Light faded in and out, and his entire frame felt weightless again, unburdened by the pressure that had built all week his lungs. The air was cool and crisp around his head, and the burning under his skin was gone at last.

There was something warm and gentle pressing on his lips briefly, just a brush of sensation across his mouth. A voice in his head or in his ears, so much softer than his own, said goodbye.

When he woke up properly, early afternoon sun was bleeding through the windows in streaks, painting his bedroom walls a brighter shade. He sighed sleepily and stretched, uncurling like a cat and listening to the pops and clicks of his body as he moved.

Conscious thought rolled through the remnants of his fast-fading dreams, and he struggled to recall the night before. He remembered racing to the theatre, the sweat dripping down his neck and into his shirt, the ache in his bones from his illness. He knew he’d spoken to Jan and Trix, and that he’d begged them to let him go on. The rest of the night remained a dappled mass, skirting on the periphery of his thoughts.

What the hell happened?

On cue his phone trilled from the bedside, and he groaned as he scooted over gingerly to retrieve it. He rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye as he answered; “Hello?”

“Glad you’re still in the land of the living,” Trix said. “Just wanted to check up and make sure you’re okay.”

Blaine swallowed against his parched and sore throat, searching his room for answers. “Wh- what happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

He shook his head. “No, last thing… last thing I remember I was talking to you before the show. What day is it?”

“Saturday,” she answered. “Jeez, kiddo. That was a crazy fever. You collapsed.”

“On stage?” Blaine asked, suddenly very much awake and completely horrified.

She laughed. “No, no, you made it backstage. You got through the show. Like a train wreck, but you got through, and then you did a nosedive down the stairs.”

Blaine grunted miserably. “Oh god.”

“Hey, you’re the one that begged to go on,” she said. “Masochistic bastard.”

“How did I get home?”

“Frankie,” she replied. “He got your address from your wallet and practically carried you out of here himself.”

A smile lifted Blaine’s mouth, and he drew a quick breath in surprise. Something in his chest flushed warm, and the sensation swept over him, prickling his skin.

“I’m gonna miss that boy,” she sighed.

His smile fell. “Wh- what? Frank’s gone?”

“No, no! Just for a few weeks. His brother was in town, and Frankie went back home with him for a while. Said he needed to figure some things out,” she explained.

“Oh.” A hollow feeling tugged inside him, sinking over the quickening of his heart. He swallowed again, trying to wet his throat.

“Don’t worry!” she said quickly. “We can fill for two weeks, it’s not that long. I’d be fucked if he was gone for good, but short-term is manageable.”

“Good,” he said with a croak. “That’s… I’m glad.”

Any ability to form actual sentences fled from him the moment he remembered his father’s phone call. Oh god.

He had to tell her. He had to say it, or she’d expect him Friday night. But Frank was gone, and if Blaine bailed on her now …

“Alright, sweetie, well you get some bed rest and keep your fluids up,” she went on. “Take care of yourself, and I’ll see you next week.”

“Y-yeah,” he stammered out, words pooling on his tongue and sticking fast. I have to quit, I can’t be there this Friday, I’m so sorry.

“Bye,” was all he caught before the click-thump of the phone hanging up.

He spent the next hour throwing up over the toilet basin, clutching the sides and shaking. He cursed himself silently. If only he’d gotten the words out, it’d be over now.

No matter what happened with his next call, he knew it wouldn’t make a difference. He was a disappointment. Just like he’d always been.

Staggering back to his bed with a glass of water, he placed it on the bedside table and flopped gracelessly onto the mattress, eyes squeezed shut tight.

What am I going to do?

Out of nowhere he thought of Kurt: beautiful, graceful, perfect Kurt. He thought of the cuff on his wrist, the sweep of his stunning brown hair, and the outline of his shoulders against sunlight. He thought of the boyfriend; of those (stupid) long arms wrapped around Kurt’s back, and that (stupid) smiling face tucked over his shoulder.

He thought of the office, and the internship, and how badly he wanted to take a nine iron to the photocopier. By the time his thoughts had wandered to school and his father and his future, the knot in his chest had built like a fist around his ribcage, squeezing slowly.

Trying to breathe, he swept his tongue across dry lips, searching for anything to focus on that didn’t add to the clench inside.

Frank.

His eyes opened, bright and watery, and he reached for his phone.

Frank would know what to do. Or at least, he’d understand. He would listen. Somehow, Frank always knew the right thing to say.

Blaine realised all at once just how badly he needed to hear his voice again.

When the first text message went unanswered, he waited another five minutes, and sent a second. By the third text message (Is it weird if I call you?) he’d already decided on calling, and sent a fourth (I’m going to call you).

After the second time the phone rang out, the squeeze around his ribs was unbearable.

When evening crept in through the windows, he was lying on his stomach, head twisted to the side to stare at his unmoving cell. It lay flat on the never-used second pillow on his bed like a tiny sigil, waiting for nothing in particular. Pretending it was holding someone’s place.

With a heavy sigh, he reached for it, dialling one more time.

He jolted when the phone picked up after two rings.

“Hello?”

The voice was unfamiliar, and sounded like it was pushing out from around a mouthful of food. It was also male.

Oh.

“Oh,” he said. “I – um, is-” he froze when he realised he didn’t actually know Frank’s real name.

It didn’t matter for long, because Frank’s voice was clear in the background. “Finn, why are you answering my phone?”

The mouthful voice grunted and garbled out an apology that sounded like it could have been “oh, sorry dude, we have the same phone”, and a round of shuffling static came down the line before a soft breath.

“Who’s this?”

“Hey,” Blaine croaked, his body easing instantly at the sound of Frank’s voice.

There was a pause.

“Blaine,” Frank said hesitantly, almost like he was afraid to.

“I tried to call you earlier,” Blaine began, keeping his tone light. “I figured you were busy but I just wanted to say-”

“It’s okay, Blaine, you don’t have to,” Frank cut him off. “I get it.”

“Get… what?” Blaine asked, confused.

Frank didn’t answer at first. Then, carefully: “Why are you calling?”

“Trix told me that you got me home, last night,” Blaine explained, rolling over to rest on his back. “I just wanted to thank you.”

“Trix told you?”

“Yeah,” he said with a short laugh, rubbing a hand over his brow. “I don’t remember anything after the pre-show, she called this morning to let me know what happened, and to check up on me.”

“Oh,” Frank said, his voice a little higher than normal.

Another long pause followed, and Blaine smiled to himself. “You didn’t have to do that, I mean, I can only imagine what a mess I was,” he coughed. “I am. But I … I’m just… grateful.”

The line was still quiet.

“And I’m so glad it was you,” he added.

Frank sighed, and Blaine held his breath for a moment, wondering if it was pain he heard or sadness.

“Are you alright? Trix said you went back home for a few weeks. I don’t want to pry, I mean I don’t know what our rules are for this kind of thing, outside of the show.” He searched his ceiling as he spoke. “But I was hoping there weren’t any.”

“Any…?”

“Rules,” he clarified, letting his eyes drift closed. “I miss you. And I know that’s ridiculous because I don’t see you between Fridays anyway, but just knowing you’re not going to be there, be here, for weeks; just knowing that I’m going to miss you makes me miss you now. Does … does that make any sense?”

Frank let out a shaky breath. “It does.”

Blaine smiled, nuzzling against his phone as he settled into the pillow.

“You really don’t remember anything from last night?” Frank asked warily.

Peering across the room through narrowed eyes, Blaine tried to recall anything past his talk with the girls. “No,” he sighed. “Nothing at all. Oh god, what did I do? Did I throw up on you? I’m so sorry.”

Frank laughed, and Blaine felt his heart race at the sound. It was musical and soft, and familiar in a way Blaine couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“No, you didn’t, you were fine,” Frank told him. “I…” he took a deep breath, “I wasn’t there for long. Your fever broke and I had to get home.”

Blaine stared at the furniture of his bedroom, the lines of his doorframe and the living room beyond. “It’s so strange…”

“What is?”

“You were here,” Blaine answered with a smile. “You were in this room. I’ve only ever seen you at the show, but you … you were actually here last night. You walked through that door, and stood in my living room,”

“And sat on your bathroom tiles,” Frank added mockingly.

Blaine laughed. “And sat on my bathroom tiles, oh god I’m sorry. And you probably walked across my bedroom. And you lay down…” he stopped talking, fingers ghosting over the blanket beside him.

“Lay down?”

“On this bed,” he breathed. “Did you…?”

It took Frank a moment to answer. “Yes.”

Blaine wet his lips, head lolling to the side as he breathed in the scent of his pillow soundlessly. “You were here.”

“I was,” Frank confirmed. “And you keep a stunningly organised apartment. I approve. Although I am worried that you have a Stepford wife you haven’t told me about.”

After a bark of laughter, Blaine coughed brutally for a long time, holding the phone away from his face until it stopped. “Sorry,” he wheezed, pulling the phone back. “But, no. No wife. I guess I just like order, that’s all.”

Another voice bellowed loudly down the line, clear enough to make out but far enough away from the phone to not blow out his eardrum. “He’s still on the phone!”

He heard the cell muffle against something, and Frank’s voice bleeding through. “Finn! Inside voice!”

“Sorry.” There he was again, the man who answered his call in the first place. “Wait, that’s not the lawyer guy is it? The one you won’t stop talking about? He’s a dick for saying-”

“FINN!”

“Fine.” The voice was fading like he was moving away, punctuated by the thump of furniture shifting on wooden floors. “Mom wants you to help with her outfit for tomorrow night when you’re done. If that’s cool.”

“I’ll be up soon.” Frank’s voice again.

A rustle of sound told him Frank had lifted the phone. Not that his efforts had done much to obscure their conversation.

“I’m back, sorry,” he said gently.

“Did that guy just call me a dick?” Blaine asked, amused.

“Oh god, you heard that? Blaine, I’m – it’s not what you think, Finn is… is…” he struggled briefly, making little noises around words he couldn’t find. “Well, Finn isn’t exactly the brightest crayon in the box, he … misinterpreted.”

“That you can’t stop talking about me?” Blaine teased, grinning.

“Ohhh my god,” Frank groaned.

Blaine’s grin spread impossibly wider. If he concentrated he could almost see Frank at that moment; face probably buried in his hand, shoulders tipped forward.

“Hey, wait,” he said, confusion dancing over his features. “How did you know I work at a law firm?”

His question met with a long silence before Frank’s voice broke through. “I – I saw,” he said shakily, “on your board, the letterhead from Harper & Veil. Internship?”

Blaine’s eyes flicked up to his pin-up board, and there it was, dangling haphazardly in the corner. “Oh, right,” he said softly. “Yeah.”

Frank’s voice dropped this time to a soft and serious tone. “Sorry, if it makes you uncomfortable. Me knowing.”

“No,” Blaine answered quickly. “No, not at all. I mean, I know things about you now, so-”

“Like what?”

He didn’t get the chance to answer before Finn’s voice piped up in the background again. “Dude, are you gonna eat that?”

“Finn!”

Grinning, Blaine stroked a hand across his stomach. “Like you have a human vacuum named Finn.”

“Touche,” Frank sighed.

“So that’s your brother,” Blaine said.

“That’s my brother,” Frank echoed, exasperated. “I’m so sorry.”

Blaine laughed.

“You know what?” Frank countered after a beat. “I’m not. I’m not sorry. I will not be held responsible for acts of Finn Hudson.”

This time Blaine’s laugh ended in another coughing fit, and he groaned softly once it finished.

“Ouch,” Frank added sympathetically.

“Mmm.” Blaine agreed as he shifted on the bed. “So.”

“So?”

“Hudson, is it?” Blaine was grinning, rubbing his hand across his aching chest as he wondered aloud, and mostly to himself: “Frank Hudson? No. That doesn’t sound like you. Mike Hudson? Not a Mike, no. James Hudson is nice. Alexander Hudson sounds like a movie star, I can see that on you.”

“I feel like we should be in a boat with various birds and fish singing harmonies at us right now,” Frank joked. “Tell me if a crab starts whispering in your ear.”

“I just like to know where I need to make space in my address book,” Blaine said mockingly. “I am very organised, you know.”

“You think you’re so clever,” Frank purred, and Blaine could hear his smile down the phone.

He stopped and held his breath as he listened, imagining those stunning eyes looking back at him, bright with amusement.

“Your last name isn’t Hudson, is it?”

“Nope.”

“Damn,” Blaine cursed, his tone still playful.

“Nice try,” he said. “Finn’s my step-brother.”

“Ah.” Blaine closed his eyes, tipping his head back and relaxing again. “You could just tell me your name, you know.”

“Where’s the fun in that? I need something to torture you with every Friday night,” Frank teased.

That familiar hollow feeling clawed at the base of Blaine’s throat, and he knew he had to say it now, or not at all.

“I can’t… do the show anymore,” he almost whispered.

He heard a sound like Frank had put something down, and the reply was calm, but uneven. “What do you mean, you can’t do the show?”

Blaine sighed, his breath rasping painfully on the outgoing air. “My father…”

“What about him?”

“I have to quit the show,” he choked out. “It's ... it's My family, I can’t … they found out. And with school and the internship, all of it, it’s too much. I can’t do it all.”

“Who told you that?”

“You don’t understand, please,” Blaine begged quietly, bracing for disappointment in Frank’s voice. Not you, please. Anybody but you. “It’s my father, I have to-”

“Can I tell you a secret, Blaine?”

He hesitated for a moment, taken off guard. “Yeah.”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he said simply. “Ever.”

Blaine let go of the breath he was holding, feeling it hiss raggedly through the air.

There was a grinding sound down the line, wooden furniture across floorboards and what could easily have been a chair setting down. Frank huffed for a moment into the phone as he sat, and seemed to settle. “Talk to me,” he instructed. And then softly; “I have all night, if that's what it takes.”

Blaine wet his lips again, sinking down into himself and finding the right words to tell the whole story.

As he started, he felt the world bleed away from him, words pouring out before he could think about what he was saying, or how much he was saying. He talked about his parents, his father, about performing and the life he’d once led at Dalton, the days when he was happy.

He talked about that day in the front room, the strict guidelines his father had put down about his future and his career. He talked about law school, the internship, and how he’d slowly forgotten his own voice.

“And that’s why I have to quit,” he said at last. “I can’t destroy what he’s built for me.”

“Does it make you happy?” Frank’s voice was soft and soothing, sliding down the phone like cool water after the desert of his life-story.

“Wh- what?”

“Being a law student sure as hell doesn’t make you happy. Being an intern doesn’t either. If it did, you wouldn’t have called Kim in the first place, to take an unpaid role that steals away your Friday nights,” Frank deduced, his voice clear and even. “You came looking for something. Did you find it?”

Stunned, Blaine closed his mouth and tried to wrap his head around what Frank was asking.

“No,” he breathed, barely making a sound.

“Law school. The internship. They don’t make you happy.”

“No,” he repeated, this time a little louder.

“Does performing?”

He tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. It was the first time he ever admitted it out loud. “Yes.”

Frank let out a gentle, relieved sigh.

“I have to talk to my father,” Blaine surmised aloud.

"Yes, you do," Frank agreed, “and I have to go help my step-mother with her ensemble," he added reluctantly.

“Oh … Right. Sorry.” He was muttering and mumbling over the words before his brain could stop them, taken by surprise and still reeling from the terror at the idea of speaking to his parents. “I shouldn’t have talked so long, god, I’m sorry.”

“I’ll be half an hour,” Frank said suddenly. “Call me back in half an hour.”

“A- are you sure?”

“Of course I am,” Frank said without missing a beat.

Blaine smiled weakly. “I can do that. And – thank you. I mean-” His gaze fell on his pocket-watch, sitting on his dresser, holding that one slip of paper hostage. “Sometimes… sometimes we forget who we really are, and I just needed to be reminded. Of that.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, and he wondered if Frank had already hung up.

His voice finally came through on a shaky breath. “What did you just say?”

Blaine blinked, confused. “Just … thank you. For reminding me.”

“Oh,” Frank said lightly. “You didn’t need me for that.”

Blaine closed his eyes, pressing his cell tight against his cheek. “I did. I do,” he said gently. “Need you.”

He heard Frank’s smile again this time, drifting down the phone line on his words; “Then it’s a good thing I’m not going anywhere.”

After he hung up the call, Blaine lay still in bed, pressing the edge of his phone to his lips as his brain churned over Frank’s words again and again.

Their second call lasted five hours, past midnight. They talked about everything they’d never talked about: life and death and loss, about marriage equality and high school, the strange coincidence of growing up in Ohio. They talked about singing, and the unexpected comfort of corsets, and everything in between.

He listened to Frank’s voice drop in and out as his weariness began to overtake him, dimming his words down to mumbles.

“You’re falling asleep,” Blaine teased.

“Mmphmm,” was the reply, and Blaine smiled at the sound, listening to Frank’s tiny non-words of denial as they trickled down the phone line with the slow beat of his breathing.

Blaine closed his eyes, letting it wash over him. He opened his mouth to speak, but sleep dragged him down before he could say his last fleeting conscious thoughts out loud.

Even when you don’t say anything, I love the sound of your voice.

When he woke on Sunday, he smiled at his cell, still where he’d left it in the middle of the other pillow on his bed. Holding someone’s place.