The story of Blaine before he met Kurt, before he was a Warbler, before we knew him.

Inspired by 'rainbow-blaine' at Tumblr.

I do not hold any connection to Glee or Fox.

When Blaine was in Elementary school, there were two other kids in his grade that came before him alphabetically. William Abernathy, from what Blaine could recall, was a tiny antisocial boy with white blond hair and eyebrows that always reminded Blaine of Macaulay Culkin… You know, when he was little and still cute. William didn't talk to Blaine much, but he couldn't recall anything odd about the child except that he could read at a sixth grade level and didn't really have any friends.

Leslie Adams came before him, too, but since he and Leslie never seemed to be in the same class, never once, it was only during things like the school holiday concert that he really had to deal with being behind Leslie. He could remember his group of friends hanging around with her group of friends at recess on occasion. She was one of those boisterous little girls who thought all boys were inferior and had cooties and she was more than willing to tell you about it.

However, neither Leslie nor William were around anymore. Whether it be due to homeschooling, a family move, or they just went to different schools, it really didn't matter. The point was, by the time Blaine was attending Lawrence High School, they were both gone and 'Anderson' now fell first alphabetically in the list of freshman students.

It hadn't ever seemed important before, but as he went through his very first day at the school, all the teachers kept making them sit in alphabetical order. Which meant that Blaine was always in that first seat, the one right up front, by the teachers desk. It wasn't that he was a trouble maker or a bad student, but the fact that he was in a spot that would allow him to be so closely scrutinized through the entire year and maybe his entire high school career was a little nerve wracking and frustrating. It was putting a damper on his mood and his already stressful day.

Blaine didn't do well under scrutiny; especially now, when there were thing that they could hold over him.

Dropping his head into his hands as Mrs. Conroy, the history teacher, attempted to get the rest of the class organized into their seats for the year, he thought. What he needed was a plan. Blaine didn't think he was a conniving person by any stretch of the imagination, but there had to be something he could come up with. Just for now. Just until he was ready to 'face the music', as it were. He rubbed both hands over his face and lifted his head just in time to be jostled in his plastic chair.

"Sorry!" the girl sputtered as Blaine begrudgingly lifted his head to look at her. "I was just trying to find my seat." She tucked her blonde hair behind her ear, revealing a little Eeyore clip that he was pretty sure no one had worn since Elementary school, but she flushed with nerves and it came off as innocently cute. "I'm new and I-"

"What's your name?" he asked quickly, cutting off her sputtering.

"Perjenna."

"Well, this is the 'A's," he replied shortly, waving his hand in towards the wide expanse of classroom. "I'm assuming you'll be over there. With the 'P's." The girl went even redder and she stammered something that Blaine didn't bother listening to before she went away.

Oh, his grandmother was probably just turning in her grave at him right now. "Manners matter," as she used to say, as she sat he and Summer, his older sister, down to teach them the proper etiquette that was "so lost on young people these days". Anthony hadn't been born yet, so it had just been the three of them sitting down for proper lunches where you asked politely for things to be passed and never put your elbows on the table. Summer used to get bored of it quickly, rolling her eyes and asking if they were done yet. Blaine, however, kind of enjoyed it. It made him feel more sophisticated, like an adult. Even when they-…

He rubbed his face again, forcing away his own reminiscing thoughts. Now was not the time; he needed to figure out what he was going to do about … stuff. However; Blaine slowly glanced over his shoulder to where the blonde girl was finally getting her seat on the opposite side of the room; he needed to apologize, first.

The opportunity to apologize didn't raise itself until a few days later. High school wasn't like you saw on TV, with lots of time to mingle with friends at your locker. Blaine barely had time to grab his books before darting off to his next class. And socializing during classes? Forget it.

On the third day of school, though, Blaine was walking back to his locker after gym class (he he had taken to changing quicker than the other boys and getting out of the locker room as soon as he could), when he spotted the blonde girl at her own. She glanced up in surprise when he approached and he sent her a smile in greeting.

"I just wanted to apologize for how rude I was to you the other day. That was completely unfounded of me and I'm sorry." If the girl didn't look surprised before, she absolutely was now.

"Oh." She brushed her hair behind her ear, again. "No, it's- it's fine. I'm totally used to far worse. You weren't being rude." The blonde girl waved it off dismissively and went back to shifting her books from her bag.

Blaine nodded for a moment, fiddling with the strap of his own bag before continuing. "You're new, right?" It was kind of a stupid question considering that there were just over a hundred people in the grade and they had all pretty much gone through school together, grown up in the same houses, in the same neighborhoods. When someone new entered the mix, everyone noticed.

"Yeah, I just started. We move around a lot." He nodded his understanding, but then everything went awkward and silent again.

The girl closed her locker door and slowly turned to face him. "I'm Elaine… by the way," she told him.

He smiled politely in return, "Blaine."

Elaine snorted to herself, but didn't say anything, and Blaine rolled his eyes. He was used to being teased for having such an unusual name.

"No!" she said, noticing his response. "It's just that…" Elaine smiled bashfully, "we rhyme."

Blaine smiled back at her and nodded. "Yeah, I suppose we do."

That's when the other boys rounded the corner from gym class and Miles Rodrick called to him, "Dude! Let's go!" That's what he was always called; dude. He was always a 'dude'.

"I'll see you around, Elaine," he said, not taking his eyes off the boys as they passed.

"In history class."

"Yeah," he said as he started off down the hall, "in history class."

Staying a few paces behind the other boys as they made their way to the next class, he lost himself in thought again. This shouldn't be so difficult to come up with one plan. It didn't even matter what the plan was, just as long as he had something. He needed it to hold on to while he attempted to deal with things.

"You know what I think?" Miles Rodrick was saying to someone, probably Perry Lu, but Blaine couldn't tell from here. "I think it's a whole load of shit. There's no way that Jackson made out with that many girls in one summer… Now, if he went to camp or something, I might believe it. I went to camp one summer and there were just swarms of girls everywhere. I almost went back just for the girls." If anything was a 'load of shit', it was that and all the boys knew it. Miles' father was a stockbroker and had recently lost quite a bit. Miles probably couldn't afford to go to any fancy summer camps, even if he wanted to, and that was general knowledge. That's how it was at Lawrence High School, a bunch of country club kids from financially successful parents. The kids knew who's portfolios were up and who's were down and it wouldn't be long before Miles would be standing back at the back side of the group, just like Blaine was now. "Nope," Miles said, getting all the words he could in while he still had the popularity to do it. "I just don't believe it. I'll bet you anything he's never made out with one girl, let alone a whole bunch."

… Huh.

Now, that's an idea.

When he slumped into his seat at the lunch table an hour later, he still hadn't made much progress in his plan. It would probably be easier if he had the kind of personality that allowed for manipulative things, but he didn't. Trickery wasn't really Blaine. If there was some way to get around it where he wouldn't have to lie or be mean to anyone in the process, then that was the most viable option, but that didn't seem plausible. Hiding from yourself was a hell of a lot easier then hiding from others, he figured.

"Blaine! Dude!" There had to be better things to call a person; something that didn't include the word 'dude' in it. Blaine looked up anyway, a light look of surprise on his face, like 'who? Me?'

Lunch tables had determined themselves pretty quickly for the freshman class, at least for those in cliques. You picked a table and you stayed there. The lower social lifeforms found their places around the larger bodies and that was it. At least, it seemed that simple three days into school. Blaine was sitting with the other boys on the soccer team who, apart from the fact that they all played soccer, he had next to nothing in common with. Commonalities didn't matter, though. Social cast mattered; and considering that Blaine's social status was on the rocks at the moment, he didn't have anything to complain about. He was lucky to be where he was.

"Sorry," Blaine muttered in that not-sorry-at-all way, "what?"

"You didn't finish telling us about your summer vacation," Miles said through a fistful of overly moist cafeteria fries. Actually, Blaine hadn't even begun to tell them about his summer. It had been the topic of discussion at the lunch table all week and Blaine had stayed out of it. He had no interest in rehashing the last two months of his life.

Shrugging non-committingly, Blaine poked at his lunch and gave a flippant reply, "It wasn't anything great." Hopefully that would be the end of the discussion for the day. It wasn't.

"I'll tell you about my summer," Jackson Brash started, practically bouncing on the bench seat. "There were these girls, right? And they were all-" Jackson was pelted with a fistful of overly moist cafeteria fries.

"Shut up, Jackson. No one wants to hear about your lame-o summer AGAIN." The boy in question looked a little put out, but no one seemed to notice. All the other boys were fixated on Blaine and he sunk slightly under their eyes. There was that scrutiny again.

"We heard your dad's back," said Matthew Clark. Matt was a little on the pudgy side, like he hadn't completely lost all his baby fat yet, and wasn't the best player, but his parents pretty much funded the team, so it was a prerequisite that everyone be nice to Matt. Blaine could tell that Matthew Clark had been waiting days to bring up the subject and everyone at the table leaned forward in their seats, as if this was the secret of the year. Blaine had the sudden desire to call them all 'gossips' and roll his eyes, but he avoided it.

Blaine had prepared for this, though. He knew someone was bound to ask eventually, so he had practiced his reaction in the mirror for hours. He gave a light shrug that was neither here nor there, "where did you hear that?"

Matt gave the same shrug right back at him, "around."

Around meant that he heard it from his mommy and daddy, who heard it at the country club, who probably heard it from Blaine's neighbors.

"That doesn't mean it's true." The rest of the table seemed to wilt slightly.

And it wasn't true. At least not in the permanent sense. Maybe for about 20 minutes, but that didn't mean anything.

Less than a year before, when news that one of the town's most influential businessmen was divorcing his wife and moving away, people had been concerned. What about the financial support of the town (as if it needed more financial support)? What about the well being of the charity auction at the RN Country Club that Martin Anderson was known to give so generously to every year? What was to become of that?

Not any concern for his wife, who had no financial support of her own. No concern for his children that he was leaving behind; but that's how it was. Money talked and usually it was speaking in the favor of those who didn't need it.

But, yes, Martin had been back for a while this past summer, but he really wished his father would have just stayed away. The thing was, Blaine really hadn't ever intended to come out to his family first and he had never planed to come out so soon.

It had been a year before, before his parents were divorced, before he ever had to face the woes of high school, that Blaine had discovered his sexuality for himself. They had been on a summer trip through Europe when he found himself entranced with a boy about his age. There was nothing inappropriate going on, of course. Mostly just talking (Blaine, in broken Italian), maybe a kiss at the most. It was just that… in retrospect, it surprised Blaine how none of it seemed to really surprise him. He didn't freak out, he didn't cry, or lose it at all. It was a very peaceful realization and for that month, he reveled in it.

Things do come to an end, though, and when the family returned to the US, Blaine decided that he needed more time to figure things out. Just a little time to get himself in order, then he would come out. Life doesn't go how you plan it, though, and things began to quickly unravel from there. The second their feet were back on American soil, Blaine's parents were at each other's throats fighting. They had always been a pair to bicker and go at each other, but it was never like this. They pitted themselves against each other, guns blazing. Both seemed determined to make their separation as messy and unhealthy as possible. Blaine's mother was the one that lost.

When the divorce papers were signed, Catherine got practically nothing. The large expansive house that Blaine had grown up in was sold off with anything else of value and the money was pocketed. Nothing was left but a meager amount of alimony, which allowed for them to by a tiny house, but nothing else. Catherine had no assistance, no money, nothing but Blaine and Tony. Two more mouths that she had to figure out how to feed, and she made sure that they knew it, too.

So, there was no way that he could come out then. There were too many other things that he needed to be concerned for and Blaine realized that when he was forced to explain to his four year old brother why they didn't have a maid anymore. His sexuality was put on the back-burner and he really didn't think about it, not even when he did come out the next summer; this past summer; the summer that his friends wanted to hear so much about it.

Blaine's mother was working at a clothing store at the mall. She had been hired and fired from numerous jobs throughout the year, but at the clothing store, she seemed to actually find the motivation to work. Blaine was glad for this because he couldn't imagine eating the same off-brand cereal for two meals a day for another week.

"Non capisco. These little girls. They just come in and they ask for your opinion, but they still buy the little bikinis that show off the most skin." Blaine scrunched up his nose and dropped his face further into his bowl of mushy cereal. "What is with these girls and their need to show off their naughty bits.-"

"What are naughty bits?" Tony interjected. He was five now and seemed to believe that he had the right to be involved in whatever conversation anyone else was having.

Mama ignored him. "It must me something in the water because I swear, we didn't dress like that when I was that age." Blaine tried not to snort. Cathrine was only 35 and he was pretty sure they had string bikinis 20 years ago, too. "You don't go getting yourself messed up with girls like that, Blaine. They're all puttane."

"Not a problem. I'm gay." He was never really sure what made him say it in that moment, but if there was a prize for making your mother look the most seasick in a single second, Blaine would have been the ultimate champ.

He went back to his cereal in the time it took for Mama to figure out if he was kidding or not and then to go through the whole my-son-is-gay shock. Tony was processing much more quickly.

"What's gay?"

Blaine looked up at his mother, but she was no nearer to answering the question than she was to taking a full breath and blinking at the same time. "It's just something that some people are," he told his younger brother, glancing out of the corner of his eye, daring Mama to object. She didn't say anything. She didn't say anything on the subject for over two weeks, so Blaine was pretty sure that everything was going to be just fine. She didn't seem to mind that he was gay anymore than he did.

Except, not.

The first week of July, Catherine didn't go to work and Tony didn't go to preschool, which was odd considering that Blaine was used to having the house to himself on week days. The atmosphere was tense at breakfast and when he heard the doorbell ring from his bedroom where he had been hiding out all morning, Blaine was sure that he did not want to go see who was there. He was called down a few minutes later and when he didn't arrive fast enough, he was called again, this time with a lot less patience.

You could see into the living room from the bottom of the stairs and the moment he reached the landing, Blaine recognized head of salt and pepper hair over the back of one of the lumpy arm chairs. He glanced up at the sharp intake of breath from the stairs and stood. Without a greeting to his oldest son, Martin said, "follow me," and led the way out the front door. Blaine was glued to his spot, trying to figure out what was happening, when he noticed his mother hovering near the doorway to the kitchen.

"You told him?" he hissed, but she slipped out of sight without an answer and Blaine was forced to follow.

"What is it?" Blaine asked as they stood in the driveway, staring at an obscenely shiny car, not a speck of dust on it.

"It's a '59 Chevy. We're going to rebuild it."

Raising an eyebrow, "why?" From what he could tell, the thing had already been rebuilt once and someone had just removed some parts from the body. Trust his father to not find an actual junker, but have to make his own.

"Son," Blaine cringed. Martin never called him that. "There comes a time when it's not okay to be a child anymore, when it's time to become a man. It takes strength, aggression, balls." Blaine cringed again. He was pretty sure his father had no idea what he was talking about, but he didn't object. Arguing wouldn't get him anywhere. Begrudgingly, he helped and they put the missing pieces back on the car a day at a time. Blaine made it his main goal to avoid all awkward conversations with his father from then out. He got good at it.

"Are you still playing lacrosse? I know that Matthew Clark's fa-"

"I quit."

"Well, what about fencing? That's a manly-"

"I quit."

"Soccer?"

"Yeah."

"There you go! A rugged and manly sport-"

"I think I'm gunna quit."

And the summer went on like that. By the end of July, they finished the car. He was still gay, Martin went back to New York, and the car went with him. The whole thing had been a big, painful waste of time, but it was a shame, really. Blaine would really have liked to keep that car.

"It's a shame, really," Matthew Clark was saying, pulling Blaine out of his his head and back to the conversation at the lunch table. "My mom says that your dad was the biggest benefactor at the charity auction every year. They're probably not going to get as much money or whatever this year. Wont be able to help as many poor people."

Blaine stabbed at his lunch, glad when no one seemed to notice the obnoxious clack of his fort hitting the plastic tray. "Yeah," he mumbled, "poor them."