AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hey, guys. I'm so sorry for not updating for so long - I just got my hands on The Land of Stories series by Chris Colfer, and I CAN'T PUT IT DOWN! No, seriously. It's like beyond amazing - it's like reading a cutesy story inside Chris's mind, it's bananas.

Um, I'm honestly not sure about when I'll update next, but it will happen. Don't worry.

I'm just working on making them qualitative and longer. So it's kind of hard...

I'd like to take the moment and thank my amazing beta, Daniela. Babe, you da best!

Enjoy!

(Disclaimer: I own nothing except for the events that I made up in this story)

Chapter Four

Kurt and Blaine were sitting quietly side by side in the classroom, listening to the teach explaining the importance of punctuation, grammatical structure, and above all – spelling.

"I cannot believe that I'm still receiving essays where it says 'loose' instead of 'lose' and almost always the rule 'I before e' is ignored," Mrs. Krone chastised. "You're seniors, for heavens' sake!" some students at least had the decency to blush; the others were staring at her blankly. "Which is why I'm assigning this year's project in pairs. Your partners are your neighbors," Blaine's eyes bugged out of their sockets and he sneaked a sideways glance at Kurt.

From what he gathered throughout his first week at McKinley, Kurt was more or less a wallflower. No one cared about what he did, except for the jocks who enjoyed taking out their frustrations on him, and no one really knew anything about him, except that he was gay.

Blaine tried making friends. He caved in to Rachel's imploring and joined Glee Club, and quickly made friends with Sam Evans, a nice albeit clueless boy, who was obsessed with comic books as much – if not more – as Blaine was.

The only time he had any sort of one-sided interaction with the enigmatic Kurt, was during classes. He spent his lunches with the new Directions (he finally learned how to pronounce it properly), but he was anxious to get back to class, if only so he could continue studying Kurt.

So, when Mrs. Krone assigned the pairs according to seating arrangements, Blaine was thrilled, but he had no idea how this gorgeous (because, let's face it, he was undeniably drop-dead gorgeous) boy would react. But there was nothing. Except for a subtle, almost unnoticeable, twitch of his nose. Kurt remained expressionless as ever.

"I really hope that you will be able to go over your essays and submit something readable," Mrs. Krone went on. "Now, for your assignments, I want you to pick a novel from either the 19th or 20th centuries, analyze it according to the rubric that is going around, and present it to the class at the end of the semester. Your grades will be equal on this project, no matter who does what, so make sure you put in equal amounts of work. Now, please discuss for the remainder of the class your outline."

Most of the students scurried into hushed conversations about their work, while some chose to spend the allotted time lounging in their seats. Blaine shuffled around in his seat until he was facing Kurt, who was staring at his rubric, still immobilized. Blaine sighed.

"Look, I get it that you don't want to talk," he said quietly. "But we're gonna have to communicate somehow if we're gonna get a good grade in this project. I'm not gonna fail English Lit…"

Kurt slowly raised his head to look at him with those big, round, fear-filled blue eyes, and dropped his gaze immediately. "I can do it all, if you want," he said, almost inaudibly.

Blaine's eyebrows shot up high on his forehead and anger flared red hot in him. "Like hell you are," he hissed, startling Kurt. "I'm not some dumbass pity case, Kurt. I don't need you to feel like I'm not up for it, if we're doing this, we're doing this together!"

Blaine immediately regretted his outburst, seeing Kurt flinch and cower in his seat, looking like a deer in headlights, lowering his head once more. He ran his hand over his face, trying to compose himself.

"Sorry," he said softly, trying but failing to catch Kurt's eyes. "I didn't mean to snap. It's just I really don't like people questioning my intelligence. I'm more than happy to work on this equally with you, ok? Let's meet today at your place and we can figure out what novel we'll work on. Where do you live?"

Kurt was panicking.

He was in his basement room, trying to put everything in its place for Blaine's imminent arrival. He put all of his face masks and creams in his hope chest, and the hope chest underneath his bed; he took all of his scarves down from their hangers and unceremoniously stuffed them in his closet; then he looked around and sighed resignedly, well he didn't have enough time to take down all his posters, so Blaine will just have to deal with it, even if it was an eyesore for anyone who didn't appreciate the brilliance of musical theatre.

He was just sitting down on his bed to catch his breath, when he heard his father holler from upstairs – "Kiddo! A Blain Anderson is here to see ya, says you two are working on some school project."

Kurt sighed and trudged his way to the door and yelled up, "You can let him in, Dad. It's fine."

And he went back to his bed, sitting primly with his books all strewn across his bedspread, awaiting the start of what was sure to be a long semester project.

Finally, Blaine made it downstairs and Kurt was stunned to see that the boy had everything they needed – including two or three novels tucked safely underneath his armpit.

"Well, I see you came prepared," Kurt said in surprise, looking at Blaine with wonder.

Blaine did a double take. This was not the Kurt he met at school. This Kurt was confident, sarcastic and sassy, and altogether far more confident than the scared teenager he met at school. He took a deep breath and walked slowly into the room, removing the novels he had brought from under his armpit and sitting next to Kurt on the queen-sized bed.

"Um, yeah, like I told you, I don't want to fail English Lit.," Blaine said quietly. "Um, yeah, so I brought some of my favorite novels, you know, for the project."

Kurt lifted an eyebrow and looked down at what Blaine brought – Pride and Prejudice, Oliver Twist, and To Kill a Mockingbird – and looked up at Blaine, squinting his eyes.

"Not bad," he finally said with an impressed smirk, and sat back. "I actually thought to bring up Oliver Twist myself."

Blaine's face brightened and split into a wide grin. "Great! So, I guess that's what we're going with. Now, I thought we could go with the theme of maybe child abuse and its affects back in the 19th century and how it's evolved all the way to the 21st century, then cross-reference it with domestic abuse. Um, but, you know," he scratched the back of his neck self-consciously, clearly embarrassed for having spoken so much. "You can pick whatever you want to write about, it's just something I thought about."

Kurt cocked his head to the side and observed Blaine. He never really took the time to observe the boy at school, having been too afraid that the jocks has turned him against him like the rest of the school, but he was completely endearing. Self-conscious, shy, trying very hard to please everyone, and not at all frightening.

"Hmm," Kurt said, trying his best not to freak out like he did at school. "Well, I guess considering the novel is Oliver Twist, it makes sense, and domestic abuse – well, I guess we can work on that. It's definitely something I hadn't considered."

Blaine nodded thoughtfully and looked around, looking for something to say, and his eyes fell on the many posters that littered the room.

"You like musical theater?" he asked, glancing timidly at Kurt.

He really had no idea how to act around this Kurt. He was confident in his own skin, unafraid to speak his mind, and always held his gaze.

"Yeah, I do," Kurt said fondly, walking over to the Wicked poster that was taped between that of Fiddler on the Roof and RENT. "I really want to go to New York City and see those for myself, and maybe…" he trailed off, blushing furiously. "Never mind," he went on. "So, if we're going to go with the child abuse thing, I think we should maybe research it in the library."

"Huh?" Blaine looked up, as if in a trance, "uh, right, sure, so you wanna head there now? Or…."

"Well, I hardly think it would do us much good now," Kurt snarked, smiling to soften the remark, "but how about tomorrow after school? Just give me an hour to take the slushy out of my clothes, okay?"
Blaine gaped after him as he walked over to his walk-in bathroom to wash his face. "Um, take the what out?"

Kurt looked at him, bewildered. "Slushy? The thing they threw at me the first day of school? I get it every day, so I need extra time to take it out before I head home."

Blaine looked down at his lap, and couldn't understand the sudden burst of rage he felt at learning this new bit of information. "But… but why?"

Kurt quirked his eyebrow at this. "Uh, cause I'm gay?"

"But… but why don't you stand up to them, then?" Blaine burst out, hardly able to contain himself or control his words. "Why are you always so submissive and accepting of their bullying?!"

Kurt glared at him. "Why do you even care?" he asked, also raising his voice. "Why do you care about me so much? Why do you always sneak a glance at me but never do anything about it if you care this much?"

"I don't know! I really don't, Kurt," Blaine tried to explain. "But here you are, this extremely confident guy who's not afraid to tell me how it is, and what you think of anything, and then at school you're just rolling around and taking whatever those jackholes are giving to you! Why?"

Kurt's face was red now and he strode over swiftly to his door, "I think you should go," he said softly, not looking at Blaine. "I'll see you tomorrow at the library tomorrow after I take out the slushy."

And with that, Blaine walked out. Leaving Kurt to slump on his bed, crying for the first time in four years.

The next day, Blaine was sitting patiently in the school library, anxiously awaiting Kurt's arrival.

After he left the Hummel residence last night, he spent the rest of the day in his room, trying to understand his feelings about what he had learned that day.

Kurt was being bullied at school, having slushies, punches and shoves thrown at him all because he was gay, and yet he never once lost sight of his dreams.

Blaine was so caught up in his pondering of Kurt's bravery, he hadn't even noticed that the subject of his thoughts had arrived and was now standing in front of the desk Blaine sat at, waiting patiently for him to come back to the present.

Sensing something has changed; Blaine lifted his head and nearly toppled back out of his chair at the shock of not being alone anymore.

"Jesus Freaking Christ!" he yelped, clutching his chest. "How long have you been waiting there?"

Kurt shrugged, biting his lower lip to stop himself form laughing – flustered Blaine was adorable.

"You should warn a guy," Blaine gave him a lopsided smile, desperately trying, and failing miserably, at hiding his blush at having been caught daydreaming about Kurt.

"Looks like you were thinking pretty hard there," Kurt said softly – causing Blaine's heart to flutter, his voice was so musical – "something you wanna share with the class?" he continued with a tilt of his head and a mischievous glint in his eyes.

Blaine gasped; it was the first time he saw Kurt expressing any sort of emotion at school. Sure, classes were out, but they were still in the building. Blaine hurried to focus and shook his head, letting out a huff of laughter. "Um, no. I was just wondering where you were, that's all."
Kurt sat down and rested his chin on his hand, his head tilted again, as if to say, seriously?

Blaine laughed again. "Really, it's not important. Let's just start this project, okay?"

And so they started researching information for their report, trying their best to ignore the little flutters they felt when they were around each other. Once in a while, Blaine would lift his eyes to glance at Kurt and he smiled softly at his brow furrowing in concentration, but then shook his head and went back to work. Every ten minutes or so, Kurt would lift his head and nearly had a heart attack at how cute Blaine looked completely immersed in his reading, his pencil shoved in between his teeth and his eyes squinting at a paragraph.

This routine went on for about a week. They would meet in the library, pretend to be completely immersed in their work, but secretly sneaking glances at one another.

Around the beginning of October, Blaine decided that enough is enough. He was fairly certain that he was crushing on Kurt and, despite being a target of bullying from the jocks, he did want to be able to go to the upcoming Halloween party, and he wanted to go with Kurt.

So, on the morning of the first Monday of October, Blaine gathered all the courage he could muster and walked over to where Kurt was standing, like he always did, and tapped him gently on his shoulder.

Like always, Kurt would drop his books in shock, looking up with big, round, frightened eyes – fearing that one of the jocks was out to torment him again – and like always, he would let out a big sigh of relief and smiled at Blaine; who did his best not to melt on the spot from those beguiling blue eyes.

"Would you… maybe want to go to the Halloween party?"