A/N: So, yeah, 5 and 1. never done one of these before but i've always wanted to. chapters should be about this length. There will be 6 (obviously) and updates will be once a week.

And as always, hope you enjoy :)


#1. First Day


Blaine yawned as he looked out the window and at the sprawling houses set back from the winding road behind rod iron gates and tall hedges. It had been weeks now since he had been up this early and he hadn't slept well.

"You're awfully quiet," his mother said, glancing over at him from the driver's seat.

Blaine just shrugged, squinting as the rising sun beamed past the pink petal of the tree lined street. Quiet was a relative term. There had been little thing over the years, like his father's business dinners or country club lunches that highlighted this. They were filled with vapid talk of politics amounting to nothing more than following the money or passive aggressive showboating. With nothing of substance, growing up, Blaine had found them deafening.

It wasn't until the hospital though that this notion truly hit hard. Day after day for two weeks he laid in that lumpy, too small bed numb to the world around him. Nurses bustled in and around, their shoes clacking across the greying linoleum floor in time to the beeping of various machines. It was as if they had become part of the electronic beast itself. But Blaine could never descend from the hallowed glare of the humming fluorescent lights off the white white walls. He was trapped. His body could not defend itself that night so his mind was doing it then, barricading itself within sound proof walls so strong they blocked out even his own thought.

He hadn't really minded at the time. He didn't care to talk to the nurses or doctors. They couldn't help, not really. And he didn't care to listen to the pitying speeches from his parents, the: 'we told you not to go with him's, 'what exactly did you think would happens's, 'you might need to tone it down's'. Buried somewhere in there though must have been something about a new school.

The new school had uniforms apparently and even before the first day had started Blaine found the tie around his neck to be more like a noose. It didn't fit like his bowties. The tie wasn't nearly as bad as his mother's constant comments though. "You nervous? Don't be. The campus looked gorgeous." Because freshly mowed, green grass was the cure to all humiliation.

The quiet comment really got him though. The numbness had faded now and his head hadn't stopped. Sleepless nights plagued him, his mind racing too hard to rest. The flash backs came along with the 'what if's' and the shame and guilt that he couldn't defend himself or his date. And everyone knew. That was the worst part. The student body left prom that night to ambulances lights and he'd cards on his bedside table from Cooper and his grandparents. There was no escape now that the quiet was gone.

The noose tightened as his mother pulled up the drive way to the Victorian looking building and further still when she interrupted a pickup game of touch football on the front lawn to ask for directions. With their dress shirt sleeves rolled up and their ties tied around their biceps or foreheads, they looked more like savage cave men than school boys. No matter how politely they answered his mother, Blaine could help but think Lord of the Flies.

He allowed himself to be led across the grounds and into the head master's office, looking over his shoulder with every step.

"Well, looks like everything is in order. You ready for a tour? Wes, one of our juniors, will show you around," the head master asked.

"He certainly is," his mother answered for him.

"You are a quiet one then? We'll have to work on that. A young man needs to speak for himself."

Quiet. There it was again. Who gave these people authority to define a relative term? Who gave them authority to give it a positive or negative value? No one did. They just took it upon themselves to judge and soon he would be judged for everything else and the noose tightened still.

"A bit intimidating, isn't it?" Wes said as he handed him the key to his dorm after they had stepped inside the final stop on the tour. Wes' tie was tied around his neck properly and he was wearing the blazer identical to the one Blaine had draped over his arm. He certainly looked more proper than the other boys but it was a little too militaristic to be comforting. "Don't sweat it, you'll love it in no time."

If only time could run as fast as his head.

He sat on the small bed as Wes rattled off some of the dorm rules: all visitors must sign in, no weapons of any kind… The squeak of the bed springs capture more of his attention and he cringed knowing they would make it even harder to fall asleep.

He shut the door to the room as Wes headed back to class. He needed that physical barrier because time seemed to tick ever slowly towards… Feeling at home here? Feeling safe here? Feeling safe anywhere? He didn't really know and that in and of itself was probably his biggest hurdle Whatever time was supposed to give him though, his legs were itching to make up for its lag and run as far away from here as possible.