It's only a skoche past eight in the morning when she arrives, but Blaine doesn't mind the early intrusion. He's so ecstatic to see her, he giggles when she passes over his threshold. He dreamt all night about having her, and now she's here. Finally.

Papers are signed, her handlers leave, and with the slide of his loft door, he's left alone with his soul mate. She took forever to find, and even longer to afford. She's sleek, sophisticated, and most important of all, untouched by anyone else's hands.

Blaine calls her Ariel.

He takes a step back to admire his new acquisition – his Steinway grand piano. A concert grand piano. It takes up about 95% of his available floor space. At 990 pounds, it almost taxes the weight limit on the ancient wood floor in his place. It costs…well, he doesn't want to think about what it costs. With the money he spent, he could have gotten a new car, maybe two…or three. If his trust fund wasn't under his complete control, his parents would have had a heart attack when they eventually came across the charge.

He, of course, wouldn't have told them. That would only be opening himself up to numerous lectures about irresponsibility and childishness, text upon text demanding that he return it…now!, and a recitation of the laundry list of items that that money could have gone towards – tuition, books, clothes, rent, food.

Blaine closes his eyes and pictures the vein throbbing in his dad's neck, sees his mom's eyes bug out as she berates him, switching between English and Tagalog in the same sentence when she gets really frustrated. Alone in his loft, he feels thoroughly chastised for all of a split second. He opens his eyes, looks at his grand piano, and sighs with contentment, the breath passing through his lips wiping his mom's voice from his head. So, maybe it wasn't the most economically sound decision. Maybe he'll be eating ramen until he has his Masters, and he'll need to sleep on the fire escape for the foreseeable future, but who cares? It's a grand. No more fighting against a nameless, rickety-old, second hand upright, with a missing lid and an entire range of keys from C to A above middle C that are perennially out-of-commission.

And if he never makes it as a musician? He can live in his grand piano, out on the street, when they evict him from his loft; play it on corners for spare change. And when he dies, they can bury him in it.

Blaine runs his fingertips over her surface…or hovering just above. He opted for the heavy full-bodied black satin finish over the high polish polyester so he could touch his gorgeous instrument without worrying about smudges or fingerprints, but she's still too new for him to touch her body.

Not until he's played her. Not until he's sat on her bench and caressed her keys. Not until he's heard her sing for him.

Blaine smiles. He can't stop smiling. He doesn't think he'll ever look at her and not smile like an irrepressible fool. He knows it's ostentatious. He knows it screams privilege. He knows it probably wasn't entirely necessary, not when other students in his school, admittedly better piano students, are practicing on Casio digital pianos in their dorm rooms, or breaking into the practice rooms late at night to use one of the many mass produced Suzuki uprights that NYADA provides.

He also knows he's never been happier than he is at this exact moment, and he can't see this happiness fading any time soon. That happiness makes it all worthwhile.

“Well, darling,” Blaine says, sitting on the bench and pulling it in a comfortable distance from his instrument, “how about we say hello, hmm?”

Blaine shifts on the bench, searching out his sweet spot – a place where he can readjust comfortably while he plays, if he needs to, and where the lip won't dig in to the back of his thigh and make his leg fall asleep. Once he finds that spot, he starts out easy to stretch the strings after the piano's ride from Manhattan. He plays through the major scales, starting with C-major, then the minors, then his arpeggiated warm-ups until, before he knows it, he's deep in the middle of Concerto #2 by Rachmaninoff. It's hard not to get carried away and push her a little bit. She sounds heavenly, her voice bouncing off the walls of his loft in a way his other piano could never achieve. She feels so perfect beneath his fingertips - the reaction of the keys, the pressure of the pedals, the hammers hitting the strings with calibrated precision.

Just…perfect.

As the final chords fade, their rich resonance is replaced by the sound of footsteps climbing the staircase up to his floor and hurrying down the hall. Before he can call out, “I'll be right there,” a slip of paper shoots beneath the door. Then the footsteps retreat back down the hall and down the stairs.

Blaine turns on the bench and looks at the folded paper, sitting a foot inside his door, curious as hell as to what it might be. He hopes it's not a complaint. A complaint is all he'd need to ruin what he feels is a perfect day so far, even if it is only 9:30. The last time someone slipped a piece of paper under his door like this was two years ago. The passive-aggressive overnight guest of one of his neighbors had complained that they could smell his Giorgio Armani cologne filling the hallways. The following afternoon, Blaine passed her on the stairs outside the second floor hallway. She sniffed in his general direction, turned up her nose at him, and headed outside, mumbling about, “Fresh air.”

But he'd never gotten a complaint about anything else, before or since. Everyone in the building is pretty mellow, all of them artist types, which has formed a certain understanding among them.

The building he lives in – a converted warehouse from the late ‘60s – only has the five floors, renovated into five separate lofts. His is on the way top, which, to him, makes it the safest, but it's also the smallest. It used to be the overseer's office, the space cut short by a dormant exhaust system that used to cool the whole building. Through his bedroom wall, he can sometimes here the spinning of a giant fan when the wind blows, ushered in by large metal pipes that stick upright from the roof and bend toward the east.

On the bottom floor lives Ms. Adelaide Cooper - a stooped older woman with hearing aids in both ears. In her teens up through her twenties, she was a dancer for the New York Ballet Company. Nowadays, she can barely make it up and down the three outside steps that lead to the front door of their building. Blaine probably sees her the least, but the times she has spoken to him, she never had anything but compliments for his playing, so Blaine can probably cross her off the list.

The second floor resident is a middle-aged man whose name Blaine has never gotten, but he's away on tour as a substitute bass guitar player. Blaine hasn't seen him for at least a week, so not him.

Third floor's a painter's loft, set up kind of like his in that they keep very little furniture, and rented by a lovely couple of engaged ladies who occasionally use their space as a private gallery. They have a showing once a month, and they always give the other residents an invitation. Blaine's even played piano for them a few times. They have a fairly decent spinet in their place, but until Blaine went to one of their showings and asked if he could try it out, they said that it didn't do much more than sit in the corner getting dusty, and hold their potted plants. Regardless, they're never shy about voicing their opinions, so not them, either.

Right below Blaine lives a petite brunette named Rachel, that he thinks might have a bit part in a Broadway show, but he's never had the chance to ask her. He's heard her practicing, doing vocal exercises, mostly to increase her range. She keeps odd hours. When she's coming in, he's usually going out, and vice versa.

As far as he knows, she's out right now, but she might have come home at some point. He wouldn't have known, caught up in the excitement of Ariel arriving.

Although, the note could be from her roommate.

Blaine's not exactly sure what their relationship is. They're too friendly to just be sharing the rent. Since day one when the man arrived, Blaine has heard the two of them through the ceiling, chatting on endlessly as if they've known each other forever. He can only imagine what they hear coming from his place sometimes - not that Blaine has any gentleman callers, but he does keep a punching bag for working off steam, and a few other private rituals of his get kind of…weird.

Blaine thought at first he was a boyfriend, until Blaine saw the man on the stairs one night, talking with another man – a ruggedly handsome blond gentleman in a flannel shirt, and with a rather enchanting (if Blaine wanted to admit it) English accent. The two men nodded cordially at Blaine, and Blaine smiled back. He could tell by the bits of their conversation that he'd caught, and their body language, standing close together, that they'd just gotten back from a date.

Maybe not too good a date, though, since the man with the blond hair wasn't invited upstairs, and Blaine only saw him one other time after that.

That was a few weeks ago.

Brother? If so, genetics went wild in their family, since she's petite, brunette, with brown eyes, and a prominent nose, and he's tall, slender, with pale skin, and startling blue eyes.

Incredibly hypnotizing, steely blue eyes.

Blaine doesn't know anything else about him, except that on most days, Blaine can't keep his mind off of him. He's not like anyone Blaine has ever run into. Walking through the city, people pass Blaine by in a blur, unremarkable and forgettable. But this man – he's like something out of a fairytale, a ray of preternatural light in a dim city, a blossom of spring clover to brighten the gloom. Blaine passes him on the stairs every Friday. This past Friday, he was carrying a bouquet of white lilies that Blaine thought might be from an admirer, until he heard Rachel say, “Lilies! Ugh!” to which her roommate answered, “I like lilies, so I buy lilies. Live with it, Rachel Berry!”

Blaine smiles, remembering the diva-esque tone of the man's voice. Blaine had thought he heard her whine something about, “But, Kurt!”

So, Kurt. The man's name might be Kurt. Blaine doesn't know for sure. He hasn't found the courage to ask.

Blaine's mind returns to the note on the floor and he frowns. Complaint or not, best to get it over with. Blaine rises from his bench, reluctantly leaving Ariel behind as he makes his ways towards the door. He bends over and picks the note up, bracing himself for the worst, just in case.

But it's not. Blaine reads it – neat, flowing handwriting on smooth, linen paper, torn at the top, possibly from a sketch book - and smiles, delighted to see that it's actually a request:

Good morning, maestro. Now that you have your new piano, may I humbly request a redux of Defying Gravity?

Blaine had just been assigned that song for his accompaniment class. The girl he'd been paired with was performing it as part of her Senior Showcase.

Okay, so Rachel then. Blaine had heard her singing Defying Gravity while he practiced it on his old piano, her voice making its way up to him through the window from the floor below. Blaine smiles, a trifle disappointed, but it doesn't matter. It would have been nice if the request had come from her roommate. Blaine could have gone downstairs and invited him up. But this could work out to his advantage. If he impresses Rachel with his musical skill, that might turn into a coffee date, which might turn into friendship, which might ease him into getting an in with Kurt. It'll be like a rom-com, and when they sell the rights to Disney, Kate Hudson can play Rachel.

Blaine pulls aside the drapes and opens the windows wide. He considers opening the loft door, and lifting the lid on his piano, too, but he decides against it. His piano should be loud enough to be heard throughout the loft, definitely down one floor. No reason to blow everyone away. He sits on his piano bench, finding his groove immediately. He adjusts the distance of the bench back and forth one more time. Then he takes a deep breath and puts his hands in position to play the first chords.

His fingers drop gently onto the keys, and he breathes out slowly. Music fills the room as he plays, as if it is physically pouring out of the piano, light and bubbly, like an expensive French champagne, and Blaine lets himself become immersed in it. With each touch of his fingertips, he and this exquisite instrument become one, and he knows for certain that its place is here with him.

He had to buy it. There's no way he could have left it behind.

The one thing Blaine loves about playing a piece like this, one that's not too technically complicated, one that relies more on style than precision, is that it gives his mind room to wander.

And it does. It goes to those places he uses music to find, fantasies that he conceives of here, on his piano bench, and then carries around with him, letting them settle in the background so he can recapture them on command.

Blaine lets himself think of him, the man from downstairs. Blaine imagines him sitting on his futon sofa, long legs crossed, a glass of wine in his hands, watching Blaine play, his eyes fixed on Blaine's fingers as they dance across the keys. It makes Blaine blush. More than that, it makes him a little hot, makes him squirm on his seat when his already tight jeans get a bit tighter. Luckily, he knows the piece backwards and forwards so his fingers don't trip over the keys.

Blaine pictures the man sitting on the piano bench beside him, swaying as Blaine's playing moves him, humming along with the tune, shutting his eyes to let it carry him away.

And this is how Blaine can reach out to him. This is how Blaine can touch him, because up till now, he's been too afraid to. Not because Blaine's a wallflower. He has his introverted moments, but every musician does, more comfortable at home with their instrument for a few quiet hours of practice than out on the town in a crowded nightclub. As a performer, Blaine has perfected the art of accepting rejection, and he can take it from almost anyone. He's a big boy, and it's an occupational hazard. But Blaine has built this man up in his mind, and rejection from him might be like a poker through the hand – painful and debilitating.

Blaine arrives at the point in his fantasy when the song comes to an end, when he stands from the piano bench and takes the man's hand, and they start to slow dance, wrapped up in the memory of Blaine's music, the swiftly dying final notes lingering in the air. But here in his loft, Blaine sits on his piano bench alone. He takes the liberty to end the song in a flourish, more dramatic than he might do otherwise, but hey, this is his first command performance. He's going to give it all he's got.

Blaine hears a multitude of applause outside his open window, coming from more than just one person - people on the sidewalk below who had stopped to listen to him play. He laughs. He has an urge to go over to the window and take a bow, but footsteps returning to his door make him stop and wait. The footsteps pause. Then there's a knock, but again, before Blaine can say, “I'm coming,” the footsteps head away, down the hall and down the steps. Blaine smiles. He can only assume there's something outside his door waiting for him.

Is it too much to hope it's the handsome, fair-skinned man from downstairs, who might be named Kurt, wrapped in some kind of large, red bow?

Blaine holds on to that image as he rises from his piano bench. He walks to his door, wearing a goofy grin, and slides it open. There's no one there. He's not too surprised, but he's, again, a little disappointed. At the very least, it might be nice to have Rachel come visit, so he'd have someone to show off his new piano to. He glances down reflexively and finds another note, only this one has a flower with it – a beautiful white lily. He bites his lip, his grin growing brighter. Could it be…or did Rachel just steal one of her roommate's flowers, possibly in an effort to get rid of them?

That might turn into an interesting argument later.

Blaine opens this new note and reads it, holding the lily beneath his nose and letting its pungent fragrance fill his nose. He feels his body warm all over. He loves when someone appreciates his talent. At NYADA, there're so many music students, so many people vying for the same, coveted spots. But here, in his tiny pond, he has a captive audience, and he likes knowing that he can perform well for them.

He furrows his brow, and reads the note over again when he realizes it's not from who he thought. He jumps up and down in place, silently cheering. He slides the door to his loft shut and races for the stairs, stuffing in his pocket the note that read:

That was magical! Thank you.

Come down for coffee?

Kurt Hummel

Fourth Floor