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                                      “Then don’t.” Sebastian told him, an earnest, but careful, emotion revealed in his eyes, behind the tumbled walls Blaine always kicked down whenever he was around. “I’m serious.” He said, already predicting the breath of laughter that was sure to erupt from Blaine’s lips. Blaine who always took whatever Sebastian said with an Atlantic Ocean of salt. He stepped in, even as his heart lept, encouraged by the way his wrist was being held and touched. “Don’t go.”

He shook his head, asking again, his voice quieter now. “You can crash in my room.” He licked his chapped lips. “And in the morning you can waltz into the provost’s office and tell them you’re coming back. They’ll probably throw at least four feasts in your honor.” He paused for a while, just looking at Blaine… His honeyed eyes that always made Sebastian feel like he was drowning, not in the cheesy, romantic, way, but almost painfully so, his lungs going tightly out of air, even more pain screwed in at the reminder he’d almost ruined one of them. He felt as though one wrong breath, a muscle twitch in the wrong second, and Blaine would crack into a million mirage pieces, and Sebastian would be standing in that room alone. Because it had to be his wild imagination that Blaine had been allowing this, those late nights, and now was even  willingly touching him. He wondered if Blaine could feel how his pulse was racing under the touch.

“You don’t seem happy.” And now his voice as almost gentle. Sebastian wouldn’t know. He had never tried to be gentle with anyone else before. But if he could compare it to anything, that was the best he could hope for, that that was what Blaine would hear. “Not lately, Blainers…” 

                                            “Stay….”

Then don’t.  Blaine fell in line with Sebastian’s predication like clockwork.  His eyes, though glistening with a little bit of hope to hear exactly what he had, squinted at their corners.  Right before, the soft laugh that rattled in his chest more as series of huffs, barely audible and more seen rather than heard, had him shaking his head and rolling his eyes.  Exasperation.  Not that he thought Sebastian was crazy.  He was anything but that.  Hearing what you want to hear and thinking it was possible?  A huge difference.  Oh, but he didn’t want to walk out of this room and leave the comfort these four walls held inside.  The smell of leather and old books.  Wood polish and sunshine through the floor to ceiling windows.  A faint sound of music and singing in the air long after the voices faded into a murmur of activity behind closed doors leaving only the two of theirs echoing quietly.  

Sebastian.  Sebastian.  Blaine let his knees buckle and sat down on the sofa.  His landing untimely and hard enough to make him bounce twice.  He never let go of Sebastian’s wrist though.  Super glue grip, much?

That would be the reason he wanted to stay most.  Someone apart from them.  Someone who knew him in ways he’d never let anyone know him.  The other parts of himself that Warbler Blaine who transformed into Blaine Warbler when he exchanged navy blue and crimson for bow ties and boat shoes whispered through the other end of the phone.  Tapped out in careful texts.  Shared underneath a blanket of Westerville stars with the hum of his or Sebastian’s pools in the background.  Late nights with Blaine sitting on the floor and Sebastian sprawled out in bed talking.  In ways no one could ever know because it would be made into something it wasn’t and he never wanted to be on the end of being chewed up and spat out for the company he kept.  Until, you know, he was.  Then the incident.  Then an ebbing into nothing but radio silence and it’s way too far past salvaging.  Heartbreak and a plane ride.  Insomnia and stolen trophies.  Who would have thought that would be what brought them back together again?

Now, Sebastian was asking him to stay.  To crash in his room and pointing out the obvious. That pet name made him break eye contact.  “I’m not,” he drug out the the t, stressing the consonant between his front teeth.  “I haven’t been.”  A glance to the fingers he pressed into freckled ivory skin before pulling, ever-so-lightly, in a gesture for him to come nearer. “I want to be.  I’ll stay.  Let’s hold the feasts until we talk more?  If that’s okay?  I could just really use someone to talk to.”  Really talk. “You want to go up now?  Or we can sit here if you want.”