In Needles And Guitar Strings

"And here with me I have the very handsome and increasingly successful singer-songwriter, Blaine Anderson." The pink-cheeked blonde reporter, her long hair teased up into a neat bun, grabbing Blaine's wrist with a manicured hand, far too close to the leather cuff hiding the name on his wrist for comfort. "Blaine, your newest single leapt to the top of the charts within two days of its release, how do you feel about your sudden popularity?"

Blaine turned to the pretty young woman, so young, teetering on her spiked heels in the area cordoned off for reporters, holding a microphone to his face, her eyes shining with innocent hope, and he smiled winningly at her as flashbulbs went off all around, people screaming his name. "I'm always so grateful for the attention I've gotten and the wonderful I have from all my amazing fans who are out in force tonight," he said with practised ease, waving to the crowds of people cheering wildly for him, stretching over the barriers in attempts to touch him. "And I know a lot of my fanbase are teenagers, and Teenage Dream is all about that feeling of being young, of finding love for the first time and wanting everything forever. It's about being lucky enough to find your soulmate young."

"And speaking of soulmates, are you willing to tell the general public whose name is under that stylish woven leather cuff you're so fond of?" Jacob Ben Israel asked, shouldering his way to the front of the pack of reporters and shoving a microphone directly into Blaine's face. "Pray tell, who is the lucky girl?"

"He's a lucky man," Blaine said, disguising his general disgust with the pasty-faced man. "And I have made it clear that I don't want to reveal my soulmate's name to the public. But a lot of my songs have been written while thinking about him, and I'll be singing those tonight."

He turned away after signing a few autographs and allowing a couple of lucky fans to take pictures with him, and Cameron came running, dragging Blaine by the arm to his dressing room, chuntering on about how he had to get inside faster and not sign so many autographs, as the half an hour call for Blaine echoed through the concert hall and the faint strains of the warm-up act could be heard.

"Are you experimenting with how much skin can be shown without getting into a lot of legal trouble?" Blaine quipped as Sugar buttoned up the black shirt to barely cover any of his torso. She winked at him and pushed him down into a chair, lining his eyes carefully and fixing his hair one last time.

"You look hot, honey," she said, squeezing his bicep and faking the face of one of his fans being allowed to touch him, all wide-eyed wonder and thinly disguised want. "It's a good thing your soulmate's in the audience tonight." Blaine's five minute call echoed above them, and she kissed Blaine's cheek and ran the lint brush over his ass and thighs one more time, collecting the dust motes that appeared magnetised to the skintight black jeans. "Knock 'em dead."

Blaine smiled at his stylist, his friend, and blew her a last kiss as he ran down the corridors, reaching backstage in time for someone to fit a headset over his ears and signal to someone to switch on the microphone for him before the audience could be heard screaming for the warm-up act, then the deep, dramatic announcer's voice coming over the intercom, barely intelligible over the screams echoing around an auditorium ten-thousand people deep in his fans. "And now, the man of the evening, the one you're all here to see, Blaine Anderson!"

The spotlights whirled and the cheering was deafening as he leapt straight intoDo Ya Think I'm Sexy?, to the affirming shrieks of so many in the audience, through When I Get You Alone, Fighter and their old favourite, the song that had sent him into the cutthroat world of the rich and famous, It's Not Right, But It's Okay. The music slowed then, and he worked his way through What Kind Of Fool,Somewhere Only We Know, Cough Syrup, and finally Hopelessly Devoted To You, gazing helplessly at the shadowed figure in the front row, wishing he could only clearly see those eyes for the first time.

Finally he stopped singing, and he took the microphone in hand, smiling out at his audience in that disarming way that had people the world over swooning. "So this is my new song, which I'm sure you've all heard, it is pretty overplayed right now," he said with an apologetic shrug that had people shouting at him that it was a perfect song, that it didn't matter one bit. "And this is for everyone out there with those names on their wrists. Whether you've found your soulmate, or you're still looking, or you know exactly who they are but you don't know how to approach them, this is dedicated to you and that magical feeling when you look into your soulmate's eyes for the first time and all you can think is…You think I'm pretty without any make-up on, you think I'm funny when I tell the punchline wrong, I know you get me, so I let my walls come down, down."

The entire room is screaming and bouncing in time to the beat, and Blaine let his eyes sweep over the crowd once, to appreciate how far he'd come since filming himself singing Baby, One More Time in the living room of his first apartment with his first and worst boyfriend, before allowing them to drift back to the person in the front row, his face thrown into sharp relief and glowing with the spotlights drifting over him as he gazed up at Blaine as reverently as anyone else, finger and thumb massaging over the raised veins on his wrist just above the simple, worn leather band he wore.

He bid goodnight to the show and walked outside with his guitar case slung neatly over his shoulder and a bright smile on his face, signing autographs for lingering fans, feeling the proud flush creep into his cheeks when he saw the board with his name standing at the door, plastered with yellow SOLD OUTstickers. He slid his phone from his pocket and positioned himself in front of the boards, waving cheerfully at the camera, and snapped a picture before navigating to Twitter.

Blaine Anderson ( yoiwantmynameback)
Awesome show tonight! Check it out, I'm popular! ;)

As he watched the photo upload to join the tweet, looking up into the night sky, Blaine smiled down at the neat letters etched into the skin of his wrist, Kurt Hummelscarred deep and destined into his flesh. His soulmate had been in the audience tonight, impeccably dressed and heart-stoppingly handsome, looking up at him with reverence shining in his eyes.

How could he know that, at that very moment, a thousand reporters and analytical fans were pouncing like starved wolves on his latest tweet, uploading it to every social networking site and gossip blog on the internet, picture after picture of his smiling face, hair limp around his face with sweat, arm outstretched and the flash of the camera capturing the neat script on his right wrist, clearly telling the world exactly who his soulmate was.