(no subject)
Author: Rachel
Title: As Long As It Takes
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 27,880~
Summary: There was a common thread that held the entire world together, a singular thought that infiltrated most minds more often than not until it reached fruition. Everyone had someone that was out there in the world waiting for them, someone they were destined to spend the rest of their lives with, and Blaine Anderson was no exception. Meeting his soul mate was a moment he'd been dreaming of and imagining ever since he was old enough to know he had one. It was a moment that he anticipated replaying over and over again in his mind -- that first moment when he'd known. No matter how much he'd thought about it, read about it, dreamed about it, nothing could have prepared him for the actual moment itself.
Author's Note: Written for the Blaine Big Bang. Thanks to slayerkitty for throwing this idea my way, whenidance for being my amazing beta, and animateglee for making such incredible art for it, which can be found throughout the story.
[ Previous]
Moving to New York City had been an easy choice for Blaine to make once he'd been done with high school. The majority of colleges he'd applied to were there, and the ones that hadn't been were only backup plans in case none of the other choices panned out. It had just come down to choosing the one that he wanted and then heading off to the city he'd thought about living in for years. New York was big, it was full of people, and that meant that there was a sense of anonymity that he kind of wanted to cherish. His apartment wasn't anywhere near his school, but the commute was something that he genuinely enjoyed. There was something about the steady rock of the subway, lulling and keeping him at peace with his thoughts between each stop when people got off and on.
It was just so easy for him to get lost in his thoughts, because there were so many things to think about. Cooper was always right there at the forefront, like a daily recurring nightmare of what could happen to him if he weren't careful. There were other examples, other thoughts, people who he'd seen matched and happily so, and he knew that was the more common occurrence than things going badly, but he'd seen it happen. He wasn't sure if he'd chosen a big city because there was more of a chance of him finding his soul mate there with the higher population or if he'd done it so it was less likely to happen for the exact same reason.
Deep down Blaine was a romantic, and he knew that. He yearned for what he'd heard in all the stories growing up, the stories he had stuck in his memory from before everything had gotten turned on its head. He wanted the happily ever after, to meet eyes with someone and just know beyond knowing that he was theirs, they were his, and that there was the one piece of the rest of his life that he needed. Cooper hadn't stayed stuck on what had happened, didn't dwell on how he'd almost died, but that had to have been easier for him considering that he had Anna. He had his soul mate and they were there going through life together, side by side, with so much love between them. Blaine could only hope that when he found his person, his soul mate, his head would stop being stuck in the past and focusing on what had happened before.
Part of him had expected it to happen right away, though he didn't know why. He'd come of age and felt no change at all - though no one had ever said that he should. None of his friends had had anything happen right when they'd come of age, other than an extra lavish birthday party to celebrate them moving into the next stage of their lives. He'd had one of those too, and for that one day he'd been able to block out the memories of the hospital and focused on the happiness that his future could very well hold. It was just a matter of where, when, and most importantly who. The who was what he wanted to know more than anything, but he tried not to focus on that as he went through his life.
Ohio, New York, it didn't matter where he was - he knew he couldn't live every day like he was waiting for someone. He had to do what he could to just live or he would go crazy. That wasn't uncommon, people fixating on the search and ending up broke and on the streets because they weren't working, just looking, and after so long they couldn't sustain themselves any longer. There was also no guarantee that he would find his soul mate within any certain time - he'd heard stories of people not meeting until they were much older than he was. That was why he hadn't been surprised when it hadn't happened soon after his coming of age, and why he'd decided not to center his life around something that he was still concerned about.
That didn't mean he didn't hope. Between the lulling rock of the subway train, every time it stopped at a station, Blaine would watch the doors and the people flowing through them with the hope that his heart would leap, that he would see a face and just know. But it didn't happen.
New York was like a safe haven for people who didn't want to be found - most big cities were. It was all for the reasons that he'd gone there, the ability to hide in plain sight, but he was still hoping that the other reason was the one that came true. The hope that because there were so many people there, his soul mate was out there waiting.
College went by in a blur, classes after class with peers who were nice friends to have but none of whom were there for him. It was hard to ignore how so many of them found who they were looking for there in the school. Blaine had never fully understood the science behind how they worked, how the system had come to be - they'd been taught that it had always been that way, though it had evolved through the years as times had changed. He'd always been more of an artistic minded person than someone who excelled in biology or philosophy, so he'd tried not to think too much on it beyond what had been explained over the years from various sources, be them teachers, his parents, other members of authority.
All he knew was that he watched as one after another, his fellow students and friends managed to find their soul mates either there at the college or out in the city, and he was happy for them - he truly was. There needed to be as many success stories as there could be, and Blaine was glad to witness so many of them. They gave him hope, gave him something to focus on when his mind tried to remind him of Cooper. His brother had been a success story, in the end, but that never seemed to stand out as much as the bad parts. Wasn't that always the way?
After three years of living in New York, three years of riding the subway, three years of classes that introduced him to some of the best friends he'd ever made but none of whom were the one, Blaine started to think that maybe he'd made the wrong move. Logically he knew he could have done everything right and it just might not be the right time, but there was only so much he could take of watching the people around him go from being lonely souls to the happiest of their life, leaving him behind, before he started to doubt himself. Statistics were on the side of his doubt, on the side of the fact that he should have found them already. Finding someone late happened, but it was more common to find them between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, prime college years - perfect for getting everything sorted out by the time both soul mates would be starting their careers.
It was enough to make Blaine consider that once he was done he should move back someplace smaller, that maybe he was making things worse by living in a city where the odds were like they were. Because even if he found them in a crowded cafe or bar - both types of places that he'd gone to frequently just on the off chance that he'd feel something, that he would know they were there - how could he pick them out of the mass of people? He wanted to think that he would know just by looking, he'd heard that he would know just by seeing their face, but everyone was different so he wasn't convinced. There was only so much he could control, and a big part of him was still terrified even if he did see them and know, did find them, that something horrible would happen. Like with Cooper. He didn't want to be a skeptic, but he started to think he was becoming one.
Until a morning that the subway line he usually transferred to get to school was broken down and he had to take another one, detouring him out of his way but it wasn't like he had a choice, and as he stood in the car and let the rocking of the train soothe over his mind, he felt a pulling in his chest.
Blaine's eyes flew open immediately when he felt it, the little tug at his heart that was unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. It was as though he was equal parts panicked and excited, like emotion was crashing through him like waves against the shore and there was nothing he could do to tamp it down as the feeling grew stronger. It was yearning plain and simple, like everything inside him was being pulled in one direction, and it just kept getting more insistent as the train came to a stop at the next station and he was so strong he felt like his heart was taking over his entire body and screaming at him that this was it and he needed to do something.
It wasn't his stop, it wasn't even close to where he needed to be, but Blaine made his way off the train as quickly as he could and let his eyes scan over the people gathered on the platform, waiting for someone to jump out at him. He could feel his heart pounding so hard against his ribcage, his breath drawing in so quick and shallow in anticipation, like his body couldn't spare enough energy to let him take a full breath, but no matter how many faces he looked at there was nothing that made him react any more than he already was. His hands were practically shaking with the sudden onslaught of emotion, and he ran them both through his hair to try and calm himself down as the chime sounded from the speakers and the doors to the train closed, and he watched it pull away from the platform and zoom off down the tunnel.
As soon as it was moving away from him, Blaine could feel the tension releasing from his body, like everything he'd felt was washing off him and it hadn't been happening at all. But it had been and no matter how quickly it went away, he couldn't forget how it had felt. It was like everything he'd been told would happen had been happening, but it had been much more intense than he had ever anticipated. No matter how many stories he'd been told, no matter how many people tried to explain to him what the feeling was, there were no words that could have ever described how that had felt. It was everything he'd ever heard but amplified tenfold from what he'd thought.
"I should have gotten back on the train," he mumbled to himself, his hands dropping down to his sides from where they'd been resting in his hair as he tried to acclimate back to feeling normal after feeling like that.
It would have made more sense if he had, because they'd been there - they had to have been. Of course they'd gotten on the train - why else would they have been at that platform? He let out a shaky breath and looked up at the board on the wall, checking to see when the next train would be coming through. It was too late, they were gone, and he knew he was going to be late to class but he didn't care. There had been such a chance that he could have met his soul mate, he had felt them there, and if there was ever an excuse to be late to anything it was that. It just meant that he had to make sure to take the same train at the same time the next morning, despite his schedule being different, because there was a chance he could find them then.
That was all he could think about for the entire day, through all his classes - how he needed to be able to retrace his steps to get to that moment again, but to get further than he had. He kept replaying what had happened, over and over, the phantom pangs of everything he’d felt twinging through him as he thought about that first moment of feeling, that first moment of knowing, and it was like watching himself in slow motion. It was equal parts thrilling and painful, because they had been right there, he knew they had been, there was no other explanation for how he’d felt.
Had they felt the same thing that he had? Blaine knew that everyone was similar but different in that regard, that no two people experienced it quite the same way, but he couldn’t help but wonder.
All he knew was that nothing could have prepared him for what he’d felt - no books, classes, stories, firsthand accounts from relatives and friends, nothing. He wasn’t even sure if there were words in the English language that could accurately even begin to depict or describe everything that had gone through him in those brief seconds. That was the other thought that took over his thoughts as the day went on - that hadn’t even been it. If that was what it felt like just when he was close, what would it possibly feel like when he met?
That was the thought that kept him awake that night, staring at the ceiling in the almost darkness of his room, the street light peeking in through the curtains in his room the only thing keeping it from being pitch black. He couldn’t wrap his mind around feeling anything more intense than he had already, wasn’t sure if he physically could without feeling he was going to burst, but he knew it was coming. Blaine knew it was coming, and it wasn’t even something that he had to shove off to some point in the distant future because they’d been there that morning and he was going to go back and find them for real the next time.
The thought that he might be meeting the one person he got to spend the rest of his life with the next morning was even more difficult to try and comprehend. It was what he’d been waiting for his entire life up to that point, a concept more in the forefront of his mind in recent years than it had been before, and the fact that he was potentially on the precipice of it was enough to make his head feel like it was reeling. It was almost too much to bear, just the possibility, but it was so distinct and right there that he couldn’t help but start to feel what he’d started to lose. Hope.
Hope was what he felt last before he fell asleep that night and then the first thing he felt the next morning when he woke up, because he finally had some kind of grasp on his future. His heart and mind was so full of it as he got ready, downing a cup of coffee after getting dressed, checking the time every few minutes to see how minutes were left before he would be on track to follow the same schedule as the day before, before finally leaving his apartment and heading for the subway station to take his new route to campus, though he knew it wasn’t school that he was heading for.
[ Next]
Title: As Long As It Takes
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 27,880~
Summary: There was a common thread that held the entire world together, a singular thought that infiltrated most minds more often than not until it reached fruition. Everyone had someone that was out there in the world waiting for them, someone they were destined to spend the rest of their lives with, and Blaine Anderson was no exception. Meeting his soul mate was a moment he'd been dreaming of and imagining ever since he was old enough to know he had one. It was a moment that he anticipated replaying over and over again in his mind -- that first moment when he'd known. No matter how much he'd thought about it, read about it, dreamed about it, nothing could have prepared him for the actual moment itself.
Author's Note: Written for the Blaine Big Bang. Thanks to slayerkitty for throwing this idea my way, whenidance for being my amazing beta, and animateglee for making such incredible art for it, which can be found throughout the story.
[ Previous]
Moving to New York City had been an easy choice for Blaine to make once he'd been done with high school. The majority of colleges he'd applied to were there, and the ones that hadn't been were only backup plans in case none of the other choices panned out. It had just come down to choosing the one that he wanted and then heading off to the city he'd thought about living in for years. New York was big, it was full of people, and that meant that there was a sense of anonymity that he kind of wanted to cherish. His apartment wasn't anywhere near his school, but the commute was something that he genuinely enjoyed. There was something about the steady rock of the subway, lulling and keeping him at peace with his thoughts between each stop when people got off and on.
It was just so easy for him to get lost in his thoughts, because there were so many things to think about. Cooper was always right there at the forefront, like a daily recurring nightmare of what could happen to him if he weren't careful. There were other examples, other thoughts, people who he'd seen matched and happily so, and he knew that was the more common occurrence than things going badly, but he'd seen it happen. He wasn't sure if he'd chosen a big city because there was more of a chance of him finding his soul mate there with the higher population or if he'd done it so it was less likely to happen for the exact same reason.
Deep down Blaine was a romantic, and he knew that. He yearned for what he'd heard in all the stories growing up, the stories he had stuck in his memory from before everything had gotten turned on its head. He wanted the happily ever after, to meet eyes with someone and just know beyond knowing that he was theirs, they were his, and that there was the one piece of the rest of his life that he needed. Cooper hadn't stayed stuck on what had happened, didn't dwell on how he'd almost died, but that had to have been easier for him considering that he had Anna. He had his soul mate and they were there going through life together, side by side, with so much love between them. Blaine could only hope that when he found his person, his soul mate, his head would stop being stuck in the past and focusing on what had happened before.
Part of him had expected it to happen right away, though he didn't know why. He'd come of age and felt no change at all - though no one had ever said that he should. None of his friends had had anything happen right when they'd come of age, other than an extra lavish birthday party to celebrate them moving into the next stage of their lives. He'd had one of those too, and for that one day he'd been able to block out the memories of the hospital and focused on the happiness that his future could very well hold. It was just a matter of where, when, and most importantly who. The who was what he wanted to know more than anything, but he tried not to focus on that as he went through his life.
Ohio, New York, it didn't matter where he was - he knew he couldn't live every day like he was waiting for someone. He had to do what he could to just live or he would go crazy. That wasn't uncommon, people fixating on the search and ending up broke and on the streets because they weren't working, just looking, and after so long they couldn't sustain themselves any longer. There was also no guarantee that he would find his soul mate within any certain time - he'd heard stories of people not meeting until they were much older than he was. That was why he hadn't been surprised when it hadn't happened soon after his coming of age, and why he'd decided not to center his life around something that he was still concerned about.
That didn't mean he didn't hope. Between the lulling rock of the subway train, every time it stopped at a station, Blaine would watch the doors and the people flowing through them with the hope that his heart would leap, that he would see a face and just know. But it didn't happen.
New York was like a safe haven for people who didn't want to be found - most big cities were. It was all for the reasons that he'd gone there, the ability to hide in plain sight, but he was still hoping that the other reason was the one that came true. The hope that because there were so many people there, his soul mate was out there waiting.
College went by in a blur, classes after class with peers who were nice friends to have but none of whom were there for him. It was hard to ignore how so many of them found who they were looking for there in the school. Blaine had never fully understood the science behind how they worked, how the system had come to be - they'd been taught that it had always been that way, though it had evolved through the years as times had changed. He'd always been more of an artistic minded person than someone who excelled in biology or philosophy, so he'd tried not to think too much on it beyond what had been explained over the years from various sources, be them teachers, his parents, other members of authority.
All he knew was that he watched as one after another, his fellow students and friends managed to find their soul mates either there at the college or out in the city, and he was happy for them - he truly was. There needed to be as many success stories as there could be, and Blaine was glad to witness so many of them. They gave him hope, gave him something to focus on when his mind tried to remind him of Cooper. His brother had been a success story, in the end, but that never seemed to stand out as much as the bad parts. Wasn't that always the way?
After three years of living in New York, three years of riding the subway, three years of classes that introduced him to some of the best friends he'd ever made but none of whom were the one, Blaine started to think that maybe he'd made the wrong move. Logically he knew he could have done everything right and it just might not be the right time, but there was only so much he could take of watching the people around him go from being lonely souls to the happiest of their life, leaving him behind, before he started to doubt himself. Statistics were on the side of his doubt, on the side of the fact that he should have found them already. Finding someone late happened, but it was more common to find them between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, prime college years - perfect for getting everything sorted out by the time both soul mates would be starting their careers.
It was enough to make Blaine consider that once he was done he should move back someplace smaller, that maybe he was making things worse by living in a city where the odds were like they were. Because even if he found them in a crowded cafe or bar - both types of places that he'd gone to frequently just on the off chance that he'd feel something, that he would know they were there - how could he pick them out of the mass of people? He wanted to think that he would know just by looking, he'd heard that he would know just by seeing their face, but everyone was different so he wasn't convinced. There was only so much he could control, and a big part of him was still terrified even if he did see them and know, did find them, that something horrible would happen. Like with Cooper. He didn't want to be a skeptic, but he started to think he was becoming one.
Until a morning that the subway line he usually transferred to get to school was broken down and he had to take another one, detouring him out of his way but it wasn't like he had a choice, and as he stood in the car and let the rocking of the train soothe over his mind, he felt a pulling in his chest.
Blaine's eyes flew open immediately when he felt it, the little tug at his heart that was unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. It was as though he was equal parts panicked and excited, like emotion was crashing through him like waves against the shore and there was nothing he could do to tamp it down as the feeling grew stronger. It was yearning plain and simple, like everything inside him was being pulled in one direction, and it just kept getting more insistent as the train came to a stop at the next station and he was so strong he felt like his heart was taking over his entire body and screaming at him that this was it and he needed to do something.
It wasn't his stop, it wasn't even close to where he needed to be, but Blaine made his way off the train as quickly as he could and let his eyes scan over the people gathered on the platform, waiting for someone to jump out at him. He could feel his heart pounding so hard against his ribcage, his breath drawing in so quick and shallow in anticipation, like his body couldn't spare enough energy to let him take a full breath, but no matter how many faces he looked at there was nothing that made him react any more than he already was. His hands were practically shaking with the sudden onslaught of emotion, and he ran them both through his hair to try and calm himself down as the chime sounded from the speakers and the doors to the train closed, and he watched it pull away from the platform and zoom off down the tunnel.
As soon as it was moving away from him, Blaine could feel the tension releasing from his body, like everything he'd felt was washing off him and it hadn't been happening at all. But it had been and no matter how quickly it went away, he couldn't forget how it had felt. It was like everything he'd been told would happen had been happening, but it had been much more intense than he had ever anticipated. No matter how many stories he'd been told, no matter how many people tried to explain to him what the feeling was, there were no words that could have ever described how that had felt. It was everything he'd ever heard but amplified tenfold from what he'd thought.
"I should have gotten back on the train," he mumbled to himself, his hands dropping down to his sides from where they'd been resting in his hair as he tried to acclimate back to feeling normal after feeling like that.
It would have made more sense if he had, because they'd been there - they had to have been. Of course they'd gotten on the train - why else would they have been at that platform? He let out a shaky breath and looked up at the board on the wall, checking to see when the next train would be coming through. It was too late, they were gone, and he knew he was going to be late to class but he didn't care. There had been such a chance that he could have met his soul mate, he had felt them there, and if there was ever an excuse to be late to anything it was that. It just meant that he had to make sure to take the same train at the same time the next morning, despite his schedule being different, because there was a chance he could find them then.
That was all he could think about for the entire day, through all his classes - how he needed to be able to retrace his steps to get to that moment again, but to get further than he had. He kept replaying what had happened, over and over, the phantom pangs of everything he’d felt twinging through him as he thought about that first moment of feeling, that first moment of knowing, and it was like watching himself in slow motion. It was equal parts thrilling and painful, because they had been right there, he knew they had been, there was no other explanation for how he’d felt.
Had they felt the same thing that he had? Blaine knew that everyone was similar but different in that regard, that no two people experienced it quite the same way, but he couldn’t help but wonder.
All he knew was that nothing could have prepared him for what he’d felt - no books, classes, stories, firsthand accounts from relatives and friends, nothing. He wasn’t even sure if there were words in the English language that could accurately even begin to depict or describe everything that had gone through him in those brief seconds. That was the other thought that took over his thoughts as the day went on - that hadn’t even been it. If that was what it felt like just when he was close, what would it possibly feel like when he met?
That was the thought that kept him awake that night, staring at the ceiling in the almost darkness of his room, the street light peeking in through the curtains in his room the only thing keeping it from being pitch black. He couldn’t wrap his mind around feeling anything more intense than he had already, wasn’t sure if he physically could without feeling he was going to burst, but he knew it was coming. Blaine knew it was coming, and it wasn’t even something that he had to shove off to some point in the distant future because they’d been there that morning and he was going to go back and find them for real the next time.
The thought that he might be meeting the one person he got to spend the rest of his life with the next morning was even more difficult to try and comprehend. It was what he’d been waiting for his entire life up to that point, a concept more in the forefront of his mind in recent years than it had been before, and the fact that he was potentially on the precipice of it was enough to make his head feel like it was reeling. It was almost too much to bear, just the possibility, but it was so distinct and right there that he couldn’t help but start to feel what he’d started to lose. Hope.
Hope was what he felt last before he fell asleep that night and then the first thing he felt the next morning when he woke up, because he finally had some kind of grasp on his future. His heart and mind was so full of it as he got ready, downing a cup of coffee after getting dressed, checking the time every few minutes to see how minutes were left before he would be on track to follow the same schedule as the day before, before finally leaving his apartment and heading for the subway station to take his new route to campus, though he knew it wasn’t school that he was heading for.
[ Next]