Work Text:
For Glee Family fic week on tumblr: Teresa Anderson preparing her songs for their first performance at the Anderson family BBQ
“Cooper Jay Anderson, if you do not stop complaining and behave, I swear to god!” Teresa Anderson shouts at her 14 year old son, who stands across from her with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face.
“Mom, it’s not fair of you to make me perform with a four year old! Blaine can hardly freakin’ walk without falling over!” Cooper uses his index finger to push his little brother who stumbles with a shriek.
“Mama! Cooper pushed me!”
“Cooper, leave your brother alone! Now, 5, 6, 7, 8!”
Teresa presses play on the boombox she has sitting on the table in the yard. She watches as her boys run through a series of steps, nothing too complicated, just a couple of steps to the side and back, as “Rio” by Duran Duran plays in the background. Blaine’s steps are small and a bit clumsy, and he furrows his brow in concentration as he tries to keep up with his brother.
“Again, Mama! I wanna do it again!” Blaine says, excited, “I think I almost got it.”
“Seriously, it’s not that hard, maybe if you weren’t a baby, you would have figured it out already,” Cooper complains.
“I’m not a baby! I’m a big boy! I’m going to big boy school next year. You’re a meanie!” Blaine crosses his arm and scowls at his brother.
“I don’t have time for this, he’s never going to get this, why do we have to include him?”
“Because it’s the Anderson FAMILY BBQ, that includes your brother?”
Cooper raises an eyebrow, “Then how come Dad’s not out here?”
“Because your father is tone deaf and has two left feet. Now, are you going to stop complaining or do you want to go to your room until dinner? And let me remind you that if you choose option number two, your Playstation will be going into Blaine’s room until you fix your attitude.”
“What? Mom that’s not fair! He scratches my games!”
“Cooper, if life was fair, everyone would be as talented as we are.”
Teresa is talented. She’s not sure where she got her talent from, but she’s always been really good at things; it just comes easy to her. Every instrument she’s ever picked up, she’s learned rather quickly. She plays piano, guitar, violin and french horn. She sings well, she’s a decent dancer. She was debate champion in high school. She won a Statewide Spelling Bee as a kid. She was well on her way to professional tennis career when a knee injury forced her to give it up.
She’s attracted to skill and intelligence, which is why she was instantly attracted to Charles Anderson when she met him in the Library during her first week at Ohio State. He can’t sing to save his life, and he has two left feet, but what he lacks in musical talent, he makes up for with his wit, determination and his impressive photographic memory. She never thought she’d fall in love with a math/science nerd, but as they say, life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. Instead of the life she imagined for herself, a home on the West Coast filled with medals and tennis trophies, Teresa finds herself happily settled in Lima, Ohio, owner of Kakaiba Events--an event planning company she started with her sister-- and the mother of two sons.
Her sons are talented, too, and their talent was apparent at a very young age. Which is why she’s spent the last four days choreographing a show stopping performance for their yearly Fourth of July Barbeque.
She and Charles started throwing these barbeques when Cooper was young as a way to make friends in the neighborhood and find playmates for Cooper. The neighbors would bring their kids to play on the large jungle gym in their backyard, while the adults took advantage of their pool.
They’d never intended to have more than one child, but one summer while on vacation in Hawaii, Teresa and Charles got sloppy, and that resulted in her big eyed, precocious baby boy Blaine. Cooper was not excited about the sudden addition to the family, going as far as suggesting they put Blaine up for adoption. Trying to get him to willingly spend time with his brother has gotten increasingly difficult as he’s gotten older. They’d gone as far as making Cooper take Blaine to some of his lessons, which lead to Cooper losing Blaine in the mall one day. Frankly, Teresa and Charles had run out of ideas.
That is until one of Teresa’s clients invited her to their Oscar party one evening a few months ago. The clients were a gay couple who hired her to plan a lavish and over the top party for their daughter’s fifth birthday, and called her again to help plan their annual Oscar party. Their daughter was a year older than Blaine and was apparently very talented, having competed in pageants since she was a toddler.
It was their daughter who was entertaining guests during commercial breaks at their party. Little Rachel had a huge voice and she knew it. She also knew every Streisand song in existence. That night at the Berry residence was eye opening for Teresa. She left that night with an idea. The next Anderson Family BBQ would feature live entertainment.
“I got it! Mama! I got it!” Blaine jumps up and down clapping after finally completing the steps correctly. Cooper just rolls his eyes.
“It only took you two hours,” Cooper mumbles.
“Okay, break time. Cooper, your room, I will be up there in a minute.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Cooper...”
“Fine,” he stomps off, slamming the backdoor shut as he enters. Teresa walks over to the table they have set up on the deck and sits down, pouring herself a glass of lemonade. Blaine follows her to the table, climbing on to the bench.
“Can I have some lemonade, Mama?”
“Of course you can sweetheart, don’t spill.”
Blaine nods as Teresa pours him a glass and hands it to him carefully.
“Mama, how come Cooper’s a meanie all the time? Sometimes he’s nice and he plays with me and then he’s mean again and he doesn’t want to play with me. And he lost me in the mall because he wanted to kiss girls, but I think that’s dumb. Why isn’t he nice? My friends have big brothers, and their big brothers aren’t meanies like Cooper.”
“Well sweetie, Cooper’s a teenager, and when you’re a teenager, you can’t control yourself because you have all these crazy hormones and hormones make people stupid.”
“When I’m big like Cooper, I’m not gonna have ‘ormones, so I’m gonna be smart. And I’m not gonna be a meanie, or yell at people. And I’m gonna like practicing dancing.”
“Oh you think so?”
Blaine nods seriously, “Uh-huh. I’m gonna be better than Cooper when I’m big and then he’s gonna have to say he’s sorry.”
“Everyone has hormones, sweetie. Even Mommy and Daddy had them.”
Blaine gasps, “You guys were meanies like Cooper?”
“Well, Daddy wasn’t, but Mommy was. I used to fight with your grandma and grandpa, and your Aunt Marie, I was mean to her all the time. I used to make her cry. But then I grew up, and I felt sad about it, so I stopped being a meanie to her.”
Blaine climbs on top of the table and crawls over to Teresa who pulls him into her lap.
“Do you think Cooper’s gonna feel sad that he was mean to me, and he yelled at me and he lost me?”
“One day, he probably will. So you have to be patient with Cooper, because it’s all those crazy hormones in his head making him stupid, okay. Promise Mama you’ll be patient with your brother. And I promise when you get big like Cooper, and your hormones make you crazy, I’ll be patient with you.”
“I promise, Mama, I’m gonna be so big and smart and I’m gonna dance and sing better than everybody and I’ll be nice to Cooper even if he’s still a meanie to me.”
Teresa presses a kiss to the top of Blaine’s head before setting him on the ground.
“Okay sweetie, go play in your room, I’m gonna order something for dinner, I don’t feel like cooking.”
“Can I keep practicing in my room, I wanna sing a song by myself.”
“Of course you can. But don’t make too much noise okay?”
“Okay!” Blaine calls behind him as he runs into the house.
Teresa goes into the kitchen and looks through the drawers and pulls out a menu for Breadstix, and calls in her order quickly. When she hangs up the phone, she can hear “MmmBop” coming from upstairs, and she smiles to herself.
“He’s obsessed with that song,” she says shaking her head as she makes her way upstairs. She approaches the door to the rec room and can hear voices inside.
“Come on Blaine, your balance is all off,” Cooper complains.
“I just learn to walk three years ago,” Blaine replies. Teresa starts to laugh, but schools her expression when Cooper storms out of the room and into his bedroom. She peeks through the crack in the door and watches as Blaine goes back to dancing. She then turns and goes into Cooper’s bedroom.
When she enters Cooper’s room, she sees him lying on his with his arm thrown over his eyes.
“Okay, what’s with you today?”
“Nothing Mom, I’m fine.”
“Let’s try this again, what’s with you today?”
“We’re going to be laughing-stocks. No one is going to take me seriously if they see me performing with Blaine before school starts. I’m starting high school Mom, that’s like the most important time of my life. If I’m going to be a star, I have to choose my venues more carefully and a backyard barbecue with a baby is just not going to cut it. Maybe in Middle School, but not now.”
Teresa nods, and sits down on Cooper’s bed.
“And what makes you so sure that people are going to laugh at us? You’re talented, I know I’m talented, and Blaine is way more talented than any normal four year old.”
“Because.”
“Because what?”
“Because, most of the kids around here, when they’re as talented as me, they go perform at King’s Island, and I auditioned and they never called me back. If I’m not good enough for King’s Island, how will I be good enough for LA?”
“Oh Cooper, is that what this is about? I don’t understand why you’re so upset, you didn’t get this upset when Disney rejected you?”
“Mom, that was Disney, there were a million kids there, and stupid Timberlake got the role. But this is Ohio, if I’m not good enough for King’s Island, how will I be good enough for anything?” Cooper sulks.
“Cooper, I’ve seen the kids that sing at King’s Island, they’ve got a girl there that looks like she’s 25. And that blonde kid that’s been singing there for a few years, what’s his name, Bryan? He’s at least three years older than you. Maybe you’re just too young. You’re still growing, your voice is changing. You just need to spend this year working on your craft and then next summer, you’ll blow them away. Until then, could you please stop taking it out on your brother. He just wants to spend time with you,” Teresa runs her fingers through Cooper’s hair.
“Mom, he’s four, how can he know what he wants?”
“When you were four, you told me you wanted to win an Oscar. Is that still true?”
“Of course it is, but I’ve moved on to bigger and better things, like I want an Emmy, too. Maybe a Tony. If I find the right part.”
“Okay then, big shot, don’t forget to thank us little people when you win,” Teresa smacks his knee playfully before getting heading towards the door, “Now go wash your hands, I ordered from Breadstix, it should be here any minute.”
“You didn’t get anything with too much cheese, right? The dairy is bad for our voices.”
“Of course not. I know better than that. I’m the one who taught you that.”
*********************************
Their first performance was perfect. They’d done a medley of Duran Duran songs, including “Rio”,” Hungry Like the Wolf”, and “The Reflex”. Blaine sang that Hanson song all by himself and Teresa joined them to sing a couple of Michael Jackson songs. The neighbors loved it, and even though he didn’t really understand the whole idea, or why it was so important, Charles videotaped the whole thing, including Cooper and Blaine signing autographs for the neighborhood girls. Well, Cooper signed autographs, Blaine wrote a giant backwards “B” followed by scribbled lines.
They performed every summer. After Cooper moved to LA and stopped coming home to Ohio, Teresa and Blaine continued the tradition. Even the summer after he came out, when Teresa thought for sure he wouldn’t be up to it, Blaine came to her room with a list of songs for their set list.
None of them ever forgot that first summer performance, or how much closer the three of them felt when it was over.