused and took a sip of his drink, as did Finn. He was confused at the reason why him knowing Kurt liked him had made 'the incident' hurt so badly. When Kurt looked down at his hands and started wringing his fingers nervously, Finn frowned and cleared his throat. "Kurt?" he prompted gently.

The countertenor looked up and Finn's heart broke at the watery eyes of his brother, the blue/green/grey whatever that color was called, glimmering from beneath as two stray tears fell down his cheek. Finn scooted over a little closer and grabbed Kurt's shoulder softly, squeezing his reassurances as best he could. Whatever it was that Kurt wasn't saying must be weighing the boy down, that much Finn could see.

Kurt scrubbed at his cheek and nose before sniffing. "Sorry" he said shakily before coughing to clear his throat. "It's just...it's...the things you said to me when I tried to sing with Sam? That cut me so deep, and it plays into why I still hurt from 'the incident'."

"Which part of what I said to you about Sam?" Finn asked, internally running through what he remembered saying to Kurt back then.

"The part that really got to me was when you said...when you said that you didn't have a problem with me being gay, it's that you had a problem with me not knowing that no means no." Finn's heart clenched tightly at both the thing that he said, and the choke that Kurt gave at the end. "The fact that one, you would think of me in such a way? As if I were out to...you made it sound so sinister, like I wanted to...it just hurt so much."

Kurt wiped at the tears that had started to fall at the memory. He remembered vividly, feeling like he had just fallen from a high distance, when Finn had said that to him, especially in a crowded room full of people who already looked at Kurt like he wanted to molest them. The thought made him sick actually, and he had run to the bathroom straight after Finn had left that day and thrown up.

Finn internally face-palmed and felt a tear fall from his own eye. "I am so incredibly sorry about that, Kurt. I had...I admit that I was being selfish then, trying to get Sam to feel safe in the Glee Club. I was stupid, and I'm so sorry for saying that" he apologised sincerely.

Kurt smiled sadly and placed a hand on Finn's hand. "Thank you, I appreciate you apologising."

Finn flipped his hand over and squeezed Kurt's hand. "Why did that make 'the incident' hurt more?" he asked.

Kurt sighed again. "Well, how I said that you were the safest person to like? I admit that I threw myself at you, I wasn't at all subtle, it's never been my thing" he said bitter-sweetly, earning a small smile from Finn who nodded in agreement at that, "But anyway, I know I may have crossed a few boundaries in my attempts at getting closer to you, but I feel like you let me."

Finn tilted his head on confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Just that...and I'm not laying blame on you at all, ok? But, I just felt like you kind of let me throw myself at you, let me fall into lust with you, or the idea of you. I felt like," he sighed, pausing a few a second before continuing, "I felt like you strung me along" he finished in a whisper.

Finn stopped and thought back to last year at he peak of the whole ordeal. He remembered joining Glee Club and starting to have feelings for Rachel. He remembered the news with Quinn, and how much of a mess he was through the whole thing. His crumbling friendship with Puck, and with the rest of the football team and student body of McKinley High who no longer saw him as the untouchable Quarterback, resulting in his dwindling popularity as he became the Glee Club loser who got his girlfriend knocked up. He remembered feeling helpless as he lost Quinn to Puck, and confused as he grew more attached to Rachel.

He remembered calling Kurt one night to ask for some fashion advice for his first date with Rachel. He remembered the first duets challenge when he and Kurt had to team up, and he remembered Kurt giving him some much needed advice about the baby, and how to cope with the stress. He remembered when Kurt's was on the football team, how he would encourage not only him, but all the other players too, even though he didn't like any of them. He had run into the countertenor a few handfuls of times, out of school grounds and the two boys had chatted cordially, even letting Kurt shout a drink or treat.

Looking back on it, Finn didn't really see how all of that amounted to leading Kurt on. But then he remembered Kurt's way of thinking back then, how he saw some kind of halo above the head of a guy who held his jacket while he was thrown into a dumpster. How Kurt had admitted to hero-worshipping him for it. As messed up as that kind of thinking was, that was how Kurt thought when he felt like the world was against him, when he had no one in his corner.

A startling realisation hit Finn over the head and he bit his lip in concentration. His words to Kurt, about not knowing that no meant no. Finn realised that not once did he ever so no to Kurt's advice or actions or advances. He changed the subject, or played it off, or, admittedly, played along. He had never once said no, he had never once called Kurt out, not until it was too late. He had never shied away from the attention from Kurt, and that, to Kurt, was all the permission he needed after being shunned and pushed away his entire life. The thought actually made Finn whimper out loud.

He squeezed Kurt's hand tightly as he let tears fall from his eyes. "I am so so sorry! You're...you're absolutely right. I never thought...dude!"

Kurt squeezed Finn's hand back and cried along with his brother. The let their sobs escape, clutching to each others hands like a lifeline as they let the pain and confusion and clarification seep away. Slowly, as they cried it out, it felt like massive weights had been lifted off of both boys chests.

As their tears subsided, Kurt wiped at his cheeks and nose with the back of his sleeve. "Well this has been some hell of a lady-chat."

Finn gave a shaky laugh, as did Kurt. "You and your warm milk always seem to lull us into long deep and meaningful discussions."

Kurt nodded and sniffed. "It's the honey and nutmeg I add that gives it that soothing effect."

"That's how you make it!" Finn exclaimed happily, though his voice was still a little shaky.

Kurt laughed though he placed a hand over his eyes and shook his head. "You roped me into that one Finnigan! Well played boy, well played."

Finn beamed and wiped at his cheek with one hand as he picked up his forgotten mug with the other. He sipped at the now cold drink and sighed at the delicious taste. "Yup, honey and nutmeg. Don't know why I didn;t realise it sooner."

"Because you're an idiot Finn, that's why. Also, that was disgusting, it's cold now!" Kurt exclaimed as he stood up and grabbed both mugs. "I'll go make us some fresh ones, and see if I can rustle up some left-overs."

"Dude, I once ate a week-old grilled cheese. I've had a lot of disgusting things in my mouth."

Kurt threw his head back and laughed as he made his way towards the bedroom door. "To many jokes with that one Finn."

Finn just shrugged and threw his feet up on the table and leant back into the couch. Kurt opened the door with his foot somehow, and stepped over the threshold out ino the hallway. Just as he was about to turn to walk away, Finn sat up with a smile. "Hey Krut?"

The smaller teen turned around with a smile, eyes red as his cheeks. "Hmm?"

"I'm glad we talked about this" he said, gesturing in between them two and the couch, "I feel much better now."

Kurt nodded, his smile growing a little bigger. "Me too, Finn."

"And Kurt?"

"Hmm?"

Finn beamed at his brother. "I love you."

Kurt beamed at his brother. "I love you too, Finn."

-xOx-

A/N: If this is terribly formatted, I apologize profusely. I'm writing this on my iPad and did all the formatting to the best of my ability, so i hope it worked. This little one-shot was inspired by a few things. 1) It's my brothers birthday, and I left his house a few hours ago feeling inspired to write something brotherly, and since I hardcore ship Furt brotherness, I thought it the perfect fit. 2) No shit, I came out to my mum when I was 14 over a mug or warm Honey and Nut-Meg milk, and the notion of having these amazingly insightful conversations with various family members always seemed to happen over vodka or warm Honey and Nut-Meg milk. I aint even gonna mention a certain cousin of mine who dashes his warm Honey and Nut-Meg milk with vodka...

Another reason to write this was to try my hand at a semi-angst kind of story. I think it turned out more Hurt/Comfort than Angst, but I'm quite proud of it for my first try at something non-fluff, not-smut or non-supernatural. Also, I don't ship Klaine, but because I wanted this to be canon, it has mentions of Klaine. I hope it doesn't sound anti-Klaine in any way, because that was not my intention. Will you let me know what you thought?