Author's Note: I'm...not really sure what this is. Prompted by musing about how since we've gotten Kurt-centric flashbacks, maybe we'll get Blaine-centric ones too at some point? Also because tiny!fidgety!lisping!bb!Blaine is the most adorable thing ever in the world. Anyways. A minor break from NaA. :D

"Mamaaaaaa!"

"Hush." With that one syllable, six-year-old Blaine Anderson's cacophony of wiggling and bouncing and squirming settled down to the constant, metronome-like patpatpatpat of his toe tapping on the tiled floor of the bathroom.

Olivia Anderson sighed a little, softly, gently dragging a comb through her only child's riotous dark curls, working the absurdly expensive hair gel through every silky, unmanageable strand. She allowed this minor (albeit annoying) method of expending excess energy, understanding that the mass of excitable elasticity masquerading as a child was trying his hardest.

"Almost done," she promised mildly, her soft voice faintly accented. She'd been married for almost ten years to Eric Anderson, living in the small, but prosperous town of Westerville, Ohio, and yet she still had that soft lilt to her words that belied her heritage. Even now, glancing in the mirror and self-consciously checking her silk blouse for stains, or her smooth, shiny bobbed hair for flyaways, she still saw little Livvie from Jefferson County, gap-toothed and running wild.

"Mama?" Approximately ten seconds had passed since she'd last shushed her son, and he was already shifting from one loafer-clad foot to the other, glancing at her in the mirror with a petulant look.

Olivia pressed her lips together and indicated the mirror with the comb. "Does your hair look done yet?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.

Blaine stood on his tiptoes, gravely examining how half of his hair lay flat and smooth, while the other half stuck out in all directions like a fluffy black cloud. "Yeth," he declared, finally, grinning widely, showing off the two missing teeth he'd knocked out the week before. "It lookth thpectacular." Whenever Blaine spoke, his "S" sounds were almost unintelligible, a combination of the missing teeth and a natural lisp.

An automatic smile threatened to creep across Olivia's face, prompted by the wide jack-o-lantern grin and the cheeky comment. Her own mother, when consulted about Blaine's speech impediment, had just laughed and waved it off, saying he'd grow out of it eventually, that kids talked funny sometimes, that she was worried about nothing. But her friends at the country club, all of whom had children in the same private school Blaine would start next week, insisted that there was nothing harmless about lisping.

"First it's a little whistle when they speak," her friend Nadine had said in low, hushed tones. "then they can't say their consonants, then before you know it they're saying "ain't" and "naw" and dropping out of school to flip burgers at the local Sonic."

This struck Olivia as a bit extreme, but there was probably some grain of truth in it. And besides, when consulted, Eric had made some vague comment about Blaine getting teased for the lisp, or singled out in class and casting the Anderson's in a negative light and how that would never do. Looking at her handsome, Yale-educated husband, who had inexplicably deigned to pluck her out of the Alabama mud and muck and make her his wife, Olivia had nodded quietly and enrolled Blaine in speech therapy the next day.

Now, smoothing a little more gel into the still-baby-soft curls, she frowned slightly, setting her teeth together and parting her lips in the proper grimace-like expression. "Ssssspectacular, baby. Ssss, say it with me."

Blaine's sunny expression fell a little bit, but he obediently mimicked his mother's expression, his "sss" face turning into a bit of a wince as the comb hit a little snag. "Ow," he complained in a soft voice, hopping from one foot to the other.

"Sorry, sugar, I'm sorry," Olivia soothed, working the comb gently through the tangles. She'd taken to straightening her own curls, but there was something unnatural about a first-grader who used a flat-iron. Besides, the gel was much more suitable to a little gentleman, which was exactly what Blaine was.

Olivia sighed a little, smoothing her hand over her son's hair, that perpetual almost-frown back on her face. She could see so much of the girl she used to be in Blaine, the wildness, the untamed joy and zest for life. But there was such a thing as living too hard, being too free. There were expectations attached to being an Anderson, even a little one. She wasn't going to let Blaine end up like her, going through the motions in a marriage that had long since lost the happiness and love it'd held so briefly. He was going to go to college, he was going to go places and do things with his life.

And if that journey started by training the lisp out of his sweet little voice and shellacking his adorably chaotic curls to his head, then so be it.

Setting the comb aside and wrapping her arms around her overenergetic son's shoulders, Olivia gently pressed a kiss to his temple, careful to avoid getting a mouthful of gel. "Mama loves you, baby," she said, softly, savoring the way Blaine still snuggled back against her, relaxed inside the safety of her arms.

Part of her knew that wouldn't last, seeing the way her country club friend's received dutiful kisses on the cheek from their children, the sort of kisses kids gave to an unfamiliar distant relative. Blaine clambered up onto her lap to give her sticky, wet, loud kisses, curled up with her on the couch with his still-chubby little fingers playing with her hair and chattered about his day without a thought in his head about being too loud or not using proper grammar. He had no idea he was expected to be different, to be better, to be perfect.

And god help her, Olivia couldn't curtail and correct everything about him, not just yet. Soon. Maybe when he started school. But for now she released him with a gentle squeeze, retreating to the upstairs window to watch him act out some sort of elaborate six-year-old fantasy world in the back yard, splattering himself with mud and sand and leaves, tugging at the drying gel and releasing his curls, swinging on tree branches and crawling under bushes and spinning around in circles until he fell down.

And she hoped and wished and desperately prayed that someday he'd understand that every drag of the comb through his hair was her way of saying how much she loved him.

"You're going to be late."

Her voice was so soft and toneless and...distant. It was sort of like being reminded by a maid or an automated phone call. Hello, this is your daily parental input. Please try not to ruin your life on the way to school.

"I know, Mother." Blaine shook his head slightly, then winced a little as this caused his comb to snag in his hair. Years of using enough hair product to clog every sewer in Ohio had made his scalp extra-tough, though, and he tugged it through, weaving his hand a little to get the perfect wave in his perfect hair, to go with his perfect clothes and his perfect life.

Oh, wait, not "perfect" life. "Totally and completely screwed up". Yeah. That was it.

Setting down the comb and running his hand over his hair, Blaine glanced at the door, half-hoping to hear another tap on it. A second reminder would be really nice. It might almost make his day. But there was nothing but silence.

So he brushed his teeth and straightened his tie and buttoned his blazer and combed his hair back one more time to make sure all his curls were contained, before opening the door, shoulders back, head high, looking every inch the perfect, model son.

Except he wasn't. Because rather than smile fondly and step forward to kiss his cheek and fuss over his clothes, to tell him to have a good day at school, to work hard and do his best, to tell him she was proud of him, that she loved him, his mother just looked him up and down briefly, then gave a short nod. And it wouldn't have hurt so badly, had Blaine not gotten the other, loving, adoring treatment for the first fourteen years of his life.

But all that had changed that day, that horrible awful day in the ER, when his parents had come in and his mother had sat down by his bedside, tears in her eyes because there wasn't a single place on her son's body that was unbruised enough for her to hold onto, and his father had stalked back and forth and muttered things about lawsuits and legal repercussions and media circuses proclaiming the evils of the little sonsofbitches who'd done this, and Blaine had looked up at them and squeaked out the words that changed (ruined) everything.

Because they had. Because even though they said things were fine, that they were disappointed, but he wasn't going to be kicked out or ostracized, that he could do whatever he wanted as long as he didn't flaunt it, something had broken the moment Olivia and Eric Anderson found out that Jordan Thomas wasn't a girl in his math class, but a boy; that Blaine and Jordan had been brutally beaten while walking the two blocks to the bus stop; that their only, their cherished, their perfect son was gay.

Now Blaine's father only looked at him to talk about the car needing a tune-up. Now his mother only touched him by accident. Now they only spoke to him to ask him to pass the peas.

"You'll be late," Olivia said again, still soft, still looking somewhere over Blaine's shoulder.

"Okay. Bye." Blaine turned to go down the stairs, then stopped, on a whim. He turned, looking up at his mother, looking right at her for the first time in what felt like forever. "How's my hair look, Mom?"

Olivia paused, in the midst of smoothing her skirt, startled enough to look down, to meet her son's eyes, which were so, so much like hers. Blaine swallowed hard, licked his lips, spoke again. "Is it all right? Is it neat?"

Then, before he could stop himself - "Is it spectacular?"

It was probably a trick of the light, probably his own imagination playing tricks on him, probably nothing at all. But for a moment, something flickered in Olivia's face, something that had been hiding for two years. Then she nodded. Once.

Blaine nodded back, exhaling, feeling like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, if only temporarily. Then he quickly hurried down the steps, because he really would be late at this rate, and there was a Warblers practice he still needed to get to. They were doing Katy Perry songs today, his specialty.

In the car, he paused for just a moment to smooth his hair, unnecessarily, since the only person he gelled it for was inside, probably folding things or baking things or doing other things. Certainly not standing at the window, watching her son drive away and covering her mouth to stifle the tears she'd been crying in secret since that day two years ago.

That was just another trick of the light.

But, even so, as he drove along, window cracked to let the cool November air wake him up a little, singing along to the radio, Blaine had to smile a little. Because, like he did every day, he hoped and he wished and he desperately prayed that someday, seeing how he did the things she used to do, how he tucked himself in and straightened his own ties and, most of all, combed his hair back just like she once did, his mother would start to remember how she also used to love him.

And maybe this was the first step.