Blaine Anderson watched from the window as the last of the FBI agents' cars disappeared down the driveway. They'd spent the last two days searching the Anderson family house, this time going even as far as taking off all the switch plates and searching the voids in the walls. It seems they did a much more thorough job searching for clues about an escaped fugitive's whereabouts than they did when simply investigating one of the largest financial scams in U.S. history.

Blaine's father, Richard Anderson, had been the owner and CEO of Winterland Investment Group, an asset management firm that had amassed thousands of investors throughout of the Midwest. Blaine had always suspected that his father played it a little fast and loose with the regulations and skirted some laws, but it wasn't until a little more than a year before that the truth had been revealed. The house of cards had fallen down in a spectacular fashion, exposing that Winterland was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, with each investor's "profits" simply stolen from the money provided by newer clients.

In the blink of an eye, it was revealed that all of the money was gone, funneled into off-shore bank accounts or used to bribe regulators. Pensions, nest eggs, and lifetime savings had all disappeared and there was nothing the victims could do.

Richard Anderson had left behind him a trail of bankruptcies, suicides, and countless ruined lives and businesses. And a devastated family.

He'd been arrested by the FBI and charged with investment fraud and a score of other crimes. Despite days of interrogation and the promise of a lighter sentence, he'd refused to give up the location of the money he'd hidden away. He'd been convicted after a lengthy trial and was released on bail to await the sentencing by a judge the FBI now suspected had been bribed. The day before he was to report for sentencing, Richard had disappeared without a trace.

The Andersons' accounts had been frozen after Richard's arrest, but they'd been allowed to stay in their house for the duration of the trial. Now that it was over, it too was being confiscated by the government. Blaine had been in the middle of packing up the few personal items that the family was being allowed to keep when the first of the FBI agents had shown up looking for his father. It'd been the first he'd heard about his father's escape.

Contrary to what most people might think, the day that his father had been arrested had been a good day for Blaine. Richard was a cold, heartless man who neglected his family, driving his mother, Gloria, to self-medicate and spend months at a time in "spas" all over the world. Blaine's brother, Cooper, had run away to Hollywood while he was still a teenager, desperate to get out. Only Blaine had stayed, which was probably the last thing his father had wanted, given that Richard had wanted nothing to do with him since he'd revealed he was gay at the age of 14.

It was ironic that his father's contempt was probably what ended up saving Blaine from being charged as a co-conspirator when the FBI had called him in for questioning about Winterland. Richard had kept him far away from the business, even going so far as to send him to boarding school in New Hampshire when he was fifteen.

What Richard had done mostly as a punishment had liberated Blaine. Without his oppressive family to contend with, he'd flourished at boarding school. His true outgoing nature, long hidden beneath the "children should be seen and not heard" mentality that his parents held, made him popular and well-liked amongst his peers and teachers. After graduation, he'd chosen to stay on the East coast for college, only returning to Columbus for good in the middle of his sophomore year when the scandal had broken, partially to help his mother and partially because there were no more funds to pay for his tuition. He had quickly lost contact with his friends, too ashamed to reply to their messages of support and offers of help.

The trial had been hard on Gloria, who couldn't seem to understand why she no longer had money to spend and why people would curse at her when they saw her on the street. She couldn't grasp that people blamed her, too, that they didn't believe that the rest of the family had been in the dark about Richard's actions, despite the fact that the FBI had cleared them of being involved.

She was now off "recovering" in Newport, Rhode Island with one of the few friends who would still speak to her. Blaine hadn't heard from her in months and it had been a year since he'd seen her completely sober.

He didn't even know where Cooper was. He hadn't heard from him in months, not since the night he'd arrived at the house soaking wet and begging for money, saying that his acting career had been ruined by their father's notoriety. No one wanted to hire the son of one of America's most hated men.

So now Richard had escaped and was probably on a tropical island with no extradition somewhere, spending his stolen money and sipping the 40-year-old scotch he loved so much.

Blaine could hardly bring himself to care. He'd already made plans to leave Columbus, even before Richard had pulled his Houdini act. He wasn't just leaving town, though. He was going to go someplace where no one knew him and start over with a new name. It didn't feel like the particularly brave choice, but it's what he was going to do. He was going to escape like even Cooper had been unable to.

The trustee who'd been put in charge of the Anderson's assets had told Blaine that he could take his clothes with him, but as he looked into the closet, with its neat rows of carefully pressed designer shirts, he realized that he didn't want any of them. They were simply artifacts of his old life. He slammed the door shut and went over to a chest of drawers, where he pulled out a stack of t-shirts and sweatshirts. He stuffed them into a large duffle bag and then added some jeans and underwear.

With one last look around at the ruins of his former life, he picked up the bag and walked out the door, leaving Blaine Anderson behind.

=^..^=

Three months later.

The air in the meeting room was stale from a combination of too many hard-working bodies gathered together after a long day and the cigarette smoke wafting in from the open door as late comers slipped in the back.

Officially, the people in the room were there for a monthly meeting of local business leaders. Unofficially, they were assembled to commiserate about shared hardships and an equally shared hatred of one man in particular.

"Any sign of that bastard Anderson?" asked a man in a power company uniform who'd had to inform his oldest daughter that he couldn't afford to send her to college the next year because he'd lost the family savings to Winterland.

"My friend at the FBI said there's no progress. It's like he vanished into thin air," a woman near the front, who'd had to lay off half of her employees, replied bitterly.

"What about the money?" another woman sitting near the door chimed in. "Have they found the accounts yet?"

"Nothing."

A fist slammed onto a table near the podium, grabbing everyone's attention. "Then they aren't looking hard enough. It wasn't their businesses that went bankrupt, their families that are out on the street. I say we find him ourselves and drag him back here kicking and screaming," a restaurant owner, who'd lost his entire retirement savings, shouted. "We know the wife is in Newport. I say we send someone to talk to her and see what we can find out."

The responses came from throughout the room.

"You don't think the feds have tried that?"

"She isn't a part of this."

"She's a drunk. I heard she barely even remembers who her husband is half the time."

"Well, we gotta try something."

A man in an expensive suit, the de facto leader of their little group, raised his hand to quiet everyone down. "I think the youngest son, Blaine, is our best bet. He's the only one in the family that stayed in town after everything went down. He was at the trial every day. He must know something."

"No one's seen him in three months. Plus, the FBI questioned him already. He doesn't know anything."

"Like the feds are perfect," the restaurant owner grumbled into his coffee.

"I have a source that says Blaine might be in New York," a tall man in the back reported. "If we can find him and the right person can get close to him, I think we have a chance of finding out what he knows."

"That idea makes me very uncomfortable," a quiet man in the back who rarely participated in the discussions, said. "We shouldn't drag the boy into this. It's not his fault who his father is."

"We're not going to hurt him. We just want information."

"He's not going to talk to just anyone."

"Are the rumors that he's gay true?" the man in the suit asked.

"Yeah, it evidently caused a big falling out between him and his old man."

"Then I have the perfect plan."

=^..^=

One month later.

The sound of a blaring car horn startled Blaine out of his daydream, sending him scurrying out of the way of the oncoming taxi. He gave a snappy salute in response to the cab driver's extended middle finger and continued on his way, autopilot leading him to French Press, the neighborhood coffee shop that was the closest thing to a regular hang out he had in the city.

Blaine worked five nights a week as a piano player in a burlesque club, which meant that caffeine was needed on a regular basis to jumpstart his day. The job helped paid the bills and if he squinted he could pretend he was fulfilling his childhood dream of being on Broadway, but the best thing about it was that no one he knew would ever imagine that Blaine Anderson would be caught dead in a place like that.

Of course, Blaine Anderson didn't work there. Brandon McCartney did.

Blaine had acquired a fake ID with his newly chosen name on it through a somewhat disreputable former schoolmate. It had taken him much longer than he'd expected to come up with his new moniker. How did one go about picking one first name and one last name out of all the ones in existence? Eventually, he'd settled on Brandon because it began with the familiar "B" and he figured that it might make it easier to get used to answering to the different name. He's picked McCartney because The Beatles were his favorite band of all time and Brandon Lennon just didn't have the same ring to it.

Blaine was actually pretty happy in New York. He was free from his oppressive family and was looking forward to building a new life for himself. He was more lighthearted than he ever remembered being and could almost forget who his father was, at least until he heard something about him on the news. The city was an excellent place for getting away from oneself.

Blaine ordered his drink and made the usual shallow chitchat with the barista before heading for the quiet table in the corner that he typically sat at. He pulled a folder of sheet music from his bag and began working on an a cappella song arrangement to be used by a singing group that one of the dancers at his club belonged to. The man had begged for help with the songs for their upcoming performance when he'd heard that Blaine had helped arrange the songs for his choir group in high school.

Blaine had agreed, even though the songs were not ones that he would have chosen and he hadn't done any arranging in several years. He was hoping that if he could improve his skills enough he might be able to build a reputation and make some money at the work.

He was partway through the first song, trying to figure out the vocal percussion needed to replicate the guitar riff in Legs by ZZ Top, when a commotion erupted behind him. A man had entered the shop on a skateboard and causing several customers to have to jump out of the way in order to avoid getting run over. A woman who had just picked up her coffee from the counter reared back, knocking the man next to her into Blaine. The man's drink, which was unfortunately some kind of red colored fruit smoothie, went flying, hitting Blaine in the face and splashing all over his white long-sleeved shirt. The man came falling after the drink and ended up landing in Blaine's lap.

Through his juice soaked eyelashes, Blaine got the impression of startled blue-green eyes and carefully styled hair.

"Oh my god! I'm so sorry. There was a skateboard...and an elbow...and then your lap," a flustered, lyrical voice stammered out as incredibly soft hands began to run over Blaine's face, wiping away the worst of the mess.

Blaine reached across the table and pulled a handful of napkins from the dispenser. "It's okay. It's okay. I saw what happened. Are you alright?"

The man grabbed a napkin from Blaine's hand and began to pat it into Blaine's hair. "I'm fine. I can't believe I just slushied someone. Well, fruit-smoothied, but basically the same thing. My teenage self is so disappointed in me." Blaine paused in the middle of rubbing a napkin across the base of this neck and shot the man a perplexed look. "It was a thing in my high school for the bullies to throw slushies as a means of torture," he shrugged.

"And you were..." Blaine waved a hand over the dripping mess.

"Too many times to count. And now I've done it to you. I'm horrified." Blaine felt the man's back stiffen against his arm. "And I'm still sitting on your lap." He slid off onto a nearby chair and folded his arms protectively across his middle. "Sorry. Again."

Blaine switched on the polite but distant, fake smile he'd worn way too often in his life before New York and took the opportunity to get a better look at his unwitting fruit-smoothier. He was tall and fashionably dressed in black and white striped pants and an oversized grey sweater with a brilliantly colored scarf. He looked to be around Blaine's age and had the kind of skin that his mother had spent a small fortune trying to acquire over the years. His face was bright red at the moment, but Blaine could tell that he was normally quite pale, which was probably a striking combination with his chestnut colored hair and piercing eyes.

"Really, it's all right. It wasn't your fault," Blaine reassured as he pinched his shirt and pulled it away from his chest a little to alleviate the cold that was seeping into his skin.

The man look down at the shirt and winced. "It's ruined isn't it? Why couldn't I have ordered banana today? Why'd it have to be blueberry?"

Blaine chuckled, a real smile edging out the counterfeit version. "I was tired of this shirt anyway. I should go home and change, though."

"No, no, no. I can't go back in time and stop the Great Smoothie Disaster of 2017, but I can replace your shirt. Come with me."

He stood up, holding a hand out and without thinking Blaine grabbed it and let him pull him from his chair. Within seconds they were out on the sidewalk and he was being led down three doors, to a clothing boutique he'd noticed before, but had never stopped in. The man opened the door and ushered Blaine inside.

"Don't worry, I work here. Just got off for the day, as a matter of fact. There's a bathroom in the back." The man pointed towards a door in the back absently as he began to flip through the shirts hanging on a nearby rack. "Why don't you get cleaned up and I'll pick out a few options for you to try on. My treat."

Blaine tried to object, but there was something about the man that drew him in, so he didn't try too hard. He was halfway to the door when the man called out, "Hey, I'm Kurt by the way."

"I'm Bl-Brandon. Nice to meet you."

=^..^=

As Blaine disappeared into the back, a man out on the sidewalk glared through the window at Kurt. His plan had been perfect. He'd paid that hoodlum skateboarder to barrel into the coffee shop and skate right by the table that Blaine sat at every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday like clockwork. He was the one who was supposed to have been knocked aside by the skater. He was the one that was supposed to meet Blaine and hit it off right away. Him, not that stupid, prancing go-go boy who looked like a reject from the chorus of La Cage Aux Folles.

All that work, two whole weeks of observing and cataloging Blaine's movements, wasted.

He pulled out his phone to report the delay and with one last scowl in Kurt's direction, turned to walk away. Time for plan B.