Not mine. Also when I started this I didn't know about Tina's crush or the actual character Adam so...

Blaine doesn't cook alone. When Adam tells her he's not allowed in the kitchen alone she assumes he, like so many other teenage males, sets water on fire if left unattended. She should have known better. Blaine follows instructions well, and they have detailed recipes for everything. It's the systematic nature of the task that seems to disorient him. He doesn't have the passion Adam has for cooking, the one Tina shares to a lesser extent, and he's never been any good at going through the motions. She discovers what Adam means exactly one day when Adam and Tina are both reading through essays for their scholarship applications and Blaine is cooking.

He flutters around the kitchen restlessly, following each and every step on the recipe card exactly, and all of the little minutes in between, where Tina would find herself stirring and tasting and just breathing in the calm, she sees and hears him tapping out beats with his knuckles or dancing over to glance over their shoulders or letting his fingers slide over the keys of an imaginary piano on the nearest available surface. Adam doesn't even look up as he sighs out "Blaine, food." with a fond smile, every time the tapping starts up again and Blaine starts and goes back to his recipe card to check on the time.

Adam loves to cook and, more importantly, to bake, and so shoves Blaine out of the kitchen, propping the massive oak doors to the living room open so they can still see each other, and Blaine plops himself down on the couch or the piano bench and retreats into his own little musical world. He's playing a piece Tina doesn't recognize, but she knows it isn't his, if only because he's played it all the way through three times without changing it at all, when Adam speaks up, still kneading the dough in front of him.

"Did you know Blaine's greatest fear is being alone?" It's all kinds of unexpected and Tina is momentarily at a loss. Usually Adam is as happy as she is to just let the music wash over them, singing along occasionally, but never speaking and certainly not abruptly dropping into what feels like the middle of a fairly heavy conversation. It's jarring and she's not sure what to address first.

She settles on the first thing that comes to mind. "Are you sure you should share your brother's greatest fears?" Blaine may be very open with most of his feelings, wearing his heart on his sleeve no matter what condition it's in, but he's not one to show fear.

"It's relevant." He sounds so casually assured that Tina can't help but go with the conversation. There is no hint of nervousness that Blaine might find out and be angry at all, just flat statements of fact.

"Relevant to what?"

He looks up at her, grinning sweetly. "Your crush." Tina frowns.

"Does he know?"

"No." He looks back down at his dough, poking at it lightly before dropping it into a large metal bowl, covering it with a towel. "He's really not good with subtext and I figured you should be the one to tell him. I think you should though, you might be surprised."

"Blaine is gay. I've seen it happen before you know. There's no point in telling him. It can only make things awkward. I'll get over it eventually." She looks out into the living room and considers going home again. Christmas break is the longest time she could potentially spend away from all the things that just make her fall faster, but she can't force herself to let go. Not yet.

Adam frowns at her. "Blaine's greatest fear is being alone." He repeats, obviously willing her to understand something.

"So you said. Are you really suggesting I should emotionally manipulate your brother into a relationship he can't be happy in?" She'd be lying if she said she hadn't thought about it, but she hated herself for it.

"No. I'm suggesting maybe other people have already manipulated him. Not intentionally, I don't think, but it happens. Blaine is really bad with subtext. Sometimes what he hears isn't what you meant to say. Blaine came out for me, I already told you that, but after the way dad reacted, there was no way he could take it back, or change his mind. If he ever brought a girlfriend home it would be some kind of confirmation to dad that doing straight things with him had made him straight, and that would leave me to deal with dad."

"And Blaine would lose you." She can't stop the tiny flicker of hope that springs up at that and she stomps at it angrily, cursing Adam for putting it there.

He continues, smiling slightly now that she's following, but his eyes look sad when he looks over at Blaine. "In sophomore year he called me one night and said he'd met a girl who was spectacular, and he'd kissed her and they were going on a date. We talked about how we were going to deal with dad because it stopped being an abstract problem then. I wasn't going to let him lose out on a chance at love just to keep some of the heat off me at home. He's gotten to know her since and it probably wasn't a chance at love but we didn't know that then."

Tina remembers how Rachel had gushed about their first date. She also remembers the look on Rachel's face as she noticed Finn silently fuming from across the choir room. "They were kind of perfect for each other at first glance, but no, I don't think anyone could have really gotten between Finn and Rachel then. Now I don't know anymore." It still smarts a little to think that Rachel was worth questioning his sexuality for, but he's never looked at Tina twice. It makes sense though. Rachel is a star, no one has ever denied it, no matter how much they disagree with her personality. She wonders if Blaine might still feel that way about her, even if just a little. They'd both be in New York next year, and maybe still both be single.

"The next time I talked to him he drove all the way to my school and he was in tears. He'd spent two years telling me that we should be allowed to be honest about who we are, and the people that really mattered would accept us, and then it was as if a switch just flipped in his head. He came out as bi, or as questioning at least, to one person who wasn't me, and Kurt said that bisexuality was something gay boys hid behind in high school to feel normal for a change, or something to that effect." His hands twitch and Tina can tell he's regretting having stored the dough away now. "What Blaine heard was 'if you're bisexual not even sweet, innocent, understanding Kurt, your new best friend will accept you.' Then a few months later he followed it up with 'I'm not sure our budding romance could take it', and that's exactly what Blaine heard, except it didn't sound like a joke to him." And Blaine transferred away from his safe place and all his friends to make Kurt's senior year magical.

"You really don't like Kurt do you?" Tina never really took a side on the break up, because both of the boys were her friends. Blaine had done wrong by Kurt, but she had watched him deflate, floating around the school like a ghost with his phone permanently attached to his hand for weeks before the cheating incident so she was prepared to say that Kurt had done wrong too.

"I really don't know Kurt. I love him for making my brother happy for as long as he did, but I don't have to like what he did. I genuinely believe he loved my brother, but he used his worst fear against him more than once, and then made him live it. Blaine made one of those mistakes in that relationship that means he can never be mad about anything Kurt has done again, but I can."

"You know Blaine said he transferred to McKinley to face his fears, not just for Kurt."

"I'm sure he did. I love Blaine more than life itself, but that is a downright lie. Blaine was never afraid of bullies, not really. He's been a bit nervous around them, for good reason, but never enough for it to stop him from confronting them. Blaine can't run from his fears because his fear is being abandoned, what he can do is hang on as tight as he can, sometimes that's too tight, but make no mistake, facing his fear would have been staying at Dalton and testing their relationship." The timer on the oven beeps and he pulls out a tray of cookies Tina doesn't know who he expects to eat and the conversation is dropped as Blaine comes wandering in, guided by his nose and smiling at them both.

"You know we should drop off another load of food at the shelter at some point tomorrow, the cupboards are filling up." Blaine mumbles, covering his mouth to disguise what's left of the bite of cookie.

It's early morning on Christmas Eve when Tina's mother calls her to say the cousins have arrived and she should come home and spend some time with her own family. She hasn't been up before either of her hosts before and she finds herself a little at a loss when she hangs up with a promise to be home within the hour. Heading for the kitchen to switch on the coffee maker had seemed like the natural thing to do but she freezes just as her bare feet are about to touch the marble floor of the dining room (still the only room with decorations) when she hears a distinctly female voice.

Her first thought is that they are being burgled and she should call the police and wake the boys. Her second thought is to smack herself because the woman is obviously their mother and she smooths her hair and enters the kitchen, feeling immensely grateful that she slipped into her dress before coming downstairs rather than wandering down in her PJs as she had done upon waking to an empty room the previous day. She pastes on a polite smile and puts her best foot forward as she introduces herself as Blaine's friend because people don't raise boys like Adam and Blaine without caring about manners.

Mrs Anderson smiles distractedly at her and instructs her to make herself at home before excusing herself, pulling a very chic scarf (Kurt would approve, she's sure) around her neck and heading for the door. Mr Anderson nods at her curtly from his seat at the table and offers her an equally distant greeting before setting his mug in the dishwasher and making his own way out. He stops just short of the door and asks her to remind the boys to remove the decorations in the dining room before the fifth so as to not interfere with the catering crew setting up.
Her answer has barely left her lips before he too is gone and she shakes her head, pulling out a new coffee filter as she contemplates his last words, ignoring the nagging feeling that they were both a product of her uncaffeinated morning brain.

Blaine stumbles into the room before she has time to question herself or the message further and she relays it to him as he kisses her cheek and reaches over her to pull out three mugs. He tells her their parents hold a party on the sixth of January in honor of the Rotary club and that has always been the rule. She quirks an eyebrow at him in lieu of asking why they needed to be reminded before Christmas even started and pretends not to flinch when she realizes the Andersons have both left their seventeen year old sons alone over Christmas and New Years without even waiting for them to wake up to say goodbye.

"We try not to take it personally, they don't like most people, including each other."

Tina doesn't tear up. She does call her mother back and can barely follow the conversation after she utters the words alone and Christmas in the same sentence because suddenly everything is just a mess of ranting with varying volume as her mother and aunt pass the phone back and forth and demand she summon both boys to her mother's living room post haste. She tells them they'll be over when they boys have gotten dressed and her mother grudgingly agrees not to drive over and collect them immediately.

Adam and Blaine give her identical smiles as she turns to find them seated at the island, coffee in hand, and Blaine reaches over to hand her her own mug. She informs them of their new plans for the day and watches them struggle to figure out whether it would be more rude to impose or to argue with her. She reminds them that arguing won't stop them from being dragged to her house so if anything the result would be both arguing and imposing. Blaine heads for the wine cellar and Adam starts pulling out an assortment of the Christmas goods he's been baking and arranging them on a large platter.

Sorry about the delay, but I can't promise to get better.