Title: Verse (prologue)
Summary: "Hello, Blaine...I'm your great uncle Todd."
Rating: PG-13 / T
Category: Glee/DPS crossover, Blaine-centric, begins around Sadie Hawkins
Disclaimer: Not mine. Wah.
A/N: Here's something new for me—a crossover of sorts, and an AU of sorts. Everytime I see an all-boys private school, I think about Dead Poets' Society. Those characters were my original "boys," and the first movie/television/book/anything that I wrote fanfiction for, back when fanfiction was still an underground concept and the internet did not exist. Well, then I saw a prompt on tumblr (you can find the link on my blog there) and I couldn't stop thinking about the connections between DPS and Glee. So, here I am, starting yet another potential epic.
I haven't seen the movie in quite a while, so some things might not be canon. But many of the DPS characters will be making an appearance. And I will be brushing up on the details as the story continues.
...
Blaine found the picture when he ran into the room, hiding from Cooper and his cousins. His chubby five-year-old fingers managed to shut the door quietly and run behind the big desk. A noise startled him on his way, and he stumbled back against the bookshelf, jostling the knickknacks and picture frames perched among dusty hardcover books. He spied the old black and white photo of three boys tucked behind a recent family portrait that included Cooper, himself, and several of his cousins.
Two of the boys looked to be older than Cooper while the third had to be his age. Blaine had stared at the photo-noticing all the details; like the way the older boys slung their arms around each other and smiled widely, while the younger one stood a bit away, his hands clasped together and eyes cast shyly toward the others. He felt a certain kinship to the unknown boy as he listened to the other children in the house laughing and running on the other side of the door. He heard his cousin Alan counting down a new round of hide-and-seek, seemingly forgetting that they had not found Blaine.
Since then, every time Blaine visited his grandparents' house, he would sneak into his grandfather's study to look at the picture.
No one told Blaine about his great uncle Todd, but Blaine knew he was still alive. He had asked his father once, and was promptly told never to ask about him again. But Blaine's curiosity would not be forgotten. As he got older, he caught snippets of whispered words at family reunions and holiday gatherings. Todd was in Argentina, working on a new book when Blaine was seven. Just after Blaine's ninth birthday, Todd had sent his brothers garish antiques he had discovered in a local market in Thailand. And when Blaine was 12, Todd was living in a commune in Egypt.
Time went by, and Blaine deduced that the lonely boy in that old black and white photo was indeed his great uncle Todd Anderson, the black sheep of the family-the only member of the family that had not entered a "respectable" profession, and was gallivanting across the world on the meager earnings of a writer.
Blaine began spending more time during family gatherings with the adults, trying to glean any information about the mysterious Todd Anderson. He refused to think it was because his cousins were relentless in teasing and taunting him. When information grew sparser, he turned to the internet. Blaine would research each location he had heard his uncle had been too. Longing to escape on adventures of his own, he imagined he was with his uncle, sailing the Mediterranean or hiking the mountains of South America.
At 13, Blaine found Todd Anderson on the internet. After patiently looking through the long list of Todd Andersons he had Googled, it was narrowed down to one. He had located several positive reviews of his work from prestigious sources, a few reports of past speaking engagements, and a complete listing of his books on Amazon. He didn't dare purchase the books or risk his father finding them in his room, so Blaine spent hours of his summer before freshman year in the bookstore or library, wherever he could find the books. They weren't terribly well known works, but reading Todd's descriptions of places he visited and the people he met captivated Blaine in the same way that the fantasy books that resided on his bookshelf at home did. In his writing, Blaine found many references to literary classics, old and new. Each mention had Blaine scrambling to get his hands on them, from Plato to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, to Allen Ginsberg and even to Katherine Patterson and Madeleine L'Engle, which had Blaine inexplicably laughing with relief when he dug out his childhood books from his closet.
Blaine had also discovered Todd's publishing company, and its address in New York City. He longed to write to the enigmatic man, to make a personal connection. However, despite his certainty that the Todd Anderson he had spent nearly his entire summer reading was indeed his great uncle, doubt crept in. Perhaps just as the family had broken ties with the man, he wanted nothing to do with the family. Blaine held no disdain for this thought, for he could find no fault if this were the case. So, he kept the small slip of paper he had written the address on tucked safely away in his desk drawer. And the letter he wrote, sealed in an envelope and stamped, remained in his backpack for the next four months.
Blaine finally met his great uncle when he was 14, four days after the Sadie Hawkins dance.
At first, he thought the pain medication was causing hallucinations. Blaine shifted awkwardly on the hospital bed, careful of the cast around his leg and the tubes still snaking along his arm, as he blinked at the stranger standing just inside the door. Though dressed in a worn wool coat, the elderly man was clean-shaven and carried himself proudly. A rueful expression graced his face, and his eyes held both sorrow and kindness.
"Hello, Blaine," the man said softly. "I'm your great uncle Todd."