YOU CAN'T SPELL CHALLENGE WITHOUT CHANGE (BODY)

The head of the North Merchant Guild comes to them at the beginning of spring. He seems to think this is a matter of extreme secrecy, so he shows up at night unannounced, forcing them all out of bed, which is never a good way to start a business partnership. The man has two big front teeth and his hair has seen better days. He is, like most of the merchants, a man of significant girth, who believes in showing his wealth by wearing as much jewelry as he can, and so he almost seems to glint under the light of the candles they have to light all over the living room to prevent the meeting to turn into a secret society reunion of sort.

The merchant, who goes by the name of Gideon Talorcan, has a beef with another merchant, the head of the South Merchant Guild, who apparently stole a cargo from him. Or, as it is more likely, had it stolen by someone else. Now, Gideon addresses the whole matter as if it was something exceptional that had never happened in the history of merchants before. They have worked for enough merchants to know that this is pretty much standard procedure. The main cause of beefs between merchants are stolen cargoes. And the main reason for merchants to come to them is a beef with another merchant. Fighting with each other must be second nature for a merchant because it's written in their job description.

Blaine accepts the job almost right away because it seems pretty easy and Talorcan is willing to pay good money for it. They shake hands with the man, get half the payment in advance, say goodbye and go back to bed. In the next few days, they find out that stealing back the cargo won't be as easy as they thought it would be, though. After a little preemptive scouting, Leo finds out that the cargo has been stolen and it is currently being guarded by a group of necromancers, which instantly turns the job into a high-risk one. Magicians and warlocks are tough nuts to crack – and Blaine usually prefers to avoid jobs that involves them as, even with Annie in the party, it's hard for them to face a group of spellcasters – but necromancers are even worse than that. They don't have a code of honor to stick to, which makes them ruthless, and they deal with death, which makes them really dangerous and, in many cases, practically immortal. There's never a good reason to face necromancers. Nothing is worth that much pain in the ass, unless it's a lot of money. But it has to be a lot.

So, Blaine calls Talorcan and tells him that, because he forgot to tell them the little detail that the cargo is in the hands of the necromancers, their price goes up and up. He expects the man to refuse such a request and he's ready to give back the down payment, but the man accepts his conditions. Facing the prospect of receiving an amount of money they have never seen in ten years, Blaine can't help but go on with the plan. Leo is sent scouting again. His job is to assess the situation and come up with a plan that allows them to get to their target and take it away.

Leo stays away for three days straight – the longest he has ever been away from home scouting, or in general – and, when he comes back, he doesn't have good news. “It can't be done.” It's the first thing he says, unbuckling his belt, from which hangs pretty much everything he usually needs, except for the bow that he keeps on his back. “The necromancers' safe house is basically a fortress.”

Adam is used to his tendency to dramatize, so he tries to get some practical information from him. “How many people are there? How many guard shifts? And how long are they?”

“No, you don't get it,” Leo says, lying down on the couch, his head on Blaine's legs. “There are, like, four guards in total. The point is that they don't need them. Seeing that they were so understaffed, I investigated further. Getting inside the walls is complicated, but perfectly possible. In fact, I did it. But once inside, I felt that thing Annie taught me to detect, that vibration in the air.”

“The magical trace,” Annie nods. They boys don't need to know magic – that's her specialty – but she's been teaching them tricks to at least feel magic when it's involved, so they can avoid traps and call her to fix the problem, instead of running head on into any kind of spell. The magical trace is a residue of magic that you leave behind after casting a spell and it can be sensed with a little training It took Annie several weeks to get the boys to focus enough to feel it, but apparently it worked.

“Exactly, that thing,” Leo nods. “I felt it, so I followed it, thinking that it could lead me to the cargo, but it didn't. In fact, I walked around for, like, hours without going anywhere. No matter where I went, I would always come back to where I started. And another thing. There's something in that place, something that growls and gives you the heebie-jeebies.”

“It's possible they cast a shield around the cargo and ordered some demonic creature to guard it,” Annie muses. “It wouldn't be the first time. But I think I can dispel something like that. It's not gonna be easy, but it can be done. I only need to get inside.”

“That's the problem,” Leo keeps going. “I can't get you inside. The place has no door nor windows, only a small passage at the top. It took a lot of grapnel work to get up there. And, once inside, it's like a Cursed Temple scenario in there. There were traps everywhere. I actually risked my life,” he adds to Blaine's benefit.

Blaine promptly strokes his head affectionately. “You were very brave.”

“Can't we just magic our way in by blowing something up?” Adam asks.

“It might not be the best idea,” Blaine sighs. “We don't want to draw the necromancers' attention because we wouldn't be able to deal with it. We need to get in and get out as silently as possible. If we need to blow things up, we will while running away, not entering. Leo, there's no way you can teach us how to get inside the way you did?”

“Do we have a few years?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“Then no,” Leo shakes his head. “The first part I might be able to teach you quickly, but the trap looks like one of the hellish training obstacle course you used to build for me. It's been already hard for me, I don't know how could I lead the three of you through it. I told you, it can't be done. Not right now, anyway.

The right thing to do would be refusing the job once again, but Blaine decides to give themselves a little time to think of a better plan. They will all think about it and, if nothing comes up in three days, he will go back to Talorcan and tell him they can't do it. It's the night of the third day when Annie comes up with the solution. Blaine is about to leave for the merchant's house when she comes running downstairs, waving a piece of parchment in her right hand. “I've got it!” She screams, in her I'm-definitely-the-genius-of-this-party voice. “I know how I can get inside the fortress.”

Blaine looks at her with affection. “I'm all ears, princess.”

She takes a deep breath in preparation of her speech. “Alright. Leo said that entering the fortress is complicated if we all have to do it. But you can still enter by yourself, right?” She asks.

“Yes, but once I'm inside, I can't go anywhere because magic makes me going in circles.”

“Exactly,” Annie smiles. “But if I could break the spell, could you get to the cargo and take it out? I mean, physically.”

“I... guess? I told you, I haven't seen it.”

“Talorcan said it was only a cart,” Blaine butts in. “Besides, when I spoke with him the second time, he said he only need one box. He didn't say why, but I'm guessing it's the usual precious artifact he bought illegally and that it's worth way more than he's giving us.”

“Isn't it always like that?” Adam snorts.

“Exactly,” Blaine nods. “So, I think we can reasonably say that Leo would be able to take the box out of the fortress if you could break the spell hiding it.”

“Great!” Annie pumps her fist in the air. “That means we'll only need to work together. Leo, you will get me in there—“

“But I just told you that—“

“Eh pa-pa-pa. Let me finish. You're gonna bring me in there in spirit,” she says.

Leo frowns. “Come again?”

Annie chuckles. “You are going to enter the fortress as yourself and once you're in there, I'm gonna possess you and make magic through you,” she explains. “Then I will leave your body again and, from outside, I'll blow the wall down. Adam and Blaine will fence our enemies off while you come out and then we will run.”

Leo frowns even more. “Wait a second! You can possess people?”

“Well, in theory I can. I've just never tried,” she shrugs.

Blaine looks pensive. “Mh, it sounds pretty dangerous,” he says.

“Actually, no, it's not. It's way safer than what we usually do,” Annie keeps explaining. “As you always say, one of us is less likely to get caught than the whole group and Leo has already been there once, which is a first as we usually enter places without having any idea of what we're going to find. If we calibrate the explosion well, it's going to be a matter of seconds. They might not even get to us in time.”

“But you will have to perform two seemingly powerful spells in a matter of minutes,” Blaine insists. “Are you sure you can do that?”

“That's the funny part,” she answers with a smile. “When I cast a spell, what really gets tired is my body, not my spirit. I use energy to shape spells and I have plenty of that, but the weight of that energy on my body, that's a lot and my body can't take too much of it. But in this case, Leo's body will be affected not mine, which means I'll still have all my strength when it'll be time to blow up things.”

“And how am I supposed to drag a possibly very heavy box out of that if you drain my body of all my strength?” Leo protests.

“I won't. First, you're physically way stronger than me,” Annie explains. “Secondly, when I'm too tired to cast a second spell, it doesn't mean I can't do anything else. Casting a spell will still leave you able to run away with our box.”

Once reassured about this little detail, Leo seems to actually consider the possibility. “It doesn't sound so bad. I mean, we've never done something like that, and it's usually never a good idea to do something we've never tried before, but considering the situation, I don't think we have much of a choice.”

“I'm still worried,” Blaine says. “It seems incredibly complicated and you said you've never tried.”

“That's true, but I'm pretty sure I can manage,” Annie says, looking at him with determination. Annie never does something she's not 100% sure she can pull off, so Blaine knows that he can trust her instincts. Still, he has doubts. “It'll be Leo alone for a long time, and if something goes wrong, we won't have any way to extract him from there.”

“If something goes wrong, we blow up everything and take him out,” Adam intervenes. “I know we don't want to face the necromancers, but that's still an option in case of emergency. We're not totally defenseless. Besides, I don't think Leo will mess up this time.”

“Aw, Adam, that's so nice of you!” Leo exclaims, genuinely surprised that Adam would say something good about him for once. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you suck at fighting and making plans, but sneaking inside places, detecting traps and jumping and crawling through obstacle courses, that's your jam. This is the only case in which you're actually useful.

Leo frowns. “You could have just said, because I believe in you, Leo,” he mutters.

“How much time do you need to prepare for this?” Blaine says, before the boys can start fighting over Adam's words.

“I would normally need more than a month, but I've known Leo all my life and that should make the connection between us easier to establish,” Annie says. “Give me a week, I can pull this off.”

“Can I pull this off?” Leo asks, confused.

Annie grins. “Oh, I'll make you.”

*

To allow Annie's spirit to pass into Leo's body, their bodies have to be synchronized. That kind of harmony, Annie's book says, is usually achieved through deep meditation. Now, Annie knows that forcing Leo to do meditation exercises is pretty much as useful as throwing a sheep out of a window to teach it to fly. The sheep is not designed to fly and, even if it was, you wouldn't teach it how to to do it by murdering it.

Leo finds those exercises boring and he gets constantly distracted. His mind simply is not designed to be at peace. In fact, his mind gives its best when it's challenged with two or more things at the same time, that's why he's so good at detecting traps and avoiding them. So, Annie skips the meditation and decides to play a game with him. They are gonna live in symbiosis for the next seven days. They will eat, sleep, wake up and get to the bathroom at the same time, they will walk at the same pace and learn how to do simple movements in perfect synchronicity.

It takes them a couple of days of run-in, but the morning of the third day they wake up, get down the bed and come downstairs moving like automaton twins. By the fourth day they already are creepy. “So, how is it going?” Blaine asks as he sips his coffee at the breakfast table.

“Good,” Leo and Annie say in unison, reaching out across the table to grab some toasted bread. “It's gonna be a piece of cake.”

“This is so weird,” Adam comments.

“You haven't seen the weirdest part yet,” Leo and Annie say.

The weirdest part comes at the end of the week, when they decide to make a test-possession to make sure everything is going to go the way they have planned it. “What do you need us to do?” Blaine says.

“Nothing,” Annie replies. “Just watch. Leo?”

“I'm ready.”

At first, Annie thinks of just hijacking Leo's body for as long as she'll need to break the necromancers' spell, but during the first two attempts she quickly realizes that it's hard to maintain herself inside Leo's body when he's still in there too. Kicking him out is going to require a little more effort on her part, but it's going to be better on the long run, so she is now going for that. Strangely enough, Leo's mind (or his spirit) grasps the concept of finding Annie's body and descending into it quite easily. Now it's only a matter of getting the hand of it.

From outside, nothing really changes, they don't even flinch or anything. They remain seated on the ground with their eyes closed for an awful amount of time. So much so that Blaine almost starts to worry. But, eventually, Annie opens her eyes and grins in a way she has never done. “That's weird,” Leo says with her voice, amused. “I feel smaller and I feel bits I didn't have up to a moment before.”

“Tell me about it,” Annie groans in Leo's voice.

“Has it worked?” Blaine asked, confused.

Annie stands up. “Yes, it worked,” she says, groaning again as she tried to get used to Leo's body, which is bigger than hers.”

“Is it normal that I feel in two places at once?” Leo asks, looking at himself in Annie's body. “I mean, I know I'm in your body, but I kinda still believe to be in mine.”

“Yes, it should stop in a few minutes. Your conscience is slower than your spirit and you're still kinda here too,” Annie explains opening and closing her new hands.

“Oh my God, you're so light!” Leo says, happily as he jumps a little on the spot. “Actually, let me try something.”

Suddenly he starts somersaulting back and forth, with and without hands as he would usually do in his body, but twice as agile in Annie's. Until, of course he miscalculates a landing and he ends up with his face – Annie's, actually – in the dirt.

“Ouch,” Annie comments, looking at herself on the ground. “Try not to break any of my bones, alright?”

“Sorry. I'm just not used to be so much lighter, and you have longer arms than I do,” Leo mutters, massaging his head.

“Why don't you try and cast a spell?” Blaine suggests, “'cause if you can't, there's no point in doing all this.”

Annie nods and closes her eyes, focusing on her magic, which has moved body with her. A moment later, they all see Leo's hands coming together, then face forward and then release a fireball that incinerates a tree a few feet from there. The giant yew tree basically disintegrates under their very eyes. “Ah! I made magic!” Leo screams in joy.

“You didn't do anything,” Adam comments, annoyed. “It was Annie.”

“But it was my body, so shut up. I did magic.”

Blaine sighs. “I say it was a success. Go back in your bodies, you two. You need to rest for what's ahead of us.”

“No, no! Wait!” Leo instantly says. “Wait, I need to do something. Annie, can I—?”

Annie frowns. “You want to touch my boobs, don't you?” She says like someone who already knows the answer.

“I have to know how does it feel when they are on yourself,” Leo says.

Annie sighs. “Alright, go on. It's not like you haven't touched them already, anyway,” she says.

Leo places both his hands on his boobs and gropes at them with such devotion that he's almost poetic to look at. “Oh, my God! They are so rounded and so soft and so nice! How do you not spend the entirety of your time touching them?!”

“I don't know, because I'm used to them? You have a penis, I don't think you spend your day with it in your hand.”

“Uh, you don't want to know the answer to that,” Adam says.

Blaine clears his throat. “Come on, you had fun, now go back. We need to fine-tune the plan.”

The reverse spell is as silent and uneventful as the first one. One second of silence and they're both back in their bodies, safe and sound. Blaine allows himself to smile, it almost seems like they're going to make it.

*

Luckily for them, the first viable night there's no moon. The night is as dark as they come and they can easily reach the Necromancers' fortress without being seen. As Leo told them, there are only four guards outside – and pretty bored or sleepy too – but there's no entrance. The place is literally one block of stone in the shape of a pentagon with only a few opening about fifty feet from the ground.

“Are you gonna enter through those?” Annie asks.

“Yes, that's the easy part. The guards walk around the fortress and cross twice every hour. I only need to climb fast enough while they're looking away. Without moon, that's going to be easy,” Leo confirms.

“How will she know when to switch?” Adam asks.

“Once I get inside, give me fifteen minutes,” Leo says to Annie. “I should be already done by that.”

“And if you're not?”

“Well, stand wherever you are and don't move as you will probably be in the middle of the obstacle course,” Leo reasons.

“Great,” Annie groans.

“But it won't happen,” Leo smiles, confidently. “It took me five minutes last time. I'm allowing myself ten minutes more to be sure. We're going to be fine.”

There's nothing more to say, so he goes. Climbing the wall is a piece of cake as he expected. He waits for the guards to move away and while they yawn, he is a shadow among shadows that moves quickly to the top of the building. Once he gets to the closest opening, he gives his partners in the shadows a thumb up, just to make sure they know he's up there.

“Oh my God, he's so stupid,” Adam grumbles.

The trap inside is not very creative, just incredibly long to go through. It's like the obstacle course from hell for someone who's got no stamina. Luckily for them, Leo lacks a lot of things, but not stamina. It's easily one of the two things he actually posses an endless amount of, the other being lust. There are a few complicated jumps to make, a sequence of deadly pendulums made of giant axes – Yes, for real –, two big boulders rolling out of their slots in the wall the moment he lands on the ground after leaping over a spread of pointy sticks, flames, the shrinking room with the moving walls and, of course, the inevitable hall with the poisonous darts. All in all, a useless display of obstacles where a few armed guards would have easily done the job.

Crouching on the floor, Leo takes a deep breath as the familiar creepy vibration of the magical trace gives him goosebumps. If he closes his eyes and listens closely, he can already hear the faint growling of whatever creature coming from between the worlds is guarding this place. The magic here is strong, it almost seems to weigh on his body like a physical thing. It doesn't surprise him that there's no one inside patrolling the place. Leo sits down, waiting for Annie to do her own magic.

Two minutes later, he feels the familiar tugging of Annie's magic nudging him out of his body. Annie has taught him how to follow that request. He relaxes and unhooks himself from his body, letting the flow of magic that started from Annie pull him away while it takes her inside. A few seconds after, he's looking at the night through Annie's eyes. “Did it work?” Blaine asks in a whisper.

“Yes, she is inside,” Leo says in her voice.

The magic is powerful – way more than she was expecting – and it's instantly clear to her that the spell has a mechanism she hadn't thought of. A tiny detail that makes all the difference in the world. Breaking the spell will release the beast – a demonic creature without any doubt, she can smell it – which she'll have to beat with magic. That could put a strain on Leo's body. He might not be able to make his way back, let alone carrying a box in the process. She either risks it or goes back and tells everybody they have to give up the money.

Leo's body seems okay. He's strong and the effort to come up here was barely non-existent for him. If she keeps the use of magic to a minimum, he might be able to come out of here on his own legs and with their box. On the other hand, if she keeps the magic to a minimum, the beast could eat her alive. Choices, choices...

“Alright, Leo, I believe in you,” she says eventually. It's a lot of money, after all.

Taking down the spell is a matter of seconds, no more than a snap of fingers. Then, the power of the beast washes over her, almost forcing her to her knees. Its growl makes her bones rattle and when it appears, at the end of the hall, Annie knows it's either she kills it on the spot or it kills her. She can't escape. The beast is huge and it vaguely resembles a lion, except that it's black with red eyes and it looks like it's made of smoke. It walks slowly towards her, growling loud enough that the guards could hear it. “Alright, kitty, bring it on,” Annie growls too.

She doesn't waste any time trying smaller spells – they would be ineffective and they would only serve to drain her magic. She goes for the big guns. The biggest she has in her arsenal, to be precise. She closes her eyes and she focuses on the center of her being, where her magic is and she draws strength from it. A white sphere starts to forming around her. It flickers at first, but then he becomes stronger and brighter. She waits for the demon lion to be close enough and then she takes that sphere and throws it at it. It's not just a spell, this is herself, her essence, all that she is, crashing against the huge beast. At first, the impact seems to have no effect on the demon, but then the smoke-like substance it's made of starts to crackle. The creature seems confused. “You're way stronger than me, buddy,” Annie says as the body of the demon starts disintegrating piece by piece, making it howl in pain. “But you're dead and my life force is poison to you.”

The black lion starts trashing around, the excruciating pain bending his spine in two. He tries to claw at Annie twice, but her energy is literally burning it alive. In one last explosion of light that illuminates the whole corridor, the beast is gone but the soldiers are coming. Leo's body trembles, so she doesn't waste anytime. She ejects herself from it, going back to her own. “We don't have much time!” She screams with her own voice, catching both Blaine and Adam by surprise. “The soldiers are coming! I bring down the wall, you go get him!”

Leo takes a deep breath. Reentering his body is like coming up to the surface of the lake after diving for a long time. He looks around, trying to get a sense of where he is and what he's supposed to do. The obstacle course is behind him, but in front of him there's a part of the fortress that simply wasn't there when he came the first time and, right at the end of the room, a series of boxes. “Alright, let's find the right one and let's go,” he says to himself as he hears the soldiers' footsteps approaching. Then an explosion makes the whole fortress shake. “ You didn't leave me much time to work with, Annie. But thanks for the fireworks.”

The boxes are numbered and he's supposed to find the number 45. It would be an easier task if these people had put things in the right order. “Three... Seventy-five... Fifteen,” Leo reads on the boxes. “Are you kidding me right now? Ah! Forty-five!”

He climbs over a couple of boxes with a certain difficulty. His muscles are sore and he feels very sleepy. It's weird. It's like having done something he has no memory of, like some nights out with Adam and Annie when Blaine had explicitly told them not to go. Except that this time he was waiting next to Blaine in Annie's body. The more he thinks about it, the weirdest it is. “Okay. You come with me,” He says to the box, hoisting it up on his shoulder.”

“I don't think so,” a voice says.

“Are you sure about that?”

Leo turns around with the box in time to see the guard go down like a sack of potato. Behind him, Adam with his sword still raised. “I like when things start and finish before I can even understand what's going on,” Leo says.

“You never understand what's going on, so what's the difference?”

Leo follows Blaine towards the exit. “I love you too, Adam,” he says, leaving him to guard the rear.

“I swear to the Gods I hate when you say that,” Adam hisses as the three of them comes out the fortress, running towards Annie who's got a cart ready for them. “One of these days I'm gonna kill you.”

“And yet here you are, saving me.”

“Don't try me.”

Blaine rolls his eyes. “One of these days, I will kill you both and run away with Annie,” he snaps.
But that day is not today.
Today they are rich.

CONVERSATIONS ON THE INVALUABLE WORTH OF OBLIVIOUSNESS

Getting used to a polyamory life has not been easy for Leo, and in fact he never did.

The idea of sharing Blaine with two more people has never really suited him. Even when he was still an escort and he knew for a fact that Blaine was seeing other boys like him, he had always considered Blaine something his, and their relationship something special, if not exclusive. Being him an escort, he couldn't demand real exclusivity from Blaine, but he had come to think that if there was some gradient of exclusiveness to be reached in their situation, they had reached it. So, when he found out that he was not gonna be the only one living in the big Hamptons house with Blaine, he was pretty pissed.

Now, he hadn't lived his whole life dreaming and waiting for a knight in shining armor to come and take him away from the horrible life he was living. One, he was not living an horrible life. He lived in a two bedrooms apartment in Manhattan, working a couple of hours a day tops with only selected clients, for a sweet amount of money, health and dental care included. Two, he was a romantic guy, but not a complete idiot. So, he didn't spend his time hoping for something that would possibly never happen. He would have done with a rich partner alright, but if none was available, he was not gonna lose his sleep over it.

But then Blaine had come along, changing everything.

He was incredibly handsome and generally more charming and well mannered than half the other clients Casey would throw his way – money doesn't equal class most of the time – and he seemed inclined to not only receive pleasure, but give it also, which was a pleasant surprise for Leo, who loved to be handled more than he loved to handle things.

In time, Blaine stopped being a normal client and became something more.

He would even come over the apartment outside Leo's normal schedule and without paying anything, breaking two fundamental laws in this line of work. Clients are not supposed to make surprise visits to your home and under any circumstances they should be allowed to get a ride for free, no matter how gentlemanlike they are, or how much they make you scream in bed. And bypassing Casey was not a great idea either. The guy cared very much for his percentage for obvious reasons.

But Leo was willing to risk Casey's anger – or better, he blatantly ignored the possibility that Casey could find out and get angry – just to let Blaine spoil him disgustedly. When the man offered Leo to come and live with him in the Hamptons, it took Leo exactly zero seconds to answer yes. Finding out that he wasn't the only hooker Blaine had rescued was brutal for him. Leo was outraged – he often is – and offended – he often is too – and he didn't want anything to do with Blaine anymore, or with those other two for that matter.

But Blaine's deal was clear: it was all three of them or none of them. And after a great deal of cuddling, cooing, and being given the bedroom closest to Blaine's, Leo got over it and accepted to share his man with two other boys.

Then, as often happens with him (and as Blaine knew it would happen), Leo grew quite fond of the rest of the family – very fond in Cody's case – and as soon as he got himself the chance to know the others better, he found out that he liked them. He hadn't had many friends back then, and having friends was fun.
Not only he got accostumed not to be the only one for Blaine – even if the most spoiled – but the boys started to have their own routine when Blaine wasn't there or when he was with one of them. Everything fell into place, and a few months after Blaine took them away from New York, Leo was quite content with his new life.

That is why Casey's sudden reappereance set Leo off again.

But it's not just Leo this time, Adam is pretty upset too by the situation. And he never is, so this should be proof enough that something really is not right. Casey is not the most pleasant of people at best, and he has the uncanny ability to annoy everyone with one single action, in this case showing up at their house randomly and unannounced. Either he wants to spend some time with Blaine (that is fucking with him) – a thing he's supposedly not allowed to do – or with Cody (and it's still debatable doing what), someone is bond to get really angry at him. Not that this changes anything.

"I hate him," Leo says, entering the kitchen. Adam's already there, drinking one of his high-protein shake, ready to frown upon Leo's coke as soon as he gets it out of the fridge.

"Must be Friday," he comments, tilting his head back to get the last two drops of what looks like chocolate milk but most likely is not.

Leo glares at him from behind the fridge's door.
"Ah ah, you're definitely here 'cause you're funny," he replies sarcastically, deciding that just a coke is not what he wants. Seeing food made him hungry. Just like seeing certain people makes him horny. He's a very simple guy as far as his urges go.

"And what would you be here for, then?" Adam replies.

"Boys, boys, calm down," Blaine joins them in the kitchen, a smile on his face. He's been quite happy all the time, lately. Having three younger boyfriends tends to do that to you, despite all the drama three young men barely out of puberty can bring onto you.

"He's hating on Casey," Adam explains.

"Must be Friday," Blaine comments. He goes to the coffeemaker and pours himself a cup of coffe, which judging by the hour, should be his second or third one. It's still morning, but he wakes up way earlier than any of them, Adam included.

"Would you stop doing that?" Leo protests, stacking slices of cheese and ham like his life depends on the sandwich he's making. He always eats like there's no more food in the world. "I'm not even angry half the time you say I am."

Adam makes a very meaningful face.
"Now, let's just not talk about that," Blaine says, averting the storm before it can even happen. "Why are you hating Casey today?"

"What is there not to hate about him?" Leo asks, taking a bite of his sandwich.

"Silly me not to be more specific," Blaine says, chuckling at Leo's glaring face. "What exactly are you hating about him? What did he do?"

"Except breathing and living and existing in the same reality Cody and I exist?" Leo asks, sitting on the table. Why using chairs like normal people do, after all? "He showed up without even a call and took Cody away, messing up our whole schedule. Not mentioning his inappropriate behavior with Cody."
It's not clear which one is Casey's biggest crime, taking Cody away when he was supposed to hang out with Leo or his inappropriateness, a word that doesn't even begin to cover the way Casey hugs, touches and kisses his twin brother on the mouth any time he feels like it. Both things are equally upsetting for Leo.

"He's his brother, Leo." Blaine always tries to use logic with him, even tho it never works. Leo's brain starts to work only after a great deal of emotion-ridden reactions.

"Oh, yeah? How do you know?" He asks. "Maybe next time me and you make out, we're brothers too."

"Well, you do look disturbingly alike," Adam offers, half serious.

"Why are we keeping him, again?" Leo asks Blaine, nodding towards Adam.

"'Cause he's cute, same reason you're all here," Blaine answers calmly as if this was a perfectly normal question – which it is, all considered. He leans in to give Leo a kiss, before going to pour some more coffee into his cup. "Anyway, Casey does nothing wrong with his brother."

"Blaine, you can't be serious," Leo says, big blue eyes open and filled with incredulity. "You live here, you have eyes. There's no way you could have possibly missed it."

"Yeah, I'm with the brat on this one," Adam agrees. "The guy's creepy."

Blaine sighs. "The guy's a guy," he says, blowing on his cup. "And Cody can be very hard to deal with when you are a man. You both should know that."

Leo has been shameless about the strong, overwhelming desire he feels every time Cody comes too close to him. Cody literally can't sit next to him without having Leo all over him in some way or another, and despite having sex together only when Blaine is breaking the rules and having it with Casey (it's both a form of compensation and a way to calm Leo down, stopping him from breaking the furniture), they always mess around anyway. So, Blaine said nothing new about him.

Adam, on the other hand, has never seemed interested in Cody in that sense. Actually, he never seems interested in sex in general. He has it with Blaine, he likely takes pleasure in it, but sex doesn't make him thrilled as much as it should do, at least according to Leo. "Wait, are you saying that the Ice Queen here is hot for Cody too?" He asks, smirking. "Elsa, what are you hiding? Let it go!"

Adam snorts so loudly that the sound coming out of his nose is ridiculous. "Why every time you open your mouth, I can hear bullshit?"

Leo smirks. "Blaine, Adam's withholding something, and I reckon this attitude is in direct contrast with our fully disclosure policy."

They don't have a real policy in the house, but they do have a rule to be honest and open with each other. Since the main reason of disagreement seems to be jealousy (that is, when it's not Casey), Blaine decided that nothing can happen behind anybody's back. "Come on, Adam," Blaine encourages him. "There's nothing to be embarrassed about."

"I'm not embarrassed!" Adam says, right away. "I just don't wanna say it to him, because you know what he does."

"Blaine!" Leo whines again, insisting for the man's intervention.

Blaine chuckles. "Let's say Adam was victim of a series of unfortunate events in the kitchen."

"It was an accident!" Adam protests. "I wasn't even thinking about it. I was leaning on the counter and Cody came near me, reaching out to the top shelf and..."

Leo's smile has progressively become bigger and bigger while Adam was talking, and now he looks like the Cheshire Cat. "And you humped him, didn't you?" He asks, knowing the answer already. He could read it on Adam suddenly red face.

"See?" Adam cries out, turning to Blaine. "Did you see that? I told you! That's why I didn't wanna say it. He always does that!"

There's nothing better than seeing Adam fretting for whatever reason. He's always so calm that Leo thinks he needs to be shaken every once in a while. "Oh! I'm so proud of you, Adam." He chuckles impishly. "You shouldn't be embarrassed. This only proves that you are human, after all!"

"It was an accident!" Adam repeats frantically, in a high pitched voice that comes from the deep and dark abyss of his embarrassement. "And I know that it doesn't matter how someone is dressed, but he never is! He's always hanging around half-naked!"

"Oh, it's way worse than that," Leo says nodding. He looks like he knows what he's talking about. "'Cause, you see, if he was just naked, you wouldn't mind so much. I mean, he's cute and all, but nudity is not so shocking. The point is that he's always dressed like he was ready to be undressed or if had just been ravished a moment before. Sometimes, the sight of his shorts barely covering the curve of his ass makes you cry in joy. What are we supposed to do?"

"Well, leaving him alone?" Adam tries, frowning.

"You didn't," Leo points out.

"It was an accident!" Adam repeats for the third time. They are talking about Cody's clothes as if they justified sexual harrassment, and that's not okay. This is why the whole thing makes him awkward. "I don't want to say that the way he dresses forces us to put our hands on him. But I really wished he didn't do....what he does."

He closes his eyes, sighing. He's really distressed, and that makes Blaine smile affectionately. "I understand what you mean, Adam," he says, calmly. "But I can assure you that Cody doesn't do anything."

"Yeah, he just likes to dress like that, but he genuinely has no idea of the effect he has on people," Leo says, nodding. "I mean, he knows he's cute and everything, and sometimes he does do that on purpose, but those are the times that he's really lethal. Once I had him coming into my room with some frilly pants from last century or whatever and a girly shirt, and he knew I would go mental – which I did. But most of the time, he's just himself and that's enough to make people crazy."

"He's completely unaware of his potential," Blaine explains. "That's his charm. The way he moves..."

"What he does..." Leo adds.

"Yes, also what he does," Blaine chuckles. He can see the little red hearts in Leo's eyes every time he talks about Cody. "Nothing is planned with him. That's just who Cody is. And he's got a certan effect on people, his brother included."

Leo's blissful face turns into a frown in a second. "No, that's exactly the point. The fact that he is his brother should prevent him from wanting to bang Cody."

"I don't think he wants to have sex with him," Blaine says, implicitly correcting Leo's register. "He's just not immune to Cody's charms. Besides, they are twins, and twins always have a special bond. That together with Cody's magic results in some..."

"Weird shit," Leo concludes for him.

"I was about to say unusual conduct," Blaine says, sighing.

"Whatever it is, I don't think it's right," Leo continues. "Cody makes us all crazy for him just barely walking into a room in his pajamas, which is both a torture and an insanely exciting thing. And it's okay if it happens to us because he's your boyfriend, which kinda makes him our boyfriend too. But you wouldn't let some random man on the street humping him, would you?"

Leo makes a little pause, and Blaine realizes that he's actually waiting for an answer. "No, of course not," he answers, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Right! Because it's a fucking random man. And Casey is something like that."

"Well, he's not exactly random. He's his brother," Blaine protests.

"Yes, but that's totally not the point. We can't let everybody have a go with Cody just because he's this overly sexualized individual who doesn't even know that he is."

"Nobody's doing that, Leo!" Blaine says, shocked. "Casey is his brother, and he's not doing anything to him. He's overly touchy? Yes, maybe. But they are twins and you can't consider this whole situation as if he were a stranger. Plus, Cody can decide for himself, and he seems okay with this."

"So you won't do anything about it?" Leo asks. He was probablye expecting Blaine to take action.

"Well no?" Blaine answers. "I mean, what should I do? Stop them from seeing each other? I don't think Cody would be happy about it. He loves his brother."

Leo shakes his head and cleans the table from the bread crumbs he left behind. "Yeah, the problem is that Casey loves him too much," he mumbles, throwing the crumbs in the sink. "Anyway, when he's back, I call dibs."

"Excuse me?" Blaine arches an eyebrow.

Leo shrugs, nonchalantly. "We were supposed to go out and Casey took him away. It seems only fair that I get to spend time with him."

"Oh, so that's how it's gonna be?" Blaine says. "You were so mad that he was here, and now you're stealing him away from me?"

Leo doesn't worry because he can hear the playful tone in Blaine's voice. He walks to him and leans on his shoulder. "It must be his sexuality working his magic on me," he whispers on his lips, a smirk twisting his lips upward.

"Oh, I see," Blaine nods. "So you're not sleeping with me tonight?"

The question is pointless. Even if they hadn't already decided that tonight was Leo's night to be with Blaine, Leo would have always answered yes. "Of course," he answers, giving him a quick kiss. "Eleven o'clock. In your bed. We are gonna have sex, in case you were thinking oterwise."

"When aren't we?" Blaine calls after him with a sigh, as Leo leaves the kitchen. When Blaine looks up, he meets Adam's questioning eyes and his even more meaningful arched eyebrow.

"Why are we keeping him?" He asks, mocking Leo's word. "Cuteness can't be enough in his case."

Blaine's chuckles. "That's his charm, you know?"

"Being a a spoiled prick?"

"Being so good at being spoiled that I actually want to spoil him more, I guess." Blaine has no better explanation for the things he's willing to put up with for Leo. Except that he loves him, of course. In fact, the two things could be connected. He loves to spoil him because he loves him, and he loves him because of how good it is to spoil him.

"I see. So, one is unhealthily sexy and he doesn't know, the other is too demanding and he doesn't care," Adam summirizes. "I guess you have some masochistic kink you don't acknowledge. What flaw did you choose me for?"

"You're too good to be true," Blaine answer promptly, pulling Adam towards him.
Adam chuckles and Blaine kisses his smile.

As a matter of fact, none of them knows the effect they have on him, and he decided not to tell. He already knows that he's gonna die having sex, he just wants to postpone the moment as long as he can.

WINE MAKES ALL THINGS POSSIBLE

There were various things about Blaine that Adam disliked – which was an euphemism to say that he despised the man and all he was – but the one thing of him that Adam really couldn't bear was the habit of showing up unannounced at whatever fucking moment he liked.

This wasn't because Adam liked formalities and would have liked a written message announcing the stupid man's arrival – that would have been cool but Adam thought things like that only happened in old movies set in times where people were still going around on horses –, he hated this habit because more often than not the man would show up while Leo wasn't there – either because he was fucking unlucky or because Leo was never fucking home or both things – and that forced Adam to welcome Blaine and stay with him until Leo bothered to come back from whatever bed he had been in for the past few hours.

Adam hated to spend time with Blaine alone more than he hated Blaine. The idea of the mere existence of that man in the world was irritating, but to be forced to share precious moments of his life with him – or even the same air – was beyond his ability to express disdain with words. For him, letting Blaine sit on the couch looking perfect as usual and just wait for Leo was some sort of defeat. He had sworn to save his best friend from the sick claws of this man, that had been closed around him since he was fifteen, and yet he was letting him stay in their living room, watching their TV, waiting to use those very claws on Leo.

Adam felt like he was purposely allowing Blaine to have sex with Leo. It didn't even cross his mind that Leo himself was perfectly capable of allowing Blaine such thing and he indeed did that every time he could, with or without Adam's permission.

So, when he opened the door that day and was welcomed by Blaine's smiling face, the first thing he did was whining. Unlike him, Blaine was never displeased to find him at home, so he kept smiling. “Was that a moan?” He said, amused. “I think it was. You're improving. A few months ago you would have yelled at me. Now you make clear sounds of pleasure. I'm really moved.”

Adam's despair turned into annoyance. “It was a whine, not a moan. What are you doing here?”

“Same thing I do every time I come,” Blaine answered and, since he was used to Adam blocking the door and trying to keep him out, he pushed him aside now that he was still confused to skip that part entirely. He brought his suitcase inside and looked around. “I guess Leo is not here.”

Adam turned around, looking at him as if he couldn't believe Blaine had passed by him and now he was inside. “No, he is not. And you shouldn't be either.”

Blaine took off his coat and went sitting on the couch. “I think I'm gonna wait him here. I'd wait him in his bedroom but, since he didn't know I was coming, it's probably war zone and I would not find the bed.”

“What about you take your five hundred dollars coat and your suitcase and you go wait for Leo in an hotel room, possibly proceeding to die of boredom when Leo clearly won't come at all?”

Blaine didn't lose his smile. He never did. That was why Adam hated him so much: it was clear that he was annoyed by Blaine's presence more than Blaine was by his. Or at least he was better than him at hiding his displeasure. And whenever Blaine was better than him at something, Adam hated him more.

“Where did he go?” Blaine asked.

“I have no idea,” Adam replied, and there was maybe an hint of disappointment in his words.

Blaine nodded and relaxed on the couch as if that was his own house. Except that in his own house he probably had some huge couch that was worth thousands of dollars and had been shipped from the manufacturer’s firm in Europe directly into his living room. Adam had never seen Blaine's house but he had a very detailed head canon for it.

“Is he seeing someone?” Blaine asked again.

“Isn't he always?” He answered. And Blaine actually chuckled, his face showing that he knew exactly what Adam meant. For one moment, they were on the same page. Adam wondered if Leo had ever spent more than two days without seeing anyone. Being alone didn't seem an option for him, as if he could withered and die without another person by his side. This was probably Blaine's fault too, but Adam couldn't honestly tell for sure. Leo seemed quite the clingy person by nature.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” Blaine continued asking.

“Last time I checked, it was both,” he said. Apparently, they had found the only thing they could talk about – Leo, who was the only thing they share, after all – and finally Adam gave up any pretense to throw him out. It was useless and required way more energy that he was willing to give right now. “He's going out with this hippie chick and with his brother too. Some sick thing like that.”

“And with sick thing you mean a threesome?” Blaine asked, amused.

Adam had disappeared into that part of the kitchenette Blaine couldn't see from where he was sitting and his voice came muffled. “I hate to say this, but a threesome would be healthier than what he's doing,” he commented. “I think he's, like, having an affair with both of them separately.”

“Oh, that's intriguing!” Blaine said, and Adam couldn't help but notice the hint of pride in his voice.

“You shouldn't be happy about it,” Adam said, coming back with two glasses and a bottle of red. “It's bad enough that you're okay with him being with everyone else, but it's not like he's doing a good thing anyway. Cheating is not cool.”

Blaine didn't answer to that. “What are those for?” He asked instead, nodding at the glasses.

“If Leo has really gone to Sunshine's, we're lucky if he comes back at all,” he explained, giving him both glasses to be free to open the bottle. It was not a very expensive wine, but not one too cheap either. Leo always bought good wine to go with his special dishes. “And I have no idea how to spend more than half an hour with you without getting drunk.”

Blaine took the glasses and watched him as he opened the bottle. The tension of Adam's slim muscles showing underneath the naked skin of his arm while he uncorked the bottle was a pretty sight. “Sunshine? Is that how she's called?”

“Yeah,” Adam nodded, joining him in his incredulity. “And Starlight her brother. Or the other way around. I never got it. They have those hippie parents who eat only fruit, nuts and seeds or something like that.”

Blaine laughed wholeheartedly as Adam poured wine for both of them. “And where the hell did he find them?”

“I really don't know,” Adam answered, taking one glass from Blaine's hands. “One day he comes home declaring he's got the best laid of his life except you, of course he never forgets you, and proceeds to tell me in graphic details how he and this girl have had sex, like, three times in the same night.”

“And the boy?” Blaine usually asked this questions to Leo himself but it was fun for once to hear about Leo's flings by someone else.

“He came about two or three weeks later,” Adam said, pouring some more wine. Somehow he seemed to have forgotten all the usual disgust with which he answered Blaine's every question. “I get back home from school and this naked guy comes out of Leo's room. I am, like, shocked but he doesn't fucking care. He raises his arm and waves, and then he disappears into the bathroom. Just like that. I ask Leo what happened to the girl? Who the hell is this guy? And he just smiles and tells me he's her twin brother.”

They went on talking about Sunshine and Starlight, how Leo managed to juggle between the two of them, and several other things that were very interesting to Blaine since Leo had never bothered to tell them to him. For example, like how that girl he had been so crazy about at the beginning of the year, Melissa, had dumped him for another guy – some blonde jock from the polo team – without a second thought. Blaine had only known that they had broken up but he had had no idea of how that happened. It was funny how Leo was more than willing to tell Blaine when he was the one doing that but didn't mention that a girl had done the same to him.

Two other bottles followed the first and by dinnertime – when it was clear Leo wasn't going to come back any time soon – they were one step short from singing old sea songs. Blaine actually tried to sing some tune but he didn't go very far and ended up chuckling stupidly.

“You suck, Anderson,” Adam laughed as he let himself go on the couch right next to Blaine. Apparently, too much wine forced him to go to the bathroom as much as beer usually did. “How can you be a Broadway star?”

“Shut up!” Blaine hit him playfully. “I'm the best.”

“I don't wanna hear the worst then,” Adam laughed again.

Blaine tried to move but his head was spinning a little. He didn't remember being so drunk in ages. “I'm done for tonight,” he slurred, resolving to stay right where he was. “No more wine for me.”

Adam was already pouring him some more. “Come on. You don't wanna give up now, do you?” Adam said. Some wine ended up on the coffee table and on the floor but none of them cared enough to do something about it. “Or are you too old to party?”

“Watch and learn, kid” Blaine said, grabbing the glass. “I still can hold it better than you.”

Blaine made a scene of swallowing the whole content of the glass at once. He coughed, almost chocked, and then they both burst out laughing like the idiots they were. “You're not so bad, after all.”

“I'm glad you finally noticed,” Blaine smiled, blissfully at peace with the world.

Adam turned his head and looked at him with heavy eyes. “Don't be so full of yourself, now,” he said. “It's only because you're drunk. Less stuck-up.”

There was a long drunkenness-induced silence and then Blaine sobered up enough to speak again. “I've never really understood why you hated me so much,” he honestly said. “I'm pretty sure it's mostly because you are jealous of Leo but there must be something else.”

“Nah,” Adam strongly shook his head. “I'm not jealous.”

“Yes, you are.”

Adam always felt the need to say that. It was automatic. That was why Blaine didn't believe it was true. Adam was jealous of Leo to the point of considering him his thing. It went beyond the affection of two best friends, it was stronger than that, almost obsessive. Blaine didn't know if Adam simply loved Leo at an unconscious level or if his attachment came from them being together since preschool. But he was undoubtedly jealous of anyone who came too close to Leo, no matter how strongly he kept denying it.

“I'm not,” he insisted. “And I've never hated you for you.”

That was new. From the deep of his clouded mind, Blaine laughed. “Haven't you? I clearly remember you saying that I was scum more than once.”

Adam shrugged. “Yes, but what I hate is not you but what you did to him.”

Blaine sighed, too tired to have this conversation again but too drunk to think about something clever to say to avoid it. “I didn't do anything to him. I've always loved him.”

Adam stared at him intensely, his head resting on the back of the couch. “He was too young, man, you know that,” he said. There was no trace of accusation in his voice. He was simply stating a fact. “You fucked up his brain. Something in here,” he went on, tapping his temple, “doesn't work as it should. That's why he does what he does.”

Blaine didn't answer. He recognized the truth, especially when a voice deep inside of him had always told him the same. He had made an habit of shut it up though, and now wine was helping it speak again. So, he drunk some more.

“But I've never really thought you did that on purpose,” Adam said, quite surprisingly. “I think you got caught up in him. I can believe that because he has this kind of power over people. He can, you know, do that. Not that he does it on purpose either but anyway he does it. He looks at you and you're, like, okay with everything. I think you made this huge mistake that night and maybe you knew it but you didn't know how to fix it. Okay, maybe a part of you didn't want to fix it but...”

Blaine was looking at him now. He was wondering what he was really talking about. If Adam was absolving him or himself.

“I don't really think you are a bad man,” Adam concluded, blinking a couple of times. His relaxed face was even more beautiful than usual. He had the strong but graceful features of the Greek statues. He could have been a young Adonis or a fierce Apollo. “I think you are a man who made a big mistake. That happens all the time. Your biggest fault is that you didn't find a way to fix it and therefore you made it all the worse. Yes, that's it. That's why I hate you.”

Blaine leaned down and kissed him on his cheek. “Thank you.”

Adam didn't freak out, either because of the wine or the moment of truth they were sharing. Anyway, Blaine hadn't expected him to. Somehow, he knew. “What was that for?” Adam asked.

“For thinking I'm not a bad man,” Blaine said. “It doesn't matter if you hate me now. Maybe you're even right. But at least I know you don't think I'm a monster.”

Blaine didn't back off. Adam's scent was something he had already smelled on Leo before, because those two were close enough to cuddle every time they could and Adam's scent always managed to stick on Leo's clothes, reaching Blaine too. But he wasn't the only one smelling familiar scents. Adam could smell the strong trace of Blaine's cologne, the scent of his neatly ironed shirt, the leather of his car's interior on his hands, even. Leo always smelled like that right after Blaine left. Adam associated this mixed scents with Leo's nervousness and sometimes with his tears, and he felt the urge to kiss those feelings away. He usually managed to restrain himself and quench his needs with a hug, but he was too drunk now. Too weak. And they had spoken too many truths to stop.

What happened was sloppy and confused but somehow pacifying.

Blaine's lips tasted like wine and they were hungry enough to destroy all his barriers. Deep inside himself he realized that he wanted them on himself – that he wanted him – and luckily he wasn't lucid enough to be ashamed of it.

Blaine had strong arms and his hands underneath Adam's shirt felt bigger and rougher than he was used to, but the feeling was not displeasing. There was a knowledge, an awareness of some sort, in his movements, in the way he was touching him, like Blaine knew exactly what he was doing and how it was going to feel, and Adam actually liked that.

At some point, Adam even stopped thinking. He didn't realize they were standing up from the couch, that they were frantically undressing each other, pulling at their belts, their shirts almost teared apart. They left a trail of clothes behind themselves as they stumbled in Leo's room – the first one Blaine had the presence of mind to drag him into – and dropped on his messy bed.

There were comics and clothes and all kind of things on Leo's bed but Blaine threw everything on the floor with his arm, an automatic gesture. He laid Adam down and crawled over him. He kissed every inch of his skin, he bit at his neck, teased his cock with his hands and mouth to the point that Adam almost screamed him to stop. But then Blaine sprawled on the bed for him, opened his legs for him and Adam just lost it.

The sex was as rough as everything else had been.

Adam didn't think at all. He let Blaine's hands guide him. He followed the scent of this man he wanted to hate so badly, the taste of his mouth that so closely reminded him of another one and yet it was so different. His mind shut down as he thrust in him, searching for another hungry kiss until the whole world they had just created for that night only seemed to explode.

He saw white for a long, taut moment, then Blaine fingers sunk deeper in his hips and brought him back to the pleasant feeling of him closing around his cock, stroking his neck and shoulder, kissing him hungrily and desperately almost like he was looking for something he couldn't quite grasp.

Adam collapsed on him, breathing heavily. He felt confused, tired and sticky but he had no strength left to think about it. He let Blaine wrap his arms around him before the magic could dissolve and he slipped in a satisfying, blissful sleep.

*

When Adam woke up it was two o'clock in the morning. Leo's Darth Vader vintage alarm clock told him so. For a moment, he didn't even wonder why that clock was looking at him from a nightstand covered in junk. The only things he could understand were his pounding headache and the heavy arm on his stomach. He tried to sit up but his head was still spinning – clear sign of hangover – so he resolved to roll on his side and see if he could slip down the bed. He needed to pee.

If the creepy mask of Luke's father had been confusing, Blaine's face a few inches from his own was utterly scary. He screamed and backed off so suddenly that he fell from the bed and landed on his butt. Blaine groaned something, grumbled and slowly opened his eyes. “What?” He asked at no one in particular.

“What are you doing here?” Adam screamed again.

Blaine made a face, the tone of Adam's voice was too loud. It clashed with his headache. “I'm trying to sleep, isn't it obvious?”

Adam was so shocked by the situation – something he had apparently just realized – that he stood up and started shaking him. “We're in Leo's room!” He screamed again. Then he seemed to notice that he was naked and left Blaine be just to scramble around and find something to wear, which happened to be one of the several pairs of pants that laid scattered around.

In the meanwhile, Blaine wasn't effected at all by the notion of his whereabouts. Besides, it wasn't strange for him to be in Leo's room, and he was still to sleepy to grasp that we didn't mean him and Leo, this time. Therefore, he didn't understand why Adam was screaming.

“Come on, Anderson! Wake up!” Adam called him again when Blaine's eyes failed to remain open and the man slipped again into sleep. “We're so fucked! He's gonna kill me.”

The mention of his surname seemed enough to bring Blaine back from the land of the dead. He didn't jump up in fear as Adam had done, though. Instead, he groaned again and rolled on his tummy, showing Adam his naked ass. “Could you at least stop screaming? My head is killing me, and I'm gonna kill you.”

Adam made a face and looked away. “Cover yourself for God's sake!” He spat. “I know you're old but you have to put yourself together. We're in a mess here.”

Once again, Blaine asked himself why he had to have sex with teens and young men. They were more trouble than they were worth. The sex was great, yes, but then there was always this crazy aftermath. He rolled on his back again and took all the time to stretch in front of Adam's panicking – and a little disgusted – eyes before reaching out and covering himself with the sheet. “Are those Leo's pants?” He asked, watching Adam squeezed into a pair of skinny jeans that didn't close and were struggling to contain the whole of his tights.

“Yes. And that's his bed. And this is his room and we are fucked,” Adam replied, moving around like a madman without actually doing anything except panicking.

“Is he back home?” Blaine carefully asked, even if he was sure Leo wasn't. Otherwise, he would have been already in the room, screaming like an eagle and trying to claw his eyes out.

“No,” Adam answered. “But he could be.”

“What time is it?” Blaine asked again.

“Two o'clock,” Adam answered again, unconsciously calming down.

“And what are the chances that he comes back now in the middle of the night if he hasn't already?” Blaine asked.

Adam seemed to think about it, and then he pouted. “That's not the point,” he protested when he realized that if Leo hadn't come back yet since yesterday morning, he wasn't probably going to before lunch. “You shouldn't be here. This shouldn't have happened!”

Blaine sighed and prepared himself to have a conversation with him, knowing that there was no way Adam would let him get back to sleep if he didn't. “Yeah, I know,” he agreed, passing a hand over his face. “It happened though."

"I can pretend it didn't!"

Adam was now more shocked by Blaine's calm than by what happened. How could he stand there like all this were perfectly normal? Okay, maybe it was for him. He fucked random people all the time, after all; but Adam didn't, and he was straight to booth. Let alone he was his boyfriend's best friend. How could Blaine just sit there and act like the world still spun the right way? It didn't!

"Adam, that's not how it works,” Blaine chuckled, settling more comfortably between the pillows.

“Don't you dare laughing at me!” He protested, pointing an accusing finger to him.

“Well, you're quite funny, right now,” Blaine commented. And Adam was indeed quite entertaining as he tried to find solutions to things that didn't have one or problems they didn't actually have yet.

“Shut up!” Adam growled. “This is serious.”

Blaine chuckled once again before letting it go. “Alright, what do you suggest?”

“Well, first of all get out of my room!" He screamed, hysterically. He even pointed at the door.

Blaine raised an eyebrow. "Actually, this is Leo's,” he precised. The funny thing was that if Leo was to come home now and find him naked in his bed, he wouldn't have stopped to ask questions.

“Fine! I'll get out of here!" Adam protested, as if he was making him a favor of some sort.

Blaine laughed, watching him leave. “Alright,” he said.

“I said stop laughing!" Came Adam's voice from the hallway.

Blaine grabbed a pillow and hugged him, preparing to get back to sleep. “You're making it impossible for me,” he said to him. Adam answered slamming the door of his room.

*

If Blaine had thought that waking up in the middle of the night with Adam's screaming at him in panic was all that was going to happen after they had sex, he was wrong. The morning after, Adam was even more restless and nervous.

When Blaine finally stood up around nine in the morning, he found the house clean, their clothes gone from the hallway and Adam painting in the living room in a pose so clearly unnatural that Blaine burst into laughs again. “Are you kidding me, Adam?” He asked, shaking his head as he went into the kitchenette to pillage the fridge. “You look like someone who wants to be seen painting so nobody will think he had fucked his best friend's boyfriend the night before.”

Caught by surprise and by his own sense of guilt, Adam drew a nervous green line above the whole canvas. The distant sound of scratched vinyl could be heard somewhere. “Thank you very much!” He said acidly. “I'm trying to act normal here.”

“Well, try harder” Blaine suggested. “You're not doing very well.”

Adam was still trying when Leo came back three hours later and found him covering in paint and Blaine watching TV on the couch. “You are here!” He screamed happily, ignoring Adam all together. His best friend could have been writing on the wall what had happened that night and Leo would have even noticed.

Blaine opened his arms and welcomed him. Leo threw himself into them and let Blaine cuddle him like a three years old kid. He smelled like incenses and Oriental essences, and Blaine put his nose in his neck to smell them better. However, before he could ask anything, Adam barged in and literally teared Leo from his arms, shaking him violently by his shoulders.

“Oh God! You are here!” He screamed right into his face. He hugged him and then shook him some more. “Where the hell have you been?”

Leo raised an eyebrow. He looked at Blaine for some explanation but the man just shrugged, shaking his head. “Duh, with my girlfriend?” Leo answered, and then he smirked. “And her brother.”

Blaine chuckled. “Now, that's interesting,” he said, pretending he didn't know anything about Sunshine and Starlight.

“Oh, it is. I can't wait to tell you everything about them,” Leo nodded, then he noticed that Blaine was wearing only his pants. “Did you sleep here?”

“Y--”

“Yes!” Adam cried out. To Leo's unaware ears that sounded like a bout of madness. Blaine understood that Adam desperately needed to say something without giving away too much. “Yes, he did! He arrived yesterday afternoon! Afternoon, Leo! And you were gone! And he was here! I had to stay with him for I don't even know how many hours! Do you know what that did to me?”

Leo frowned even more. “It surely made you hysterical.”

“Yes!” Adam cried out again. “Yes, exactly. It made me hysterical because this man – your man – is the worst and you left him free to be around the house without you!”

“Actually, I didn't know he was coming so I didn't exactly leave him with you,” he pointed out.

“But it happened!” Adam said, whether he was referring to the fact that he was left alone with him or had sex with him, Blaine didn't know.

“Fine,” Leo agreed, still confused and a little freaked out by Adam's reaction. “But why didn't you leave?”

Adam frowned at him. “What?” He asked.

Leo shrugged. “I mean, you didn't need to stay. Blaine's a grown up man, he could have waited for me here by himself.”

“Alone? With all our stuff?” Adam asked, quite stupidly while his brain was working hard to find a more suitable argumentation.

Leo chuckled. “As if he needed to steal our stuff to make some money!” He said. “Come on, Adam. I'm sorry you had to welcome him and stuff, but it's not like you haven't the option of going away or minding your own business if you wanted to.”

Adam couldn't argue with that. He didn't know why he decided to stay with the man and even drank with him. That had been really stupid now that he thought about it. He knew Blaine was dangerous – he was actually contagious as he had clearly seen last night –, he should have known better. “You know what?” He cried out, finally letting go of him. Leo dropped on the couch again and Blaine instantly wrapped him in his arms. “I hate you! And you! Now I'm going to my room and when I come out of it later, you'll have disappeared from this living room. And possibly from the face of the Earth too. Are we clear?”

He didn't give them any time to answer. He turned around and marched out of the living room and into his own room, slamming the door close. For a moment, Leo looked into the space that had been occupied by Adam just a moment ago. “What the hell did just happen?” He asked.

“I don't think I have an answer for that,” Blaine said, leaving a little kiss on his temple.

Leo turned his head and looked at him upside down. “What did you do to him?”

Blaine didn't even flinched. “I did nothing to him,” he answered, and actually considered those words true. Technically, it was Adam who did something to him. “You know how he is.”

Luckily enough for Blaine, Adam had a long history of mad episodes involving his presence, so Leo found the answer perfectly normal. “I just wish he would stop hating you. You would say he did after five years,” he sighed.

Blaine hugged him closely and kissed him on his neck. “I think he doesn't really hate me,” he chuckled, remembering what Adam had said to him. “Now, these siblings. I want to know everything.”

That was enough to make Leo forget Adam completely. Blaine knew it would happen. Actually, he was counting on it. Leo turned around, almost bouncing ecstatic and proceeded to tell Blaine where and how he had met Sunshine and Starlight. How her skin was caramel colored. How beautiful his eyes were. And his account was so detailed that Blaine could almost see Leo with her, with him or – as it had just happened the night before – with both of them, and he was strangely aroused, proud and jealous all at the same time.

He settled better on the couch and held Leo in his arms while he kept talking. Blaine let his words slip in, washing away the memories of what happened between him and Adam. He wasn't going to forget, of course – he didn't even want to –, but he needed to put those memories away from the moment. And while Adam did the same by turning the music in his room so loud that they could hear it from there, Blaine smiled and kissed his boyfriend, letting Leo's voice doing all the work for him.