Who did things like that?

No answer came, and Blaine knocked harder. He had to ask him- had to yell at him for giving it, or- or something,but he had to see Peter right this second and get answers or he might explode. His chest felt too tight, the muscles in his limbs coiled and ready to spring into action - though Blaine didn't know what action that could be. Storming over here had helped his restlessness only a little and given him time to dwell and get angrier - at himself, at Peter, at whoever this John Rechy guy was who had committed such atrocious behaviour to the page-

He heard grumbling on the other side of the door and then it opened to reveal Peter. The boy's pajamas were slightly askew, the neckline of his silk pajama shirt falling diagonally across his crisp white undershirt; his hair was a wreck, especially at the back, sticking up at every conceivable angle. Such an appearance wouldn't have been noteworthy on most guys Blaine knew, but on the dapper gentleman he'd never seen look remotely disheveled - hell, that he'd never seen without a hat in public, like the rules of another century would dictate - it felt...wrong. Peter wasn't supposed to look like that.

He wasn't supposed to do a lot of things.

"Blaine?" he asked blearily, blinking twice to try to clear his vision, and it was only then that Blaine realized it wasn't late yet. Or it was very late, he wasn't sure which at this point. He hadn't slept since- god, had it only been 20 hours or so? A little more, probably, but not much. He couldn't guarantee how long it had been since he'd left Peter's with the armful of books and no plan to get Evelyn back, but he was sure it hadn't been many.

"I woke you," he said slowly as the realization dawned on him.

"Did I strike you as someone who is usually up at-" Peter leaned over to more easily see the living room clock, then stood upright again as he concluded, "- half past 5 on a Sunday?"

Blaine swallowed hard, not sure what to say. The antsiness and frustration from earlier were still there, bubbling just beneath a layer of enough politeness and social training to suppress everything else - at least for a few minutes. "I'm sorry," he replied evenly, feeling almost robotic. "I didn't realize what time it was." It was true, but he wasn't sure whether he could honestly say he would have been able to stay home a few extra hours if he had known.

Something about that response seemed to strike Peter as odd, and he peered more intently at Blaine in the dim pre-dawn light. "What happened?"

"Nothing," he replied, but the word was forced. Something had happened, and Peter knew exactly what that something was. Several things had happened, actually, and the boy knew them all, but the latest- "Except why in the world would you give me this?" The words tumbled out of him in an angry rush, eyes narrowing as his fingers tightened again around the spine of the paperback.

"Do you insist on having this conversation on my front step, or would you like to come in?" Peter asked, almost disinterested in the answer as he stepped back from the door and nodded toward the living room. Blaine followed, but unlike the previous times he'd come he felt no more at-ease entering the space; this time, it felt tiny - brimming with books that held horrible things that Peter would try to make him read because he was twisted enough to believe that anything in there was helpful - or good, even, from the way the boy talked about it all. There must be thousands of books here, and even if they didn't all talk about the condition- even if they weren't all like this one...there were at least a dozen books still stacked on the coffee table that Peter had wanted to give him.

They looked so unassuming sitting there, like their owner had just been searching for a particular fact or quote and moved on to something else, but to Blaine they felt threatening. Menacing, even. Like at any moment they might leap off the table and show him more evidence of the destruction and devastation of their condition.

Peter emerged a few minutes later, holding only a cup of coffee for himself. "You don't need any more coffee," he stated by way of explanation. His eyes were still drowsily narrow but plenty focused as he sat in the wingback chair, eyeing the anxious boy standing in the middle of his living room. "Now. Would you like to tell me what's going on? You were just here, you can't have gotten drunk again."

"No," Blaine replied irritatedly. Not everything came down to alcohol, and besides- "Nowhere's open."

"Which was how I knew. And because anyone who was trying to stay sober wouldn't have gone out and rebought the beer I removed from his apartment." Blaine wasn't sure whether that meant Peter believed him or not - or if it mattered or not. "So what scared you?" He leaned forward to peer at the book clutched in Blaine's hand. "Oh, Blaine," he sighed, shaking his head. "Why did you have to start with that one? Look, I know it doesn't seem glamourous - it's not. There's no way around the fact that he's selling himself to less-than-reputable old men who have significant issues in their own lives. But I wanted you to see the parts about other communities out there. Did you at least get to the part about Darling Dolly Dane? She's a bit much, I'll admit, but the world-"

Blaine's eyes widened as Peter tried to explain away the book and why it wasn't so bad, all while describing things almost as awful as what he'd read - probably worse, actually. Because if Kurt was the protagonist- he swallowed hard, feeling sick suddenly at the image of the beautiful boy he'd known...the stunningly handsome, self-assured, self-righteous boy letting sick old men touch him.

"...You didn't get that far, did you?" Peter surmised as he saw Blaine's reaction.

Blaine shook his head. "I didn't get past the prologue."

"The prologue? What was so wrong with that?" Peter asked, blinking slowly.

"It was awful!"

"Of course it was, it's meant to set the stage for his escape into the city. No one wants to grow up in West Texas, but someone has to be, and he runs away for a reason."

The isolation of the dessert hadn't been the bad part, not remotely. Not as far as Blaine was concerned. Tumbleweeds were a depressing image, as was the idea of the type of rural poverty the narrator and his family had lived in, but that wasn't any worse than the John Steinbeck he'd read in high school and college. Those were manageable; he wasn't one of the characters in that scenario, he was a million miles away from them. None of the stories about the dust bowl or life in the Wild West had a disturbed father whose homosexuality led him to do unspeakable things to his own son.

He'd heard stories of severely ill men from his own father for his entire life, but nothing had come close to the narrator's experiences: his dad and any of his dad's male friends who wanted would call the narrator onto their laps and touch him, or ask him to touch them, or- Blaine swallowed hard.

He wanted to be able to write the character off entirely as a monster, but until he'd read that he'd felt a kinship for the man, who had so wanted to be a musician and ended up in an empty marriage in the middle of nowhere with no music but sporadic lessons to neighbourhood children. Blaine could understand that; he feared that. Especially after his semester in the business department - a world without music, trying to make ends meet, in a silent house? He couldn't imagine anything more terrible. He ached for the man.

And then the man was even more disturbed than his son who ended up in big cities as a prostitute.

It was almost certainly the father's fault, Blaine realized slowly with a queasy feeling in his stomach. The narrator wouldn't have needed to go off and do that, wouldn't have been sick at all probably, if his father hadn't made him that way. Not all illness came from another person like that - otherwise how would he have gotten it? - but contagion was common, especially among younger, more naive men who trusted the homosexual man-

Like Kurt had trusted him.

He felt like he might faint and moved over to the couch as quickly as he could, sinking down onto it heavily. He could hear Peter ask if he was okay, but he couldn't respond - and he wasn't. Not at all. Not realizing what he was.

He wasn't the lonely protagonist staring across the barren land of the southwest and yearning for something more; he was the father, the man desperately wanting music and feeling and manipulating people around him in his quest for boys whose innocence he could steal. He wasn't the one who ran off to New York to live an unsavoury, dangerous life; Kurt was. He was the one who ruined-

"Blaine. What was awful?" Peter asked gently but insistently, but he didn't know how to begin to answer that. The father was awful. He was awful. Everything he had done- the way he'd left Ohio had been awful. The entire year before he left Ohio.

"The father," he managed finally, and Peter's eyes widened.

"I'm sorry," he replied with overwhelming aching sincerity. "I had no idea - I would never have given you that book if I had. Of course you don't have to talk about-"

"What do you mean?" Blaine asked, confused

"I would have picked a different book if I'd known your father..." Peter trailed off, and Blaine almost choked as he realized what Peter was getting at.

"No," he replied quickly, shaking his head. "He never- he wouldn't." He couldn't think of a single thing that would make his father less comfortable than that, and the idea was nauseating on every level he could imagine. "No, he-...I-..." He tried to find the words, but Peter watching him closely wasn't putting him any more at ease "I identified with the father more than the narrator," he began, and Peter nodded.

"The narrator can be a little out there - especially later. In the prologue he's mostly talking about rotting dogs, that's not something most people would connect with," he acknowledged with a kind, fond smile, but the way Blaine wanted to see that expression more made his stomach roil uncomfortably.

"But he's a monster. He's disturbed, and his symptoms make him-" He couldn't even say it, but the way Peter sat back in his chair in contemplation made Blaine think he might understand anyway - at least get what he was trying to say, even if he didn't understand it from personal experience.

He hoped Peter didn't understand it from personal experience; that would make him even more uncomfortable here, and he was already plenty skittish around him.

"He's not a monster," Peter replied. "He did awful things, yes, but that doesn't mean he was evil. I see him as more tragic than anything. Pitiable, even."

"Severe cases are almost always pitiable. At least I think so," Blaine agreed, nodding. Even his father thought so, on some level; that was why he wanted to help them so badly. Seeing men struggle so hard against the illnesses they had never asked for or wanted...

"Ah- no," Peter half-chuckled awkwardly. "That's not why. He's tragic because he lost everything that would have given his life meaning or happiness. He could have been a musician in New York or LA or Chicago or some other city, where there were men his own age he could be close to and get physical and emotional comfort from; instead, he suppressed everything he felt, everything he loved, and wound up in a loveless marriage in the middle of nowhere, with no music; no joy; no anything, to the point where he felt compelled to take pleasure from his son. If he'd been honest with himself about who he was and what he wanted - what he needed - from life, it all could have been avoided. But he took a more conventional path and ended up broken, empty... as desolate as where they lived."

Blaine swallowed hard. Those were his options? Give in to a life of being unrepentantly ill, or live a life with absolutely nothing that felt right and fall prey to even worse urges than the ones that would tell him to kiss a grown man? "Maybe I wouldn't have to give up music," he ventured to himself. "Evelyn said music was just what made sense- if I can get her back...she wouldn't make me give it up. She would want the same thing: a house full of music and laughter and warmth and-"

"And babies," Peter replied dully, and Blaine looked up suddenly, unaware he'd spoken aloud. "And to kiss every so often, one assumes."

"I could," Blaine stated firmly. "Now that I know that's what a kiss is meant to feel like-"

"Of course it's not!" Peter almost laughed but sounded more incredulous than anything. "A good kiss is amazing. It leaves you breathless and giddy and aching to stay close to the person. It's not something you can tolerate while sober in order to keep a girl you could maybe like one day." Blaine swallowed hard as he could tell what Peter's next question was before he even asked it: "Have you ever felt that, Blaine?"

It wasn't inherently a threatening question, but the knowledge that if he said 'no' Peter might take it upon himself to demonstrate made him uneasy. Even more unsettling was the feeling that if he said anything other than 'yes' it would be a lie that the perceptive young man would be able to see through in an instant. He shifted, trying to avoid direct eye contact, but Peter remained settled in the wingback chair, legs crossed, eyes fixed firmly on Blaine as he awaited an answer.

This wasn't fair, Blaine wanted to protest; it wasn't anyone's business, certainly not Peter's, and it wasn't the kind of thing he was under any obligation to answer to defend himself.

Peter considered, then offered easily, "How about this - I'll answer first, then you answer. Okay?" Before Blaine could weigh the deal, Peter charged ahead with his own story. "His name was Jean-Luc; he lived down the hall from me my first year in the UK. He was the most beautiful Frenchman I had ever seen, with these entrancing pale green eyes... and his accent was really cute," he added with a grin that was almost shy; it was the closest to self-conscious Blaine had seen him, but even now there was a bit of pride in his voice at having kissed the adorable French student. "We were together for about six months, until he had to go back to Paris. Then last year was Edwin: that only lasted a couple weeks, but he kissed like he had spent years doing nothing but. Brilliant mouth, that one had." He grinned to himself, as though remembering a particular moment with the man, blissful but private.

He'd never heard anyone talk about boys like that before. Like kissing one was nothing but extremely pleasant, without remorse or any sense of turmoil about it. Just the way guys talked about girls they used to go with.

"So. What about you, Blaine?" Peter prompted when Blaine didn't immediately volunteer, and he shifted forward a little, like he couldn't wait to hear the answer.

He wished he could say no. He wished he could say that he had no idea if Evelyn's kiss felt right (for non-drunk kisses) because he'd never felt anything better, anything like what Peter felt, but... he had. He hated that he could remember it so clearly: lying on his bed in his senior dorm, Kurt propped up against the pillows, while something - Judy Garland? No- Sound of Music that time, he reminded himself - had played on the turntable. Kurt had been singing that achingly sad song about being ordinary, and with that beautiful, clear voice of his... it had been like a siren's song - not quite so high, but just as deadly as far as Blaine was concerned. He had moved in and leaned up to kiss Kurt slowly, lightly- He'd been terrified, tried to pull back, and Kurt had followed him.

Kurt always followed him when he ran.

He remembered the feeling of Kurt's shirt under his hands as he pulled him close, trying to hold onto anything he could so he wouldn't lose what was left of his mind, but once their lips touched once, he couldn't get enough of it. He wanted more - so much more. Even as he felt sick inside at the knowledge that the kiss - and liking the kiss so much - meant he was worse off than he'd thought...it hadn't been enough to stop him that time.

"Blaine?" Peter prompted again, more gently this time, as though he wanted an answer but mostly just wanted to shake him from his trance.

He wanted to say no. He wanted to be able to say no or to leave or to-

"Yes," he murmured, looking down.

Peter's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open just a little at Blaine's admission, but a small, proud grin slowly crossed his face. "Who was he?" he asked, clearly testing the waters, seeing how far he could get the boy to go.

"A wonderful boy I ruined," Blaine stated quietly, avoiding Peter's gaze. "He's in New York right now, doing who-knows-what, because I... had to get away from him. Because he represented everything I wasn't supposed to be." It was difficult to put into words; he'd never done it before. He'd never tried - not remotely. Who would he tell? Even if he could tell anyone about his malady, he didn't want to go around talking about the mistakes the malady had caused him to make.

Were they mistakes? He asked himself again. Was coming out here wrong? Because judging from Peter's comments about the narrator's life in New York, he had to conclude that Kurt had been completely wrong about what the city would be like, so... really, he'd been smart to leave, hadn't he?

If only that was why he'd left Ohio. If only he could say with a straight face that he had left because he knew for sure Kurt was wrong about the life they could have together.

If only he'd actually been able to imagine a life together. He couldn't, even now - especially now. He could see a life with Evelyn, a half-century of Christmas dinners and summer barbecues and children and grandchildren- all of that made sense to him. All of those were obtainable, desirable goals. The things Kurt had talked about were just a flight of fantasy that would never exist anywhere outside the boy's mind.

Why did Kurt have to insist on being so imaginative instead of realistic and practical? Why did Blaine have to be so attracted to the way he was so sure of himself and what he could - would - have in the future?

That wasn't really it, Blaine reminded himself; it was the music. He should have known to run the second Kurt sang Over the Rainbow - he was already done-for as soon as the boy opened his mouth to sing with that beautiful, high, clear voice. But no; he'd gone and invited him to listen-

...He really was the one who had pushed everything, wasn't he? Blaine realized sickly. He had spent four years thinking of Kurt as the one who drove their... whatever one would call a relationship between two men. He remembered Kurt pushing him toward New York with unceasing vision and enthusiasm of a world Blaine had never been able to believe in. He remembered Kurt insisting on dates - in a place that was never half as safe as the boy wanted to think it was. He remembered Kurt being the one who had initiated that damned near-kiss before Christmas that left him terrified and queasy all through break, sick with fear that he was even more wrong than he'd realized and that he was going to spend the rest of his life in an institution. But that wasn't remotely close to the whole story, was it? He'd kissed Kurt. He'd invited the boy to come listen to Judy Garland when he knew he was infatuated with his voice and his expressiveness. Hell, Kurt hadn't even known what a homosexual waswhen they'd met, and though he'd tried to keep quiet about what he knew because he was trying to protect the naive boy from all the horrors he knew awaited them... hehad been the one who had pushed everything.

He had been the one who left Kurt half-naked on a couch in the Commons after frantic fondling and kissing, then pulled out of the duet they were meant to sing because he couldn't bear to face him. He felt cold all over suddenly, and his stomach jerked at the memory; he grasped the arm of the couch tightly and hoped he wouldn't be sick as he had no idea where the bathroom was in Peter's apartment and he was sure the rug was too nice to clean up easily. He had- had used the boy in a flurry of fantasy and pleasure and then bolted and left him completely alone because he didn't want to deal with what all of it meant for his illness.

Kurt had seemed older than him in so many ways; he was so strong and certain of who he was and what he wanted out of life when Blaine felt like he couldn't figure out anything except what he didn't want. But he was younger, and so naive...so trusting. Kurt had had no idea what they were doing - he remembered glasz eyes staring up at him in wonder, as though trying to ask what on earth was happening and why it felt so good - and he had taken advantage of his naivete. He hadn't taught Kurt what awaited them if they continued on the path they were ambling along; he hadn't protected him from what they were, and he'd been the only one who could have.

Peter waited for him to explain further, but he couldn't - he just couldn't. How was he meant to admit any of that aloud? When he didn't speak up, Peter got the hint and nodded slightly. He set his coffee aside and leaned forward to look at Blaine, eyes glittering with sincerity and regret. "The only thing you're not supposed to be is what you're not," he stated in a quiet voice that quivered slightly with intensity, as though he were trying to be sure that if Blaine listened to only one thing he said ever again, that would be it. "There's no other 'should'; it's a matter of living authentically, honestly, and as truly as possible." Blaine worried for a moment that he'd spoken, that he'd let the entire story of his horrible short-lived romance tumble out, but Peter didn't look stricken enough for that. He tried to think back to the last thing he remembered saying- about how he'd kissed Kurt, and ruined him, and- right. About running away because Kurt was everything he wasn't supposed to be. Which meant the culmination of Peter's advice was to throw caution to the wind and be like Kurt. Like him. Like all the men who had been forced into his father's office in search of a cure while proclaiming to anyone they could that there was nothing wrong with them.

It was a nice thought, Blaine supposed, but seemed even more fantastical than Kurt's image of a glittering New York full of elegant dinner parties thrown by cohabitating men. "I should go," he replied softly. When Peter simply nodded, he stood and gave the book a half-hearted toss onto the coffee table, wishing he could let go of everything that troubled him as easily as he'd let the paperback leave his hand and land with a quiet smack on the stack of other novels and references Peter wanted him to read. "I'm sorry for waking you. And I do appreciate the help - honestly." What he really appreciated was the attempt at help - he wasn't in any better place than he'd been before, but he wasn't going to say that after waking the poor man in the middle of the night. It would just be rude.

"Come back anytime," Peter replied sincerely, though he didn't move from his chair. Blaine forced a faint smile and started for the door; when he was halfway there, Peter called across the short distance, "If you're reading again, start with the Berlin Stories. It's a little easier to get through." Blaine forced his smile wider, but he doubted he'd be reading any more of the books anytime soon.

* * * * *

It wasn't hard to track down Evelyn. He only had to ask two Mendicants before he found several who knew her - which, on some level, he knew probably didn't bode well for him because it meant the guys could easily find out just how badly he'd ruined his date - and Fitz had two different classes with her. He bragged that made it easy to stalk her, though Blaine objected to the term. It wasn't stalking her, it was just following her to try to get her to forgive him for being a jerk on Saturday.

Her schedule wasn't hard to nail down; she had a block of classes in the music department on Wednesdays that would make her easy to find for much of the afternoon as long as she wasn't ditching, and she wasn't really the type to do that - she was a good student, and Blaine admired that about her even if he wasn't as good at it himself as he would have liked. That didn't give them a lot of time to learn a song, so he took a chance; the Beatles were easy to arrange and easier to learn because the songs already had a lead and plenty of harmonies and didn't have very complicated chord progressions. Besides, everyone knew them so he didn't have to worry about the guys learning the words in only three days. That helped move them along quickly, and though he felt bad about keeping the group in rehearsals three afternoons in a row, he hoped it would ultimately be worth it.

Of all the people in the world, Evelyn would understand that he was trying to make it up to her. He hoped, anyway. He had thought about calling her on Sunday but hadn't been able to figure out what in the world he could say beyond how sorry he was - because he was. He genuinely regretted it all, and if he could do it over again- but he had no idea how to convey that just picking up the phone. Luckily for him, he'd fallen for a girl who would understand this way just as well, maybe better.

By the time 1:40 rolled around on Wednesday, Blaine was starting to get nervous. It had to work. It just had to. There was no other option; four straight days of Kurt bombarding his mind had left him ill-at-ease with everything but never more certain that Evelyn was his best chance to a normal, symptom-free life.

A happy life. Wasn't that what he was meant to strive for - a life that was happy and meaningful for both of them?

At 1:45, classes began to trickle out, the hallways filling slowly with music students, and Blaine stood a little taller to try to find her in the growing crowd. He and his backup singers would be easy to find if she were looking for them, but to his knowledge she wasn't; in fact, there was a chance she was trying not to see him. But finding a single girl in the growing sea of classmates-

"There she is," Jerry grinned, pointing up onto the staircase where she was just beginning her descent, smiling and laughing with two friends. Even at this distance, she took Blaine's breath away - her grin was so easy, her eyes so bright... Blaine drew in a deep breath, walking toward the foot of the staircase, the Mendicants following him like a cluster of baby ducks after their mother. The crowd parted easily around them, more a function of their size than out of any kind of respect, but Blaine didn't care; he was too busy watching her come closer. Each step she took was sure, the click of her heel imperceptible with the ambient sounds around them. She grinned and shook her head at something one of the girls alongside her said, her hair tossing over her shoulder. He closed his eyes a moment and drew another slow breath to calm his nerves and gather strength from the music he was about to make, and when he opened them her eyes were locked on his.

Her gaze was cold, mouth set in an irritated line. "What are you doing?" she asked as she landed on the lowest step. She was taller than him at that place and looked over his head at the boys organizing themselves into sections behind him.

"Evelyn, I wanted to apologize for Saturday," he stated; he'd rehearsed this part, and that helped him ignore her friends as they covered their mouths to hide their embarrassed laughter. Evelyn wasn't laughing in the least. "I wanted to explain, but you know as well as I do that I'm not much with words, so I brought my friends here to help me sing my-"

Before he could even complete his sentence, she was off the step and had grasped his forearm, tugging him toward a more secluded area - an alcove near one of the nearby classrooms. "What are you trying to do?" she demanded

"Apologize," Blaine replied, a bit bewildered by her response. She should understand, she should appreciate-

"No," she replied shortly. "I don't want to hear it. For one thing, I can guess what it would say - you're so sorry. You were drunk and didn't know what you were doing. It won't happen again. You're not usually like that, especially on a first date, and you want to take me out again to make it up to me." When Blaine sputtered a little to come up with a reply, she took advantage of the lack of a proper response to continue, "I'm not going out with you again. If there's one thing I hate more than a jerk, it's a jerk who disguises himself as a nice guy. I thought you were great - but I have no interest in going with someone who has to be drunk to be around me." She shook her head and turned to leave, glancing over her shoulder just long enough to add, "And don't ever try to use music to manipulate me like this again."

"I wasn't-"

"In public, with a group of boys backing you up, where all my friends can see? You thought it would be harder for me to say no when you sang, and that's just obnoxious. You really aren't sure of yourself at all without music to fall back on, are you?"

And with that, she was gone.