12/13 revision

First time it happens, Blaine is seven and he's dreaming. One minute his eyes are closed, breaths even, and sleeping soundly - and the next all he could smell is smoke, all he could hear is screaming, and all he could see is a blinding orange and yellow. He screams and cries, and suddenly his caretaker (who acts as his babysitter, his maid, and his stand-in mother) is rubbing soothing circles on his back, whispering "It's just a dream, Blaine, just a dream, shh, baby, it's okay…"

Two weeks later, a vengeful employee lights up a match and throws it to the kerosene-splashed wooden floor of his boss's family home. The fire that erupts awakens the entire street within half an hour, and Blaine watches ten houses down across the street of the blaze as firefighters attempt to salvage the burning house.

All he could smell is smoke, all he could hear is screaming, and all he could see is a blinding orange and yellow.

He doesn't dream for a long time.

Blaine is barely eight when he takes a nap one warm, Saturday afternoon on May. For the first time in months, he dreams. He sees a young boy, more or less his age, wearing black among a sea of adults wearing black. The boy has soft, brown hair and milky white skin and looking so lost; beside him stands a man, bald and near tears, gripping the boy's shoulder protectively. They're both – as everyone else is, actually – staring at a hole in the ground. They throw white flowers and say goodbye.

Blaine wakes up confused - only three days later does he watch a movie and finally understands what had been happening.

(He meets the boy just about eight years later. The boy – teen – still has that soft, brown hair and milky white skin, and still looking lost, but underneath all that Blaine sees strength.)

He keeps dreaming, but never tells anyone about it.

When Blaine is eleven-going-on-twelve, things start to change. For one, he stops looking at girls and starts looking at boys. There's an uncomfortable, sinking feeling in his stomach after every time he catches himself staring too long. But despite the uneasiness, all he could think about is how his heart would flutter and face would redden whenever his fourteen year old guy neighbor would grin at him just like that. It doesn't take him long to find a name for it.

Secondly, the line keeping his dreams in his dreams suddenly breaks, and he sees. He remembers being in alone in the kitchen that day, no one else at home except for his caretaker, before a loud crashing sound makes him jump out of his skin and for a moment he believes the house had been broken into. But when he makes his way to the living room, there's no one else but his mother and father. They're red-faced and furious at each other, and on the floor are the shattered remains of the vase mother abhors, mostly because it came from his father's own mother who hates her. Despite the fact that it's obvious that they're shouting, Blaine can't hear anything beyond his parents' muffled voices. He quietly retreats to his room, and blasts his radio out loud. He sings, waits for their argument to sizzle down, and wonders what's for dinner tonight.

(However, he knows his mother is out with the other ladies from the country club, probably until eight in the evening, and his father is rarely home nowadays, opting to spend his hours running his blooming corporation.)

All too soon, Blaine is an eighth grader and everyone in his middle school knows he is gay. He's in that awkward stage of puberty where his voice had just gotten deeper yet his body is still small and scrawny. He ignores the looks other students would give him and the whispers and derogatory comments that would make its way to his ears, among other things. He barely has any friends, and those that acquaint themselves with him likes to turn their cheeks and pretend they don't know him when a particularly resentful jock throws his lunch all over the cafeteria floor or gives him swirlies in the boys' room. It hurts, but he does his best not to mind it. He knew what to expect from his peers. Blaine didn't even need his sight to see it coming. (This is, after all, Ohio.)

He comes out to his parents the day "FAG" is written black and bold on his locker. His father, who is home for once, doesn't say anything but the hand he laid on his shoulder spoke volumes. (He's forgotten how gentle his touch is, and Blaine forgives him for not always being there. He understands.) His mother is nothing else but tight lipped and looks at everything but Blaine. That too, spoke volumes.

They send him off to bed, and he pretends he doesn't hear the sound of a vase shattering and his parents shouting because of him. He only allows himself to think how funny it is that his father, who was born and raised in Christian morals and the church, is the one who supports him while his mother, who denounced God at eighteen after the death of her younger cousin, is the one that refuses to have him as her son.

That night, he dreams of the brown haired boy coming out to his own father, and being accepted. He smiles in his sleep.

(The divorce is finalized less than two months later, and he never sees his mother again. But Blaine knows things would be okay, because his father's best friend's sister has loved him since forever, and everyone will be happier with them together. Blaine had already accepted her by the time his father introduces her as a potential new mother seven months later.)

The visions and dreams become just about a part of his everyday life by the time the summer before high school comes around. Most of it has nothing to do with him (an old man who runs a pawn shop will be robbed on three o'clock and shot, but he will live; a car accident on the highway will involve three cars, and a little girl will be left an orphan; someone's rabbit will die in two weeks), but he lets himself see them. Blaine doesn't know how to stop them, anyways.

He tells only one person, only because Uncle Harold is very superstitious, believes in the supernatural and stuff, and the least likely to laugh at him or regard his sight as nonsense. Instead, his uncle nods solemnly and hands him a pack of new tarot cards the following week. He tells Blaine about the responsibility of such power, and how no matter how much he would wish so, Blaine cannot always change the future, if ever.

The tarot cards became an outlet his sight needed to keep the "day visions" at bay and at low frequency. Blaine takes to them as a fish would to water, and his uncle grins at him amusedly. He would mostly do readings of himself, and he finds them very enlightening, if not vague.

Two weeks before Blaine is set to attend his first day as a high school freshman, Uncle Harold is to fly to London for a business conference. Blaine knows this, and two hours before his uncle's flight, he wakes up from a sinking feeling of his stomach. His alarm clock read 5:24 am in bright red numbers, and Blaine nearly trips over himself to shakily reach his cards. A hasty shuffle, asking if his uncle is fine, will be fine, make it to London safe and sound, and cards are laid.

He's a novice, so by the time he has interpreted the cards, his uncle has boarded his plane with his phone off. But he tries and tries and tries to tell him.

His father finds him sobbing almost hysterically on his bed ten minutes after eight. Despite not knowing the reason for his distress, he pulls Blaine close into his arms for the first time in years and holds him for the longest time.

Hours later, a news anchorman tells all of Ohio about a plane heading for London crashing thirty minutes into the flight. No survivors. It was the same plane his uncle was in.

At the funeral, he says "I'm sorry," instead of "Goodbye."

He throws his cards into a shoe box, tapes the lid closed three times, and doesn't touch them again. Not for another few years.

(Blaine opens the box and uses the cards once more when he's seventeen and confused about the boy he once dreamt of. The cards are as vague as he remembers, but it's promising.)

His freshman year is hell on earth to Blaine. It is only been twelve days and four hours since he officially became a first year and he already has more or less five bruises from locker shoves and has gotten over a dozen homophobic notes taped to his locker door. Word travels fast about people, especially about being the only out-of-the-closet student in school. The upperclassmen are especially horrible.

Blaine's terrified.

His day visions make him vulnerable, he finds out. Just one moment's pause is all a jock needs to grab him and throw him into a dumpster or against the lockers. Once, he sees himself in darkness with two other people doing something to him he's certain he doesn't like – and a moment later he is pulled back to reality, dragged into the janitor's closet by two seniors and violated in the dark.

By the time sixth period rolls around, practically everyone knows of the incident and most of them just say "he deserved it," and "he wanted it." Blaine files a complaint to the school, but they tell him that there's nothing they could do without proof.

(At that point, Blaine thinks that the school deserves the shooting that will happen in two years, orchestrated by a spiteful sophomore who will be disregarded as Blaine was. But even if he did warn them, there's nothing they could do without proof, after all.)

He doesn't tell his father, who is happier than he has ever been since his corporation made it big and married Blaine's birthmother. Instead, Blaine smiles and says everything is okay.

It's not a lie, because Blaine knows everything will be okay. At night he would dream of himself wearing a navy blue blazer with red trimming, flirting and singing with the boy wearing the same uniform as he, in a fancy room decorated with Christmas ornaments. And when Blaine sings, his smile is always real.

So Blaine sucks it up, despite the nagging voice at the back of his mind warning him. (In hindsight, Blaine should've known better than to ignore his instincts. Past events should have taught him not to.) Things get worse.

He and an acquaintance attend the Sadie Hawkins dance together. They're cornered an hour into the dance and are beaten within an inch of their lives. Blaine wakes up on a hospital bed. His father pleads to tell him what happened, who did this to him. He keeps quiet.

(His acquaintance doesn't even look him in the eye anymore, much less say a single word to him. Soon, the others follow his footsteps.)

Then two weeks before Christmas break, he's knocked out cold while walking home from school. He wakes up feeling sore all over, and most definitely bruised – it's a familiar feeling. He drags himself home and goes to the bathroom to look for the first aid kit. And when he looks at the large mirror above his sink, he doesn't see his reflection. Almost as if he was watching television, he sees one, two, three figures donning familiar letterman jackets over a huddled form on the ground at night. They roll the body into the ditch and drive away hastily.

The body is him.

Blaine doesn't go to school the next day, nor the next, nor the following days before break. He tells his father all about the bullying and harassment at school and instead of letting his father sue the hell out of the administration, Blaine slips an informational printout of Dalton Academy for Boys, the words "zero tolerance bullying policy" highlighted and underlined clearly, in front of him as they talked in the kitchen. His father and stepmother waste no time on thinking. January comes, and Blaine is wearing a navy blue blazer with red trimming. He meets Wes and David, friends who couldn't care less about his sexuality, and lives.

For the first time, Blaine changes the future.