For some people, the din of bagpipes, a mass of boys wandering around in blazers, and a chanting crowd assembled in a chapel might have seemed like a strange, even a worrying occurrence. For the students of Dalton Academy, it simply meant one thing: it was time to go back to school.

After near three months of freedom – or at least, freedom from the tirade of uniform and dormitory inspections – it was time to knuckle under, put your head down, and work once again. Most boys dreaded the day the summer ended. They never wanted to say goodbye to debate camps at the country’s top colleges, or jetting around the world, or, if your parents were slightly more laid-back, lazing around by the pool drinking lemonade and hitting a tennis ball or two, if it pleased you.

Blaine Anderson was not one of those boys.

He gladly took up his father’s offers and moved from one city to the next, attending summer school and camps for near everything under the sun, but not because he was concerned about his acceptance to college – he hadn’t gotten anything less than an A grade on anything since seventh grade, he had more extra-circulars than he knew what to do with, and of course there was the small fact that his father had finished top of his class at Dartmouth and that several of his friends from his school days were top professors there. He had practically already been accepted, but his father certainly hadn’t been given Blaine a break because of it.

It wasn’t that Blaine loved school so very, very much. He just loved it so very, very, very much more than home.

‘Blaine? Blaine? Blaine, are you listening to me? Blaine!’

Blaine jumped, and one hand shot up to his gelled down curls in instinctual defence. He tore his gaze from the view over his father’s shoulder back to his face and smiled, half forcedly and half apologetically, to show that he was listening.

Once he had gotten his son’s attention, Mr Anderson pursed his lips and turned back to Mr Nolan, the headmaster. ‘Brain’s gone soft over the summer,’ said Mr Anderson.

For a second, Blaine felt like arguing back. He knew for a fact he’d barely had a moment to spare for relaxation all summer – and that even if he had, he’d only been at home for a two weeks out of the ten, so how would his dad even know? But he knew his dad would throttle him later if he caused a scene in front of the headmaster, so he shoved his hands deep into his blazer pockets and grimaced at Mr Nolan as his father continued.

‘We’re going to be working hard this year, though, huh, Blaine?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have you decided what colleges you’ll be applying to?’ asked Mr Nolan.

Blaine opened his mouth to speak, but Mr Anderson jumped in before he could say anything. ‘He’ll be going to Dartmouth, like I did.’

‘Ah! A Dartmouth man!’ exclaimed Mr Nolan as he nodded approvingly. ‘Good show, good show. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we have a new student I need to go and greet.’ And with a shake of Blaine’s father’s hand and a curt nod at Blaine himself, Mr Nolan turned around and walked over to the group of people standing behind Mr Anderson.

Blaine folded his arms across his chest subconsciously as he watched Mr Nolan approach the father and son standing off to the side. The older man was wearing an old chambray shirt and a navy cap, and stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the suit-clad fathers and pearl-wearing mothers that littered the front lawn of the school. As Mr Nolan marched up to them, the dad stepped aside so Mr Nolan could talk to his son, who had been lurking behind him.

When the new boy stepped into Blaine’s line of vision, he couldn’t help but stare. He was beautiful - beautiful in the exact way Blaine told himself he shouldn’t find boys. He looked scared and haughty at the same time, his eyebrows raised partly in clearly fake self-importance and partly in alarm, not meeting Mr Nolan’s gaze but glancing around at all the people staring at the unfamiliar boy in the over-familiar uniform. He plastered a smile across his elfin face, almost like a reflex, as Mr Nolan started laughing at a joke he himself had made, but Blaine could see from where he stood thirty feet away that it didn’t reach his eyes. And this boy had the most beautiful eyes Blaine had ever seen, like the the colour of a wave as it crests over you and you can look up and see the sky through it, the millisecond before it crashes down and knocks you over, leaving you scrambling for air while you try to get your feet back underneath you. They were framed, top and bottom, by long golden lashes that caught the sunlight as the boy blinked rapidly, like he did every time he accidentally caught the eye of someone milling about on the lawn, continuing his furtive glancing around.

Look at me, Blaine thought, before his father cleared his throat and he dragged his gaze away from the new boy. Blaine smiled blandly and said, ‘Yes, Father?’

‘Someone you know?’ Mr Anderson asked, glancing pointedly at the boy Blaine had just been admiring - no, observing. Blaine had only been observing. It had been a long time since Dalton had had a new student in his grade. He was only about curious what that must feel like, and observing the reactions of the new boy, what was reflected in those big blue eyes of his, was the only way he could do that.

Blaine shook his head. ‘No. No, that’s the new student Mr Nolan had to say hello to.’

Mr Anderson nodded, simply to have something to do in response, and pressed his lips together into what was supposed to be a smile but did not even come near to curving up at the corners of his mouth. He watched his son as he glanced momentarily back over to the new boy, who was now talking to his own father, and then looked down at his black school shoes, a slight pink tinge rising on his cheeks.

Around them, parents were starting to hug their boys goodbye and head back to their cars. Both Blaine and his father watched the new boy say goodbye to his father. The older man wrapped his son in a hug, and the boy returned the hug as fully as he could in his restricting blazer. He rested his head dejectedly on his father’s shoulder, his mouth pulled anxiously to one side. His father muttered something, and the boy smiled fondly and nodded into his father’s shoulder, closing his eyes for a brief second, just long enough for Blaine to get his breath taken away by the expression of utter and complete calm and ease on his face, before pulling away. He smiled at his father, and his father said something that even from this distance Blaine and his father could tell was ‘I love you. Very much.’ Blaine smiled wistfully, and then looked back down at his feet when the father saw him watching and looked at him quizzically. Mr Anderson, however, saw this as nothing but an opportunity for him to make his annual quick getaway.

‘Well,’ Mr Anderson started, but faltered when Blaine looked up expectantly straight away, a quicker and more expressive response than what he was used to getting from his son. He cleared his throat again. ‘Er... well, speaking of your friends...’ he trailed off, waiting for his son to get the gist of what he was trying to say.

‘Were we?’ Blaine replied flatly, purposely not steering the conversation in the direction his father wanted.

Blaine’s father paused. ‘Speaking of people you know,’ he said slowly and pointedly, ‘I think it’s about time you go and find your friends so I can head off.’

Blaine blinked in surprise, momentarily shocked at how blunt his father was being about wanting to leave, before he should his head. Like he should have expected anything else.

‘Okay, then,’ he said. He caught his father’s gaze in a challenging stare before he continued. ‘Tell Mom I love her.’

Mr Anderson shrivelled under his son’s intense expression, but didn’t break eye contact until Blaine raised one eyebrow, when Mr Anderson could bear to look at Blaine no longer.

He clapped Blaine on the shoulder and laughed softly under his breath in an attempt to defuse some of the tension, not daring to look up at Blaine again while he did so. ‘Work hard, son,’ he said to his shoes. When Blaine stayed silent, he continued. ‘Have a good year, alright?’

‘I will.’ Blaine was looking down at his right shoulder, where his father’s hand was still resting, and continued to bore his eyes into it until Mr Anderson gave it a quick squeeze and let go. Finally, he turned around to walk back to the his car and left his son standing alone on the grass.

Blaine did not watch his father’s retreating figure walk away from him. Instead, he simply picked up the two small suitcases that were lying on the ground on either side of him, turned on his heel, and joined the growing stream of boys that was flooding into the tall building that had been looming over them all morning.

It was this four-storey building of grey stone, the first building that greeted you when you arrived on the Dalton Academy campus, that housed the school hall, the dining hall, the dormitories, and the common room for each grade. If you walked through the arched tunnel way to get behind this building, you would find the immaculate quadrangle and the three equally-imposing buildings full of classrooms that framed it.

But those buildings were for another day. At the moment, Blaine was only concerned with getting to his dorm room so he could take his blazer off for a little while and perhaps unpack a bit before lunch. According to the letter Dalton had sent to his parents house exactly a month before school went back - the letter that now resided in his back pocket - he was in room 4F, which he knew was on the top floor of the dorm building, where all of the Senior dormitories were, along with their common room. Beneath where his room assignment had been printed on the letter, it should have said his roommate, but this year it simply read ‘Roommate: to be confirmed.’ He could only hope this meant he was getting a room to himself; he’d need it this year, if he was going to keep his grades up like his father wanted.

Blaine pushed his way through the group of lost-looking ninth graders that had congregated at the bottom of the staircase, and took the stairs two at a time until he got to the top. The hallway there was almost completely packed, the doors to all of the rooms open as boys raced around, looking for friends they hadn’t spotted yet, shouting the stories of their summers at the top of the lungs to try and be heard over everyone else - because obviously their story of how they had given their poor, unsuspecting aunt such as fright she fell into the pool at a family barbeque was much more entertaining than that one going around about how Robert Black had managed to get the TA at his debate camp to come back to his dorm room one night, because there was no way that was true. Blaine smiled at the few people who were hanging out of their doorways, but hadn’t seen any of his friends (or caught a glimpse of this new boy again) by the time he got to his room.

The Dalton dorm rooms, unlike the outside of the school buildings and any other places that important visitors would see, were plain and simply decorated. They were all twin rooms, with two beds, two narrow cupboards, two small desks, and two uncomfortable desk chairs. They all had large windows, though, and the one in this room looked out over the front lawn of school, were Blaine had been standing just a minute ago, and past the gates and tall slate wall that separated Dalton from the rest of world. You could see the endless fields and meadows, and the valleys that were perennially misty, even at the beginning of the school year.

Blaine piled his two cases on top of one another on one of the beds and stood in front of the window. In the distance, he thought he could see his fathers car driving along one of the curving narrow roads that lead away from the school. He watched as it disappeared over the crest of a hill, then unhooked the latch on the window pane and pushed the window open to let the warm breeze into the stuffy room. He was shrugging his blazer off when someone behind him cleared their throat and declared in a deep voice, ‘Mr Anderson! Not breaking uniform rules already, are we?’

Blaine jumped and turned around, hurriedly tugging his navy blue blazer back into his shoulders to see - two boys, one a lanky brunette, the other an athletic blonde with his almost white hair flopping in his face, leaning against either side of his doorway. Nick and Jeff. Nick was grinning smugly and Jeff had a hand slapped over his mouth to keep from laughing.

Blaine rolled his eyes, quickly shucked his blazer off, screwed it into a ball, and threw at Nick, who was known for his ability to impersonate any teacher on demand. Nick, with lightening quick reflexes, caught it, and then strode into the room and folded it over the back of one of the wooden desk chairs. ‘Wouldn’t want that getting crumpled, now, would we?’ he said condescendingly.

Blaine ignored him and instead turned to Jeff, who was still in the door, as Nick flopped down on Blaine’s bed. ‘How was your summer, Slick?’ Blaine asked Jeff teasingly, raising his eyebrows.

Jeff smirked, and then sighed, with a faraway, reminiscent look in his eyes, like he was reliving fond memories. He stared absent-mindedly out the window for a minute, long enough for Blaine and Nick to share a look and for Blaine to whip the letter out of his back pocket and make to whack Jeff across the top of the head with it. Jeff dodged out of the way just in time, and glared at Blaine as he sat down on the other bed, leaving Blaine to take a seat in his desk chair.

‘Why, did you hear anything about it?’ Jeff asked curiously, just a little bit of a hopeful edge coming through in his voice.

Nick snorted derisively, and Blaine shook his head as he said, ‘Not. A. Thing.’

Jeff looked put out, and flopped backwards heavily, bouncing slightly as the springs in the cheap mattress creaked. ‘Yeah, well, at least I didn’t do summer school like someone I know but will not mention by name, Blaine.’

Nick snorted again, but Blaine shrugged and raised his hands dismissively. ‘What could I do? My father wanted me to get ahead. Math is important if I want to go to business school.’

Nick and Jeff looked at each other, and then looked back at Blaine.

‘But Blaine...’ Jeff began.

‘You don’t want to go business school,’ Nick finished.

Blaine grimaced. ‘If I want to get in to-’

Nick and Jeff raised their eyebrows simultaneously. ‘That isn’t any more accurate,’ said Nick.

‘Okay, okay! You know what I mean. If I have to get into business school in order to avoid being killed by my father,’ Blaine conceded before he leaned back in his chair and stared dejectedly at the wall opposite him.

‘There we go,’ muttered Nick quietly.

‘Oh, please, like you’re any different,’ Blaine snapped testily. ‘What’d you do this summer, again?’

Nick sighed. ‘Okay, so I don’t like it any more than you do.’

Blaine made an annoyed face at the wall, and a moment later Jeff made an excited noise and lifted a hand from the bed to point at the door. Crowded around the entrance to Blaine’s dorm room were three boys - David, Wes, and Thad.

Nick cheered and jumped up to greet them, thumping Wes and David on the shoulder as they came into the room, and accepting Thad’s hand for a shake with a tight smile. Wes swatted Blaine over the head with the rolled up newspaper he was holding and David ruffled his hair, before staring down at his hand in disgust at the gel he got on it. ‘Really? Really?’ he mouthed in exaggerated disbelief, and Blaine couldn’t help shouting with laughter as David wiped it gingerly on his school pants.

Jeff looked up at Wes and David as they stood side-by-side next to the bed he was still lying on. ‘I am worried,’ Jeff announced as Wes and David shared a conspiring look, the second before they turned around and sat down on top of him, like he wasn’t even there.

‘Guys...’ Jeff pleaded. ‘Okay, it’s very funny, but-’

‘Yes, quite,’ David said, putting on a ridiculous posh accent, as Wes unfurled his newspaper and started to read it, throwing one of his legs over the other like he was waiting for a bus.

Nick snickered as he returned sat back down on Blaine’s bed, so Jeff appealed to Thad, who was still standing awkwardly just inside the door. ‘Thad? Thad, could you get your butt in here and get these two idiots off me, please?’ Jeff asked, sounding slightly out of breath.

Thad took at step toward them, but leaned back on one of Blaine’s bed posts when he was met with Wes and David’s challenging stares. Instead of helping Jeff, he changed the subject. ‘Anyone do anything interesting over the summer?’ He paused for half a second, not long enough for anyone to say anything, before answering his own question. ‘Because I went to quite an interesting micro-economics course - it was at Yale, you know, Yale - and it was really very fascinating, because-’

‘Um, excuse me?’ came a soft, lyrical voice from the doorway, accompanied by a polite knock on the open door.

Glad to not have to listen to Thad as he began was almost certainly going to turn into a very long monologue about micro-economics and, you know, Yale, Blaine pulled himself out of his chair and turned to see who was at the door, before freezing in surprise.

‘Hi,’ said the new boy from the lawn earlier that day, his smile slipping from polite to uneasy in the few seconds too long it took Blaine to respond in a way other than his mouth gaping.

Blaine cleared his throat. ‘Um. Hi. Yeah, hi! Sorry, sorry I-’ Blaine rambled.

The new boy interrupted him, but Blaine was glad to be put out of his misery. ‘I think I’m in this room too,’ he said, peering around Blaine to look at the other five people in the room, who Blaine had completely forgotten about.

Blaine blinked at him, and then tried to suppress what what would have been a very inappropriate grin while he said, ‘Oh, sure, of course, come in.’

The new boy shuffled into the room, taking care not to bang his suitcase into Blaine’s shins as he squeezed past him, and then paused, taking in the bed on one side of the room that had two suitcases and one boy on it and the bed on the other side of the room that had three boys all piled on top of each other on it. He turned back to Blaine and said, ‘Um, which...?’

Blaine sighed. ‘Sorry about them. Jeff, would you get up, already?’

Jeff, who was slowly but surely going into oxygen deficit, made a weak noise of protest.

Wes continued to read his newspaper, but David looked from Blaine to the new boy, then elbowed Wes to stand up. Once Jeff had been freed, Nick crossed the room to pull Jeff up, and they all congregated on Blaine’s side of the room so the new boy could get to his bed.

Blaine made faces at the other five until they were all paying attention, and then indicated that they should leave the room with several sharp jerks of his head. He was met with mostly confused looks and raised eyebrows, but David elbowed Wes again and said loudly, ‘I think we’d better all be off, huh guys? Unpack and all that?’

Wes made a violent noise of agreement and prodded a very confused Jeff and Nick in the back until they started moving towards the door. ‘Study group, tonight at eight?’ he suggested as they piled out the door, looking pointedly at Blaine.

‘Sure,’ Blaine called. ‘Sounds good. Trig?’

‘Yeah, and Latin!’ replied Nick.

‘And English! Oh, and maybe some Chem? And History,’ said Jeff.

‘I’m happy to help with history,’ said Thad self-importantly. ‘And I can tell you all about micro-economics and, you know, Yale.’

Wes groaned quietly, and banged his head against the door frame before closing the door behind them, and then the room was empty but for the two boys assigned to it.

The new boy, after watching incredulously while the noisy group left, placed his suitcase on his bed and sat down next to it, looking up at Blaine, who was standing in front of his own. ‘Sorry about them,’ said Blaine, doing his best to sound breezy. He took one long stride across the room and stuck out his hand for the other boy to shake. ‘Blaine Anderson.’

The boy looked at his hand for a second, before looking back up at Blaine’s friendly face, smiling sweetly and reaching up to shake it. ‘I’m Kurt Hummel.’