The sea called to Blaine. He didn’t know if it was the rhythmic beat of the waves against the boardwalk, the crisp, salty smell of the water that tanged just so on the back of Blaine’s tongue, or the hum of the boats, moving closer, further, and away, but Blaine always wanted to be closer.

            Quinn finally let him go town to the harbor in the mornings to watch the dawn break over the rippling water with Mr. Davis, who didn’t do very much but stare out to sea and complain about his stiff knee. Blaine could watch the pulse and ebb of the currents all day, content to just breathe the salt air and listen to the life of the harbor.

            It was a warm, breezy day and the old men Blaine sat with were all clinging to their wide-brimmed hats and muttering about an approaching storm, and Blaine sighed softly, wondering if Quinn would scold him if he wandered off on his own, just for some time alone with the sounds of the harbor.

            Things had definitely changed for Blaine, over the past weeks that stretched into months and eventually years. First, there was Beth. Beautiful, smiley, golden-haired little Beth. She was the spitting image of Quinn but had Noah’s dopey smile, and she was perfect. Almost anything could make her laugh, and when she did it was like a chorus of birdsong on an early morning. She was just now learning to walk, and Blaine often marveled at the differences between them; she was so small, peachy pink and downy-haired, so new while the wrinkles in his face were still receding. Blaine knew he had not been born the way Beth had, but it still fascinated him, to see her follow in his footsteps of growing up in a way so detached from his own.

            The things that Blaine had counted on and taken for granted over the first few years of his life were not the same after Beth’s arrival, to say the least. Blaine housed permanently in the spare room on the 2nd floor and learned to live with the drafts, and he quickly discovered that his time with Quinn and Noah was divided considerably with Beth. But despite his previous fears, Blaine was by no means abandoned or forgotten – he was just a little more secondary. Quinn was still his mama and always would be, and Blaine loved his baby sister as much as Quinn and Noah did.

            It was easier learning how to be secondary when he had Kurt by his side. Kurt visited every few weeks or so, bursting into the house like a sunbeam with a suitcase and a megawatt smile. Kurt wasn’t all elbows and knees that jutted out too far from his body anymore; he’d grown taller, still slender but a little more filled out over the years. His tongue was sharper and wittier, and Blaine often had a hard time keeping up with Kurt’s lightning-speed conversations. But he loved Kurt’s attitude and the words that shot right over Blaine’s head and left him dizzy, because they were what made Kurt essentially Kurt, and Blaine wouldn’t have it any other way. Kurt was Blaine’s best friend, and Blaine valued that much more than a few silly thoughts about the intensity of Kurt’s eyes.

            A small tugboat chugged slowly into Blaine’s line of vision, nearly colliding with the dock. The black paint of the hull was chipped and in need of repair and the deck was choked by numerous ropes and pulleys, but she looked sturdy, and Blaine watched with interest as an insanely tall, gangly man leapt onto the dock to promptly lean over the edge and vomit into the water. A wiry, middle-aged man with black hair and slanty eyes landed beside him, cursing and grumbling as a line of mismatched men gathered on the boat’s deck to observe, snorting and elbowing each-other.

            “You’ve got to pull yourself together, Finn, come on, swallow it down or something! Stomach flu? You were fine yesterday! You’re really going to leave me without a full crew?”

            The tall man mumbled something through his retching and the man with the slanty eyes cursed and spat onto the dock.

            “Anyone here willing to work a day for honest wage?” he hollered, scanning the men sitting on the line of benches in desperation. Blaine glanced to his left; not a single man sitting beside him on the damp wooden benches was a day under 80 and looked as if they’d sooner climb into their own coffins than aboard the tugboat.

            “No one?” The man spat again and raked a hand through his hair, casting a harried glance at the gangling man at his feet, now sitting on his heels and wiping his mouth with a shaky hand.

            Blaine stood up.

            “Sit down!” Mr. Davis hissed at him like an old goose, but Blaine ignored him.

            “I’ll do it.” The slanty-eyed man turned and stared at Blaine for a moment, dark eyes scanning him up and down, tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek.

            “You got your sea legs about you?” He didn’t have an accent like most everyone Blaine knew, and his tone was inquiring, not rude, and Blaine immediately took a liking to him.

            Blaine looked down at his own legs, now sturdy and sure-footed after weeks of practicing without the cane.

            “I think so.”

            The man nodded slowly, deliberating before he clapped his hands together and urged Blaine forward. “Alright, come on then, daylight’s wasting. Finn, get on home, come back when you’re feeling better. We’ve got you covered.”

            The tall man gave Blaine a wobbly grimace before pushing himself to his feet and stumbling away, and Blaine approached his new employer, slightly nervous now.

            “Name’s Mike Chang.” Blaine took Mike Chang’s proffered hand and shook firmly, trying to make a good impression. “This here’s A New Direction, and I’m her captain. You’ll be scrubbing the deck and cleaning out the kitchen today, and I’ll pay you half right now but if you don’t finish the job I keep the other half, sound fair?” Mike spoke in a confident, authoritative monologue, and Blaine had never heard more fair in his life.

            “Yes, sir.”

            Captain Mike grinned and his whole face lit up, sea-worn lines fading into the smile, and Blaine couldn’t help but smile back.

            “What’s your name, sailor?” Mike asked, climbing aboard A New Direction and offering Blaine a hand up.

            “Blaine.”

            “That it?”
            “I guess so.”

            Mike shrugged and led Blaine across the messy deck, and Blaine watched his feet carefully, avoiding the coils of rope that threatened to catch at his ankles. The boat swayed beneath him and the smell of salt water was almost overpowering, but Blaine loved it already.

            “Well, Blaine, I’m grateful you’re doing this. Finn’s a good man but he’s unreliable, always eating the wrong thing and wondering why he’s sick as a dog the next day, you know how it is…”

            Blaine didn’t, but he nodded anyway, because Captain Mike Chang was quickly becoming one of the most interesting people Blaine had ever met and he wanted him to keep talking.

            Work on A New Direction was rigorous, taking its toll on Blaine’s still-fragile bones, leaving him with dark, swollen bruises on every inch of his skin each night, but Blaine relished it. Despite the dirty, strenuous work scrubbing the deck, cleaning the kitchen, hauling lines, and scraping the occasional pile of bird shit from the railings, the whip of the crisp air across his cheeks stung with independence and the ache of his muscles made him feel strong, like he could do anything if he put his mind to it.

            Of course, it was at that precise moment that a swell rose up and sent the boat lurching heavily to one side, and Blaine was re-acquainted with the deck for the umpteenth time in the past few weeks. The boards were slippery beneath his cheek and he could feel new bruises pulsing through his elbow and the heels of both hands.

            “You alright down there, Blaine?” Mike hollered, leaning over the upper-deck railing, wind catching in his salt-and-pepper hair and pulling it up and away from his head.

            Captain Mike, despite the rough exterior and tongue of a true sailor, peeled back like an onion under closer inspection, compassion and fierce loyalty exposed with the peeling of each layer. He’d opened up to Blaine after Blaine had showed up to the harbor each morning, bouncing and eager to board the boat, meeting Blaine’s questions with a crinkled smile and quiet, intelligently worded answers that intrigued Blaine even further. Blaine learned that Mike was the son of a wealthy family who would have much preferred a strict education in the law or medical field to captaining a grungy tugboat that putted across the world whenever it was needed, but Mike said he didn’t care what his family – especially his father – thought (he used words much more colorful and beyond Blaine’s current vocabulary, and Blaine was justly in awe). According to Mike, nothing he’d tried had been good enough in his parents’ eyes. Singing, dancing – Mike reminisced on those two the most, longing in his eyes as he told Blaine about his teenage years spent performing at a small theater until his parents found out and gave him an ultimatum: law school, or find another place to call home. Mike had chosen the latter, and hopped aboard A New Direction at age nineteen, never looking back.

            Blaine wondered what that must be like, cutting ties with your family and finding an escape in ocean waves and a worn helm under your palms. Blaine loved the sea, but he always returned to his family once the sun kissed the ocean and orange spilled into blue.

            “’M fine!” Blaine called back to Mike, rearranging his limbs and straightening up to be met with all 6 feet 2 inches of Finn Hudson.

            “You all right, man?” Finn’s gorilla-like arms steadied Blaine and Blaine cracked a small smile; Finn was always front and center in a crisis, the only problem being that he was usually a few crucial moments behind.

            “I’m fine, Finn, thank you.” Blaine craned his neck to smile at the man, - easily the tallest person Blaine had ever seen but by no means the scariest - and Finn grinned crookedly, nodding and turning to lope towards the wheelhouse.

            For Blaine’s first week aboard the boat, Finn had kept making doubtful mentions about Blaine’s apparent age and shuffled around, muttering irritably about Blaine taking his position, though Mike made sure they were both paid equal amounts, and didn’t warm up until Blaine saved him from being knocked out by a falling coil of rope on a particularly stormy night. Then Finn was constantly at Blaine’s heels, and it was all Blaine could do not to trip over him.

            There were eight men aboard A New Direcion, including Blaine, and Blaine sometimes wondered how no-one ended up overboard by the hands of another some days; each man was so diverse from the other, complete with quirks and irritabilities that caused so much friction Blaine sometimes swore he saw sparks. Rory and Artie, for instance, were constantly at each-other’s throats, bickering about everything from Ireland to pretty women, and Rory had a habit of pulling the locks out of Artie’s wheelchair until Mike had to threaten to deport him back to his home country and Artie would roll away to prepare dinner, glaring with narrowed, bespectacled eyes and muttering something about pesty leprechauns.

            Sam and Joe generally got along well, but once they were on land they would inexplicably start to argue, getting into some heated debate about religion and the temptations of God, and Joe would stalk off, flipping his dreadlocks over his shoulder in disdain. Blaine once asked him how he had gotten his hair like that and had subsequently sat through a twenty minute biography of each dreadlock. Blaine supposed he should have heeded the simultaneous finger-slicing-neck-abort-mission motions from Sam, Finn, and Mike.

            No one seemed to have a problem with Cooper, the tall, bright-eyed man who spoke too loud, pointed his fingers too much, and seemed to have a criticism for nearly everything, which surprised Blaine because the man was instantly on his nerves, especially when he patted Blaine on the head and started calling him “Squirt,” much to the crew’s amusement and less so to Blaine’s. Mike explained to Blaine that Cooper was a rejected film actor and had nowhere else to go, which made Blaine feel kind of bad, but Cooper’s excited fingers always somehow ended up nearly poking Blaine’s eye out, which lessened his sympathies considerably.

            Truth be told, Blaine often felt young and inexperienced compared to his crew. Sam had performed in clubs and bars before he found Captain Mike (White Chocolate was evidently a nickname he was still trying to shake); Rory had traveled across all of Ireland before deciding he wanted to experience America; Joe could quote Bible scriptures with no hesitation while half-asleep. Artie managed just as well as anyone else despite his disability (he’d been paralyzed in a boating accident several years prior and Mike was the only one who would take him after that), Cooper’s dinnertime dramatic monologues were surprisingly riveting, and even Finn, with the two left feet and windmill arms, was probably strong enough to lift five of the eight men, while Blaine had trouble getting the heavy ropes to do his bidding.

            “I haven’t done that much,” Blaine admitted to Mike one day as he wrestled the ropes in question into a neat coil and Mike smoked a cigarette, gazing out at the pastel of the sunrise. Mike exhaled a ring of smoke into the chilly air and flicked ash over the rail, turning to Blaine.

            “That’s better than doing nothing at all, isn’t it?”

            Blaine held those words close to his heart, so he could feel them burn on his coldest, most doubtful days.

            Blaine had never been inside a bar prior to his job on A New Direction, but to the rest of the crew, it was second nature to go out on a Friday night, charm the women, have a good time, and get absolutely, completely – as Mike called it – shitfaced. Even Joe, who protested against the sins of gluttony, always loosened up and downed enough booze to get him giddy and cotton-mouthed, while Rory, Mike, and Cooper often had to be dragged stinking drunk and unconscious from the premises.

            Blaine enjoyed alcohol, the taste and the burn that always left him feeling happy and light as a feather, but after one night where he showed up home at 2am babbling on about how amazing Mrs. Jones’s dentures were before throwing up all over Quinn’s slippers, he preferred to watch his friends enjoy themselves while nursing his one and only drink.

            “So, Blaine, how many women have you been with? Old man like you, you’ve got to have pleased them all, yes?” Mike had to shout over the shouting of everyone else, squinty-eyed against the smoke from his cigarette. Finn and Sam were currently engaged in an arm-wrestling contest while Cooper assumed the role of commentator, his booming voice audible even over the din of the bar, and Blaine sensed that the bottles and glasses surrounding Sam and Finn’s straining arms were going to suffer an untimely death very soon.

            “Um. None, I don’t think?” Mike’s eyes flew comically wide and he choked slightly on his own smoke, slamming his fist on the bar and staring at Blaine. In the background, Rory hollered something in Irish and there was a crash of shattering glass.

            “None? In your entire life, you’ve never had a single woman?” Blaine shifted a little on his barstool, not quite understanding what Mike meant and certainly not willing to admit that he had never found another woman beautiful. Not the way he still found Kurt.

            “No,” he said, shrugging. Mike whistled softly and shook his head, slapping a few bills on the counter and jerking his hand at Blaine.

            “Come on. We’re changing this immediately. Don’t give me that look, put down that drink and follow me.”

            And that was how Blaine, who had never had any inclination towards women, much less prostitutes in various stages of undress, ended up at a brothel, watching Captain Mike dance an elaborate tango with a dark-haired, heavily make-upped woman in fishnets and a chemise.

            Blaine tried to make himself as small as possible, wondering if he slumped low enough in his seat Mike would forget him in favor of the goth girl and he could escape home to a glass of warm milk and the safety of his own bed.

            Of course, things like that didn’t happen to friends of drunken tugboat captains, and so Blaine wasn’t really all that surprised when he found himself flat on his back on a hard mattress, lace-covered thighs under his hands and barely-covered breasts swinging uncomfortably close to his face.

            Blaine was absolutely not a violent person – he still had to close his eyes when a spider got into the house and Quinn shrieked for Noah to come kill it – but he was going to throw Captain Mike overboard at the soonest opportunity.

            “Um,” Blaine stammered, squirming underneath the curly-haired prostitute and looking as far away from her breasts as he possibly could without rolling his eyes all the way back in his head. “Um, I don’t think this is going to work, miss –”

            “Look, Grandpa, I’m the only one who was up for this, so just close your eyes or something and enjoy.” She sounded only moderately annoyed, but Blaine realized she wasn’t just about to get off him and let him stumble out. Warm, plump lips trailed up his neck and teeth nicked at the side of his mouth and Blaine was definitely starting to panic. Before he could protest, those lips came out of nowhere to cover his, pliant and tasting vaguely of cherries, and oh no, he didn’t even think girls were pretty and he was kissing one, oh no, oh no. Also, Mama Quinn was going to kill him.

            Skilled hands worked at the clasp of his pants and Blaine almost shot straight off the bed, creaky bones and all, yanking his lips as far away from hers as he could.

            “No, I mean, you’re very beautiful -” he assumed she was, anyway, by the way Mike hooted and clapped him on the back when the curvy woman had gestured for Blaine to follow her “ – but… this isn’t right. For me.”

            The prostitute straightened up, thin eyebrows blending into her wave of red hair, and Blaine scooted into a sitting position and shoved his glasses straighter on his nose. He felt awful, he really did, for she was beautiful – any of his crewmates would have a line of drool dangling from their chins at the sight of her, but all Blaine could think about was how her eyes were not nearly as pretty as Kurt’s. And that scared Blaine, honestly, because he should be enjoying this - Mike’s gift, as his captain had hollered before twirling into a room with the girl in fishnets - because any other normal male would be. Blaine had hoped, in the months that separated Kurt’s last visit from now, that he would have forgotten his feelings for the boy and learned to appreciate girls, but so far he’d only noticed muscular shoulders and broad hands, the contrast of smiling white teeth against a patch of dark stubble. Blaine hated how, again, he couldn’t be normal, but then again, he supposed, did he really just expect for things to change out of the blue?

            “I’m very sorry for your trouble,” Blaine said, mortified, sliding off the bed and retucking his shirt. “I have to go.”

            And he walked out, leaving the prostitute kneeling there looking absolutely bewildered.

            Other women gave him funny looks as he hastened down the stairs, all barely clothed, which made it seem somehow creepier when he bid them good night.

            He emerged into the heavy night air, breathing out a shaky sigh of relief and scanning the street to get his bearings. Whatever alcohol Mike had forced into him back at the bar had long since worn off and his head throbbed in tiny, staccato bursts from all the smoke and incense inside the brothel. Blaine heaved another sigh, lowering himself to the curb and rubbing absently at a bruise on his forearm – this one from Finn slamming into him with an armful of breakfast dishes.

            It looked like he’d be here for a while, if Mike’s apparently lack of the ability to tire had any say in the situation. Blaine was thinking of good lies to tell Mike when he finally emerged – Mama Quinn had taught him to always be truthful, but now that Blaine was older he was discovering that some lies never hurt anyone – so Cooper, Rory, and especially Artie wouldn’t spend every moment on the tugboat heckling him about his balk-and-run from the brothel, when a sleek black automobile pulled up, one of the rear windows rolling down. Blaine was instantly cautious, tensing on the sidewalk, but the man that leaned out the window looked relatively friendly, a few frown lines crinkling between his eyebrows, and eyes that looked as deep as the ocean Blaine loved so much.

            “You look like you could use a ride,” the man said in a low voice, offering Blaine a warm smile.

            “That’s very kind of you, sir, but I’m waiting for a friend.”

            “At this hour?”

            Blaine glanced behind him at the dimly lit brothel, wondering it if even had closing hours. The man in the car chuckled a little. “Ah, I see.”

            There was a silence filled only with the putter of the engine and the shouts and giddy laughter from inside the brothel.

            “Do you mind if I join you, then?” the man asked abruptly, and Blaine eyed him hesitantly for a moment before shrugging and gesturing to the space next to him. Nodding gratefully, the man stepped out the automobile, unfolding into long arms and even longer legs. He murmured something through the open window to his driver before turning to face Blaine as the automobile trundled away, pale under the yellow gloom of the streetlights, and anxious, if the way he fidgeted with the lapels of his finely-made jacket as he settled himself beside Blaine was any indication.

            “How rude of me,” he said suddenly, tapping his forehead with a thin hand. “My name is Thomas. Thomas Anderson-Button.”

            “Blaine.” Blaine shook hands with Mr. Anderson-Button, still slightly confused about the whole situation but determined to be polite.

            “Blaine,” Mr. Anderson-Button said softly, eyes unfocusing just slightly, and Blaine shuffled his hands in his lap, glancing away to stare down the empty street. What exactly did Mr. Anderson-Button want with him? Part of Blaine wanted to scramble back into the brothel to wait for Mike, but the other part told him to be polite, talk to the mysterious stranger who obviously had some things he wanted to say. The commanding voice in Blaine’s head sounded an awful lot like Mama Quinn.

            “So… what brings you here?” Blaine asked slowly, and Mr. Anderson-Button smiled ruefully down at his shoes, polished and shiny enough that Blaine could almost see his own reflection in them. “Just passing through, really. You happened to look a little stranded. Brothels not your forte?”

            Blaine shrugged good-naturedly, scuffing the toe of his boot against the street. “I guess not.”

            “I was never fond of them myself.” Mr. Anderson-Button stretched out his long legs and gazed pensively down the street.

            “Why’s that?” Blaine asked, now a little more interested in the strange man. Mr. Anderson-Button licked his lips and looked down, a slight shrug lifting his shoulder.

            “I preferred my wife. She was the love of my life from a very early age. I never had any need for another woman.”

            Blaine nodded absently, pretending he could relate. “She sounds lovely.”

            Mr. Anderson-Button smiled softly and flicked a speck of lint from the knee of his pants. “She was.”

            Blaine caught the past-tense and swallowed, trying to figure out how to tread along the delicate situation. “Oh. I’m… I’m sorry…”

            Mr. Anderson-Button waved him off. “It’s been a long time now. Anyway, what brings you out here?” Blaine flushed a little, thinking back to his experience in the brothel and feeling no less embarrassed.

            “My friend Mike insisted on it. I… I haven’t done a lot, see. He wanted to help me get some experience.” Mr. Anderson-Button nodded his understanding.

            “Why haven’t you done a lot? An older man like you, it would seem you’d have the world and more under your belt.”

            Blaine grimaced, shaking his head. “That’s the problem, really. I’m not… I’m not as old as I look. I was born with this disease, no one’s been able to tell me what exactly’s wrong with me. I haven’t been able to do too much yet because of it, but I’m getting there.”

            Mr. Anderson-Button nodded slowly, eyes travelling down Blaine’s wrinkled face, alighting on his bent, aching hands before he blinked, swallowing roughly and returning his gaze to his shoes. “I’m sorry.”

            “Nah, don’t be. My mother always said what makes you different makes you special.”

            “Your mother?”

            “Miss Quinn. I’m adopted. Someone left me on her doorstep when I was just a baby… I don’t think they quite knew what to do with me, but Quinn and Noah manage just fine.” There was something in Mr. Anderson-Button’s eyes that looked like deep, carefully guarded pain, but Blaine pretended not to notice. Mr. Anderson-Button smiled tightly and folded his arms across his knees while Blaine shifted to a more comfortable position on the pavement.

            “I see.”

            They were silent for a minute or so, but this time the quiet was less uncomfortable and more companionable. Blaine just breathed, massaging the cramps out of his hands and Mr. Anderson-Button drummed his fingers lightly on his forearm, eyes unfocused.

            “So, Mr. Anderson-Button –” Blaine began, but his companion chuckled and raised his hand, cutting Blaine off.

            “Thomas, please. The last name is such a mouthful.”

            Blaine smiled and nodded, continuing. “Thomas – what to do you do for a living?” He couldn’t have been in any line of physical work; the man’s delicate hands looked far too fragile for manual labor and his build was that of a runner, not a heavy-lifter or crewman.

            “Buttons,” Thomas laughed, as if repeating an old joke that had not stopped being funny but was now simply tedious. “Button’s Buttons, what a surprise, right? Two generations and still going strong. And what about you?”

            “I’m a tugboat man,” Blaine said, and he couldn’t help preening, just a little. “Kind of an extra hand on deck. I love feeling that free out on the water, you know?” Thomas smiled, a little wistfully.

            “I can definitely imagine.”

            “Blaine!” Blaine turned sharply to see – speak of the devil and he shall appear – Mike pacing towards them, a huge, lazy grin on his face and the top buttons of his shirt still unbuttoned. “I was asking for you, they said you left!”

            “Oh, yes, it was… over quickly,” Blaine supplied frantically, while Thomas watched in quiet amusement. Mike reached them and slapped a jovial hand on Blaine’s shoulder.

            “You dog, you! Told you you were missing out, didn’t I? Who’s this?”

            “Mike, this is Thomas Anderson-Button,” Blaine said, getting to his feet with a slight groan and a crack of stretching bones, and Thomas followed suit, extending a polite hand for Mike to shake.

            “From the button company, yeah, I’ve heard of you.” Mike gave a friendly smile as he took Thomas’s hand in his own. Blaine hoped he’d had the decency to wash them.

            “Notorious, I’m sure,” Thomas joked, glancing between the pair of them. “Can I offer you gentlemen a ride home? I told my driver to be back at the top of the hour…”

            “Nah, we’re all right. We’ve got to pick up the rest of the boys anyway.” Mike said cheerily, and Blaine deflated just a bit at the thought of helping Mike lug his crewmen’s heavy, sweaty bodies into taxis. Last time they’d gone out, Rory had squawked something in Irish before heaving out the contents of his stomach into Blaine’s lap, and Blaine was not keen on repeating the experience. Thomas smiled and nodded understandingly.

            “Of course. Well, it was a pleasure meeting the both of you. Blaine, I’d love to meet again sometime, if that’s all right with you…?”

            “That would be nice,” Blaine said warmly. The man was certainly someone Blaine would like to know more about. “Have a good night, Thomas.”

            “You too.” Mike slung his arm around Blaine’s shoulders as they started down the street, wasting no time and babbling on about the girl in the fishnets – Blaine caught the name Tina before Mike just started sighing happily – and Blaine twisted around to glance over his shoulder before they rounded the corner. Mr. Anderson-Button watched them go, eyes burning with something that looked like regret.