CHAPTER 1. A

Elliott morphed his face in a worried expression, when he saw his boyfriend bended over the table of his grandparents' dining room, his face completely and stubbornly buried in his arms as if he wanted to be suffocated by them.

"Blaine?" he called, getting closer quickly to him. He put his hands on his shoulders, in a shy attempt of consoling him from whatever thing had caused his sudden misery. He hoped it wasn't anything too bad. He was so happy and serene just a few moments ago, enthusiastic for his party preparation and for the presence of all his friends there with him. And there he was, easily the emblem of desperation.

His boyfriend mumbled something intelligible. Elliott relaxed after that. That was the sign that whatever thing was bothering Blaine wasn't that serious: he was just being a drama king as usual. Regardless of that, he started slowly massaging his shoulders and back, feeling his tense muscles melt nerve by nerve. He then gave him a little kiss on the back of his head and felt Blaine sigh tiredly.

"You want to tell me what is it that is bothering you so much?"

Blaine sighed again, before turning his head slightly, showing his will to talk to him but not to interrupt that improvised massage. "I just heard from Nick and Jeff. They're gonna arrive here from Los Angeles without stopping by in Westerville."

Elliott's eyebrow got up. That didn't explain much, so he waited Blaine to continue.

"So I wanted to call Wes, but then I remembered that he was taking his girlfriend and his children, which means that his car will be full. Then I thought I should talk to David, but he didn't planned to stop in Westerville either. And Trent's arriving in a few, he just texted me a few minutes ago."

"..so what?" Elliott asked, still confused. Blaine moaned softly in satisfaction when his boyfriend rubbed his fingers on a particularly sensible spot of his back, the he resumed talking.

"So the only available person that can give Kurt a lift is Sebastian."

"Ah." Elliott said, starting to share Blaine's worries.

"But the fact that he's available doesn't mean he is willing to do it, or that Kurt would accept being helped by Sebastian. Which I highly doubt." Blaine bitterly thought out loud. "I guess this is just a divine punishment for wishing that both my best friends could come at my birthday contemporarily for once. Silly me."

Elliott couldn't do anything but laugh at his boyfriend's dramatic attitude, though he knew he wasn't wrong. It was absurd, really. And also pretty frustrating, to be honest. When Blaine had asked his friends to come even though there would have been the both of them, he wasn't too hopeful. He never wanted to get his hopes up, because one they never said yes in the past. Because of that, when both had accepted Blaine was so damn happy, so enthusiastic. He was happier for their presence than for his own birthday, Elliott was sure.

In other past occasions, they always backed out and bailed out on him with poor excuses, such as sudden, life-or-death kind of work problems, family meetings or super important school exams, and a promise of passing some time together before or immediately after what Blaine had organized to make up for being the worst friends ever.

Sometimes it was Kurt, sometimes it was Sebastian. Blaine suffered anyway.

If they hadn't known that the two of them hadn't been talking for the previous five years, since Blaine's graduation party, he would have thought that they had a deal going on. It surely seemed like it. But why they acted like this was still a mystery.

Blaine had told him their past history. From what he heard, Kurt and Sebastian had never really liked each other, since the very beginning, when Smythe tried to break Kurt and Blaine up. And he knew that things got even worse when Sebastian nearly blinded Blaine with a slushie aimed at Kurt. But Sebastian had begged for forgiveness and Kurt seemed okay with him as long as he didn't try to break them up ever again and trusted Sebastian's desire of becoming one of the goods. And, as Blaine told him, Sebastian really changed after a series of happenings in his life. He really did and that's why his boyfriend found in him a true listener and reliable friend.

So it was unlikely that Kurt was still offended because of the things that happened when they were in high school, since he was the first one to preach about forgiveness and tolerance back in time. And surely it wasn't because of jealousy for Blaine, as Kurt himself had pushed him and Blaine to go out together: it was thanks to him that they started dating and fell in love with each other. Moreover, Elliott knew him well enough, he was one of his closest friends: he had never pictured Kurt as childish or egoistical, not even at the beginning when they roomed together in Bushwick, nor he had ever given him reasons to think badly of him.

With Sebastian, things were basically the same. The Sebastian that Elliott became friends with was the new one, the one who already was Blaine's best friend. He hadn't known him as long as Kurt and it took time for him to open up ( probably just because he was friends with Kurt ), but eventually it happened. It was mathematic, really. Even if he had any prejudice about him for being Kurt's friend, they probably vanished when he realized that Elliott intended to be around Blaine for long time.

And that was what confused both him and Blaine. Why was he so willing to accept someone that could easily not to be trusted but not his best friend's other best friend?

It didn't make any sense.

At first, Blaine suspected it was because of jealousy and pride. Before and after the break up with Kurt, Sebastian had been his anchor: he had been there when Blaine cried his eyes out because he missed his – later ex – boyfriend and he probably never digested that Blaine had waited for him to come back with his arms open and welcoming like he was the prodigal son.

On the other hand, Kurt – understandably so – hadn't really swallowed how the relationship between Blaine and the guy who once had hit on his boyfriend when they were still a couple. And yes, maybe at the beginning there could be some resentment and – why not – fear of being replaced, but after five years, it kind of looked pretty stupid, because it was obvious that Blaine loved the both of them equally and in different ways and wasn't going to leave them behind or to prefer one or the other. So it couldn't be that.

Something happened between the two, both Blaine and he were sure of that, but that topic was not to be touched with neither of the two nemesis. They just moved the attention to other things or just plainly told them to mind their own business whenever they tried to discover something more about that unreasonable hatred they shared towards each other. Eventually, they stopped asking.

It seemed like they just pretended that the other didn't exist and made sure to avoid any given possibility of being around one another. Basically, they were just acting like stubborn judgmental pricks who couldn't put aside their divergences, not because they couldn't but because they didn't want to. It was childish and frankly, Elliott was tired of seeing Blaine suffer because his best friends made him feel like he had to choose or something like that. It was time.

"You know what?"

Blaine looked up from his arms and met Elliott's eyes with his own, noticing his boyfriend's sudden change of tone. "What?" he asked, curious and unsure at the same time.

"You should ask Sebastian to give Kurt a ride."

The curly-haired boy looked at him like he had grown two heads. "Are you crazy? You do remember that's basically a miracle that they both accepted to come in the first place, right?"

Elliott rolled his eyes, crossing his arms against his chest and looking reprovingly at Blaine. "Babe, you need to stop tolerate their childish behavior. They're twenty-three, for fuck's sake, it's time that they get their shit together and start acting like grown-ups capable of behaving like civilized human beings even in front of someone they can't stand."

Blaine messed his hair up even more by passing his fingers through them in frustration. "You're right." He admitted, "I just hope they won't hate me too much for this."

Elliott chuckled lightly before bending to kiss Blaine on his forehead. "You know, you're surprisingly easy to persuade. I should have told you this ages ago. And by the way, they could never hate you even if they wanted."

"Well, maybe not hate me, but I'm pretty sure they will insult me to no end. I do know that I've let them get away with a lot of their actions in these years. But, you know, I'm also convinced that they kept doing this thinking to protect me in some disturbed, contorted way."

"Without doubt. You know Sebastian and Kurt deeply care about you. The problem is that they're also two idiots. Please, remind me why they hate each other so much? They're so alike they could be the perfect couple." Elliott half joked.

"You're kidding" Blaine said, with a smile that was half embarrassed and half amused, "but I've actually always shipped them a bit. Even when I was still with Kurt." He confessed.

Elliott's eyes widened. He looked quite impressed.

"Excuse me? You thought that your beloved boyfriend and the guy who wanted to get into your pants looked good together?"

"You don't understand. You didn't get the chance to see Kurt and Seb in action. They were..powerful. It was intense, seeing them interact. You would have shipped them too, trust me." Blaine said with honesty.

Elliott lifted his brow and smiled wholeheartedly. "You work in a mysterious way, Blaine Anderson." He said, shaking his head. Only he could fell in love with such a strange individual. But really, he should have known this from day one. It's not that common to start liking romantically someone when they start singing with you a song called Glitter Rock Vampire after a bad fallout.

"What can I say? Even if I was in love with Kurt, my heart knew that he wasn't the one." Blaine answered with a wink. At that, Elliott rolled his eyes and laughed again, before leaning towards his boyfriend and kissing him senseless. "You're diabetic. And diabolic." He mumbled against his smiling lips.

"I don't know if the two things can possibly go together." Blaine joked, but Elliott just shrugged, looking lovingly into his eyes. "I don't know. But I've told you, you work in mysterious ways." He whispered. Just whispered, because the way Blaine looked at him made even breathing difficult. How was it possible after nearly five years?

"You love me anyway."

"I wouldn't want you any other way." He corrected, before leaning in again.

"Jeez, you're in a fucking estate, guys. Do you really need to be disgustingly lovey dovey in the main room?" Santana exclaimed, entering the dining room and making them both jump.

"Jeez, you're in a fucking estate, Santana. Do you really need to interrupt and ruin every moment with my boyfriend?" Elliott parroted, even though he wasn't really pissed off. He was used to Santana and her attitude, after years of sharing an apartment and seeing her bitching about everything and everyone. He loved her, regardless of her bad temper, and he knew she loved him back, even though she did everything in her power to annoy him.

"I'm sorry, I can't really help it. It's a natural talent of mine" she replied with a smirk and a wink, getting closer to the table Blaine was still seated at. Santana let the box she was holding fall on the old wooden surface in front of her without any grace. The content of the box made an awful noise, but hopefully it wasn't anything that could easily break. Both Elliott and Blaine had insisted with their other friends on never, ever letting Santana touch or even get close to anything breakable in that house. She was just incapable of being tactful – in every sense - and everything in there was probably worth more than all their useless lives put together.

"So" she resumed, unperturbed, "Who's going to bring Lady Hummel's pale ass here? And more importantly, when? He's such a pain in the neck, but he sure does how to organize things, with all his obsessive-compulsive quirks." Santana asked, opening the box and starting to grab things out of it. "Uh, this must be ancient. We could re-use it." She said, inspecting an old banner that said Happy birthday, Blaine. If he remembered correctly, it was from his tenth birthday party. He smiled, thinking at the sweet surprise that his grandparents had prepared for him. But then he remembered Santana's question and his smile dimed a little.

"I'll ask Sebastian."

The latina girl looked at him dumbfounded for a few seconds, before bursting into laughter. "Oh god, good luck with that, dwarf. I wanna be there when you call them." She said and laughed again, like it was the funniest thing ever. Blaine wasn't so amused.

In that moment Mike Chang, Tina, Mercedes and Rachel – who until a few moments previous were somewhere in town buying only god knew what for the party -entered the room, looking as perplexed as Elliott and Blaine while staring at Santana. "Why is she dying with laughter?" Tina asked, while she helped Mercedes with another box. Mike put the chairs he was carrying (as he didn't want to risk ruining the marble of the floor) down and Rachel quickly sat on one of them, after leaving the packet of paper napkins – because they were so heavy to hold – on the table.

"Blaine wants to ask Smythe to drive Lady Hummel here."

The four friends looked at Blaine with a mix of amazement and concern. Amazement, because the guy got guts. And concern, well, for obvious reasons.

Elliott rolled his eyes. "Seriously, am I the only one that thinks that Kurt and Sebastian need to get their shit together and stop acting like children?"

"Yours are noble intentions, oh my less cool clone of Adam Lambert. And Frodo, here, has every right to say something to those two hysterical geese." Santana said, "The problem is, they will never accept. It's like talking to two fucking peacocks."

"Well, they both are very stubborn. And definitely excessively proud." Mercedes stated, giving Blaine a look that said sorry, boy.

Blaine pouted. "You're not helping, guys."

"Honestly, I think you're a tad overdramatic." Elliott said. He was not letting those guys discourage his boyfriend after all his work. Not that the convincing part had been a tough one, but still.

"You don't understand." Mike insisted, "You have no idea of how explosive Kurt and Sebastian were in the past."

"Yeah, so you keep telling me." Elliott spat, irritated. God, he wished he had been there to see them just so that those guys could stop repeat that he could not understand. It was getting old.

The Asiatic guy continued: "The thing is, we remember how they were. If things are gonna be like in the past, even putting them in the same building is risky enough. But with all the resentment they may have bottled up in the years, I can't even imagine what could happen if they were in the same car for a second, let alone for five hours."

Blaine let out a muffled, desperate sound. "I'm starting to regret inviting them both in the first place"

Elliott gritted his teeth and looked darkly at Mike, who looked very scared for a moment. Then he turned to point his finger at Blaine, as his brother-in-law had taught him to do. "Blaine, we already discussed it. You need to talk to them anyway. You can't just chicken out like this nor Kurt and Sebastian should have the chance to repeat their usual trick this time too and keep running away from their responsibilities."

"Yeah, well" Tina said calmly, "they'll learn to deal with their problems, because Kurt has to be here for the party and Sebastian cannot bail out on that. Spoiler alert, Kurt has with him pretty much all of our presents for Blaine, so Smythe better give in already." She concluded.

Elliott looked at her like she was his new divinity. Bless you, Tina Cohen-Chang, he thought, and thank you for existing and for being the bestest of Blaine's best friends.

"And anyway" Tina wanted to add, "Presents aside, I don't think they would say no now. They care too much about you to kill one another, knowing how much it would hurt you, too. The very worst that could happen would be them arguing all the way till here."

Yes, Tina was definitely his new royalty. All hail queen Tina!

"Or them fucking like rabbits" Santana interjected, "But that would be the best thing that could happen. God only knows the levels of sexual tension they would reach in that car."

"Oh my gosh, Santana. Why are you always so crude?" Rachel exclaimed, looking resented on his best gay's behalf.

"And how are you always such a prude?"

"I am not a prude, I just don't get why you feel the need of being so assuming of people's sex lives." She replied.

"I'm not assuming anything, darling, it's something everybody has always known. There's not a single person in this room that doesn't think that there was something between them. God, all this fucking Blaine thing is probably due to the fact that those two were so deep in denial for liking each other that they confused it with hatred." Santana spat, "And God, you are even worse, you have fucking hams in front of your eyes! You wouldn't recognize interest and attraction if they hit you in the face!"

Silence fell. They all watched, frozen in their spots, as Santana started to breathe normally again, under the gaze of a wordless Rachel Berry.

Well, Elliott thought, that rant had been interesting, to say the least. First of all, it had given him a new perspective on the situation between Kurt and Sebastian. If Santana – and everyone else, really - was right, the only thing that Elliott could think of was that those two were two freaking morons. But even more idiotic than how he saw them before. But that meant that the situation could finally be adjusted, with a little bit of luck on their side.

And secondly, he discovered that there was someone more clueless and sentimentally-slow than his own boyfriend, and that person was Rachel Berry.

"That's not true." Rachel eventually said, with a serious tone. "And I still think that Kurt is not that stupid. For starters, he would never like someone like Sebastian. The guy has changed, sure, but he still not is Kurt's type. Secondly, admitting an hypothetical and completely absurd sexual attraction between them in the past, I still cannot see how it could affect them now, after five years of not seeing each other. Wasn't it, always hypothetically, the aim of their doing?"

Santana smirked, now completely again in herself. "Because distance makes you want to fuck harder."

"Oh my, I always thought that it said «absence makes the heart grow fonder»" Elliott joked to himself. Blaine snorted and looked at him with a complicit smile.

Rachel crossed her arms on her chest. "Santana, they hate each other's guts." She insisted.

"Well, hate sex is the best. They'd be great at it. No, they will be great at it. Boom."

"Santana, stop it."

"If you're so sure, wanna bet on it?" the Latina asked, challenging Rachel with her waiting hand. The girl stared at her with fuming ears and bright red cheeks, gritting her teeth while she considered.

"Yeah, okay." She decided, eventually, grabbing Santana's hand with firmness. "If I win, you'll stop being a bitch to me. Alright?"

"And if I win, you will do anything I'll ask you to do." She grinned wolfishly, as if she was sure to win the bet. "So, Anderson. It's your turn. Call them."

Blaine sighed, grabbing tiredly his phone. He preferred when the attention was on Santana and Rachel's argument, really. He scrolled through his contacts list, stopping with his thumb over Kurt's name. But then, he changed his mind. Better starting with the weaker one.

"Hey, Seb" he said, over enthusiastic, "I have to ask you something…"