It's Cooper who comes up with the idea.

They're sitting in Cooper's living room one Friday evening, Blaine nursing a glass of water while Cooper gulps down the last drops of his beer. Blaine feels tired and his muscles are aching – his boxing might have been a bit too intense earlier that day, but somehow the pull and weariness in his hands and shoulders feel good. They are like reminders of his own strength, of the things he is able to do, pushing away any hesitation and doubt.

Cooper puts his empty beer can on the table and leans back, watching Blaine curiously. "How was your day?"

Blaine shrugs. "Okay. Went for a run, boxed a bit. Same as usual."

Something disappointed flashes in Cooper's eyes, but he doesn't say anything, and Blaine pretends not to notice, giving Cooper a small reassuring smile instead. He and Cooper have had their problems; they didn't talk properly for years when Blaine was in high school, but when he dropped out of college six months ago, Cooper was the one who asked him to come to Los Angeles and live with him. After all those years of ignoring each other and not saying how they really felt, Blaine is grateful for this easy camaraderie with his brother.

Still, they've had their deep and meaningful conversations too many times already, and Blaine's not in the mood for one right now, not when his body feels pleasantly tired and his mind empty.

"How about yours?" he asks, trying to steer the conversation back to a pleasant topic.

Blaine knows he's succeeded when a wicked grin takes over Cooper's face. "Well, I got that gig."

"Seriously? Coop, that's great!" Blaine laughs, leaning over to give his brother a quick one-handed hug. "So which award will you be presenting? The best supporting actress in a foreign newspaper ad?"

"Hardy-har-har, that's not even a real category." Cooper punches his arm playfully. "No, I think it's actually going to be one of the bigger categories. It's not the Oscars, obviously, but it's still nice to be recognized in your own field."

"Well, they would be crazy if they didn't get the Free Credit Rating Today guy, also known as the 'Do you know what you children are doing on the Internet?' guy, to present at the Annual Advertisers' Awards." Blaine slumps back on the sofa, smiling easily. He's always in the mood for talking about Cooper's silly ad campaigns.

"Ugh, that Internet campaign was so weird," Cooper groans and runs his fingers through his hair. "But yeah, like I said, it's nice. There's gonna be a red carpet and all."

"Screaming fangirls?" Blaine grins.

"Oh God, I hope not. They are always so... too enthusiastic. I used to like it, but these days it's just a hassle. Did I tell you about that one time this sweet-looking old lady almost ripped my suit? One of my best suits at that?" Cooper shudders.

Blaine laughs, remembering that Cooper doesn't actually have fangirls – he has fanwomen, older ladies whose husbands have died or left them and who send disturbing letters to Cooper's fanmail address. Blaine shakes his head and takes a sip of his water. The day had been hot, and he should have drunk more after his run, but the adrenaline had felt too strong for a break. He'd gone straight to the basement and hit the punching bag for hours, feeling the strikes in his whole body, forgetting everything else. He'll probably regret it tomorrow, but for now he'll just bask in the pleasant feeling.

"Maybe you should get a bodyguard, to protect you from the grandmas," he jokes.

Cooper bursts out laughing – but then his face suddenly turns more serious, in a way that Blaine knows means something stupid is usually about to happen. It's the same smile that Cooper had on his face when he decided to climb on the roof of their parents' house over fifteen years ago and when he had the brilliant idea of taking Blaine to a gay bar on his twenty-first birthday.

"What?" Blaine asks warily.

Cooper's smile widens as he turns to look at Blaine. "You could be my bodyguard."

Blaine promptly chokes on his water. After some spluttering and a few slaps on his back from Cooper, he snorts. "Yeah, right."

"I'm serious."

"Well, I'm not. Have you seen your little brother lately, Coop? Emphasis on the word little. I'm 5'8 and... tiny. Not exactly bodyguard material," Blaine says, waving his hand in the air. "Not to mention that I don't want to be a bodyguard in the first place."

"But your height could be your advantage!" Cooper gushes, and oh god, he's getting excited. Blaine groans. This can't be good.

"Just think about it! No one would see you as a threat, but you're scarily strong – I've seen you box – and your height would make you almost invisible, so you wouldn't steal my spotlight," Cooper goes on and ruffles Blaine's hair affectionately, indicating that he's at least half-joking. "But your fists could still protect me! And besides, you're really good at talking! So, you know, you could talk someone out of hurting me or my suits. It's perfect!"

"Are you sure you had just one beer?" Blaine asks, the corners of his lips tugging upwards. "Because you must be drunk to come up with this ridiculous idea."

"It's not ridiculous, it makes perfect sense! You're my brother, so I trust you. You're strong and fast. People would underestimate you and regret it. And it'd give you something to do other than running and boxing." Cooper's smile falters. "You... You can't hide in my house for the rest of your life, Blainey."

And with that sentence they are once again back on uncomfortable territory. Blaine's shoulders tense, and he feels the easy smile slip away from his face. He's retreating, building a cage around his feelings and memories again, burrowing himself deeper into the sofa cushions. But Cooper keeps talking, hands moving in the air, because even though their relationship is better these days, Cooper still doesn't know when it's time to stop talking.

"You know that I would love to see you go back to college, even if it's a waste of time." Cooper tilts his head. "And I would love to see you become a music teacher, like you wanted, to sing silly songs with those stupid kids until they beg you to stop and – what did you say that one night when you were really drunk? Make art and help people? I would love it more than anything to see you do that, B."

Blaine keeps his eyes to the floor, his legs twitching to get away, to go back to the basement to his punching bag and boxing gloves, to make Cooper shut up. They were having such a comfortable evening and of course Cooper has to ruin it.

"But I also know that..." Cooper chances a glance at Blaine, looking almost regretful. "That you won't go back. Not yet, at least. And don't say you're fine, I know you're fine, I freaking live with you, Blaine – but you can't just do nothing for the rest of your life. I want to see my kid brother doing something else than moping around the house and punishing himself, but I guess college isn't an option right now, not after... everything."

Blaine swallows roughly.

Cooper sighs. "And I'm not saying you should become a professional bodyguard, but maybe you could just... Do something. And maybe this could be some sort of a distraction?"

Blaine stays silent, hoping that if he doesn't say anything Cooper will just stop and let him be. He doesn't say that he still dreams of going back to college one day, dreams of graduating and getting his degree, doesn't say it because he doesn't have any idea if and when he'll actually do it, when he's ready to do it. They are thoughts he ignores most of the time, buries them underneath boxing and running and playing his guitar and reading as many books as he can. But Cooper, familiar and irritating but still his dear brother who knows everything about him, which is both great and awful at the same time, somehow always manages to hit his weak spot:

"And you could protect people. Help them. Help me. You like that, don't you?"

Blaine turns his face away from Cooper, staring out of the window and seeing nothing. "But I don't like hurting them," he murmurs.

Cooper reaches out to rest a hand on his shoulder. "I'm not asking you to beat people up, B. You'd be protecting me. I don't even have that many crazy fans and the ones I do have are fragile old women, so you'd mainly just steer me away from them and make sure no one gets close enough to rip my suit apart. And if they did, you could, um... bat them away? But not like really hurt them," he hurries to add. "I know you took some self-defense courses in college and after... after Sadie Hawkins. So it would be like self-defense. A lighter version of self-defense?"

Blaine turns to look at his brother. Cooper looks earnest, and Blaine huffs out a laugh. "You're not joking, are you? You're actually serious about this. You actually want me to be your bodyguard, to do something that insane as a distraction?"

Cooper shrugs. "I want you to be happy. I want you to... Dammit, Blaine, I don't want you to be some sort of cold-hearted Arnold Schwarzenegger look-a-like, I want you to help people and protect them because despite what you think, I know that's what you love to do. That's what you were born to do, and you're good at it. And maybe you should be reminded of that."

All signs of excitement are gone from Cooper's face now, and Blaine feels almost uncomfortable looking at him, so trusting and serious. He doesn't say what he's thinking out loud because Cooper can probably see it in his face anyway – that he doesn't think he can help people anymore, not after everything that happened before he dropped out, after he failed so badly. He doesn't think he even knows how to help himself anymore, lying on his bed every night and staring at the ceiling, thinking of everything he could have done differently, everything he did wrong – but maybe this could be his redemption. His atonement. If he doesn't fail this, maybe he can move on.

Maybe.

Blaine sighs. Cooper is still staring at him with an unreadable expression on his face, and for a moment Blaine is jealous of him, of his talent to hide his feelings behind his face, because Blaine knows too many people can read his own face like an open book. He crosses his arms over his chest. "Fine."

"What?"

"I said fine. I'll do it. I'll try it out at the awards gala," Blaine says, hunching his shoulders.

Cooper doesn't scream, doesn't jump on the sofa table and do his famous Chandler Bing imitation. Instead he smiles warmly, scoots closer and wraps his arm around Blaine's shoulders, giving him an encouraging squeeze. "That's my brother." Then, after a moment, the ridiculous smile is back. "And my bodyguard!" Cooper whoops, and Blaine shoves him away with a laugh.

Later on, when Cooper is actually drunk, they argue about the word bodyguard, both agreeing that it doesn't really give an accurate description of what Cooper wants Blaine to do. Blaine says that he should just be Cooper's assistant or something like that, whereas Cooper is drunkenly adamant on calling him his bodyguard because it sounds 'so cool'. Eventually Cooper wins, mostly because Blaine gets tired of his pestering, and sends a message to his agent saying that he needs one extra ticket to the gala for his bodyguard.

Blaine wonders what on earth he has gotten himself into.

-

The night of the gala Blaine puts on his old suit and a dark tie, gelling his hair into submission for the first time in a long while. He makes a nervous joke to Cooper about getting a gun license, and Cooper almost has a heart attack, yelling at him that he won't have his kid brother carrying a gun until Blaine convinces him that he doesn't even want a gun, absolutely not, he was just joking. Cooper still glares at him, tying his own tie in front of his bedroom mirror.

When they arrive at the gala, Blaine doesn't know what to do. At all. Cooper is all smiles and finger guns, pointing intensely at everything and everyone and talking with the people he knows from the industry. Blaine just follows him around, feeling like a lost puppy and thinking that this must be the worst idea Cooper has ever had – even worse than trying to give an acting class to the Warblers during Blaine's senior year. Even Cooper himself admitted that the class wasn't exactly a good idea.

When they get to the red carpet, they're suddenly surrounded by screaming old ladies who all seem to have a thing for Cooper. There are a few younger women and one or two men that Blaine can make out from the crowd, and they all keep singing the Free Credit Rating Today jingle really loudly and terribly off-key. The noise gets even louder when Cooper turns to look at them and gives an exaggerated wink. Blaine thinks his ears might be bleeding.

Then all of a sudden there's a middle-aged woman with crazed eyes reaching for Cooper's arm over the rope. Blaine sees her, moves quickly between the woman and his brother, nudging Cooper away. The woman looks angry and starts screaming at him, a scramble of words and profanities, but Blaine is already moving forward. There's another woman almost immediately, this one a bit younger, staring at Cooper with a hungry expression on her face. Cooper is pointing at the cameras, not even noticing anything else, and Blaine bats the woman's hand away, focuses on keeping his brother away from the crazy ones and Cooper's nice and expensive suit intact.

The gala continues like that, Blaine staying alert the whole night through. Cooper presents the award he was supposed to, actually giving a decent speech but ruining it all by saying the winner's name really loudly (for dramatic effect, he explains later). The food is good and the drinks are free, everyone is laughing and telling stupid advertising jokes, and all the absurd ad campaigns start to slowly make sense to Blaine. Perhaps the copywriters are also drunk when they're coming up with advertisements. That would certainly explain some of the crazy ads Blaine has seen.

Blaine doesn't feel entirely comfortable, but keeps his eyes open in any case. There's only one more incident after the red carpet – they're already leaving when a drunken man, whose face Blaine has definitely seen on some billboard, stumbles into Cooper in the hallway, his words slurring. The man raises his fists weakly, trying to pick a fight. Blaine pushes the man away and leads Cooper out quickly, stopping only when they reach their car.

Cooper slumps on the backseat, pleasantly drunk, and smiles encouragingly at Blaine. "You were really good," he points out.

Blaine shrugs, still feeling the adrenaline pumping inside his veins, still alert, and feeling almost embarrassed how... intense it all was. Intense is probably the word Cooper would use. It was certainly a distraction; Blaine's mind is whirring but not with doubts and memories this time, and he finds himself giving Cooper a small smile.

Cooper nudges his shoulder. "Told ya," he says and closes his eyes sleepily.

-

A month or two later Blaine's definitely not a professional bodyguard, even though Cooper keeps calling him that. (He doesn't know if it's a joke or not. You can never be sure with Coop.) Blaine has been to numerous events with Cooper, sometimes even with some of Cooper's friends, keeping greedy hands away from them and pulling them forward when the crowd gets too enthusiastic, but he still doesn't like the word bodyguard. It feels too dangerous and violent, especially when he mostly deals with weird old ladies. Or men. Old men are a surprisingly usual occurrence as well.

Cooper keeps saying he seems more like himself these days, more fine as he had put it. Blaine knows this bodyguard thing (he seriously needs to come up with a better word) is not permanent, not something he wants to do for the rest of his life, and he's just helping Cooper out, but it is a distraction. It makes him feel useful, and it gives him something else to think about, something other than things he cannot change. And he does like helping people. He likes to keep people safe.

Even if it is just from crazy old people.

He's hanging around in Cooper's basement one afternoon, mostly just cleaning his boxing equipment when his phone rings. He fishes out the device from his pocket, expecting it to be Cooper telling him to stop whatever he's doing and come watch something important with him – 'something important' is usually an euphemism for a Friends marathon. Cooper has a weird fascination with Chandler Bing and Joey Tribbiani.

That's why Blaine is a bit surprised to see an old photo of Wes from their Dalton days staring back at him from the screen.

"Hi Wes!" he answers, the smile evident in his voice. "How's the business going?"

Wes grumbles. "Annoying assistants and even more annoying clients, you know the drill."

Blaine laughs. Wes is an agent for a few almost-wealthy people in New York, keeping their businesses in order and their faces well-known. For all Blaine knows Wes could be Cooper's agent if he lived in LA, trying to get him more ad campaigns and making sure he doesn't think way too highly of himself. Wes may complain about his job every time they talk, but Blaine knows Wes is happy. He got married a few years ago, and he likes to keep people in order. Thank goodness he doesn't have a gavel anymore.

Wes coughs awkwardly. "Look Blaine, I'm afraid I'm calling on business."

"Oh?"

"Are you still doing those... bodyguard gigs?" Wes asks, a hint of nervousness in his voice, something Blaine hasn't heard since Wes told him he was going to ask Sarah to marry him.

"Yeah, I am. I mean not at the moment, but sometimes, if Cooper or one of his friends has an event or something," he answers, confused. "Why do you ask?"

Wes sighs, and Blaine immediately knows he's going to hear a rehearsed speech. "Here's the thing. One of my clients told me that this other client of mine, her friend, is getting weird anonymous notes – nothing serious, at least not yet. Mostly they're just flattering, but she's worried about him and almost... forced me to do something about it. There is a big concert coming up and a few other events as well, and she kept telling me that I should get her friend a bodyguard, but I'm not exactly..."

"Excited about the idea?" Blaine offers.

"Yes," Wes exhales. "They're both relatively famous in their own theater circles, but not famous famous, so it feels sort of weird to get him a bulky bodyguard because of a few anonymous notes. But she was really adamant, even threatening to find another agent, and I don't want – I can't afford to lose any of my clients, Blaine. And that's when I remembered you, and you would be ideal for this job. You'd be doing the same you do with Cooper – escorting him to events and parties and making sure no one gets too close, all of it without looking too conspicuous."

Blaine is silent for a moment. He's always wanted to go to New York, even dreamed of applying to a college there, but in the end he decided to stay closer to home. But now, when Ohio holds too many bad memories and Los Angeles is just a pit stop, a place when he didn't have another choice... Well, now New York sounds wonderfully like an even bigger distraction. "So it would be in New York?" he asks eventually.

"Yes, the man works as a costume designer on Broadway," Wes explains. "You could really help me on this one, Blaine. I personally don't think there's any need for a bodyguard, but then again I don't want to lose my clients and better safe than sorry, right?" There's a pause and then Blaine can practically hear Wes smiling like an idiot, something only a few people get to see. "And the pay would be alright as well..."

Blaine laughs. "Well, in that case... But no, seriously, why not. Like I said, I don't have anything at the moment. I'll have to check it with Cooper, but I'm sure he'll send me off gladly. He's been complaining that I'm damaging his, uh, personal life."

"Too much information." Wes sounds mildly horrified.

"Sorry." Blaine snorts. "Anyway, as long as it's not the stereotypical bodyguard gig with violence and guns and bulky muscles, I'll do it. A change of scenery might do me good."

"So you'll come?" Wes checks.

Blaine shrugs even though he knows Wes can't see him. "I'll come. So what's the name of this costume designer I'm supposed to protect?"

"Oh, I don't know if you've heard of him – his name is Kurt Hummel."

Blaine tilts his head, thinking about the articles and websites he's read about Broadway. He doesn't know much about the theater scene, just some basics and the names of a few actors or actresses, and Kurt Hummel doesn't seem to ring any bells. "Doesn't sound familiar," he quips. "But I guess I'll meet him soon enough."