Scott called for a break and the group broke up. Cooper showed Deaton his bag and giving him samples of things they got raiding Pamela's storeroom, stuff they can't get anywhere else, including unrefined sea salt, ginger talismans and Philippine-grown chilli peppers.
Isaac took Sam downstairs to the basement, letting him use the McCalls' washing machine to do their laundry. Lydia and Danny went to town to pick up lunch. It was still early but they decided that now was as good a time as any and the food can keep until they got hungry.
Chris and Allison took a walk around the block. Allison felt the need to apologize and Chris needed to let his daughter know not beat herself up about last night. They didn't get the chance the night before so they were taking it now.
Blaine was in the backyard, enjoying the warm sunshine and for once not having to worry about being attacked. He knew he would have to feed soon but for now he could keep his craving under control and just enjoy a very rare peaceful moment.
"So you and Sam, huh?" A voice breaks through his quiet. Blaine turns to see Scott standing a few feet behind him. In the morning light his mocha-colored skin practically glows with health and his warm brown eyes matches the easy humour in his lazy smile. Blaine can admit that Scott McCall, with his askew jaw and compact but graceful frame, is gorgeous but he's used to crushing on the unattainable so he pushes it aside with no difficulty.
"It's complicated," he answers with his own smile, letting Scott know that his questions or presence are not unwelcome.
"That's what your brother said."
"So you and Allison, huh?" Blaine says and he can't help but smirk when he sees Scott's startled reaction.
"How did you know?"
"Please," Blaine snorts, "after having to work out the relationship quagmire that is New Directions, figuring out who used to date who and who is into whom is child's play."
"New Directions?" Scott asks as he sits on the grass beside Blaine. Apparently not caring about things like dirt or grass stains. But then again, Blaine is on the grass, too, and Blaine had stopped caring about dirt and grass stains a long, long time ago.
"My friends," he manages to say normally. It helps that they're talking about this in the sunlight. Sunlight always seems to make things better somehow. "We were in show choir and were at the bottom of the food chain in high school. We had to stick-up for each other because no one else would have. We got ridiculously close. One of the fall outs is that we tend to date within the group."
"Wait all your friends, the ones in the pictures, were in show choir?"
"Yep."
"And you were at the bottom of the food chain?" Scott asks incredulously.
"Yep."
"Even the blondes?"
"Which one?"
"All of them!" Scott exclaims. "You guys are like ridiculously hot! Where did you go to school, Tyra Banks High? Were all your other classmates models or something?"
Blaine just burst out laughing.
"Okay, I may be oversimplifying," he concedes. "When New Directions started, we were made up of misfits and outcasts but yeah, when we started winning competitions we started getting some respect and a lot of the cool kids started to join. But we faced a lot of opposition, we had zero support from the school even though we were national champions, so we kinda developed an 'us-against-them' mindset that kinda stuck even when it wasn't as bad later on."
"National champions, huh?" Scott asks. "How does that work exactly? Do you have events on who can sing the highest note?"
"Okay now you're just showing your jockiness and making fun of us music nerds," Blaine sees Scott wince and he senses weakness. "You are, aren't you? I bet you're like the star athlete...too small for football...soccer? Baseball?"
Scott sighs. "Lacrosse," and at Blaine's raised eyebrow, he also concedes, "team captain."
"Hah!"
"And I'm not too small for football!"
"Scott," Blaine says condescendingly, "you're barely taller than I am and while I'll admit you got the brawn, there is no way in hell they'll put you in a football jersey. But then again you are here in California and everyone knows how wimpy folks out here are..."
"Hey!" Scott yells out in indignation. "I'll have you know that lacrosse is a rough, manly sport that is just as brutal as football."
"Which I bet they only allowed you to play after you became a werewolf."
"So not the point," Scott mumbles.
"Wait, I'm right?" Blaine looks surprised.
"I was asthmatic, okay?" Scott says sullenly.
"Aw, don't feel, bad," Blaine grins, "I'm just joshin' with ya."
"Nope," Scott says crossing his arms. "You hurt my feelings. To make up for it you have to tell me something embarrassing about yourself."
"I was part of a superhero club in school," Blaine says. He's not really embarrassed about it but he figures that for a jock-type like Scott it would be. He actually likes the guy, though, not at all like the Neanderthals back in Lima. "We wore costumes and everything."
"You wore superhero costumes in school?" Scott says flatly.
"Yup."
"This was a club?"
"Yah."
"The school actually allowed this?"
"Yah," Blaine said. "Before it used to be a group of cosplayers who got together to exchange costume tips and planned trips to different conventions but when I joined up, we got the principal to allow us to wear our costumes during certain days and for club events and the club participated in community outreach programs including charity work; which we did, in costume."
"That...is...awesome!" Scott's face transforms into a huge grin. "That has got to be one of the coolest things ever! Who did you go as, Batman?"
"No," Blaine says, pleased and surprised at Scott's enthusiasm over the club. "We had to make our own superheroes and design our own costumes. That way, no one fights over who gets to be Batman or Superman."
"That's even better, so who are you?"
"I can't tell you," Blaine says smirking.
"Why not?!" Scott actually looks upset.
"Duh," Blaine says rolling his eyes, "it's a secret identity?"
"Huh," Scott says settling back and then shrugs his shoulders. "No worries, I'll have Danny look it up later. He's like a demon on the computer, he'll find out."
"Nightbird."
Scott looks at Blaine who had also leaned back and was now facing the sun with his eyes closed. "Huh?"
"My alter ego's name was Nightbird," he repeats. "Sam was the Blonde Chameleon but don't tell him I told you."
"Wait, Sam used to be a part of the superhero club?"
"Yeah, he's the one who changed the direction of the club from just being cosplayers to a charity group…who were also cosplayers."
"Aha!" Scott exclaims. As Blaine looks to him, his eyes open and his face showing confusion. "You made a mistake! You had neatly deflected my earlier question about you and Sam but you brought it back around!"
"I wasn't deflecting."
"Yes you were."
"If I was I was, but then so were you, I noticed you didn't answer me about you and Allison either."
"We used to be together but now we're just friends," Scott shrugs.
"That's nice," Blaine says. "It's good that you can remain friends. That's one thing the New Directions was cool about, with all the inter-group dating and relationships we learned how to stay friends despite all the break-ups that were going around." Blaine sits up as if realizing something. "Come to think of it, the harshest rivalries were among people who never dated and were never interested in each other that way."
Scott opened his mouth about to tell Blaine about Jackson when something occurred to him.
"You did it again!" Scott is now on his knees pointing accusingly at Blaine. "Deflector!"
Blaine chuckles, "Okay! Okay! You got me!" He looks at Scott with plain curiosity on his face. "Why do you want to know?"
When he sees Scott's eyes narrow, he holds up his hands and speaks up before Scott can yell at him again. "Peace! Peace! I'm not deflecting but before I answer your rather personal question I just want to know the reason behind it."
Scott can't help but blush when he realized that his question is rather personal but he has his reasons and isn't afraid to share them with Blaine, maybe not all of them though...Blaine is kinda cute and he's curious how close he is with this Sam dude.
"Sam is the most volatile and dangerous of the three of you," Scott says, settling back down. "I meant what I said, I don't hold his actions back at the Nemeton against him but he's the wild card. I swore to protect you guys and to do my job I have to understand you. I think I get where you and Cooper are coming from but Sam is an enigma." Scott didn't want to admit that Sam actually scared him last night and every bit of information that can help him get a handle on Sam would help. "I'm specifically asking about the two of you because you seem to be the only one who can control him."
"I guess that's fair," Blaine says. His eyes look back out into the yard. "Don't judge Sam too harshly. If you met him last year you would swear he was a completely different person." Blaine looks at Scott again. "We all had to change to survive. Sam just had to change the most. He isn't an attack dog, you know, he can reason and it's not like I have a remote control that directs his thoughts and actions—"
"But you can if you wanted to," a voice behind the interrupts.
Scott and Blaine turn to see Deaton and Chris behind them. Blaine grimaces, realizing that by allowing himself to relax he let the two to sneak up on him. He expands his senses. He can smell Cooper and he can feel Sam. They're in the kitchen, probably unpacking the food.
"What do you mean?" Scott asks Deaton but Deaton remains silent and just looks at Blaine. Scott turns to face Blaine and asks again, "What does he mean, Blaine?"
"He means that I blood-bound Sam."
"That's how you calm him down, isn't it?" Deaton asks. "I sensed it. You can feel each other and you can control his emotions. That's how you were able to heal him, one of those pre-conditions?"
"Must either be related to me by blood or bound to me by blood," Blaine says dully. He gets up, feeling a little vulnerable on the ground. He clamps down on his emotions, though, not wanting to have Sam come storming out here and possibly cause an incident.
"You enslaved another person," Deaton says intensely. He isn't shouting but Blaine can feel him holding back. "How can you expect to go through the ritual as "pure" when you used a ritual to bind another person against his will?"
"When he did it to save my life," Sam answers coolly behind Deaton. Blaine sighs, seems like everyone is sneaking up on everyone else. He looks at Sam and Sam looks back at him and Blaine looks down with a grimace, he can feel Sam's smugness over their connection. Sam knew something was up when Blaine locked their connection down tight.
"More than Tina, more than Kurt, I'm Blaine's best friend," Sam says. "If I asked him to go to the middle of the Amazon forest with nothing but a plastic spork he would."
Blaine walks up to Sam and nudges his shoulder. "I'm kinda stupid that way."
"So those bastards grabbed me and started the ritual but Pamela, Cooper and Blaine showed up and stopped them," Sam never took his eyes off Deaton. "It was too late you know, they had taken my heart but they hadn't consumed it yet and the ritual was keeping me alive. I needed to be alive while they took my skin."
Scott gulped as he realized that their friends Kurt, Tina and Finn were flayed alive. He imagined someone doing that to Stiles and he couldn't understand how Blaine was willing to let those bastards get away with it. Then he thought if it meant sparing Isaac, his mom, Allison and the rest the same horror, he might do the same. He looked at Blaine and felt a kinship with the young man. He just knew that Blaine hated them with every fibre of his being, but he won't let that hate dictate his decisions. Blaine was as much an alpha of his pack as Scott was of his.
"They stopped them but they couldn't put my heart back and we all knew that once the candles were extinguished the ritual will end and I'd die," Sam's eyes and words bored into Deaton. "So Blaine did the only thing he could to keep me alive, he gave me his."
"Figuratively speaking of course," Blaine adds trying to lighten the mood. "I didn't literally tear my heart out and put it in Sam." Blaine winces when his attempt at levity falls flat.
An uneasy silence descends on the yard. The world suddenly got a bit darker despite the bright sunlight.
"Sacrifice, Emissary," Sam continues unrelentingly. "He sacrificed himself for me. There is nothing purer, no magic whiter than that. So before you start accusing him of the darkest craft, know that you aren't the only one who knows his shit."
"I will not apologize," Deaton says. "Sacrifice is pure, yes, but his reasons his motivations...if they are even the least bit selfish, he will be judged harshly!"
"Then it's a good thing that he's the one who will be standing there and be judged and not you, isn't it, druid?"
"Sam," Blaine says firmly. "That's enough." He turns to face Deaton. "I know the risks I'm facing Emissary and I'm grateful for your concern but I've made my decision. If you will consent to perform the ritual then I will be ready to face whatever comes."
Deaton nods stiffly and swiftly walks back to the house. Chris however has a curious expression on his face while looking at Sam.
"What?" Sam barks at the man, not liking his scrutiny.
"You're a revenant," Chris says with a voice that sounds satisfied, that a puzzle has been solved.
"Stop trying to figure me out!" Sam bites back harshly.
"Sam," Blaine says in a soft but firm voice. Blaine can feel the emotions in Sam warring in him and he knows by now to let Sam cool off. "Why don't you go for a run?" Running has always been like meditation for Sam, and Blaine knows he needs it right now.
"Go," Blaine says, "I'll be fine." Sam smiles a tiny smile and without looking at either Scott or Chris walks towards the house.
"He needs to cool down," Blaine explains as he watches Sam walk away. "He's doesn't like it when people assume the worst about us."
"He doesn't behave like a revenant," Chris says.
"Sorry but I have to admit that I haven't really been doing my homework," Scott interrupts. "What's a revenant?"
"Revenants are the vengeful dead, brought back to life to right the wrongs done to them—"
"Sam isn't a revenant," Blaine interrupts. He looks at Chris and Scott and seems to think hard, probably on what to say. "Sam isn't a revenant," Blaine repeats himself, "you shot him, remember? He was dying. Revenants, being undead, are kinda immune to death."
"Right," Chris says sheepishly, "I forgot about that."
"So what he is he?"
"Sam is a person," Blaine says in a tone closest to anger that either man has ever heard him, despite the hard things he has had to reveal. "Sam was going to die. I didn't know what I was doing, all I knew at the time was that I had some power over blood and Sam was going to die because he wouldn't have that piece of himself that controlled blood.
"Like I said, I didn't know what I was doing, I only wanted him to live," Blaine isn't looking at them, he's just looking at where Sam had walked off. "I...called...on the blood. I don't know how I did what I did and I doubt I could do it again but the end result is that, somehow, he's bound to me. He shares my life, my strength, my speed, and my senses. He can still die, as you saw in the clearing and if I die then so will he. We are bound. I can choose to exert my control over the bond, but I won't. I will never do that to Sam.
"For what it's worth, I hope that gives you a handle on him Scott," Blaine says as he walks away.
Scott watches him go. He remembers what Sam said last night, that he's insane...a monster. His heart was ripped out of his chest while being kept alive, and then his friend did something to him...what would that do to a person?
