Hey all! Another chapter here :D Big thanks and kudos to everyone who has reviewed on the other chapters, and on all my stories in general! You are fabulous :D

So this is the third chapter of Background Music. I really hope you all enjoy it. It's a little longer than the others, but I tried to cram more into it :D I hope it makes sense and everything! See you again at the end!

Chapter Three: Absolutely Empathy

Kurt's feet pounded against the pavement, each jolt digging into his arch and forcing the muscles of his foot to spasm. He bit his lip but kept going, not slowing his pace.

He was late for work. Extremely late for work. In his rush to get to the audition, he'd forgotten to call his boss, and if there was anything his boss disliked more than Kurt Hummel, it was when Kurt Hummel didn't call to say he was going to be late.

'I-' he breathed, erratically, sliding through the door and almost colliding with a washing machine. 'I'm here- I'm- I'm sorry I'm late.' He drew in a deep breath to try and steady his voice, but it remained persistently shaky. 'I- I had a last minute audition.'

His boss glanced at him, raising an eyebrow. 'You know what I said, Kurt.'

Kurt tried to think back, but nothing was really coming to him at the moment other than late, and Blaine. 'Um... no?'

'I told you that if you forgot to call one more time, or skipped a shift because of a damn audition, I would be firing you. So consider yourself fired.'

Kurt stared at him in shock. 'What?'

'I said, you're fired. I'm sorry, but I made myself a promise that I couldn't deal with your showbiz crap anymore, especially when you weren't getting anywhere anyways, so now you have to deal. Leave, I'm not interested.'

And with that, he stepped out of the room into the office and Kurt realised. He just got fired. From a laundromat.

'Hello?' Tanya's voice asked over the tinny cell phone reception.

'He came.'

'Pfft!' The woman tried to conceal her laughter, but Blaine could tell she was seriously amused.

'What?' he asked.

'You said "he came"!'

He groaned, but she was slowly calming down, and when he next spoke she was almost silent. 'He was at the auditions, and he was amazing.'

'Come on, Blaine. You're just saying that because you're in love with the guy.'

He pressed his lips together, trying to stop himself blurting out anything he'd regret. 'No, everyone else thought he was great too. And, Tan?'

'Yeah?'

'He picked the scene.'

Her voice was curious when she replied. 'What "the scene"?'

Blaine rolled his eyes. 'The scene. In the Dalton commons. Where I told him I was in love with him.'

'Really?'

'Well, in not so many words. I told him he moved me. And that I'd woken up and realised he was the one I was looking for.'

'And he chose to act that scene for his audition?'

Blaine bit his lip and nodded until he realised Tanya couldn't see him over the phone line. 'There were three options they could choose from. The other two were just simple dialogue moments. It was supposed to weed out those who were confident with portraying emotion.'

Blaine waited for Tanya's reply, but all he could hear was an expectant silence.

'And damn, could he portray that emotion.'

And suddenly she was chattering again, like a constant buzz in his ear. 'Oh, that's so sweet, Blaine, and did you talk to him, did he see you were there, does he know its your play and does he-'

'I'm pretty sure he knows,' Blaine cut her off. 'I don't think men regularly profess their love for other men over the bejeweled caskets of dead canaries.'

Tanya was silent for a moment then- 'Wait, you did WHAT?'

The apartment was silent when Kurt reached it. He'd wandered the city for a few hours, breathing in the smoky air and the smell of hot dogs in an attempt to calm himself down. He didn't want Ethan to see him in such a state.

He'd auditioned for Blaine's play.

He'd seen him in the audience, at the end of the line of producers. His mop of curly brown hair was unmistakeable, even though he'd let it grow a little longer, and he'd forgotten to shave. But Kurt had known. It was Blaine, and Blaine was there, and there was no doubt about it that it was his work. The damned lines kind of gave it away.

You move me, Kurt. Although he'd manage to replace his name with some irritatingly similar sounding syllable, it still rung true and clear to that day. It was like reliving it all over again.

Except you haven't talked to Blaine in four years. And there's Ethan.

And speaking of Ethan, where was he? The apartment was painfully silent, and Ethan's usual evening bustle was missing. Kurt considered taking out some steaks to cook for dinner, but could hardly consider himself in the mood for cooking, so instead grabbed a packet of fried noodles from the pantry and placed them in a container to boil in the microwave.

He reached with one hand to the remote on the side table, flicking the TV on and watching absently out of the corner of his eye. There was some romantic comedy on, and it was just slipping into an ad-break.

'And coming up next is an interview with Broadway star, Rachel B-'

He switched it off quickly. He didn't want to hear about Rachel's success. Especially when he was now completely out of work and hardly less than homeless on the streets.

Kurt turned to the doorway at the sound of the key in the lock, taking a quick breath at the thought that maybe its not Ethan, and that its a robber or worse, Blaine. And as he saw the dark mop of curly hair slipping around the door, a lump formed in his throat.

'Kurt?' And it escaped, sliding back down to wherever it came from, because that voice was not Blaine's. It was Ethan's - one hundred percent Ethan's - and the man was glancing at him with an odd expression on his face. 'Were you holding your breath?'

'What?' Kurt asked quickly, turning around to grab a fork from the draw and stir his packet of noodles. 'No. I was just...' And he paused, because he wasn't quite sure what to say next.

'Staring at me?' Ethan asked, and Kurt gave a half nod, trying to pull off a nonchalant shrug. He was sure it had failed, but Ethan seemed content enough to drop his bag and step the few steps closer to Kurt and wrap his arms around his boyfriend's waist.

'Hello,' he said, lowering his voice slightly. 'How was your day?'

Kurt groaned. 'Shit.'

'Really? That bad?'

He let out a sharp laugh, hearing the bitterness in his own tone. 'It was that bad. I got called in to a last minute audition for a small-time show, and no less than my ex-boyfriend was there, and he was the one that had written the damn thing.' Ethan took in a breath but didn't say anything, just held Kurt loosely by the waist and waited. 'And it was like deja vu, because he'd written it about us, and I did a really good job, which kind of annoys me because I really hope I don't get cast as myself in a corny musical about my life.' He took a breath. 'And then because I was late to work, I got fired.'

'What?' Ethan spoke up.

'Yeah, my boss was sick of me turning up late because of auditions and having to rearrange shifts. So I'm out on the streets, metaphorically.'

The dark haired man gave him a genuinely apologetic smile, and hugged Kurt close to him. 'Then maybe getting this musical could be a good thing. You'll get paid at least?'

'Yeah, but I don't want to have to deal with Blaine every day and-'

Ethan's eyes went wide. 'Wait, what?'

'Blaine? My ex-boyfriend? Whose play I auditioned for today?'

'Oh.' His voice was tense, and his arms had stiffened against Kurt's back. 'That ex-boyfriend.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'Nothing,' Ethan said quickly, defending himself. 'Just... you mention the guy a lot. He seems like a real jerk.'

He's not, Kurt felt like saying, but now most definitely was not the time to sing Blaine's praises. Not if he wanted somewhere to stay for the night. 'Yeah,' he said softly. And he pressed his lips gently against Ethan's letting smooth skin touch smooth skin. 'Let's just forget about it for tonight, okay. I need a break.'

And Ethan nodded, unravelling his arms from around Kurt and stepping aside to glance at the microwave container, nudging the noodles with a fork. 'Good luck with this shit,' he said laughingly.

Hanging up on Tanya, Blaine slid his phone into his pocket. He'd managed to round the conversation up with a quick lie that he needed to go because his food was boiling over. He knew it hadn't placated her one iota, but it gave him an excuse to end the line.

And man, was he glad he did, because her voice was still ringing in his ears. She most definitely was not happy with the way he'd first told Kurt he had feelings for him. It didn't matter to her that he was only a high school junior and that he clearly had no idea about how relationships worked, having never been in one, and just previously having tried to seduce a guy by singing to him at the Gap. She only heard the words "dead canary" and immediately thought "inappropriate".

'You wouldn't have thought it was inappropriate if you'd been there,' he muttered half to himself, stepping across the hotel room to the small bar fridge. 'It was romantic. Really, really romantic.'

He grabbed a can of diet coke from the back of the fridge, opened it and swigged it in one smooth movement. The cola tasted smooth against the back of his throat and the tang of sweetness bit at his tongue.

Setting the can down, he moved back across the room and reached for his guitar.

Blaine had to admit that his guitar had become his best friend these days. It treated him better than Tanya did, and there was really no one else. It didn't talk back to him, or argue. It only agreed whole heartedly, and when tuned right, could accompany him perfectly in any song he chose. He didn't even have to teach it the notes.

The old battered thing, which at some point during it's life he'd called Lila, rested perfectly against his thigh and he strummed the strings with his fingernails. They made a tinny sound, and he could hear the clash of out of tune notes. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a pick and carefully turned the knobs, tightening the strings to a practiced perfection.

And he started to play, properly this time, each note almost perfectly formed, only the slightest of missed bar chords. His fingers moved delicately, almost lazily across the strings, and slowly a melody formed.

He wasn't sure what it was, or where it came from, but almost everything he wrote started this way. It was just a feeling he had, a feeling that he needed to play and now and then suddenly the music was there, and the words just slipped out. He'd edit later, make it sound all right. But for now, the only pause he took was to grab his cell out of his pocket and press record, to be able to remember this moment tomorrow, after the sleepy drowsiness had hidden it from his mind.

'And so I guess maybe love is just a lie
And I don't know how to stop myself from hoping I will see you again
Because you infiltrate my mind
Without even trying, darling, darling.'

The words slipped from his mouth like water from a faucet, and he barely had time to think them over before they were mixing with the melody and forming the song.

'It's something like a dream
Perhaps I'm really lost and dying
Did I feel the knife blade as it hit
Or am I still left trying
To make a life of something far from what I always wanted
Cause ever since you've left I've seemed to go downhill.'

The chords were becoming stronger in intensity as he came into the chorus again, those first words seeming to echo in his mind. He liked the familiarity of this song, like he'd heard it before, and he was just singing a well known tune he'd listened to on the radio. He knew instinctively his first words were the chorus and he repeated them, letting his fingers strum at Lila softly, gently, but building in power with every strum.

'And so I guess maybe love is just a lie
And I don't know how to stop myself from hoping I will see you again
Because you infiltrate my mind
Without even-'

The phone rang, breaking Blaine out of his reverie, and he slipped the guitar off his shoulders with a scowl, leaning it against the sofa. He stopped the recording on his cell and held the phone to his ear.

'Hello?'

'Blaine. Great. You're still up. It's Marcus.'

'I know,' Blaine answered as the man paused for a breath. 'What do you want?'

'Why so sharp with me, my boy? This is good news! We've cast the role! That kid Kurt Hummel! He's in! I just got the call myself from the producers. They're so excited to be discovering a new talent. And a countertenor. Can you believe that? You write a play about a countertenor, and we manage to get one of the only ones in New York? How about that, Blaine? How about it?'

Yeah. How about it.

Soooooo. Yes, that's the end of this chapter. I got a few comments about the changing points of view, and I love doing this, so I am definitely not going to change it :D The only time it might be limited between views is if a single scene with both of them is really long. I don't like swapping views in the middle of a scene; it kind of disrupts the flow. I both read and write stories like a movie, and I imagining changing povs in the middle of a scene like suddenly making a black screen and then starting again from a whole different perspective. Not just the normal little shifts. So I don't really do that. But I happily cut backwards and forwards from rather separate scenes, as you've probably noticed :D

I hope you're continuing to enjoy this and feel free to continue to review :D

Love to you all!

xxxxx Wynnie