Notes: Written for my very good friend berrywarbler. First chapter is Seblaine history, the second chapter will be Blainchel history, and then the third part will be putting the three together harmoniously.
This is a Boy Meets World AU. It is neither a perfect Boy Meets World fic nor a perfect Glee fic but an amalgamation of the two.
i. Blaine, Meet Sebastian
The very first time they met was on the playground in first grade. Blaine spent most of his time sitting alone at recess, under the tree behind the monkey bars, counting the caterpillars that would crawl on the fence. One day in the Spring, a brunette boy who was too tall even then walked over with a gaggle of children following him. Blaine watched with a curious gaze, not really knowing who the kid was because they weren't in the same class (and it was like a rule that you didn't play with kids who weren't in your class; not that Blaine played with anyone who was in his class).
The tall boy boasted loudly about how his mom had let him join a gymnastics team and now he was "pretty much an FBI agent" and "really great at everything". As if to prove his skills, he climbed all the way to the top of the jungle gym, a feat no other first grader ever dared. The kids all oohed and ahhed as he they watched him, and he was clearly soaking up the attention. Wanting to prove himself further, he settled so that his legs were locked around a bar and swung through one of the holes, hanging upside down like a trapeze artist.
It was cool for all of three seconds, until his legs slipped and he tumbled down to the sand below. Blaine winced as his chin hit the ground hard, knowing how much it hurt to scrape yourself on grains of sand. The other kids didn't feel any pity though. To them, it was hilarious. Blaine wasn't sure if the boy was angrier about the painful fall or the embarrassing way they all laughed at him, but in either case he was trying to get them all to shut up. One tubby kid said something Blaine thought was pretty mean and definitely would've made him cry if he'd been the target, but this tall kid just stood and brushed sand off his knees, looking up and calmly saying, "Yeah, well, why don't you go back to the ocean, Free Willy?"
It was probably the meanest thing Blaine had ever heard anyone say, and the tubby boy took it hard, tearing up and running off. The group of kids followed after him to maybe see if he'd go tell the teacher and start something interesting (it was always a show when someone got in trouble). It was only after the kids had all gone that the tall boy started to sniffle.
"Are you okay? That looked like it really hurt," Blaine spoke up, voice just as small as he was. The tall kid turned almost fearfully, not having realized that someone else was still there. He made quick to wipe his eyes, ridding himself of the tears that had begun to form. He stood up a little straighter as he regarded Blaine, unsure what to do about being caught.
"I'm not a sissy," he insisted. "I can take it." He puffed out his chest almost comically, but for some reason Blaine completely bought it. Maybe it was 'cause the kid was so tall. "I was just sad because these are new slacks." Blaine had never heard another kid say the word 'slacks'. It made him smile. "What's in your hair?" The question seemed to come from nowhere and Blaine blushed, looking away.
"It's gel," he said as if it were obvious. His mom always did his hair in the mornings, gelling his curls down to make him look like the perfect little gentleman. He hated it because the other kids always teased him about it, but she never listened and did it anyway. Now, sitting under a tree in front of this really cool kid, he was more embarrassed about it than ever.
The tall kid walked closer to him and Blaine was sure he was going to poke a stick into his hair or call him "a slimy gross worm" like everyone else always did. But instead, all he got was an, "Oh, huh," before the kid slumped down on the ground next to him. "Well, I'm Sebastian." He looked at Blaine expectantly and Blaine tried to overcome the shock and nerves in order to answer without sounding like a total stupidhead.
"Blaine," he said. "That's me. I'm… Blaine."
"Okay. Hey, guess what? My mom put me in gymnastics and…" Sebastian started bragging about how good he was at tumbling, but Blaine didn't even care. He was so cool, even if he had fallen off the monkey bars, and Blaine hung onto every single word he said, which Sebastian seemed to be feeding off of. Blaine didn't even think to mention that sitting in the dirt might ruin Sebastian's brand new slacks.
Ever since that moment, Blaine and Sebastian were drawn together as though they were attached by some invisible string. Not many people really understood why, and they constantly questioned it. Well, mostly they questioned Sebastian. "Wait… him? That guy? But… why would you wanna be his friend?" In his weaker moments, Blaine even questioned it himself. For all intents and purposes, it didn't make much sense. Sebastian was cool and slick. Most people loved him despite how cocky he could be, and the few that hated him were so far off Sebastian's radar that he didn't seem to notice. He was quick-witted, smart despite his inclinations to slack off, and his father was a state's attorney. Sebastian always got what he wanted, one way or another, and he never really cared what other people had to say about it. Blaine, on the other hand… Blaine was not such the smooth criminal. He still gelled his hair and wore bowties and shoes without socks. He worried about things a lot more than Sebastian seemed to, was a little more empathetic which you'd think would have made him more likeable but somehow it didn't. Blaine felt the anxiety of keeping up a certain persona that he wasn't sure Sebastian ever dealt with.
But the two boys didn't need other people to understand their friendship for them. No matter how strange it was, they fit together. And whenever Blaine doubted himself, he always brought his mind back to Sebastian.
After that initial year, their friendship was made easier by being put into the same class. Sebastian said his father had demanded it, because he was "real powerful". It must've been true, because they hadn't been separated since. Even when they got to middle school, they were put in the same class, able to laugh at the fact that their teacher was that weird Will Schuester guy who lived right next door to the Andersons.
When Blaine reflected back on it later in life, he realized he was probably pretty lucky to have Sebastian at his side in middle school. Instead of the horror stories people usually had about junior high, Blaine only had good ones.
Like that time Sebastian convinced him to stay up super late to watch a boxing match when he knew they had a big test in Mr. Schuester's class the next day. He ended up failing (while Sebastian passed, he noted), but in the end it was probably worth it.
Or that time they found out the winner of the Geography Bee would receive a gift card to Breadstix, so they tried to convince Artie Abrams to give one of them his spot (to no avail, which probably had something to do with Sebastian starting off the conversation by saying, "Listen up, Big Wheels").
And there was that time Blaine's older brother Cooper was babysitting them (which really meant he was making out with Beth or Becky or Bernadette on the couch), so Sebastian convinced Blaine to sneak out and see an R-rated movie with him. They got caught, of course. Sebastian always believed in his plans more than he thought them out.
"You think way too much," Sebastian always told Blaine. "It's like all that gel in your hair just keeps the thoughts in and one day you're going to blow up."
"It's not my fault I have to think enough for two people. If I didn't think so much," Blaine countered, "we would probably be dead." Sebastian would consider that for a second before shrugging one shoulder.
"Touché," he'd admit.
It wasn't all fun and games, though. There were some rough times. But even through those, Blaine and Sebastian were at each other's sides.
Like the time Lima, the town they lived in, had that Fourth of July father/son flag football game and Blaine's dad decided to take Cooper instead of him. He had decided he probably wanted to run away. He'd never been over to Sebastian's house before (which he gave little thought to; it always seemed natural that they just ended up at the Andersons), but he insisted over a phone call that he was going to hide out there for the rest of his life. When Sebastian said that he wouldn't like it there, Blaine simply groaned and said he'd move in with Mr. Schuester then. Without any hesitation at all, Sebastian replied, "You could share hair gel."
Or that time Sebastian got in trouble at school for blackmailing another student ("Did you expect me to write this stupid Social Studies essay by myself?"). The principal called Sebastian's parents and as Blaine peeked into the office to check on his friend, he didn't see the smug smirk he'd grown so used to. It was confusing and he tried to call Sebastian that night but nobody picked up. He didn't talk to his friend for three days, visibly moping as he gazed at the empty desk in Mr. Schue's class.
"Hey Pumba, where's Timon?" Artie Abrams joked, probably still bitter about that one time (or all those other times) and Blaine simply blew out air and let his head fall onto his desk, though he did toss a ball of paper at Artie's head at the end of class.
When Sebastian finally showed back up, there was a yellowing bruise at the corner of his eye. No matter how many times Sebastian waved off Blaine's questions, Blaine kept asking them. He didn't find out the answer until a month or so later, in the dead of night, when Sebastian crawled into his window (not unusual) and slid fully-clothed under Blaine's covers. Blaine blinked at his friend, Sebastian's face seeming much softer in only moonlight. Sebastian stared at the ceiling for a long time, and Blaine stared at Sebastian for just as long. The taller boy eventually turned his head to look back at Blaine, and that's when he saw the dried blood under his nose and the serious expression on his face. It was unnerving.
"He just gets stressed out, okay?" Sebastian's voice was defensive, protecting himself from something Blaine hadn't even said.
Blaine had no idea what to do at that point. It was a shock to the system; an uprooting of everything he'd believed about Sebastian. Having been sworn to secrecy, he kept it locked in his head for almost a week before it came spilling out to Mr. Schuester one day after school. Sebastian had to spend the summer in France with his mother. It was the loneliest summer Blaine had ever had, and he spent most of the time locked away in his room, ignoring the sound of the TV downstairs that seemed to be playing his brother's new commercial on constant repeat.
Blaine dreaded the first day of school after that summer, not really knowing how he'd deal with his last year of junior high without Sebastian at his side. But when he walked into class, Sebastian was already there, shooting the students around him a superior smile as they sat around him paying rapt attention to the stories he was telling them about France and his Senator uncle, whom he was now living with. Blaine was almost positive that Sebastian hated him, but he was proven wrong when Sebastian motioned for Blaine to choose the seat behind him before someone else got it ("God forbid Artie sits there.").
After that, Blaine was pretty sure they could survive anything.
And there were certainly a lot of moments they needed to survive, as far as Blaine was concerned. Sebastian took everything in stride, obviously, but as always, he was the warrior and Blaine was the worrier.
Like when they finally entered high school and had to watch those videos about how they were 'growing' and they'd be experiencing 'new feelings'. Blaine was mortified that he had to sit in class and watch a video that was "like scientific pornography" he'd told Sebastian, who spent most of the class snickering and wiggling his eyebrows at anyone who looked.
"I'm never going to school again," Blaine said as he collapsed onto the couch in the living room of the Anderson home after a day of listening to Finn Hudson and Noah Puckerman talk about how the female reproductive system looked like something out of a sci-fi horror movie.
Sebastian laughed and sat down next to him. "I don't understand why you're so bothered," he said. "We both know you already knew the dirty truth that lies beneath everyone's off-brand Levi's." To emphasize this, he patted Blaine's crotch, and chuckled when his hand was swatted away. They'd spent too much time looking at the Internet together to not understand all these 'changes'.
"It's not that," Blaine replied. "I just didn't appreciate having to sit in the middle of everybody we know while diseased penises popped up on the TV." He turned and put his hands on Sebastian's shoulders in order to make sure his friend really heard his next sentence. "Mr. Schuester was there, Seb. Mr… Schuester… was there." Sebastian laughed and quirked an eyebrow, which Blaine knew was never a good sign. He sighed and settled back into the couch, bracing himself for whatever Sebastian was going to say next.
"Were you more worried about Mr. Schue or Rachel Berry?"
Immediately, Blaine's eyes went wide. Rachel Berry was a girl they'd met just that year. She was bossy and loud and very absorbed in the notion that she was one day going to be as famous as Barbra Streisand. Most people kind of hated her for it, and the videos she posted on MySpace were always rife with mean comments from the girls on the Cheerios. Blaine didn't mind her as much as other people did. He liked talking to her; she had interesting ideas about things, definitely more interesting than most of the population of their small town. And he always found a reason to bring her up in conversation. It wasn't his fault though. Not only was she in their Health class, but she was also in the Glee club that the two boys had joined that year (at Blaine's insistence and much to Sebastian's chagrin; "But Ladyboy and the Great American Cripple are in that club").
"I don't like Rachel Berry," he argued. "At least not in that way."
Sebastian rolled his eyes. "What kind of name is Rachel Berry anyway? Sounds like a chapstick flavor." Blaine was about to respond when the two boys heard the very familiar drawl of "Little brother!" from the kitchen.
"Oh no," Blaine muttered, sitting up quickly and looking pointedly towards the stairs. But there was no escaping it, because his older brother was in the room before either of them could get up off the couch.
"Hellooo-ooooo-ooooo, Kid Brother," Cooper said, jumping over the back of the couch so that he was seated next to Blaine, who only groaned.
"I didn't know you were home," he said, glancing over at Cooper who was facing him, a bright screen-worthy smile on his face. Cooper had been much more popular than Blaine, not just in school but in all aspects of life. He was loud, exuberant, and handsome. He was larger than life, casting a shadow so huge that Blaine couldn't escape living under it no matter how hard he tried. The only person that didn't seem captivated by Cooper was Sebastian ("It's like someone put a sheep's brain into a human body") and Blaine appreciated that.
Cooper shrugged. "Well, ol' Mumsy and Daddy are going out for the night and they wanted a bodyguard for little Blainey. I thought I would be a nice older brother and spare you from spending all night playing Pictionary and watching old Journey concerts with Mr. Schue from next door."
"I don't need a babysitter anymore," Blaine insisted, wearing what Sebastian dubbed his "grumpy face". Cooper's eyes flickered up to Sebastian.
"I'm not sure it's you they're worried about," he replied, and Sebastian smiled smugly. "So what were you talking about before I made my grand entrance? Fill a brother in." Cooper slung his arm around Blaine's shoulders and the younger boy tensed, but knew better than to try and shrug him off.
"Nothi-" Blaine began to respond, but he was cut off by Sebastian.
"Blaine's got a crush on a girl named Rachel Berry," he said quickly, earning himself a rough jab from Blaine. Cooper looked intrigued which only annoyed Blaine more.
"And she doesn't like you back." Cooper sighed at his own assumption and Blaine furrowed his eyebrows, actually shrugging Cooper off this time.
"No, that's not ev-"
"Look, Blainers," he said, turning to look at Blaine seriously. He pointed directly at his brother, which seemed to be his new favorite thing. "It's like I said in my famous car insurance commercial: Life's tough. Get a helmet." They had to sit through almost two hours of advice about romance, which Cooper said he'd learned both from his experiences with girls and his time studying romantic acting techniques ("People say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, but what they don't know is that the arms are the fireplace"). When the two boys had finally escaped and were sitting on top of Blaine's bed, the shorter boy admonished Sebastian for encouraging his brother.
"Oh, come on," Sebastian said. "He's funny in the way that watching elderly women slip in the supermarket is funny." Blaine ignored Sebastian, grabbing his bookbag from the floor in order to start doing some homework. "Don't be like that. You and I are both aware that you could snag any girl you wanted, if you actually tried." Blaine gave him a look and Sebastian sighed, like he was tired of reiterating the obvious. "You're in such blatant denial of your Cary Grant meets John Mayer meets a cardigan factory charm that I kind of want to punch you."
Blaine wanted to smile, but forced his face to stay in a frown, not letting Sebastian have the satisfaction. "Then why am I single?"
"Because you don't like girls," Sebastian said. "At least that's what you tell me, despite the fact that you sit in the back of the Glee room and watch Rachel Berry like you want to wake up to carousel sweaters and knee-highs strewn about the bedroom floor." Blaine shot Sebastian with a glare, but he only held up his hands innocently. "And gay men are like an endangered species around here."
"What about Kurt Hummel? He's nice," Blaine talked over the disapproving noise Sebastian made. "And he might like me. And we have a lot in common."
"I thought we already agreed that you don't like girls." Blaine sighed heavily and Sebastian moved so that they were sitting next to each other. "And you won't let me take you to Scandal's. It wasn't as bad as you think it is, I'll probably go again."
Blaine scrunched his nose up in distaste. "You're fifteen and you got propositioned by more than one guy over 40."
"Live a little," Sebastian retorted. But Blaine and Sebastian had always had much different ideas about romance. They had both discovered that they were attracted to other boys in middle school. It was Blaine's idea, actually. He'd been curious and had started to form certain theories in his head after staring at one of his brother's acting buddies for a little too long and then having awkward dreams about it that same night. And it wasn't like he could date a girl to see how he felt about it. So he resorted to the good old world wide web, with Sebastian at his side. Sebastian who was somehow a lady's man without ever actually dating a lady.
After that, they'd both taken this newfound information about themselves and dealt with it in different ways. Sebastian took it with a shrug while Blaine spent the next few weeks in some state of nervous frenzy, as though he now had a big rainbow stamp on his forehead that said FAG. When Blaine had expressed his fears, Sebastian simply rose one eyebrow and said, "Tous le monde faire foutre." Fuck everybody.
Still, Blaine was always a little less forthright with his sexuality than Sebastian. He experimented less. He just wasn't into it. Sex was alright and all and he wanted to have it at some point in his life, but love and romance were more important. Sebastian never seemed to feel that way though.
Like that one time, at the end of freshman year, when Sebastian crawled into Blaine's room through the window and woke him up with an unceremonious shove.
"What, what?" Blaine said groggily, running a hand through his curly hair, still shy about it despite how many times Sebastian had seen him without gel.
"Guess what I just did," Sebastian whispered with a satisfied smirk on his face.
Blaine was not as enthusiastic at the idea of losing his virginity to some guy from a nightclub as Sebastian seemed to be.
It took them until sophomore year to figure out what in hindsight Blaine thought should've been very, very obvious.
"We need to talk about something," Blaine started one night. They sat on a blanket in the Andersons' backyard, leaning against the fence that separated them from Mr. Schuester's lawn. He shifted uncomfortably, though it wasn't from the hard ground.
That eyebrow raised but Sebastian didn't look away from the chocolate froyo he was spooning into his mouth. "Hm?"
"Why do you never…" Blaine trailed off. Even though he was completely comfortable around Sebastian, he had had to build up some courage for this conversation, and yet he was finding that he hadn't stored enough of it. But he'd already started talking, and now Sebastian was looking over and seeming interested.
"Never what?"
Blaine blanched a little, feeling like he'd dug himself into a hole that he couldn't get out of. "You're always hitting on guys," Blaine said. "You even told that new kid Sam that you had a list of 50 ways he could properly use his mouth."
"51, I added to it last night. And what's your point? You can't just waste lips like those, B." Sebastian put his spoon into his mouth suggestively and Blaine shoved him with his shoulder. Of course Sebastian wasn't going to make this any easier.
"You never hit on me though," Blaine said. Sebastian regarded him carefully, before laughing a little.
"Do you want me to hit on you? Because I could. I'm very good at it, you'll find," he said. "For instance, your ass is like prime real-estate in those pants."
Blaine looked at him earnestly, wishing Sebastian would stop with the charade for just a second, but knowing that was probably highly unlikely. "It's not funny," he insisted. "You don't see me like that."
Sebastian rolled his eyes uncaringly and Blaine just wanted to drop it and pretend he'd never said anything. But then Sebastian was talking again. "I wasn't joking. You're like living, breathing sex, but I never said anything because you're you. I figured since I haven't gotten some ludicrous display from the Glee club in the middle of a shopping mall that you weren't interested," he said, referencing the disastrous time Blaine had a crush on a guy that worked in the Gap and charged the rest of Glee with helping him woo said Gap guy (it didn't work). Despite being reminded of what was still an absolutely humiliating event in Blaine's life, he smiled.
"Since when has lack of interest ever stopped you?" he challenged.
"Touché," Sebastian said, and without another word, he leaned over and captured Blaine's lips with his own.
Sebastian was a good kisser, Blaine would find. He supposed it had to do with all the experience. His kissing was insistent and purposeful; he completely took control of the situation, like he did with everything else.
But they weren't boyfriends. Sebastian refused to tie himself down to something like that. Blaine was offended for about a week (not helped by Sebastian's indifference), but it didn't even take one of Mr. Schuester's heartfelt pep talks for Blaine to understand that he would always be Sebastian's and Sebastian would always be his. Everybody else didn't matter. They were an inevitability. It had just taken longer for Blaine to figure out the truth that Sebastian had settled on a long, long time ago. Even when he made a trip to Scandal's or hooked up with a guy from that all boy's school in Westerville, Sebastian always came crawling back through Blaine's bedroom window.
It wasn't conventional by any means, but when had Sebastian ever been? Blaine was okay with that. It didn't hurt that the sex was amazing. It was true that Sebastian was the only person he'd ever had sex with, but he didn't need a reference level, because being with his best friend left his skin on fire and his mind in a daze.
Still, the physical release that Sebastian afforded him wasn't completely satisfying on its own. There was something missing, a gaping empty spot that Blaine longed to fill. And despite adamant denials to Sebastian's teasing, he knew exactly who he wanted to fill it with.
Enter Rachel Berry.