A/N: Hey all sorry for the delay. I collapsed at work on Thursday with a severe fever. I feel less like death today so I decided it was time to reacquaint myself with the internet world before I went completely apeshit. I urge anyone who hasn't gotten the flu shot to go and get it. I've gotten the flu before but this was an off the charts kind of agony. If you think you might be sick, take it from a true idiot and go to the doctor rather than putting it off. I hope everyone is healthy and safe.

The Proper Way to Deal With the Devil

I used to have this recurring dream.

I'm a kid again—two maybe three years old. I can feel the hot sun on my face and the grass tickling the back of my neck. I'm sprawled out on the ground, crying and alone in the shadow of a house that fails at pretending to be alone. It's quiet—the kind that's scary.

My mother suddenly appears and her long black hair falls all around me like a curtain. She smiles and presses her hands to my face. An unnatural calm seeps into me and the world is right and wonderful again.

Just like that.

I had always hated that dream. Not only because my mother was in it, but because sometimes I couldn't help but wonder whether it really was only a dream…

My eyes flew open and latched onto the ceiling above me. For a second, I was disoriented and I half expected to find myself looking up at a clear blue sky. That strange sense of calm from the dream still clung to me as if a dream actually had the ability to refuse to be forgotten.

Kurt's concerned face came into my line of sight.

"Bad dream," I told him before he could ask.

His concern shifted into something darker and he nodded solemnly. I knew he was thinking about his own bad dreams—the ones he had had every night since my father's unexpected visit on Monday.

By Tuesday night we had practically moved ourselves into the student lounge. Kurt wanted nothing to do with either of our dorm rooms and while I couldn't really blame him, it wasn't the solution I had wanted for the problem.

No matter how many times I suggested that maybe we should call his family, Kurt refused.

By Thursday night I had given up on trying to change his mind. Now that it was Friday we would be on our way back to Lima in a few hours. We just had to get through the rest of the day.

"What time is it?" I asked and he held his phone in front of my face so I could see the time.

6:30.

That meant we had an hour before classes started.

I rolled off the couch and got to my feet, stretching my arms high above my head as soon as I was upright.

When I opened my eyes again, I noticed that Kurt was already dressed in his uniform. "You showered already?" I asked, surprised. He had kind of been my shadow for the past few days.

He shrugged apologetically.

"Oh," I said, a little thrown off. "Uh… I guess I'll see you third period then."

He answered with a small placating smile.

I frowned. "You okay?"

Again with that same smile and I narrowed my eyes at him. Both of us knew perfectly well that a smile was just a smile. It wasn't a lie and it wasn't the truth. It just was.

"Kurt," I started but he stood up and kissed me, effectively shutting me up. After a minute of indulgence, I pulled away with a scowl. "I'm not stupid, you know."

"Really?" he asked cheekily and I gave him a harmless shove.

"Brat. You absolutely suck at being subtle. Stop trying to hide the fact that something's bothering you."

"Is that what I'm doing?" he asked, trying to look innocent.

I snorted. He was being a little shit is what he was doing. I wasn't stupid enough to tell him that, though. "You're sure as hell doing something."

He said nothing and leaned down to pick up Elizabeth's book from the table. He placed it in my hands.

I looked down at the small book and then back up at him with a raised brow. "It's your turn," I reminded him. "I had it yesterday."

He shrugged, kissed my cheek, and left the room.

I sighed and placed the book in my backpack for safekeeping before heading off to shower.

Whenever it was my turn with Elizabeth's book I usually spent first and second period reading to myself but I was too distracted that day. I kept thinking about that damn dream.

The silence got to me every time. It was creepy as shit and the memory of the deafening lack of sound always left me cringing for hours.

I hated silence.

After Cooper had been taken to the D5 facility, silence had reined in our house. I remembered how it used to make my ears ring, almost as if my body was trying to make up for the lack of noise.

It might not have been so bad if our house was normal sized—it was the kind of place that was too big for ten people, so you can probably imagine how ridiculous it would have been for a family of four. To call it ostentatious would have been putting it lightly.

Overwhelming was a better way to describe it. Overwhelming and silent.

It hadn't always been that way. When I had Cooper with me, the house was more like a playground than anything else. It was the perfect place to play hide and seek for hours without getting tired of having to use the same hiding places again and again. The two of us made more than enough noise to make up for a silent mother and an absent father.

Back then we got away with being as noisy as possible. Debora Burke, our nanny— who we called Old Bat behind her back and sometimes to her face—mostly left us alone because she was afraid of Cooper for two very specific reasons. One, his ability terrified her (she was convinced he was possessed by the devil), and two, he looked almost exactly like our father and Carl Anderson scared the ever living shit out of her.

Of course, when he was gone all that changed. Suddenly there were too many corners, too many shadows, too many rooms that could be hiding some terrible child eating monster that could reach out and grab me as I walked by. I learned to hate all the places I used to love, especially when my mind started playing tricks on me by feeding me imagined whispers that had me spinning around to confirm that I really was alone. Just thinking about those days of being trapped inside that damnable mansion made me feel a cold sense of wrong that would start in my stomach and move slowly outwards until even my fingernails felt poisoned by it.

With Cooper and my father gone (if my father came home at all, it was only on the weekends), Old Bat became queen bee and according to her, silence was the gateway to God's good graces.

No one was allowed to make a goddamned sound. No music, no talking, no nothing 24/7.

So I escaped to Dalton my freshmen year of high school and never looked back.

By the time I met Kurt, I hadn't been back to that house in over two years.

I spent my summers and vacations away from Dalton doing whatever with Bitches and staying with anyone who didn't care how long we stayed. Those places weren't exactly the Ritz Carlton, but they served their purpose and thanks to my "job" as my father's lie detector I had seen a lot worse.

Plus, almost anything was better than living alone with Old Bat and my mother.

I could never understand why my father hadn't just divorced her. He didn't love her, I was positive of that. Sometimes I wondered whether she had an ability. My father was so obsessed with the preternatural that it wouldn't have made sense for him to have a wife without some sort of preternatural curse. It was no secret that he liked to collect people with strong, useful abilities, but I had never seen my mother do anything other than sit in her favorite chair and smile out her window.

When I was seven, I asked Cooper what was wrong with her.

He only had one thing to say on the matter: Dad.

When he said it, the look on his face scared me so I never brought it up again.

Unlike me, Cooper never had anything bad to say about our mother. In fact, whenever he spoke about her, he would get this sad, almost wistful little smile on his face—almost as if somewhere deep inside of him existed good memories. If that was the case, he never shared them with me. It was almost impossible to imagine her behaving like a normal human being. Like I said before, all she ever did was sit there and smile. Like a doll.

I remembered one time, about two months after Cooper had been taken, I snuck into my mother's section of the house. She had just finished her lunch and Old Bat had left her alone to bring her tray back to the kitchen. It was the only time of the day that she would be left alone I was desperate to hear a voice that wasn't mine. I hoped that maybe if it was just the two of us, she would talk to me—I remember thinking that she didn't even have to say much. Just a few things so I could stop being so lonely.

I pulled up a chair and sat myself down in front of her. I begged her to talk to me for almost an hour until the old bat came back and found me there. She dragged me back to my own room as I kicked and screamed in protest. My ass hurt for days after the punishment the old bitch dished out.

After that I went to see my mother only one other time—right after my first interrogation at SIIPA. I had been nine years old and the experience had been anything but pleasant. I went straight to my mother's room after the car dropped me back home and screamed in her smiling face until my throat felt raw and it hurt to swallow.

Old Bat tried her best to take me out of the room, but I was a lot stronger at nine than I had been at seven. By the time I was finished screaming, the dumb bitch was breathing just as hard as I was. Mother, however, hadn't batted an eye. She just sat there and kept on smiling the entire time.

An adamant nudge against my shoulder brought me out of my reverie. I looked to my left to find Kurt frowning concernedly at me for the second time that day. I hadn't realized that the bell had rung.

Sebastian, who was also in the class and couldn't seem to function unless he was practically breathing down our necks, stared at me with an amused expression on his face. "Are you strung out or something?"

I scowled. "Do I fucking look like I'm strung out?"

He chuckled at that, that stupid arrogant smirk on his face. "Well, you're certainly acting like it. I called you twice before Kurt nudged you."

Ever since my father's visit Sebastian had been a constant pain in the dick. It seemed like I couldn't go anywhere with Kurt without Sebastian tagging along.

I didn't know what was worse—Sebastian's constant presence or the fact that Kurt seemed to mind it less and less as the days passed.

I decided not to respond to Sebastian and wordlessly held out Elizabeth's book to Kurt.

Kurt looked at the book and then back up at me, clearly confused.

"You might as well take it for the rest of the day," I told him. "I'm too distracted to read."

Kurt's eyebrows furrowed in a silent question, but I shook my head. I really didn't want to talk about it. Especially not in front of Sebastian Smythe of all people. Kurt, of course, didn't look pleased with my refusal to say anything on the matter.

"Hey, don't look at me like that, gorgeous. If you can keep secrets then so can I."

His displeasure turned into a full on glare.

Sebastian made a sound of disgust. "You guys are kind of sickening. It's a little disturbing how you can have silent conversations with each other."

"Don't be jealous, Smythe. It's not our fault that you can only get guys who are living on the wrong side of forty and desperate to go anywhere near your clap infested hole."

As per usual, Sebastian's eyes sparked with pleased amusement at the insult. The fucker was always so happy to be insulted. Sometimes I wondered why I even bothered.

"Don't be crabby, Anderson. It's not my fault that you haven't fucked anyone besides Hummel in two mon—ow! Jesus, Kurt!"

I snickered as Sebastian rubbed the abused area on his head where Kurt had attacked him with Elizabeth's book. I shut up real quick when Kurt shot me a look.

'Whipped!' Sebastian mouthed at me when Kurt had his head turned.

I shrugged because it was probably true.

888

"I can't believe that sectionals are next week," I complained to Kurt as we made our way towards my car. Stubborn to the core, I had both his and my hand stuffed in my pocket partly because it felt wrong not to be touching him in some way when he was within reaching distance and partly because I didn't want to walk into a pole or something—I had my eyes fixed intently on my phone.

Kurt snorted indelicately. "Yes, Wes seemed to really appreciate the fact that you forgot." For a second I actually thought that he was going to throw his gavel at your head.

"Pfft. Yeah, right. He's got a boner for that fucking thing. He wouldn't any more willing to part with it than he would his own dick."

Kurt hummed.

"What? You don't believe me? It's true. Besides, you can't really blame me for forgetting. We've had a lot of shit to deal with lately. The last thing on my mind is some stupid high school singing competition."

"Right," Kurt said, "because you're not competitive at all and you hate singing." You're excited and you know it.

"Yeah, yeah—" I started to grouse but cut myself off when Kurt suddenly stopped short.

"Who's that?"

I looked up from my phone and my mouth dropped open. "Fuck."

Kurt's grip on my hand tightened. "Blaine?" he prompted.

I had to swallow a couple times before I could answer. "That's my grandfather."

Kurt took a step closer to me and I couldn't tell whether or not he had done it involuntarily. "What does he want?"

"I don't know," I admitted.

Kurt took another step closer towards me, but kept his eyes locked on the old man who stood about one hundred feet away.

Adam Anderson wasn't a tall man by any means, but he wasn't short either. He was average. Everything about him was average—or at least it seemed that way.

He wasn't a particularly striking looking—not in his face or in the way he dressed. He wore a nondescript black hat and coat and he had arranged his body in a relaxed position that was not only nonthreatening, but looked completely genuine. If you passed by him on the street you probably wouldn't notice him, and if you did by some chance, you would easily forget him not long after.

That was the way he preferred it.

"What do we do?" Kurt asked.

I don't know.

"Just—just act normal," I said and started walking again. "He's going to try to shake your hand. Don't let him."

"Why?"

"He can sense abilities with touch." Just like my father.

"Oh god," Kurt said, sounding sick.

"We'll be okay," I lied because my grandfather was dangerous in ways my father only dreamed of being. "When I let your hand go, I want you to stop walking and take out your phone. Pretend to be doing something with it—it doesn't matter what, just don't look up at him—even if he tries to get your attention."

When were a good twenty feet away, I let go of Kurt and kept walking. He stopped like I told him to.

"Blaine!" my grandfather greeted with an open smile that looked one hundred percent trustworthy. Like the rest of him, he had an unremarkable voice that was easily forgotten. I had to remind myself that he sounded that way only by choice. If he had a mind to, he could have instant command of any room full of people.

He held his arms out for a hug and I indulged him. Unlike my father, he wasn't someone to fuck with. Everything Adam Anderson did was for a reason.

Don't get me wrong—I didn't roll over for anyone, not even a man like my grandfather. I just knew how to play the game.

His hold on me was light and easily broken but I didn't dare pull away until his hands gave me that gentle push that told me he was done.

"Hello," was what I said.

He chuckled softly. "Now there's a painfully generic way to greet a person. Hello is such a tired, dreadful word—and so overused."

To that, I said nothing and Adam grinned widely.

"Still such a cheeky bastard. I'm afraid you get that from your father. Your bad manners, too," he said as he peered around me to look over at Kurt. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?"

"I assume you came here for a specific reason?" I asked, stepping into his line of sight.

He blinked in surprise at my abrupt tone before his face lit up with delight. "You see!" he cried good-naturedly. "Such a blatant show of disrespect." He shook his head with an indulgent smile. "I swear it will never cease to amaze me how comfortable you young people are sometimes—you all can't be bothered to conduct yourselves with even a modicum of civility. Well, I certainly remember how manors work… Nice to meet you!" he called out to Kurt, waving jauntily.

I forced myself not to look back and check to see if Kurt was doing what I told him to. Instead I watched my grandfather's face.

He frowned a bit before stark determination sparked in his eyes despite the fact that I knew he probably didn't give a shit about who Kurt was.

"Excuse me!" he called, a little louder that time. "If I might have your attention, young man! I don't believe that we've met!"

Nothing.

My grandfather looked back at me with something that resembled delighted intrigue. "Ha! I tell you, it never ceases to amaze me," he repeated with a happy grin. "Times have certainly changed."

I stuffed my hands in my pockets. My grandfather, of course, caught the motion and his glee became slightly subdued.

He cleared his throat. "I see you are getting impatient with me. Perhaps you will introduce me to Mr. Hummel later."

My body flared hot with horror at his unexpected use of Kurt's name and I couldn't stop my surprise from showing on my face.

The silver haired man smiled gently. "Oh, yes, Blaine, I know your friend's name. Kurt Hummel. You two know each other quite intimately, yes?"

Quickly, I pulled myself together. "If you're asking whether I've fucked him, then the answer is yes. But so what? I fuck a lot of people."

"Yes," he mused slowly, pursing his lips. "Yes, I've heard as much."

I shot him a bored look. "Did you come here to talk about my sex life?"

He laughed outright at the question, head thrown back and all. "Definitely not! No, there are some things a grandfather need not know about his grandchildren," he said with a wide smile that made his eyes crinkle at either side.

"What do you want to know then?"

For a moment the smile seemed frozen on his face. It faded slowly but didn't disappear completely. It ended up a secretive little grin that he directed down at the ground. "My son is a complete idiot, Blaine." His eyes flashed up to mine. They danced with an sardonic kind of amusement. "Have I ever told you that?"

"Not in so many words," I said dryly.

"Well, then, I'll say it again. My son is a complete idiot." He clasped his hands in front of him and leaned back against my car. The repositioned stance made him a bit shorter than me. "Would you like to know why?"

I didn't bother with a yes or a no. I knew he would tell me anyway.

"It's because he underestimates you."

I shrugged. "He would disagree."

Adam laughed wistfully. "Yes. Yes, he certainly would, wouldn't he?" He heaved a heavy sigh. "Ah, but isn't that always the way—always the same endless cycle of idiot fathers underestimating their idiot sons."

He shook his head and took his weight off the car to stand up at his full height once more. He walked towards me, almost passing me completely before he stopped and laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. "Say hello to your bother for me."

He patted me twice on the shoulder as a black car rolled up next to him as if he had willed it there himself. He opened the back door and paused to look back at Kurt.

"It was nice to meet you, young man!" he called and then laughed lightly at Kurt's lack of response, shaking his head in disbelief. He got into the car and shut the door and the driver drove away.

Without taking my eyes off the car, I called loud enough for Kurt to hear, "Come here, Kurt."

He hurried over to my side. "What happened?" he asked breathlessly.

I grabbed his hand and started back towards the school. Kurt barely cooperated and I had to pull.

"Blaine, what's going on?" he asked, glancing back at my car. "Where are we going?"

"We're staying here this weekend."

"What? Why?"

I didn't reply. I just kept walking.

"Blaine? Blaine! Stop. Answer me!"

I turned back to him and let every single bit of panic I felt show on my face. His eyes flared wide.

I turned back around.

Kurt didn't say another word.