Chapter Two

Kurt put his alarm clock on the nightstand, it was the last item from his luggage. He zipped up the luggage and put it under his bed. He sat on his unfamiliar bed and looked around the room. Well, this is a new start for sure. He thought.

The opposite side of his room was another bed with the same nightstand and the same study desk, the bed sheet looked very disordered and there was a pile of books left untidily on the desk. Kurt's roommate, Nick, was very much like his step-brother Finn, not only just in this way, but in many ways as well. He was a football player and a member of the Warblers. They had little chat when Blaine took Kurt to his room as their last destination. Nick seemed to be a nice person. He quickly introduced himself to Kurt before he went to the Warblers rehearsal with Blaine. Now the room was empty, he was alone with himself again.

He thought about McKinley. He wondered how would the day be like for his friends there, he wondered how was the rehearsal going for New Directions. Were they busy at putting the numbers for regional? Were they having fun at putting all the singings and dancing together? Oh, he missed McKinley a lot already. Those peaceful parts of McKinley were the places where Kurt really belonged to, but the Neanderthal came into his life and made it liked a living hell. All his peacefulness was vanished in the fist of the Neanderthal's. All those slushies and bruises weren't the big deal, but it was his fear of the darkness would make his knees stuck on the ground eventually.

His darkness was Dave Karofsky.

If he could he wouldn't run away from him, he would fight until death. Kurt couldn't, and that was the problem. He had to run away from this guy who bullied him and kissed him, who threatened to kill him but told him that he loved Kurt at the same time. In Kurt's eyes, David Karofsky was a jerk. Every time when he thought about Karofsky, he breathed harder each time.

But today he wasn't going to go there. No, he promised himself this was a new start and he would use his power to make his life back to normal, so he jumped off the bed. He checked everything in the room and made sure he had everything done.

Everything was done.

He sat back on the bed and he looked at his phone that was put on the desk. Should I give dad a call now? He hesitated; maybe it was still early to call.

Kurt was bored, the room was so quiet and he didn't know what else to do. Now that he was a student in Dalton, he couldn't plan for his outfit for the day, not the next day, or the day after next day. Everyone here seemed to wear their uniform even after class. It would make Kurt felt weird if he was the only one who wore casual clothes after class each day.

He closed his eyes and let himself fell on the bed. Everyone in Dalton seemed to be very friendly, especially Blaine.

Kurt only knew Blaine for no more than an hour, but he had already occupied Kurt's mind. His feeling toward Blaine was somehow different from the feelings toward the crush on Finn before. Blaine made his heartbeat raised so fast that he could hear the beat inside. He wanted Blaine to be his boyfriend. To be frankly, the desire in him had left him to be lonely, and the loneliness in him had left him to be thirsty. But Kurt wasn't sure he was ready for a relationship yet, or should I ever be in a relationship? He put on hand on his chest felt the heartbeat. It was strong… and it was non-rhythmic. Right. There was a quick click in Kurt's mind. He almost forgot he made a promise to his dad that he would go to the nurse every day. Kurt quickly grabbed his jacket and left the room.

Blaine couldn't concentrate during the rehearsal. His mind was focused on the new kid, Kurt.

"Blaine!" shouted David.

Everyone in Warblers could feel something was different in Blaine today. Normally Blaine was so into his singing passion and he would make every rehearsal like the best performance they had never done before. However, Blaine was quietly sat still on the chair. His eyes were staring at something but the Warblers weren't sure if he was just looking or he was daydreaming.

"Is Blaine okay?" another Warbler asked.

Dave and Thad both shrugged, only Wes was smiling, "Looks like someone has stolen our lead singer's heart today."

The room was suddenly filled with noises of people talking, talking about the comment that Wes had just made. Wes laughed when Blaine finally seemed to show a little notice about the noise. Wes, Thad and Dave, as the head of the Warblers council, had decided the rehearsal was finished, since they couldn't do much with Blaine's mind at somewhere else.

"Blaine?" People were leaving the room and David continued to ask.

Blaine looked up to David and saw Wes and Thad next to him as well. He was surrounded by three of his friends. David and Thad looked confused but Wes was wearing his evil smirk. He looked around the choir room and found it was empty, now he was confused too.

"Why is everybody's gone?" Blaine asked.

"It's already ten to six, Blaine!" replied Wes.

"Oh…." Blaine raised his eyebrows. This was the second time where Blaine felt embarrassed today. How many times had Blaine really felt embarrassed in the past two years? He swore he could count them with one hand only.

"So who was it?" The question that Thad threw to Blaine made Blaine blushed, "What are you talking about?" He pretended he didn't understand the question.

"Thad meant, who was the guy that you were dreaming about?" Wes helped Thad to complete the sentence.

"Wait… what? I didn't dream about any guy!" Blaine claimed loudly with his voice raised.

"Sure Blaine." Wes mocked. The three exchanged their eye contact, now they were sure. Who could make Blaine blush possibly? They knew Blaine for two years and had never seen him blushed before. Now that there was a new kid today and they had seen the Blaine blushed for the first time. Who could that be?

Blaine looked at his friends. From those evil smirks, oh boy, they already knew who that guy was.

And that guy's name was Kurt.

Blaine shook his head. He only hoped that his friends wouldn't mock him like the way now when they were with Kurt. But he looked at his friends laughing, he realized what he had just hoped for was useless, they were going to make fun of him and that was absolutely positive. Oh well, wasn't that what friends were for?

They left the choir room and headed to the cafeteria. They sat on their usual spot and continued to mock Blaine. Blaine didn't argue back, he was looking for Kurt now. He showed Kurt where the cafeteria was and told him dinner normally started at about six. He was hoping Kurt was good at direction and wouldn't get lost. Dalton was quite big and sometimes people got lost. That was what happened to him when he was new and he remembered the person who was making fun of him now, Wes, showed him the way so friendly when they first met, now they had become friend and Wes had finally showed his 'real side'.

"You know Wes, sometimes I really missed the first time we met." said Blaine.

Wes knew this sentence, he knew it because every time when Wes or any of his friends were teasing about him, Blaine would bring up the old time to remind them why were they friends in the first place, but it just never worked, and that's why they all loved Blaine besides his amazing talent.

"Wait, so you don't miss the first time we met. Blaine?" David put on a sad look, he was teasing for sure, how could Blaine not miss the first time they met? Everyone at the table laughed loudly.

"Oh come on! I showed him where his room was, I deserved to be missed!" Wes argued.

"What? Blaine! Tell me you miss ours, too? I showed you to the Warblers!" Thad joined in.

"Oh please, quiet everybody! I show him my answers for the Spanish homework when we first met, so he would miss me more than you guys." David said proudly and Thad gave him a high five.

Blaine was going to tease back, but now his mind got drift into somewhere else when he saw a boy walking to their table. Kurt was with his roommate, Nick, chatting and smiling.

Blaine felt kind of lucky when he figured out Nick was Kurt's roommate. Nick was the Warblers as well, that meant Kurt and he were in the same friendship group. And that meant he could spend a lot of time with Kurt, as a friend, for now.

"Kurt! So you didn't get lost! You're good at direction, huh?" Blaine said. The excitement in his voice was obvious. Wes, Thad and David exchanged their eye contacts quickly.

Kurt laughed, "Well, I cheated a little bit I guess. I asked Nick to take me here actually." He took a seat between Blaine and Nick, he joked as he continued, "But I guess I'm good at asking people favour." Kurt glanced over the table and saw all the others were laughing, he was glad that they appreciated his joke. People at McKinley didn't. They wouldn't bother to listen anyway.

Blaine liked Kurt even more, one was because of his gorgeous looking, of course, but second it was because Kurt had a good personality. He had not only found out Kurt was easy to be with, he was as funny as hell, too.

"Kurt," Blaine introduced him to his friends, "and Kurt, this is David, Thad and Wes."

"Nice to meet you Kurt." Greeted Wes.

"Nice to meet you all, it's a pleasure to be here." Kurt replied politely.

Right now there were thousands of thoughts running through Kurt's mind. He was scared, to some extent it was because he was exhausted from the first day, and to more extent he didn't know what to expect. He knew people here were kind, but Kurt also knew he wouldn't last any longer without a group of good friends. What if they didn't get alone and what if they decided they didn't like Kurt after they found out he was gay? Would that even happen? Or maybe they had already known he was gay by the look of his face? People at McKinley once teased about him that they could smell the lady inside him with even him coming out or seeing him. Kurt's look often gave away his sexuality. Small town like Lima was too closed to accept the fact homosexuality existed in this world. If you were gay there, your troubles began right away after you were born.

"So Kurt, where did you transfer from?" David asked.

"McKinley High, it's a public school in Lima." replied Kurt.

"Is is because your family moved here?" Thad asked the next question.

"No, my family is still in Lima, I transferred here because Dalton has zero tolerance policy…" Kurt breathed and slowly looked down to his drink on the table. There were words that would trigger those unhappy memories. The others were replying with an, "Oh… we're sorry." Without stating it clear, they all knew the reason. Kurt tried hard to hide them away so he wouldn't bring the great atmosphere down. He did successfully hide his emotions under his skin, however, not quite. Blaine was the only one who noticed the sadness in those crystal blue eyes. The sadness was buried deep somewhere in Kurt's heart and Blaine could see it straight away. He had been through probably the same as Kurt as well, to cheer Kurt up, he thought it might be nice for him to share his experience first.

"I got torn in my old school a lot, too." Blaine started off. He looked at Kurt, who was surprised by what Blaine had just said.

Blaine got torn a lot in his old school? He wondered how could that even happen. Blaine was good-looking, had amazing voice. All Kurt had seen was the confident Blaine here, but how could an awesome person like this got bullied, too?

"I was a freshman when I came out," paused Blaine, he didn't take his eyes off Kurt the whole when he spoke, "I got bullied a lot, like every day and school was like hell to me. But I was never bullied physically," before he continued his story, he looked down at the table, seemed like he was gathering his courage, but he looked back to Kurt then. Kurt was waiting to hear more, "there was this Sadle Hawkins dance one day however, and I asked a friend of mine – the only other gay guy in the school. While we were waiting for his dad to pick us up, these three sophomores came, they um… beat the living crap out of us."

Kurt felt horrible after hearing Blaine's story. He knew there were people in this world would do whatever they could to get rid of gay people, but he never thought a person like Blaine had been through all of this.

"I'm so sorry…" Kurt said.

"It's okay. It was quite a long time ago. Anyway, so here I am, in Dalton, in heaven." Blaine held Kurt's hand tight without realizing, "and I promise you nothing like that will happen here."

"Thank you." said Kurt in a whisper. He was glad there was someone like him finally, someone who was gay and came out. When he was in McKinley he was the only kid who came out of the closet and he was lonely. Despites the bullies Kurt had good friends there, Rachel, Mercedes, Finn and others, but he was lonely. He hoped for so long that someone could understand him like the way he understood himself. Kurt looked at Blaine gratefully. He might have just found one.

He wasn't sure what that holding hands mean, though. Was it to show empathy? Or did it mean something else?

Wes cleared his throat, and when the two had notice the existence of others Wes spoke, "Tell us your hobbies, Kurt. We would really like to know."

"My hobbies, I guess the first one would definitely be fashion. I'm really into fashion, and I have thoughts about getting in fashion after graduation."

"We can tell." Wes smiled, approving Kurt's taste.

"And then it would be singing and reading I think." Kurt slightly shrugged, he didn't really have any interesting hobbies, they all sounded somehow boring to Kurt.

"Hmm, sound interesting to me, especially the reading and singing part, very much like me." Blaine commented, he indicated Kurt to give him a high five and Kurt did. In this high five, there were surprise and doubt, Kurt wanted to know if Blaine really enjoyed.

"I thought people like our age don't read anymore." Kurt teased.

"Oh you should totally go to Blaine's house and check out his bookshelf, you can find… what's that book called again?" Nick frown.

"Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady." Blaine smiled.

Kurt was surprised, once again, "Clarissa? I'm impressed." Kurt didn't expect anyone in this world like his age would know Clarissa, this was such a classic to read, it was too classic for them.

"It was kind of like a challenge, you know, because the length, but then I got really into the story." explained Blaine shyly.

"Well, I have no idea what that is but it sounds exciting for sure." Nick laughed.

The group changed their topic for a few times and the night continued to leave Kurt to be surprised and impressed. Blaine was such a different kid out of them. Everyone had been nice and patient enough to explain things to Kurt whenever they talked about something that Kurt wouldn't know. Kurt felt included, for the first time in many years, he felt he belonged to somewhere without worrying anything.

The feeling was good. It left him awake on bed.

Kurt thought about all the commons Blaine and him shared. How many of them exactly? They were both gay, they both like singing and reading. Blaine wasn't as madly as Kurt about fashion but he surely knew something about it. They both went through rough time at old school and now they were both at Dalton. Kurt wanted to think about Blaine a little bit longer, but he was exhausted for the day. And tomorrow his classes finally began.

Kurt put on a smile before his body forced him fell asleep. He still didn't know what to expect yet, but after all, today was a good day for Kurt, undoubtedly.