"Hey!"

Kurt jumped, dropping his books in the process. Blaine cursed. "I am so sorry," he said, scrambling to help Kurt with his books. "I didn't mean to scare you."

Kurt forced a laugh. "It's fine. Don't – don't worry about it."

As they both stood, Blaine moved to brush lint off Kurt's shoulder. He wasn't looking the right way and was digging something out of his pocket when Karofsky passed by the pair of them in the hall. Kurt's eyes followed the bully, his eyes widening and his porcelain skin paling as the burly teen blew him a taunting kiss in the near-empty hallway. He was still staring like a deer in headlights at the back of Karofsky's head when Blaine looked up.

Blaine looked first at Kurt's face, his smile faltering, then out at the backs of a few people who'd been walking away from them. "Kurt," he asked. "Is something wrong?"

Kurt turned back to Blaine, shaking his head. "No, it's nothing. It's…it's stupid." Blaine frowned, but looking around him and seeing over a half-dozen students that could be eavesdropping on their conversation, he decided they should try for some privacy maybe.

"Come on. Let's – get some air." Leading the way, Blaine grabbed Kurt by the hand and pulled him along purposefully through the halls and out a little-used exit. He dropped Kurt's hand as he jogged down the steps, hopping down the last two. There was a neglected picnic table with a broken bench on one side that Blaine walked to. He stepped up on the unbroken bench, turned, and dropped down on top of the table. He patted the table top next to him to indicate Kurt should take a seat.

"We're going to be late," Kurt protested, though without much conviction.

Blaine shrugged. "So? Sit."

In his hands, Blaine turned his new phone over and over in his hands. Kurt finally noticed it. "Is that Rachel's phone?" he asked, recognizing the case. Blaine looked down at the bedazzled purple case.

"Oh. No – it's mine, actually. The case is…temporary," he said with a crooked smile.

He'd have preferred to go with no case at all than to use one of Rachel's hand-me-downs, but he was too afraid of dropping it when he had no way of paying to replace it.

Kurt finally obliged, climbing up to sit on the table, but managing to do so far more gracefully than Blaine had.

"So," Blaine said, breaking the silence. "What's his name?"

Kurt stiffened. "W-what do you mean?"

Blaine looked at him, opened his mouth to answer but stopped. He looked away again, rethought what he was going to say, and opened his mouth again. "Two years ago, I had some…trouble. There was this group of guys. They were friends with this guy named Adam. He's a Senior now, but back then, we were friends. At least," he paused, shifting in his seat, "I thought we were. He used to hang out with my friend Bethany and I. We'd eat lunch together and hang out after school and stuff. I thought.." Blaine laughed, barely believing now how stupid he'd been. "I thought he was so cool. I knew Beth before, you know, but Adam was a sophomore, and I was just a freshman, and he wanted to hang out with me instead of his jackass teammates."

Blaine swallowed thickly.

"Anyway, Beth and Adam were my first real friends. They got me drunk for the first time." He smirked at the memory, though his eyes were fixed on the gravel ground. "Adam was the first guy…" He stopped, trying to find the words to describe what he'd been.

"He was the first guy that ever kissed me…that I w-wanted to kiss back." Blaine drew in a shaky breath. He tightened his grip on the phone in his hands. "He and Beth were the only ones that knew. The only ones…"

He shook his head and cleared his throat. "Anyway, towards the end of my freshman year, Adam started acting weird. Then one day, he was walking me to my car, and out of nowhere, a group of his other friends – they surrounded me. They, um," Blaine shook his head as if he was trying to shake off the memory. "They beat the crap out of me." For the first time since Blaine started his story, he looked at Kurt.

"They ambushed you," Kurt said, almost inaudibly, using Blaine's own word from the day he'd acted strangely after school. Blaine, though, just nodded.

"I spent the next six months in a hospital and in rehab. I had to repeat my freshman year, but I had to do it at another school since I got expelled. For fighting." He let out a humorless laugh. "Beth, she – she transferred with me, which helped, but what happened to me…it got around," he nodded. "Everyone at my new school knew. They all knew I got beaten up for 'coming on' to one of the JV lacrosse players." He held up fingers and made air quotations around the words "coming on".

Kurt sat through the story, his body stiff as he took in everything that Blaine was telling him.

Blaine fell silent, giving his story a chance to sink in.

"So, what did you do?" Kurt asked quietly.

Blaine met his eyes. "I took up boxing."

As if on cue, the warning bell rang. Kurt, who appeared to have been on the verge of saying something, exhaled a sigh. "I have to go. Maybe…what are you doing today after school?" He slid smoothly off of the rickety table.

Blaine hopped down after him and followed him towards the building. "Nothing. Trying to figure out my new phone. Do you – want to come over?"

Kurt paused on his way back to the building, then said, "I could help you with that. The iphone thing." He shrugged and added, "If you want."

Blaine's lip quirked into a half-smirk. "Yeah. That'd be cool."

Together, they headed back up to the building, opening the door to the school just as the final bell rang.

Rachel fiddled with her pencil and glanced ever more anxiously at the door to her classroom until finally – finally – Kurt arrived. He scurried into the classroom and slipped into his seat. Rachel straightened in her own. She'd see them – though she didn't think Kurt or Blaine realized it. She'd seen him, hand in hand with Blaine, heading out of the school building. She also couldn't help but notice the smile playing on Kurt's lips. Her own lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line.

She did not like the idea of her imposter-brother usurping her friends. Not one bit. And especially not after what she'd overheard this morning…

Rachel yawned luxuriously as she trudged down the hall to her bathroom. As she approached, she noticed the door was already closed. Someone was using it to shower. Ok, sure, it wasn't really her bathroom anymore; she'd been forced to share with Blaine ever since he'd arrived. Still, as she approached the closed door she thought she heard Hiram singing. Had her dads' shower broken or backed up or something?

It was a few seconds with her ear pressed to the door that she realized – that wasn't Hiram singing…

'Cause baby you're a firework…
Come on show 'em what your worth.
Make 'em go "Oh, oh, oh!"
As you shoot across the sky-y-y.

It seemed he had not been arrested after all. And when she'd asked her fathers about the detectives, they'd told her not to worry. That it wasn't going to affect her or their family. Which of course meant that they thought Blaine was going to be staying around for a while longer. Unless she did something to stop it, it would only be a matter of time before Blaine invaded the one and only thing in her life that was really truly still hers and hers alone - the New Directions.

"I am still shaking, and it is either from low blood sugar or rage. I knew it was only a matter of time before Rachel tried to take over the Glee Club."

Mercedes offered Kurt a sympathetic smile. "We'll forget about it tonight at bowling."

"I can't. Blaine asked me to hang out."

Mercedes turned to Kurt. He didn't see the shock and hurt in her eyes because he was too busy turning up his nose at the different food options available in the caf. It wasn't as if Kurt was spending a ton of time with this Blaine kid, but they'd hung out just the day before, and hadn't they just gone for coffee the previous week? "I've been looking forward to it all week," she protested. Seriously, Kurt was her best friend. What was happening here?

"Wait, are you two going out or something? Because you need to come clean," she asked, honestly disgruntled by the idea of being replaced.

It wasn't that Blaine gave off a definite gay vibe or anything, but he did have two gay dads. (Naturally, the fact that he was Rachel Berry's bio-brother had made its way around Glee shortly after Puck punched him. It was old news.) But no straight guy in his right mind would hang out with Kurt Hummel two nights in a row and expect to get away with it.

"What? No," he responded quickly. "I don't need any more Rachel drama right now. Besides, his mother just died. Please, Mercedes, mum's the word."

She bit her lip, was she being unfair. "We'll be happy for you. We know how lonely you've been. I'm sure even Rachel…"

"Hey, we just hang out. Nothing more than that, OK? It's just…nice to have somebody to talk to."

Mercedes couldn't help the pang of indignation that twisted her gut at that. "What's that supposed to mean?" she insisted.

"Nothing, Mercedes, nevermind. Look, I'll make it up to you Mercedes. We'll hang out Friday…"

But Mercedes' attention was stolen at that moment by something that sounded much more enticing than even bowling did. Tots.