He tried not to overanalyse the meaning behind the small bag of suckers he’d bought on the way out of the convenience store.

The vast majority of his weekend was spent curled on the couch watching the movie play over and over, saying aloud the lines he could remember and gesticulating absently along to the dialogue. By Sunday night, he was on his feet in the middle of his living room, acting out scenes and stop-starting the DVD to practice.

There was so much to re-learn; the way his body moved, the way his voice wound itself around the songs, blending with the baritone of Barry Bostwick. It was new, but at the same time, it was so old and so familiar, and the more engrossed he became the faster the hours slipped by into the black of the starless city night.

When he finally thought to look at the clock it was past 2am, and he skidded to a halt in the middle of yet another run through of Dammit Janet. He had work in seven hours. Oh, crap.

With an exaggerated sigh he found his remote, turning off the DVD and watching the screen go dark before he slumped to his bathroom to brush his teeth. His mind wandered over the surreal speed of his missing weekend, all just flashes of sound and sequins and the taste of too many cherry lollipops. His eyes unfocused as each thread of thought traced itself back to that one moment on Friday night, when he was pressed bodily into the wall of the Kismet Theatre and taken for all he had.

His breath came out shakily, ghosting over the mirror under the shudder that rippled from his toes to his ears. It had been too long since a man had touched him like that. Kissed him like that. No, he reminded himself. He’d never been kissed like that.

The muscles in his thighs flexed at the replaying memory; that feeling of smooth skin under his fingers, caught up in lace, and the firm curve of that ass filling his palms. His dick twitched, and he hissed softly, pushing himself away from the counter.

It was nothing. It was a brief moment of over-sharing, of unnecessary openness with a complete stranger in the side-stage of a theatre, it was just a thing, this thing that had happened to him (no, things never happen to him, nothing ever happens to him, he tells himself, and then in another burst of thought, but this did, this was real, don’t push this away) and he needs to forget about it.

He had to go to work in six and a half hours, to be respectable, be an Anderson. He had to be that unpaid intern that brought the suits their coffee, hoping for some scraps of experience before his next lecture.

Today was Monday, he remembered, now curled up in bed under tangled sheets and staring at the clock. That’s all that mattered; today was Monday, which meant coffee at Caf� Destin, which only ever meant one thing. He'd get to see him, today.

Kurt Hummel.

Letting out a soft, peaceful sigh, Blaine closed his eyes, sliding his hands under the sheets.

Kurt Hummel was the one thing that made his week worth waking up to. Monday mornings at the tiny French coffee shop on the corner, there he was like clockwork.

They both worked in the same building; the law firm was in the same high-rise as the magazine publications office that Kurt seemed to be a part of, but Blaine never got to see him properly there. Sometimes in the hall or the lobby, and the single most memorable time – the greatest twenty-four second elevator ride of his life – but otherwise? No, it was Caf� Destin, 8:27am, Monday mornings. That was all he got.

It was enough.

He let out another slow, smooth gust of breath, his hands grazing gently over the soft skin of his own belly, tracing the lines of his bare hipbones as he let his mind wander.

His father had organised the internship with Harper & Veil, of course. He hated every moment trapped in that insipid maroon office, making coffee and photocopying endless stacks of documents for hours on end, sore from standing still too long. There was no music; there was barely any sound at all above the hum of the office machines. He wondered almost daily how he’d managed to stay sane after all this time.

And then he’d remember: Kurt Hummel was how.

You have to start somewhere, his father had said when he’d told Blaine to take the internship. Everybody starts on the bottom rung. Work hard and be reliable, be a foundation, boy. If you don’t screw it up, you might make partner someday.

Partner.

Blaine didn’t care about any kind of partner that came hand in hand with silence, condescension, a mahogany desk and the smell of overpriced cologne.

He’d been there a week, going slowly out of his mind, when he first saw Kurt. It was two seconds in the lobby, a long look across the grey marble floors and the hint of a smile on that perfectly shaped pink mouth. He was captured in the sunlight filtering through the glass doors, outlined like a star. He was the most beautiful thing Blaine had ever seen.

And he didn’t know his name.

It was always stolen glances in passing in the halls, but Kurt was never looking back when Blaine saw him. Once or twice Blaine got off on the wrong floor, just to see if it was the right one.

Sometimes he remembered the look on Kurt’s face that first time he saw him, and he forgot, for a moment, how to breathe.

Then one day, the greatest thing that could ever happen to him happened: the ground floor coffee cart was evicted from their haughty, pristine marble lobby, sending Blaine down the street to the little caf� for his morning caffeine fix one random Monday.

And there he was.

It’d become a ritual, now. Blaine would get there at twenty past eight each Monday, catching the earlier bus to make sure he wasn’t late. He’d find a seat in the back, always the same one, and take his medium drip to drink alone. Kurt showed up seven minutes later, sweeping in the door every time in another flawless ensemble, usually topped off with a scarf. He’d order his drink and take the table by the window, folding his legs gracefully staring out at the passers-by.

Blaine memorised the back of his head, the lines of his shoulders under his coat, the beautiful curve of his neck and the sweep of his light brown hair. Sometimes a woman would come and sit with him, and Blaine would feel that twinge in his chest flare up again. Girlfriend? Sister? He didn’t know, but he didn’t mind her, after awhile. She made Kurt laugh, and the Mondays when he got to see Kurt laugh made his entire week.

He smiled sadly to himself in the dark of his room, fingers ghosting over his own thighs, as he tried to remember the musical sound of that laugh. He'd barely caught it over the chatter of the other patrons, but it was there, riding on the air. Just a second of sound.

He’d found out Kurt’s name by accident, that one day in the elevator. That one day he’d finally had enough of law school, his father and his bosses and that miserable silence, and he was ready to pull the emergency stop and just crumble to the floor. But the lift stopped before he could so much as move his hand, and in strode Kurt, spinning on his heel, papers in hand and perfect dark-rimmed Chanel glasses perched on his elegant nose.

All the pain, everything that felt like too much in his life, all of it vanished in that moment, disappearing over some invisible event horizon.

Blaine held his breath for all twenty-four seconds, and forced himself not to stare. He flicked glances at the papers carefully, at the leather cuff on Kurt’s tapered wrist and the stunning powder blue of his Prada shirt. There it was, printed in bock letters on a card clipped to the stack of papers. Kurt Hummel, PA. Underneath it, on a piece of scrap paper, was a sentence in elegant handwriting, scribbled like an afterthought. Reading it felt like a hammer had been taken to Blaine's heart.

Sometimes we forget who we really are.

Blinking back tears, Blaine opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again. His throat stung with the need to get out the sound of his name. He was right there, Kurt was standing right beside him, he could just say something. Say his name. Say anything.

But he couldn’t find his voice.

Without so much as a glance, Kurt was gone. Out the heavy gray doors, and out of his life again.

But he was right there, once, and maybe some day it would happen again. Blaine just needed to find his voice.

He rolled over in bed, glancing at the clock and trying to kick off his sheets, now clinging to sweat-damp skin. It was past 5am.

Resigned to his insomnia, he let his gaze trail over his darkened room, lingering on the shadow of his pinup board and the flier still stuck to it. Rocky Horror. He’d taken it from the caf� one morning, the casting call for Brad. He needed to find his voice, and this is how he was going to do it. He was a performer, once. He’d stood in front of crowds, he’d won championships for his singing; he could talk to Kurt Hummel.

He ignored the sound of his father’s voice, burrowing through the back of his mind again (Blaine, this is absurd. When are you going to grow up and be a real man?), focusing instead on the memory of the taste of sugar cherry lollipops, and the feeling of lace under his fingers.

Frank was something new, something easy to fantasise about, miles away from the droning monotone of reality. Frank was his escape, his window into that world, and just as surely as Frank had used him for kicks before he’d walked out onto that stage, he could use Frank now.

He pushed his palm under the band of his pyjamas to stroke lazily at himself while his mind flashed over mirrors of sensation and absent ideas, the phantom sense of how Frank’s sweat would taste, the way he would guide his hands over that body, satin and lace between his teeth and on his tongue. He whimpered softly, squeezing himself a little too tight and rolling his hips into the feeling.

By the time he came, crying out and slumping back onto the bed, it was ten to six in the morning.

With a groan he rolled over, dragging himself limply to the bedside to clean up, and shivering as his bare skin slid across the cool sheets on the unused side of his mattress. He froze for a moment, hand groping in the dark for some tissues or wipes, and tried not to think about the ache in that rose up in his throat whenever he was reminded of the pillow by his elbow that had never been touched.

Why he thought of Kurt at that moment, he didn’t know, but it only made the ache worse. He wiped himself down absently, eyes staring at nothing in particular through the murky morning dark.

He tried to train his mind back to that Friday, to the side-stage and the kiss, but every time he came back around to the lobby, the sunlight streaming in through the doors and that tiny smile on Kurt’s face.

Sighing heavily, he fell back onto the bed with an exhausted groan.

It had been six months. Six months and not even a word shared between them, and even with his perfectly pre-designed career path and random stolen kisses from strangers, he knew somehow he would never escape that feeling. For some stupid reason, Kurt Hummel was the only person he wanted to wake up to.

His alarm blared, and he huffed out a humourless laugh.

At least it was Monday, and that only meant one thing. He could see him today. Even if only from a distance.