Welcome, welcome, welcome to a brand new story

I missed you all so very much in the past few months and I couldn't wait until it was time to share this fic with you. I hope you're ready to go on a new adventure.

Cause and Effect is the name of Keane's latest album (2019, but it feels like it was just yesterday, honestly), and you all must know by now that it's my all-time favorite band and their music is one of my biggest inspirations, which is why I often name my fics after their songs. In this opportunity, I thought I'd take a full album and base a story on it, much like I did with Sing to Me Instead. Every chapter will be focused on one of the songs.

This is a love story. It's a story about how love can slip right out of your grasp, and how you end up finding it again when you least expect it, or even when you shouldn't find it. I've never written this kind of trope before, and it was very interesting to put these very familiar and beloved characters through it. I hope you will enjoy it.

Cause and Effect is still being written as I post this first chapter, but I'm getting closer to the end. And I'm very excited about sharing this journey with you.

Thank you to Christine, for reading and fixing and making my work more presentable and correct. I can't believe that after all these years she's still willing to put up with me Love you.

And thanks to Sofi, for making the beautiful artwork for this story, as well for reading the chapters and encouraging me with her excitement and her reactions. Love you

That said… how about we just dive right into it?

This first chapter's song is Phases.

A plan is a work of art
A house built to fall apart

You're digging for the answers
Crawl across the world to find
There are just more questions
Waiting on the other side

But you're still here
You're bleeding but you're still here

The house was quiet, but it wasn't going to last long, because it never did. The alarm hadn't gone off yet, and Blaine wasn't sure what had woken him up – he didn't even notice the sound of traffic or ambulances driving past his window anymore, and he was still tired enough to sleep for another hour or two. He rolled to his side, hoping to get comfortable and slip back into dreamland, his hand settling on his husband's chest. Jack was deeply asleep, and he was snoring quietly (maybe that was what had woken Blaine up, after all), like he always did after a particularly long and difficult surgery. He had spent too many hours alert and focused the previous day, and that always exhausted him.

Blaine sighed. Now that he was awake, his head was already making an automatic list of everything that needed to be done that day. From taking the trash out to booking a dentist appointment, from restocking the pantry to buying a birthday present for Jack's secretary. It was usually Blaine who made sure their home life ran smoothly, who took care of all those little details Jack had never been quite able to bother himself with. When they first started dating, Blaine had found that actually charming: Jack was a genius in his field and all he cared about was saving lives.

Ten years into their marriage, he wasn't exactly sure the word charming had been the one he had been looking for.

It wasn't that Jack was a pompous asshole. What he did was noble and even heroic sometimes – even if his bank account saw the reflection of it, so it wasn't entirely selfless. Blaine loved that he was passionate about his job. He certainly didn't want to need surgery and find that the guy performing it couldn't give two shits about doing his job. He knew that a life filled with passion was a life worth living.

He just wished that passion was present more than in just their careers.

It kind of would have been nice to find it in the bedroom.

Blaine groaned a little and then paused to check he hadn't woken Jack up, but he was still snoring quietly. He didn't want to sound ungrateful for the life they had. It was just that, at thirty-six, he had thought they still had a few ardent, sexy years ahead of them. Blaine still felt young, was still healthy, and he was very much human. There were itches he wanted to scratch. And it wasn't that Jack was uninterested – it was just that half the time, when he was home, he was either too exhausted from work, or too distracted with the children.

Having children also kind of put a damper on their sex lives.

Still worth it, Blaine thought. He wouldn't change his kids for anything. But just because he was a father, it didn't mean he stopped being a husband. He wanted adult conversation, he wanted to go on dates that didn't involve the children, he wanted to look at his husband and feel like they were still those young men who had fallen in love and hardly kept their hands off of each other, who found it impossible to. He knew it wasn't as easy these days – sometimes they couldn't get a nanny, or the baby started crying at the worst possible time, or their daughter puked her dinner all over the couch. It wasn't easy to feel sexy, to want to be sexy, when you were covered in snot and the remains of SpaghettiO's.

But sometimes he couldn't help thinking that he had stopped being desirable to his husband.

It shouldn't have made him feel so miserable, and yet… here he was.

What was their life going to be like when they were forty-six? And what about at fifty-six? Would they have to wait to be a couple again until the children went to college? Would they even be able to get back what they had postponed after so long?

Blaine opened his eyes and took a quick glance at the clock on Jack's nightstand. The alarm wasn't going to go off for another ten minutes. Some other time, ten minutes wouldn't be nearly enough. Today… it felt like a little blessing.

He scooted closer and started kissing Jack's neck, hands already roaming over his chest, fingertips catching on hair and the peak of his nipples. Jack made a low sound in the back of his throat but didn't wake up, so Blaine decided to be a little more drastic.

He let his hand go further south and he was about to curl his fingers around him over his underwear when a loud scream carried through the apartment.

"Daddy! Can I have chocolate milk?"

Blaine deflated and let his head fall momentarily on his husband's shoulder. It would only be ten more seconds before Lena started pounding on their bedroom door, demanding his attention. And that would amount to waking up Jack in a lot less sexy way than he had planned.

He sighed and got out of bed.

Lena was already marching down the hallway and towards their bedroom when he opened the door, a determined look on her little face, hair all over the place (poor kid had inherited his curls), and wearing only one sock. The whereabouts of the missing sock would most likely remain a mystery for a few days, because that was what usually happened: one would expect it to be in her bed, that she would have kicked it off in her sleep, but nope. Last time, it had appeared in the vegetable drawer in the fridge. No one could explain how it had gotten there.

Life was certainly an adventure, being a father of two.

Blaine quickly redirected her to the kitchen so she wouldn't wake Jack up (there was no point now, he thought bitterly, he might as well let him sleep a few more minutes) and began the usual dance that was their morning routine: making breakfast, starting the coffee maker, getting Lena's clothes ready for school, waking Theo up, trying to pick up the mess that had taken over their living room. He had only been up for twenty minutes and he was exhausted already.

When Jack walked into the kitchen, still yawning, Blaine pressed a cup of coffee into his hand and a kiss to his cheek and said: "I'm jumping in the shower," because not even breakfast could be enjoyed as a moment of quiet family time: they were running against the clock, taking turns watching the kids while getting ready for work.

Around the time Theo had been born, Blaine had considered quitting his job and becoming a full time dad. Jack would never quit, and their lives had become such a challenge, fitting everything, the new and the old, into the same twenty-four hours they had always had. But then he had realized that, as much as it would have made their lives a little easier, he didn't want to stop working. He loved his job as an elementary school teacher, loved the kids he had at school, loved being able to be independent. He didn't want to have to ask his husband for money so he could buy him a present on Valentine's Day. He liked to have those few hours that were all to himself, even if they weren't exactly relaxing (just yesterday, a boy had shoved a pencil sharpener up his nose and they'd had to take him to the emergency room to extract it). He liked to know there were things that were his, and only his.

Blaine often wondered if it had been this difficult for his parents, though theirs wasn't the marriage he wanted to use as an example for what he wanted in his own. His mother had never worked, not until both he and his older brother went away, and she seemed to become a much more liberated version of herself, then, like she hadn't been allowed to be herself until she no longer had to be a full time mother. And looking back to when he still lived with them, Blaine couldn't remember his parents being very expressive in their love for one another. They had never cuddled on the couch watching a movie, or walked hand in hand when they took him and Cooper to the park, or even laughed too much. Blaine couldn't remember his house being filled with laughter. And though he'd had a happy childhood, and his parents loved him, he had never thought that their marriage was a particularly happy one.

And he was afraid that his own might be heading in the same direction – would he and Jack soon be just two people who lived together, who raised kids together, without having anything at all in common, nothing to say to each other?

Blaine got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around his waist. He wasn't going to give in to despair: he and Jack were nothing like his parents. They were just… tired, that was all. It wasn't easy to be a perfect couple when you had two young kids to run after the whole day and careers you cared too much about to neglect. They had just… lost their balance, he thought. That was all. Maybe someday they would find it again.

He could hear Jack in Theo's room, negotiating with the two-year-old to put his clothes on. He started making the bed, straightening the sheets and fluffing up the throw pillows as he tried to decide what to wear that day. Maybe the dark purple button down with the black polka dot bowtie…

His entire life was about multitasking.

He almost accidentally knocked Jack's phone off the nightstand, where he had left it charging, when he dropped one of the pillows. He quickly grabbed it to make sure it didn't hit the floor, and the screen came back to life, showing there was an unread message.

Blaine didn't mean to look at it. But his eyes were reading the words before he could realize what he was doing.

From: Eddie.

Hey babe, are you free to meet up this afternoon? I miss you.

Blaine stared at it for a long time, as if he couldn't make sense of the combination of letters that made up all those words that he himself had used, both separately and in similar combinations, but that somehow seemed too foreign now, impossible.

As he was looking at it, the phone buzzed with another message.

From: Eddie.

I mean, I know I saw you yesterday but… I can't get enough of you.

The little fire emoji added at the end of the message was almost disconcerting to Blaine.

In automatic pilot, he put the phone back on the nightstand, finished making the bed and got dressed. Then he left the room and went into Theo's to check the progress. Jack was kneeling on the floor in front of him, tying his shoes, smiling up at the little boy as he rattled on about something he had seen on television the previous night.

Blaine had somehow expected things to shatter all around him, but they were eerily the same.

Jack stood up and saw Blaine standing there watching them. He smiled, those damn dimples looking as irresistible as ever, and came towards him. "All done with Theo. Lena insisted on brushing her own hair, so I'm not to blame for whatever she's doing right now. It was her idea."

Jack squeezed his shoulder as he walked past him and into their own room, like everything was normal, like he hadn't just gotten a message from Eddie, his secret afternoon fuck.

Blaine smiled at Theo. "Grab your backpack while I go check on your sister, sweetie."

The rest of his morning felt strangely like it always did, but somehow slightly shifted until everything was a little bit out of balance.

He kissed Jack chastely on the lips before he left the apartment with the kids and wished him a good day.

A good day, indeed.

Always on the outside
Fingers clinging on so tight
Kicking at the window
Dreaming of a better life

Take what you can
Just got to take what you can

There were so many things that Kurt Hummel loved about working from home. He could choose his own schedule; he could get up from his desk and go take a walk if he found himself blocked or overwhelmed by what he was doing; he could take a break to scratch his cat, Petra, behind the ears, and he could take his job with him anywhere, if he got sick of being stuck in his apartment. All in all, it was a wonderful thing.

But sometimes he sat in front of his computer, staring at the screen, wondering what the meaning of it all was.

Sure, he had a comfortable life and an even more comfortable apartment overlooking Central Park. He had a man he loved and a job that allowed him to splurge on clothes and trips. He literally had nothing to complain about…

He kind of felt like complaining a bit, though.

It made him feel like an asshole. There were many people out there who were having a rough time, and Kurt had everything he could possibly want. But sometimes it just felt like everything had been chosen for him.

Kurt had been a bright-eyed kid from Ohio when he first made it to New York, intent on either making it on Broadway and becoming a star, or going into the fashion world and becoming a star. He had been accepted into NYADA and had gotten an internship in Vogue, so at first it seemed like everything was working exactly as it was supposed to, and it was only a matter of time before he reached stardom in one or the other. Or maybe even both of them, because sometimes he laid awake in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, unable to decide what he loved more: the stage or the runway.

And then one night, he had been sitting at a bar, waiting for his friends to show up to celebrate Rachel getting yet another role she had dreamed of performing since she was two months old, doodling mindlessly on a napkin, when he had heard a voice right over his shoulder.

"You're really talented, you know?"

As far as pick-up lines went, it was probably the most original one Kurt had heard so far, and probably the most meaningful. He had looked over his shoulder, eyebrow arched, and found a very attractive man, piercing green eyes fixed on him, lips tilted into an irresistible smile, broad shoulders that Kurt immediately wanted to press his hands to, and perfectly wavy blonde hair.

It hadn't been easy to find the right words to say, not when he looked like that, but eventually Kurt had, intelligently, mumbled: "Uh, thanks."

"Just telling the truth," the man had shrugged, and even that was charming. Without asking for permission, he had slipped into the chair across the table, and leaned in to take a better look at Kurt's doodle. "Have you ever thought of illustrating children's books?"

Now that was the weirdest pick-up line Kurt had ever heard. "Not really."

"Well, I work in publishing. And we're always looking for new illustrators…"

"Oh, I'm not an illustrator," Kurt had said at once, knowing that he was blushing without the need to look in a mirror. "This is just… you know, something to pass the time until my friends arrive."

"It could be something you actually get paid for, though," the man said, smiling broadly at him, and Kurt found it was hard to look directly at it – it blinded him, like staring at the sun. He extracted a card from his shirt's pocket and slid it across the table. "Just… think about it and give me a call?"

And Kurt had truly believed that the guy (Ian Johnson, according to his business card) was truly flirting with him and saying all of this just to get Kurt to call him. So Kurt had called him two days later, expecting to go out on a date, but, instead, he had ended up on the top floor of a publishing house in midtown, meeting a bunch of publishers.

Kurt had sort of gone with it, at first, wanting to see where it went. He signed a contract to illustrate five books, and then ten books, and another five, which he would also write. And before he knew it, he was mildly successful. During one of the book tours he went on, Ian and him had gotten a couple of drinks at the hotel bar and ended up going upstairs to Ian's room together. And what had started as a failed date, and then a business relationship had ended up becoming Kurt's best relationship ever.

They worked together perfectly, both when it came to business and their personal lives. They understood each other, they had fun, they had great chemistry in and out of bed, and all of Kurt's friends adored Ian. Even his father had nodded approvingly when he first met him. No one was surprised when they got engaged.

And now they had been married for eight years, and Kurt couldn't even understand where half of that time had gone to. He had blinked and he was suddenly thirty-seven, the only show tunes he sung were the ones he performed in the shower using a bottle of shampoo as a microphone, and the last design he had worked on had been his own wedding suit.

He stood at the large floor-to-ceiling window in his living room and looked down at the city at his feet, and wondered if maybe, just maybe, he had lost control of his life at some point and hadn't quite realized it.

Then he shook his head and told himself that he was being ridiculous. Of course he hadn't lost control of anything – his life was amazing. He wanted for nothing.

Well, maybe he wanted for one thing.

The one big disagreement that had almost broken them up before they got married, was that Kurt wanted children and Ian didn't. Kurt, having grown up with a loving father, in a tight little family, had always dreamed of having his own. But Ian had never wanted to be a dad – he loved his job too much to sacrifice even a second of his time to raising a kid. In the end, Kurt had been faced with a difficult decision: either he gave up fatherhood, or he gave up the man of his dreams.

And it had felt ridiculous, giving up something certain for something he had never had, something he only imagined, something he was probably romanticizing in his head. So he had chosen Ian.

But there was this little cloud hanging over them, sometimes, all these unresolved things, everything they had chosen to push aside to be together, threatening to rain down on them at some point, when they least expected it.

Though sometimes, and Kurt was a little afraid to admit it, even to himself, it felt like he had been the only one to give things up to marry Ian.

He shook his head, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Enough with the whining. He had a perfect life. He had a perfect husband. He had everything he could possibly want. So what if he didn't have kids? He had enough nephews and nieces to spoil and love and buy cute outfits for.

He could use a cup of coffee, and maybe a walk. That would clear his head. That would make him stop with that silly pity party of his.

There was nothing to be sad about. There was nothing to regret.

He had everything he needed.

Blaine's day had seemed to be happening to someone else. He went to work, he laughed when the kids made a joke, he had lunch with his coworkers and chatted about Hannah's upcoming maternity leave. After school, he took Lena to karate and then picked Theo up at daycare to drop him off at his weekly piano lesson.

He had a grocery list in his pocket and a million more errands to run before he had to go get them to take them home, but he found that whatever fake energy had been keeping him going since this morning was now depleted.

So he sat on a park bench, finally alone with his thoughts for the first time that day, and told himself not to cry.

It had been right there, in the back of his head, all through his day. He had smiled and chatted and nodded along to what everyone else said, but he had been hearing the words non-stop, like the tolling of the most annoying and hateful bell in the world: your husband is cheating on you, your husband is cheating on you, your husband is cheating on you.

"You're not sure," he said out loud, and an old lady walking by with a tiny poodle in a Gucci sweater glanced at him curiously. Blaine ignored her.

It was the one thing that kept him mildly sane since he had seen those text messages: he wasn't sure. Even if all the hints were right there, as long as he didn't know the actual true, anything was possible. It could be that this Eddie had texted that to Jack by mistake. Maybe he had meant to text Jack, but he wasn't talking about sex at all: maybe they had gotten together to play tennis for a bit, and Jack had been on fire on the court. Maybe he was the new anesthetist, and he meant that Jack had been on fire as a surgeon.

Each new excuse sounded stupider than the last.

But he still clung to them like a drowning man clings to the debris that used to be the now wrecked boat that was supposed to carry him safely to the shore.

He wasn't going to drown. He refused to drown.

Sitting still wasn't helping. He felt like he was ready to jump right out of his skin. So he stood up and started walking with no direction in mind. Part of him kept wondering what Jack was doing now. What if he had said he had a meeting with the hospital board but, instead, he was in some hotel room with this Eddie?

What was Blaine going to do? Should he go and ask him directly? Should he pretend he didn't know, that he hadn't seen anything?

This last option was, strangely, the most tempting one. He knew that this one question was big enough to alter their lives as they knew them. Nothing would ever be the same if Blaine actually went searching for the truth. What would be next? A nasty fight? Jack admitting that Blaine wasn't enough to make him happy anymore? Their family breaking apart? What if Jack got custody? Blaine wouldn't be able to survive if he had to see his kids every other weekend, if he couldn't tuck them into bed each night and kiss their foreheads…

But why wasn't Blaine enough?

Walking aimlessly around the park didn't make him feel any better, it just made him realize he had no idea what the hell he was doing. It made him realize that he had no control. So he turned around and headed to the nearest coffee house.

Everything always made more sense after a good cup of coffee.

Blaine was too lost in his own head, still, as he walked into the coffee shop. So he didn't see that someone was already making their way out and, of course, because that was just his luck today, they crashed against each other. The other man had been holding a cup of coffee that spilled all over them, hot coffee dripping down Blaine's chest.

"Oh god," the stranger said in what could only be described as a very melodic voice. Blaine glanced at him, feeling like he was frozen to the spot, and found a pair of dazzling blue eyes staring at him in horror. "I'm so sorry. I didn't see you, I…"

And Blaine, of course, realized there were suddenly tears in his eyes, because apparently what he truly needed today was to be further humiliated. Because, apparently, someone spilling coffee on him was the last straw on a day that would go down in history as the worst day in his life.

"Shit," the man said, eyes widening at the sight of Blaine's tears. "Was it that hot? I'm truly sorry, I didn't…"

"It's fine," Blaine reassured him, because it wasn't this poor man's fault that his life was falling to pieces. He stubbornly wiped at his eyes. "I'm okay. I'm sorry you spilled your coffee. Let me buy you another one…"

"Please, don't worry about that," the man replied. He bit his lip and then sighed. "And you're wearing such a nice coat…"

"I'll take it to the dry cleaners," Blaine shrugged. He didn't care about the coat. He didn't care about anything.

His husband was cheating on him.

"Two cups of warm water, one tablespoon of dish soap, one tablespoon of white vinegar. I swear it works on everything. You just… blot the stain with that and it should be good as new," the man said, rather desperately, like he truly wanted to do something for him.

Blaine smiled, but he was sure it didn't look very genuine. He couldn't bring himself to care about that, either. "Thanks for the tip."

The stranger watched him for another moment as Blaine walked up to the counter. It looked like he wanted to say something else, but Blaine wasn't in the mood to talk.

No matter how upset he was, though, he was too polite not to offer the man a fresh cup of coffee once more, but when he turned to him, he found that he was gone already. So he ordered his own medium drip and then took his cup to a small table at the back and sat there by himself, watching as people walked down the busy New York sidewalk, probably on their way home.

Probably on their way home to someone who loved them.

He drank his coffee and pretended he was about to do the same.

Phases, the motion of our lives

Ages, the rote of changes

Erases the ink before it dries on pages

It's all just phases

I cannot wait to read your comments and know what you think of it.

Cause and Effect will update every Wednesday, so… see you next week!

Love,

L.-