Title: An Unexpected Visitor
Author: an-alternate-world
Rating: T
Characters/Pairing: Blaine Anderson, Sebastian Smythe
Word Count: 3,481
Summary: [Seblaine Spring Fling Day 2: Spring Break] Blaine sighed as he listened to the faint but echoing sound of bass booming across the campus, his gaze drifting through the blinds to take in stumbling co-eds on the path below.
Warnings/Spoilers: None.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with Glee, FOX, Ryan Murphy, or anything else related to the FOX universe.

I received the following anonymous prompt that was too good to pass up writing when the Spring Fling 'Spring Break' theme happened: "I found you passed out in front of my door so I just dragged you into my home and put you on the couch please don't scream." IS THIS NOT SEBLAINE CAN YOU PICTURE BLAINE OPENING THE DOOR AND JUST SEEING SEBASTIAN FACEPLANTED THERE DRUNK OFF HIS ASS AND HES JUST "IM GONNA SAVE THIS GUY!"

Thanks for the prompt, nonnie. I'm still laughing at it x

Blaine sighed as he listened to the faint but echoing sound of bass booming across the campus, his gaze drifting through the blinds to take in stumbling co-eds on the path below. He nursed a mug of hot cocoa between his hands, keeping his fingers warm as he shut out the cold memories of his first – and only – fraternity party during Spring Break. Too much alcohol, too many gaps in his memory, too much of a hangover the next morning which, he ruefully conceded, had kept him mostly straight through the remaining years of college, consistently made for an unpleasant reminder every time he had to stand off to one side and watch others get drunk and high and lose control during Spring Break.

It wasn't like he didn't understand the appeal of forgetting the stresses of college life for a while.

He turned away from watching indistinguishable lumps that he thought might be people clutching at each other, the dull thud of music on the other side of campus following him around and making it difficult to stop thinking and get some sleep. He had a stack of papers to finish marking in the next two days otherwise his seniors were going to be screwed for their final thesis drafts and his sophomores were probably going to pitch a fit that he wasn't doing his job properly because he hadn't marked their midterms. He ran a hand through his ragged curls and stared at the half a dozen books he'd checked out of the library last week to add more evidence to his own thesis but hadn't touched since dumping them on the corner of his coffee table.

It felt like undergrads were given a free pass to party as hard as possible during Spring Break while the grad students, the TAs, were pushed to the brink of losing the last shreds of their sanity with all the responsibilities they had to do.

He curled his feet beneath him, looking mournfully at the piles of work he had, meticulously laid out, red and green pens at the ready, and hoped he could somehow develop the skills of Matilda, making objects move before his eyes and tell the pens to grade the work for him. He'd even concede to giving everyone As if it reduced the developing meltdown that he had too much to do and no time to do it in.

"I need a break," he mumbled, pretending it sounded more convincing, pretending it explained why he'd holed himself up in the darkness of his small, single room for the last five days, before releasing a sigh that hissed through his teeth. Great, his internal monologue supplied for him with all the sarcasm and disappointment his father used to express when he did something 'too gay', now he was talking to himself. Wasn't that the first sign of madness?

He scrunched his eyes together and stood, moving towards the tiny kitchenette and depositing his half-drunk hot chocolate that had lost its powers of comfort. His mind spun through all the things he had to do, again and again, but every time he got closer to the coffee table, every time he thought about actually doing something to reduce the load of stress making him barely coherent, he felt a swell of nausea in his belly that soundly pushed him away again. It reminded him of when he'd been caught in a rip at the beach once when visiting Cooper in LA. He could recall the overpowering helplessness as the currents had pushed him in one direction before abruptly dragging him in another.

He thought life was meant to get easier once he began specialising, when he no longer had multiple undergrad courses that were so diverse he struggled to reconcile all the concepts in his head. Teaching seemed to have opened up new anxieties, like witnessing the mediocre standard of some of his sophomore students had made him paranoid that endlessly rewriting sections of his thesis wasn't actually improving it. The incorrect conclusions drawn by some of his seniors had him triple-checking his own statistical analyses for the forty-eighth time. He wouldn't deny he was a perfectionist but he failed to see anything wrong with producing the best work possible, in defying all the expectations set forth until he was-

Rudely interrupted by a knock on the door, it seemed.

He frowned and smoothed another hand through his hair, self-consciously trying to scrape it into place in case it was his supervisor – which was an absurd thought. It was 3am. Everyone he knew would either be in their dorms, in their hometown or passed out in the gutter in Mexico. Everyone he knew would be taking advantage of the break rather than working themselves into a frenzy about the state of their academic career.

There was another rough thump to his door that spurred him into action, crossing the floor of his 'living room' in five steps. He peered through the peephole and saw no one on the other side of the door. He frowned, knowing he hadn't imagined the disturbance, and flicked the lock and removed the safety chain. He opened the door and startled back a step when a body slumped half a foot into his room and the door slipped open.

"What the?" he said, grimacing as he crouched by the male and poked his shoulder. "Hey. You alive?"

He didn't get a response which made him panic – for all of about three seconds and then he heard a rumbling snore.

He scowled and rose to his feet again, surveying the man whose face was hidden by a dark grey hoodie that he suspected was emblazoned with 'PRINCETON UNIVERSITY' across the chest. Tufts of brunette hair poked out the top and he almost wanted to kick the stranger, or himself, for quite literally flopping into his life.

"Great. Just fantastic," he huffed, prodding a toe into the man's bicep but receiving no response. "Fabulous. You're drunk off your ass and passed out and now I can't get the door shut."

He tried to ignore how ludicrous it was to be addressing someone who was out cold and wondered if that meant he wasn't actually talking to himself if the presence of someone else existed. It was a consideration for another time perhaps, as he rolled the male over and surveyed his state.

He seemed young but then Blaine was generally surrounded by older professors and sleep-deprived graduates so anyone that looked as fresh-faced as this man was 'young'. He was easily an undergrad, with a straight slope to his nose that ended in a point sharp enough to poke someone's eye out. Long eyelashes fanned beneath his eyes, a smattering of freckles decorated his cheek and neck and one seemed to be embedded in his slightly bushy eyebrows. Even collapsed in a heap, Blaine could tell the male was taller than him.

"I hate Spring Break," he growled, opening his door wider, grasping beneath the other male's armpits, and pulling with all the strength he had. He could only hope no one walked past his room right now because he probably looked like he had stepped out of an episode of How To Get Away With Murder and he really didn't want anyone running down the corridor, screaming that he was a murderer, to anyone that hadn't gone home for the holidays.

It was after 3am in the grad student dorms though so the chances of that happening were about as likely as the stranger spontaneously recovering and walking out the door.

He hauled the man to his couch, awkwardly lifting him until he was a tangle of long limbs on a surface too small for him.

"Serves you right," Blaine said, not even trying to disguise the bitterness in his voice as he looked at what he had accomplished. "I hope you develop a crick in your neck that takes one of the physio grads a month to work out. That's what you get for being an idiot during Spring Break."

Okay, well, maybe that was a little harsh but he was severely sleep-deprived and stressed and now he had a drunk undergrad passed out on his couch.

With a dismissive sniff, he turned back to his door, checking that nothing had been dropped in the immediate vicinity, and then shut and locked the door. He entered his bedroom to withdraw a spare blanket from the closet that he liked curling into when he was marking on the couch and returned to the male. He hadn't moved, hadn't budged an inch, and as annoyed as Blaine was by this unexpected development, he was still ridiculously charitable under the layers of tiredness. He ended up adjusting the man's head to rest against a cushion, straightened his legs so they wouldn't cramp quite as badly, draped the blanket over his body and tucked it around his shoulders.

"Don't choke on your own vomit," he said, flicking on a lamp and shutting off the main light before retreating into his bedroom with the door partially ajar.

He tossed fitfully, becoming increasingly tangled in the sheet and blanket that covered him until he was ready to throw the bedding out the window and incinerate it. He was too conscious, uncomfortably so, that a stranger was in his living room. Add the fact that Spring Break was nearly over and he'd squandered the relaxation potential because he was too wired to unwind and hadn't achieved anything and… Well… It was another night with no sleep.

By seven, when he'd had enough of cursing his racing thoughts and his curtains were letting sunlight creep across the carpet, he flung the sheet and blanket off him and got to his feet. It was probably a good thing that it was still Spring Break because his mood was absolutely foul and if he had to teach today… Then again, his insomnia had shown no sign of abating when he didn't have the constant grind of classes and discussions and readings and thesis meetings so the chances of getting some sleep and his mood miraculously improving were slim.

He paused as he took in the stranger from the night before, more or less in the same position Blaine had rearranged him into. His mouth had parted half an inch, the soft light in the living room giving him the appearance of some sort of holy creature, and every inhale and exhale was accompanied by a (cute) breathy little snore that was one part soothing lullaby and one part infuriating because how dare this guy get to sleep when Blaine couldn't?

And it wasn't cute, his thoughts insisted.

"Prick," he hissed with a deep scowl and turned towards his kitchenette to make a fresh pot of coffee. He was already going through his endless list of things he needed to achieve today as the water boiled – none of which would probably be done after he worked himself into another panic – and made the coffee extra strong and extra sweet in the hopes that it would kick-start his brain into something functional, something capable of completing any of the number of tasks he should have done days ago. Marking the sophomores' work was simplest but mind-numbing. Checking the seniors' work was tedious and time-consuming. Continuing his own research was exhausting when words he knew, words central to his thesis, blurred in and out of focus and were abstract ideas that had lost all meaning when he was so tired.

He sipped his coffee and winced at the heat that burned his tongue, blaming the man on his couch – just because he could – and sat on the floor in front of the coffee table, eyeing the array of work he needed to complete. It wasn't that he didn't know where to start. He was perfectly capable of prioritising the most important to least important tasks, the easiest to the hardest, the simplest to the most time-consuming. He just…didn't want to do anything. He was so stressed that it seemed to fill every vein, every nerve, every cell, and yet he was surrounded by a strong sense of apathy, and disinterest, and exhaustion.

Sam had tried to suggest that he had some serious anxiety problems, maybe even that he was depressed, but Blaine had waved away the concern and said it was normal for grad students to be like this. It was normal for undergrads too. He wasn't the only one in the dining halls whose appearance made bio-evolutionary students wonder if they were distant cousins of the panda. He wasn't the only one whose standard of dress slipped around key dates of the semester. He wasn't the only one whose hair looked unkempt from time to time. He wasn't the only one whose nerves were fraught because the pressure was immense.

Still, as he stared indifferently at the pile of sophomore papers, a green pen in one hand, a mug of steaming coffee in the other, he knew he was forcing himself to do something he had no ability to truly concentrate on. He knew all his students but as he stared at 'Samantha Jennings', he got nothing more than an indistinguishable grey blob in his head and couldn't recall whether she was a good student or not.

He put the mug on the table and the pen fell from his grip, a frustrated sigh passing his lips as he bunched his fingers into his curls.

"Get it together, Anderson," he muttered, ignoring the dull ache in his head that tried to protest he was too tired to do anything. "You have work to do."

"Do you always talk to yourself?"

He squawked and flung himself backwards, probably a little wild, probably a lot comical. The rough chuckle of the stranger on his couch drew his attention back to who had spoken in the first place and he tried to pretend his stomach didn't twitch at the sleepy gaze of green eyes on him.

"I found you passed out in front of my door so I dragged you into my room because I couldn't shut the door and I put you on the couch," he said, a little too fast, his cheeks flooding with embarrassment at the raised eyebrows of the male opposite him. "Nothing happened. I didn't harvest a kidney. You don't need to scream."

"And here I was wondering where my roommate was," the stranger observed, a smile tugging at the edge of his lips as Blaine remained resolutely unaffected by how cute he looked. Because he wasn't cute. Not at all.

"That's probably safe to assume since I don't have a roommate," Blaine replied, scraping a hand through the curls on his forehead, fussing with his hair for reasons he couldn't fathom.

"I gotta say," the male said, the tips of his fingers appearing around the edge of the sheet as he held it close to his neck, "you're a better sight to wake up to than him."

Blaine felt heat bloom in his cheeks and tried scowling to disguise it, picking up his mug of coffee like it might offer some answers or, at the very least, a distraction from having to speak. It was too early in the morning for pick-up lines.

"Not gay. Right. Sorry." The stranger sat up, wincing and pressing a hand to his head, a groan of pain lodging in his throat. As annoyed as Blaine was by the interruption last night, he did feel a stab of sympathy for the evident hang over.

"You don't have to- I'm not- I-" He swallowed and tried again, trying not to look at the stretch of the male's neck as he rotated it on his broad shoulders. "I am gay. Very gay. Gold-star gay, in fact." Shut up, Blaine.

The stranger shot him an amused look, his eyes sparkling in a way that made Blaine wonder if the coffee was making his stomach feel overheated or if the excess caffeine was finally making its way through his bloodstream.

"I should leave you to do all that work you were just talking about, Anderson," the man drawled and Blaine's heart didn't skip a beat at the way his last name rolled off this stranger's tongue like it was sin. Not at all.

"Yeah. Grad student. We have lots to do. Much to mark. Thesis to write."

If an inability to string a proper sentence was what days – weeks – of sleep deprivation earned him then he may as well cut himself out of the grad program now. His thesis would never be written in sentences shorter than five words and any complex argument he might have encountered in the papers of his students would probably make parts of his brain explode.

"Grad student?"

Blaine dared to peek up at the male who was eyeing him with surprise, and shrugged as nonchalantly as possible. "Ed and Dev Psychology," he mumbled, twisting his fingers into his shirt and before the man could ask, continued with the thesis he was meant to be writing. "I'm assessing the impact of childhood trauma on attachment styles and the subsequent impact on education. The implications consider how best to engage students in traditional school settings."

"Fascinating," the male breathed, sounding actually impressed, and Blaine felt heat crawl down his neck and settle on his shoulders. He'd end up with a full-body blush eventually.

"Yeah… So…" He scratched the back of his neck, gesturing vaguely at the work spread across his coffee table that was probably not going to get done. Especially not when someone was on his couch. Staring at him with interest. Feeding him pick-up lines probably found on the bottom of a cereal box.

"I'm Sebastian," the stranger burst out and when Blaine looked up at him, he was picking at the threads of the blanket across his lap.

"Blaine," he offered, biting his lower lip and reaching for his coffee mug before he did – or said – something really stupid.

"Blaine…" Sebastian said slowly, nodding to himself, apparently liking the sound of it. Blaine's stomach totally didn't do the twitching thing again. Not at all. "Cool."

Sebastian peeled the blanket from his lap and folded it into a neat square, leaving it atop the cushion his head had rested against. Blaine rose to his feet several seconds after Sebastian did, standing awkwardly while Sebastian rubbed a hand across his face, pinched his eyes and released a deep exhale.

"Well, I'll just-"

Sebastian gestured to the door and Blaine took three steps towards it to unlock it and remove the safety chain, knowing that if he didn't then he would probably be branded as a potential serial killer who didn't want his victims to leave. Which wasn't the impression he wanted to give someone he didn't really know.

Sebastian paused in front of him, a good half a foot taller, his eyes reminding Blaine of the pine trees his father used to cut down at Christmas, and there was almost definitely heat crawling down his chest towards his navel at the expression on Sebastian's face but his reaction didn't really mean anything.

"You know," Sebastian said, his voice low, like he was sharing a secret that he didn't want the world to hear despite the door being wide open, "I've heard grad students get really stressed."

Blaine blinked, his eyebrows furrowing, a confirmation and a denial twisting his tongue into knotted silence.

"If you're ever awake late one night and can't sleep and need someone to…help take your mind off all the work you should be doing, give me a call," Sebastian said, his smile almost blinding, and Blaine most certainly wasn't conscious of his heart stuttering in his chest as he thought about how long it had been since he'd gotten laid and how easy it could be to throw caution to the wind and sleep with an undergrad just so maybe he could sleep.

Sebastian swept past him with a wink, a faint trace of his cologne lingering in Blaine's nose beneath the musk of beer and smoke and fabric softener, and it spurred Blaine into action.

"But I don't have-"

"I scribbled my number on one of those papers you should mark," Sebastian called over his shoulder, reducing Blaine to the colour of a tomato as he made it clear he was interested. Very interested. Too interested. Dangerously interested. You should not be interested in an undergrad, Blaine. "I know your room number too if I don't hear from you soon."

Blaine watched the male walk down the rest of the corridor, his mouth agape at the forwardness, his stomach fluttering with nerves. With trembling fingers, he shut the door and slumped his head against the back of it, a ridiculous grin crawling over his face as Sebastian's words took root within his brain.

~FIN~

Author's Note: I'm labelling this story as 'Finished' but let's be real for a sec, I can completely see the potential for more. Stay tuned. It may happen.