MORNING HUNGERS AND MORNING WOODS

Friday nights out at the club have only recently become a thing.

Before Blaine – quite literally everything in Leo's life now is described according to the time it happened, and if it was before or after Blaine showed up, as if the man was the new Messiah – Leo's Friday nights out meant a pizza and a movie with Adam and Annie, or maybe the evergreen wasting of time at the mall, moving from one shop to the other without really buying anything and constantly eating or drinking something. But that changed after Blaine.

Now, those kind of nights are still happening, Leo keeps going out with his friends every week end (every day of the week, actually), but once a month – two if he's particularly lucky – he gets to go to Westerville and stay at Blaine's house for three days and two whole nights, instead of just staying with him in a hotel room in Lima. And, when he's there, they usually go to the Prince of Persia on Friday, which is currently one of the coolest things ever, according to his last comment on the matter.

The Prince of Persia, a gay club he wouldn't be let in if it wasn't for the fact that Blaine reached some God Status in there and he's basically allowed to do whatever he wants, even bringing a minor with him, is just one of the many many unusual-for-a-fifteen-years-old things that are currently happening in Leo's life.
Another is waking up completely naked in a bed currently owned by a man twenty years older than him, after a night of which at the moment he remembers very little.

He didn't drink – Blaine rarely lets him – but that doesn't matter. A very long, very exhausting night of wild sex has on his brain the same effect of drinking too many vodkas (which is just one glass, he found out recently with Adam). He just wakes up without even knowing his own name, let alone remembering what exactly happened between those sheets.

He opens his eyes and the only thing he sees for a moment is gray. His brain is so not working that it takes him a while to realize that he's having a moment of intense communion with Blaine's fancy sheets. The man himself is not there. They don't sleep spooning or whatever – Leo moves too much during his sleep to even think about it – but he always ends up draping himself around Blaine and spending the last hours of the night with his face hidden in his neck. Blaine's got a bigger, more solid body that he likes to feel when he wakes up, so, after getting to the farthest corner of the bed, he naturally tends to move closer and closer back to him, until he touches him again. And the fact that he's not embarrassed to admit it anymore it's a sign of him opening up. Or some other crap Blaine said.

Bottom line is, he doesn't like to wake up alone. Unfortunately, that almost always happens because he could sleep for days if let free to do so, while Blaine doesn't stay in bed more than eight hours unless you give him a good reason to. Leo keeps his eyes open but he doesn't move as he listens. The loft is big but the absence of anything even remotely resembling a wall helps carry sound. He knows for a fact that the hissing comes from the espresso machine on the kitchen counter, some Italian steel monstrosity that makes a lot of noise and gives you back only a tiny cup of super strong coffee that made Leo cringe the only time he tried it. That's the only coffee Blaine drinks now, even tho he admitted that he was a Starbucks addicted when he was Leo's age. Other than that, there's the clinging of Blaine setting the table, the swish of the sugar jar being dragged on the counter and the stools being moved a little away from the table, ready to welcome them both for breakfast.

Leo knows that, in a few moments, Blaine's coming to wake him up. He could pretend to be still asleep, so Blaine will crawl on the bed, nudge him and cuddle him until he's properly awake. That would be nice, but it'd probably lead to sex – everything that involves them being close to each other on a comfy surface leads to sex – but the truth is that he's hungry. And he must be the only male in the world whose morning hunger is more annoying than his morning wood.

He rolls over and crawls out from under the blankets and out of bed.

Blaine's bed is perfectly squared, low and vaguely oriental, and it's placed on a sort of freaking stage to which you access by a set of three wooden steps. Blaine says it's design, to Leo it's like one of those special prizes at the casinos, the expensive car placed on the rotating stage for everybody to see. And it's not even the weirdest part of the house.

The thing that always hits Leo is that everything in the apartment looks unused, perfectly placed in a certain spot to show off and nothing more. Sometimes it's like living in one of those fake sit-com set up. You've got the impression that if you take three steps to the right you're gonna get out of the set and find yourself in the warehouse where the TV show is being shot.
Luckily, it only takes him a couple of hours and his suitcase to make a lived and perfectly normal house out of this place. There's no end to the number of things – clothes, comics, video games – he can scatter around, and Blaine learned that it's easier to clean up after he's gone than while he's there. Besides, he would never have the time for that anyway.

Leo picks up his pants and t-shirt from the floor and puts them up. He never really got over the embarrassment of being naked when he's not supposed to be. Unlike Blaine, who feels so comfortable in his own skin that he could end up locked out of the house naked and still wave to his neighbor without feeling the need to cover himself, Leo can't go to the bathroom after they just had sex if he doesn't put some clothes on first. And he's not so sure it has anything to do with being an awkward teenager at all.

He just came around the set of shelves in front of the bed, which is the sad excuse for a bedroom wall, when he slams into Blaine, who is indeed half naked and wearing only his pants. “Look who finally woke up!” He says chuckling as he wraps his arms around Leo and pulls him closer.

Leo instantly hides his face in the man's neck, his body automatically adapts to Blaine's. It seems like there will be some pre-breakfast cuddling after all. “What time is it?” He asks, leaving a little kiss on Blaine's neck. Blaine smells like coffee and sex.

“It's almost noon, a time for a meal called lunch,” Blaine says, and then he chuckles hearing the low growl coming from the bundle of bones and curly hair in his arms. “But, knowing that you won't take a bite of proper healthy food unless you've stuffed your mouth with something containing an illegal amount of sugar first, I set the table for breakfast.”

Leo smiles. “Did you have it already?”

“Just coffee,” Blaine answers. “I thought I was going to need it once you opened your eyes.”

Leo chuckles. “Shut up! I'm not that bad,” he complains as he slowly disentangles himself from him and starts dragging himself towards the kitchen. “You are a very lucky sugar daddy. I could have been worse.”

“First of all, I'm nobody's sugar daddy,” Blaine says, following him. “And please enlighten me on the be worse part.”

Leo glares at him. “You know, you're lucky that I'm still too sleepy to be offended,” he says as he systematically opens every single cabinet and then steps back so he can look inside all of them at the same time. He's a big picture breakfast kind of guy. He needs to know exactly how much food is there for him to pick from, because sometimes he doesn't know that he wants something until he sees it.

Food in Blaine's house is always a problem. The man can't cook for his life, and he's not even interested in learning either. He's got a fridge the size of a small wardrobe, but all it contains are a couple of beers, some fancy bottles of water with a funny French name, probiotic yogurt, of course, because he needs to keep himself in shape, and not much else, really. And his cabinets are usually even worse, because what use could have for bread, pasta, or canned food a man who doesn't have meat or vegetable in his fridge? Blaine doesn't need fresh food because he doesn't cook. Best case scenario: he goes to a restaurant. Worst case scenario: he orders take away.

Leo remembers the very first time he got to spend the night at Blaine's house. It didn't happen so much time ago, so he obviously remembers it pretty clearly, but it is so important and it was so weird and exciting for so many reasons, that he's ready to bet he will never forget that, not in a million years. And among the many reasons he will remember it for – having sex with Blaine in an actual house for the first time ever included, of course – there's the moment he went to the kitchen to eat something and found nothing, literally nothing, to feed himself with.

He couldn't believe that in Blaine's fancy one million dollars house there was a chromotherapy shower but not bread. It was so illogical to him, that he stared at the empty cabinet for a good ten minutes. When he didn't come back to bed, Blaine came to look for him and found him still there, in shock.

That was the time Blaine found out what it means to have a teenager in the house, what kind of food said teenager expects to find in the fridge, and how much of it he's able to make disappear in a very small amount of time. And so, planning to have Leo over again in the future – possibly multiple times – Blaine learned how to grocery shopping specifically for the food catastrophe that he's Leo when he's hungry.

“The cabinets are full,” Leo notices, impressed. “You actually bought things.”

“With money, yes,” Blaine nods, playing along. “I learn quickly.”

Leo takes out some cereal boxes to look behind them, in the deepest part of the cabinet. “I'm quite impressed. I was worried that teaching you new things would be hard at your age.”

Blaine gets closer to him and pinches his hip. “I'm not that old, you know!” He protests. “Besides, it was survival instinct. I don't want to experience having you here when you're hungry and there's nothing to eat ever again. You're even less able to control your hunger than you are to control your sexual impulses.”

Leo blushes, taking out more boxes and a bag of chocolate chip cookies. “I don't have those,” he tries, even though he knows he does of course. But he still has problems with the concept of sex. Or sex itself. Or the fact that he wants to have it. It's complicated.

“Really?” Blaine helps him out with all the boxes, moving them on the counter. There's already enough food on it to feed a small state in Africa. “So what is it when you ask me to do it again? Or when you stick your hands down my pants or yours?”

“Shut up! I don't... I mean, I do, but they are not...” he mutters, turning purple. “Oh, just shut up! Where are the Oreos?”

Blaine chuckles and gives him a kiss on his cheek before he can scurry away in embarrassment, as Leo promptly does. “Second cabinet on the left. There was no room left,” he sighs. “Actually, do you really plan to eat all this stuff?”

“I don't know. I haven't decided yet,” he answers, reaching up to the top shelf on his tiptoes. He's still very small for a fifteen years old boy and he can't wait to grow taller all of a sudden, like everybody says he will. If it doesn't happen, he's gonna complain with the Universe. “Oh! Cool! What is this?” He turns around, holding another box in his hands. It's black with white spaceships all over it.

“I have no idea,” Blaine admits, as they sit down. Actually, he sits down, Leo climbs on a stool, as he reads the back of the black box. “I was shopping for you in the breakfast aisle and this young woman, a clerk, looked in my cart and said you would loved those. Well, she actually said my son would love those, but that would be you for anyone who sees me shopping for you. Anyway, I think they are spaceships shaped cereals or something. She probably thought you were five.”

Leo pours some cereals in an empty bowl. They are, in fact, chocolate and sugar coated cereals in the shape of spaceships, the Moon, astronauts and the like. A stars themed breakfast, the box says. They look cool. “She was hitting on you,” he comments, trying them out suspiciously. He grabs some with his fingertips and puts them in his mouth, a wine taster expression on his face.

“Oh, come on,” Blaine makes a face, pouring black coffee in his cup. “She was just being nice.”

“She was being nice because she wanted to slip in your pants,” Leo insists, eating another handful of cereals that he puts directly on his mouth. “Girls never guess you're gay.”

“Should I wear a rainbow flag?”

Leo smirks without looking up. If there's something Blaine loves about him is that smile, but it's very rare. Except the times Leo gets angry for some reason or another, he's still very shy around him, and extremely self-conscious. He used to be very self-confident when he was a kid, but he lost that along the way. That smirk is proof of that, it's almost a memory of the strength he misplaced somewhere, and Blaine's always proud and happy when he manages to bring that back, even for a moment.

“So, are they good?” Blaine nods towards the bowl. One of them, actually.
Leo's got three. One full of those chocolate spaceships, one with milk and frosted flakes and one full of fruit cut into pieces. That one is bigger than the others and he will bring it along with him until is empty even after breakfast. He's got a passion for fruit, which is unusually healthy for a kid who would feed solely on fast food for the rest of his life.

“Yeah, they are good,” he nods, munching at a spoonful of frosted flake. “Your secret girlfriend was right.”

Blaine sighs. “She was not my secret girlfriend,” he says, patiently.

“Right. I bet it's a man,” Leo says. “A young man, about twenty something. He's in college and he needs money, so he works part-time as a clerk in a supermarket. He thinks he's only using you for your money, but he's quickly falling in love with you.”

Sometimes Blaine forgets that Leo is extremely imaginative other than insanely jealous. “Oh, really? I didn't know he felt that way.”

“You wouldn't know,” Leo nods. “You're too busy with your career, and it has never been something serious for you. You're gonna break his heart.”

“Oh, poor... what is his name?” Blaine plays along.

“You tell me,” Leo hisses, the fine line between game and annoyance is about to be crossed.

Blaine can feel it, but he also knows very well where is the point of no return, so he pushes it a little further. “Carlos,” he answers. “He's half Mexican. His mother chose that name because it was her father's, Carlos' grandfather.”

Leo looks up, glaring at him. His eyes are ready to set fire to him, the kitchen and Carlos, wherever he is. He's going to spontaneously burst into flames, and nobody will ever know why. Suddenly, what was just a story Leo was telling becomes reality, only because Blaine took it into his hands. Leo is okay with fictional boyfriends as long as Blaine denies their existence when Leo tells him their stories, but the moment he plays along, the line is crossed and suddenly he's cheating. “Oh, so he has a name,” he comments, coldly.

Blaine smiles, knowing that he can't go any further without making a mess, and he doesn't want that. “No, he doesn't have a name because he doesn't exist. I was playing with you. Come on!” He offers him a bright, happy and charming smile that Leo welcomes with a judging frown. Blaine sighs and grabs a piece of apple and brings it to Leo's lips. They remain stubbornly closed, so he pushes a little, trying to break their resistance.

That's when he understands the mistake he has just made. Leo looks at him, but his lips open and then close, soft and warm, around the piece of fruit and his fingers, triggering both their brains. Blaine can read it in the kid's eyes and knows for sure that the light changed in his own too. He wonders if he should stop. They just woke up, they could do other things. And then Leo sucks at his fingers, and that's a no.

No, they can't do something else.

He was about to stand up and go make the bed, but apparently that would be pointless.
And he never does pointless things. As they leave a messy kitchen to reach the messy bed, Blaine thinks this kid always turns all his things upside down, and he doesn't even care.