A/N: First, I have to plug Whatsername Lambert because she's the one that wrote the story/is writing the story that inspired this piece. I just had a sudden flash of inspiration in the shower one day and had to get it down.

So, if you like this one, you should definitely check out her story called "Lessons In Being A Man".

Secondly, I'm not a huge FF writer, but I've been doing more as of late. I write a lot of original fiction, like a lot of original fiction, but still. I have a few other things typed up that I might put up on here later, so this will have to do for now.

Finally, I don't own any of these characters.

Ellie was fifteen when a few more pieces of her childhood suddenly fit together.

She was fifteen, just barely, and sitting in her closet with the light on, finishing a reading assignment due tomorrow that she had told both her dad and Blaine that she had finished yesterday, even though she was supposed to be in bed, asleep. The song floating through her earbuds – 'Teenage Dream' from Blaine's vintage collection of early Katy Perry – had faded out and in the silence following the song, before the next one continued, she heard the telltale sounds of her fathers going at it in their bedroom down the hall. There were a couple dull knocks, a gasp and cry that sounded distinctly like her dad's, and then the hiss of Blaine, probably telling him to keep it down, and a short fit of giggles. The next song – 'Born This Way' from her dad's Lady Gaga obsession back in the day – quickly drowned out the noise, and she returned to her book, A Tale of Two Cities.

She had just started the last chapter of the assignment when 'Born This Way' faded out, just in time for a loud f-bomb to echo through the upstairs. Ellie winced and lifted her book to cover her face in embarrassment. Really? They couldn't do this some other night? Although, for as embarrassing as it was sometimes, she was glad to know that her dad and Blaine still loved each other. She had friends whose parents were divorced, in the process of divorcing, or who fought so much they might be better off divorced. She also had a few friends who didn't have two parents. Her friend Becky's dad had been killed on duty as a police officer several years ago, and her friend Erica's mom had passed away last year from breast cancer. She was lucky to have to two parents that still loved each other and were willing to do everything for her. It didn't matter to her that they were both men. They were a family.

Another loud string of curses bypassed her music and found their way into her ears. It was then she remembered something she had forgotten. A memory that had faded with time, been pressed into the back recesses of her mind as she had gotten older and found more important things to think about, suddenly came rushing forward. She was six, living in the guest room of Blaine's apartment not long after they'd gotten away from Dave and his abuse. She'd heard the same sounds, the same curses, but because of fairly recent events, she'd thought Blaine was hurting her dad. She thought her dad might have been in trouble again. But he hadn't been.

The awkward conversation Blaine and her dad had with her the next morning was nearly gone from her memory bank, but she distinctly remembered the confusion as to how someone could scream like that and not be doing it maliciously. She also remembered resigning herself to thinking about it when she got older, when she would supposedly understand better.

"Well, shit," she murmured.

Now she understood. When she was six years old, curled up under her blanket, hugging her favorite stuffed animal, and thinking that Blaine was hurting her dad, she was really just listening to them have mind-blowing sex. Fantastic.

Ellie sighed heavily and messed with her iPod, changing the music to something that wouldn't remind her of sex. She settled on her Star Wars soundtrack and cast her gaze back down at the pages of her book, shaking her head slowly.

With some of the things that went on in the Hummel-Anderson household, it was a wonder she turned out as well as she did, she thought, a small smile tipping her lips as she turned the page.