There’s no malice in David’s voice, though. In fact, he sounds proud. Blaine always feels warm with affection when it comes to his friends. No one is bitter about the fact that Blaine managed to land a job in the industry, albeit temporarily.

“My job has one big flaw, though,” Blaine says as he looks over the menu.

“Don’t tell me it’s-”

“It’s the neighbour,” Blaine finishes Wes’s sentence. Wes rolls his eyes.

Thad suppresses a laugh. David also looks amused.

“What?” Blaine asks.

“Come on, Blaine, you said so yourself. You barely see the guy,” Wes says, “He’s part of the wardrobe crew. He fixes costumes and helps with quick changes while you spend your time in the pit under the stage. Just ignore him.”

“It looks like he’s ignoring you,” Thad says, “So who cares?”

Blaine slumps in his seat. His friends have a point. It’s ridiculous that Blaine can’t stop thinking about Mr. 21, but merely his existence annoys Blaine. He’s so rude and annoying and standoff-ish. Yes, he has a Switch, but that doesn’t mean that Blaine’s going to start playing with him. Avalon, his colleague from the brass section, told Blaine that multiple people play video games during break and they asked if Blaine wanted to join, but Blaine’s not in the mood of voluntarily spending time with Mr. 21.

“Is he still hot, though?” David asks.

“Unfortunately,” Blaine sneers. Especially now that Mr. 21 is dressing up more. It makes sense, since he’s from the wardrobe crew. Mr. 21 was always hot, but when he first moved in, he seemed to care less about his appearance.

Why do all the rude men have to be so attractive?

Wes raises a finger, indication that he is going to say something.

“Hotness and kindness are not mutually exclusive!” he says with a very serious tone, as if he’s read Blaine’s mind, “We don’t care if he’s hot if he’s a dick.”

“Hear, hear!” Thad hollers.

Blaine hides his face behind the menu. Why are his friends like this? Maybe Blaine should stop updating them on Mr. 21’s whereabouts, since it’ll only lead to teasing. This is why he should only talk about Mr. 21 with Kurt. Blaine told Kurt that there’s an annoying colleague and that’s that, and Kurt lets him rant when he wants to.

It beats talking about Kurt’s job, since The Guy has apparently gotten an offer to stay for a couple of more weeks. Kurt’s still working up the courage to talk to him and Blaine is not really helping.

“Can we change the subject?” Blaine asks, “What are you guys ordering?”

“Awww come on, man! Okay, screw Mr. 21. What do you love about your job?” Thad says. He sounds very excited and interested. Really, Blaine’s friends are fine with their new career fields, but they’re still curious to hear Blaine talk.

Blaine smiles.

“Alright, it’s fun to play music,” he starts, “And it’s nice to have some sort of schedule to follow. You know what you’re doing and you know you’re good at it. I like that I can play multiple instruments, although I’m mostly doing piano now, since that was Ed’s main instrument. And apart from Mr. 21, the people are really nice. Avalon from the brass section is becoming a great friend.”

“Ready to replace us?” David says with a wink.

“Never! Once a Warbler-”

“We get it,” Thad quickly says, “I don’t think the other patrons of this establishment would appreciate it if we start making loud Warbler calls.”

“But yeah, it’s good. Avalon is very friendly and they’ve already invited me for lunch with the others several times,” Blaine says. Now that Blaine’s staying for a while, others pay more attention to him. He gets it.

They are interrupted by a waiter, but after they’ve placed their orders, the conversation resumes.

“So, is this orchestra thing the job you’re going to pursue?” David asks, “Like, are you going to sub more, or are you going to look for an actual contract, or are you still moving to other things?”

Blaine shrugs. He doesn’t know yet, but he likes playing for the orchestra more than he had expected. He always wanted to be on the foreground, but this is also fine. He gets to do something he likes without a thousand judging eyes watching him.

“I’ll see.”

They’re between shows and Blaine is playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with Avalon. Avalon is wickedly talented in video games. They finish every race in first place.

“Damnit, no one is a match for you!” Blaine says with a laugh. His character is once again in second place. “One day I’ll beat you at a race.”

“Please no. I have a reputation to maintain,” Avalon says and they flip their hair in a dramatic fashion.

“Blaine, Avalon, are you guys coming with us for lunch?” Viola from the string section asks. She’s the person who gave Blaine a tour on his first day and she’s also making sure that Blaine’s included. Blaine thinks it’s brilliant that a violin player is called Viola.

The musicians walk to the exit of the theatre, but Viola tells them to wait a little bit longer. Someone from the ensemble is joining them.

They’re waiting at the door when some of the wardrobe crew pass them. Mr. 21 is among them. He and Blaine look at each other. Blaine wants to put on a rude look, but Mr. 21 nods politely before walking away with the others.

Avalon raises an eyebrow. They’re as confused as Blaine. After all, they noticed the tension between Blaine and Mr. 21, so Blaine’s explained the situation.

Avalon and Blaine look at each other.

Usually, Mr. 21 straight up ignores him. Now, the look lasted a couple of seconds and then Mr. 21 nodded. It wasn’t even a cold nod. More of an ‘hi’ nod.

“Wohoo!” Viola cheers when her friend is finally arriving. Blaine focuses on them instead. He’s finally getting to know his colleagues. Mr. 21 can wait.

Kurt and Blaine are playing Splat Zones on Inkblot Art Academy and they’re just talking about their days. The internet is having a bad day, so sometimes they break up.

“I am slowly working up the courage to talk to The Guy,” Kurt says at one point, “I didn’t immediately look away because of nerves. I think I even gave him a friendly nod.”

“That’s… great,” Blaine says lacklustre-y. He should sound more excited, but he isn’t. If Kurt notices, then he can pretend that he’s too concentrated on the match. He should’ve picked a more long ranged weapon for Splat Zones.

“It’s progress,” Kurt says.

“Hmm, yeah, speaking of nods, I think the douche at my workplace is also, I don’t know, warming up to me,” Blaine quickly says to move away from The Guy.

“Also progress!” Kurt sounds chipper.

“I still don’t trust him, though- let me use my special.”

“One thing my counsellor told me is that you can never look inside people’s brains. You don’t know what he’s thinking, Blaine,” Kurt says.

Blaine stops to think about that. He’d never considered that. But then again, what other explanation is there for Mr. 21’s continued unmannered behaviour?

He’s thinking so much about it that he’s temporarily distracted from the match and they lose the zone.

“Blaine!”

“Fuck, right, on it, on it.”

He throws some splat bombs for damage control.

“You need to be focused if you wanna play competitively,” Kurt says, but there’s a joking tone in his voice. This isn’t a competitive match after all. Blaine can afford to be distracted for a second. It’s a great way to move to another topic, though. Blaine doesn’t want to talk about Mr. 21 and he doesn’t want to hear about The Guy.

So instead they talk a bit about the upcoming World Championship. Blaine has scored a ticket to the half-finale and the grand finale. He hasn’t told Cooper and his dad yet.  

He might be procrastinating on that part. Right now, his plan is to tell them when they’re already in LA. That way he can pull the “oops, it’s too late now, sorry!” card.

“That’s a bit of a dick move,” Kurt points out. On screen, he’s using his Hydra Splatling to cover the zone with ink. Kurt’s really good with long ranged weapons.

“I know,” Blaine admits while he splats an opponent, “I just don’t know what to do. You know how I feel about telling people about Splatoon. Especially my dad.”

Blaine’s father is supportive of Blaine and Cooper’s creative degrees now. When Cooper first decided to go into acting, their dad had called him delusional and they didn’t speak for two weeks. They found a compromise. Cooper also did some extra IT classes, so that he has two fields for opportunities. Cooper’s acting career isn’t as lavish as he had dreamed, so the IT classes pay off.

Years later when Blaine decided he wanted to pursue music, Blaine’s father had a similar reaction. The tension got even worse when Blaine didn’t want to do other classes. One degree already sounded stressful enough. His father had laughed and he said: “It’s music, you can hardly call that a degree!”

During Blaine’s senior year, his father came around and he helps Blaine by paying the rent, but he’s very adamant that Blaine gets a proper job to prove that he made the right choice. The orchestra job seems to suffice for now, but Blaine’s father is expecting Blaine to spend his free time polishing up his CV and looking for job offers.

Video gaming isn’t part of that. Of course, Blaine’s father knows that his sons have lives and that includes fun stuff, but Blaine can never show his dad the amount of hours he’s put into this game and he can’t tell him that he wants to play competitively. How will he even explain that?

Kurt knows all of this.

“How about this?” he says when the match is over, “Try it out on your friends. You said that your friends also don’t know about Splatoon 2 for the same reason, albeit less daunting.”

“I can try,” Blaine says. He quickly changes weapons in the lobby before going to the next game. “They know I play.”

“And you play well,” Kurt points out, “You’re saving all of your best plays in order to find a team. Maybe show them what you do?”

Blaine thinks about it. His friends are definitely more approachable than his family, though. The friendship Blaine has with his high school friends has never been conditional. Maybe it’s wrong to think of his father’s support as something that’s conditional, but that is how it feels.

Cooper’s already met whatever condition by having his IT background. No matter what happens to his acting career, he will never fail in their father’s eyes.

Blaine is proving himself with The Street and he should count himself lucky by the extension, but he needs to look further than The Street to make sure his father’s not going to be terribly disappointed in him.

He’s not sure that showing his father some clips of his best plays is going to make a difference. After all, Blaine’s great at music and he’s still on thin ice.

This is all for later, though. He needs to play now.

Blaine focuses on his screen. That’s a good one. He checks the map and he sees an opportunity for a play. His comeback ability makes it easier to get specials, so he ink jumps to home base, ready to use his Sting Ray, when suddenly the screen changes.

Connection error.

The game ends and Blaine’s back in the lobby. Kurt starts cursing. Did he also get kicked out? Usually when a player gets kicked out due to bad connection, the remaining players continue the match.

He can’t fully process that he just got kicked out, because there’s some unexpected noise coming from the other side of the wall. Mr. 21 is angry about something. Blaine cannot make out what he’s saying, since Kurt’s cursing is ringing through his headphones, but he doesn’t sound happy.

“Hang on,” Blaine says. He gets out of his chair and he bonks on the wall. He yells: “Everything alright?”

“What was that bonking?” Kurt asks, “Did that come from me or from you?”

“From me,” Blaine answers, “My neighbour sounds upset about something.”

“You sure? I think my neighbour just got mad at me for cursing.”

Kurt remains silent so that Blaine can listen for an answer from Mr. 21, but it doesn’t come. He shrugs and walks back to his monitor.

“Never mind then.”

The next day, Blaine leaves for his piano lessons. He still gives them and they line up perfectly with the schedule of The Street.

He exits his apartment and when he closes the door he’s surprised to see a note taped on his door.

Sorry for the noise yesterday.
Everything is fine. See you at work.

- K.H, number 21

Blaine takes the note off his door and he stares at it in surprise. First, Mr. 21 acknowledges his existence and not in a snide way, second, he apologises. Blaine doesn’t have time to dwell on this. His reluctant student is waiting. He puts the note in his pocket and leaves.