Fic: Suicide Boys, Chapter 1
Title: Suicide Boys, A Murderverse Story
Author: FearfulLT
Rating: PG-13 but will go up.
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Kurt/Puck, Blaine, and appearances from New Directions.
Genre: Drama
Warning: AU, adult themes, potential creepiness, mentions of death and bullying.
Spoilers: AU from season 1.
Disclaimer: I don't own it and I'm not making any money from it, this is pure entertainment.
Author Notes: This is an AU in which Dalton doesn't exist. Event timelines may have been altered. This story is set after S(LAP) but before Two Freaks. I also feel like I should warn for the presence of Blaine, who is pre-canon and therefore not the exact same boy we're used to watching.
Summary: Blaine thought that the only thing he'd have to deal with at his new school would be deciding whether or not to come out. He never counted on Kurt Hummel, or all of the things that happened next.
Word Count: 2768
-
The transfer was finalised just after the last exams of the year, which gave him the entire summer to get used to the idea of a new school. Blaine Anderson was quietly terrified. The cast on his right arm came off two weeks into the holidays, the bruises long since faded and the splits in his lip and eyebrow healed into thin pink scars. He still limped a little, but apparently that’s what a torn ligament will do to you. It would heal, it was just taking its sweet time to do so.
In a hidden, rational part of his mind he knew he shouldn’t be scared. He hadn’t quite made the requirements for a scholarship at Dalton Academy, but McKinley high in Lima was closer to home and had maintained a fairly good reputation even after the morbid tragedy of last year.
The student body had really pulled together, he’d heard the principal’s speech to his mother, sitting awkwardly in the man’s office an hour after school had ended for the day. There hadn’t been a single instance of bullying in months. The glee club had even held a concert to raise funds for the memorial garden now featured outside the main entrance.
“Hear that, honey,” his mother had smiled at him, looking heartbreakingly hopeful, “there’s a glee club. You could start singing again.”
“I could,” Blaine had agreed, largely just to keep from making her feel bad. “Maybe.”
It would be a long bus ride each morning to a school full of hundreds of new faces. Hundreds of people who might judge him if he was too quick to out himself, or if they knew what had happened to make him transfer. He wouldn’t be telling anyone about the couple of weeks taken off school, or about how the kids who’d beaten him up had been arrested only to be released later when the other victim - a boy he’d thought was his friend - had refused to press charges or corroborate Blaine’s story.
As far as the law was concerned he’d done all of it to himself.
Which really didn’t help his confidence when faced with the prospect of a new school full of potential new threats. He wasn’t afraid to admit that he spent most of the summer fretting, cooped up in his bedroom and refusing to go out with his old friends in case they ran into one of the boys who’d beaten him. In fact, by the time the school year actually started he’d practically convinced himself that leaving the house was just a disaster waiting to happen.
“I don’t feel well,” he tried the old excuse first thing in the morning when his mother came to wake him up. “I think I’m sick.”
His mother put the back of her hand against his forehead and gave him a doubtful look. “Come on,” she said, ignoring his claim to illness, “I’ve made pancakes for breakfast.”
“Do I have to go?” Blaine asked, reluctantly sitting up in bed. “You could have agreed to home-school me.”
“Honey, everything will be fine.” His mother smiled at him. “This will be good for you. You’ll get out of the house, make some new friends...”
“What if I don’t want to get out of the house and make new friends?”
“Then you’re out of luck, honey. You’re going to school today.” She sighed. “Just try, sweetie? Just take it all one day at a time and soon enough you’ll see that it’s not that bad. McKinley sounds like a decent school, won’t you at least give it a chance?”
He really wanted to say no, but she was giving him that same hopeful smile again. The one that reminded him of how much his parents had already gone through on his account and made him feel like a jerk for even thinking about disappointing them again. Blaine sighed. So much for staying home.
Half an hour later he was sitting in the car, his pancake breakfast feeling like a lead weight in his stomach. He was dressed as casually as he knew how, determined not to draw too much attention to himself. Jeans, t-shirt, hoodie, and sneakers that were just the right amount of scuffed to not look brand new. He stared blankly out the window on the drive in, trying not to think about all of the awful things that were bound to happen. But the more determined he was not to think the worst the more nasty scenarios kept just popping into his head.
By the time they actually arrived at McKinley he was just about ready to hurl. He honestly had no idea how he managed to kiss his mother goodbye and make it all the way to administration. It was like one minute he was sitting in the car and the next he was standing at the reception desk with a crisp new schedule in his hand. Blaine stammered a thank you to the receptionist and left to find his locker, belatedly wishing he’d thought to ask for some kind of a map too.
It took him far too long to find his locker, long enough that the bell rang while he was still trying to open it.
Students scattered, disappearing from the hall in a stampede that left him alone in just moments. Late on his first day. On the first day of school.
“Great,” Blaine muttered to himself, finally managing to get the damn thing open. “What a great way to start the new year. Being late.”
“It’s actually a long held tradition,” a voice suddenly piped up from beside him. Startled, Blaine slammed his locker shut to reveal the boy standing at an open locker several feet down the hall. “For certain people to be late on the first day of any new semester. Of course, that was back when early morning dumpster tosses were still in fashion.”
Blaine wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he just stood there watching the other boy select a thin book covered in pink protective cover. The boy shut his locker and turned to face Blaine, a smile on his very pink, very plush lips.
“Kurt Hummel,” he introduced himself as if Blaine should already know who he was. “And you must be new.”
“Blaine Anderson. I just transferred in,” he said. And then added, a little sheepishly; “I have no idea where I’m supposed to be right now.”
Kurt walked over to him in a few quick steps, hand out and fingers flicking, gesturing to his schedule. “Let me see your timetable?” He scanned it quickly when Blaine handed it over, then moved to stand beside him and point to his first class listed. “You have English with Mr. Hooper which, coincidentally, is right up the hall over there. I’ll walk you, it’s on my way.”
“Thanks,” Blaine said, taking the schedule back. “I appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it.” Kurt smiled at him. “This is purely self-centred. I now have an excuse for my own tardiness.”
“Still, it was nice of you. I don’t know many kids who’d help the new kid like this.”
“Then you don’t know the right people.” Kurt stopped him in front of a classroom door. “This is you,” he said, and smiled again. “Welcome to McKinley, Blaine Anderson.”
Blaine couldn’t help but smile back, all of his horrific worst-case-scenarios temporarily pushed from his mind. “Thanks for the welcome, Kurt Hummel.”
He watched Kurt walk down the hall for a moment, taking note of the way the other boy moved. Like he was on a catwalk, like he owned the place. A boy like that - a boy who was pinging Blaine’s gaydar as an 11 out of 10 - walking with that kind of confidence was a good sign. A sign that just maybe McKinley wouldn’t be such a bad place after all.
Blaine slipped into Mr. Hooper’s English class with an apology for his lateness and found himself assigned a seat up the front for his trouble. He didn’t mind, English had always been one of his better subjects. He found himself paying less attention to the class than to wondering about Kurt. He wondered if the confidence was just a front or if he really did have a right to walk down the halls of McKinley High like he owned the place.
The rest of his day was fairly uneventful, full of introductions and being forced to stand up in front of half of his classes and say ‘a few words’ about himself. Lunch was awkward, more so than he would have liked. He wound up sitting in the spare seat at a table full of people who acted as if he wasn’t even there, which was less than gratifying. His afternoon classes were much the same, until he wound up in French and finally saw a familiar face.
Kurt waved to him from the back of the classroom and Blaine immediately zeroed in on the empty seat next to him.
“So I see you’ve made it to the end of the day without hurting yourself,” Kurt joked, tapping a sparkly blue pen against his desk.
“Barely,” Blaine confessed. “This is the first time I’ve had to adjust to a new school since junior high.”
“I hear it gets easier. I wouldn’t know, I’ve been at school with the same people since elementary. You can’t imagine how depressing that once was.”
“It’s not now?”
“Well now I’m a Cheerio and in the glee club,” Kurt replied, and it took Blaine a moment to recall that the cheerleaders here were called ‘Cheerios’. “Life is generally much less depressing than it was this time last year.”
“You’re in the glee club?” Blaine asked. He remembered his mother’s hopeful smile and how good it used to feel when he was singing up on a stage with an audience watching him. Back before he came out and everything went to hell. “I used to sing -“ he started, but was cut off by the appearance of their teacher.
“Alright boys and girls, who’s ready to conjugate?”
Blaine snapped his mouth shut and paid attention to the lesson, taking notes quietly until Kurt’s pen poked him in the side. “You used to sing...?” Kurt prompted softly.
“At my old school,” Blaine replied in a murmur, deciding not to get into the details. Talking about the solos he used to get and the talent shows he used to win seemed too much like bragging. He didn’t want Kurt to think he was conceited. And part of him was also a little afraid to bring it up. He wasn’t sure he was brave enough.
“Glee club has a practice after school today,” Kurt told him. “One of our members moved over the summer so we’re a person short this year. You should come along and see if you like it. I know everyone would be glad to have you.”
“You only want me for my voice,” Blaine joked. Then fell silent, shocked at how flirty that had sounded. He hadn’t intended to say that. It had just sort of come out and now he didn’t know how to take it back. He didn’t want to come out here, not yet, not on his first day! And definitely not until he knew for sure how this school treated people like him.
Kurt didn’t seem to notice his uncomfortable silence. “That’s me,” he joked back, “I always have an ulterior motive.”
-
Blaine followed Kurt to glee practice when class ended, bemused by the way the rest of the students seemed to part around him. Kurt cut through the crowd like a knife, head held high, clusters of students moving out of the way and people stepping to the side to let him pass. It was a shock for him to see the way the other students looked at Kurt. He recognised the same sort of awed envy-cum-admiration that cool or popular kids always seemed to have directed at them. To see people looking at someone like Kurt in that way was... completely foreign.
Blaine didn’t know how to bring it up, or even if he should, so he just followed in Kurt’s wake like some kind of puppy until finally they came to the choir room and the door shut on the rest of the world.
There were a few people already in the room, a couple of girls sitting together, a handful of boys in letterman jackets, and a pianist that sat at the baby grand and seemed to be ignoring everything and everyone in the room. One of the jackets broke away from the small cluster, came up to Kurt, and casually slung an arm around the other boy’s shoulders.
“Who’s the newbie?”
“This is Blaine,” Kurt introduced him, raising a hand to touch the jacket’s hand. “And this is Noah.”
“Puck,” Noah corrected. “Nobody calls me Noah without losing teeth.”
Blaine took one look at Puck’s build and the obvious bad-boy vibe he was cultivating and decided not to draw attention to the obvious double standard. He was intimidated, even a little bit afraid. “Um, hey. Nice to meet you,” he offered, faking bravado and trying not to recall any similarities between Puck and the bullies from his last school.
“Blaine is thinking about joining glee,” Kurt said, voice pitched so that he was informing the room at large.
“That’s excellent,” a vibrant, female voice sounded behind him, and Blaine turned just in time to see a small brunette enter the room. “As you all know we here in New Directions have always struggled to find a consistent balance between our male and female voices, so on behalf of the whole choir let me be the first to welcome you to our team.”
“Rachel Berry,” Kurt stated, giving Blaine a dry look, “known for incurable verbal diarrhoea.”
“And for my amazing talent,” Rachel added, holding out a hand for Blaine to shake. Her grip was strong. He couldn’t help but think it must be to match her personality.
“We’re going to sit down now, Rachel,” Kurt told her, sweeping away and steering Puck towards the chairs that lined the room. “Blaine, don’t be intimidated and come along.”
Blaine smiled at Rachel in apology and followed Kurt, secretly grateful to be given an out and not immediately expected to introduce himself. He took the spare seat on Kurt’s left, noticing as he sat that the other two boys were now casually holding hands. Boyfriend, Blaine thought, slightly disappointed. Kurt was obviously off market.
He didn’t let the disappointment linger for too long, instead thinking about the positive implications of what he’d seen so far. Kurt was flamboyant in the most stereotypical of ways and from what Blaine had seen he seemed to be right at the top of the food chain. Puck, on the other hand, was clearly not a stereotype and had that same kind of tough-guy look that Blaine would normally associate with bullies. The mix of students in the glee club seemed promising too. A quick look around and he could see students from what looked like every conceivable social group in the school. None of them batting an eyelash at the displays of public affection.
A few more students trickled in, followed by a smiling man in a sweater vest, and Blaine started to feel a bit odd.
“Welcome back gleeks!” the man in the sweater vest announced, clapping his hands together. “It’s good to see everyone back again after the summer holidays, and it’s especially nice to see we seem to have a few new faces this year.”
Kurt leaned over to comment into Blaine’s ear; “Mr. Schuester, the most optimistic man you’ll ever meet.”
“Now over the holidays I’ve had a lot of time to think,” Mr. Schuester continued, “and what have I been thinking about? New York. This year nationals are going to be held in, that’s right, New York. And this year we’re going to make it.”
“I see what you mean,” Blaine murmured back, though he couldn’t help but feel like maybe things really would be different in this school. He could see how Mr. Schuester’s optimism was infectious, trickling through the club and creating an atmosphere full of promise and possibility. The whole club just seemed so comfortable with each other, he suddenly felt like introducing himself and getting involved wouldn’t be such a big task after all.
Not bad for a first day, he couldn’t help but think to himself. And maybe, he glanced at Kurt, he may have even made a friend.
Author: FearfulLT
Rating: PG-13 but will go up.
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Kurt/Puck, Blaine, and appearances from New Directions.
Genre: Drama
Warning: AU, adult themes, potential creepiness, mentions of death and bullying.
Spoilers: AU from season 1.
Disclaimer: I don't own it and I'm not making any money from it, this is pure entertainment.
Author Notes: This is an AU in which Dalton doesn't exist. Event timelines may have been altered. This story is set after S(LAP) but before Two Freaks. I also feel like I should warn for the presence of Blaine, who is pre-canon and therefore not the exact same boy we're used to watching.
Summary: Blaine thought that the only thing he'd have to deal with at his new school would be deciding whether or not to come out. He never counted on Kurt Hummel, or all of the things that happened next.
Word Count: 2768
-
The transfer was finalised just after the last exams of the year, which gave him the entire summer to get used to the idea of a new school. Blaine Anderson was quietly terrified. The cast on his right arm came off two weeks into the holidays, the bruises long since faded and the splits in his lip and eyebrow healed into thin pink scars. He still limped a little, but apparently that’s what a torn ligament will do to you. It would heal, it was just taking its sweet time to do so.
In a hidden, rational part of his mind he knew he shouldn’t be scared. He hadn’t quite made the requirements for a scholarship at Dalton Academy, but McKinley high in Lima was closer to home and had maintained a fairly good reputation even after the morbid tragedy of last year.
The student body had really pulled together, he’d heard the principal’s speech to his mother, sitting awkwardly in the man’s office an hour after school had ended for the day. There hadn’t been a single instance of bullying in months. The glee club had even held a concert to raise funds for the memorial garden now featured outside the main entrance.
“Hear that, honey,” his mother had smiled at him, looking heartbreakingly hopeful, “there’s a glee club. You could start singing again.”
“I could,” Blaine had agreed, largely just to keep from making her feel bad. “Maybe.”
It would be a long bus ride each morning to a school full of hundreds of new faces. Hundreds of people who might judge him if he was too quick to out himself, or if they knew what had happened to make him transfer. He wouldn’t be telling anyone about the couple of weeks taken off school, or about how the kids who’d beaten him up had been arrested only to be released later when the other victim - a boy he’d thought was his friend - had refused to press charges or corroborate Blaine’s story.
As far as the law was concerned he’d done all of it to himself.
Which really didn’t help his confidence when faced with the prospect of a new school full of potential new threats. He wasn’t afraid to admit that he spent most of the summer fretting, cooped up in his bedroom and refusing to go out with his old friends in case they ran into one of the boys who’d beaten him. In fact, by the time the school year actually started he’d practically convinced himself that leaving the house was just a disaster waiting to happen.
“I don’t feel well,” he tried the old excuse first thing in the morning when his mother came to wake him up. “I think I’m sick.”
His mother put the back of her hand against his forehead and gave him a doubtful look. “Come on,” she said, ignoring his claim to illness, “I’ve made pancakes for breakfast.”
“Do I have to go?” Blaine asked, reluctantly sitting up in bed. “You could have agreed to home-school me.”
“Honey, everything will be fine.” His mother smiled at him. “This will be good for you. You’ll get out of the house, make some new friends...”
“What if I don’t want to get out of the house and make new friends?”
“Then you’re out of luck, honey. You’re going to school today.” She sighed. “Just try, sweetie? Just take it all one day at a time and soon enough you’ll see that it’s not that bad. McKinley sounds like a decent school, won’t you at least give it a chance?”
He really wanted to say no, but she was giving him that same hopeful smile again. The one that reminded him of how much his parents had already gone through on his account and made him feel like a jerk for even thinking about disappointing them again. Blaine sighed. So much for staying home.
Half an hour later he was sitting in the car, his pancake breakfast feeling like a lead weight in his stomach. He was dressed as casually as he knew how, determined not to draw too much attention to himself. Jeans, t-shirt, hoodie, and sneakers that were just the right amount of scuffed to not look brand new. He stared blankly out the window on the drive in, trying not to think about all of the awful things that were bound to happen. But the more determined he was not to think the worst the more nasty scenarios kept just popping into his head.
By the time they actually arrived at McKinley he was just about ready to hurl. He honestly had no idea how he managed to kiss his mother goodbye and make it all the way to administration. It was like one minute he was sitting in the car and the next he was standing at the reception desk with a crisp new schedule in his hand. Blaine stammered a thank you to the receptionist and left to find his locker, belatedly wishing he’d thought to ask for some kind of a map too.
It took him far too long to find his locker, long enough that the bell rang while he was still trying to open it.
Students scattered, disappearing from the hall in a stampede that left him alone in just moments. Late on his first day. On the first day of school.
“Great,” Blaine muttered to himself, finally managing to get the damn thing open. “What a great way to start the new year. Being late.”
“It’s actually a long held tradition,” a voice suddenly piped up from beside him. Startled, Blaine slammed his locker shut to reveal the boy standing at an open locker several feet down the hall. “For certain people to be late on the first day of any new semester. Of course, that was back when early morning dumpster tosses were still in fashion.”
Blaine wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he just stood there watching the other boy select a thin book covered in pink protective cover. The boy shut his locker and turned to face Blaine, a smile on his very pink, very plush lips.
“Kurt Hummel,” he introduced himself as if Blaine should already know who he was. “And you must be new.”
“Blaine Anderson. I just transferred in,” he said. And then added, a little sheepishly; “I have no idea where I’m supposed to be right now.”
Kurt walked over to him in a few quick steps, hand out and fingers flicking, gesturing to his schedule. “Let me see your timetable?” He scanned it quickly when Blaine handed it over, then moved to stand beside him and point to his first class listed. “You have English with Mr. Hooper which, coincidentally, is right up the hall over there. I’ll walk you, it’s on my way.”
“Thanks,” Blaine said, taking the schedule back. “I appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it.” Kurt smiled at him. “This is purely self-centred. I now have an excuse for my own tardiness.”
“Still, it was nice of you. I don’t know many kids who’d help the new kid like this.”
“Then you don’t know the right people.” Kurt stopped him in front of a classroom door. “This is you,” he said, and smiled again. “Welcome to McKinley, Blaine Anderson.”
Blaine couldn’t help but smile back, all of his horrific worst-case-scenarios temporarily pushed from his mind. “Thanks for the welcome, Kurt Hummel.”
He watched Kurt walk down the hall for a moment, taking note of the way the other boy moved. Like he was on a catwalk, like he owned the place. A boy like that - a boy who was pinging Blaine’s gaydar as an 11 out of 10 - walking with that kind of confidence was a good sign. A sign that just maybe McKinley wouldn’t be such a bad place after all.
Blaine slipped into Mr. Hooper’s English class with an apology for his lateness and found himself assigned a seat up the front for his trouble. He didn’t mind, English had always been one of his better subjects. He found himself paying less attention to the class than to wondering about Kurt. He wondered if the confidence was just a front or if he really did have a right to walk down the halls of McKinley High like he owned the place.
The rest of his day was fairly uneventful, full of introductions and being forced to stand up in front of half of his classes and say ‘a few words’ about himself. Lunch was awkward, more so than he would have liked. He wound up sitting in the spare seat at a table full of people who acted as if he wasn’t even there, which was less than gratifying. His afternoon classes were much the same, until he wound up in French and finally saw a familiar face.
Kurt waved to him from the back of the classroom and Blaine immediately zeroed in on the empty seat next to him.
“So I see you’ve made it to the end of the day without hurting yourself,” Kurt joked, tapping a sparkly blue pen against his desk.
“Barely,” Blaine confessed. “This is the first time I’ve had to adjust to a new school since junior high.”
“I hear it gets easier. I wouldn’t know, I’ve been at school with the same people since elementary. You can’t imagine how depressing that once was.”
“It’s not now?”
“Well now I’m a Cheerio and in the glee club,” Kurt replied, and it took Blaine a moment to recall that the cheerleaders here were called ‘Cheerios’. “Life is generally much less depressing than it was this time last year.”
“You’re in the glee club?” Blaine asked. He remembered his mother’s hopeful smile and how good it used to feel when he was singing up on a stage with an audience watching him. Back before he came out and everything went to hell. “I used to sing -“ he started, but was cut off by the appearance of their teacher.
“Alright boys and girls, who’s ready to conjugate?”
Blaine snapped his mouth shut and paid attention to the lesson, taking notes quietly until Kurt’s pen poked him in the side. “You used to sing...?” Kurt prompted softly.
“At my old school,” Blaine replied in a murmur, deciding not to get into the details. Talking about the solos he used to get and the talent shows he used to win seemed too much like bragging. He didn’t want Kurt to think he was conceited. And part of him was also a little afraid to bring it up. He wasn’t sure he was brave enough.
“Glee club has a practice after school today,” Kurt told him. “One of our members moved over the summer so we’re a person short this year. You should come along and see if you like it. I know everyone would be glad to have you.”
“You only want me for my voice,” Blaine joked. Then fell silent, shocked at how flirty that had sounded. He hadn’t intended to say that. It had just sort of come out and now he didn’t know how to take it back. He didn’t want to come out here, not yet, not on his first day! And definitely not until he knew for sure how this school treated people like him.
Kurt didn’t seem to notice his uncomfortable silence. “That’s me,” he joked back, “I always have an ulterior motive.”
-
Blaine followed Kurt to glee practice when class ended, bemused by the way the rest of the students seemed to part around him. Kurt cut through the crowd like a knife, head held high, clusters of students moving out of the way and people stepping to the side to let him pass. It was a shock for him to see the way the other students looked at Kurt. He recognised the same sort of awed envy-cum-admiration that cool or popular kids always seemed to have directed at them. To see people looking at someone like Kurt in that way was... completely foreign.
Blaine didn’t know how to bring it up, or even if he should, so he just followed in Kurt’s wake like some kind of puppy until finally they came to the choir room and the door shut on the rest of the world.
There were a few people already in the room, a couple of girls sitting together, a handful of boys in letterman jackets, and a pianist that sat at the baby grand and seemed to be ignoring everything and everyone in the room. One of the jackets broke away from the small cluster, came up to Kurt, and casually slung an arm around the other boy’s shoulders.
“Who’s the newbie?”
“This is Blaine,” Kurt introduced him, raising a hand to touch the jacket’s hand. “And this is Noah.”
“Puck,” Noah corrected. “Nobody calls me Noah without losing teeth.”
Blaine took one look at Puck’s build and the obvious bad-boy vibe he was cultivating and decided not to draw attention to the obvious double standard. He was intimidated, even a little bit afraid. “Um, hey. Nice to meet you,” he offered, faking bravado and trying not to recall any similarities between Puck and the bullies from his last school.
“Blaine is thinking about joining glee,” Kurt said, voice pitched so that he was informing the room at large.
“That’s excellent,” a vibrant, female voice sounded behind him, and Blaine turned just in time to see a small brunette enter the room. “As you all know we here in New Directions have always struggled to find a consistent balance between our male and female voices, so on behalf of the whole choir let me be the first to welcome you to our team.”
“Rachel Berry,” Kurt stated, giving Blaine a dry look, “known for incurable verbal diarrhoea.”
“And for my amazing talent,” Rachel added, holding out a hand for Blaine to shake. Her grip was strong. He couldn’t help but think it must be to match her personality.
“We’re going to sit down now, Rachel,” Kurt told her, sweeping away and steering Puck towards the chairs that lined the room. “Blaine, don’t be intimidated and come along.”
Blaine smiled at Rachel in apology and followed Kurt, secretly grateful to be given an out and not immediately expected to introduce himself. He took the spare seat on Kurt’s left, noticing as he sat that the other two boys were now casually holding hands. Boyfriend, Blaine thought, slightly disappointed. Kurt was obviously off market.
He didn’t let the disappointment linger for too long, instead thinking about the positive implications of what he’d seen so far. Kurt was flamboyant in the most stereotypical of ways and from what Blaine had seen he seemed to be right at the top of the food chain. Puck, on the other hand, was clearly not a stereotype and had that same kind of tough-guy look that Blaine would normally associate with bullies. The mix of students in the glee club seemed promising too. A quick look around and he could see students from what looked like every conceivable social group in the school. None of them batting an eyelash at the displays of public affection.
A few more students trickled in, followed by a smiling man in a sweater vest, and Blaine started to feel a bit odd.
“Welcome back gleeks!” the man in the sweater vest announced, clapping his hands together. “It’s good to see everyone back again after the summer holidays, and it’s especially nice to see we seem to have a few new faces this year.”
Kurt leaned over to comment into Blaine’s ear; “Mr. Schuester, the most optimistic man you’ll ever meet.”
“Now over the holidays I’ve had a lot of time to think,” Mr. Schuester continued, “and what have I been thinking about? New York. This year nationals are going to be held in, that’s right, New York. And this year we’re going to make it.”
“I see what you mean,” Blaine murmured back, though he couldn’t help but feel like maybe things really would be different in this school. He could see how Mr. Schuester’s optimism was infectious, trickling through the club and creating an atmosphere full of promise and possibility. The whole club just seemed so comfortable with each other, he suddenly felt like introducing himself and getting involved wouldn’t be such a big task after all.
Not bad for a first day, he couldn’t help but think to himself. And maybe, he glanced at Kurt, he may have even made a friend.