Great Expectations

Disclaimer: HA. No.

Summary: Finn expected a lot of things when it came to sharing a home with Kurt. He didn't expect his almost-stepbrother to unknowingly help him understand Rachel a little better. Kurt, on the other hand? He just wants Finn to quit getting Doritos dust in his hummus because god, that's gross. Sibling!Furt, mentions of Klaine, and diva offs in the basement. Bring it on.

When Finn had made enough amends with Kurt that it had been established that he could re-enter the Hummel household without being shot on sight, he'd admittedly had a lot of notions of how it would actually be, living there. Finn Hudson had been expecting a lot of things when it came to living with Kurt; some were true, some were not.

He'd been expecting the persnickety attitude and the fussiness, the insistence on having certain things just so. Kurt was the same way in glee club and it would have been silly to expect anything less than such at home, where it was clear that Kurt ruled the roost as easily as if he'd been doing it his whole life. Burt Hummel might have been the elder, the father, the authority, but his world revolved around his only son. Kurt might have been only sixteen but he did the vast majority of the cooking, kept the house in working order, and made sure that the bills got paid on time, so Finn figured that he might deserve the right to be boss.

Finn hadn't been able to identify with or understand Kurt's jealousies involving sharing his father until he walked in from football practice one day to find his mother standing in the living room dressed in a flowy blouse and skirt set that he hadn't ever seen before. They were flattering and pretty and unlike most of the things he knew she owned or would pick out on her own. Next to her sat Kurt on his knees, one hand holding one of the edges of the shirt to hem and the other delicately sticking in pins that made Finn wish that he was more dexterous. He hadn't expected the sudden spike of irrational annoyance or the strange urge to snatch the pins out of the other boy's hands, to stomp his foot and tell his very-very-possible-stepbrother that Carole was HIS mother and that he couldn't have her. He hadn't, though. He hadn't even moved, standing lost in the doorway until Kurt glanced up and told his mother that his father was a lucky man, and she reached down and patted his cheek.

Carole Hudson already knew better than to touch Kurt's hair.

Finn didn't continue on his way until he saw the strangest look cross the smaller boy's face; he looked lost and a little bit scared and really young and Finn felt kind of guilty for being so jealous for what he could do and Finn couldn't, even in his head.

Finn had expected Kurt's fashionable and classy clothing, but he hadn't expected any of it to rub off on him at all. He wasn't suddenly wearing jackets with lots of buttons and Doc Martens and skinny jeans and brightly colored skull scarves (he'd leave THOSE to Kurt, thank you very much), but he hadn't realized that he'd taken it to heart when Kurt tentatively peered into the room where he was sleeping and commented on a charcoal grey button up until he was putting it on the next morning and didn't know why he felt like he was standing straighter instead of slouching. The startled and genuinely pleased look on Kurt's face when he saw that he'd taken his advice was fun too, and Rachel's considering glances up and down that day hadn't hurt him in the slightest. Finn didn't quite want his almost-brother to re-do his wardrobe or anything, but he may have covertly asked for input once or twice or ten times since then. Kurt might have owned way too many pairs of expensive boots to be healthy and have a men's corset tossed in the back of his closet, but he did know what he was talking about.

Finn had expected to hear Kurt singing all the time from the basement and had sort of resigned himself to it. It wasn't that he disliked Kurt's voice or anything, but he listened to RACHEL all the time too, and she was good, but sometimes all Finn wanted was some silence or manly grunting. For now, they didn't share a room anymore for reasons already hashed out between them, but the football player hadn't expected those grey-again walls to be soundproof. It probably shouldn't have surprised him since Burt didn't seem the biggest fan of showtunes mingling with his football games but it did nonetheless, especially when he'd knocked on the door, hearing silence and then pushed it open, getting blasted in the face with a strong, crystal clear voice. He also just happened to catch Kurt dancing on his bed, singing along to A Very Potter Musical and using a Rock Band microphone stand that had somehow ended up in his room as a glorified magic wand.

It was days before Finn could see anything Hogwarts-related and not snicker to himself. It was weeks before Kurt could be convinced to leave his door unlocked when he was singing, which really was all the time.

The nice thing was that, while Kurt and Rachel almost always had a song, Rachel tended to stick to her idols and Kurt, while being as big a fan of Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland as... well, as anyone who knew who they were and liked them, had as many genres to dip into as he had creative insults, which he already possessed in spades.

The variety was nice, though, and if Finn walked by and happened to press his ear to the wall once in a while out of curiosity to see if it was a day for Evita or Beyoncé or Wicked or Panic! at the Disco, who was going to say anything? And if Finn found himself unconsciously mouthing the words the next time Rachel decided to serenade him with Broadway in the auditorium, all the better.

Finn had known that Kurt was close with Mercedes and Tina. It was hard to miss even from the front row in glee. It was even harder to miss from the front row in glee when he didn't so much as see them but hear them laughing and talking in the back row, Tina alternating her attentions from her friends to Mike, with whom she kept her fingers firmly laced. Finn HADN'T known that Kurt had become close to Brittany and Santana and Quinn as well from joining the Cheerios, and it had been an extremely awkward situation to burst into Kurt's room (without knocking, of course) to find the whole gaggle of them, including his ex-girlfriend that he was extremely sensitive about still, curled up together on the bed, using each other as cushions and giggling like middle schoolers.

He couldn't do anything but stare when Santana, prickly, vicious, hellbitch Santana reached over and tweaked Kurt on the cheek before catching a retaliatory pillow in the shoulder from the indignant boy, and Finn decided that it was definitely time to leave before something bad happened or he got noticed. That was, of course, right before Brittany leaned over and, ignoring Kurt's extremely vocal protests that yes, he was still most definitely Capital G, began to drop kisses behind his ear and Finn DEFINITELY had to leave.

At least before he died of that strange mix of horror and envy.

Finn didn't notice when he began to watch how his friends acted in club, how they spoke and smiled at each other and bumped shoulders and leaned on each other without hesitation. Even icy Quinn spared smiles that would have otherwise been rare. It was a shock when he realized that while Kurt maintained close friendships with almost all of the glee girls, he hadn't once shown his face when Finn and the guys were playing games together in the living room. It was worse when he realized that through the countless sleepovers, he'd never seen Rachel down in that basement with the rest of them.

He asked once, just once. Kurt had nearly spat out the mouthful of orange juice he'd been drinking but had never answered.

The silence had almost been more telling than any words could have been.

Kurt hadn't known quite what he was getting into, living with two extra people, one of whom he still wasn't quite sure where he stood with. It'd be like pulling teeth to admit it, but in his weaker moments, he'd grudgingly acknowledge that he'd definitely had some set ideas on how things were going to go, and that quite a few of them had been wrong.

He'd been expecting the messiness and carefree attitude from Finn and he was generally proven right on that front. It was how he acted in school and glee club and it was how he sang, and really, how could he be anything other than what he was? Kurt got simple and he got confused looks at words over four syllables and he got way too many freaking socks that were definitely not his mixed up in his laundry and if it happened one more time, he was going to staple them to the other boy's lampshade and laugh when he found out.

Kurt hadn't expected to spend the first month half terrified out of his mind. The apology had been nice and being defended had been even nicer, but if he thought too long about it, it all came down to that word and Kurt really couldn't risk hearing that again from him. He forgave, yes, but forget? It'd take getting clobbered in the head with a baseball bat to forget that. For weeks, he kept his eyes down and his voice low. Civil, but not friendly. His misguided crush had withered and died the second that word came out of Finn's mouth, but he had to make sure that it was clear. It was dead and it would never be resurrected and Kurt knew that it was for the best but thinking too long left a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach that he only got when one of the jocks had him pinned up against the lockers and he knew that it'd be a while before he would be comfortable sharing a room again, though Finn couldn't stay on the pull-out in the office for much longer. The shopping trip with Carole had been a fantastic distraction and being able to alter clothing to flatter her even more than it already did was a fun challenge that he'd been excited to take on, and a knot he hadn't known he'd had loosened when the woman who would likely become family smiled down at him and brushed her knuckles gently against his cheek.

Finally, he'd been able to smile back.

Kurt had expected things to eventually reach a point where he'd have to do SOMETHING, but he hadn't expected it to come about due to a shirt. It was a simple thing, really. His probably-very-soon-to-be-stepbrother had somehow managed to not only get socks mixed in but a shirt as well. Scowling and about to dive into a particularly glorious rant about keeping track of one's own things and how it was something to be learned at six and not sixteen, Kurt stopped, before finally reaching out and fluffing the wrinkles out of the garment, hanging it on a hanger and just looking at it. The tags were still attached, though wrinkled and fragile after going through the washer and Kurt knew that it had never been worn, yet somehow ended up in the laundry. Eventually, Kurt had extended a hand to rub the fabric between his fingers. Not bad, and it was stitched well and would likely hang well, darting in where it should.

Later, he'd taken the shirt and knocked on Finn's closed door, half-hoping that the other boy wouldn't be in there. He'd hesitated in the doorway before finally coming in and setting the shirt on the pull-out, commenting on how it was a good color for him and that it looked like it would fit well, before scrambling out as fast as his pride let him. Scrambling for Kurt Hummel was still a strut, given away only by the fact that his hands were laced together behind his back to hide the slight tremors and that generally, he didn't walk at the speed of an average jog back down to his basement.

Kurt really hadn't meant to smile when Finn came into the kitchen the next morning wearing that dark grey button-up, and he couldn't help the slightly smug tilt of his lips behind the shock that yes, he'd been absolutely on the money.

Kurt had expected Finn to have terrible eating habits, and he was wrong. They weren't terrible, they were absolutely atrocious. Chips everywhere, all the time, and there was almost always a fast food bag that had been forgotten on the counter and Kurt eventually took to balling them up, hunting down his wayward housemate, and pelting him in the head with them. Sometimes there was even more than one, and he ended up getting a do-over if he happened to miss the first time. Unfortunately, Finn was rarely as intimidated by Kurt's special brand of senseless violence as he ought to have been and tended to just laugh about it, before dipping a dorito into Kurt's organic hummus that he'd gotten from Whole Foods and sending the younger boy into a tirade of really long words and angry hand gestures that all came out to mean something along the lines of 'If that dip tastes even the slightest bit like overprocessed fake cheese cardboard, your ass is mine and I will flush your decapitated head down Noah Puckerman's toilet.'

Burt had once walked in on one of those rants but had only stood there for a brief moment, listening as his son raved and spewed his vitriol to a way-too-chill-to-be-human Finn, before shaking his head and walking away. He'd decided to not even pretend to understand how those two boys worked, but he had a feeling it had a lot to do with Finn not knowing half the words coming out of Kurt's mouth and Kurt getting more and more annoyed at the amused and slightly dopey smile on the taller boy's face.

Kurt was used to having girls over. He and Mercedes had been having regular sleepovers for what SEEMED like forever and Tina had been added to the mix in the last year, but not even he had anticipated how joining the Cheerios would affect his relationships with the other girls in club. Suddenly, his best girls and the cheerleaders could be civil, even relatively FRIENDLY with one another, at least in the confines of his bedroom. Kurt likened it to a metaphorical Switzerland, a neutral zone that provided both chocolate and really good manicures to the wild beasts he called his friends. It was a good thing, even if Brittany didn't seem to understand that being gay meant that her kisses and touches meant nothing to him other than being kind of embarrassing, and why did she insist on doing it to him in front of everyone, anyway?

Living with Finn meant that his home was no longer a girls only environment. Suddenly, there were guys piled up in the living room playing video games half the time and Kurt found himself hiding away in the basement whenever they were over. He wasn't afraid of Finn, nor was he afraid of Puck, or even remotely intimidated by Mike Chang or Sam and he was never frosty, but never tried to integrate himself into their group. Kurt knew very well where he stood and didn't show so much as a hair of himself when other members of the sports teams were over as well. This was his home, his haven, the only place he ever felt safe even when that word had torn the safety right out of it, and Kurt would hide before risking that safety.

Finn asked him one day why Rachel never came over even though it felt like all of the glee girls wound up in his room, and Kurt had been so startled that he nearly had to spit out his orange juice. The look in the other boy's face was genuinely curious, and Kurt found that he couldn't give the real reason, choosing instead to tilt his head slightly and furrow his brows, before dropping the topic.

Not even the neutrality of Switzerland would have been enough to prevent the bloodbath of Rachel Berry entering the delicate rapport that had somehow managed to be built up between unlikely people, and that was something he couldn't bring himself to risk.

Not now.

Finn had a lot to be guilty for and felt like the shittiest brother ever for not expecting Kurt to have nightmares, and an even shittier one for taking so long to notice them. They were back to sharing a room again, after Kurt had insisted that it was fine and it had been relatively smooth thus far, minus some blow-ups on Kurt's part for crumbs on his pristine carpeting. The fact that he hadn't seen Kurt eat anything more substantial than yogurt or a bowl of leaves in he didn't even know how long should have more than tipped him off and it hadn't. Suddenly, Kurt's already precious iPhone became even more of a fixture of him, and it wasn't uncommon for Kurt to be texting in glee instead of singing.

The kicker had been The Call.

2:45 was a terrible time to need to get up and get a drink, but the body wanted what the body wanted, and Finn still had his face buried in his pillow, considering sleepily just how bloody his death would be if Kurt caught him drinking orange juice from the carton. A rustling noise from the other bed caught his attention, and Finn cracked open an eye to see Kurt sit up in bed, clutching his phone as if it were the only thing that mattered in the world.

The younger boy's voice was low and intense and no louder than a whisper, but Finn very easily caught the words that shook him up more than he'd ever admit.

"Blaine…Blaine, I don't know what to do. I can't keep doing this. No one knows, and no one cares. I feel like I'm breaking all the time and no one can tell." Silence as the person on the other end responded. Kurt sniffed and raised a hand to his face and Finn was horrified to see that oh my god Kurt was crying and he looked so young and hurt. "Yeah… I'm sorry, I should let you get to sleep. It's just that—yeah, I remember. Thank you for being there."

Thank you for being there.

Like this Blaine kid was the only person Kurt could trust in the world. And apparently was, because if Burt or Mercedes knew that something had happened to make Kurt cry like this, they'd have been on a double-teaming, world-burning rampage to make things right for him.

"No, go—go to sleep. You don't have to…" Kurt trailed off and the room descended into silence. Finn listened intently, and could just barely make out a tune coming from the telephone, a voice he didn't know, singing to the boy who would become his brother. Kurt shuddered and curled in on himself, covering his mouth with a hand to stifle what sounded like sobs coming from his throat. Eventually, all sounds died. Kurt quieted and Finn knew that he was finally asleep, and it was more than twenty minutes longer before the faceless voice on the other end trailed off as well.

For the first time since…ever, really, Finn woke up first the next morning. Curious, he wandered over to the edge of Kurt's bed, peering down at him. The sleeping boy's eyes were rimmed with red and his phone had fallen out of his grip in the night. Finn took a closer look at it, curious.

The call was still going.

Kurt knew that a breakup of Finchel was an inevitable thing. Sad, yes, because he was exceedingly fond of his stepbrother and could be fond of Rachel when he didn't want to stuff a sock in her mouth, but inevitable. He knew full well that the entirety of New Directions apparently ran off of drama (except for him, of course. Kurt ran on non-fat frozen yogurt and coffee and double-breasted jackets.) and that when nothing was going down, it meant that something bad was coming.

It didn't make him feel any less sympathetic though, when he walked through the doors one weekend after the drive from Dalton and Finn was sitting on the couch, head in his hands, looking closer to tears than Kurt had ever seen him. There was a bag of chips next to him, and it was unopened and that was only one more sign that something had gone down, something bad.

"Hey, dude," the taller boy greeted miserably, and for once Kurt didn't rebuke him for the second forbidden word.

"Hey yourself," he replied, setting down his bag and making his way over, seating himself delicately on the couch next to him and crossing his legs. "Why so down?"

Finn muttered something unintelligible and Kurt tilted his head, cupping a hand around his ear in a 'repeat that, please' gesture.

"I said, I broke up with Rachel."

Kurt froze, unsurprised but still rather shocked. Not that they broke up because that was nothing new, but because he had clearly broken up with her this time, and the last time they spoke, he'd been so disgustingly smitten with her that only a few well-planned mentions of Blaine had stopped it.

"Do you…want to talk about it?" Kurt ventured with another head tilt, and wasn't surprised when Finn shook his head.

"I don't really want to," he said quietly, hands laced in his lap. The younger boy glanced over to eye the unopened chip bag before turning his focus back to his brother, reaching out and patting his hands.

"You want me to make you something to eat? You not being a vacuum cleaner is a little scary for me."

"I don't really want anything…"

"Hold that thought," Kurt said suddenly, getting to his feet and making his way into the kitchen. He rummaged around in the fridge for a brief moment, before grabbing the tub of brown paste that he'd been looking for and returning to the living room. Silently, he removed the top and plopped the package of hummus into Finn's lap, grabbing the bag of Doritos, ripping it open, and handing those over too. "Here. For all your whining that hummus is too beige and too healthy, don't think I haven't noticed that you actually like it. Go ahead, defile it with your cardboard."

Not thirty seconds later, Finn was half sobbing into his snack and Kurt had scooted closer to squeeze his shoulders, tsk'ing appropriately at the garbled words he could barely understand stumbling out of the other boy.

"Why is it always Puck?" he finally spat, sadness twisting into anger, something Kurt was equally less equipped to deal with but also less heart wrenching. "Every damn time. It's ALWAYS him."

"I don't know, Finn. I wish I could tell you."

"I don't know what to do. I l-love…loved her. Love her. I don't even know any more. Should I go fix things?"

"Fix things meaning apologize for her wronging you and go back to being the king and queen of Coupledom? Maybe…" Kurt began, voice low and soft as if he were speaking to a stray cat or the little yellow warbler in his cage by the door, "Maybe you ought to try the singles club for a little while. Sort yourself out first, and then focus on other people. Breakups hurt. Hell, they hurt even if you're not even in a relationship," What Kurt dubbed his I'm Going To Be Alone Forever Blaine Twinge went off in his stomach and he continued, "It's okay that you're mad and sad. Just feel how you feel, you don't owe anyone anything for that."

And suddenly he was being grabbed in a tight grip and Finn had buried his face in his shoulder. Kurt returned the hug, absently removing the food from danger of the being ground into the carpet by accident, rubbing the boy's back with hands more used to comforting his girlfriends instead of his brother.

"My girlfriends always cheat on me with Puck and there has to be something wrong with me because the only thing I'm good at is football and half the time not even that. Hell, I can't even be a half-decent brother when all that shit was going down with YOU when you're awesome to me and-"

"You hush up," Kurt said sternly, knowing full well how ridiculous this conversation was, the entire living room smelling like fake cheese and he being squashed under a giant, "For what it's worth, you're a good brother. You know how you were all set to mess up Karofsky's face for effing with me after you pulled your head out of your butt? Right now, I want to go pay a visit to Rachel Berry, bitch slap her, and then go cut off all of Puckerman's jeans at the thighs because god knows I can't beat him down physically."

"You are a really good brother."

Finn's voice was muffled from somewhere around his shoulder and Kurt sighed, the side of his lips involuntarily quirking up.

"Yes, yes. We're BOTH good. Now let go for a second, tonight calls for pizza and you're lucky, I'm feeling generous and might let you pick toppings if there are no pairs of holey boxers encroaching on my side of the room."

The other boy was off like a shot and down the stairs before Kurt could even take out his phone.

AN: And then everyone ate pizza. Please read and review! I gracefully accept both compliments and constructive crits.