Hurry up, the stage awaits you. Don't forget to memorize your lines. Can you hear them congratulate you? Out of step, just can't find the time. Will we pass through undetected? Everything's right here inside our file.

You're not so free to be so unprotected…

- * -

Kurt didn't think it was an actual thing.

Really, can you blame him? It's something straight out of a crime film formula. It's that predictable thing that adds dramatic tension. It's a plot twist. It's not an actual thing. Except, it is.

And suddenly it's something that's yawn inducing, if only at the dramatic tension. Suddenly it's not that predictable thing. Suddenly it's not a plot. It's not even something that should be considered entertainment worthy. Any such opinion that suggests otherwise is clearly the logic of a prime, grade-A fuckwit. No one should make entertainment of something they know not of because, more often than not, the movies and TV shows get it wrong – dead wrong.

He shivers, internally chastises his slip.

Dead – now that's something the movies and TV shows do get right. It is the punishment for slipping. Just the simplest, absent-minded drop of a name and then it ends. Just like that. Few fates are worse than death, but the beauty of death? It's permanent. No more slipping. No more anything, just the cessation of breathing, of existing, presence carved out of the world's molecules and extinguished.

But he's getting ahead of himself. This isn't about the thing, peripherally yes, but not exclusively. This is, ultimately, a love story. An odd one, and a bit of an unconventional one, but still, a love story.

This is the story of how he, one Kurt Hummel, creator and CEO of Blackbird Designs, falls in love with Blaine Anderson, aka Devon Bartlett, the shy, quiet restorer of antique instruments. You see, the thing Kurt realizes is actually a thing is this: Devon Bartlett is Blaine Anderson, federally protected witness for the prosecution of Anthony “Two Tone” Castellano.

Oh yes. Witness Protection is actually a thing and it's the thing that when you raise, you bet your life, you go all in and even if you hold a royal flush, you still lose. What you lose may be insignificant, not particularly noticeable save for the constant, ceaseless erosion of your identity, like the jagged cliffs battered day in and day out by churning, salty waves, but it's still a loss.

Perhaps, that kind of loss is one of those few fates worse than death. Perhaps if one day you stop being you after twenty-seven years and start being someone else, still clothed in the skin and scars of your old self, you find yourself stranded, lost; you are the familiar unfamiliar. You are a citizen without a passport; you are the road map leading you back to somewhere you don't know anymore, because your destination has changed, has been irrevocably altered.

The unbeatable hand is only beatable when your poker face is all that's keeping you alive.

And Blaine? He had the best poker face of anyone until, one day, he didn't.

- * -

Words and numbers spell out the price to pay. It simply states, “You're disconnected baby.” 

See how easily it sall lips away…