Blaine knew he might have gone just a little overboard with them, but he couldn't help himself. What else was he meant to do? He couldn't go drinking anymore, which carried with it a myriad of social limitations: no going out with groups after class, no evenings at the piano bar, no post-study-group rewards-...and that was during the week. Maybe Peter had been even more right than Blaine had realized, he thought wryly to himself. A couple times he tried to suggest they go hang out somewhere else - not a library or anything, just a restaurant or coffeehouse, somewhere he might feel neither conspicuous for not drinking nor tempted to revert back to old and destructive habits - but had been met with a resounding blow-off as the group of students trotted eagerly toward one of his old hang-outs and he trudged back to his apartment. And if he couldn't spend his time even trying to find a nice girl to date...

Peter may not have said that directly in as many words- well, not that any of his advice had really been in so many words, Blaine corrected himself; the edict to stop drinking had been cryptically disguised as a promise of a better life without any mention of alcohol whatsoever. He hadn't said there couldn't be any more women, but the combination of the haughty voice mocking his failed attempts at finding the right girl, and the look on Evelyn's face as she stormed out of the parking lot, made it awfully hard to think about approaching a girl to ask for a date.

He should just give it up, he had concluded sadly on- Tuesday? He thought Tuesday, anyway, the evenings had kind of blurred together into a dark (but very clean) room with a stack of arrangements and lonely-sounding records playing. Love wasn't the beautiful thing he kept wanting it to be anyway. Movies and poets and singers were wrong; it wasn't lovely. It destroyed everything it touched, no matter how hard he tried to stop the devastation, and it always ended with people getting hurt.

The arrangement that had followed the resigned decision had been defiant, but ultimately fruitless. He had spent the rest of the week trying to talk himself into believing it but hadn't had any luck so far - not while he taught it to the guys, not when he heard the sound swell around him for the first time...usually that was the time he could really feel the song the best, when he was surrounded by the music and the energy of the group, but this time it had just made him melancholy.

He would have to fake it for the performance, he knew, and he could; he was an expert at pretending not to feel things that pierced him deeply. He just wasn't used to having to do so through song; usually when he performed was the only time he could be honest.

But the group had liked this arrangement, had loved the way he'd sung it, and so that was what they would perform. He couldn't very well come up with a reason they shouldn't perform his brand new arrangement that they had spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday learning; they would just ask why he'd created it in the first place, if he didn't like the song, and he didn't have a response he could give them. And so, at 12:30 on Friday, he led thirteen boys across campus and into the grand center archway, striding far more confidently than he felt with his pasted-on smile and put-on charm. This time, the sea of people didn't merely part for them as it had the first performance; the crowd separated to allow the boys to pass, but folded into a group behind them, following them to see where they would perform and what they might sing. It would seem, Blaine thought to himself with a faint but nonetheless proud smile, that their reputation and cache on-campus was growing. A few weeks ago, he would have loved the idea. The group did genuinely work hard, and he was proud to lead them, but the fringe benefits of popularity held no appeal for him now. Even if singing up there could get every girl on campus to want him - not even the rest of the group, but him, just him, only him forever...what good would it do him? He couldn't have her. He couldn't make himself want her, and even if he could he wasn't going to do to her what he'd done to Evelyn.

He kept hurting everyone he tried to get close to like that, so in the interest of everyone else...he just needed to stay by himself for awhile. For however long it took him to figure out how to feel things for another person without making that person miserable. So maybe forever.

He hoped not, but he wasn't optimistic anymore.

Luckily for Blaine, the rest of the Mendicants were invigorated by the sight of so many people - and so many girls - gathering to see them perform. Their enthusiasm was electric, and as they formed a circle to get their pitch and count off, he could feel his body starting to respond to the opportunity to sing in front of a group this big. At least this felt the same as it always did - perhaps a bit more urgent, but it had been a long and particularly awful few weeks...and he wasn't allowed any of his other vices or outlets anymore, so naturally everything was going to want to pour out through song.

At least until Peter gave him some reason to hate that, too, he thought with a roll of his eyes at nowhere in particular. Knowing his luck, that was next on the boy's list of things that were harming him somehow.

Maybe not, he consoled himself. Peter had stressed that the problem with the wretched father in City of Night was abandoning the things he loved. Being a music teacher wasn't the problem, it was being a music teacher when he wanted to be something more. So that meant he should be able to keep music, right?

Of course, he had loved parties, too, and he saw how that ended. And he'd been completely, madly in love with Evelyn, and- well. That wasn't so much giving it up as having her no longer speaking to him. But in any event.

He wouldn't give this up. No matter what book Peter threw at him next to try to get him to see that music was just covering up some hidden something that Blaine wished could have remained covered and tamped down...no matter what, he wouldn't stop this. Of all the things he needed in life, this was the one and only thing he had ever felt like he might die without.

It might be all he was left with, now, but maybe... maybe music could be enough. It was better than a world of loneliness withoutmusic, that was for sure.

With the best smile he could muster, Blaine blew into the pitch pipe and counted out the tempo, turning to face the growing crowd as the boys behind him started the song. Even a few notes of listening to them sing while he remained silent felt like too many, as the frustrations of the past week seemed to bubble up inside him suddenly, as though once the river of music began to rush past he had no choice but to dive in headlong so he wouldn't be left behind.

Even if he felt more like a dog straining against a leash as a squirrel ran past, needing with everything he had to go chase it and lose himself in the hunt. To just let himself go, to follow the only instincts he could still trust, and lose himself for awhile in the release of melody.

Please lock me away
And don't allow the day
Here inside
Where I hide with my loneliness
I don't care what they say
I won't stay in a world without love

But he had to now, didn't he? He thought to himself sadly as he sang. No matter how emphatically he sang it, there was no amount of wishing that would make love anything like the beautiful thing he saw in movies and felt in songs on the radio. Nothing would make his life into a Broadway show, where he could get the woman of his dreams if he just sang perfectly enough - if he felt everything deeply enough-

He wished he could stop feeling so much. All the time. At a certain point it went from being frustrating but bearable to agonizing, especially when the thoughts that tormented him were ones he couldn't do anything about: the lonely darkness of his apartment that never seemed to get brighter no matter how many lamps he turned on; the queasiness he could never tamp down enough; the tight clench around everything inside him-- he could never tell whether it was keeping him together or crushing him, because the two prospects sounded about the same these days.

Music relieved it a little - not completely, but enough. Singing like this, or belting out just the right song to express how he felt in the privacy of his room... The biggest advantage of living in a building where everyone else partied and he couldn't, he was finding, was that there was no one around to complain that he was too loud as he poured his emotions out on a Friday night. The sensation was never quite enough to make him feel normal, but it took the edge off - like one beer instead of being blissfully drunk.

For now, it would have to do. And maybe in time it would be everything he needed; he hoped so, anyway, since he had no idea what else he could possibly do to feel better. If he wasn't going to put any girl through dating him, and dating anyone else was completely out of the question for reasons so obvious as to not even need stated... something was going to have to fill that void, and music seemed the least destructive contender.

Birds sing out of tune
And rainclouds hide the moon
I'm okay
Here I'll stay with my loneliness
I don't care what they say
I won't stay in a world without love

He wanted to be defiant as he sang it, to prove he wouldn't - that he wouldn't be alone, that he wouldn't submit to the obvious solution to his problems that stared him in the face and whispered at him in the darkness. He wanted to be able to say with any degree of certainty that he would be able to love someone, that he wouldn't give up that hope as easily as he had his drinking habit, but he couldn't; he couldn't lie when he sang. From the time he could remember, it had been the one honest form of communication he had known, and he wasn't sure he could give that up even if he were willing.

He was going to be stuck in a world without love for the rest of his life, he concluded glumly. Until or unless someone could come up with a way to make him able to not destroy the people he fell for, the empty apartment built for one was what he would be saddled with.

Maybe not, he tried to convince himself. Maybe he could find a lovely girl after graduation - after there were places to go with a group of people that didn't involve a bar... and now that he wasn't drinking, he could help ensure he wouldn't shove a girl away the way he'd shoved Evelyn.

Except those places didn't exist any more for adults than for college students taking advantage of their newfound freedoms around campus. Every work event or meeting involved a stiff drink - maybe not as much for a teacher, he hoped, though his father's business associates could certainly drink. Every dinner party required wine paired with the dinner and the appetizers and nightcaps with the boys afterward.

Not that he would have to worry about being invited to those, if he couldn't bring someone to make a nice, even table. And at some point, he would have a label attached to him that would ensure he really wouldn't be invited anywhere:

Bachelor.

There wasn't one in every circle, but every few circles had one they knew in common, and he was always regarded with a mix of disdain, pity, envy, and eye-rolling, as though every man in the room secretly wished he could do the sorts of things the bachelor might do - carousing with different women, for one - but at the same time thought of the bachelor as a sort of relic of their own by-gone youth; a boy who wouldn't grow up, an eternal Peter Pan-type who refused to accept the responsibilities of a man in the community. There were jokes about how lucky bachelors were not to be chained down to one woman, but they weren't invited to anything serious, anything important, and were generally seen as one not to be taken seriously at all - as someone who was more childlike in his mentality and couldn't be trusted with adult matters or parties.

And that was if he was frequently seen in the company of different women. If he wasn't... The whispers would be bad enough to sink him just the same as an admission of his illness would. Because when considering a bachelor, there were only two options: either he wasn't married because he enjoyed women too much...or because he didn't.

At some point, Blaine wondered if the ostracization of being an eternal bachelor wouldn't be just as bad as admitting what was wrong with him. If people would assume anyway - what with him being unwilling to destroy women the way a bachelor seemed to need to...would hiding do him any good?

That was ridiculous, he chided himself; of course nothing would be as bad as proclaiming his illness to the world. Even bachelors, as disregarded as they were in proper social circles, could at least be envied by men and pitied by women who wanted to feed them properly and be sure they were taken care of. No one envied or cooked for homosexuals.

It was just as well, Blaine supposed; he didn't want to be part of that world anyway. Wasn't that what he was running from in the first place? Wasn't that why he had moved out here so eagerly? But without a wife to help pull him into the warmer family units of the middle class, without Evelyn to bring him along to her family gatherings, he wasn't sure how he would find such a place to latch onto. He couldn't very well show up and demand to be part of a stranger's family in the way that a son-in-law could, which left the stiff and detached social circles he'd been raised in; his father's associates had associates who knew people out here in California, and they would extend him invitations if he made clear he wanted them, and then... well. That would be that.

At least until the bachelor comments became too much innuendo and not enough envy.

So I wait, and in awhile
I will see my true love smile
She may come, I know not when
When she does I'll know, so baby until then
Lock me away
And don't allow the day
Here inside
Where I hide with my loneliness
I don't care what they say
I won't stay in a world without love

Blaine scanned the crowd, hoping that maybe - just maybe - Evelyn had realized how sincere he'd been when he'd tried to come see her and sing for her the previous week. Maybe there was still a chance to make things right. Maybe, if he really tried, he might be able to earn enough of her trust back to be allowed to keep trying to fix things. It seemed unlikely, he knew, but it was better than giving up hope entirely.

There were plenty of girls in the audience - all kinds, something for everyone... but nothing for him. Nothing he could have, anyway; a few of the boys in attendance might have been fodder for something if he were the type of homosexual who didn't understand just how dangerous he was, how easy it was to let the illness take over and abandon all sense of morality or decorum or propriety... A boy like Peter, who went around bragging about kissing French boys, could have plenty of young men to enjoy in the crowd, he was sure - or at least to think about, because Blaine was certain that none of them would return the feeling. But for Blaine...

He had known it was possible to feel alone in a sea of people before; every party his parents had ever thrown had taught him that, for one. But somehow the chasm between him and the audience felt unbearably wider, deeper, more when it was a group he wasn't expecting to feel apart from. Put another way: of course he'd felt alone surrounded by his parents' stuffy friends and business associates, but he'd come to terms with being different from them years ago. But these were his fellow students, were the people he'd crooned to at parties for years and stood in line with for lunch and admired at undergraduate recitals... only now it felt as if they were a million miles away.

None of them could understand what this song meant to him. None of them knew what lurked just beneath the surface and pasted-on grin; none of them knew what perverse sicknesses invaded his mind and made him so different from them all. And none of them would be there with him in his tiny apartment as he contemplated whether more lighting would help things feel less bleak.

But there was no time to be melancholy; sixteen bars felt like a lifetime of thinking but wasn't nearly long enough to get lost in the music completely. So Blaine stood a little taller and began to sing the final verse.

So I wait and in awhile
I will see my true love's smile
She may come, I know not when
When she does I'll know, so baby until then-

Blaine caught sight of a newsboy cap in the crowd and barely managed not to groan to himself. Of course Peter would be here now. The only way it could be worse timing was if Evelyn were there and he were making a fool of himself.

A part of him wanted Peter there, he had to admit. It wasn't his fault that the guy gave really good advice sometimes - sometimes the not remotely practical advice of someone who just didn't understand the real world yet, but sometimes genuinely helpful, insightful advice. How else would it ever have occurred to him that alcohol was more of a cause of his problems than a solution? And if Peter was armed with any books, they appeared to only be standard texts and perhaps a few light reading materials - such as they were for anyone with that many bookcases in that small of an apartment; few other people walked around with The History of the Peloponnesian War under their arm.

Blaine tried not to let himself be distracted by Peter, but he found his eyes wandering back to the young man each time he tried to pull them away. Peter seemed to be watching him closely, a look of intense thought on his face, and Blaine wished for a moment that he weren't performing so he could ask what Peter was thinking about; it was clearly something important or new, but beyond that he couldn't discern from the expression alone.

Lock me away
And don't allow the day
Here inside,
Where I hide with my loneliness

Blaine tried to push the young man out of his mind and perform as hard as he could. He needed more release this week than most, more music, and he didn't have much time left. He needed to use every moment he could to try to exorcise everything that had been troubling him the best he could. Even as he danced across the makeshift performance area, he could feel Peter's gaze on him, and when he looked over quickly their eyes locked.

Blaine swallowed hard, glad he was between words; this felt much too intimate to be appropriate - for so many reasons, not the least of which was that they were in public and surrounded by other people. Peter seemed to be studying him, and after a moment a broad smile crossed his face. Blaine wanted to ask him why, but he couldn't; Peter's grin bloomed wider as he looked suddenly inspired, then was absorbed by the crowd as the song drew to a close.

I don't care what they say
I won't stay in a world without love
I don't care what they say
I won't stay in a world without love.

The onlookers erupted into a chorus of loud cheers as soon as the song ended, and Blaine stood front and center surrounded by thirteen boys who were convinced this was the singular best experience of a person's life: to be admired by so many gorgeous young women. Blaine wished he could feel the same way; he looked for Peter's cap bobbing above the throng but saw nothing, and as the divide between the audience and the performers shrank and then disappeared altogether, he slipped unnoticed out of the crowd and back toward his empty apartment.

* * * * *

Blaine wasn't sure how long he had been working on schoolwork when the knock on the door diverted his concentration. It must have been several hours at least because the light coming through the east-facing windows along the left wall of his room was dim and greying. Twilight came earlier on his side of the complex, so he doubted it was late enough that he'd missed his chance to grab dinner from the deli down the street he liked - they closed at 7:30 - but he couldn't be sure how close he would cut it if he left now. He sifted through the heap of opened, half-overlapping textbooks until he unearthed his clock; half past six wasn't such an odd time for a visitor, Blaine guessed, even though it was strange for him to have visitors at all, at any time. He tried to remember the last time someone had just dropped by and came up empty. Usually the only people in his apartment - other than himself, of course - were girls he invited back after a great party, and even then he more commonly stayed at their place, and-

The knock came again, five neatly-landed raps in quick succession, and Blaine stood, stretching and then straightening his cardigan as he padded over to the door. Peter stood in the hall, dressed as casually as Blaine had seen him the first night at the party: off-white henley with the sleeves pushed up around his elbows, paired with soft-looking grey wool flannel pants held up by suspenders. He wore the same slouched newsboy hat as he had at the performance, but his wingtips still reflected light, polished to a brilliant black shine. Under his arm, Peter held a thick stack of albums, though Blaine couldn't see any of the titles or artists from where he stood, and he wasn't sure what had prompted the boy's beaming grin.

"Peter?"

"I'm sorry, I know it was impolite of me to just show up like this," he acknowledged but still seemed ready to burst from pride. "I would have called first, but I didn't have your number."

Blaine started to reply that he didn't have Peter's either, as though that were the pertinent fact and not the number of times he had shown up at the man's apartment unannounced - including twice in the same night, both well after he should have been asleep. "What's going on?" he asked. He would have asked if everything was okay, but the way Peter looked so happy answered that question for him. "Come in - I'm afraid I don't have tea, but I could make coffee..."

"That's fine. Where's your turntable?" Peter was inside practically as soon as Blaine had stepped back far enough to allow him in. The enthusiasm was uncharacteristic of the young man Blaine was used to; usually, Peter seemed to have it all together while he felt like he was floundering. Now, however, he seemed ready to sprout wings and fly off from sheer happiness.

"Over th-" Blaine started to point on his way to the kitchen.

"Found it, thank you," Peter said before Blaine could give proper directions. He supposed it wasn't that hard to find; it was one of the few things in the apartment that were used every day, so it wasn't buried under anything even at the messiest of times. It wasn't as distinctive as Peter's gramophone, but it served him well. Blaine heard Peter set down the stack of records, then his voice drew nearer. "I figured it out."

"Figured what out?" Blaine asked. He tried to match Peter's enthusiasm, but it was hard when he had literally no idea what they were even talking about.

"How to help you."

Blaine's eyes widened and his heart leapt - he tried to tamp it down, to remind himself that so far none of Peter's active attempts at helping him had been nearly what he needed. Well-...they were in part, but none of them had solved things and each had led him down an increasingly desolate path. No matter how well-intentioned the gentleman's plans, they couldn't fix the root cause of his agony.

...Could they?

The possibility alone was enough to let Blaine ask, "How's that?" If there was even a chance-

Peter beamed again, looking so proud of himself that if Blaine didn't know better he'd swear the man in his apartment had just won a Nobel Prize in something. "I was going about it all wrong," he stated, and though Blaine didn't want to be rude enough to agree aloud he did have to silently acknowledge the truth of Peter's statement. He wanted to help Blaine, that much was never in doubt, but he tended to focus so much on trying to convince him that there was nothing that needed fixing that he never really got at the problem itself- "I can't believe I didn't see it until today. How dim of me. You don't see the world the same way I do, so of course the way I was trying to help wouldn't work." Peter grinned again to himself, practically laughing with delight at whatever this newfound plan was.

"That's true," Blaine acknowledged gently. It had been the main problem last weekend, it had been what was wrong with the books, what was wrong with everything Peter had said after the disastrous date with Evelyn. It had been easy enough to agree not to drink - though harder to give it up in practice - but so much of Peter's worldview was built on defiance of what their fathers' generation held dear that of course he didn't understand why Blaine wasn't so easily swayed-

"Books are my window to the world," Peter stated, meeting Blaine's eyes, still so excited he seemed almost to vibrate with it as he shifted from one foot to the other. "That's not how things are for you. You need music."

The statement meant more to Blaine than he could ever have explained to Peter, but he tried anyway. "More than anything," he replied with as much sincerity as he could let out, silently pleading that that wouldn't be the next thing to go.

"No, silly," Peter laughed, reaching out to grasp Blaine's shoulders to force him to look directly. "You need music to understand the world. It's how you relate to everything. It's not just about wooing women when you've had a few drinks, and it's not just about being the center of attention for you. Is it?" he asked with a gentle smile.

"No," he replied, his voice quiet but certain.

"I didn't see it until I watched you perform this afternoon - God only knows why, it was so obvious," Peter chuckled at his own expense. "Giving you books, giving you essays and studies and narratives that forced you to read things right there in black and white... you couldn't detach yourself, but you couldn't relate to it either. It just ended up scaring you. But music... That you'll be able to understand."

There were too many half-formed thoughts in Peter's statement, and while from what Blaine could follow it sounded right, he still wasn't sure where this was going or what any of it meant for him. "Understand what?" he asked slowly, eyebrows lowered in skepticism, and Peter's hand slid down onto his bicep.

"Do you trust me?" The hand on his arm gave a gentle squeeze that left Blaine feeling like all the blood had been drained from his body. Peter's palm was broad, strong, reassuring in all the ways that were not reassuring at all. His eyes were too bright in this light and from this angle, his smile too warm and genuine, and Blaine wanted more than anything for something bad to happen right now. Then maybe-

He wasn't talking about being stabbed in the chest by a pin, he wasn't a child anymore - wasn't that desperate high schooler anymore in the middle of an ancient Warbler ritual. No one was in their underwear, thank God, and this was his apartment. He could tell the man to leave, and he had no doubt that Peter would. But if something could happen right now that would help him want Peter to leave, so he could remember that instead of how eager and kind the man looked... Maybe that would help enough.

Still, he had to answer the question, and he couldn't lie. "Yes," he replied quietly. It was himself he didn't trust. While Peter's illness made everything around him more dangerous because of the possibility of reciprocation, if he weren't sick himself then there wouldn't be any danger of temptation. And while many homosexuals were violent, out of their minds with frenzied lust, Peter seemed more sedate and respectful, as though he had a greater hold on his instincts even if he chose not to rid himself of them completely.

"Then let me play some things for you," Peter urged. His smile grew broader as he added, "Worst case scenario, you spend an evening listening to music you may like."

Only that wasn't the worst case scenario, Blaine knew. There were far worse things that could come of it than that. That was how it had started with Kurt - the two of them and some Judy Garland albums in his dorm room - and look how that had turned out. Music was too powerful a thing to bond over. Although...

Maybe he would be safe. Peter wasn't as drawn to music as he was, so it wouldn't be like with Kurt. Part of the problem had been Kurt's enthusiasm for the songs, the way he sang along to them, but Peter wouldn't. So maybe he would be fine.

"Okay," he allowed, and Peter smiled broadly as he led Blaine over toward the table that held his record player.

"My collection's not nearly as extensive as yours, I'm sure, but I did what I could."

"What do you mean?" Blaine asked as he sat on the edge of the bed, because Peter still wasn't making any sense.

"I should back up," Peter acknowledged, and Blaine did his best not to make his nod appear as though he agreed too heartily. "When we spoke last, you were trying to explain to me that the way you knew it was wrong was because your father treated hopeless cases all the time, and because you saw how society feels about men like us firsthand for too much of your life."

It was what they had talked about, and yet it wasn't; Peter's summary made it sound as though Blaine had no stake in it whatsoever, and that wasn't true. He wasn't merely parroting back something he'd been told - he agreed that he shouldn't- But there was nothing in the statement he could inherently disagree with, so Blaine replied, "Mostly," and left it at that.

Peter smiled and nodded again, standing at the foot of Blaine's bed. "And we came to the conclusion that you don't hold all the same opinions as our father's generation, correct?"

"Well I don't-"

"I'm assuming, from the makeup of the Mendicants, that you're not in favour of segregation?" Peter supposed, and at that Blaine had to concede the point. He looked down, smiling faintly in acknowledgement of the truth of Peter's statement, and nodded. "And from the way you praised that girl's wit, I'm guessing you don't want a bored housewife with an M.R.S. degree."

On that, Blaine was slightly more torn. He wanted his children to one day have all the warmth he'd lacked growing up, which he did associate with the presence of a mother to dote on them, but at the same time... He'd seen girls around whose only interest in college - and in life - was finding a husband, and they had never held his interest. He needed someone who could challenge him at least a little, and that... that did sound like what Peter was describing. "Ideally," he replied.

"So you're already leaps and bounds ahead of our parents," Peter stated.

Blaine gave a short nod and a bit of a shrug, because on those two issues Peter might be right, but- "Does that really have anything to do with-" before he had to struggle to get the word 'us' past his lips, Peter jumped back in with his most professorial voice.

"I'm glad you asked," he stated, smiling broadly. "That brings us perfectly to what I wanted to show you." He stepped to his left over to the turntable and sifted through his stack until he found the album he wanted. Blaine tried to peer over to see what Peter had brought, to get any idea of what was going on, but Peter kept the record and its sleeve in a position where Blaine couldn't see anything but its shape. "Not so very long ago," Peter began his lecture as he pulled the album from its sleeve and placed it carefully with a precise hand on the record player, "everyone younger than we are now was obsessed with a particularly handsome young man with tall hair and very flexible hips." It only took Blaine a moment to guess who Peter was talking about, and he snickered at the description - it sounded at once silly and lurid. "And everyone older than we are now thought he was destroying the country. Teenagers would run wild, they claimed, and give in to sexual urges at the very sight of a man's gyrations on television. So tell me, Blaine-" Peter lowered the needle to the record, and a familiar song filled the room. "Did this ruin the world?" he asked over the rock and roll song with a patronizing grin.

Blaine rolled his eyes but smiled and shook his head. "Of course not," he replied, because it was true; no matter how many people had sworn up and down that Elvis would cause an explosion in inappropriate teenage behaviour, upheaval like that hadn't come to pass. He had revolutionized music, and his influence was stamped all over popular culture, but the United States hadn't come toppling down as a result of a man's hips on the Ed Sullivan Show.

"Really? Because our parents were so sure," Peter replied dryly, and Blaine shook his head because he got Peter's point - but it was more complicated than that. "Well, if he didn't destroy the country's sense of morality, what about these guys?" He lifted the needle and removed the Elvis record, replacing it quickly with another, and in a few moments the strains of "She Loves You" filled the room. "You like them, right?"

"Yes," Blaine replied, but he was growing frustrated. "Look, Peter, I understand and appreciate what you're trying to do, and I'm grateful that you care enough to try, but this isn't going to change my mind."

"Change your mind about what?"

"About what we are," Blaine stated, aggravated that Peter would play dumb like that. "About what's wrong with us. Just because my father treats men like us and also happens to dislike Elvis-"

"Okay." Peter held up his hands in surrender. "Will you let me play one more thing?"

"What?" Blaine asked, not sure where this was going.

"Ah ah ah, no questions. One more record, yes or no?" Blaine wasn't sure it would do any good - in fact, he was growing certain it wouldn't - but he supposed he didn't have anything left to lose, so maybe- "To sweeten the pot, I can tell you it's almost certainly something you've never heard before."

That piqued his curiosity. There wasn't much music he hadn't listened to - at least, not that he knew of. He had grown up with classical played quietly at his parents' soirees, and he had been taken to the opera enough times as a child to be familiar with most of them, and he listened to rock and Broadway and plenty of the music he was about five years too young for- "Really?"

Peter grinned. "Is that a yes?"

"Yes," Blaine allowed, and Peter beamed again in victory as he pulled the Beatles off the turntable and replaced it with a new record. He lowered the needle and turned to watch Blaine listen.

Peter had been right - it was something he definitely hadn't heard before, and with good reason. The piano on the record was playing nothing but- but noise, but whatever keys he happened to hit, like a small child with hands that were too tiny to play the correct chords who had no sense of his own limitations. There was no melody, no harmony that made any sense, no chord progression - no chords, just random sounds thrown together in a jumbled mess. Peter barely managed to contain laughter at Blaine's expression. "I take it you're not used to jazz," he supposed.

"It's not that," Blaine tried, because politeness kept him from saying how awful he thought it was.

"Sure it is," Peter replied. He held up the album sleeve, then handed it to Blaine so he could see it. "Thelonious Monk. When I first heard of him, I misheard the person giving his name and thought it was a political statement about the Catholic Church." Blaine smiled faintly at the joke, and Peter continued. "Just keep listening. Give it a try. I know it's not like the music you're used to." His voice was gentle, understanding, but urging nonetheless, and Blaine couldn't bring himself to say no. It was just a song, after all, it wasn't anything harmful no matter how much his ears were protesting.

It wasn't even that the individual notes themselves were awful, and the more he listened the more obvious it was that the piano player had far more finesse than an unruly child. It was just too much for his brain to sort out, too many things to listen to all at once, and none of it seemed to fit together. The notes and rhythm, such as they were, felt upbeat but the rest of the chords didn't sound it. Every time he started to catch wind of a melody, it changed, like the entire piece of music were written on an Etch-a-Sketch and, instead of just turning a page every so often, the person sitting beside the pianist fellow shook up the score and started over again.

But still, there was something-... Something about it, something that left Blaine searching in the music instead of tuning it out, something that made him want to- if he could just listen harder, listen awhile longer, he could find whatever it was Peter liked about this, he felt certain. If he tried-

He rolled his eyes, frustrated; music wasn't supposed to be work. It wasn't supposed to require a translation and make him this desperate to try harder. He had enough things in his life that he had to work at, and music was meant to be the means by which he freed himself from all of that. Yet when the song came to an end, and Peter lifted the arm and asked whether they should listen again, Blaine replied unhesitatingly, "Yes."

He was close to finding the beauty in the song, he was sure of it. It constantly felt just out of reach, just beyond his ears, but maybe one more time-

"I know you hear noise," Peter stated as he began the song again, and Blaine wasn't sure where to focus: on the words, or on the chords he couldn't quite understand. "Most people do. But I hear something beautiful, complex, fragile... I hear something amazing, even if other people don't understand it. I feel something with jazz-... it's like looking at a handsome young man. Just because other people don't feel the same thing I do when they look at him, just because they don't see the same things I do... it doesn't mean it's not there, Blaine. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the way I hear, or feel, or see. It just means that my world is in jazz, and theirs is the Beatles."

And suddenly, there it was.

Blaine wished he knew what 'it' was, what about that explanation had made things seem simpler, but he didn't. And it wasn't perfect, it didn't answer everything- far from it. But something about whatever it was made him at-ease enough to change his tone, pointing out in a more questioning than defensive voice, "Isn't there a difference between liking a type of music and being severely mentally ill?"

"I thought we were past that," Peter sighed softly, shaking his head. "Your father-"

"He's very well-respected, he isn't a quack selling potions. He tries to help people who have nowhere else to turn." He wasn't sure why he felt compelled to defend the man he tried to avoid spending five minutes alone in a room with, but something about the way Peter kept trying to dismiss the whole field and all its beliefs set him on edge every time.

"These men he helps... do they come to him voluntarily?"

"Most do, as far as I know. Sometimes their families bring them because they're a threat to themselves."

Peter winced, sitting on the edge of the bed but giving Blaine some space. "They-" He sighed and shook his head. "Suffice it to say that who you have seen is not a representative sample. They believe they're sick, so they want to be cured. They aren't everyone, Blaine. They want help not feeling the way they do, so of course they're miserable. That's why you're so miserable." When Blaine tried to protest feebly, Peter cut him off. "It is. My dear boy- if you could only see- that's the root of everything wrong in your life. That's why you drank so heavily, that's why you chase all those women and need to prove you can have them, that's why you keep everyone at a distance - everything is held so tightly inside you. You're like an overstuffed suitcase about to pop open. Which means you have a choice. You can keep feeling the way that you do...or you can find the beauty in who we are and embrace it."

Blaine wanted to protest, but everything he was saying was right. Everything he'd worked to surround himself, all the ways he'd tried to cope since moving to California, laid out in front of him by a gentleman with expressive eyes and a pitying look on his face. Still, the choice wasn't nearly as simple as Peter made it out to be. He didn't know how much longer he could bear feeling the way he did - the way he had felt for as long as he could remember... or for whatever portions of his life he could remember. He certainly didn't want to continue the way he had; particularly without alcohol to help ease everything, to help smooth his insides over, he felt like he could snap at any point, and then-...

He wondered what it was that had set his mother off, what had made her snap way back when. He wondered if she'd felt like this, back when she could feel anything at all, before the cocktails and medications hollowed her into a smiling, presentable shell. Did she have enough idea of what was going on to have regrets about it? Would she do the same thing again? Or would she embrace whatever- whatever darkness it had been that had caused her to explode in such an unacceptable way for a society woman?

But then there was the question of the other supposed option. No good came of embracing being sick. At least if he could find a girl he liked, he could have the things he craved so badly - warmth, family, a home...where would any of that be if he just let himself be the way he felt?

Of course, he reminded himself, where was any of that now? Where was any of that for his parents, for their friends, for anyone he had grown up knowing? The only person he knew with a family like that was Kurt anyway, with the dad who worked on cars with him and the stepmom who didn't know how to cook but really tried anyway. And Kurt had sworn up and down that there could be homosexuals in- in relationships, so maybe-

"Do you think a person could be happy?" Blaine asked quietly. "Being a... fan of jazz. Or is it a lonely life?"

Peter's face twisted into something like agony, and he reached out to cup Blaine's face; the sudden warmth left him breathless as Peter replied, "Happy. I promise. You just have to find someone else who feels the way you do. Things may not be perfect - they're never perfect - but I have been so happy in my life... and I have no doubt you can find that. None at all."

Blaine nodded mutely. It sounded so nice, so- so possible, the way Peter made it seem like just another style of music instead of what he'd grown up seeing it as, and... of all the words he could use to describe the eccentric gentleman, he didn't know that 'lonely' would spring to mind quickly at all. He was so outgoing, often in the company of female friends, invited to parties for a department that wasn't even his own... And he'd had boyfriends, hadn't he said? The one who kissed well but didn't last long, and the- the French guy. Peter had certainly sounded happy talking about them... not the way he felt when he thought about Kurt, so angry and hurt and full of regret...

"You and my- former boyfriend-" he struggled to get the word out. Even saying the word 'boyfriend' aloud felt terrifying, but how else could he describe Kurt? "-would have gotten along well," Blaine managed finally, staring at the edge of the desk intently. Kurt would have loved this conversation, would have spent the entire time standing there with his arms neatly folded and shooting him a look that said "See? I've only been telling you this for half a decade now, Blaine." Of course, if he'd believed it then he wouldn't have needed this conversation now, but that wasn't the point.

That caught Peter's attention, and he leaned closer, smiling gently. "You think so?" he prompted, and Blaine knew he needed to talk about Kurt eventually but it just seemed so difficult to sort out. His relationship had been more complicated than the chords plinking out on the record.

Instead he simply nodded and replied, "Yes. You had a similar...optimism." He'd called it something else at the time, but now... If he was going to try this, he needed to really try this. "He tried for months to convince me, but in the end I... couldn't. I just couldn't."

Peter nodded slowly, then patted his shoulder fondly, with such tenderness that Blaine could sense it without looking up. "You weren't ready," he offered gently.

"What if I could have had the things he talked about, but I can't find them with anyone else?" he asked, the words startling him even as they came out of his mouth. He didn't talk about this - he'd never- for obvious reasons, and then the bigger reasons on top of that, and now he just said things-

"You will," Peter assured him. "You're too kind a soul to be alone forever. And with that voice? Boys should watch out, you'll steal their hearts in a second."

Blaine rolled his eyes at the ridiculous attempt at a consoling talk and replied, "That's not been my experience. Boys aren't like that."

"Not that you know, that's all," Peter replied. "They hide as well as you did. But believe me, you have all the right things to find someone now that you're not afraid of yourself. I have a sense about these things. You may not see the beauty, but I do."

Blaine didn't know that he believed any of it. He knew he was talented, and he had certainly used his talent to his advantage to try to get girls to pay attention to him over other boys, but he wasn't sure he was half as great as Peter was making him out to be... and even if he were, he wasn't sure how that would translate into finding the things he wanted so badly. But at the same time... it wasn't as though he'd found them with a girl, had he? He wasn't sure if that meant he wasn't good at finding the qualities he needed, or if he'd just spent so much time floundering because he didn't know how to like the right girls? "So I'm like a piece of jazz?" Blaine concluded, trying to joke but sounding too nervous to really convey amusement. "Only you can feel the beauty?"

Peter chuckled at his comment anyway, which did make him feel a little better - not much, not enough, but a little. He hesitated, then leaned over to the stack of records he'd brought. "No - I'm jazz, you're much more... Oh, where did she go?" At the use of 'she', Blaine found himself desperately hoping it wasn't Judy Garland. He wasn't sure why Peter would have one of her albums, but then, he couldn't imagine that guy owning "Hound Dog," either, so really he had no choice but to fear-

"Ah, here we go," Peter smiled as he plucked up the record he was looking for. He put it on the turntable, then studied the back of the cardboard sleeve for a few moments before selecting the song and lowering the needle with a precise hand. Blaine had never been so grateful to hear a song he didn't recognize in his life. "Do you know this one?"

"No," he replied, almost breathing a sigh of relief.

"Dusty Springfield. She's wildly popular in England right now, but her songs have a theatricality to them... a way they swell as she pours emotion into them, but always with control. And a lot of her songs are about being utterly lonely, but they're romantic at the same time. I think she wants to believe in all those childhood dreams but she never manages to get there. And it all exudes trying so hard - at what she's singing about, not at the songs themselves. The songs themselves sound effortless." This music was much more Blaine's style than the jazz, with catchy melodies and a full, almost Phil Spector-ish quality, but Peter was right - it sounded like wanting and trying but pasting on a smile and trying to be upbeat... only succeeding a lot more than Judy ever did. The loneliness was clear, but so was the spirit...

And perhaps more importantly, she could be his. Judy Garland, in his mind, belonged forever to Kurt... to the way he cried beautifully as he sang, and the way he poured every ounce of sadness into songs, and the way he refused to be defeated...

I just don't know what to do with my time
I'm so lonesome for you it's a crime
Going to a movie only makes me sad
Parties make me feel as bad
When I'm not with you
I just don't know what to do...

There were reasons he hadn't been able to listen to those albums since leaving Ohio, and every reason had to do with the boy he'd left behind. And he missed them both.