On the Art of Stay-age

by JollyWicked

"So. You're the infamous demon Killer," said the tall figure, and Blaine was pleased to note his words sounded winded. "I prefer to be addressed as the Slayer," Blaine replied testily, which earned him a look from his opponent. "It is the officially ratified term, by the Council of—" "I think I'm gonna stick with Killer."

He could have stayed. Everything about this person—this non-person enticed him, entreated him to stay.

The regally unapproachable sway of hips and limbs.

The beatific smile molding into sharp angles of his chiseled face.

The green-eyed monster that lurked beneath.

Stay.

So he stayed, harboring no regrets.

Blaine felt the exact moment his brisk walk tilted towards a run and wariness gave way to fear.

Always keep to the light, his mother's voice echoed in his pace. And Blaine always did, except when he decided to walk home from a party down semi-familiar streets on the one night the street-lights seemed to be malfunctioning.

He couldn't understand what on earth possessed him to take a lonely stroll home tonight, on Halloween, through the dark and the unknown. He knew he shouldn't be afraid because, by one particularly well-kept agreement, things did not go bump on this particular night. Still. Familiarized with the dark as a heaven of all things violently unfamiliar, Blaine didn't give so much as a thought to any conscious effort of exploring situations which held the potential to lead him into darkness tonight, and strand him there.

A faint warble of voices could be heard from somewhere away. People trick-or-treating way past their bedtime. Blaine shuddered and walked faster. He spotted a familiar iron gate. He'll take a shortcut. Less chance of people, and the graveyard was kind of his scene, anyhow.

The street was very dark, apart from the pathetic little lamp which flickered above the engraved sign advertising to the uninformed that this was one of the 23 cemeteries in Lima, Ohio.

He remembered the green-eyed monster he used to dream about, that lived in the blackness under his bed and how it would get him if he didn't keep absolutely still, suffocating with the lack of fresh air under thick covers. He remembered Cooper jumping out at him from dark corners and scaring his breath away.

The electric light flickered unsteadily as Blaine approached, crackling and zinging like a broken flipper machine.

He remembered waiting in the dark parking lot and the taste of asphalt mixing with coppery blood and bitter tang of futile resistance.

Blaine jumped over the fence.

At least the graveyard was deserted. Blaine slid faster over the yard trying not to revisit the dark memory, and tripped.

He was being attacked. They were after his blood.

His hands broke the fall, slipping on the wet grass. The cool blades licked his face and that was the moment, the exact moment of his wariness gave way to uncontrollable fear. Blaine's brain flooded with all the worst-case scenarios under the sun, except this was nighttime and every bad thing seemed that much worse under the pitch-black void of a moonless sky. He could feel the tide of panic, its majestic swell spreading out from his very core, a single beating spot in the middle of his chest. A silent and most vicious attacker. And Blaine was losing the fight.

"You know, for someone who obviously perfected jumps that high, I'd seriously consider taking a course in the art of just walking."

"Huh?"

"I said, for someone who obviously perfected the retro-look, you should definitely wear your curls more," his friend Tina repeated herself with a skeptical look on her face, bringing Blaine out of a reverie. "They're so wonderfully dark it makes the light bounce off twice as much," she added. It was their lunch break at McKinley High. It also happened to be the one day Blaine woke up to an empty bottle of hair gel and too late to obtain some more, thus forced to go au naturel.

"Thanks," he cringed.

He had been lost in the events of two years ago, which popped into his head, unbidden. He thought it might be the date. His memory of that night was still filled with strange images and even stranger questions.

Blaine shook his head. It hadn't been his first day then and there on the streets of Lima, not by a long shot, but even now, Blaine's family was relatively new to this town. It was still quite easy to get lost in the dark.

"Blaine!"

He realized he hadn't been listening to a word coming out of his friend's mouth. Tina frowned and he made a face that said ooops. With a look of her own which made it clear he was going to pay for it later, Tina left for her next class. He watched her go.

Blaine didn't have many friends and Tina was one of the rare few who warmed up to him the second they introduced themselves, after being seated next to each other during sex ed. Which happened to be the very first class Blaine ever took in McKinley High. If he head to pick, hardly could have Blaine picked anything more awkward—not on the account of Tina being a girl (that had been a blessing in disguise), but simply because an exercise in proficiency of rolling a condom onto an exceptionally large banana was not something one expected to be doing on their first day of school to which they transferred on the account of being badly beaten up on the basis of their sexuality in the previous one.

Blaine still thought it was morbidly funny. Hello, class. This is Blaine. He's new. Today we are going to learn about protection. Grab your protection and your banana, Blaine. Welcome to McKinley High.

And so, Blaine made his first friend on the same day he learned how to correctly apply a condom onto a banana. He wondered what happened to those bananas. Was anyone allowed to actually eat them afterwards or was the mere thought considered a perversion? If so, Blaine thought it a terrible waste of food.

Speaking of food, Blaine had a shift down at the local coffee shop in the afternoon. He was barely 17 but if he ever wanted to buy himself a proper guitar, Blaine figured he'd have to get a job. Asking his parents would have been too easy—they would feel guilty for him getting beaten up almost three years ago and let him have it, but all that guilt combined with apprehension towards a sexuality which Blaine himself wasn't completely sure of was not something Blaine felt needed heavy exploring in the near future. His teenage-self had been just fine in the light. And if the light meant doing what everybody else was normally doing, like getting a part-time job filling paper cups with diluted coffee and wiping tables at the Lima Bean three hours a day, four days a week, then it was a Blaine thing to do.

Overcome by a sudden wave of nerves, he ran a hand through his hair and it got stuck in his curls on the way down. Stupid hair. Blaine briefly considered skipping glee-club practice to re-do his hair before his shift at the Lima Bean, but decided it wasn't worth the inevitable wrath of his colleagues. Even though they would probably never let him live it down.

Blaine lifted his face from where it was being kissed by the slippery grass. A tall figure emerged behind a gravestone and continued the casual chatting in an unfamiliar drawl.

"I mean, I'm just saying, walking—kinda useful, don't you think?"

Blaine sat up, alert.

"Especially when you're wandering the graveyard, all alone, at night."

There was a flash of fang and the figure glided closer. Thankfully, there were some skills Blaine couldn't forget, even if he tried.

"You keep forgetting!"

Blaine snapped out of his second reverie that day, knocking his hand into the metal jug and nearly spilling white foam all over the counter.

"The unrefined sugar container gets the green cap, the regular gets the red and the artificial sweetener gets the blue one. That's how you know which one you're serving."

It was his second week in and Blaine had messed up the sugar containers today only once so far. He tried well enough to get it right, but somehow couldn't see the point in all the fuss. The containers were the same dull, brown pieces of plastic and Blaine couldn't fathom how covering them with different-colored lids was going to change the fact they were all filled with sugar. What is more, Blaine was convinced people didn't even know the difference. They just drank whatever Blaine gave them. He even compared the taste himself and reached a conclusion that only someone especially attuned to different flavors and of extremely sensitive taste-buds deserved to be treated to a different-colored lid.

Needless to say, his co-worker and supervisor, Stella, wasn't amused.

"I'm sorry," he offered amicably, wiping the counter where some milk had been sprayed. "I'll try harder not to mix them up. I promise."

"Promises, promises. . ." Stella grumbled, somewhat appeased by Blaine's submissiveness concerning a matter he would have usually taken up with her until they eventually sneaked a drink 'on the house' (which one of them would always cover, pretending to be a customer who either cared too much or did not give a fig about the sugar) to prove their respective points. "Wait, aren't you going to argue?" she demanded, as Blaine failed to launch into a rant on the sheer futility of it all.

Blaine shrugged.

He'd been in the middle of remembering a bright flash of a smile which was supposed to be intimidating or seductive, he couldn't decide. Blaine had a hard time telling such things apart.

It came with his job description.

Oh, not the coffee-making and table-wiping at the Lima Bean—although, with some customers, you never know. It came with his job as the Slayer.

You betcha, extinguisher-of-demons-protector-of-the-innocent-one-per-generation, Blaine Anderson the Vampire Slayer.

(How Blaine sometimes wished demons could be repelled by flashing them a smile. Instead, one usually had to flash them a stake.)

His thoughts wandered back to that devilishly confusing smile. No, Blaine wasn't going to argue. He was saving it for later.

Later, when their brief, but energetic brawl came to a tie, Blaine probably made the biggest mistake of his slaying life, one that kept, figuratively speaking (though not for the lack of certain vamp's attempts to make it literal), returning to bite him in the ass.

There is nothing good that can come out of making small talk with demons, his watcher and ex-Slayer, Sue Sylvester kept telling him. Sue was a Slayer with the number of extinguished demons under her belt so high that she actually got to retire, when the majority of Slayers mostly died at the hands of one. It was a cruel and violent existence.

Deep inside, Blaine hated that violence.

"So. You're the infamous demon Killer," said the tall figure, and Blaine was pleased to note his words sounded winded.

"I prefer to be addressed as the Slayer," Blaine replied testily, which earned him a look from his opponent. "It is the officially ratified term, by the Council of—"

"I think I'm gonna stick with Killer," the vampire interrupted his elaboration abruptly, a glint in his eyes. "Your reputation precedes you. The demon community back in Columbus sounded like you had them whipped into submission. I had to see for myself what the hype was all about."

It made Blaine feel kinda smug, but the smirk creeping into the guy's face spun a tale of nothing good.

"Of course, now that I do. . ." he trailed off, and something in his tone told Blaine he should be insulted.

"Excuse me, and who are you, again?" It made the guy's smirk even wider.

"Funny you should ask," he said. "Sebastian Smythe, pleased to make your acquaintance." Sebastian Smythe did a little flourish and bowed.

Blaine couldn't care less. Vampire-heart-stake-dust. That's how Sue would have done it. That's how any Slayer would have probably done it. But apparently Blaine just had to make with the chatties, because he kept asking this Sebastian guy stupid questions. Looking back on it, Blaine doomed himself to eternal banter in that very graveyard, on that very night.

"What do you want?"

"To have fun, mostly," the vamp said with a wry smile.

"And how exactly is that, by stalking people in the graveyard?"

"To an extent," he retorted, vamping out for a brief second. "See you around, Killer." He turned and started walking in the opposite direction. Blaine was unprepared to see him leave, so he ran after him and grabbed the vamp by the arm.

"Wait! You can't!"

"Can't what? Walk away?" He glanced at Blaine's hand on his forearm, and Blaine let go of it as if it was something deadly toxic.

"You can't go vamping around tonight. It's Halloween."

"So? The more, the merrier," the guy shrugged. Blaine was appalled.

"It's forbidden! It—we agreed on this! The Council Treaty specifically decl—"

"Again with the Council," the vampire right out laughed. "Don't kill the fun, Killer."

"But you are a vampire," Blaine said. "It's—"

"Binding? Oh, please. I'm European."

They were walking again, and Blaine didn't realize they left the cemetery reached the road. Some people were still running about, and occasional screams could be heard, of excitement or terror, Blaine couldn't know. Sebastian closed his eyes, grinning. Blaine felt a chill crawl up his spine.

"You're not killing anyone tonight," he declared seriously. "Or any other night, for that matter."

"Who said anything about killing?" Sebastian opened his eyes to cast him a sideways glance. "Besides, isn't that your job? Killer?" He smirked. Blaine couldn't tell it he was being messed with or not.

"It's Slayer, and—and—" Blaine made up his mind on the spot, "—I'm coming with you."

The vampire perked up, as if this was incredibly amusing.

"And then what?"

"I'm not letting you out of my sight."

"Aw, want me all to yourself, Killer?" Oh, now he knew he was being messed with. Blaine bristled.

"Only so I can steer you away from the crowds, get you to an isolated place and—"

"Have your wicked way with me?"

"Exact—what, no! Stop that!"

"Stop what?" the vamp asked innocently, not bothering to hide his obscene amusement.

"Flirting! What is wrong with you?" Blaine cried in exasperation.

"You are amazingly prim for someone your age. Has anyone ever told you that?" the vampire commented conversationally and continued on his way. Blaine was having none of that. He got into the vamp's face, intercepting his path.

"I am this close to staking you right now."

"But you. . . Won't?" The vampire sounded smug. "Because of the Treaty. You're too righteous for that. Am I right?"

Blaine fumed.

"I will if you so much as blink at someone with harmful intentions," he promised, letting go.

"Well, good thing I excel at not blinking," the vampire muttered under his breath, patting the lapels of his jacket. He looked at Blaine and Blaine stared back. "I mean, at harmless intentions," he corrected with a sickeningly sweet smile.

They continued walking.

"Uh-huh. And what was vamping out at me back there?"

"Wow, you really have no idea how some of us operate, do you? I'm starting to understand what they saw in you," the vamp observed. Blaine was confused. "Working on a need-to-know basis. Annoy me and I stake you. That kind of thing," he clarified.

"Look," Blaine was suddenly tired of this whole thing, "just go home or—wherever you crawl out of at dusk, and I can stake you tomorrow."

"No." The vampire pretended to reconsider. "Unless it's a date," he added, much to Blaine's chagrin. Blaine looked ready to protest, so Sebastian Smythe explained. "I'm headed to a party. Heard there actually was one, at some lamely popular club in this obscure town. So here's the 4-1-1, Killer. I get in, get some booze, get down—" his eyes slid up and down Blaine's front, and Blaine flushed "—and then I'll go back to wherever I usually crawl out of. Don't even need a get-up." He flashed his teeth and let the green in his eyes be taken over by yellow.

"Well, I'm coming with you."

"Sure, why not," the vampire shrugged. "That lovely stick up your posterior needs a bit of loosening."

"The only stick that'll be loose is the one I'm going to aim at your chest," Blaine growled.

Sebastian Smythe was laughing. "As long as it's a party," he said.

"I hear Scandals is throwing a huge party tonight, you going?" Stella asked over her shoulder, making two large mocacchinos.

"Yeah, probably. Our glee club is going to play a couple of sets." Blaine looked forward to it, even if he learned to be apprehensive.

His Halloweens as the Slayer never turned out as un-eventful as they were supposed to be, considering the Treaty and all that. Weird stuff always found its way to Blaine. Like last time, when he went to a party in a literally haunted house. Or the year before that, when everyone's identity was trapped in their Halloween costumes. (Blaine sometimes felt like he had taken a short vacation from slaying that year, and wished he could do it more often.) Or meeting Sebastian.

Even his slayerhood came into the picture around Halloween. (And that one might have been the freakiest of them all, at least by Blaine's standards. It was like he'd been told that from now on, every day was going to be a dark and scary Halloween. And Blaine was destined to play chaperone to everyone else's trick-or-treating.)

The day Blaine found out he was the Slayer had been a couple of days after he got beaten up in that parking lot. He'd been at the hospital when the super-healing kicked in and it had been a pain to wear the sling when he obviously didn't need to. Overall, the sudden discovery of slayerhood made other facts of his life even more terrifying. Demons didn't attack Blaine in that parking lot on Halloween some three years ago. People did.

If he'd been stronger, he would have fought back. Or would he? Blaine didn't know. He hated the violence.

Sue always made it all seem so black and white. (And that's what got her through to retirement, Blaine thought.) There was nothing glamorous about slayer life. Even more so when you found that the majority of demons were just humans in disguise.

"So, what are you going as?" Stella turned her attention away from the coffee she was making. "Halloween. The party," she repeated when Blaine blinked at her dumbly.

"Oh, that. I might go as myself, actually," Blaine shrugged. "I think this hair is pretty scary on its own." He made a grrr face at her and Stella burst into giggles.

"Nice to see people having fun at the workplace," a new voice observed.

Blaine admitted to himself a while ago that it was kind of hard to feel the warning tingles associated with an approaching vampire if your mind was constantly tingling with thoughts about the said vampire.

"Sebastian," he said.

"Killer."

Blaine huffed. Stella gave them a curious look and went back to work.

"What brings you here?" Blaine asked, because chat was what they did.

"Coffee," the vamp answered as if the real answer was anything but. He wore a strange expression on his face.

"Uh-huh," Blaine reached for a cup. Sebastian and his insistence on coffee. Like he was a normal guy or something. It annoyed Blaine to no end. He caught the vamp looking at him. "What?"

"I like your hair," Sebastian finally said.

Oh good god, Blaine actually forgot about it for a second. He couldn't understand why it was suddenly a thousand times more embarrassing now that Sebastian was here to see it.

"Shut up." Blaine pushed his usual order down the counter, trying to find something else to keep himself busy long enough for his face to return to its natural color. He hated it when Sebastian gained any kind of upper hand. Even if that meant learning the natural shape of Blaine's hair.

"You going to that party?" Sebastian asked over the rim of his cup. He inhaled and smiled knowingly.

The bastard was pleased Blaine knew his coffee order, and Blaine was suddenly angry with himself for not making Sebastian say it first. This made it seem like they were friends. Like they were cozy, even more than friends, actually, when Blaine knew they were Not. In. A. Million. Years.

"Why does that concern you?" he asked back. It was the kind of back-and-forth verbal dance they engaged in all the time.

"Well, it's Halloween. I've got nothing better to do," Sebastian retorted with a dangerous glint in his eyes. Or it may have been seductive. (Again, Blaine couldn't tell.) "And seeing how your Halloweens usually play out—"

"There's nothing unusual about my Halloweens!" Blaine hastened to loudly cut him off, inclining his head towards Stella, who was clearly interested in their conversation from the other end of the counter. He glared at the vamp.

"But it's our anniversary, hun'," Sebastian exclaimed playfully, smirking when Stella's back seemed to straighten up a fraction. Blaine looked ready to strangle him.

"You are going to pay for this," he hissed at Sebastian menacingly low. It only made the vampire smile wider. Sebastian leaned in.

"How?" he all but purred.

Blaine knew all too well what Sebastian was doing. Referring to the time they first met, the bastard was trying to get a raise out of Blaine. But while he didn't necessarily need Stella to make any assumptions, Blaine did kind of consider it a significant date. It was a serious turning point of Blaine's life.

"I'm serious! You're not killing anybody."

"Kill—oh, nom de Dieu, do I really have to explain to you how things work at a club?" Sebastian Smythe exclaimed. "What am I saying, of course I do, you're probably twelve or something," he rambled on.

"Hey! I'm sixteen!" Blaine paused. "Tomorrow."

"Oh, well in that case," the vampire said mockingly, "there'll be dancing, grinding, drinking—not blood, unless someone offers willingly, and even then only to get things going—and orgasms, a lot of them, but no intercourse unless they're unbelievably hot and also preferably male. There. The mysteries of night-club activities unveiled. Consider it a birthday present."

"Ew," Blaine said. "Wait, what do you mean offers willingly?"

"I mean that I sometimes make it feel so good people want me to taste them on a. . . Deeper level," the vampire smirked at Blaine's incredulous expression. "But it doesn't do quite that much for me," he added. "I'm all about release." It took Blaine a few seconds to catch on.

They club came into view. Music and voices carried on a steady pulse of the bass.

"So what you're telling me is that your ultimate goal is to go in there and have sex? Not. . . Drain someone dry?" The vampire laughed.

"Drain them dry of their sexual tension, perhaps. Of course, it's not all incubi are capable of," he smiled wickedly, "but it's kind of hard these days to find a young, corruptible virgin with a heart of gold and all that merde."

Oh, yeah. Blaine remembered that.

He'd never encountered anyone who was so out there. He also remembered asking Sue about incubi the following day. That had been a fun talk which still made him cringe inwardly.

And now, two Halloweens later, the guy was purring at him from across the counter in a Lima coffee shop because Blaine happened to have his order intimately memorized. For all his big talk about how everything was so boring around here, Sebastian never seemed particularly keen on actually going back to his beloved Paris, Europe. Also, it kinda worried Blaine when he realized that he didn't particularly mind.

"Well, Killer?"

Blaine looked into bright and expectant green eyes. An anniversary, was it? Well, then, Blaine was going as Sebastian's anniversary gift. His hair ceased to be a problem. He smiled sweetly at the vampire.

"You know what? Be there at eight."

Blaine then left to clean the tables with new-found purpose, not having to look over his shoulder to know Sebastian was ogling. Just as well.

Sebastian was there at eight sharp. Long gone were the days when Sebastian Smythe claimed he wouldn't be caught undead at a place like this. It was almost as funny as it was endearing.

Somehow, Blaine had always suspected there would come a time when the vampire's annoying habit of being punctual would come in handy, and as he turned to face the audience wearing the most eccentric, vibrant, glittery, low-cut and ridiculously close-fitting glam-rock outfit he could find on short notice, topped off with untamed hair and a huge, gleaming cross suspended on his chest, Blaine could tell this was that time.

Sebastian's face gaped at him from the sea of costumes, while the crowd cheered. Blaine didn't sign up for all-night entertainment but the glee club let him throw in a couple of songs at the last minute, thanks to Tina.

"Okay, so this one is dedicated to a very special anniversary," Blaine declared, eyes purposefully catching a specific pair of astounded ones across the room on the last word. A couple of whoops and wolf-whistles were thrown his way from the audience and Blaine was amused, but didn't elaborate.

And then he began.

Blaine took his time reaching the bar in between sets. Every masked face in the crowd seemed to want a piece of him. The entire set had been a blast, however, Blaine's lively and expressive rendition of Queen's Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy at the very end had thrown the audience into a state giddy stupor.

When he finally crossed the sea of half-drunken admirers, he all but draped himself across the bar next to Sebastian.

"Remind me to never do that again," Blaine groaned, but not in a very convincing manner. He placed an order.

"Yeah, it looked like you were having a terrible time," came Sebastian's dry reply. He was observing the drink in front of him with uncanny interest. It was altogether very far from the reaction Blaine had been hoping for.

"Hey." Blaine tried to get his attention. The vamp caught his eyes and softly cleared his throat.

"Hey," he replied, raising his glass in accompaniment. Blaine could not believe this guy. This was the guy who took advantage of every single innuendo under the freaking sun, but now that Blaine had all but hit him with a massive, flagrant statement over his stupid vampiric head, he was acting all prim-and-proper-y. Blaine wondered if he should actually hit him over the head.

"You are amazingly prim tonight, for someone your age. Has anyone here told you that?" Blaine leaned on the bar in a manner he hoped was confident and seductive, and not silly and awkward. He supposed it was working because the vampire in front of him spluttered for the tiniest second.

"When someone underage is showing that much skin, it's mostly considered polite to look away," he bit out another reply, looking at anywhere but Blaine.

"Unless I don't want you to look away." Sebastian's head snapped his way.

"What are you doing, Blaine?" Uh-oh. First name calling. Blaine braced himself.

"Flirting," he replied seriously. "But I'm starting to think you are one remarkably thick sex demon," he couldn't help but tease. Sebastian snorted like he couldn't believe this was really happening.

"Why?" Sebastian asked so uncertainly it made Blaine realize that he was standing face to face with yet another serious turning point of his life.

"Because. . ." Blaine couldn't risk scaring Sebastian away into thinking there was some kind of incubic thrall involved by telling him just how much he had really wanted to, for months now. At least not yet. "Because it's our anniversary, hun'," he used Sebastian's words from earlier today, hoping it might work. "And I am in a celebratory mood. There's already drinking, but I was also hoping there'd be dancing, since we're in a club and all. "

"Were you?" the vampire seemed to be playing along.

"I'd include all those other activities you mentioned the first time we met, but that seems to be quite a handful on a first date."

Sebastian's face was caught between incredulous and amused. Blaine went all the way.

"Consider it my birthday present." Sebastian laughed a little, finally letting his eyes take Blaine in.

"The eyeliner is hot," he allowed and Blaine had to stop himself from doing a victory jump.

"And here I was making an effort with the outfit," he rolled his eyes, but couldn't stop grinning even if he wanted to. He moved in closer. "I could have just thrown on some black kohl earlier today and been done."

"Oh, we're far from done, Killer," Sebastian replied, letting him.

It sounded like a promise. That he was here to stay.