Author's note: Well. I don't want to get too crazy and write a novel of an author's note. It seriously only occurred to me recently that 'hey, you don't actually have to have an author's note before every story.' But I started this fanfiction business over 10 years ago, so it's kind of a reflex, but more importantly, I've been working on this for a year, it's legitimately 10 times longer than most stories I write, and it's the first time I've put a serious effort into editing myself. I knooow, I know, wanky wanky, who cares, it doesn't even matter how much I put into it if no one likes it. But that's my quiet self-celebration before I nervously put it out there in the universe.
This is, for now, a one-shot, but I'd be lying if I said it's 100% without-a-doubt finished.
And though she may barely even remember suggesting it, thank you to Chandi for the initial inspiration.
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"Oh, Blaine, you would absolutely love the drama for prom queen right now."
It's been approximately 52 seconds since Blaine Anderson agreed that he would, within a matter of a week and a half, rent himself a tux, get himself and his boyfriend (his boyfriend) a limousine, and escort his boyfriend (boyfriend) to his junior prom. A dance, at a school lacking the zero tolerance policy that shelters him at Dalton, keeps him feeling a little safer every day when he's traversing the halls between classes. He hangs on Kurt's every word—and Kurt loves to talk—so he's aware that things at McKinley are improving, with the whole "Bullywhips" thing, and Karofsky backing down and supposedly ending his tormenting ways. Strangely, despite his somewhat traumatic experiences in the past, he isn't as concerned with the idea of what happened to him at his old school happening again—if McKinley were truly a vicious environment where gay kids were in constant danger of physical violence, he knows Kurt never would've returned. What he's more concerned about now are the looks. The stares. Two boys, taking a prom portrait. Two boys touching each other as they enter the decked-out gym, even in the most innocent of ways. Two boys dancing together, even to the fast songs. There were going to be looks. There were going to be stares. Most days, Blaine goes on pretending like he embraces the attention, negative or positive. But the feeling still brushes against all his nerve endings, an unerasable feeling that all the denial in the world can't completely contain.
Blaine is listening intently, even though he has his head down and is staring at his plate while he breaks his bread. The truth is that he isn't all that interested in a 'prom queen race'—the mere idea seems a little ridiculous to him—but courtesy and compassion run so deep in his veins that he even feels a pang of guilt for not caring, and then another pang for not always being interested in the same things as Kurt. He perks up and makes eye contact, to show he is in fact listening.
"So Lauren Zizes—you know, Puck's girlfriend, the one who essentially was just my replacement so they could still compete at sectionals, although I suppose we like her now and that's why we let her stay—anyway, irrelevant—she just out of the blue decides one day she's going to run for prom queen. And Quinn, who I'm fairly certain sprang from the womb requesting lip gloss and her tiara, has been campaigning for—well, weeks, but it feels like it's been longer, trust me. And then who even knows what goes down between them, but all of a sudden, there's a poster up on the bulletin board." Kurt gestures with his hands. "'Vote for Lucy Caboosey.'"
Blaine's been slacking on the attentive-boyfriend front ever since Kurt even uttered the word 'prom,' having spent the last minute and a half rearranging things on the table and then absentmindedly twirling his straw around in his cup while having to remind himself to look back up at those eyes wide with excitement over a school dance, but at those two words, his whole head seems to give a small twitch.
"Lucy…? " He gives a quizzical look.
"Caboosey," Kurt finishes matter-of-factly. "And it's a picture of Quinn from a few years ago, and… oh, words can't do it justice, let me just show you." Blaine's brain is buzzing while Kurt whips out his phone and flips through pictures. It's a mere coincidence. It can't be anything else. "Quinn tore most of them down before the end of the day, but they were up long enough…" Kurt uses two hands to flip his phone around and present it to his boyfriend on his fingertips. Blaine's eyes take in the picture and his heart immediately drops into his stomach. "I know, I know. Even laughing at it probably constitutes some form of bullying, and sure, in some twisted way we all love Quinn nowadays, but…" Kurt's smile falters, and his face begins to drop just slightly. "She still tormented everyone for a solid year. She still did nothing while her boyfriend and his band of rodeo clowns threw me in a dumpster every day. I think I at least reserve the right to chuckle at a picture of that same girl with no sense of how to make herself look remotely attractive, at the bare minimum." He pauses for just a second, then says out of the side of his mouth, "Makes a lot more sense now why she fit right in with us freaks."
Blaine hadn't been listening. Blaine had been staring at the screen of the phone, at the girl's face. Looking for something that's off, something that conflicts with his memory so that this would all be one big coincidence. But the hair. The glasses. The uncomfortable smile. Those eyes. It all floods back to the front of his brain from the back, where he stored all the adolescent memories he didn't want to readily remember. But he does catch that last sentence. 'Freaks.'
He clears his throat, looks up to catch Kurt's blue eyes staring back at him intently.
"This is… this is Quinn?" He looks back down for half a second, then straight back up at Kurt.
"Yes…" Kurt is on the verge of self-pityingly asking if he should change the subject, his eyes crinkling with slight worry, and Blaine feels it. He quickly looks back down at the screen, taps it. He thinks of trying to send it to himself without Kurt noticing, but he cares for Kurt and their relationship is in its infancy, so he doesn't want to arouse distrust and suspicion over something that's not even illicit to begin with.
"Can I… can I send this to myself?" Kurt cocks an eyebrow, gives him that look. "Just… want to see it side by side with Quinn now. With how she looks… now. I mean, it's such a… crazy… change. To go through." Kurt's still giving him that look—that he doesn't have a clue what's going on, but that he knows it's bizarre—even as he gives a short nod.
"Sure..."
Blaine finishes up quickly, a few more taps before he feels his own phone vibrating in his pocket. He slides Kurt's phone back over to him, and doesn't even give him time to put it away before he's clasping Kurt's hands in his and gently smiling back up at him. "So when are you free for tux shopping?"
He's gotten good at hiding things.
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Blaine buries his well-gelled head in his book. He's barely 100 pages in, but he's already sure that Mark Twain is much more accessible than Dickens or Dumas, so he's breezing through A Connecticut Yankee. He doesn't look up when the first body walks across his peripheral vision. He doesn't even look up at the second that enters two minutes later. It's an everyday occurrence, so commonplace it's not even worth acknowledging anymore. He checks his watch because he's so into the book, and it's just getting good, but he doesn't want to read further if he doesn't have the time, and… 12:45. His locker's at the other end of the school and class is in 15 minutes, so he should get going… no, no, one more page.
Another figure walks across his line of vision, and that's when he finally looks up, wide eyes that seem even larger behind his glasses.
It's two figures, actually. Two girls, beelining for the corner of the library. Blaine's in the center of the library, and they walk right past him like he's invisible. They're in miniskirts and Uggs and leggings and Blaine doesn't like to judge, but he's pretty sure they're not in the library to do research. He worriedly looks to the desk because he knows Ms. Burchfield was here a minute ago—she was that first figure in the corner of his eyes, after all—and he's hoping she'll throw the girls out as soon as she realizes they're in the library "for socializing purposes, as opposed to academic purposes," but now she's nowhere to be found.
"Hi, Lucy!"
He whips his head around to try to watch what's going on, but he can't quite see anyone. (He can never really see her over there, with all the shelves in the way, even when he tries to.) He sees all three pairs of feet and the backs of the girls' North Face jackets every couple seconds, but that's about it.
He doesn't even hear Lucy say 'hi' back before the brunette of the two launches into what they came there to say.
"So, I was just talking to Abby Waymer—you know Abby, right?—and she just told me the funniest thing. She said she saw you outside homeroom looking at the bulletin board. And then we talked about what's on the bulletin board, and all that's on there right now are like, sign-ups for basketball tryouts and the biiig poster about the winter dance. So, we were talking, and like, obviously you're not trying out for basketball any time soon. So we were wondering…"
"Are you actually thinking about going to the dance?" the other pipes up.
There's a long silence, and all could Blaine can see is that one of them had now moved to sit on top of the table. He isn't expecting an answer, he'd expects them to just chatter away and then grow bored when they don't get any replies, but then it comes, quietly, meekly.
"Yes."
"You do know you're kind of supposed to have a date for these things, right?" An awkward pause follows. "I mean, no one's really stopping you from going or anything, but… let's be honest, like, do you actually think any guy's going to dance with you? It'd just be a total waste of your money…" Blaine sinks down into his seat. They're so blunt. So ridiculous, it's laughable. Blaine would laugh, if he weren't so afraid of attracting unwanted negative attention, and weren't even more afraid of giving the impression he agreed with them.
"And I know about your little crush on Justin. Usually I ignore it because it's not like he even knows who you are, but just so we're clear, you're not allowed to talk to him. I mean, really, I'm kind of doing you a favor, because he'd just laugh in your face if you asked him to the dance."
"We're not trying to be mean, but if you even go near him…"
"Well…"
"You just really shouldn't."
Mrs. Burchfield dropping a stack of books onto her desk grabs the attention of everyone, and without another word, the two girls are scurrying to exit. Blaine hears them, as they walk by, tittering and making comments on Lucy's weight, her nose, her skin. The comments they made to her face seem downright sweet compared to what's spewing out of their mouths while they flit by.
But that isn't new. Blaine is sure he's the only person in the school who knows the girl in the corner as Lucy Fabray. He doesn't know exactly when or where it started, but the nickname "Lucy Caboosey" had stuck. To many, it's still used as a weapon to hurl at her, but for countless others, it's just what she's known as—it's her name. Most don't even bat an eyelash calling her it, because at the end of the day, she doesn't seem that bothered by it. Lucy never smiles, but she never really frowns, either. She goes from class to class to class, chooses desks in corners, keeps to herself with her nose in a book.
It actually isn't all that different from how Blaine spends his own school days, and that's the only logical explanation for why his chest tightens every time she walks by.
Blaine Anderson is barely thirteen and he's already mastered putting up a façade, deflection, secrecy. Lucy is different, and she can't hide it. It's in the way she chooses to dress every day, the way she chooses not to wear makeup like all the other girls, the way she carries herself with her head down and her shoulders slumped. Blaine covers it all up, allows himself only one day a week to dress a little differently, another day of the week to rebel against the prepubescent fad of floppy unruly hair and tame his with gel. He walks tall and proud and tries to "own it" but he feels stares—stares that might not even be there, stares that maybe he's just imagining. But nonetheless, he lives and breathes an aching self-consciousness, a debilitating fear that if he makes one wrong move, everyone will know his secret, and he'll be shunned and mocked and bullied the same way Lucy is, day in and day out. He just isn't strong enough for that. He needs acceptance. He's a social creature just barely getting enough interaction with his peers to survive every day. Sure, maybe a lot of it is in quiet group discussions before class about which girls they'd like to "do," in locker rooms after gym class (where Blaine always keeps his head down, eyes glued to the floor, and changes quietly) when someone out of the blue asks for Blaine's opinion about a "chick"—the typical middle school bravado talk designed to make guys feel bad for being anything less than a sex-craving caveman-like brute. He isn't great at pretending, but he likes to think there's an actor somewhere inside him, with how many times he's seen The Music Man and imitated Robert Preston's every move.
He'll tell everyone eventually, but not now. Right now it's too fresh, too soon. He needs a chance to think it over, to be sure this is the life he wants. Not that he's really entirely sure what that life entails.
He's never said a single word to her, but he looks at Lucy sometimes and he sees his future. Nearly every day they're here, at opposite ends of the library, both hiding out and escaping the world through books when the rest of the school is out gossiping and socializing. Blaine keeps an open mind—he knows that plenty of his classmates have their own troubles, family problems and those sorts of things, but the difference is that at the end of the day, they have friends to turn to. For Blaine and for Lucy and for only a handful of other kids in their middle school, navigating things alone is the norm. And every time that Blaine gets snapped out of his book and back into the real world, notices Lucy over there in the corner, he wonders what it would be like if he tried to be her friend, even just the kind of friend you only talked to at school. They'd both finally have someone, and he could shield her from some of the abuse, and, well… if it ever came time to share his secret with the world, it would be nice to have someone to rely on, with his brother already having fled to LA a year ago and his parents… well, not exactly the open-minded type. It seems insane and he knows that, but he doesn't see the harm in trying.
But by the time he's prepared a script in his head and worked up the nerve, she's bustling past him with her books clutched to her chest. He watches her walk out with wide eyes, then shallowly sighs and closes his book.
It's another week—five whole library visits—before Blaine stops psyching himself out and decides to finally talk to her. In that time, he, too, had stopped to take a look at the glittery monstrosity on the bulletin board advertising the winter dance. The cosmos align and they tell Blaine exactly what he needs to do. It isn't easy—it feels hard to even close his book and face what he's about to do head-on, and it comes with a lot of sighs, lip-biting, and nervously brushing his curls back with his fingers. But finally he gets up on his feet, taking one laborious step at a time to her table in the corner, and only stops when he almost runs into the side of it opposite where Lucy is seated. Her head stays down but he's almost certain he sees her eyes looking up at him behind her glasses. He shouldn't be this nervous about asking a girl to a dance—this was normal, this was what normal guys his age did—but he is, in spite of himself. He just stands there for a couple seconds, with his fingertips on the tabletop, practically holding himself upright and still so he wouldn't get even more fidgety. "Hi." No, no, that's not good enough. "I mean hi… Lucy. I'm Blaine. … Anderson. In case you didn't… know. 'Cause… you're in the grade above me. So… you might not know… me."
Lucy's only hint of a response is a sniffle. Most guys would have turned around and walked away by now, but Blaine, fortunately, isn't most guys.
"Okay, so, I know this is weird, but there's a dance on Friday and I was wondering if you wanted to go to it. As in… with me."
One of the longest, most uncomfortable silences of Blaine's young life follows. He thinks she's just going to laugh, or worse, just stare at him and question his intentions. She certainly has the right to, he thinks, while he watches her and awaits some kind of signal as to whether he should maybe just walk away and pretend he hadn't ever done this. Blaine sometimes seems to forget that they're still strangers, and that being two quiet kids who frequent the same school library doesn't make them any more connected than two people who ride the same bus in the morning. More and more as he grows up, he's finding that he's just a little too optimistic, and a little too idealistic about people in general. He'd never outright thought about being friends with that girl in the corner, but it does make a lot of sense. He just forgets so often that not everyone thinks the same way he does.
"If you write down your address."
When Blaine comes to, there's a blank white notepad pushed against his fingertips. He peers up and, for the very first time, there is Lucy, making direct eye contact and not breaking it even after an entire four seconds. He's almost startled by the sight—or maybe startled by the fact that she hadn't said no—and seems to have momentarily forgotten what he's doing. Finally he looks back down at the notepad and stumbles over his words.
"I thought we could just… meet here… that that might be easiest.."
"I'd rather do it this way."
Blaine's not even sure what he's just uncovered. In the relatively short amount of time he's known about Lucy Fabray, he's positive he's never seen her even come close to sticking up for herself when other kids would say the most horrible things straight to her face. Now he was doing something he considered pretty nice for her, and she was suddenly being demanding. He's already wondering if maybe Lucy isn't the girl she appears to be on the surface—the innocent introvert. But Blaine does have a habit of getting ahead of himself and reading too much into things. It's still worth a shot, still worth a single night of hanging out with someone new just to see what it might be like, just to do a good deed. Without further hesitation, Blaine takes the nearest pen and starts scratching out his address in blue ink onto the notepad in front of him. He has nothing to lose.
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It's a little unnerving being picked up by a girl.
Not that Blaine's ever picked up a girl, either. This is the first dance he's ever gone to "with" someone. There's a little cynical voice in the back of his head saying that he should probably get used to "playing the girl" if he's going to go down this path (he still thinks he has a choice in the matter), but he pushes it aside for the time being. Right now it's about him doing something nice for Lucy, and if that means dealing with her wanting to be the one to come to his house, then by all means, he'd go for it.
He's been hiding in his room for a while, not wanting his parents to know that he's spent over an hour getting ready. He's ironed his black pants, he's slicked down his hair. He's stared at himself in the mirror for so long, he's already tired of his own face. Just as he's struggling to get his contacts in his eyes, the doorbell rings, making him slip and poke himself in his left eye with his index finger and let out a yelp as it starts immediately throbbing. Still, he needs to beat his parents to the door and get out before they make a big fuss over the whole thing—he knows that his mom will start taking pictures—so he pushes his left palm against his eye and bolts down the steps. But by the time he gets there, he's too late. Both his parents are there, and they've opened the door to let Lucy Fabray into his home.
It never occurred to him before this point that she's about to be his date to a dance. Lucy Fabray. A girl about whom he knows nothing. And now she's here. At his house. In his home. In his life.
He has no idea what to say. She breaks the silence.
"Are you okay?"
Oh. Right. He still has his hand against his face.
"Oh," he breathes out. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." He brings his hand down to his side and his eye flutters open, then shuts, then opens again. Finally Lucy comes into vision. The only thing separating her look as she stands in his foyer peering at him curiously from the look she wears five days a week is the pale green frock hanging limply off her body. It's a nice color, and that's about the only compliment Blaine has for it. He wants to say something in the vein of 'you look nice'—like every other guy his age, he at least knows how to be suave with girls from movies and TV shows—but now his parents are standing and watching, and his left eye is still watering and twitching. Blaine glances down at his watch—which he can barely see, much less read the time off of—and looks back up. "We should probably rush out of here. The dance is only so long…" He tries to give his mother a knowing look, but it's hard to tell what he's trying to convey with his face still contorted. Lucy is still just standing near the door with her hands clasped together in front of her and the same uncomfortable expression she wears day in and day out, and his dad's just standing there by the stairs, hands fisted in his pockets, observing all of it.
"Just one picture, honey." His mother seems to whip a camera out of thin air and direct—push, really—Blaine towards Lucy near the door, and he kind of wants to die. Like, to just keel over right this second and never have to face Lucy again, because his mom is now backing up and motioning for them to stand closer, and he can feel his face flushing. It doesn't make sense, because he doesn't "like" her—in that way—and this shouldn't be that weird, but he doesn't even have to look at her face (which is good, because he can't manage to do so without feeling even worse) to know she's feeling this discomfort too. Plus he'd somehow never noticed how tall she is compared to him. Plus when his arm brushes against hers, the best he can do is mutter "sorry" under his breath. Finally his mother is snapping pictures—after repeatedly instructing, "open your eye, Blaine"—and it's thankfully over quickly. It isn't until both his parents are preoccupied with looking over the pictures that he glances at Lucy and catches her eye and instead of wanting to die, they share small commiserating half-smiles, before promptly looking back away.
"Have fun, sweetie! Call when you're on your way home!" are the last words he hears before the door closes and they're faced with more silence. Now seems like the appropriate time to say something about how she looks nice, but as soon as Blaine opens his mouth, a deafening car horn cuts him off. He hadn't noticed, but there's a dark SUV in his driveway. Yet another thing he hadn't considered: he'd have to meet Lucy's parents, too. Honking seems awfully rude, he thinks, especially when they're clearly right there, but Blaine thrives on being the kid every parent adores, so he wouldn't say a thing. When they get to the car, Lucy is the one to open up the backseat for him; he quietly thanks her and piles in, awaiting the introductions and the forced smiles. Instead, the first person he sees is the guy in the passenger seat who looks no more than 22 with sandy blonde hair and an Ohio State sweatshirt. He really hopes that's not Lucy's dad.
He plops down behind the passenger seat and his eyes dart to the driver. She looks no more than 18, so Blaine finally pieces it together that this must be Lucy's sister—though he's really only guessing due to process of elimination, because he can't pin a single similar feature between the two. When the girl turns to face the guy next to her, her long, bone-straight blonde hair swishes like in a Garnier commercial and her lips are dabbed with pink lip gloss. When Blaine looks back at Lucy, she seems to have shriveled, like the other girl's presence has sucked the meager ounces of confidence Lucy had to begin with. He awaits introductions, but even though he isn't expecting much—maybe a mumbled "this is my sister," at best—he gets absolutely nothing. The car starts up and they're backing out of the driveway in silence. Blaine and Lucy both buckle their seatbelts without being told, and they're off.
No one speaks. Not even the girl—he still can't be sure it's her sister; maybe she still has a babysitter or something—or the guy—the girl's boyfriend, Blaine guesses?—say a word. The girl's turned a pop station on to a high enough volume that it would be awkward to try to talk over, and besides, every time he glances over to Lucy, she's staring out her window. It's an odd situation—sure, Blaine is a quiet kid at school, but it's mostly because he's afraid of rejection by his peers. He doesn't really feel that same nervousness around people older than him, so it's about a mile and a half down the road that Blaine can't take the awkward silence anymore and leans forward, pulling on the seat in front of him, to try to initiate conversation.
"I'm a big Ohio State fan, too," he says out of the blue, loudly enough so he can be heard over the blaring Rihanna song coming through the car's expensive speakers, and the guy's head turns immediately towards him, looking startled. Blaine takes his hands off the chair and shrinks just slightly in embarrassment. "I mean… my dad went there. So he's taken me to a couple games. It's been a really good season." Blaine takes the awkward lull that follows to mean he should keep talking. "Who's that guy, the um… the wide receiver…" The guy turns his head back just slightly, sour expression on his face like he'd rather be anywhere else, and cocks an annoyed eyebrow.
"Robiskie?"
"Right, Robiskie. When he finally enters the draft in a couple years, if he's not one of the first ten guys picked, I'll be… really, really surprised, 'cause, I think he's like… one of the best in college football right now. I mean, not that I watch… every college football game, but, I definitely watch the Buckeyes and I try to keep up with the rest. … My dad says I'll probably have a good shot at getting in there… Ohio State, I mean. Since he went there and all, and I get pretty good grades. … Not that I'll play football there, I can't even play. My dad thinks I should try out for the team when I get to high school, but I haven't played since I was 7 and I was really bad then." It takes until that moment for Blaine to look at the expressions of the girl driving and the guy and realize he's been talking too much for his own good, and he shrinks back permanently. "But yeah… Robiskie is really… good," he mutters under his breath while sinking back into his chair and glancing over to Lucy to find she looks even more uncomfortable right then than she usually does when people are bullying here directly to her face. The guy never even responds.
The pain finally ends when Blaine looks out his window and recognizes their school—barely, having only seen it in the dark a few times, but the girls walking in and the minivans lined up dropping kids off tip him off. He mumbles his "thank you"s and hops right out, holding the door open while Lucy slowly steps her way down in her green kitten heels. Unlike the straggling helicopter parents, who sit in their cars until their kids walk inside the building, Lucy's ride is gone almost before the door is shut. Blaine looks back to see it speeding off towards the street, but Lucy doesn't. After brief moments of silence as they walk side by side towards the gymnasium, he looks up and over at her, smiles, and attempts to bring some levity into the situation.
"Was that your dad?"
Lucy just glances at him. No confusion, no anger, no bitterness. Just a blank expression.
"No."
With so much behind them before they even walk in the door, he's only now starting to wonder what he'd gotten himself into.
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Entering doesn't make things better.
The music isn't all that audible until they walk through the lobby with its one rickety trophy case and into the gym. The new rubber-type flooring they'd installed last year must be absorbing the sound better than the old wooden flooring did ... Then Blaine realizes he's thinking about flooring while at a dance. With a date.
The same Rihanna song from the car is blaring through the two mounted speakers the 40-year-old DJ's set up. The dance committee's made the bitter mistake of giving the kids a few round tables to sit at. Every table is full. While sitting, kids aren't even thinking about dancing. And to make matters worse, there aren't even enough tables, so within a minute of entering, Blaine has already witnessed one argument break out between two boys nearby over a 'stolen' chair. Some kids are paired off in couples, some are with groups of their own genders. Some are deep in loud, laughing conversations; others are just peering around the room like they're waiting for something to happen. It feels a little like prison, and when he looks over at Lucy, she seems to be thinking the same thing.
Blaine is torn between not wanting to stick to the status quo, but not wanting to stand out too much, either. He'd love to just ask Lucy to dance, cajole her into it and then spend most of their night doing that and shutting the rest of the world out. But there are eyes, dozens of sets of them, and it's like they're just waiting to pounce on the first person who does something 'wrong.' He doesn't want to draw that kind of attention to himself. If they start making fun of him, then they'll start making fun of her, and then he'll completely fail in his attempt to protect her tonight. So dancing is off the list, but he spots the refreshment table and he thinks maybe he can just grab her some pretzels and punch and they can stand over by the bleachers and find something to talk about—books, or school, probably, depending on whether she spends her time in that library doing schoolwork or reading books. Or he'd really just like to know more about the eighth grade curriculum, mostly what books they get to read in English—
"Could you get me some chips?"
Blaine looks over at Lucy, surprise written across every line in his brow. He knows he shouldn't be surprised because she's a human being and she's allowed to ask for things, but her tone is almost… demanding, once again, just like it had been when he'd asked her to this dance. And it's so unlike the girl he sees every day who just takes the abuse she receives and seems to shrink in the presence of the 'cool kids.' He tries to shake off any mild feeling of resentment he may have from being treated like her assistant, but he can't help but wonder if maybe Lucy isn't the put-upon, downtrodden girl he'd assumed. Maybe he'd been as bad as everyone else by making judgments about her without ever saying a word to her. He suddenly feels a little dumb, because he of all people should know that it's possible to be shy and reserved without necessarily harboring some deep, dark depression. It's a hard pill to swallow that Lucy may not be a big bowl of cherries, but at least it's just one night. If she doesn't want him as a friend, then he's okay with that. They'll go their separate ways in just a couple of hours, and when they return on Monday, they can go back to being two kids who sit in the same library at the same time every day.
"Sure."
Blaine hesitates for an awkward second, thinking she might say something else, but she doesn't, and her arms are already folded across her chest in a way that he's not sure if she's uncomfortable or just bored already and casually peering around at all the tacky decorations. His hesitation catches her attention, and she looks at him, and he opens his mouth to explain why he hesitated, but bolts instead. He keeps his shoulders back and his posture perfect but still manages to keep his gaze fixed on his shiny black loafers while he walks. He gets to the table and there's a taller boy blocking his access to the paper plates, so he waits patiently, looking down at the bowl of pretzels.
"You need something, Anderson?" Blaine immediately looks up to meet the eyes of the taller boy next to him and his chest tightens a little. He hadn't realized the boy next to him is Justin Aikman, one of the few people in this school with whom he'd had more than a couple passing conversations. A couple of years ago it had been an after-school art club that Justin hated and had been forced into, but just last year it was from math club—something he's good at, something he likes. Blaine knows all this from talking to him on a bus ride to a math competition back in the spring. They'd talked the whole time, and it wasn't all one-sided. Justin, of course, is still among the upper echelons of middle school society, in a weird caliber where he's not much of a jock (he only does soccer), but he's still really well-liked and popular. He's basically all that Blaine wishes he were, in a taller, fairer package.
"No," Blaine immediately blurts out without thinking. "No, I mean…. not no, I mean yes. I was waiting…" He gestures towards the plates. "The plates." Justin looks over, nods, hands Blaine a paper plate. "Thanks."
"No problem." Justin stands with his back to the table now, shoving pretzels into his mouth. It makes Blaine nervous—the standing, not the pretzels. He's wondering if Justin is really only standing there to continue talking to him, or whether there's some bigger reason, like he's meeting someone by the table. Or… some other reason, one that makes more sense, because it's not a huge gymnasium and it's not a huge crowd so they didn't necessarily need to 'meet by a certain spot' or anything—"You come here with your friends?" Blaine's mouth curls into an immediate smile, because he's sure that's a facetiously 'mean joke' between acquaintances, and he has a good sense of humor about himself and his loner status, but then he looks back up at Justin and his expression is vacant. The smile immediately falls off Blaine's face.
"Um, no, I… brought a girl. … A date, I mean." Justin nods.
"Cool, yeah, me too. Who says Mathletes can't score, right?" Blaine laughs along, but he wishes he had more than a paper plate in his hands. Maybe something he could hide behind better. Instead he's just standing there, facing the same direction as Justin because it seems like the less socially awkward thing to do, but it's ironically making him feel even more socially awkward. He's aware, on some level, that desperately craving peer acceptance is no way to go through life, but he just wishes he had an in with Justin so everything could be smooth sailing from here through 12th grade. But things don't seem to be going his way. They're not even acquaintances. All Justin knows about him is he's the short kid named Anderson from math club. It's hopeless. "Your date wouldn't happen to be Lucy Fabray… would it?"
Blaine freezes. Honesty is the best policy, and there's absolutely no reason why he should lie about coming to the dance with Lucy. He may not be sure if they're friends, or even acquaintances, but she's still a girl who deserves respect. But at the same time, what will Justin think if he admits the truth that he asked out Lucy, not as a last resort, but as a first resort? Does that actually make him seem like even more of a loner, to only hang out with a fellow loner? Shouldn't two loners hanging out cancel their loner status? It isn't like Blaine wants their approval. He just wants their acceptance. He's positive that there's a difference.
"Um… no, I… no, it's someone else. … Someone who's not here yet. She had to…. she had a stain on her shoe, so she had to drive back home with her parents and… get new ones. So she'll be back… eventually." He looks back up at Justin with his flushed face hopefully hidden in the dim light. "Girls," he said with a nervous laugh.
"Yeah," Justin replies, sipping at his soda. "My date paid like 200 bucks for her dress. And I'm like… why? Save that for graduation or something, this is a pointless school dance." He turns to Blaine. "You know Arianna, right?" He doesn't, really. He thinks she's the one with the dark wispy hair always pulled up into a high, tight ponytail, but he's not sure because he doesn't really know that many 8th graders.
"Uh, yeah, I… think—"
"You can come hang with us for a while, if you want." Justin's thumb is pointing in the direction of a circular table, and sure enough, it's full of kids from 8th grade, the "popular," revered kind. But it isn't really all that intimidating, now that he's watching them and all they're doing is laughing, talking, goofing off, taking pictures. They're not mythical creatures. They're just people.
… But he'd forgotten about Lucy, and whips around to give her a signal that he'll be back in a second—because as exciting as it sounds to sit with Justin and his friends for a while, and even though he'd lied about being here with her, he has the gentlemanly obligation to not strand her alone all night. He keeps having to remind himself that he'd invited her here to make her have a good time. Or… something. He's actually a little fuzzy on his exact intent, but it was something to that effect. But once he turns, she's not standing where she was a few minutes ago. In fact, he doesn't see her anywhere.
"Tell her to text you when she gets here." Justin's voice breaks him out of his concentration on seeing in the dark and trying to find his date. It gives him the idea to text Lucy and ask where she is, but he remembers then that he doesn't have her number. It's such a simple, almost trivial thing, to not have her number—to not even be sure if she has a cell phone, since Blaine sometimes has to remind himself that not everyone has rich, overprotective parents who give them cell phones for their 10th birthdays—but it speaks volumes about where he thinks he is in his relationship with Lucy and where he really is. Blaine nods to Justin, because, right, of course why didn't he think of that? and takes his phone out of his pocket, then holds the screen strategically out of Justin's view while he pretends to tap out a text message. He's not even 'done' when he starts being beckoned. "Come on."
Blaine follows him at an awkward angle, not wanting to trail him like a lost puppy, but still not confident enough to walk at his side. He hopes keeping some space between him and Justin will make him not look so short. He's also trying to duck behind the taller boy so he can make sure his hair is all in place before he meets anyone new. When he gets to the table, he makes sure to have his shoulders back and a smile on his face that's friendly but not overeager while he waits to be introduced to everyone.
It doesn't come. Justin sits down and points to an empty chair he can pull over. Blaine does it, all the while thinking that it's okay, Justin's just not a guy of many words, and it's a casual setting. If he's going to get anywhere in making strides to being better-known and more well-liked, he has to prove he can make the transition seamless. He pulls his chair as close as he can get to the table between Justin and a girl next to him.
There's a minute of nothingness, while pop music continues to blare through the gym, and Blaine can do nothing but gnaw on his bottom lip and anxiously dart his eyes around the room in hopes someone will say something to him, but there's little hope of that, with Justin talking to his date, the girl next to him talking to the girl next to her, and there's no chance of hearing anyone else farther away. He can't even reach the plate of potato chips on the table without potentially crashing onto someone, and he's worried he might have to interrupt someone's conversation just to make an attempt to be friendly.
"Hi."
Blaine had wanted to look suave (or at least normal) when someone finally spoke to him, but instead he's startled and looks a little bewildered as he realizes the girl is speaking to him.
"Hi." Well, it isn't the worst thing he could come up with.
"I really like your whole… hair thing." Blaine preens as soon as he hears this, and sits up a little straighter, and starts to move his hand up to lightly smooth his hair back again. "Did you do that yourself?" He stops his hand, looking a little confused but then trying to mask it so she doesn't think he's slow. He doesn't really understand the question, though. He's 13 years old. Does she think his mom still does his hair for him? That seems a little rude. On the other hand, she could be implying it looks like it was done at a salon, which would be awfully nice. He decides to just answer neutrally.
"Y… yeah." He runs a hand back against his slick hair. "All me." She laughs in a way that only seems appropriately described as a 'giggle.'
"Cool." She swivels her body around to face him a little more, and her blonde tendrils swish back and forth a couple times across her shoulders. It makes him nervous to have this much attention. He hadn't expected that. "Who do you have for homeroom? … Wait, you go here, right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I have, um… Irving." Her face falls a little.
"Oh. You're seventh grade."
Blaine has no idea what to say to this. He doesn't see why that's a huge deal, and the best he can come up with is bringing up that he's at least in the older half of his class, having already turned 13, and he's opened his mouth to say this when Justin cuts in.
"Don't hate on Blaine, he probably could've skipped a grade if he wanted to. He took the SAT last year and got like, a 1900." Blaine looks down and laughs, nervously and a little high-pitched.
"1820, actually…" he says in an attempt to be humble, but blonde girl with tendrils is wide-eyed and staring at him.
"Oh my God, why did you take the SAT already?" He's feeling stupider by the second. He really wishes Justin had not offered his 'help.'
"It was for a… summer program… sort of thing…" She still hasn't wiped that look off her face.
"Do you just like, spend all your time studying?" Justin pops another pretzel into his mouth and keeps interjecting.
"No, he's just a genius. He could probably place out of Algebra I already." Blaine continues to look down at his shoes.
"I don't… think that's true…" Blonde with tendrils is still fascinated.
"I suck at math. My mom's all, Nicole, you better get better at math before you get to high school. And I'm like, so not gonna happen, mom." Another pretzel goes into Justin's mouth, and he doesn't even stop chewing before talking.
"Blaine could tutor you."
Blaine's eyes shoot over to Justin with an incredulous look. Blaine is not a tutor. He can't explain how he understands math any more than he can explain why people have eyelashes or why middle schoolers don't dance at dances. He can't help anyone get better at math and he'll just be wasting her time if he spends even 5 minutes 'tutoring' her. But Justin is just smirking, and Blaine gets it: this is a 'favor.' And when he looks back at the girl and her eyeliner-rimmed eyes, he is a little appreciative. She's pretty. She seems nice. She seems… social. Popular, even. She could help him with his social ineptitude, and she could also, maybe, help him see if he's wrong about this whole… crisis he's been having. It's not that he's doubting who he is, but maybe he should just… double-check. And the six or seven months until most of the people at this table graduate wouldn't seem like a lot of time in real life, but this is middle school time—that time is practically a lifetime. He could turn over a new leaf, join this big circle of friends, actually have someone to sit with at lunchtime. By the time he starts his own 8th grade year, he could everyone in school at least knowing his name. It seems too good to be true, that this is the starting point for everything, but all it takes is one friend.
"Sure. I mean, I could, if you wanted me to—"
"Oh my God, you guys!" Blaine lunges forward a little as two girls crash into the back of his chair. "The funniest thing eeeever just happened."
"We just saw Lucy Caboosey running out of the bathroom crying."
"And then when we went in there, and there wasn't even anybody there."
"She's totally off her meds or something."
Blaine feels like someone's choking him the second he hears the name Lucy.
It's him. She must have seen him over here, felt abandoned, and gone into the bathroom to cry. He's never felt worse than in this moment. He'd invited a girl to a dance as a way to help her out, then left her after barely five minutes of being there. He's a terrible person. He hadn't even thought about Lucy since Justin pulled him aside. He was so wrapped up in becoming another number in these people's phones that he hadn't even stopped to remember the girl who didn't have anyone.
"I have to—" Blaine's stood up, and everyone around him is staring. He should tell the truth. They seem to like him, and if he stands up for Lucy, maybe they'll learn to back off. Maybe it'll start with Justin, and then this girl named Nicole, and it'll spread from there. He can change things, and it can start right here. "I have to get to my date."
He's in a cold sweat while he walks away from the table and towards the hallway. If he was going to lie, he should have lied outright. If he was going to tell the truth, he should've told the entire truth. Instead he'd left it in a place where they can easily figure it out if they have half a brain amongst the lot of them, but he'd seemed ashamed of it. It doesn't even seem possible to hate himself any more than he does right now. For a minute or two he just wanders down the hallways, having to mutter to a couple of chaperones that he was looking for his date and not just meandering about. It isn't until he tries looking outside that he hears a faint shuffling of feet, approaches it, and finds Lucy sitting on the dark half of a bench otherwise lit by the orange glow of a street lamp from overhead.
He's not sure what to say at first. For as bad as he feels for leaving her for people who aren't really his friends, Lucy isn't really his friend, either. He has no real allegiance to her. He just wants to help her. He has a naïve notion of being a hero to certain people, and, well, it gets the best of him sometimes.
"I'm really sorry." He catches her attention, then tentatively sits down next to her, and she turns her head to face away from him. Now not only does he feel terrible, but he feels awkward, too. "I just… it was stupid. I was being really dumb and self-centered. But we can still… I mean, there's still time left, and I can make it up to you. I really want to make it up to you." Blaine holds his breath, and a couple seconds later, she turns to him, and he can finally see her face in the light. Her eyes look a little wet, but she's not the hysterical mess he was expecting.
"Make up for what?"
Blaine's eyebrows immediately, instinctively furl. "I… I thought I… why are you out here?"
Lucy looks back down, and he realizes that wasn't the most artful way of asking her why she's outside of a dance with tears in her eyes. He's on the verge of apologizing again when she unexpectedly lifts her head.
"I saw things on the bathroom stalls. About me." He's hit simultaneously with the relief that it wasn't his fault and the pain of knowing she'd faced more torment alone because of him. He cringes at the thought of not even being able to do something as commonplace as walk into a bathroom without facing ridicule, like it isn't enough that they constantly say things to her face, but that even when they're not physically there, they can still get to her. They can still get under her skin. Blaine's been so focused on getting the attention of these people, never stopping to consider that attention is all Lucy gets from them, and it's miserable. It isn't black and white, it isn't as if every 'popular' person in school is mercilessly taunting her. But so many do, and those that don't don't say a word to stop it. "I'm fine. It's fine. It's not the first time." She's looking upwards to keep any more tears from falling. Blaine crinkles his eyes in concern and reaches a hand over to place on her back, but she jumps at his touch. "I said I'm fine." He retracts his hand with a small raise of his eyebrows and clasps it back with the other in front of him. He expects that to be the end, that they'll call… whoever and get a ride home and be done with this failed experiment. But she suddenly turns to him like she just realized who he really was and why he was really there. "What… what is this, anyway? Asking me to this dance? You think just because I'm some social reject and you're some social reject, that we'd just go to some dance and bond and become best friends? Like that means we have anything in common?" She pauses to heave a dry laugh, her wet cheeks shining in the light of the street lamp above. "Or no. No, better yet, you actually think you're better than me, just because you don't get people calling you fat, and ugly, and useless, and you don't have some stupid nickname that even the teachers know but won't do anything about, or things written about you on bathroom walls. And that makes me deserve your pity, so you ask me to a dance because you know no one else will, and you get to pat yourself on the back for doing a good deed. But I didn't ask for your help. I don't want your pity. You don't know how I feel or what I'm going through. You don't even know the first thing about me. So just… stay out of it. I'm doing fine on my own."
It all hits Blaine like a tidal wave, and he's floundering because he can feel in his heart, against his will, that she's right. He'd been approaching this all night… no, for weeks, as if he were doing Lucy a favor. He'd passed judgment by assuming she wouldn't have anyone else to go with, assuming that she'd want to go with him, assuming she'd be this quiet and agreeable little thing. And he'd done all of it feeling okay because he knew his heart was in the right place, but now he was even second-guessing that. Where had his heart been? He can barely recall his motivation through the clutter of feeling so pleased with himself for his supposed good deed. He knows he'd wanted to do something good, but it became something else entirely, and now he can't help but feel like he'd just made everything, for himself and for her, so much worse. He just sits with his hands still folded in front of him, while Lucy keeps her face out of his view like she's waiting for him to leave.
"Lucy, I…" He wants to find the perfect words. He wants to pour his heart out and have her know he's not a bad guy. He can't bear the thought of her walking away from this thinking he's a complete jerk, but he knows on some level he deserves it. "I've been watching you for months." He pushes his hair back nervously, winces a little at how the words sound coming out of his mouth. "I mean… the library. I'm always there, too. At lunch." He wrings his hands, unable to even look at her. "It's all I ever see of you, besides… passing you in the halls sometimes. Everything else is just… stuff I hear from other people. … When I lay it out like that, you're right, I'm a total idiot. I don't really know you. And… I mean, I guess, you don't really know me, either. … And you might not want to. Which is okay, because… I'm no one, really. You don't have to like me, I won't be offended, I swear." He's starting to cringe at his own incompetence at expressing himself clearly, so he pauses and takes a long breath. It's freezing out, he finally notices. Lucy is probably even colder, but he can't help but feel like if he takes off his jacket and tries to give it to her, she'll throw it in the bushes and stomp away. "I think what I'm trying to say is that I… want to get to know you. I don't want to be like everyone else, who just listens to what every other person says and goes with it, and makes judgments about you without even bothering to really know you. Everyone in there is probably just afraid that if they talk to you, they'll realize that you're a human being, with feelings, and that the stuff they say and do actually affects you. And they might actually feel bad about it." He glances out of the corner of his eye to her, but she's still facing away from him. "You're right, maybe we won't have anything in common, and we won't wind up ever talking to each other again. But we won't know unless we try." It should feel cheesy, but he says it with such sincerity that within a few seconds, she turns her face back towards him, squinting in curiosity as if she's trying to see through him. He swears he sees a flicker of a smile on her face for a moment.
"Has anyone ever told you you're hopelessly optimistic about how people really are?" Blaine had started to smile upon seeing hers, but it drops off his face suddenly at this sentence.
"No… wait, what do you mean?" Her smile fades away, too.
"No one cares that they're hurting me. They're trying to hurt me. If they know how much it affects me…" She looks down, gnawing on her bottom lip. "They'd probably feel even better about themselves. They love it. It's all a game to them." After a moment of staring down at her fingernails, she looks back up at him with a curious eyebrow cocked. "You really don't get that?"
He isn't sure. He'd read it as an insecurity, that Lucy is just a punching bag for everything the kids don't like about themselves, but to think of them as really enjoying it, getting a sick joy out of tearing someone else down…
He shakes his head slowly. "I don't believe anyone's that cruel."
There's a hesitation, then a sad smile slowly spreads across Lucy's face.
·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·°·
Just past midnight, Blaine is still holding his phone over his face and studying the lines around Lucy's eyes, almost hidden entirely by the thick rims of her glasses. Lucy Fabray. That's who she is, and he wants to hold onto that. He's met Quinn. He's been around Quinn. He can't even quite put his finger on when he first met Quinn, but he's sure it was brief and her name was amongst a list of a near-dozen he had to learn if he was going to keep up with Kurt and his renewed love of McKinley High. The blonde not in the cheerleading uniform. Green eyes. He remembers that much, but he still half-smiles in disbelief every hour or so over the fact that he'd had no idea.
Did she? Could she have forgotten about him? Or was this part of the charade? If she'd announced herself as Lucy to him, she'd have to announce herself as Lucy to everyone, then explain to the entire school the girl she once was. The girl that was once a lot less scared.
Blaine feels pressure, too. Being the guy to bring hope to Kurt when he was down brought the warm rush of a good deed, the optimism of being able to pass along what he'd learned and infect someone else with confidence. He loves being that guy—a guru, a helping hand. But the truth is he didn't always know everything. The further truth is that he still doesn't. He glosses over that a lot, though. He doesn't think that's a huge defect; he'd spent a lot of his adolescence feeling weak and vulnerable, and he just doesn't want to go back there. He can't help Kurt be the best that Kurt can be if he isn't proving, daily, that it's possible to be confident and proud of who you are even in high school. Omitting his seventh grade weaknesses doesn't mean he's hiding them. He just doesn't want people to think he's overcompensating now for a less-than-perfect childhood. He wants people to think his confidence was borne out of nothing more than self-respect.
So he falls just short of understanding why Quinn does it.
Lucy Fabray once was a minor hero to him, seemingly fearless in the face of endless taunting and bullying. It isn't as though she changed his life. She came in quietly and she exited just the same. But she was a friend in a time when he desperately needed one, and she showed him he wasn't powerless.
He doesn't know the details. He doesn't know how she went from the girl he remembers at her own graduation to the girl Kurt would know just a few months later, from the bullied to the bully, from Lucy to Quinn, in mere months. He'd once imagined that Lucy got away, that she found a high school where she met people with similar interests and developed a bustling social life, that she met guys who saw her for her inner beauty, and that she felt happy with herself. If he didn't know the truth, seeing a picture of Lucy now would have reminded him of this life he'd made up for her in his head, and he'd probably smile. But there are pieces to the story he may have never fully understood, and may never fully understand. Once upon a time, Lucy came into his life and made him realize that not a single person on earth should feel ashamed of who they are, what they do, who they love, or what they stand for, and it was a life lesson he'd hold in his heart for the rest of his life.
If only he could've made sure she knew it, too.