Hey, a casual affair,

That could go anywhere,

And only for tonight.

Take any moment, any time,

A lover on the left,

A sinner on the right.

Hush, hush, don't you say a word.

“You saw him? Who's him? Oh! Fuck. Are you okay? I mean obviously you aren't because that's kind of something big.” Christian was rambling the same way he always did when he was either concerned or nervous.

“Shut up,” Blaine laughed. Why it was worth laughing over was beyond him. “I'm just going to go to bed. Thank you for dinner and even though I didn't finish, it was wonderful. So thank you.” Blaine was possessed, he had to be. There was no way he'd ever be as kind to anybody as he was being to Christian right now. His roommate must have been thinking the same thing if the gaping mouth that followed him out of the room was anything to go by.

The next few days were a blur. He stayed in bed over the entirety of both Tuesday and Wednesday, barely awake long enough to eat the food that Christian brought for him before drifting off once again to nightmares of blue eyes and chestnut swooping hair, of warm embraces and stolen kisses. There was the ever present murmur of Christian's voice outside his door, whether it be hushed phone calls or his quiet singing to the music that curled through the apartment continuously. Wednesday night was different. Blaine felt lighter for a reason that he couldn't place; like there was a weight lifted off his chest and he could finally take a breath of fresh air.

Blaine slept soundly for the first time in ages. A dreamless night where he didn't once wake up, screaming or otherwise. And it was positively glorious, despite it being 5p.m.

He stretched slowly, a little moan loosing its way from the back of his throat as his back cracked. He felt free and careless and it was exhilarating. Boundless, like maybe he could smile today and be happy and really live life out from under the storm cloud.

Blaine rolled off the bed, arms reaching above his head in another stretch just because he could and it felt so damn awesome. He couldn't help the little half-shimmy as he made his way to the living room. Christian was already awake, as always; moving around the space and humming quietly while dusting.

“Good morning.” Christian jumped at the sound of his voice, feathered plastic jolting against the glass dolphin statues he was so adamant on collecting and knocking over one with an undignified squeal. Blaine fell onto the couch with a laugh –an honest to god laugh- as he grinned up at his roommate.

“Well good morning, Cheery.” Christian tossed him a small smile over his shoulder as he righted the disrupted figure. “What lit up your candle?”

“I just feel really good today. I feel free, like I can breathe for a little while.” Blaine let out a light sigh, grinning dopily down at his hands.

“That's good. Breathing is a good thing. Oxygen is needed to live. Being alive. Breathing. Life is so cool, y'know? Like wow. Life. I—“

The smile dropped as fast as it had come. “Chris, what's wrong?”

Christian cast him a meager glance as he edged himself around the room. “Wrong? Nothing's wrong. Of course not. Nothing wrong here, no sir.” His voice cracked at the end as he kept himself turned away from Blaine.

“Christian,” Blaine pulled himself off the couch, reaching for his friend, “what the fuck is wrong?”

“Nothing.” It was a squeak as there was a knock at the door, a firework of panic blooming across the taller man's face. “I'll get it.” He pulled out of Blaine's grip, nearly running to the door as if he couldn't get there fast enough. Blaine didn't know what to do. Did he stand around and wait? Did he go do something? The tips of his fingers tingled in the reminder that he was supposed to be happy. Maybe he'd go back to his room and play with his keyboard. Music was a good outlet. He could make some of his own off this newfound surge of happiness.

Blaine padded back down the hallway, bare feet squeaking slightly on the polished hardwood. The second he stepped back into his room it was as if he never left. The warm glow of the sunset filtering through his blinds made everything wonderful again. As if Christian's weird deal never happened. He was alive and free and wild and he just felt like laughing; singing out loud to no music and dancing with a stranger on the street. He spun in a little circle on the carpet, fingers touching his face as if he couldn't believe it was real. He couldn't remember the last time he felt like he was alive.

Blaine dropped down on the little leather stool in front of his keyboard and set to work. Smiling and swaying and feeling the music as he played in no direction, the smooth plastic keys bringing out a warmth he didn't remember existed. He was so happy he felt like crying. Like throwing open his window and yelling it out for the world to hear that he was living.

“What are you playing?” No! No, it couldn't. It couldn't be happening. The warmth evaporated. When Blaine turned around he'd be faced with Christian leaning against the doorframe the way he always did when he watched Blaine play –although that rarely happened to begin with. This wasn't happening –it couldn't be.

Blaine twisted on the seat slowly, the figure in the doorway unfortunately nothing like his slight yet sturdy roommate. The navy business suit looked so out of place in Blaine's small room of what was a sanctuary only moments ago. He still looked the same as he always had, although more aged than before. Dark temples greying slightly, crow's feet deepened –definitely not from smiling-. His mouth was still set the same. Disgusted, disappointed, and disinterested.

William Anderson hadn't changed a bit.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Blaine spat as he rose off his chair.

“I got a call. Your friend said you needed some guidance. Some nudging in the right direction.” William's voice was still cold; still harsh and empty and icy.

“Oh you've done enough ‘nudging'. I've got the scars to prove it. You always seemed to wonder why I tried to avoid you, why I didn't want anything to do with you. You fucking beat me for Christ sake.” Blaine's father's eyes narrowed slightly as he took a step into the room.

“This isn't what I wanted for you, Blaine.”

“No, of course not. You wanted a straight son who would follow directly in your footsteps and be your little clone. And when Cooper left for L.A you didn't have to pretend to be happy for him anymore.”

“Blaine.”

“No. You can't come into my house and try and tell me how to live my life. I left because I had the obviously false hope that I'd never have to see you again.” Blaine could tell the second that his father's composure snapped. The way his carefully schooled face shifted into a line of anger and his fingers twitched at his sides.

Blaine didn't know what he did wrong. He never knew. There were days when his father seemed as happy as he was going to be, even passing little smiles at Blaine over their dinner table when he bothered to make food for the both of them.

But then there were other days. Days where the second Blaine stepped in the door after coming home from school he could feel how wrong everything was. Feel the shift in the air that made him want to somehow get the school bus to come back so that he could run away.

He would always be in the living room on those days; eyes trained on the television that had probably been muted longer than it hadn't, a squared glass of scotch on the table beside him. He'd twist in his chair to look at Blaine, expression that may have been light and cheerful the day before now empty and loathing. And Blaine didn't know what to make of it. He knew if he tried to escape that his father would find him anyways. So he did as he was told and took everything thrown at him with stinging eyes and pitiful cries that nobody would hear.

“I'm here to help you. You know, if you'd never done whatever you did with that Kurt-“ the name rolled off William's tongue sourly, “- boy, you wouldn't be in this mess. What are you even doing here? Your arm looks like a fucking tally chart and I don't know what could ever possess you to do such a thing to yourself.”

“This has nothing to do with Kurt! You did this to me. You made me this way. You made me want to die. I hate being alive and you're the reason that I can't remove myself from the situation because then that would make you look like the good guy and make me look selfish.” Blaine was seething. He brought his hand up to subconsciously cover his forearm, fingertips brushing over the newly raised scars.

“I didn't want this for you,” his father repeated and he suddenly seemed so miserable, like he'd honestly planned for Blaine to be okay and that he'd failed as a father because he wasn't. Of course he failed. Why else would Blaine have mangled scars that tore up the golden expanse of his back and twisted around his ribs in a gruesome reminder of the way things were?

“Exactly. Because you wanted me to be perfect, and strong, and successful, and straight.” The distress washed off his father's face and the anger was back. “You shoved this bible in my face and tried to take me to Church and make me what you deem normal.”

“I just wanted you to have some religion. So that you wouldn't turn into... this.” William's hand gestured at Blaine as a whole. “Kurt's probably what made you gay in the first place,” he sneered, arms folding across his chest in the way he used to dismiss Blaine; to make him look older, as if he had authority and his son didn't and whatever Blaine would say didn't matter because he wasn't the adult.

“He did not ‘make me gay.' I promise I liked boys long before I was fucking them.”

“You know that it's a sin to lay with another man.”

This made Blaine laugh, arm slipping to clutch at his stomach as he moved to brace himself against the wall, head falling forward and dark curls flopping over his eyes. “I'm pretty sure we've gathered that I'm a sinner, although it doesn't count as lying with a man if you're fucking against the wall.”

“That's vile.”

“So is my entire life to you, so why don't you get the hell out of my house and stop trying to come back and tell me how to live my life.” Blaine couldn't help the smile that stretched across his lips at his father's expression. He looked positively livid. And yet he turned without a backward glance, the small apartment seeming to rattle as the front door slammed shut.

Christian.

His roommate was curled up on the couch, tucked into the corner and staring unseeingly at the dark television. He looked lost. Lost and alone and small. But that didn't matter because they had something that needed discussing.

“Why?” Blaine snarled from the opening to the hallway, shadows created from the golden lamp across the room leaving him in partial-darkness.

Christian's head snapped up at his voice, seeming to try and sink further into the couch. “Blaine....”

“Don't. I want to know why you thought bringing him here was a fucking good idea.” He stepped into the room, moving around to the other side of the coffee table to watch his roommate.

“He's your dad; I thought he could help you get things back on track. I knew you couldn't have always been so sad all the time. I was just trying to help,” Christian squeaked out, fingers that were twined together rubbing slightly.

“Maybe you should have asked what my relationship was with him before you tried to be the knight in shining armour.”

“Blaine, I'm so sorry.”

“He fucking beat me, Christian. He beat the shit out of me my whole life and made me want to die and the only reason I didn't kill myself was because then at the funeral he'd be able to pull the victim card and make himself not look like the bad guy and show that maybe he did have feelings. But he doesn't care about me, he never cared about me. Ask before you do something.” Blaine turned to leave, sufficiently satisfied with his monologue before Christian spoke up again.

“If I'd have asked, you would have tore a strip off me and yelled about how you didn't need help.”

“It's because I don't need help. I don't need help from anybody.”

“You're a human being, everybody needs help sometimes.” Christian was standing now, voice gaining more confidence when he figured that Blaine wasn't going to tell him off. Too bad he was hoping too hard.

“I don't need anything. I'm not your fucking charity case and I don't want your pity. So butt the fuck out and let me live what's left of my shitty life.” Blaine started for the door, grabbing his coat off the rack as he went and sliding on his shoes.

“Blaine! Where are you going?”

“Fuck you.” And the door to the apartment slammed shut for the second time that night.