me, and you
God only knows it's not what we would choose to do
They spend the first five years of their lives traveling the country, hands usually interlocked in the backseat of the Impala as Dean sings along to whatever tape he's stuffed into the cassette player for the day. Blaine loves the Midwest the most, the sprawling fields that he can see into forever. Rachel falls asleep easiest when they pass through them, her head in Blaine's lap as he gazes out the window, thoughts deep even for a young child. There's no real possibility for a normal childhood for them, he had heard Dean tell Cas one night, not with a life like theirs. He doesn't know a normal outside of this, outside of listening to Rachel croon along to Carole King whenever Dean relents and lets her choose the music, outside of Cas telling Dean their next destination is still 342 miles away. Hotel rooms are his bedroom, the beds still large enough that he and his twin can curl up under the covers comfortably with more than enough room.
If there's something else that constitutes as a normal childhood, Blaine doesn't want it. He doesn't need it, only needs his dads and Rachel.
He's only five, after all, and he doesn't understand that this worldview could ruin his life in the end.
Dean's schooled them in having a good taste of music pretty early on. Rachel still prefers the girls' voices – Blaine thinks it makes her feel like she's not the only one in the universe, although to him she is – and when it's her turn to choose the tape, it's often a selection of Janis Joplin, Heart, and Fleetwood Mac. He doesn't mind it, the songs are good but they're not the same as what he prefers.
When it's his turn, he prefers the likes of Zeppelin, of Boston, and Queen. Dean beams at him the first time he lets him choose a tape and he immediately reaches for Mothership, but listening to Kashmir as they race through Iowa just gives him a peace he doesn't really understand. One that's way too over his head for a child, one he shouldn't expect to feel until he's at least in his teens, if not later.
One that he'll rarely find once he reaches those ages.
It's usually Castiel's job to keep them occupied when they start getting restless, pulling out coloring books for the two of them, dolls for Rachel and army men or toy cars for Blaine to play with in the back seat. Sometimes they get a little too crazy for the confined space, and Dean drives until he can find a place to stop, to let them run free for a little while. He's run across state parks, school playgrounds, corn fields and shores of lakes and rivers. Rachel's cried when she couldn't find him during intense games of hide and seek until he comes out of hiding, patting her back and telling her he wasn't going to leave her forever, what was she so afraid of?
They spend warm summer nights camped out in woods, on the edges of lakes, and Blaine likes those days the best. They can bask in the warm summer sun, Rachel forcing Dean to teach her how to swim, and sometimes their uncle Sam will come with them, spend a few days just getting away from whatever it is their parents do. He'll put Rachel on his shoulders and walk her around while she can giggle about how tall she is, Blaine pulling on Dean's jacket sleeve until he gives in and does the same, the two of them high fiving in their innocence while their dad and uncle run them around, screaming and laughing with them.
They're the best years of his life, even if he's too young to remember half of them, even if the memories will eventually fade into the back of his mind when the future comes. He's happy, things are simple, and he has no idea just how tragically fucked his life is going to become.
one voice is clear above the din
The first time he can remember her saying 'I love you', they're four and a half and curled under a blanket in the backseat of the Impala. Dean and Cas usually try and save Christmas as something special for them, wanting to instill all the childish hope and dreams they can in them even despite their less than average lifestyle.
But this year is different, with Dean needing the extra time to speed through the night, a promise that when they awake they will have presents, they just have to meet up with Santa to make his job easier, and with no reason not to trust their parents, they do. So Castiel sets them up in the large backseat, pillows and blankets galore to keep them as comfortable as possible, and Dean lets them listen to the radio for once, humming Christmas tunes under his breath. It's almost cheery, watching the snow fall around them while Dean drives as cautiously as he can while going nearly 70 down I-80 through the middle of the country.
Her head is tucked on his shoulder, her soft curls tickling his cheek and their hands-so tiny-wrapped tightly around one another like they might drown if they're not connected in some way. Dean never says anything about how often they touch and hold one another, it's natural to feel Rachel in some way, always close enough to wrap around each other and laugh and smile and comfort when one is upset.
Castiel's even humming along to Jingle Bell Rock, Dean smiling wide as he looks over at him, and Rachel's eyes are focused on the falling snow surrounding the car while Blaine turns to look at her.
"Pretty," she comments, in the small voice he'll recall years from now, her head turning to look at him with the gorgeous smile that she'll grow into as they age. "Isn't it pretty, Blaine?"
"Really pretty," he smiles, kissing his sisters forehead just to hear her giggle, the sound distracting Castiel enough to turn his head slightly to watch the two children as Rachel tucks her legs underneath her, her reindeer footie pajamas keeping her warm underneath their two blankets.
"I love the snow," she says after a few minutes, her eyes focused on the outside world again, "and I love Christmas," she grins, and he does too because Christmas means presents and seeing Uncle Sam and even Uncle Bobby sometimes, gingerbread cookies and, of course, pie for Dean. "Do you know what I love most of all?" she asks, her eyes bright even in the darkness of the car.
"What?" Blaine asks, because he's genuinely curious, because he never wants his sister to stop talking, her voice soothing even if it is high pitched at times, especially when she's upset.
"I love you," she beams, and a warmth spreads through his chest as he wraps his arm tighter around his twin, wanting nothing more than to be as close as possible to her as he can.
"I love you too, Rach."
you can't always get what you want
but if you try sometime, you just might find
you get what you need
The summer they turn six, Castiel tells them they're moving.
Technically, they've always been moving, never in one spot longer than a week or two. But this time they're getting a house, and the thought is almost terrifying to Blaine.
"But what do we do when we want to go on a road trip again?" he asks, Rachel frowning at her father as she takes the news in stride.
"You won't be, not during the school year at least," Cas tells them, Blaine furrowing his brow as he looks at his sister, begging her to ask the next question so he doesn't seem needy.
"Why do we have to go to school?" she finally asks, though her voice is lacking the sharp edge to it that Blaine wants it to have. If Rachel is on board with this even a little bit, that means they'd have to actually move into a house, make it a home, stop seeing all the places across the country.
"Because, you're not going to end up doing what your uncle and I do," Dean answers gruffly. "I'm not your grandfather, you deserve the chance to have a choice in this."
"But I want to do what you do!" Blaine cries out, standing up and yelling at his dad. The truth is, they don't even know what it is Dean and Castiel and Sam all do, but if the alternative means staying still, he doesn't want it. "I don't want to stay in one place!" The term wanderlust is too far out of his vocabulary, but if he could have, he'd tell Dean that's what he'll endure for the next few years.
"You don't get a choice, Blaine," Dean tells him sharply. "We're moving to a house, in Ohio, and you're going to go to school like normal kids."
Rachel doesn't fight against it, just sits on the edge of the hotel bed and appears deep in thought.
Sometimes, in the future when he's on his own, Blaine wonders if they were really ever kids at all.
The house is small, 'quaint' as Sam puts it when he helps them move in. Blaine doesn't like it. He doesn't like that his room is not the same as Rachel's. He's barely been more than ten feet away from her at any given point in their lives at this point, and knowing that he has to sleep in a different bed – in a different room, at that – puts him ill at ease. They're too old to believe in monsters and things that go bump in the night, but he likes that if anything ever happened, he'd be right there to make sure she was safe. She's more than capable of taking care of herself, of course, but she shouldn't have to. Not when Blaine's supposed to be right there fighting for her.
The first week, Rachel sneaks into his room to sleep. Their dads allow it for a few days before he feels Rachel being lifted from his bed and carried away, panic and terror rising inside him for reasons he doesn't quite understand.
He's reassured by Dean that it's fine, that he can go back to sleep, but he does so uneasily. The thought that they're trying to take Rachel away from him is gripping, and at six years old he nearly becomes an insomniac, spending the late hours worrying about why his sister is being taken away from him.
She always seems to deal better with his absence than he does hers.
They seem to settle into a routine after a couple weeks, and it isn't long until they're shipped off to first grade, papers pushed through that they had completed kindergarten out of state – lies, forged signatures, but they're bright children. Cas would often read to them on the road, and they've developed a quick sense of figuring things out from Dean. It doesn't take them long to understand the curriculum, though they're put in separate classrooms.
Blaine stays mostly to himself, quiet in the back of the room next to a kid named Mike, and whenever the teacher makes them pair up, the two do so seamlessly. They spend their recesses talking about sports, Mike loves football and mentions that he wants to play when he reaches high school, teaching Blaine all the basics of simple things he never realized he was missing. Rachel spends her breaks with a boy named Kurt that is even louder than she is, the two singing as they jump rope or sit quietly on the pavement and conspire together. Blaine asks her, sometimes, what they talk about with wide eyes and fascinated hushed whispers, but the answer of 'our future' is unsatisfying to him, but he can't place why. It's another thing he'll recall when he's older, traveling the road without her next to him, that she could plan her future so easily without him. She's at the end of his every sentence, but he's not the end of hers, and it's something that's been in place since Dean moved them to that God-forsaken town.
Sometimes, Dean and Cas will disappear for days, Sam or Bobby coming to watch over them. Blaine begs to go with them every time, because as much as he's found he likes learning – and he does, he's quick at it and he's good – he misses being on the road. Rachel is usually content to work on her homework, making sure her letters are perfect for their spelling work or that all her math is done correctly, reading aloud in silly voices to entertain herself, never asks to leave. Dean and Cas never take either of them with them, and Blaine pouts for two days every time they disappear.
"I feel you," is all Sam says to him when he's in these moods, and Blaine thinks he does. His uncle understands, because he's usually out there driving in whatever car he's found this week, always a different one when he pulls up to their house, and sometimes before Dean and Cas come back Blaine asks if Sam could take him with him when he leaves again.
Castiel thinks it's amusing, Blaine's obvious desire to be in the Impala and on the road for weeks on end, but he doesn't explain why, much beyond "You're just like your father."
Blaine questions if Rachel's anything like him, or if she's more like Cas, and after pondering for a minute Cas just answers with "No, I think she's more like your uncle than either of us."
The fact that Sam and Dean seem to part so easily these days doesn't do anything but nag at Blaine as he passes seven and eight, too afraid to ask the questions that pop up the older he gets.
What happened between dad and Sam?
Were they ever as close as Rachel and me?
Did they ever love each other like Rachel and me?
Why don't they want to be around each other all the time anymore?
He gets the answers much later, when things start to fall apart, because the answers aren't suitable for a nine year old to hear quite yet.
There's a lot they're not telling him, he realizes, and while Rachel's started dreaming of a life outside of their family, outside of Ohio and the backseat of the Impala, Blaine just wants answers to things he doesn't know how to ask about yet.
oh mama, i can hear your crying
you're so scared & all alone
hangman is coming down from the gallows & i don't have very long
During school vacations, Dean and Cas allow them back on the road with them. They travel from the east coast to the west, stopping in places like Virginia or Oklahoma, Wisconsin or Wyoming. They're still not informed on why, but Rachel's never been that curious about it anyways. She enjoys being in the car for hours on end, laying with her head rested on Blaine's shoulder as they each listen to their own music in headphones from the iPods their uncle got for them the summer they turned ten, not that it makes much of a difference. Rachel's found show tunes and pop music, and Blaine's discovered newer rock, but they tend to gravitate towards the classic rock they're so accustomed to when they're out like this. Sometimes one of their iPods will die, and they share headphones. Blaine doesn't mention that he likes those times the best, because he can hear her singing softly. She hasn't had any training, just joined the choir in their elementary school, but she already has a beautiful voice that he can tell he wants to listen to for the rest of his life.
Even if they've found small groups of friends – Rachel with Kurt, Tina, Mercedes, Blaine with Mike and Artie – they still stick to each other more often than not. Their friends grumble about it occasionally, especially when they end up in the same class in fifth grade, but they refuse to be separated. They've spent too much time apart in recent years, always in separate classrooms and Rachel still being pulled out of Blaine's room whenever she tries to slip inside of it. But no one understands just how much they need each other. At the end of the day, they're all they really have. Dean and Cas love them, but they disappear and leave them under others care more often than Blaine thinks they should. Kurt may share Rachel's dreams for the future, but it will be Blaine on her side in the end.
He knows this, at the age of 11. Knows that he's going to spend his whole life with her, that it's not really up for debate.
By the summer they turn 12, Dean and Cas stop in South Dakota to visit Bobby. His house is as comfortable to the twins as their own house and the back of the Impala is; all three surrounding them with the feeling of home they just don't get anywhere else. They've been raised by this man as much as they have by their own fathers and their uncle, but something is different this time around. There's a tense feeling in the air, one Blaine can't quite place, but Rachel seems to sense it too and holds tightly onto his hand whenever she can. They've been getting looks more and more often from Dean when they do things like this, hold one another closer than they should, but Cas just reminds him that it was only natural.
"They're twins," he'd say in an even voice, the same one he always used, and Dean would look away before muttering that it shouldn't change a thing.
They're there for a few days before Dean calls them inside from where they were wandering around the lot, the two of them walking inside like it's a death march. They know this is something big, something important, and it isn't until they see the line of men leaning against various fixtures in the kitchen that it seems to hit them just what's happening.
"You two are getting older now, and we've decided you're finally old enough to learn the truth about your family," Sam starts, Dean fidgeting with the bottle of beer in his hands. He clearly looks like this isn't something he wants to do, but Blaine's interest is just as piqued as Rachel's appears to be, both of them leaning forward across the rickety table in the middle of Bobby's kitchen, Castiel glancing at Sam before waving him forward.
It started, they found out, generations before they could even imagine. Their family was destined to be hunters – try as they might to derive from the path set out for them, they always ended up there. They'd been to hell, to heaven, and back again. They'd met the Devil, they'd met God. None of the words coming out of their mouths seemed believable, but as both Dean and Sam pulled down the neck of their shirts to show off their anti-possession tattoos, the same ones that were embedded in the skin of Rachel and himself, things started feeling a little different.
"You hunt monsters?" was all Rachel could find herself saying, sounding incredibly skeptical.
"Ghosts, goblins, vampires, werewolves," Dean listed, "Dragons, at one point."
"Dragons?" Blaine asks, his eyes wide and for the first time he's believing the words out of his father's mouth.
"We've seen things you can't even think up," Bobby grunts from his spot; he'd remained pretty quiet through the whole exchange, Sam and Dean taking most of the responsibility for the story. They learn that their other father used to be an angel, one of the chosen few sons of God, but that he fell after they helped avert the apocalypse, his powers never fully returned in their complete form. He'd had enough strength to raise Sam out of a cage in Hell, to save him from spending eternity with the archangels Lucifer and Michael, but that he had been helped. That any remaining powers he had were completely drained when Blaine and Rachel showed up, to be taken under the care of Dean, and their ribs had been etched with a language they could never hope to learn that kept them out of sight of any heavenly being.
It was terrifying and exciting to learn all these things, and Blaine wanted to know more about it – how many different monsters had they fought, would he ever get a chance to go out and fight with them, had they ever lost a battle of importance – but Rachel had a question of her own that Blaine had never even thought of before, startling him into silence.
"How did we come to you?" she asks quietly, and by the way her nails dig into her thigh just below the hem of her shorts underneath the table, Blaine can tell she was putting a lot of weight into the question. He wonders if she'd been thinking this for years, and just never said anything, but he couldn't very well ask her in front of the rest of their family.
Dean looks at Cas at the question, but Sam is the one who tells him that it might as well come out now too. It takes a minute before Dean pulls a chair out from the other side of the table and sits down and begins to tell them the story of how there was a time, back in Kansas, when Dean fell for a woman with dark brown hair, eyes that seemed to set him on fire, and a voice that could kill when she sang. Blaine's first instinct is to look towards his sister, and Dean just chuckles a little, agreeing that Rachel is the spitting image of their mother.
"How come she's not around?" Rachel inquires quietly, her voice so soft it nearly broke his own heart to know that she definitely had been thinking about this for a while. He wonders if she felt abandoned, neglected, all by a woman Blaine had never bothered to wonder about before.
"She didn't want the life we lead," Castiel says simply, stepping in when Dean fails to come up with a good reason. "She had her own path that was separate from ours, and it didn't include children. But your father doesn't abandon family, and so he graciously took you two from her so that she could have her life while you could have yours."
"She doesn't want us?" Blaine has never heard his sister sound so dejected, so small and he wraps an arm around her shoulders before Dean could say anything about it, their father shaking his head 'no' sadly.
It's the saddest part of their story, even more heartbreaking than finding out that almost everyone their parents had ever loved had been killed in a battle far before their time.
In the end, it's why Rachel comes crawling into his bed that night in tears, Blaine unable to do anything more than hold her and tell her it'll all be okay, that he wants her, and that it should be enough for now.
He's terrified it isn't.
hey jude, don't be afraid
you were made to go out and get her
the minute you let her under your skin
then you begin to make it better
He's always known he loved his sister above all else, but as they continued to pass 12 into 13, 13 into 14, Blaine realizes just how much he loved her.
How he loves her in a way he definitely should not.
Every other guy talks about various girls in their grade or the one below them, rating them and flirting with them. Finn Hudson, already on the varsity football team even if they're all freshman, had even asked Blaine about Rachel and if she was 'free'. His answer of 'no' may have come out a little sharper than intended, the image of Rachel and Finn together nearly causing him to throw up all the bile in his stomach at the very thought.
The fact of the matter was, while everyone else was finding their types and hitting on girls like Quinn Fabray and Santana Lopez, or even Brittany Pierce, Blaine's eyes focused solely on Rachel, on the way her hair swung slightly when she walked, on the way her legs seemed to grow underneath her skirts by the day. He'd spent his entire life wrapped around Rachel in some fashion or another, and he was starting to see the consequences of his actions.
He tried his best to push away the thoughts, to dwell on cheerleaders and nerds alike, to focus on blonde hair or blue eyes or anything that didn't immediately jump to the girl across the hall from him, the girl who still occasionally climbed into his bed when she couldn't sleep. For every bit as much as Blaine was coming to the conclusion that he wanted Rachel on every level there was to want a person, he knew she was coming to the same conclusions about him. It was in the way she'd stare at him occasionally when they were working on projects in one of their bedrooms, her tongue flicking around the cap of her pen while she was deep in thought, in the way she'd brush against him when she walked past even if there was room around him to avoid, in the way she'd still fall asleep with her head on his shoulder when Dean and Cas let them break free for long weekends with them in the backseat of the Impala.
But she was his sister, and Blaine knew that the feelings of love and lust he felt towards her were wrong, and he tried his best to remember that at all times.
It's a spring night when they lay in the hammock of the backyard, fingers interlaced as they swing back and forth, Rachel humming an old Beatles song under her breath. Even if she'd joined the glee club at their school by now, already starting to plan for college – for an escape she was sure was inevitable – his favorite moments were when she sang just for him, quietly to the songs they grew up listening to.
"Did you ever have your first kiss?" she asks him quietly, Blaine only able to respond with some sort of strangled noise because he's not sure where this is going, but he can nod his head that he has – at a party that Noah Puckerman threw that he didn't really want to attend, with Brittany Pierce during a round of seven minutes in heaven the previous school year. He manages to choke out a 'yes' before she hums quietly, seeming to mull it over.
"Haven't you?" he asks, even if it's not his place – and it isn't, because he's tried so hard to ignore if she even has any sort of love life, knowing he'd either burn with jealousy or ache with desire to replace the object of her affection, and he can't deal with either.
"No," she says quietly, curling into his side and looking up at him. "None of the boys in school interest me," she tells him honestly, and he can feel a lump in his throat the size of Texas that he can't seem to swallow.
"You'll find someone," he finds himself saying, which he wants to believe, wants to think that someone else will take her away from him almost as much as he can't stand the thought of that happening.
"But I want it to be with someone I trust, Blaine. Someone I know could never hurt me," she tells him, and he can't help but melt a little at the way her eyes are focused solely on him, at how tan her skin is even in the fading twilight of evening and how warm her hand is where it's rested on his chest.
"If you want," he finds himself saying, and he knows it isn't too late, not yet, that he could back out – but he doesn't want to, not even a little bit, and instead presses forward. "I could be your first kiss."
The road to hell is often paved with good intentions, he figures as she nods in agreement, a certain spark to their touch now that had been missing, or possibly just diluted only a few seconds prior. "Please," she whispers, and he'll never be able to tell her 'no', never not give her anything she wants and more.
It's awkward, on a physical basis, in the way that a first kiss should be. It takes them a few moments to figure out the right alignment of their heads, to get their lips to part just so and to trust the other completely before falling into the moment, but once they start they can't figure out a way to stop.
Blaine wouldn't ever stop, he figures, if it wasn't for breathing. But even that, he thinks, is overrated when the opposite would be a sweet death from his sister's mouth against his own.
i have waited a lifetime, spent my time so foolishly
but now that I've found you, together we'll make history
The kiss should have changed everything for them, made their lives infinitely more complicated, but instead it seemed to do the opposite. As their freshman year of high school came to a close, the prospect of being on the road for an entire three months once more lay before them, and despite Rachel's hesitance to pack up and travel the country like they did every school vacation, Blaine was once more looking forward to it. Being on the road with Rachel and their dads was the happiest he'd remember being, even if it was going to be more difficult to hide the new aspects of their relationship from their parents.
Still, they managed, spending days sitting in the back seat of the Impala and singing along quietly to The Doors, The Who, and Clapton, fingers daring to reach out and graze each other's as secret smiles were exchanged silently from their spots. The nights were easier for them, Dean and Cas entrusting them to their own hotel room, always making sure to get one with two beds, though they rarely used more than one. They spent hours laying together, legs intertwined as they kissed, hesitant touches on glimpses of bare skin, Rachel giggling as he'd pull her on top of him. They spent more time sleeping as Dean drove them through Illinois, Kansas, and Arizona than they did in the various motels they were set up in while Dean and Cas took out one monstrosity or another.
Blaine inquired more and more about what exactly it was their fathers did as they rounded on 15, asked about the monsters and demons they fought against, asked how exactly they exercised demons and defeated vampires, listened as Dean told them about fighting things like wendigos, ghouls, and worst of all: people. He heard about the apocalypse, about how Castiel had fallen from grace and wound up a mortal human after coming in and out of existence several times, how Dean had traded his soul for Sam's life, how both Sam and Dean had traveled to hell and been rescued from the depths of it.
"It's not a life I want for you," Dean told him sternly, but even still he shared with him the journal of Blaine's grandfather, a man he never met – a man, according to Sam, he would never want to.
He knew Rachel wanted more than this, could see it in the vague disinterest betrayed in her eyes whenever they started discussing their next hunt, whenever she'd start jotting down in a notebook all her grand plans to move to New York, a city they'd never been to, despite Rachel's constant questioning of it. He tried to ignore that the end was coming for them, if still a few more years away, and would instead only sit closer to her when their inevitable parting was mentioned. A life without Rachel was not something he wanted to think about, and yet it was becoming more and more certain as he begged Dean to let him join him on a hunt, any hunt until Dean finally relented.
It was a simple case, Cas explained as Dean constantly watched over his back to make sure Blaine was keeping up, Rachel tucked away safely in a motel doing God knew what on her own. A ghost haunting an older house, a dime a dozen type of situation. Find the bones, Dean told him, salt them and burn them, and in most cases the job is done. As he lit the match to throw into the pit of bones, Blaine felt a sense of accomplishment he only ever experienced when Rachel told him she loved him, like he had done something right in his life to deserve this.
He had no idea that in the end, he'd have to give up one for the other.
The summer came to a close, Dean and Castiel dropping them off at home before taking off on a larger hunt that Sam needed help on, making sure they were safe before disappearing into the distance, and as wonderful as their summer had been, Blaine couldn't help but feel the relief at being alone, for even the tiniest bit, with Rachel.
She laughs as he pins her against the wall in their living room, the windows open and sunlight streaming in, but they lived off the traveled road a little, no one around for what felt like miles to come and spot them as his hands danced around the hem of her skirt, Rachel bucking slightly into his touch. "I know we've talked about it," she says quietly, Blaine's lips moving across her jawline and pulling on her ear as she talked, "and we said that we would wait until we're ready but-"
"Are you?" Blaine asks, eyes lighting up with a glimmer of hope and her smile lights up the already bright room as she nods, pulling his head back to her own. Their kisses turn from rushed and full of desire to slow, lingering, full of promise and potential, and Blaine can only let his grip from her hips tighten as he brings her from the wall to the stairs, both nearly stumbling as they make their way to his bedroom.
He lays her down on his bed gently, brushing hair from her face and kissing her softly, Rachel's eyes shining in the dim lighting of his bedroom as he let his hands pull her dress up and over her head, kissing her neck as she gulped at the thought of being so exposed to him. His hands were heavy and warm on her skin, her own soft and gentle as they helped to rid him of his own clothing. It was sweet and loving, everything he'd want for her first time with someone, her back arching under his fingertips and her body coming undone all because of him, giving him a sense of power and pleasure unlike any he'd ever even thought up before.
They spent their last week before school started in a place of bliss, completely alone and cut off from the world just like they'd always felt they were. They were Rachel and Blaine, Blaine and Rachel, and no one else was ever going to come between them. They'd sealed their fate and interwove their futures together in the most intimate way either knew of, and Blaine felt like they truly belonged to one another in every sense of the word. He'd never love another like he loved Rachel, and blood relation or not, he was assured for the first time that she felt the same.
time everlasting, time to play besides
time ain't on my side, time i'll never know
The fall came slowly, summer holding on as long as it could and while attending school as something more than siblings was unacceptable, they did their best to maintain the relationship they'd been building while portraying innocent . Rachel attended football games with her small group of friends, cheering on a team she didn't particularly care for, members of it involving her glee club the only real excuse she had to go. Blaine continued to keep his head down, working out any aggression he felt towards the boys now more openly hitting on the girl he couldn't show off as his own by spending countless hours in the weight training room, swinging fists at a punching bag until he's so sweaty and gross he can barely stand to be around himself anymore.
All was easier said than done, and things were more difficult when their fathers were puttering around the house, Dean teaching Blaine how exactly to fix cars, Castiel helping Rachel get her plans together for her inevitable move in another two and a half years. "It may seem far," Cas had said over dinner one night as Rachel panicked about the perks of staying in a dorm versus getting an apartment, "but it's not that much time."
Blaine hated those discussions, Dean even more so than he did, and they'd often retire to the garage where an old, black '69 Camaro was sitting on cement blocks while they fixed it up. It was to be Blaine's car, one day, at least until Dean passed on the Impala – a feat Blaine wasn't sure was ever going to happen, really, and he was content with the car his father chose for him. "Nothing is better than a classic," Dean told him one night while they tinkered with the engine. "Things were just made better back then."
It was a line countless people had said, but coming from Dean it settled into Blaine's chest. He took the words to heart in a way that Rachel wouldn't have. She didn't want to work with her hands, didn't want to spend her life on the run, wanted the fame and the attention and the praise for her talents. And she deserved it, Blaine knew, but that didn't mean he liked it.
So he'd focus on the car, he'd focus on his schoolwork, and late at night when they were sure all was quiet, he'd focus on Rachel, and that was his life boiled down. It was hardly considered the highlight of his life, and had it not been for her mere existence pushing him through every day, he wouldn't have had any significant memories at all from the time period. Every single one he did carry with him all centered around her.
There was the night of the fall dance, Rachel swung around on Finn Hudson's arm at the school but her gaze directed at Blaine more often than not; and try as he may to pay attention to Santana Lopez on his own arm, he couldn't focus on anyone but her. It wasn't until they arrived home only moments apart, Rachel ducking away from Finn as he tried to kiss her before heading inside the dark and empty house to Blaine that they were united. He did the best he could to make up for what had been his own shit night, turning on her favorite Elvis song and pulling her towards their backyard where the music played quietly over them in the moonlight, twirling her around in the damp grass just to hear her laugh.
There was Christmas, which had never been an elaborate affair, always quiet but homey. Sam would often show up the night before, occasionally dragging Bobby with him, but Blaine never saw Rachel happier than when they were all joined around the tree with the fireplace warming their small but inviting living room, unwrapping presents in her reindeer sweater and a pair of pajama pants Blaine suspiciously believed to be his own. It was quiet as ever that year, neither twin asking for too much – they never did, didn't need anything more than their family – but Rachel had been given the biggest surprise of all. It came in a simple envelope, a plane ticket to New York for their spring vacation, a world of questions in her eyes as she turned to look at Dean and Cas and ask about it.
"Your mom offered to let you stay with her," Dean said after a minute, though he looked slightly uncomfortable at the mention of the woman neither had yet met, and Rachel froze for a moment at the words. "If you want to stay with her, you could be in New York for a week. I know that's where you want to head after high school and- I want what's best for you, Rach. Even if it's nothing I know."
She'd flung her arms around both their fathers before talking excitedly to Blaine for nearly three days straight about the sights she planned on seeing, not once noticing that he hadn't gotten a ticket as well, no invitation to go see their mother, and it stung deeper than Blaine would have thought. Dean told him, later on, that he had debated about sending him with Rachel, but thought the distance might be best for them. That Blaine could come on a real trip with him and Cas, without worrying about Rachel being left behind, and Blaine only nodded as he focused his attention on the carburetor in front of him.
Their spring break was the first time she wasn't with him in as long as he could remember, he, Dean and Cas dropping her off at the airport and Blaine kissing her cheek as platonically as he could while wrapping his arms tight around her, the excitement and fear visible in her eyes as she promised she'd come back to him in only seven days' time. They drove to an empty field nearby, Dean cracking open a beer and handing one to Blaine almost without thinking, Cas muttering quietly to himself as they sat on the hood of the Impala and watched planes fly overhead, knowing that in one of them was the center of all three of their lives, their light in the darkness, and that one day she'd get on a plane and never come back. It was a thought he carried with him as Dean taught him the rigors of hunting, all while trying to remind him that this wasn't what he wanted from him – he wanted Blaine in college, like Rachel, wanted him to have dreams just as big as she had. Blaine kept silent, because it was easier that way, easier than admitting that while his twin had everything figured out the only thing he knew for certain was her.
The night they reunited, they didn't sleep, instead traced lines across one another's bodies as she told him about the city, how wonderful and perfect she had fit in there. How nowhere else in the entire country had felt so right for her, how even their mother – a retired Broadway actress, now running a prestigious university's drama department – was willing to welcome Rachel into her life, show her the things Rachel could one day have. Blaine listened with open ears, and when it got to be too much, when it was just another reminder of everything he'd one day lose, he covered her words with a kiss, both sinking into one another time and time again.
They had years before they had to say goodbye, Blaine figured, and there was no need to bring it up now.
As spring returned, bringing with it a National's win for Rachel and her glee club, driving lessons and the end of their sophomore year, Blaine could sense that there was something different about their upcoming summer, something that differed from the past 15. They had, of course, planned to pack up and leave the second school released them, Blaine excited to join in on the hunt once more while Rachel decided to take the summer to relax, the last that she could.
Everything seemed to change, of course, three days before school let out, Rachel and Blaine convinced they had the house to themselves until the next evening. They were trying to pretend to study for finals, but books lay strewn across their living room carpet as Blaine brought his sister's lips to his own, kissing her lightly before she furthered the action, her fingers feather light against his jaw as he let out a small groan. His hand wove in her hair, dragging her into him even more, her teeth dragging lightly across his bottom lip until they sank down in unison when the words "what the hell is going on in here?" startled them.
She sprang away from him as Blaine whirled around to see Dean and Cas standing in the archway leading into the living room, Castiel looking completely nonplussed while Dean seethed, the hand wrapped around his duffel bag nearly slate white from how tight he was gripping it, and Blaine had no idea what to say to explain this away.
He didn't get a chance to even explain it as Dean set into action, grabbing his arm and pulling him away while Rachel curled in on herself on the floor, watching with wide eyes and apprehension. "I can-"
"Not right now," Dean replied gruffly, interrupting him and leading him out of the house. He was vaguely frightened of what Dean had the abilities to do to him, but trusted that even if he had just walked in on his children making out – fully clothed, Blaine added bitterly in his own mind – he wouldn't do anything too drastic to them.
Blaine kept silent until they were in the garage, Dean leaning against the hood of the Camaro that was to be brought to Bobby's in a few days' time for safekeeping over the summer while they ran across the country in the Impala, glaring at Blaine as he anxiously pulled at the sleeves of his sweatshirt, too ashamed to look at his father. It wasn't that he thought what he and Rachel did was wrong, by any means, it was the most natural thing in the world for them – but he had known all along that Dean would never understand, that Castiel would never approve, and that's why it had all been kept a secret.
"I'm sorry," Blaine blurts out, because it's the first thing he can think of to say, but Dean only snorts in response, clearly not believing him for an instant.
"How long?" he asks instead, and Blaine blanches. He wants to say it's been his whole life, that he's wanted her for as long as he can remember, from the day she wrapped her small hand around his, but Dean doesn't care about that. He won't see the love there, only sees the physical act of what they were doing, and so Blaine uses that instead.
"About a year," he tells him, "a little more, I think."
"I thought she had a boyfriend – that tall guy, Flynn or something like that-"
"Finn," Blaine corrects, "but no they're not- she doesn't like him," he explains.
"Why would she when she has someone right under the same roof?" Dean mutters, running his hand over his face as he stares up at the ceiling above them, a small 'Jesus Christ' falling from his lips. Blaine looks down at his feet again, suddenly feeling like he's five years old. They'd never really gotten into trouble, always too well behaved to act out, and now the one time they had Dean has no idea how to punish them anymore than they know how to apologize for it.
"I'm sorry," Blaine tries once more, but Dean just lets out a heavy sigh before leaving him behind in the garage, continuing to mutter about plans under his breath as he makes his way back to the house, Blaine's eye line moving straight to his sisters window to see her sitting in front of it, watching him.