Thank you all so much for the wonderful response! I've never received so many alerts for one chapter before. This chapter was originally much longer, but the second half didn't seem to fit. So I cut it and it will be used in the third chapter. Thank you to everyone who reviewed, I hope this doesn't disappoint despite it's lenght.

I've seen you in a fight-
You lost.
I see you in a fight.

Two weeks later, the punch landed hard and was so very, very painful. Blaine stumbled backwards into the hall of the apartment as Finns tremendous form pushed in the doorway. The bitter tang of blood bit at his tongue, and Blaine raised a tentative hand to his jaw. He looked up at Finn, who's face was blazing. His brown eyes burning like wood on a fire. Blaine had never seen Finn look such a way before and an unpleasant pall cooled the blood in his veins frighteningly quick.

'You bastard,' Finn growled, reaching down and grabbing Blaine, thrusting him against the wall in one staggering motion. Blaine hit the wall with a dull thud, sliding to floor, surrendered. He would not fight Finn. He had nothing to fight for- nothing to defend.

'Did you see what you did to his face?' Finn shouted, unable to strike again and settling for punching the opposite wall with a force that seemed to shake the whole flat. Blaine didn't move from the floor, the sickening guilt and regret of what he had done weighing him down like an anchor to the carpet.

'You bastard, you fucking bastard,' Finn groused waspishly, his back to Blaine. His whole body seemed to be shaking with rage and Blaine found himself feeling ready to cry.

Not from fear, Blaine wasn't scared. No, definitely not scared. He was just ruined. It was as though some invisible hand had grabbed his heart and twisted it to the point where it stretched at the seams. Blaine could almost feel each one snapping as Finn continued to storm. It was terrible, worse than Blaine could ever have thought to sit and listen to Finn speak about Kurt that way. Like Blaine was some disgusting criminal and what had happened had been an act of pure malice, Kurt an unsuspecting victim. He felt the familiar sting of bile in his throat.

Something else stung, too. A bitter resentment. After all, it wasn't like Kurt was completely innocent in all this.

It seemed like forever before Blaine realised Finn had stopped raging, the silence in the space between them big and horrible. Blaine looked at Finn and noticed the man before him was staring down the hall, into the open lounge. At the back of the couch, where a blanket was strewn over it carelessly. Blaine saw Finns brow crease, his fists stiffen beneath the hem of his denim jacket.

'Who's staying on your couch?' he asked, each syllable dripping acid.

'Me,' Blaine croaked. His voice seemed to abandon him. Lost in the sea of so many other things. 'I couldn't... I just can't sleep in our bed anymore. Not without him. Not after what h-happened.'

Suddenly overcome with emotion, Blaine curled his knees into his chest and began to sob. Finn appeared to be taken aback by Blaine's sudden weakness. But Blaine didn't care. He didn't care if Finn screamed and yelled all night at him. Punched him until blood spilled. Nothing could take it back. Blaine found the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them, making circles in the carpet with their weight;

'I was stupid- insane. I thought he was sleeping with someone else, I thought...' Blaine choked into his flannel pants. 'I was just so angry. So hurt. I couldn't believe myself, wouldn't believe him. We were fighting and he said- God, I don't even know.' Finn still said nothing from above him and Blaine couldn't bring himself to look up. 'I just couldn't lose him, Finn. I was so fucking scared, but now- now I just, just don't know'

Finn fell silent and nothing filled the air between them but Blaine's crying. The guilt and grief that had plagued Blaine suddenly raked through him with a threatening amount of strength. He couldn't bring himself to care what Finn was doing, what he was thinking. All that mattered was that Kurt was gone. And after two weeks of adamant silence, Blaine began to lose the faint hope he had had that Kurt would come back.

'He misses you.'

Finn had spoken so quietly that Blaine almost missed what he said. In jerky breaths, Blaine looked up to see that Finn was still not looking at him. But he had looked away from the couch and was now watching the floor with quivering eyelids. He groaned in a frustrated way and Blaine thought Finn was going to hit him again, but instead he just collapsed back against the opposite wall, facing Blaine.

'Don't know why. Told him he'd be better off hitting you back,' Finn spat. 'But he said he couldn't. Said you weren't yourself. But you weren't drunk, were you? You weren't high or anything!' Blaine shuddered against the wall, and for a brief moment, he wished Finn would hit him again. 'You're a bastard, Anderson.'

Blaine registered the renewed use of his surname and he could feel himself nodding in reply. They were silent for a very long time, and a few neighbours peered curiously in the abandoned front door, but Finn seemed to give them a look that encouraged they move on. Only after Ms. Wall stopped and opened her mouth to ask something, did Finn snap at her savagely before slamming the door shut. Blaine winced. The noise brought the memory Kurt leaving back with a vengeance.

'I d-didn't mean to,' Blaine stammered. Finn seemed to inhale anger at the statement.

'You didn't mean to?' he repeated viciously. Blaine looked away, more tears threatening to spill. 'What? It was some sort of freak accident or something?'

'It wasn't like that,' Blaine murmured weakly but Finn had regained his stride.

'You- I don't even know what to call you!' Finn yelled from above. 'What? You think it's different because it's two dudes? No! You don't hit the people you love, Anderson! Ever-!'

'I KNOW THAT!'

Blaine wasn't sure where the anger inside him came from, but it was sudden and completely consuming. The tears had stopped. In one push, he was off the floor and facing Finn. Finn pressed himself off the wall in response, a far more impressive act seeing as Finn was a good foot taller than Blaine. But Blaine didn't care. All the frustration and heartache he had been feeling was suddenly hot and boiling inside him.

'It just happened!' Blaine roared, his voice filling the apartment like water. 'We were fighting, screaming! He said some things- horrible things! I thought he was seeing someone, I thought he was screwing around!' Finn's eyes widened and his fists tightened, but Blaine couldn't stop. His twisted the words, imitating Kurt's mocking tone; 'I told him I wouldn't be surprised, that he had always loved a bit of attention. Then he shouted, screamed, I grabbed his arm... He said...' Blaine suddenly faltered, the pain of what had happened overwhelming him and cutting his words short.

'What?'

Blaine shuddered, the truth and venom in Kurt's words still feeling as cold and awful as they had then. 'He said he would've though. He would've slept with him if he had known it would hurt me. Just so he'd be able to walk away knowing he'd had the last win.'

Blaine took a stammering breath. Finn was still silent. 'We'd had rows before this. Fighting over his late nights with this Jasper guy, over the constant texts and stupid excuses to spend time together that Kurt always fell for. He never believed me. But he said he'd rather fuck this random stranger and win a fight with me, than stay and lose. And I just... I just snapped. '

It seemed like years before Finn spoke again, and when he did, the words were laced with an almost doubt that brought Blaine back to the hesitant seventeen year old, suggesting Queen songs for competitions long since lost; 'Kurt would never say a thing like that. Ever. He loves you. He'd never-'

'I'd never hit him,' Blaine interrupted coldly, the words tasting like blood. His jaw still ached and his bottom lip throbbed. 'But he did say those things. And I did hit him.'

Finn made an odd movement forward, but seemed to decide against at the last minute. Blaine was vividly reminded of the way Kurt's fingers trembled, the way he stepped so carefully the night before he left. He started to cry again, unable to contain it any longer, his sudden fury still pumping and swirling like burning oil on sorrowed water.

'I've lost him, Finn,' Blaine said quietly. He turned away from Finn and kicked the wall hard, ignoring the pain and pressing himself against it, the cool grey Kurt had picked all those months seeming even colder than it had two weeks ago. Blaine gave a bitter laugh. 'Huh, who'd have thought it? Years of Kurt bitching about girls and other guys at bars, and it turns out I'm the jealous guy. You were right, Finn. I am a bastard.'

'Stop it,' Finn said, a new emotion lurking in his words, eyes closing in a familiar way Blaine almost forgot. But Blaine shook his head, a strained smile still stretched across his face.

'No, it's true. Everything you said, every last thing was true and we both know it,' Blaine said scathingly. 'Why not give me another go round? Maybe I can get a bruise to match Kurts-'

The punch was sudden and unbelievably painful. Blaine saw lights dance in front his eyes and his stomach turned over violently at the force of the strike. Crumbling to the floor, he looked up to see Finn breathing heavily, his eyes glossed.

'Don't you dare say something like that,' he snarled down at Blaine, his whole form shaking. 'Whatever's going on between you two is screwed up. But if you ever lay a hand on my brother again, I will kill you.'

As Finn left, the door banging off the wall once more, Blaine watched the place where he had been feeling strangely empty. He thought that if Finn had hit him again, made him feel as humiliated and scared as Kurt must've felt, he'd feel better. Like some sort of reprieve. But instead he felt nothing but a sickening grief that made his heart sting and a headache that pounded in time to his bloodied jaw.

We're under the sheets and you're killing me.
In our house made of paper, you words all over me.
We're under the sheets and you're killing me.

God, I love writing Finn. He's brilliant.