Blaine had been at McKinley for two months now, and he hadn't been thrown into a locker once. He hadn't been locked in a closet or 'accidentally' tripped in the hall. He hadn't come back to his locker to find it covered in epithets. No one had scowled at him as he changed for gym or accused him of looking at their junk. He'd taken a slushy to the face once, but one of the Glee kids had been walking past at the time and the jock had apologised afterwards for missing his target.
Face stinging, Blaine rushed to the bathroom to clean up. It was for the best, Blaine decided. If he ever started to feel weak, all he had to do was remember this and he'd know why he was lying low. He couldn't understand how the Glee kids put up with it all the time. He'd made the right choice in not joining Glee.
Instead, Blaine threw himself into school work. He went to all the A/V club meetings and listened carefully, only speaking when directly spoken to. He tried to convince himself that he didn't time his walk to his car after school just so that he could hear the strains of voices wafting into the hall from the choir room.
"You got a girlfriend?" Lauren asked one day.
Blaine shook his head without thinking.
"Boyfriend?" she asked.
Blaine felt himself freeze inside, but it wasn't for nothing that he'd spent hours carefully cultivating an amiable, inoffensive exterior. This outer Blaine was able to shake his head without flinching, even while the inner Blaine panicked at the thought that he might have somehow let something slip.
Some of his emotion must have showed through, though, because Lauren rolled her eyes. "Just asking. Man, why do you guys always take offence when I ask if you have boyfriends?"
Okay, that was good. It was just something she asked all the guys. She was just open-minded. Blaine hadn't given himself away. Blaine was able to shrug her question away and go back to eating his sandwich, keeping his expressing politely disinterested.
In French, Blaine took to watching Kurt. He had this habit of raising one eyebrow, just slightly, before saying something outrageous in French, as though daring his partner to understand and take offence. His partner, a tall jock, never did. Blaine was pretty sure that he didn't understand a word that Kurt said.
Kurt had ten times the courage that Blaine had. He came to school dressed in the most amazing outfits and didn't seem to care what anyone else thought or said. He strode confidently down the halls, even after being hit by a slushy. One morning, Blaine had arrived to see Kurt climbing out of the dumpster. Blaine would have been in tears if it had been him, but Kurt just brushed himself off and walked on his way as thought it was nothing.
Basically, he was amazing, and Blaine would give anything to be one tenth as strong as him. In French, Blaine wished that he could just walk across the room and say hello, but striking up a friendship with Kurt would ruin everything.
It was better for everyone if Blaine just minded his own his own business.
Even so, Blaine couldn't stop himself from walking past the choir room and listening, just so, in the hope of catching the familiar strains of Kurt's voice.
It was in November when Blaine heard it: a pure voice, singing out his favourite song from Wicked. Even though it was stupid and anyone might see him, Blaine couldn't help but stop in the middle of the hall, spellbound. This time, Kurt wasn't singing in the chorus. He was singing a solo and the depth and emotion was incredible. Kurt was amazingly talented.
Then came the highest note of all and Kurt missed it, badly. Blaine winced. He wasn't sure why it happened. He'd heard Kurt sing higher than that, so he knew that the note was well within Kurt's range. Kurt was strong and brave and outrageous and everything that Blaine wasn't, so why would he throw that note?
Blaine wanted to ask Kurt, but that would mean admitting things that he wasn't ready to admit, even to himself. Instead, he forced himself not to think of it, mentally filing the detail away to life's unsolved mysteries. He had more important things to do than spend hours contemplating Kurt Hummel.
Another month passed without incident. Signs started popping up around the school inviting the student body to come and support New Directions at Sectionals. A little voice in the back of Blaine's head was telling him that he should go. No one would ever know and it might be nice to be close to Glee in that way, even if they never knew it.
The stronger part of Blaine quashed down on that little voice. It wasn't worth the risk.
The day of Sectionals arrived. Blaine set himself up in the library with a pile of work to try to distract himself. He was just heading out, thinking his mission had been achieved, when he saw Finn Hudson sprinting down the hall with a stack of sheet music under one arm and a set of car keys in his free hand.
"Shouldn't you be at Sectionals?" Blaine asked without thinking, before kicking himself for revealing that he'd been following Glee's doings rather than condemning them with the rest of the school.
"I, uh, I'm running late," Finn said.
Maybe it was fate, the stupid part of Blaine thought, before asking, "Can you give me a lift – I was going to come and watch."
Blaine sat quietly as Finn drove them to the venue in what Blaine was sure was Mr Schuester's car. When they arrived, Blaine politely thanked Finn and went to find a seat. There wasn't long to wait before New Directions came on. They were brilliant. The short diva – Rachel Berry was her name, Blaine remembered – came down the aisle singing her heart out. Blaine was sure that if he was straight, he would have been attracted to her immense talent. When she was finished, the rest of the group came out and sang 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' before segueing into an epic rendition of 'Somebody to Love'.
It was awesome and amazing and Blaine was so glad that he'd come to watch and so sad that he couldn't be up there with them.
After the show finished, he was about to fade into the crowd as though he'd never been there when he remembered that he didn't have a way to get home. He awkwardly sidled up to the celebrating New Directions group. Kurt looked momentarily startled before smiling cautiously at him. Blaine smiled back.
In the bus on the way back to campus, the Glee kids started an impromptu rendition of 'We Are the Champions' and Artie nudged Blaine to join in. He couldn't quite bring himself to sing, but he jiggled along in his seat to the beat of the music and was laughing and smiling the same as everyone else when they arrived back at campus. For a moment, as he let them pull him into their group hug, he wondered if just maybe this feeling might be worth it.
It wasn't, though – it couldn't be – Blaine decided as he climbed into his own car to drive home. His father had bought him the car when he'd transferred to McKinley. Blaine had to make his father proud. He had to survive high school and go and get a fantastic job and live up to all those dreams they both had for his future. He couldn't go back to being that scared bullied kid that everyone looked down on. He couldn't afford to even consider it.
It was Kurt who asked him. In French, he walked up to Blaine and, with no preamble, said "You should join Glee."
People were staring at him, wondering why he was talking to the resident gay kid. "Why?" Blaine asked, slightly more harshly than he'd intended.
"Because you enjoyed yourself on the bus on the way back from Sectionals," said Kurt, oblivious to the mutterings.
"I'm not gay," said Blaine, "and I'd never join homo explosion." He'd heard one of the jocks use the phrase once. He'd felt sick in the stomach at the time, but not as sick as he felt now.
He didn't meet Kurt's eyes for a long moment, afraid of the hurt he'd see. The mutterings were growing, though, and he knew he had to do something else, so he made himself look up and was surprised to see a stunned look on Kurt's face that was quickly transforming into compassion. The sick feeling in Blaine's stomach got worse.
Kurt knew.
The rest of the class were still staring at them, as though waiting for something more. Blaine didn't know what to do or what to say. Kurt knew and if Blaine didn't do something soon, the rest of them would realise, too.
Kurt's mouth was opening. He was about to say something and ruin everything. Kurt was brave and strong and he wouldn't be able to understand why Blaine couldn't be brave and strong, too. Blaine had heard rumours about how Kurt's father threatened to sue the school to let Kurt audition for 'Defying Gravity' (even if Kurt had thrown the song in the end). Kurt wouldn't be able to understand why Blaine needed to be discrete.
"Stay away from me, you fag," said Blaine, going for the word that he knew would hurt worst, hoping that the harshness would be enough to deter the rest of the class from realising what Kurt had.
He turned and walked out of the room without waiting to see Kurt's reaction.
Kurt had been surprised to see Blaine at Sectionals – after a semester of French, he'd thought that Blaine would be one of the last people to show an interest in Glee. Instead, there he was, nervous, but smiling along with the rest of them. Kurt had decided then and there that he was going to recruit Blaine for Glee.
The fact that he was undeniably attractive had nothing to do with it. Kurt's heart belonged to Finn, after all. Still, that didn't mean that he couldn't occasionally slip in a daydream about the boy who could speak French almost as well as he could. He was a teenager, after all.
He hadn't had a chance to talk to Blaine when they'd gotten off the bus. He'd decided that French was the next best bet and had gone up to him at the start of the lesson to ask him to join New Directions.
"I'm not gay," Blaine had said, spitting out the last word, "and I'd never join homo explosion." It should have been insulting, the way that Blaine had implied being gay was the worst thing in the world, but Kurt couldn't help but notice the fear in Blaine's eyes as they flickered back and forward, his attention on their classmates rather than on Kurt. When he looked up, Blaine's expression was pleading and in that moment, Kurt knew.
Blaine was gay.
He was gay and he knew it and he was terrified that someone else would realise. Kurt had been there not that long ago. He knew what it felt like. It was only because of that that when Blaine called him a fag and told him to stay away, Kurt didn't take it personally. He'd been there and he might still have been there if it wasn't for Glee. Maybe he could be the one to help Blaine through this. Kurt had been so busy looking for someone else to be his hero that he'd never considered that maybe he could be that hero for someone else.
Blaine stormed out before Kurt could say anything else, which was probably a good thing because Kurt was so stunned in that moment that he could have said anything. He would have chased after Blaine, but that wouldn't have been helpful to either of them. He promised himself that he'd try to talk to Blaine the next time they had French, but Blaine didn't show up to class.
It was only a week later that he discovered that Blaine had dropped the subject.
