A/n: This is what happens when you spend several hours looping Ed Sheeran.
TW: Allusions to self-harm and suicide.
In the city there is a boy who does not believe in love, but creates it wherever he goes. He thinks that he might've once had a name, long ago, before. He's not sure when he came to the city or if he's just always been there now. Sometimes he dreams of another place- smaller and slower than his bright city, with the feeling of claustrophobic that comes with wide-open spaces and too much feeling. It's like falling, but only into the deeps depths of yourself. He can remember a voice sometimes, that sings softly to him.
Those are the days when he wakes up with tears on his face.
Blaine is sixteen years old when the love of his life disappears. Not in the melodramatic sense of teenagers- his love, embodied in a human form, vanishes in the sprawling life of the city that had held his imagination captive for so long.
They tell him, after two weeks, that people disappear in the city all of the time. Sometimes it's not by choice, but it is far more common for a person seeking to lose themselves to succeed.
Blaine tries not to believe them.
In the city there is a boy that no one can see.
He'd woken up here, on this mattress on the floor, years? Days? Minutes? ago. The loft was in the middle of an apartment building, yet no one ever comes to his door or notices him coming and going. He learns every inch of the city. Time holds no meaning for him.
There was a day (minute? Second? Years?) when he'd woken up to twisting pain in his back. He'd scrambled at his skin, trying to relief, only to pull handfuls of feathers away from his shoulders.
Blaine is nineteen and jaded by the world when he graduates. He goes into law- works his way into joining the police force. Maybe one day he would go back for his law degree. He is twenty-two by the time he is officially on the force.
(He will do everything he can to make sure that no one must go through what he has.)
The city thrums with life.
He twirls an arrow idly in his long fingers. His perch on the building gives him a view of the entire street and the people below.
The bow and woodcarving materials had been a surprise. At first he hadn't been sure what they were for, but when the wings had appeared, some long-forgotten memory had prompted him to whittle the wood. He pulls the name Eros from thin air and curls it into the pale wood of his arrows.
The couple in the alley below him are flirting sweetly, lingering after the night's activities.
He aims, and fires.
Another couple, blonde and laughing raucously on their way home, thick winter coats warping their shadows.
Aim, fire.
Blaine lowers the gun.
The rushing around him as the rest of the team moves in is white noise. All he can see is the face of the kidnapper- just like the hundreds before, taking the place of the person who had stolen Blaine's love away, just for a moment.
(He'd never given up hope, not really. There was always hope, right?)
He's growing restless.
He doesn't know why. The feeling of anticipation, of being on the edge of something just about to happen, exhausts him.
The couples he'd once doted on turn his stomach with an aching empty jealousy. His arrows turn sharper and needle thin.
A couple at a bus stop.
Aim, fire.
Walking home late at night, alone.
Aim, fire.
Three people, laughing at a bench.
Aim, fire.
Aim, fire.
Aim, fire.
Blaine's commanding officer makes him take off for a week.
In Blaine's office sits a white wooden arrow, resting and harmless on his desk. (It had belonged to his love's mother, long ago. It helped remind him.)
He tries to lose himself in the people.
The bright, thudding, thrumming crowds. He trails his bitter-sharp arrows over bared navels and twining limbs and twisting hands and jutting collarbones and traces them over the outline of lips.
He is never seen and yet never lost.
He stares for far too long at the sharp point of his arrow.
Blaine comes back from his vacation much more relaxed.
(He will never admit that he spent three of the seven days slobberingly drunk and reminiscing about his lost love.)
He traces the tip of the arrow back and forth back and forth across his palm. Up his arm to caress his pale throat.
It would be so easy. So quick.
Blaine gets the call late at night. He sighs at having to go to the outskirts of the city at such a time, but suits up nonetheless.
He enters the dilapidated building as others are exiting. They look puzzled and amazed, and more than one asks if his specialty is the freaky cases.
He enters the workshop- that's all it can be, with the tools and tables lying around- and spots one of his co-workers, in a trench coat, standing in front of what looks like a mattress. He's got his back to Blaine and is scratching his head.
A figure is lying on the make-shift bed.
Blaine's heart stops.
It hurts, much more than he's expected. Sharp and burning and he can't breathe can't…
He falls limply to his side, hand still curled loosely around the arrow in his throat.
Blaine falls to his knees next to the mattress. He reaches out and touches the pale face of the fallen figure, rules be damned.
"Kurt." He whispers.
The pale arrow vanishes suddenly.
He knows that voice.
There is a sudden harsh breath, and bright blue eyes blink open.