Archive of Our Own

His little home is not much, you should know that. He doesn't have a castle anymore, and  the platform of a chopped-down log could never pass for the stages he used to perform in. 

It's in the countryside, inside of the endless woods that act more of a portal than anything else. There's fae gardens he has to warn Lance not to jump in—the fae are not friends, but they aren't enemies, even if they do hide his buttons—and kudzu growing wherever it could. 

Outside, he feels the air going through his hair, a little longer than it once was, and his skin is flayed with scars. A cardigan the same shade of  dandelions just before their growth; loose trousers that are easy to run in, which is needed for their uphill battles. 

(Metaphorical, hyperbolic battles. All he has to do is walk up a hill, climb if he has to. The walk down is always easier. It's more of a tumble. Lance calls it fun.) 

He can hear the sound of water rippling through the air, like pebbles being tossed, skipping miles, a lake somewhere. Lance tells him about it, about the leeches that suckle on his skin. His brother merely peels them off back into their habitat, careful never to squash them between his fingers. 

(“I'm gonna name ‘em,” he promised, because there wasn't a member of their family that was able to stop caring more than they should.) 

There's an oven in their kitchen, along with a dining table just big enough for three—it usually only has two at it, though. Lance never liked being alone, after all, and his boisterous army friends hang around the outside, their laughter floating through the windows, somehow getting through the brick wall that kept their little home upright. 

Whenever they can't keep their muddy footprints out of his kitchen, he has them plant flowers in the garden until the mud on their shoes dry. The gloves are thick and worn, in the way not a lot of things in Blaine's past life used to be. 

Lance keeps small trinkets on the wall, treasures he's found while exploring. He has pictures of his friends pinned sloppily above his bed, an amateur painting decorated in a gold frame by the wall next to the opening of Blaine’s office. There are butterflies painted in small places; blue, delicate, watercolor-like, floating inside the pastel yellow wall—they lead to the kitchen, to the cookie jar and the glass plates and the nice pots and pans. 

Their home is sat upon a hill, more of a lump in the ground. It's surrounded by fawns, jumpy bunnies, by birds who still sing their proudest songs even when he's complaining about their off-tone. There's these orange and red fishes that Lance tells him are swimming in the clear lake. He claims there's spirits, spirits who burn like fire and love like all Hell, floating among the lilypads, he thinks they're friends of the leeches. (To that, Blaine tells him to stop making up stories.) 

In the nook he considers a living room, where he brings his rare guests into, it's all browns and warm oranges and a sun clock he looks to, always in thought, whenever he's writing a letter. There's a piano beside the 

He walks to collect berries every morning, to check up on the family of spotted deer. His flowers grow the best in Spring. 

Two bedrooms that aren't that much bigger than the one closet they have, a little smaller than the wine cellar below them—it came with the house, drinking is a ghastly habit—and they're right across from each other, for the ease of communication when one brother might wake up from a nightmare and the other needs to find him in time. 

The moon acts as a nightlight. Lance’s curtains are always a peek open. (“Are you afraid of the dark?” The word ‘still’ catches in his throat. Sappy familiarity grows on him like mushrooms and he can only hope it won't affect his speech or his mannerisms. He has dignity, after all.) 

Right now, the sun is upon him, yet the shade is cool and, even as he stands in the sunlight, it's kind to his pale skin. The fire has never touched him. In the comfort of the forest, his brother waiting for him—soaking wet like a dog as he will be—it won't start now. 

The doormat will be sullied, the pink long-stained with rich earth. His scarf calls for a chillier time. He's never needed a bookshelf, for Lance never enjoyed reading, but there's books unread underneath the wooden table in the Nook—flappy colored books and hard-covered—and beside his bed. Unopened letters are smiling at his desk, his quill beside him, not yet dipped in ink. Song lyrics lay to the side, to be grammatically corrected sooner rather than later. 

And right now—right now, he is unrushed as he watches the atmosphere shift, ever so slightly. The leaves won't change their vibrant green for a couple months, but they shed when shaken. Petals of all different colors swirl in his visual. 

The woods are places with their secrets. Blaine thinks that, perhaps, he and his brother—the Plaid brothers who betrayed, the Plaid brothers who escaped, the Plaid brothers as a whole—are one of them. 

Blaine stops, brown bulky boots mixing with the dark dirt beneath him, and takes a moment to take in the flowers. Because he has a moment. Because the world will wait for the bees to pollinate and the sky to raise and for the pie to puff and it will wait for him. 

The world is full of love, of patience. It just took a little time to see it.