author's notes: special thanks to my beta Inwenalas.

characters: June Wilder (OC), Blaine, Sebastian, Joe

CHAPTER SUMMARY: When June finds out Sebastian's been texting Blaine she confronts Sebastian against Blaine's expressed wishes.

BUT YOUR WORDS ARE LIKE WEAPONS;;

chapter ten

"Your phone's buzzing," June says, his phone vibrating in circles between them on the cafeteria table.

"Yeah, it's—" Blaine starts, but stops himself. June doesn't know about this, she probably thinks it's Kurt and knows that pointing out a message on his phone lately only leads to giddiness. Kurt texts him plenty, but he's in class now.

"It's just Sebastian," he says.

June looks up from her history book. "Sebastian?" she asks. "What does he want?"

"He wants me to have dinner with him at Breadstix."

Her eyes narrow on his face. Now he's done it; he shouldn't have said anything, he should have just told her it was Kurt or his brother. Anyone but Sebastian. He thinks that part of her wants to keep Sebastian to herself, because they've shared something he and Sebastian haven't—it suits him just fine, the more time Sebastian spends with June the less time he can spend texting him.

"Like a date?" she asks.

He shrugs.

June reaches for his phone. "No—" he starts, but she snatches the phone from the table before he reaches it himself. He sighs and leans back in his chair. This is really something he'd hoped to avoid. June's going to take this personal. There's an incredibly beautiful part of her that always tries to protect him from Sebastian's advances, shield him from bullies and ugly words, but he doesn't need that part of her right now.

"Blaine, there are over a dozen texts here! And that's just today," she says, her eyes wide in question when she looks up to meet his eyes. "How long has he been doing this?"

This is the part of her that feels for him, instead of him, that knows how difficult it is for him to get flirtatious messages from Sebastian while Kurt's in New York, so far away. It's something sisterly and intuitive and sometimes he does wonder how she does it.

"Since we ran into him and his sister last week. It's no big deal."

But he knows he's not fooling her. Of course it's a big deal, Sebastian's well aware of his effect on him, and with Kurt gone it's that much harder for him to ignore it.

"Please, don't—" He wants to tell June to keep her cool, to not Hulk out all over Sebastian next time she sees him. "I can handle it."

June looks at him and takes a deep breath—she shrugs and goes back to her reading.

"June," he says, forcing her to look up at him. "Promise me you won't talk to him about it."

He can tell he's asking a lot of her. It's sweet, and he appreciates it more than he can tell her right now, but if she antagonizes Sebastian now it's only going to get worse. And he's still feeling too miserable about Kurt not being here to be able to handle Sebastian properly.

"Okay," she says. "I won't."

#

He's caught completely off guard when he sees June's car parked outside Dalton, her leaning back against the hood. She's sipping from a Frappucino (he expected nothing less) and clearly waiting for someone to turn up. As far as he knows he's the only one she knows at Dalton.

"You just can't stay away, can you, Miss—"

"You have to stop texting Blaine," she interrupts him.

Sebastian blinks. "Excuse me?"

"Kurt and Blaine are trying the long-distance thing."

"And I should respect that?"

"Yes!" she shouts, attracting the attention of more than a few of his friends.

He just smiles and shakes his head.

"What?" she asks.

He thinks it's cute she came here to stick up for Blaine, but would Blaine really want that? He doubts Blaine asked her to talk to him. No, this is a typical June-on-the-warpath routine. "I'm wearing him down," he says, and puts his hands in his pockets. "Before you know it he'll be mine and Kurt will be nothing but a distant memory."

If eyes could spout fire he's sure June's would right now. "Blaine loves Kurt," she sneers and takes a step closer.

"You think that's going to stop me?"

Her reply comes so fast he thinks she must have rehearsed it while she was waiting: "No, I think it's what's kept you going," she says, her eyes ice-cold, just like in that first conversation they shared after he slushied Blaine.

What? he thinks.

"This isn't about your feelings for Blaine," she continues. He thinks it's curious that she already supposes his feelings for Blaine without really knowing if he does. He does, or at least he thinks he does, he's never put so much effort in any guy before. "You just can't stand that he's with Kurt."

"Blaine's too good for him."

But she ignores his answer: "If you keep doing this you'll get them both heartbroken, you do know that? Blaine will hate himself and he'll never forgive you."

"No, he'll blame himself."

She blinks, eyes digging into his. He knows he can't do this; she'll never let him get away with hurting her best friend. "And you walk away unscathed." She shakes her head and looks away. "Every time I give you the benefit of the doubt, think you might be an actual person with feelings—"

"Wait, you think we're friends?" his own answer comes way too fast, a remnant of the time when going at each other like this wasn't harmful to their friendship, or whatever it is they've got going between them. Now he knows she'll take his words at heart. But he can't stop himself, this is his defense mechanism too. "Miss June, you mean to say you actually like me?"

When she looks at him again he thinks she's about to spew every bad word in her vocabulary at him, show him just how much she's gotten to know him and tear him down completely. But to his surprise, she doesn't. She just shakes her head again. "Forget it." She shrugs, and walks back to her car.

He doesn't know what just happened, or what cuts through him watching her walk away—it's her indifference, he thinks, the thought that he's disappointed her rather than get her angry. She accepts defeat only to leave him behind defeated.

"I'm not used to not getting what I want!" he calls after her.

There's a brief trip in her step and whatever part of him that does consider them friends hopes she'll turn around. But she doesn't. She gets in her car and drives off without casting him another glance. She's clever. They're both verbal people, but she knows that sometimes silence speaks louder than words. Right now her silence leaves him with an eerie discomfort at the pit of his stomach. He's not sure he's ready to lose her as a whatever-she-is-to-him.

He thought the summer would chase it away, just like Karofsky's suicide attempt had prompted several apologies and the realization that he was going through life a joker, never taking anything seriously until he was faced with the hard cold reality. He thought his nights spent with other guys at Scandals and in Paris would make him forget about Blaine Anderson.

But one look at that bashful schoolboy thing, the perfectly tamed hair and that killer smile and he was right back where he started. He wanted Blaine for himself. It's not love or even puppy love or any of those other terms people use—but there's feelings he doesn't quite understand and he knows Blaine is the answer to them.

He went about it all wrong when they first met, his usual overconfident self, raining down compliments that Blaine waved off, going toe to toe with Kurt—he came on too strong. No, Blaine would need a different approach. Maybe it's time Blaine knew that.

#

She should have known it would come back to bite her in the ass. Confronting Sebastian was a big mistake, Blaine had known that and he'd asked her to stay out of it for good reason. God, how could she have been so stupid? Things like that were bound to go wrong.

She's in the library when Blaine storms in—Joe's at the opposite side of the table, both of them studying in silence, but Blaine doesn't seem to care.

"Did you talk to Sebastian about me?"

Damn, caught already and it'd only been a day.

"Yeah," she says, but her heart breaks when she sees Blaine's eyes widen. She'd promised goddamn it and still she'd—but Sebastian had no right to do that to Blaine. When Kurt was texting that Chandler guy they'd almost broken up and she wouldn't let that happen because of Sebastian.

And then his—Sebastian's goddamn nonchalance over the whole thing, like breaking Blaine and Kurt up was some sort of game for him to play and he was having fun with it. This was the Sebastian Smythe everyone had always warned her about, the early Sebastian before they knew each other well enough.

"Why would you do that?" Blaine asks. "I don't need you to fight my battles."

She sighs; why couldn't she just have kept her promise? Keeping promises for friends isn't a hard thing to do. "I know that," she says.

"I love Kurt, I could never—"

"Blaine, I know," she insists.

"Then why would you go to him?" Blaine's eyes read nothing but hurt and it breaks her heart. But she thinks her heart's been breaking since yesterday. "You know it's only going to get worse."

"Then block his number," she says defensively. She loves Blaine so much but there are times she wishes he'd just put his money where his mouth was. "God, Blaine, if you can fight your own battles then just do it," she adds, speaking from a place she knows she shouldn't tap into. "Instead of talking to me about it."

Blaine straightens up and stares at her, his eyes telling her he's angry and he won't let this go easily. "I will," he says, and leaves.

Tears fill up her eyes—Blaine and her have never fought, they've never even particularly disagreed over anything, and now he just walked away angry with little intention to talk to her any time soon she imagines.

She gets up from her seat and grabs her things together. She has no desire to cry in front of Joe or the librarian or anyone else for that matter. The pressroom is always blissfully empty, she'll go hide in there.

She wishes she could just say it, admit it to herself and to Blaine, so that he'd understand exactly why she did what she did. Her anger towards Sebastian has nothing to do with Kurt or Blaine, or the fact that Sebastian's trying to break them up even—it's lowly and she thought Sebastian was a better person than that, but her anger comes from somewhere else.

She thinks that, well, maybe she's in love with Sebastian.

And she knows exactly when it happened. It was in a cab in Paris at four am in the morning. Sebastian was drunk on dancing and she was high on an Italian make-out session, but he tucked her under his arm to keep her warm and he kissed her hair before she dozed off. She knew what it meant to be infinite.

He was just shy of drunk but she wasn't and she remembers every single moment.

"You like him," a voice sounds from the open door. She swivels around in her chair, not used to anyone actually knowing where the pressroom is—it's a tiny room somewhere in a forgotten corner of the school, but at least there was decent lighting. Right now it seems Joe has followed her here.

"Like who?" she asks, because she's fairly certain that this time she won't be accused of being in love with Blaine.

"This Sebastian guy."

Her heart drops to her stomach. How can a guy like Joe, a guy she hardly knows, tell that about her while her best friend—no, that's not fair, Blaine's had a lot on his mind.

"Well, that would be impossible," she answers instead. "He's gay. I'm gay. Or so I thought anyway."

Wait, did she just blurt that out in public?

"So you do like him," Joe says, and she's grateful he doesn't point out the fact that she just practically came out to him.

"It's stupid," she says. She's in love with a gay guy. She's in love with a gay guy who's interested in her best friend. A best friend who's trying to maintain a long-distance relationship with a guy Sebastian loathes. When did her life become so melodramatic?

"It's not stupid," Joe says.

"Having feelings for a guy who's after my best friend?" Part of her wants to hate Sebastian for what he's putting Blaine through—part of her can't stand what he's doing, but a much bigger part of her is just confused over, well, everything. "While I don't even—I don't even know what I am."

Joe takes another step inside. "Who you are is just someone that's searching," he says. "There's nothing wrong with that."

She smiles. "How are you always this serene?" She envies him for it.

Joe shrugs and shuffles around for a bit. "You're serene," he says.

She chuckles. "I'm really not." She shakes her head. If she were anything like Joe she'd have kept her promise to Blaine, stay out of his business and she wouldn't have known what Sebastian was really planning. And now she's fighting with Blaine and Sebastian. Forget melodrama, her life's more like a real-life soap opera. "I'm always thinking, dreaming—I have trouble shutting out all the static."

"Even when you're writing?" Joe asks.

She arches an eyebrow; she never thought Joe was that observant. "No." She smiles. And if she's really honest with herself singing shuts out the static too. Sadly that also makes her realize that talking to Sebastian makes her forget about her troubles as well.

She sighs. "Not when I'm writing."

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