Not Mine

How did you even make that? Who sells periodic element beads? Who sells uranium beads?

The note is waiting for him on what has become his usual desk when he arrives (the lecturer hasn't even started speaking).

"This girl in my ancient civilizations class makes her own jewelry, beads and all, and I convinced one of the assistant professors to let me have some tiny little samples. Jenna did the actual blowing of the beads around the stuff. She's really nice, you should meet her. Actually oxygen was hardest. I didn't want to cheat and just use air, but even with the oxygen tank I'm sure there's some air in there." Thankfully Professor Layton interrupts at that point, before Blaine can ramble further.

Blaine has always been under the apparently false impression that he is quite confident around attractive members of the same sex. Mike has cured him of that particular delusion. It was easy to be confident with Jeremiah, who had asked him out, and even Sebastian, because while Blaine did the actual asking out, Sebastian had made no secret of his appreciation of Blaine and his many assets. With Mike he had no real indication that his advances would be welcome, barring the one sentence email that could easily be his way of laughing it off.

Mike does not pass him any more notes during the class and Blaine is almost hyperventilating over having made things awkward with his best friend (in New York) and crush. Mike on the other hand is frustratingly calm and grins down at him as he stands, leaving a sheet of paper on Blaine's desk as he strides out of the room. At first he thinks he's dropped a page of his sheet music, but it's not one of his and it has a pink post it note stuck to it.

Read it when you get home, or whenever ;)

With an actual smiley at the end. The sheet music is a little confusing though. At first glance it looks a lot like the Minute Waltz and Blaine is already playing along internally when he notices the half notes throwing of the tempo. It's not the Minute Waltz, and the title admits as much. He's never heard of the title or the composer listed at the top of the page.

Biliteral Overture

Friedman-Bacon

When he gets home he plays the piece, first on his keyboard, then Mrs. Rosenblatt's piano, just to make sure. It still sounds like the Minute Waltz with the tempo all screwed up. He pouts a bit before focusing back on the title, hoping to find a new clue there. He possibly should have just plucked up the courage to admit his crush face to face.

Overture is easy. Kind of. It means prelude, it can be an offer or a proposal, or it could just be a random musical term Mike chose to use. Biliteral. Involving two letters? A proposition in two letters? He wouldn't write it in binary would he?

He might.

Blaine googles binary alphabets and frowns when the 175 notes on the paper fail to split evenly into groups of eight. It takes him a few seconds to google biliteral, and then biliteral + Friedman-Bacon, and then half an hour of reading about Bacon ciphers before he eventually splits them into groups of five and attempts to apply the key. There are no spaces, and at first he gets the order of the as and bs wrong, but he eventually manages to make a sentence out of it.

It would be an honor if you would go with me - M

There is no indication of where Mike wants him to go with him, but there is a date at the bottom of the page, which Blaine's calendar confirms is when he was planning to be packing for his trip back to Ohio for Thanksgiving and he finds that he really doesn't care where.

He picks up his phone and dials Wes's number. Wes does not react with the appropriate level of excitement (the National Geographic channel could do a special on your mating habits Blaine, but at least you haven't tried singing about sex toys in anyone's workplace in a few years), but he does congratulate him which is more than David does (I still can't believe you made him a puzzle bracelet, that is just hilarious). Sebastian is actually mildly enthusiastic, in his own way (wow, he just took your crazy and ran with it, sounds like a keeper, if it doesn't work out my dorm door is always open, or if he's as hot as you say he is, the door is still open if it does work out). Blaine decides to stop calling people after Bas though, resolving to giggle over it with Jenna next time he sees her instead.

The next time he sees Mike isn't Monday. Mike finds him in the library in the history building on Wednesday afternoon and stands across the table from him, shifting awkwardly for several minutes while Blaine scribbles notes about the Kingdom of Kush. Blaine looks up when his knees hit the leg of the table as he sits down and beams up at him. His smile falls slightly when Mike slides a notebook over the table to him instead of responding to his (possibly over-) enthusiastic greeting.

I'm not quiet. I'm mute. I didn't want to tell you because you look at me like I'm normal but if you agree to come to the fall formal with me you'll have to find out.

"You want me to go to the formal with you? I mean of course you're not abnormal. I mean technically you're abnormal if you define normal as being the norm because you are in the minority but to be fair if you really want to be the norm you get a lot of bonus points for being Asian. Although you are unfairly attractive and really good at dancing and highly intelligent so you do kind of deviate from the norm in a lot of ways. I mean um...I would love to go to the fall formal with you?"

Mike smiles at him and leans across the table, planting a soft kiss on his lips before pulling away and disappearing between the high shelves.

It takes him twenty minutes on Monday night to shift his schedule again to accommodate the ASL lessons he finds on one of the notice boards in the one of the Liberal Arts buildings and throws himself into it with gusto. He spends at least an hour every night for the almost two weeks leading up to the formal attempting to get his hands to remember the movements and trying them out on a girl who is studying abroad in Belgium over Skype because it's really hard to find people who are willing to practice sign language with him at one in the morning.

They've decided to meet before the formal because Mike says the portions are tiny and they should get food before and Blaine isn't going to turn down what amounts to a date before the date. He spots Mike already seated in a booth in the pub two blocks down from the venue and slides in across from him.

When he sees Mike's face fall at his silent greeting he immediately panics, trying to figure out if he signed it wrong or if he said something to offend him.

"I'm sorry, was that wrong? Did you...I noticed you signing with the professor last week and I thought it must be kind of a hassle for you to have to write everything down and if I learned ASL it might make things easier." Mike sets his pen to the notepad he always carries with him and Blaine forgets his panic for a few seconds to register that Mike can actually write legibly upside down.

I like listening to you talk.

Blaine is slightly stunned by the words scrawled across the small notepad, his mind scrambling to formulate a response. Mike doesn't set his pen down and Blaine waits for him to continue. The taller boy sets the tip of the pen to the page three times, seemingly second guessing himself before scratching out another sentence.

I kind of wanted to teach you to sign.

"Wow. I would love for you to teach me."

Sam and Rachel join them just as the check comes and Rachel immediately demands to know everything about him in a mildly frightening tone, starting a conversation that lasts them through the entire three course meal, pausing only for speeches, and Mike holds his hand under the table throughout so when Rachel demands his presence at a place called Callbacks, where all the NYADA students apparently hang out, he just smiles and nods.

Sam is mild mannered and surprisingly relaxed considering he's Rachel's date. He lives with Rachel, but they're not dating, and he's apprenticing with a photographer and taking evening classes at a community college.

All three of them went to McKinley (although Sam was only there for his sophomore year), and Mike knew Sam from football and Rachel from one of his dance classes and reintroduced them when he heard Sam needed a place in New York and Rachel needed a new roommate.

When Mike walks him to his door at three AM his head is swimming. The dinner had been nice and Rachel certainly hadn't let any awkward silences fall and there were plans made for meeting up during Thanksgiving, Rachel and Mike were going to go meet him in Westerville, Sam's family was in Kentucky so he wouldn't be joining them. The dancing after the dinner had been spectacular though. Blaine had gotten all dressed up and gone dancing with a boy he really liked at a fancy party and no one had shot him any kind of disgusted look (well there had been that one guy but he turned out to be offended by Blaine's bright blue socks).

Blaine likes scrapbooking, always has. He tends not to advertise it as most of his friends, being teenage males, like to tease him mercilessly for it, but it isn't something he actively hides either. He does blush heavily however, when Mike comes over to welcome him home after Thanksgiving and finds the newly started scrapbook he has dedicated to their relationship, and hurriedly changes the subject, hoping Mike will be less inclined to call the hobby stalkerish than Jeremiah had been.

Two days later Mike is over again and pulls the scrapbook off the shelf and hands Blaine the slip of paper with Mike's offer of help and Blaine's scribbled email-address from back in late September. Blaine blushes and tucks it carefully in with the rest of the pictures and tickets and miscellaneous objects he hasn't found the perfect place for yet.

"You have no idea how embarrassed I was the first time we spoke."

Why?

And Mike looks legitimately confused, like he can't understand how Blaine could possibly have been anything less than confident.

"I told you I was crushing on you before that, although obviously I didn't know how perfect you actually are. Do you realize how mortified I was when I realized it was our first real interaction and I was all mussed and gross and not to mention late?"

You weren't gross.

"Sweet, but I was. I was covered in sweat and my hair was all out of sorts."

And you were trying to control your breathing. You closed your eyes and leaned you head back and sort of arched up. You were wearing one of those ungodly tight polos and there was clinging and just all kinds of flexing going on.

"Oh my..."

The girl across the aisle dropped her pen and hit her chin on the desk picking it up. I have seen porn less erotic than that moment. Actually strike that, I have yet to see any porn more erotic than that moment. If I didn't proof read my notes before sending them off you would have seen some not exactly PG examples of more fun ways I could make you sweat.

"Wow." Blaine blushes and it feels a little like when Bas used to say similar things, except Mike is blushing too and that somehow makes it really sweet. Mike holds up a finger, motioning for him to wait, and ducks out into the kitchen, rummaging in his bag and pulling out his now familiar sketch pad.

This is how I remember that day.

He flips it open to a page close to the middle and Blaine reminds himself of the new pad he'd been meaning to give him, having noticed the current one running out of clean pages. The image startles him slightly because he's seeing himself through Mike's eyes.

The boy on the page has his nose and his eyebrows and all the other little things Blaine has always been a little bit insecure about, but on him they look beautiful. His shoulders are drawn back and his head has fallen onto the backrest behind him exposing a long throat leading down to collarbones only just peeking out from an unbuttoned polo. His eyes are closed and his mouth is hanging open and his curls have long since broken free of their gel prison, although they are thankfully not the frizz he used to see in the mirror every morning in high school.

Best class ever. Although can we not name our firstborn after me? I'm already a junior and having the same name as your dad is all kinds of lame.

Blaine freezes and tries to read the note but can really only focus on the words 'our firstborn' printed, neat as ever, in Mike's handwriting across the notepad in his hand. Mike clearly notices his shocked look and scrambles to amend his statement just as the pad is knocked from his hand and his back hits the wall, Blaine rising up on his toes and pulling him in for a kiss. He breaks away momentarily to speak. "We're not having kids until we're at least twenty six." Mike has a dumbfounded look on his face as he nods rapidly as Blaine attacks his neck. "Also we're going to take this slow and not rush into anything, right?" Another nod. "That being said, I think I love you." Mike dives in for another kiss.

(A/N:) I am deeply unhappy with this but it's not getting better, it's getting worse so I'm posting it now because I have to hand in my lab work in four hours and I can't focus on properly proofing it.

It has been way too long since I wrote something fictional.