The teacher—Mr. Shuester, he reminded himself—nodded at him with a beam and took a seat in a chair up front. “All right! Go for it, Kurt.”

Taking a deep breath, Kurt waited until the opening chords of the song had played and started singing. If there was one thing he was comfortable doing, one thing he was proud of himself and that he knew he could do better than many people, it was singing. He let his voice flood the room, hitting the notes flawlessly. He would close his eyes and lift his hands up to emphasize a powerful moment; he finished amongst loud clapping coming from the students in front of him. Cheers and smiles, and he allowed himself to smile back.

“Great job!” Mr. Shuester called out, standing up and going over to pat Kurt on the back, squeezing his shoulder before turning to the rest of the Glee Club with raised eyebrows. “I think we all agree that you’re welcome to New Directions!” he laughed.

Beaming proudly, Kurt stepped forward to take one of the empty seats, immediately leaning back against the chair and folding a leg over the other, setting his satchel next to his chair and let out a breath. Okay. He was part of something, now.

Mr. Shuester started speaking up front, about the upcoming Sectionals, and a motivational speech that Kurt was paying rapt attention to, when he felt a pair of eyes on him, and something to his right caught his eye. Turning his face away from the teacher, his eyes fell upon a blonde boy sitting not too far away.

The guy smiled when their eyes met, lips thick and nice, and nodded a little. Kurt’s stomach flipped somewhat and he sat up a little straighter. The guy’s smile widened. ‘Hi’, he mouthed. Kurt inhaled through his nose and allowed himself to return a tentative smile as his own lips curved over a ‘hi’ in return.

Glee was over half an hour later. Kurt bent over to gather his things, determinedly not thinking about the blonde to his right and hummed to himself quietly.

“Hey.”

Looking up, mouth parted somewhat, he straightened up and lifted his face to see the same guy standing in front of him, shouldering a red backpack and sporting a blue shirt with a target painted on it over his chest. “Kurt, right?” the guy asked, tilting his head to the side before sticking out his hand. “I’m Sam. Sam I am, and I don’t like green eggs and ham.”

Kurt stared for a moment. Blinked. “Oh, sorry, hi,” he quickly blurted out, taking his hand and shaking it a little before turning to clutch onto his books in front of his chest.

Sam grinned at him and shook his hair out of his eyes—a deep greenish brown—before taking a step back. “You’re new,” he pointed out, waiting for Kurt to come over, which he did, still blushing somewhat. “Where’re you from?”

“New York,” Kurt replied, walking out of the choir room with him, trying to remember which hallway his locker was at.

“What made you decide to stay?” Sam asked, glancing at him sideways as they turned a corner, students bustling out of after-school groups, getting ready for the pep rally at four—at the field, he remembered, behind the cafeteria.

He’d gotten that question nine times today. “It was my dad’s decision,” he said, looking around for the locker number he wanted. “We were here all summer and he met a woman, said she was ‘the one’ and we moved.”

Sam frowned, and Kurt waited for the question he knew was already coming, ‘what happened to your mom?’ and opened his mouth to answer already, when Sam spoke up again. “I’ll be sure to send her a bouquet of flowers, then,” he piped up, turning around Kurt, winking at him, and moving towards the locker to their right. “I’ll see you at the pep rally, Kurt.”

Kurt stood there, staring after Sam for a moment before he remembered how to move his legs and quickly walked out of sight. He’d been flirting; he was sure of it. ‘I’ll send her a bouquet of flowers’? He bit his lip; it felt nice.

Somehow, he managed to find his locker relatively quickly, and opened it easily, stuffing all of his books and bag before he turned to the mirror he’d put up on the inside of his locker door, taking a look at himself to make sure his hair was still in place, reaching up to comb his fingers through it, letting it fall loosely over his forehead as usual and sighed.

“Kurt!” a girl’s voice called out behind him, and he barely had time to jump, startled, before Rachel’s hand was at his elbow. “C’mon! The pep rally’s starting, and we need to get good seats!”

Allowing himself to smile, Kurt nodded and closed his locker. “Sure, let’s go,” he agreed, turning around as Rachel looped her arm through his again, leading him down the hallway. “So, what are pep rallys about? We didn’t really have them at my old school.”

Rachel looked up at him with raised eyebrows. “Really? Oh, it’s really fun. Basically, the whole school gets together, and the sports teams make appearances. There’s a cheerleader number—don’t talk to them, they’re all snobs—and the sports coach makes a speech about what it’s going to be like this year, and boosters, and everything. Personally, I would have plenty of ideas on how to make it much more titillating, because Coach Tanaka was terrible with words, but I hear we have a new one this year, so everybody has their fingers crossed that it’s someone decent, at last.”

Through her speech, they’d made it out to the football field, where, sure enough, everybody had gathered. There was loud music playing through speakers across the grounds, and people with paint on their faces were running around, filling up the bleachers and whistles hooting in the distance. Rachel tugged on his elbow. “Come on,” she whispered, and led him towards her group of friends.

The pep rally was everything Rachel had said it’d be. Even the cheerleaders’ performance was spectacular, in Kurt’s opinion, though he kept it to himself since all Mercedes did was whine about how it was the most classist, racist, ridiculous group of girls and boys in the world, and really, Madonna was a terrible choice for a song this early in the year, especially one like 4 Minutes.

Kurt kept his judgment silent with a quirked eyebrow and folded his hands over his lap as he tried to get excited about it.

--------

It was starting to get dark outside, and Blaine was still draped over the hood of his car on his back, staring up into the evening sky with his hands folded over his stomach.

“Dude,” Finn whined from somewhere off to his left. “How long is this shit, anyway? Why do we have to sit through it?”

Blaine closed his eyes, ignoring him; he really wasn’t in the mood to deal with Finn’s crap unless he had Puck to back him up—Puck, who’d gone to pick his motorcycle up over half an hour ago and still hadn’t returned.

Mike beat him to the punch, anyway. “Puckerman wants to show off his ride to the Skanks, Hudson. We went over this during math.”

“I was sleeping during math.”

“Well, stop being a douche and keep quiet.”

“You’re the one being a douche!”

There was shuffling from behind him as Mike probably tackled Finn—theory further proved correct as a yelp was held, and then grunts. “Alright!” Finn’s voice cried out. Blaine peeked at them through an eye, watching as Finn straightened out his own leather jacket, lifting his hands up. “Chill, man.”

He was going to go insane.

The rumbling of a motorcycle interrupted whatever it was Artie had been about to say and Blaine didn’t think he’d ever been gladder to hear that noise. Sitting up, he swung his legs over the side of the car to lean back against the driver’s door, arms folded over his chest as Puck roared his way in front of them.

“Took you long enough,” Blaine grunted, pushing off his car to go over to the bike, and ran his hand down the metal side of it. It was slightly rusted, and the paint had worn off. “You planning on fixing up this piece of crap?”

“Hey,” Puck replied, jumping off the vehicle and shoving at Blaine’s shoulder a little. “You get yourself one of these and then you can call it a piece of crap.”

Blaine grinned at him and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, nodding over at him. “So, spill. How many condoms did you stop to buy on your way here that we had to go through three cheerleader performances before your glorious face popped up?”

Puck’s expression darkened. “Smythe was being an idiot outside the parking lot,” he grumbled, as Finn came over to listen better. “Of course I beat the crap out of him and that slut he’s dating now.”

Blaine cocked an eyebrow. “He has a new boyfriend?”

“Girlfriend,” Puck corrected him. “That Santana chick from Crawford.” Blaine made a face of disgust at the name. Of course, it didn’t help that Sebastian had cheated on him last year with that particular slut—he’d forgotten to mention he was bi when he’d had his hand down Blaine’s pants—and he rolled his eyes, patting Puck on the back.

“Forget about him, man,” he said instead, shrugging and glancing over towards the football field, far away from where they were, at the edge of the school, behind the bleachers, as the noise started to die down. “Think it’s over?” Artie mused out loud.

Finn let out a breath through his lips. “Better be.” He paused and bit his lip before turning to Puck. “We still going to Fabray’s later on tonight?”

Subtle, Blaine thought, not being able to help letting out a soft chuckle under his breath. Finn had it bad for the theatre-obsessed girl in the Skanks, Rachel. Not that she was that bad, he had to admit, but rather annoying.

Of course, thinking about Rachel led him to think about him. He liked theatre. He liked singing. He’d had a voice that sounded like sleigh bells and laughter and warmth.

“Anderson.”

He snapped his face back up. “What?”

Puck was staring at him. “What’s up with you lately, man? I asked if you were coming.” Blaine shrugged him off and made a half-hearted motion with his hand. “Yeah, sure.”

--------

Kurt huffed out a breath as Mercedes tugged him by the elbow with a giggle, the rest of the girls surrounding them as they walked around the bleachers they’d been sitting at. “I don’t understand where we’re going!” he laughed a little.

Rachel beamed and squeezed his forearm. “It’s a surprise!” she said, for the third time, walking backwards in front of him as she brushed his hair off to a side and fixed the collar of his shirt. Brittany, who also seemed to know what was going on, giggled and undid the first two buttons of his shirt, making him gasp a little.

“Brittany!” he hissed, blushing and trying to button them up again, but Quinn stepped in out of nowhere and batted his hand away, smirking up at him.

“Let it be,” she told him, her voice still raspy, still intimidating, and Kurt blinked up at her. She grinned, patting his cheek. “You’re just gonna love this.”

From what he could see around the three girls in front of him, Mercedes still pushing at his back, there were three cars parked over to a side of the road, and a group of boys. He caught the glimpse of a wheelchair and frowned, confused. “What’s--?”

Quinn sauntered away from their group and towards the guys. “Hey, Anderson!” she shouted over the wind that had picked up. “We have a surprise for you.”

Then Rachel and Brittany cleared his path and Mercedes pushed him forward, causing Kurt to stumble a little on the grass, and barely had time to gather himself, breathing out a ‘what’ again before his eyes had settled on somebody suddenly standing in front of him.

Blaine’s eyes widened.

Kurt’s jaw dropped.

“Kurt?”

“Blaine!”

“Oh my god!” Blaine cried out, half-laughing as his face lit up, and Kurt let out a surprised noise as well, feeling all of a sudden breathless and giddy. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going back to New York! I can’t believe—“

“Anderson?” another boy’s voice broke out from behind him, clearing his throat, and Kurt couldn’t even look away to see who had spoken because Blaine was here and then suddenly Blaine had frozen, visibly stiffened, and relaxed his shoulders back to slump a little, cocking his hip to a side.

Blaine was wearing a leather jacket, Kurt noted absentmindedly, before the other boy was smirking at him. Not smiling, smirking. “Hey, babe,” he drawled out. “Didn’t have to crawl across the country for me, you know?”

Kurt froze as well. “What?”

“I mean, I know you dig me and everything,” Blaine kept speaking, as a guy behind him snickered, and he glanced around his friends, laughing along with them. “But you don’t have to take such drastic measures. You just had to ask, sweetheart.”

“Blaine, what…?” Kurt whispered again, shaking his head, face falling into confusion, then a little disappointment. “What’s going on? Why are you acting like this?” he asked, frowning.

Blaine laughed again, loud and unlike him, visibly mocking him as a mohawked boy reached over to bump his fist with his. “What d’you mean what’s going on?” he returned, not really looking at Kurt in the eye as he spoke, and ran a hand through his hair, which was slickened back.

Kurt remembered curls; free and wild and falling rather adorably over his forehead. Curls he’d brushed back and snuck kisses to the skin underneath at the nape of his neck.

“This is me, babe,” Blaine continued speaking. “Missed me?”

A whoosh of breath left his lips, and Kurt shook his head, feeling his throat tighten as humiliation burned deep inside his chest, bubbling its way up to the surface, and he swallowed, tilting his chin up despite the stinging in his eyes. “Miss you?” he breathed out, voice stony, cold. “I don’t even know you.”

Glaring at Blaine hard—at the hazel eyes that had haunted his dreams ever since they’d parted with a kiss at the beach—he pursed his lips and turned away, brushing past Quinn, who was looking smug about something, and around the cars parked there, quickening his pace as he felt his eyes glaze over. He couldn’t cry. Not in front of him.

And he didn’t.