Blaine had been called out of classes early on Friday, his father dragging him to a business dinner, an incredibly dull distraction that meant he spent his time acting like a proper, Dalton-bred son so his father could win investment promises from men too old to breathe without wheezing; by the time it was over, it was too late to bother driving back to Westerville. Back to fighting with Sebastian, to the uncomfortable impasse that was between him and Rachel, to the dorm room that was somehow too big and too small at the same time. Not that his own master sized suite at his house was much better: too cold, too impersonal now that he'd been away so long. He couldn't look over and see Rachel sleeping, the blankets kicked off her legs and her shirt riding up her back as she turned over. He couldn't turn the other way and see the collage of photos he had of Sebastian, smiling after a lacrosse win, on vacation, in bed and half awake.
He knew the problem wasn't with either of them, that it was his fault for lying and cheating, for being unable to restrain himself or make up his mind. Except he had, on some level. Almost. He knew he couldn't keep the truth from Sebastian any longer, that he deserved more than he was getting from him. It wasn't right, it wasn't fair, and even though Blaine was going to lose him, it was the price he was going to have to pay if he wanted this whole mess to end. In the wee hours of Saturday morning, before the sun had even come up, he was resolved to tell Sebastian everything, and let the pieces fall where they could.
The only thing left was Rachel and the unanswered questions were more terrifying than the impending crash of his supposedly stable relationship he was about to call to an end. It said more than he was prepared to understand, that he was more concerned about her than he was Sebastian, but it had been like that for months now. She was in his skin, his blood, his head, like a siren singing his name until he crashed among the rocks. She was treacherous and beautiful and he couldn't deny himself around her, or the way she made him feel. There was a warmth in her eyes, a secret in her smile, and when she let him in, everything in his world make sense.
The hardest part was thinking he didn't do the same for her; because if he knew she did, if he knew this was truly more than just physical contact and the sense of having a warm body around, then he knew he was selfish enough to demand it from her. That he couldn't be with her if they couldn't have all of it, and it made the guilt and the deceit feel even worse somehow that he couldn't know it was all for a purpose, for something real. But he was in too deep and he had to find a way out, with or without her.
The first step was Sebastian, and his heart broke just thinking about it as he drove back to Dalton that afternoon; but it was time. He practiced in his head the entire drive back, but nothing sounded right. They all just hurt, and he panicked, wondering if he was really ready for this. He wasn't, at all, but... he was tired of running and hiding, of doing things just because they were easier, or they hurt less. He wasn't a brave person, by any means, but he could do this. He had to do this.
Still, he was more than surprised to find Sebastian waiting for him in his room, perched on the edge of his bed, glaring at Rachel's perfectly made bed like he might set it on fire at any moment. It was more than a little unnerving, any shred of confidence he'd managed to construct slipping away as he dropped his overnight bag by his closet before trying to sit next to his boyfriend. Sebastian slid off the bed before Blaine could even say a word, recoiling from him and a thousand scenarios ran through his head, the worst being that Rachel had told Sebastian on her own, without talking to Blaine. That she had decided she was done as quickly as she started, and she was just tying up loose ends.
"Okay, you're still mad at me," Blaine sighed, the weight of it settling on his shoulders seemed to make it even harder.
"Mad?" Sebastian spat, the word sounding like a poison coming from him. "No, mad was what I was when you implied you wanted to sleep with Rachel. Pissed is what I was when I found out you have slept with Rachel. Fucking livid is what I am now, now that I know you've been fucking around on me for months and lying about it to my face."
Blaine's heart dropped, Sebastian's raised voice rattling through his bones. "I don't-," he stammered, anything he might have tried to remember from his sessions in the car abandoning him and disappearing. "What are you-?"
"I read her letter," he snapped, glaring as if daring Blaine to deny it. He wouldn't, except...
"What letter?" he asked before he could catch himself, knowing that it sounded like he was playing dumb even if he truly had no idea what Sebastian was talking about. He hadn't written a letter to Rachel, and if he had, it wouldn't have been said anything about them sleeping together. Unless it was her letter, to him, but he didn't have one of those either. He glanced at Rachel's bed again, ignoring the anger in Sebastian's eyes, realizing that there was no way she had slept in it the night before, that she had gone. And apparently had left a letter behind, one that Sebastian found. "I swear I have no idea what-"
"Oh I know," Sebastian cut him off, unfolding a ball of crumpled up papers in his palm. "It was signed, sealed, and delivered to your pillow. Your girlfriend's as big a coward as you are. Allow me to read my favorite parts to you, if you don't mind. Actually, I don't give a fuck if you do."
Blaine could see Sebastian's hands shaking as he found whatever he was looking for on the papers in his hand, and Blaine could just make out Rachel's dainty scrawl before Sebastian started reading, his voice tight and clipped with sarcasm. "I was trying to help us, Blaine, trying to find that common ground of friendship and fuck buddies who wanted nothing more than that from one another – She's a saint, really, classy girl you picked there. Oh, and this part, it's quite sweet - I know you care deeply about Sebastian, that he was-is-your boyfriend. That you never meant to hurt him, despite your mutual participation in all this. And if you choose him, I wouldn't blame you. - I mean, I guess I should thank her for giving me permission to exist right?"
"Sebastian-."
"I am not done!" he yelled and Blaine couldn't help but feel like he'd been thrown against the wall for all the rage in Sebastian's voice. They had fought before, said worse things to each other, but he'd never been like this before and Blaine wasn't even sure what he could do but sit down and take it. "You fucking lied to me Blaine! Which fine, we lie to each other all time, but I asked you about this and you said nothing was going on and I fucking believed you because that's what you've always needed from me. I've spent the last year killing myself on how to be a goddamn boyfriend because you needed that from me and if all you wanted was a tight little ass to fuck-."
"It's not like that!"
"I know it's not fucking like that because it says so in her goddamn letter!"
"I don't know what you want me to say," Blaine muttered as he stared at his hands. This had not gone at all like he'd planned and he was feeling somehow ever smaller and more useless than he'd ever imagined. He knew Sebastian would be angry, that he would yell and it would come down to this, but he thought he would at least appear to be a little stronger than this, that he would at least get to be the one to admit his own betrayal. Somehow, he felt like it would have made a difference.
"I don't want you to say anything," Sebastian asserted angrily, crushing Rachel's letter in his hand. "Everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie and I deserve a lot of things, but I don't have to listen to your hypocritical bullshit anymore. How many fights did we have about this, about you feeling like I was flirting too much or coming on too strong. I backed off to make you comfortable and the irony of it all is that you're the one who fucked around on me!"
"It wasn't intentional!" Blaine yelled back as his patience snapped in him. "I didn't even- it's not like we planned any of this. One minute I'm fighting with you and the next, she's on her knees with my dick in her mouth. And it just escalated and I'm sorry, but it's not like we were ever this perfect couple."
"Well if that's your excuse for cheating on me, if that's what's make it okay," Sebatian sneered, "then I guess getting trashed in Paris is my excuse for letting Rafe fuck me in the bathroom the day before I came back."
"You- what?" Blaine couldn't keep the surprise out of his voice as he blinked up at Sebastian, a flash of rage and betrayal heating up inside of him. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"You don't get to ask me that question!" Sebastian hissed, his cheeks a bright red as his temper rose even more. And Blaine knew he was right, that he had no right to be angry with him for doing the same thing Blaine had been doing to him, but reason and rationale did nothing to calm him, his guilt only making it worse; it was only because he knew Sebastian so well that he could see the way his eyes flickered to the side, the way his jaw set slightly to the left and Blaine could see the hint of a lie in Sebastian's face. He couldn't tell what it was exactly, maybe all of it, maybe only part of it, and he knew Sebastian had a tendency to protect himself by being as awful as possible, but it didn't matter anymore. They were fucked, over and done with and there was nothing either of them could do at this point to fix it.
"Now who's the fucking liar?" he challenged anyway, not caring if Sebastian knew he'd been caught or if he thought it was merely Blaine throwing his words back in his face. "Why are we doing this to each other then?"
"We're not," Sebastian said, his voice as cold as Blaine had ever heard it as he turn on his heels, hand thrust into his pockets. "We're not anything anymore," and he stomped out the door, slamming it shut behind him. Blaine wanted to tear after him, but he stayed glued to his spot, fighting the scream bubbling in his chest and the overwhelming impulse to reach out to Rachel hit him fast and hard, though he wasn't sure if he wanted to fuck her or cry to her, to let her hold him and tell him it would be okay, that it would be better tomorrow. And these were the things he was supposed to be mourning Sebastian for, the things he had just lost in him, the friendship and understanding and the comfort; he was supposed to be broken-hearted over this, but all he could feel past the lingering resentment was the desire to start it all over again with someone else.
With Rachel.
-:-
It was midnight before he remembers the letter, and he feels like an idiot for forgetting it in the first place. Whatever she had written had been enough to set Sebastian off and Blaine hadn't even read it for himself. He had no idea what it said really, just a few snippets here and there that he'd barely heard though Sebastian's disdain. He knew what he wanted to be in the letter, what he hoped would be, but Rachel was just as likely to run as he was and judging by the fact that she clearly hadn't been to the dorm all weekend, maybe she had. Maybe she had given up, just as he came to the realization that he couldn't.
The problem, he discovered with a quick look around the room, was the letter was nowhere to be found. He tore apart his bed and his desk before overturning everything on her side, but it was gone, disappeared. He crawled around of the floor, emptied the wastebaskets, even checked behind the counters in the bathroom before he accepted that it was a lost cause. Her letter wasn't there anymore; her words, her explanation, gone. He sagged against the way, suddenly exhausted and overcome with a doubt he hadn't felt in a long time. He could just call her, text her, email his own letter, knowing that wherever she was, she'd get it. But what if she was saying goodbye, or apologizing for leading him on, for letting him believe their arrangement had been more than a physical need he just happened to meet, a lie to keep stringing him along.
He wasn't sure he could take that kind of disappointment and he knew it was his cowardly side shining through, the person in him that was content to sail through his own life with a passive disinterest. It was a wall he was so used to putting him that knocking it down felt so raw and heady, like a mistake in the making. But he'd let it down with her, given into himself over and over again, and he knew it was more than just exploring the idea of passion, or the dark attraction of wanting what wasn't good for him. It was just... her and how he felt about her, and her smile and laugh, and the jokes she told that weren't really funny but she was so enthusiastic about them. It was in how she feel laid out beside him, hand intertwined in his when they napped, just resting. How she would kiss his cheek when she woke up in the morning, wanting nothing in return.
He was at a loss for words to describe it, but it was something and that something was real. It was deep, and deepening, and nothing anyone said would change his mind. If he could just talk to her... he didn't know what he would say. He would try to tell her he wanted more, that he was serious and he had made that decision she had asked him to before, that he was sorry for taking so long, that the obvious answer was the hardest one and he had never been good at making the hard decisions. But that he would for her, he would try and he would get better. He would be what she needed, and if he wasn't already, he would learn to be.
He fell asleep practicing, trying to organize all his thoughts into some kind of order, and it was well after noon Sunday when he woke up. He groaned as he tried to pick himself off the floor, his bones creaking in protest; Rachel still wasn't back – might never be back, his guilt whispered at him – and he was tempted to chase her down, make her listen to him despite what her letter may or may not have said, because he didn't want to lose her. He wanted to have her, all of her, and he wanted to fix the mistakes he'd made because even at his worst, he'd fallen in love with her. And that was it, he realized. That was the truth he'd been hiding from, trying to find the words to dance around with, but it all boiled down to those simple little sentiments.
He just didn't know where to look. She was obviously off campus and he had no idea where her fathers' house was, or where she might have gone to. He guessed Lima, he guessed Quinn's, but he had no idea where she lived or how to even begin to get there. All he could really do was wait and hope that when she reappeared, she would listen to him.
He stayed in the shower until the water ran cold because he didn't have much else to do, jumping at every little click of a door as students came back from the weekend, listening for one that sounded close enough to be his, to be her. His nerves were draining the longer the day went on without word from her, and it wasn't until an hour before curfew that anything at all happens. An envelope sliding under the door, unmarked but with a post-it note attached the the front. Blaine's heart skipped a beat as he recognized Sebastian's handwriting, the words "Don't be an idiot" scrawled across the tiny square.
Her letter is inside, crumbled and torn, taped back together and Blaine knows it's Sebastian's doing, how much it had taken for him to give this back, because reading it and hearing in her words everything that Blaine himself had been holding inside, he can't control himself. He can't just sit by and let this happen and it didn't matter than he would be out way past curfew, that he didn't know his way around Lima and he could very well end up lost in Ohio for days with his sense of direction. He needed to look her in the eye and tell her that she wasn't alone, that he wanted her too. That he loved her.
He grabbed his keys and swung the door open hurriedly, a surprised gasp stopping him in his tracks; he might have laughed if he wasn't so relieved, because there she was, pink duffle bag hanging off her shoulder as she looked at him with wide eyes. "Rachel!" he exclaimed loudly, startling even himself.
"Where are you going?" she whispered, a stark contrast to his own voice and he wanted to kick himself because he knew now that she'd been waiting for him to reach out to her all weekend, having put her heart on the line, been vulnerable and as crazy as he felt he had gone warring with himself, he could only imagine what it had been like for her. And it looked like he was leaving, standing with his keys in one hand her letter in the other, his jacket half on. He looked like he was running.
"To find you," he said, a smile slipping past his lips as she looked at him with hopeful eyes. He dropped everything in his hands, needing only to hold her, to feel her against him. To hear her heart skip the same beat his did when she was around him, to know that she wasn't lost, that he still had a chance. "I was going to find you because I-"
Rachel didn't let him finish, her bag dropping to the floor as her arms flung around his neck, lips against his before he could even think. It's something new, a first for them, out in the open and full of an understanding beyond the meeting of skin on skin. It's fresh and terrifying, and there was still so much they would have to work out, but it didn't quite matter in that moment. "I love you," he finally whispered as their kiss broke, and she giggled breathlessly against his neck, her arms clutching him closer.
AN: That's it! We're done! And Kira's really sorry it took her so long, since this was her chapter to finish and she's easily distracted between school and finals and work and we both had other projects going on at the same time. But we've had a lot of fun with this one, and we hope you did too. Enjoy and thank you for reading. ~ashley and kira