Stay Lost On Our Way Home (2/2)
Title: Stay Lost On Our Way Home (2/2)
Rating: PG
Characters: Blaine+Tina (friendship), Blaine/Kurt, Wade (Unique), Harmony, Rachel, Artie, Sugar, Joe
Words: ~15,000
Warnings/Spoilers: Homophobia/Transphobia, bullying
Summary: How Blaine Anderson and Tina Cohen-Chang became the new glee power couple (in a totally platonic way).
Part 1
Blaine knew that he and Tina shared a lunch period with Harmony from the previous day, when she had spent the time smiling at them across the table and commandeering the conversation in the direction of how perfectly suited her voice was to everything in the American songbook. In any other situation, it would have sort of been a relief when she didn’t show up the day after she shouted at Tina in the choir room. As it was, it just made things more difficult.
They found her, after a while of searching, sitting in the stands on the football field. She was staring unhappily down at a group of Cheerios practicing whatever overcomplicated routine Coach Sylvester had assigned them; she looked faintly miserable, mechanically lifting prepackaged apple slices to her mouth. Blaine stopped Tina at the bottom of the metal bleachers and shared a significant, confused look with her, but she just shrugged. Harmony looked like someone had taken a pin to her and let all of the air out. Even her hair looked wilted.
Blaine and Tina picked their way up and along the benches, and Harmony didn’t even acknowledge their presence until they were sitting on either side of her, following her gaze down to the Cheerios.
“They called me fat,” she said cheerlessly, not looking away. She dropped an apple slice back into the bag. “And they said that I looked like the kind of person who has a lot of body hair, which I thought was sort of creative for a moment, but now I just hate them.”
Blaine and Tina shared another look over her head, then Blaine asked, “Why are you still sitting out here, then?”
Harmony’s shoulders drooped more. She tucked the bag of apples back into the pack lunch in her lap. “I didn’t want you to find me,” she said quietly. Then she nodded at the cheerleaders down on the football field. “And I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of making me leave.”
“I can put spiders in their lockers,” Tina told her. “They already think I’m a vampire or something. I’m pretty sure that vampires can control spiders, right? Or was that--”
“Why are you being nice to me?” Harmony interrupted, looking hard at Tina beside her. Blaine was struck, not for the first time, by how intense Harmony could appear, like all of her focus was pulled narrowly in on whoever she was looking at. It could probably be flattering, if used correctly, but at that moment it sort of looked like a knife to the throat. “I was so mean to you yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you want us to find you?” Blaine asked, trying to defuse her a little.
Harmony looked away from Tina to frown down at her hands in her lap. “Because you’re going to kick me out of the club,” she said dully.
There was a long pause between the three of them. The only sound was the shout of a tempo down in the field, and the distant sounds of gym classes playing softball brought over on the breeze.
And then Tina started laughing, the way Blaine knew she would, while he cracked a ridiculous smile at Harmony. She stared between them, whipping her head back and forth, looking like she was ready to be angry, but was too confused to start, and Blaine reached out to pat her knee.
“We’re not going to kick you out,” he told her brightly, “so don’t worry.”
Tina was wiping tears of mirth out of her eyes. “That didn’t even occur to me,” she said. She was still giggling, looking at Blaine. “Can you imagine if Mr. Schue kicked Rachel out the first time she yelled at everyone and flounced out of the choir room? We’d still be singing Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat. Harmony, there’s no way we could kick you out. No one gets kicked out. Except when you set a piano on fire, and even then, not for long.”
Harmony’s whole face pulled down into a frown. “I can honestly say that I’ve never been more confused than I am right now.”
“New Directions doesn’t kick people out,” Blaine reassured her. “Even if they deserve it, which you probably don’t. We work things out with each other.”
Harmony seemed to take a moment to internalize this. The breeze fluttered in around them, lifting the brown paper of Harmony’s lunch bag and unsettling her hair, which she reached up to fix absently. “This really isn’t how I thought this conversation would go,” she murmured. She glanced at Tina, and then suddenly turned her whole body on the bench to face her and take both of her hands. (Blaine grabbed her lunch before it fell down through the bleachers.)
“I’m sorry,” Harmony said earnestly, looking right into Tina’s eyes. “You are talented, and even if your talent is less practiced and refined than mine, I shouldn’t have taken my frustration out on you. So, thank you. For not kicking me out of the club. I promise I’ll never have an outburst like that again.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Blaine muttered, setting her lunch on the bench below them.
Over him, Tina said, “It’s fine! Uh, really.” She took her hands out of Harmony’s with a vaguely uncomfortable, overwhelmed smile. “So, um. We wanted to talk to you about why you decided to yell at me and storm out of rehearsal like a crazy person.”
“Does it have anything to do with the conversation you and I had yesterday in the hallway?” Blaine asked a little more gently. He sent an unamused glare to Tina behind Harmony’s back. “When I told you that we’re focusing on group numbers?”
Harmony looked at him for a moment. He could see it again, behind her eyes: the fear that had appeared so strangely yesterday, resurfacing. She bit her lip, and was obviously weighing something in her mind. She drew herself a little straighter. “Have you ever seen the show Dance Moms? Or Toddlers and Tiaras?”
“Yes,” Blaine said, at the same time Tina said, “No.” Blaine blushed when Tina leaned around Harmony to stare at him in accusatory surprise. “They’re two of Kurt’s guilty pleasure shows,” he said, squirming under her scrutiny. “He says they lower his expectations of the world to a realistic level.”
Tina sat back again, mostly mollified. “My mom won’t let anyone in my house watch anything where everyone seems like a bitch, so that rules out most reality television.”
“My mom is those people,” Harmony sighed. “My dad, too.”
Oh, Blaine thought. Suddenly so much about the way Harmony acted made sense. In a completely ridiculous way, obviously, but that was sort of par for the course now, if he was being honest.
“Oh, God,” Tina said, as it hit her, too. “You're a pageant baby.”
Harmony nodded. “I won every competition they entered me in, until my mom was banned from the pageant circuit because she had a habit of attacking the judges when they gave me low scores.” She looked up at them. “We’ve moved six times so that I could reenter in other counties, but eventually they figured out what she was doing and now at every beauty pageant in Ohio there’s a picture of my mother at the sign-in desk saying that she should be escorted from the premises. But my talent was always singing, so when I got to middle school, they decided that I should do competitive show choir, instead. Same chance of winning, less possibility of arrest.”
She put her elbows on her knees and dropped her chin into her hands. “When the Unitards lost at Sectionals last year, my parents got the Defiance High choir director fired, and then when New Directions won at Nationals, they decided that we’d move to Lima over the summer so I could join - as my mother put it, the major leagues. They knew that Rachel Berry was graduating, so there would be a void where her talent had been.” She glanced at Tina. “Sorry. Anyway, that’s why I got a little overemotional yesterday when I heard that we aren’t going to be featuring performers.”
Tina frowned at her. “You think you need to get solos to get your parents' approval?”
“No,” Harmony said, her eyes very large. “I have to win to get their approval. Do you know how many trophies we have in our house? A whole room. We had to rent a separate truck to get them here. They need me to be the featured lead. Between sessions of freaking out about you guys kicking me out of the club, I spent all last night trying to think of ways to subtly overthrow Tina so I could be the only female voice. Sorry, again,” she said quickly to Tina. “I promise I'm not going to hit you with a metal baton like Tonya Harding.”
“Uh, good,” Tina said, eyebrows furrowed. “But - you know, winning isn't what New Directions is about. Blaine and I are actually okay with the idea of losing Sectionals this year.”
Blaine nodded. They'd discussed this a little, on the drive back from Chicago, and over the summer. The important thing was creating a group that worked well together and could go on do to well next year. They both knew that three seasoned glee members, two who had hardly been there a year, and at least seven people who may never have done a jazz square in their lives wasn't really the recipe for another Nationals win - maybe not even a Sectionals win - but they could at least lay a foundation for the next few years.
But Harmony looked horrified at this news. “You - but--” she sputtered. “But what’s the point?”
“It’s fun,” Blaine said simply. “And it helps, sometimes. Glee club can get to be kind of like group therapy. At least, it can with us. We tend to sing our feelings.”
“Some of us do, anyway,” Tina mumbled.
“What I’m saying is,” Blaine said a little louder, speaking over Tina, “we all do glee because we love it, not because we want to win. If you don’t want to be a part of it, that’s fine - but we want you to be.” And Blaine really did, he realized then. He wanted Harmony’s voice in the choir room with theirs, not just because it was beautiful, but because he knew that it belonged there. “I think that maybe it would be good for you,” he told her.
“I don’t know,” Harmony murmured. She looked out at the Cheerios again. The period was drawing to a close, and they were all standing in a loose group, discussing something, with the occasional derisive laugh drifting up to the bleachers. “I don’t know what my parents will do when they find out I might not even be competing. That was the whole reason for coming here.”
“Well, maybe just don’t tell them,” Tina said.
Harmony looked at her, frowning. “You think I should lie to my parents?”
“It isn’t lying.” Tina sounded only vaguely sure of this, but went on anyway. “It’s just - masking the truth a little. Seriously, Harmony, your voice is amazing. You’re probably going to be featured at Sectionals, if we manage to get enough people to go. And you can’t tell me that you love the fact that your parents make you do all of this stuff for them. Maybe you should do something for yourself for a change.” She paused. “Do you actually like to sing?”
“Yes,” Harmony said immediately, without even a breath between question and answer. She blushed. “I mean,” she continued, backpedaling, “I’m very good at it, and that’s part of it, but - I feel the most like myself when I’m singing.” Her voice went very small, and she folded down into herself on the bench, not looking at either of them. “I like feeling everything else go away. When I’m not competing, I mean. When I’m just singing because I can. It makes me feel like I can control something.”
Blaine pushed down the urge to reach out and hug her. She looked so small that way, with her back hunched and her eyes down, saying those things like it was so difficult to let the words go, completely different from the girl who sang Buenos Aires and Think Of Me and followed him around with sheet music. It made him think achingly of Rachel, who had the same self-possessed determination and vulnerability, and even more of Quinn: initially appearing evil, but with something terrified and powerless underneath. He could feel so much that Harmony belonged with them, in the club. New Directions had helped Rachel and Quinn, and everyone else. It could help her, too.
“Sing with us, Harmony,” he said quietly. “You should be able to do something just because you want to.”
She looked at him, with her very, very sad eyes. The wind blew through her hair again, raising it off of her shoulders, but she let it go. She just sniffed quietly, and gave him a very small nod.
“I’ll think about it,” she whispered.
* * *
School had hardly been in session for three days, and Blaine was already charming information out of the secretary in the attendance office. She was nice, and she liked his hair, and his story about glee clubbers decorating the lockers of new members. She gave him Wade’s locker number, after extracting his promise that he wouldn’t do anything untoward with the information. Blaine agreed whole-heartedly, smiling at the way the word untoward fit so easily in her fifty-something Midwestern mouth.
The note that he dropped through the vent of Wade’s locker wasn’t exactly a trap - but, well, it was basically a trap. He hadn’t come to glee rehearsal after The Bathroom Incident, so Blaine didn’t know whether he had decided to drop out of the club entirely, or if he was avoiding Blaine, or if he’d just needed to go home - so he had Tina write to him herself, explaining that she needed to talk to him after school in the choir room about a possible solo for the recruitment performances they were planning. If he’d given up the club, he would ignore it. If he was just avoiding Blaine, he would come.
When Mr. Schuester wandered into the choir room fifteen minutes after the final bell to find Blaine and Tina sitting together in the front row, he stopped in his tracks. “Hey, guys," he said slowly, confused. "Did I miss a memo?”
“Drama,” Blaine and Tina said at the same time.
“Already?”
“We’re dealing with it,” Tina said.
“Although,” Blaine said quickly, glancing at Tina. She raised her eyebrows at him, questioning, but he just looked back at Mr. Schue. “Mr. Schuester, Wade’s being bullied. I found him after he was slushied yesterday.”
Mr. Schue frowned, absently lifting his bag to lay it down on the piano. “I was worried about that,” he said.
“Is there anything you can do about it?” Tina asked.
“I’ll talk to Principal Figgins.”
“Can you talk to Coach Sylvester, as well?” When both Schue and Tina stared at him in confusion, Blaine felt himself color a little. “When Kurt was being bullied, she kept an eye on him. I know she’s kind of - distracted, right now, but maybe she could get Coach Washington to help. She seems just as crazy and unpredictable.”
“Don’t I know it,” Mr. Schuester mumbled, taking the sheet music from the piano’s music stand and sliding it carefully into his bag. “I’ll talk to all of them. Okay?”
Tina smiled gratefully. “Thanks, Mr. Schue.”
“No problem.”
There was a cough in the doorway, and all three of them looked at once to see Wade, standing awkwardly between the hall and the choir room. He was watching them with apprehension.
Mr. Schue quickly closed his bag and slung it back over his shoulder. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” he said with a wave at Tina and Blaine as he turned to leave. Wade stepped into the room to get out of his way, and as he passed, Mr. Schue put a hand on Wade’s shoulder and gave it a brief squeeze. Then he left, and it was just the three of them, alone. Wade still hadn’t said anything. His hands were wrapped in the straps of his bookbag, holding tight to them like a lifeline. The anxiety in his face was echoed in the tenseness of his shoulders, and the way he held himself up, like to stand any taller would make him a target. The image made every part of Blaine ache with sympathy - and it made him so, so tired with remembering what it felt like to be that, to stand like that. No matter how much time passed between then and now, it still felt so close, chasing him down. It was what had made him tell Kurt to stand up. It’s what made him leave his seat now and cross to the door to pull it closed.
“Hi, Wade,” he said gently, turning to him. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
Wade hesitated for a moment, before releasing his bag and shrugging it off of his shoulders. “Something tells me this isn’t actually about a solo.”
“Not really.” Tina looked a little guilty. “Sorry.”
Wade crossed over and dropped down on the piano bench, facing away from the keys. As Blaine began to follow back across the room to Tina, Wade looked up at him and said, “I’m sorry.” It made Blaine stop walking, surprised. Wade just kept watching him with a beseeching sort of expression. “I didn’t really mean it, what I said in the bathroom yesterday,” he continued. “I was mad. It wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. You just wanted to help.”
“It’s fine,” Blaine said with relief. It felt like he was pushing something heavy off of his chest. “Honestly. I’m sorry, too.”
Wade just shook his head.
Blaine sat back down next to Tina, who asked into the ensuing silence, “Why didn’t you tell us that you were being bullied?”
Wade only shrugged. His head went down, shoulders hunched. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “I didn’t know what to do. I was embarrassed, I guess. I guess I thought - when I moved here, I thought, oh, good, I get to go to McKinley. I told Kurt and Mercedes last year that I wanted to transfer, but I didn’t think it would actually happen.” His face flashed with something painful, before cinching tight, closing off darkly. “I really wish it hadn’t,” he whispered.
Blaine could feel something more moving behind those words. Something more than just a slushie, something much worse than that. “Because of the bullying?” he asked carefully.
Wade shook his head again, and took a wet little breath.
Tina was up out of her chair immediately and flying over to him, wrapping her arms around him and holding on tightly. “Shh,” she whispered, when Wade let out a surprised sob. “It’s okay, it’s totally okay.” He wrapped his arms around her, too, clasping them around her back and pulling her closer, his head pressed against her chest. Blaine could see tears coursing silently down his cheeks.
Blaine, frozen solid in his chair, was suddenly, deeply grateful for Tina. Tina was so much better at physical comfort than Blaine. Tina would throw herself around a crying stranger at a bus station to make that person feel better, happily and without question. Blaine couldn’t. Even being familiar with Wade, and his own identity, and the open-mindedness that would come with it, Blaine was afraid of touching people he didn’t really know. He’d had the idea that his touch wasn’t welcome drilled into his brain through his whole stay in middle school. He’d had it literally beaten into him during his freshman year of high school.
So he was so, so glad, in that moment, and so many before and after it, that Tina was his co-captain.
“They kicked me out,” Wade sobbed into Tina’s chest. “They - they said - they were embarrassed, they told me I had to change, and I wouldn’t, and my whole family hated me because I was famous for being a f-freak, so they told me I had to leave until I - until I got over it.”
Blaine’s his heart lodged itself in his throat and beat heavily between his collarbones.
Tina was rubbing Wade’s back, her cheek against the top of his head. “It’s okay,” she repeated. Blaine could hear the telling waver in her voice. “I’m so sorry, Wade.”
Blaine stood, almost automatically, and walked across the room to them. He laid a hand on Tina’s back, and one on Wade’s shoulder. “Where--” he tried to ask, but his voice was strangled. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, in through his nose, out through his mouth. He tried again. “Where are you staying?”
Wade’s crying was starting to calm down. He was taking breaths like Blaine’s, huge lungfuls of air moving slowly in and out of him. “My grandmother,” he said, muffled against Tina. “She’s the only one who--” He didn’t finish. He just said, almost broken, “She loves me.”
“She lives in Lima?” Tina asked. “That’s why you transferred?”
Wade nodded. He let go of Tina, and she stepped back to give him room to rub the tear tracks off of his face with both hands. He sniffed one more time. “Sorry,” he said weakly.
“It’s fine,” Blaine murmured. He stepped away to grab a chair and pull it closer, turning it around and sitting on it backwards, with his arms crossed over the back. Tina settled next to Wade on the bench with her arm around him, flush against his side. “I’m glad that there was someone you could go to.”
“Me, too,” Wade said. “I didn’t think there would be, but -- after Nationals, and after my parents - she told me that she didn’t care who I was, I was family. I don’t think anyone talks to her anymore.” He wiped at his eyes again, taking another breath. “I spent the whole summer trying to get away from everything that happened last year, but everyone knows.”
“You were trying to get away from it?” Tina asked, eyebrows drawing together. “I thought you loved being Unique.”
Wade closed his eyes, shaking his head back and forth. “I do, but -- look what happened. Maybe I - maybe things would be easier for everyone if I were -- normal.”
“You are normal,” Blaine said, so fiercely that it made Wade look up at him in surprise. Blaine could feel his anger boiling low in his stomach - anger at Wade’s family, anger at the kids who tried to take the strength out of him, anger that he could still feel the sympathetic ache in his ribs from size twelve dress shoes, anger that anyone, ever, could be made to say the words if I were normal. “Listen to me, Wade,” he said, reaching out to capture both of Wade’s hands in his. Wade blinked back at him, but met his eyes. “I can’t know exactly how you feel, because we’re different people with difference circumstances. But I know what it feels like to try and suppress something about yourself to make things easier for other people. You need to do what feels right for you.” He softened a little. “If you aren’t sure about your identity, that’s fine. You have all the time in the world to figure yourself out. You’re fifteen. But please, don’t let anyone tell you who you need to be for them. Only you have any say in who you are.”
He let go of Wade’s hands and sat back, and Wade kept staring at him with big, overwhelmed eyes. “I--” he said, and faltered for a moment. His eyes filled with tears again. “I’m still not sure. About me. For me. But I feel more like myself when I’m Unique, more than when I’m not. There’s just nowhere I can be her where people won’t hate me for it.”
“Here,” Tina said softly. She tucked her head against Wade’s shoulder. “Be Unique here, in this room, in glee.”
Blaine nodded. “If you can’t be Unique everywhere, you can start in here. We won’t judge you, or hurt you, or anything. That’s what this club is for. You can express yourself however you want to, be whoever you want to be. We’ll be here for you no matter what. And we’ll do our best to take care of you.”
The tears were back to coursing down Wade’s cheeks, and he wiped them away with delicate little swipes of his fingers. His smile was tremulous and small, but it was present, brightening his face. “Kids in Vocal Adrenaline didn’t even know each other’s names.”
“Vocal Adrenaline is a musical war machine,” Blaine said, copying Wade’s smile and letting it grow bigger. “We’re kind of the eternal underdogs.”
“Underdogs with heart,” Tina added.
“Underdogs with heart and a National Championship,” Blaine concluded, and Wade laughed.
Blaine stood out of his chair and set it back over with the others, before returning to Wade and offering him a hand. When Wade took it, Blaine pulled him up from the piano bench and into a hug. “Your audition was beautiful,” Blaine said, drawing back. “I know you meant what you were singing. New Directions kind of has this tradition of singing what we’re feeling, and I think you’ll be really good at doing that.” He tilted his head, grinning crookedly at Wade. “You’re always welcome to put something together. As Wade or Unique, whoever you want. We’ll always want to hear your voice.”
Wade looked very pleased. He bent down to retrieve his bag and slipped it back over his shoulders, then turned to look at Tina, then to Blaine. He smiled. “I’ll think about it.”
* * *
Blaine woke up the next morning to three emails on his phone. The first, which he allowed himself to read while still cocooned in a nest of blankets, was from Mr. Schuester, assuring him that he'd spoken to Principal Figgins, Coach Sylvester and Coach Washington, and that Figgins was looking into reinstating the Bully Whips. Blaine sent him a quick reply to thank him, then rolled out of bed to start getting ready for school.
He saved Coach Sylvester's email until he was awake enough to deal with it, fixing his hair in the bathroom mirror after his shower with the phone balanced against the taps. Hearing her insane message relayed to him in the calm, vaguely bored voice of his text-to-speech app was an exercise in surrealism, and he gave up listening somewhere around, Even though I'm profoundly distracted by the impending birth of my first child, I'll have Becky Jackson give Coach Washington a few tips about taking down a hostile entity, which I picked up in my extensive spy training for the CIA.
It ended, As you are still somehow romantically attached to Porcelain, despite your obvious inability to dress yourself, I won’t find a way to punish you for daring to interrupt my third trimester with your nattering requests.
Blaine snorted and dictated an email back with his hands full of hair gel, thanking Coach Sue and apologizing for the inconvenience. It took Vlingo four tries to get the word inconvenience right.
He saved the final email until he was on his way out of the front door, plucking his keys from the hooks next to the doorframe.
From: hummelk2353@students.nyada.edu
Subject: Personally, I don’t find it particularly flattering.
I found this on my hard drive last night when I was procrastinating. Rachel took it. She seems insistent that you’ll like it.
I love you. Have a good day!
Attached was a picture of Kurt, laughing with his head thrown back and his eyes closed, outside somewhere that Blaine didn’t recognize. His hair was windblown, the top two buttons of his shirt open with the faintest shadows of his collarbones visible. Rachel had obviously caught him while he wasn’t looking, and it was gorgeous, to see him totally candid like that. It warmed Blaine from his hair to his toes, and he stood on the front porch of his house at eight in the morning, smiling dopily, staring down at his phone.
Eventually, he made the picture his new background, slipped the phone into his pocket, and went to school.
The day was shockingly uneventful. Joe approached him before lunch to give some suggestions for the recruitment numbers - all of them were either vaguely religious or classic rock, which seemed to be all Joe ever really listened to before he started at McKinley. Which was fine, obviously. They were good suggestions, and Blaine almost kept Joe too late in the hallway discussing them. He’d ended up having to run for Spanish, his dreads flying behind him, one hand raised to wave, while Blaine laughed and waved back before heading for the cafeteria.
Harmony wasn’t there again, which he chose not to take as a bad sign. If she was quitting, she would tell them. He saw Tina frown at the empty seat once or twice. She apparently didn’t have the same thought.
Between sixth and seventh period, he was accosted in the boys’ locker room by Roz Washington. It was like trying to pass a test for which the questions were in Mandarin. She looked him up and down with her arms folded over her chest and interrogated him about Wade, and who was bothering him, and why. In the end, she said, If that boy is a beautiful black woman on the inside, then that’s who he is, and nobody’s gonna keep him from walking down that hallway being whoever the hell he wants. You hear he’s in trouble, you come running to me. You got it? Tell him, too.
Blaine had enough time to nod before she turned around and left him standing next to his gym locker.
Given how intimidating Coach Washington was when she was just being helpful, Blaine had good feelings about Wade being under her protection.
He’d almost escaped the day completely unscathed and was pulling the books he needed for homework out of his locker when Tina appeared at his elbow in the empty hallway and wrapped her hand around his arm, looking panicked. “Come on!” she shouted, pulling at him. “We need to go.”
“But--” Blaine, confused, tried to pull his arm away. “What are you--”
“Unique just walked in,” Tina said, frustrated, “and the rugby team saw her.”
All of the air seemed to disappear from Blaine’s lungs at once. He fumbled to slam his locker closed one-handed, and Tina took off, dragging him along, down the hall, around a corner, down another hall. “I tried to tell Coach Washington,” Tina called over the sound of their running footsteps, “but she wasn’t in her office, and I didn’t know where--”
Blaine planted his feet and yanked her to a halt, almost making both of them fall over. “Stop!” he said in a whisper. “Shh.” He tucked them both against the wall, sneaking up slowly to the corner. He’d definitely just seen-
“What are you doing?” Tina asked.
“Harmony just ran by,” Blaine whispered. He’d seen her dash past the mouth of the hallway, a look of pure determination on her face. “Come on, come on--” He pulled Tina up to the corner with him and peered around to see what was going on.
Down the hall, four rugby jocks had Unique backed against a bank of frosted windows. She looked equal parts angry and terrified, with the sequins of her dress catching and reflecting the muted light, splintering it into pale shapes along the floor and ceiling. The jocks just looked angry, like they were all so morally affronted by what they were looking at that they couldn’t get their mouths to untwist out of bared white teeth, like circling dogs. Josh Coleman had the lead of his three nameless flunkies, and he was saying something too quietly for Blaine to hear, but it looked awful, from the way Unique’s face became more and more enraged and humiliated.
But then Harmony was there. She slipped into the space between Josh and Wade, and Blaine could only see her expression in profile, but she looked intense. It was the razor-blade focus that Blaine had noticed the previous day, turned deadly. Unique looked surprised, eyebrows raised, anger slipping off of her face as Harmony leaned forward to start speaking. Josh Coleman had about half a foot on Harmony and had to look down to see her, and at first he just looked amused, casting his eyes from side to side at his buddies, like they were sharing in a joke. But then his face paled a little, and he pulled his attention back to Harmony, who was really leaning into it now, her voice never getting any louder than to fill the space between them.
“What’s she saying?” Tina asked, watching transfixed, the way Blaine was, unable to take his eyes away from the way that the jocks were starting to shift uncomfortably and glance at each other, and at Josh, who was getting more and more pale, his eyes huge with horrified shock.
“I have no idea,” Blaine murmured.
Unique was starting to smile now, sort of reluctantly, listening to whatever Harmony was saying and biting her lip to keep from laughing as the nameless rugby guys started to take little steps away from Harmony and Josh. Her stream of speaking was breathless and unbroken, and she started to poke him in the chest with her pointer finger, as if accusing him of something, and he just stood there, taking it, looking too shocked and horrified to react.
“What the hell are you two doing?” said a voice behind Blaine and Tina, and they both jumped and looked to see Coach Washington with her hands on her hips, staring at them. “I hear from four separate people that Asian Horror Movie’s running around this school looking for me, and then I find the two of you peeking around a corner like cartoon characters in a rejected Disney movie from the nineties. You do realize that I have things to do that don’t involve your sorry asses, right?”
“Unique’s in trouble,” Tina said quickly. “Or, well, she was, but--”
“Then why are the two of you just sitting here watching?” Coach Washington sounded like she was actually angry at them, as she moved around them to the corner to look out for herself. Then she frowned, looking confused.
“They, uh,” Blaine said, shrugging helplessly. “I think they have it under control.”
Roz Washington whistled low. “They sure do,” she said. “I don’t know what that little girl is saying to him, but he looks like he’s about to catch fire.” She stepped back, looking at them. “Well, I’m here, so I might as well put the fear of God into that little ratfaced bastard. You tell me if anyone else gives Unique any trouble. And tell Red Beret to use her voodoo powers for good.” Then Coach Washington stepped out into the hall, and Tina and Blaine piled back against the corner to watch as she stomped down to where Harmony was still speaking and grabbed Josh Coleman by the ear. She said something to Harmony and Unique, and then dragged him off towards her office, drawing his flunkies behind her.
Harmony seemed to take a big breath. Then she turned around and stuck her hand out for Unique to shake, smiling. Blaine caught I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced on her lips, before Unique started to laugh, and reached out to take Harmony’s hand.
Tina’s body relaxed next to Blaine’s. “I have no idea what just happened,” she murmured, “but I’m really glad it did.”
“Agreed,” Blaine breathed.
They looked at each other, and smiled. Tina took his hand in hers and squeezed.
Harmony never told them what she said to Josh, and when Wade was asked, he'd just smile with this far-off, pleased expression.
Unique had come back into the school decked out in full regalia because she'd had something prepared for glee club that required being the real me, as she phrased it, standing at the front of the choir room while the jazz band settled themselves for her number. Or at least as real as I can figure out so far. She'd smiled, and pulled Harmony up to the front, saying that they'd decided to do this number together. Harmony added that they'd only had a little while to practice with each other, but she was great at improvising. Then the song started.
And Blaine was blown away, sitting there listening to the club's two newest members sing the hell out of Pink's 18 Wheeler.
They meant it so much. They both threw themselves into it, and the change was totally staggering in Harmony, who, Blaine realized now, had never really sung something for herself in front of him. It was phenomenal to see the real fun in her eyes, and the way that she and Unique kept looking at each other, singing at each other, almost laughing. Their voices blended beautifully. It was so, so obvious, from the way Harmony moved and smiled and meant every word, that she was going to stay.
And it was such a relief to see Unique swinging back into who she was when she performed, big and dramatic and totally gorgeous, If I Were A Boy left behind for something fantastic and loud. Being herself. It was amazing to watch.
They charged the tiers and pulled Tina and Sugar out of their seats amid delighted laughter, dragging them to the front to sing and dance out the rest of the song. Tina looked ecstatic, mid-waltz with Harmony, laughing with her head cast back while Sugar and Unique shimmied nearby, and Blaine, not to be outplayed, leapt out of his seat and over to Joe and Artie, who danced with him, grinning and singing backup. Joe pulled Mr. Schue, who had been watching and laughing and clapping along, out of his seat to dance, too.
Across the room, Blaine met Tina's eye as she came out of a spin with Sugar. He could see that sudden knowledge in her, too, knocking into both of them, huge and bright, he was sure, on both of their faces.
This is what glee club was supposed to feel like.
* * *
“So, congratulations,” Kurt said, sounding fond even through the phone. “You survived your first week as glee club co-captain.”
Blaine grinned, squinting up at the sky. It was a little while before Friday’s glee rehearsal, and it was beautiful outside, the sun out and washing everything with bright gold. Blaine had sneaked out into the empty courtyard behind the cafeteria and was laying back on one of the cement tiers, his head pillowed on his free arm, his legs dangling over the edge at the knee. The stone was warm beneath him, radiating heat through his shirt and into his skin, and it felt wonderful. But, honestly, not as nice as hearing Kurt’s voice. “Did you think I wouldn’t make it?” he asked.
“Of course I thought you’d make it,” Kurt said, as if that much was obvious. “I knew you would be good at this kind of thing.”
That was actually a surprise. Blaine blinked. “Really?”
“Why do you sound so shocked?” Kurt asked, laughing. But then he softened, and Blaine felt Kurt’s voice almost like it was a physical thing, winding its way around Blaine’s body in a warm, absent sort of hug. “You’re good with people, Blaine, no matter what you think. And people like you. They like you you, not just the part of you that you want people to like. You’re a good person. You care, way more than you really need to. It’s one of the things that’s really admirable about you.”
Blaine could feel his surprise and pleasure moving through him, like it was in his blood, making every part it touched warm and luminous. “I--” he said, sort of breathless, with no idea what else to say. “Thank you. I wish you’d been here to tell me that for the last few days.”
Kurt laughed. “I think you did fine without me constantly texting you courage.” Blaine felt a blush crawl over his cheeks and neck at the vaguely mortifying reminder. Kurt’s voice softened again. “You did a good job, Blaine. Everything isn’t totally solved, but what ever is, really, with that group? You worked with what you had. I’m really proud of you.”
Blaine was not going to start tearing up in the courtyard when anyone could just waltz by and see him. He took his arm out from beneath his head and pressed it over his eyes, swallowing hard and trying to breathe normally. I'm really proud of you. Kurt could say that so easily, like there was no other way he could feel. No matter how many times Blaine heard it, it was overwhelming, like it was too bright, or too deep.
“Blaine?” Kurt asked, concerned. “Are you there?”
“Yep,” Blaine said in a strangled voice. “Give me a sec.”
“Oh my god, I love you,” Kurt said, laughing. “I’m sorry. I don’t know my own strength.”
“You really don’t,” Blaine managed. He drew his hand back to press it over one cheek and then the other. Warm, but not wet. He let out a shaking breath. “Okay. Sorry. Crisis averted.”
“You really did do a good job, though,” Kurt said. “Just wait until you start dealing with pregnancy scares and people cheating with each other. Glee’s going to be a volatile little family of talent and crazy in no time.”
“I just hope that we get more members,” Blaine said. He sat up a little on his elbow, looking out over the empty tables and chairs at the bottom of the courtyard. “No one else seems to be interested. We’re putting together some numbers, but I don’t know how well they’re gonna work.”
“Oh, they’ll come,” Kurt said.
“You sound so sure,” Blaine said, smiling.
“Of course I am,” Kurt said. “When word gets around about what you guys did for Unique - you know why we joined glee in the first place, Blaine. It’s safe. You can be who you are. And now everyone will know that, and you’ll have kids trickling in all quarter, who’re too scared or weird to join any of the other clubs, but they know that glee is a place where other people feel accepted and have fun and stick up for each other. You’re going to be up to competition standards in no time, believe me. You’ll be tripping over new talent by Christmas break.”
Blaine was rendered breathless again. He shook his head to clear it, sitting up fully, letting his feet swing and knock against the cement stair. “There’s this plaque on the wall in the choir room,” he said softly. “I never noticed it before this week.”
“Lillian Adler?” Kurt asked, and Blaine could hear the smile in his voice. “I think she was Mr. Schue’s glee club coach. ‘By its very definition--’”
“’Glee is about opening yourself up to joy,’” Blaine finished. He smiled himself, once again casting his head back to stare up at the cloudless blue sky. “I want to make sure that’s the way things work this year. I think that’s how it’s always been.”
“You can do it,” Kurt said, and Blaine knew he really believed. “Lead by example.”
“I’m gonna try,” Blaine agreed. He brought the phone down to look at the time before pressing it back to his ear. “I have to get going. Glee practice. We’re doing the wrap-up song.”
“Oo, what song?” Kurt asked.
Blaine grinned. “C’Mon, by Fun. and Panic! at the Disco. Tina suggested it.”
“I’ll have to look it up.”
“I think it works.” Blaine tucked the phone closer to his ear. “I love you. I’ll talk to you tonight.”
“I love you, too,” Kurt murmured, very warm. “Talk to you tonight. Have fun.”
“Definitely.”
So c’mon, c’mon, with everything falling down around me, I’d like to believe in all the possibilities.
There was a moment, on the stage, with the lights hot above him and the boards solid beneath him, when Blaine came to a realization:
They were good.
The voices swelling around him were strong and bright, layering into harmonies beneath the duet that he was sharing with Tina. They made the song full and resonant, making Blaine feel like he was being lifted up and carried along by it, making it feel effortless, and so fun, and so freeing. They were all so happy, and Blaine could feel it in every word as they all sang together, this great crescendo swept up by the band, sweeping into him as he stood at the center of the stage and let himself feel it. There were no pockets where old voices were missing, no little vocal ghosts or holes in the choreography. This was theirs, his and Tina’s and Artie’s and everyone else’s.
This was the new voice of New Directions. They’d found it.
As Tina drew out the last word of the song with the two of them stood at the very edge of the stage, she gave a little curtsy to Mr. Schue clapping and whooping in the seats. When she straightened back up, she met Blaine’s eyes with a brilliant smile. She looked so proud. Blaine felt the exact same way.
He dipped his own flourished little bow at their audience of one, and was immediately tackled by six laughing, excited bodies, jumping, group-hugging, shrieking about how great that was, how good they were together, how fun. Blaine hugged back, and shrieked back, and was so, so excited.
This year was going to be amazing.
Rating: PG
Characters: Blaine+Tina (friendship), Blaine/Kurt, Wade (Unique), Harmony, Rachel, Artie, Sugar, Joe
Words: ~15,000
Warnings/Spoilers: Homophobia/Transphobia, bullying
Summary: How Blaine Anderson and Tina Cohen-Chang became the new glee power couple (in a totally platonic way).
Part 1
Blaine knew that he and Tina shared a lunch period with Harmony from the previous day, when she had spent the time smiling at them across the table and commandeering the conversation in the direction of how perfectly suited her voice was to everything in the American songbook. In any other situation, it would have sort of been a relief when she didn’t show up the day after she shouted at Tina in the choir room. As it was, it just made things more difficult.
They found her, after a while of searching, sitting in the stands on the football field. She was staring unhappily down at a group of Cheerios practicing whatever overcomplicated routine Coach Sylvester had assigned them; she looked faintly miserable, mechanically lifting prepackaged apple slices to her mouth. Blaine stopped Tina at the bottom of the metal bleachers and shared a significant, confused look with her, but she just shrugged. Harmony looked like someone had taken a pin to her and let all of the air out. Even her hair looked wilted.
Blaine and Tina picked their way up and along the benches, and Harmony didn’t even acknowledge their presence until they were sitting on either side of her, following her gaze down to the Cheerios.
“They called me fat,” she said cheerlessly, not looking away. She dropped an apple slice back into the bag. “And they said that I looked like the kind of person who has a lot of body hair, which I thought was sort of creative for a moment, but now I just hate them.”
Blaine and Tina shared another look over her head, then Blaine asked, “Why are you still sitting out here, then?”
Harmony’s shoulders drooped more. She tucked the bag of apples back into the pack lunch in her lap. “I didn’t want you to find me,” she said quietly. Then she nodded at the cheerleaders down on the football field. “And I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of making me leave.”
“I can put spiders in their lockers,” Tina told her. “They already think I’m a vampire or something. I’m pretty sure that vampires can control spiders, right? Or was that--”
“Why are you being nice to me?” Harmony interrupted, looking hard at Tina beside her. Blaine was struck, not for the first time, by how intense Harmony could appear, like all of her focus was pulled narrowly in on whoever she was looking at. It could probably be flattering, if used correctly, but at that moment it sort of looked like a knife to the throat. “I was so mean to you yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you want us to find you?” Blaine asked, trying to defuse her a little.
Harmony looked away from Tina to frown down at her hands in her lap. “Because you’re going to kick me out of the club,” she said dully.
There was a long pause between the three of them. The only sound was the shout of a tempo down in the field, and the distant sounds of gym classes playing softball brought over on the breeze.
And then Tina started laughing, the way Blaine knew she would, while he cracked a ridiculous smile at Harmony. She stared between them, whipping her head back and forth, looking like she was ready to be angry, but was too confused to start, and Blaine reached out to pat her knee.
“We’re not going to kick you out,” he told her brightly, “so don’t worry.”
Tina was wiping tears of mirth out of her eyes. “That didn’t even occur to me,” she said. She was still giggling, looking at Blaine. “Can you imagine if Mr. Schue kicked Rachel out the first time she yelled at everyone and flounced out of the choir room? We’d still be singing Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat. Harmony, there’s no way we could kick you out. No one gets kicked out. Except when you set a piano on fire, and even then, not for long.”
Harmony’s whole face pulled down into a frown. “I can honestly say that I’ve never been more confused than I am right now.”
“New Directions doesn’t kick people out,” Blaine reassured her. “Even if they deserve it, which you probably don’t. We work things out with each other.”
Harmony seemed to take a moment to internalize this. The breeze fluttered in around them, lifting the brown paper of Harmony’s lunch bag and unsettling her hair, which she reached up to fix absently. “This really isn’t how I thought this conversation would go,” she murmured. She glanced at Tina, and then suddenly turned her whole body on the bench to face her and take both of her hands. (Blaine grabbed her lunch before it fell down through the bleachers.)
“I’m sorry,” Harmony said earnestly, looking right into Tina’s eyes. “You are talented, and even if your talent is less practiced and refined than mine, I shouldn’t have taken my frustration out on you. So, thank you. For not kicking me out of the club. I promise I’ll never have an outburst like that again.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Blaine muttered, setting her lunch on the bench below them.
Over him, Tina said, “It’s fine! Uh, really.” She took her hands out of Harmony’s with a vaguely uncomfortable, overwhelmed smile. “So, um. We wanted to talk to you about why you decided to yell at me and storm out of rehearsal like a crazy person.”
“Does it have anything to do with the conversation you and I had yesterday in the hallway?” Blaine asked a little more gently. He sent an unamused glare to Tina behind Harmony’s back. “When I told you that we’re focusing on group numbers?”
Harmony looked at him for a moment. He could see it again, behind her eyes: the fear that had appeared so strangely yesterday, resurfacing. She bit her lip, and was obviously weighing something in her mind. She drew herself a little straighter. “Have you ever seen the show Dance Moms? Or Toddlers and Tiaras?”
“Yes,” Blaine said, at the same time Tina said, “No.” Blaine blushed when Tina leaned around Harmony to stare at him in accusatory surprise. “They’re two of Kurt’s guilty pleasure shows,” he said, squirming under her scrutiny. “He says they lower his expectations of the world to a realistic level.”
Tina sat back again, mostly mollified. “My mom won’t let anyone in my house watch anything where everyone seems like a bitch, so that rules out most reality television.”
“My mom is those people,” Harmony sighed. “My dad, too.”
Oh, Blaine thought. Suddenly so much about the way Harmony acted made sense. In a completely ridiculous way, obviously, but that was sort of par for the course now, if he was being honest.
“Oh, God,” Tina said, as it hit her, too. “You're a pageant baby.”
Harmony nodded. “I won every competition they entered me in, until my mom was banned from the pageant circuit because she had a habit of attacking the judges when they gave me low scores.” She looked up at them. “We’ve moved six times so that I could reenter in other counties, but eventually they figured out what she was doing and now at every beauty pageant in Ohio there’s a picture of my mother at the sign-in desk saying that she should be escorted from the premises. But my talent was always singing, so when I got to middle school, they decided that I should do competitive show choir, instead. Same chance of winning, less possibility of arrest.”
She put her elbows on her knees and dropped her chin into her hands. “When the Unitards lost at Sectionals last year, my parents got the Defiance High choir director fired, and then when New Directions won at Nationals, they decided that we’d move to Lima over the summer so I could join - as my mother put it, the major leagues. They knew that Rachel Berry was graduating, so there would be a void where her talent had been.” She glanced at Tina. “Sorry. Anyway, that’s why I got a little overemotional yesterday when I heard that we aren’t going to be featuring performers.”
Tina frowned at her. “You think you need to get solos to get your parents' approval?”
“No,” Harmony said, her eyes very large. “I have to win to get their approval. Do you know how many trophies we have in our house? A whole room. We had to rent a separate truck to get them here. They need me to be the featured lead. Between sessions of freaking out about you guys kicking me out of the club, I spent all last night trying to think of ways to subtly overthrow Tina so I could be the only female voice. Sorry, again,” she said quickly to Tina. “I promise I'm not going to hit you with a metal baton like Tonya Harding.”
“Uh, good,” Tina said, eyebrows furrowed. “But - you know, winning isn't what New Directions is about. Blaine and I are actually okay with the idea of losing Sectionals this year.”
Blaine nodded. They'd discussed this a little, on the drive back from Chicago, and over the summer. The important thing was creating a group that worked well together and could go on do to well next year. They both knew that three seasoned glee members, two who had hardly been there a year, and at least seven people who may never have done a jazz square in their lives wasn't really the recipe for another Nationals win - maybe not even a Sectionals win - but they could at least lay a foundation for the next few years.
But Harmony looked horrified at this news. “You - but--” she sputtered. “But what’s the point?”
“It’s fun,” Blaine said simply. “And it helps, sometimes. Glee club can get to be kind of like group therapy. At least, it can with us. We tend to sing our feelings.”
“Some of us do, anyway,” Tina mumbled.
“What I’m saying is,” Blaine said a little louder, speaking over Tina, “we all do glee because we love it, not because we want to win. If you don’t want to be a part of it, that’s fine - but we want you to be.” And Blaine really did, he realized then. He wanted Harmony’s voice in the choir room with theirs, not just because it was beautiful, but because he knew that it belonged there. “I think that maybe it would be good for you,” he told her.
“I don’t know,” Harmony murmured. She looked out at the Cheerios again. The period was drawing to a close, and they were all standing in a loose group, discussing something, with the occasional derisive laugh drifting up to the bleachers. “I don’t know what my parents will do when they find out I might not even be competing. That was the whole reason for coming here.”
“Well, maybe just don’t tell them,” Tina said.
Harmony looked at her, frowning. “You think I should lie to my parents?”
“It isn’t lying.” Tina sounded only vaguely sure of this, but went on anyway. “It’s just - masking the truth a little. Seriously, Harmony, your voice is amazing. You’re probably going to be featured at Sectionals, if we manage to get enough people to go. And you can’t tell me that you love the fact that your parents make you do all of this stuff for them. Maybe you should do something for yourself for a change.” She paused. “Do you actually like to sing?”
“Yes,” Harmony said immediately, without even a breath between question and answer. She blushed. “I mean,” she continued, backpedaling, “I’m very good at it, and that’s part of it, but - I feel the most like myself when I’m singing.” Her voice went very small, and she folded down into herself on the bench, not looking at either of them. “I like feeling everything else go away. When I’m not competing, I mean. When I’m just singing because I can. It makes me feel like I can control something.”
Blaine pushed down the urge to reach out and hug her. She looked so small that way, with her back hunched and her eyes down, saying those things like it was so difficult to let the words go, completely different from the girl who sang Buenos Aires and Think Of Me and followed him around with sheet music. It made him think achingly of Rachel, who had the same self-possessed determination and vulnerability, and even more of Quinn: initially appearing evil, but with something terrified and powerless underneath. He could feel so much that Harmony belonged with them, in the club. New Directions had helped Rachel and Quinn, and everyone else. It could help her, too.
“Sing with us, Harmony,” he said quietly. “You should be able to do something just because you want to.”
She looked at him, with her very, very sad eyes. The wind blew through her hair again, raising it off of her shoulders, but she let it go. She just sniffed quietly, and gave him a very small nod.
“I’ll think about it,” she whispered.
* * *
School had hardly been in session for three days, and Blaine was already charming information out of the secretary in the attendance office. She was nice, and she liked his hair, and his story about glee clubbers decorating the lockers of new members. She gave him Wade’s locker number, after extracting his promise that he wouldn’t do anything untoward with the information. Blaine agreed whole-heartedly, smiling at the way the word untoward fit so easily in her fifty-something Midwestern mouth.
The note that he dropped through the vent of Wade’s locker wasn’t exactly a trap - but, well, it was basically a trap. He hadn’t come to glee rehearsal after The Bathroom Incident, so Blaine didn’t know whether he had decided to drop out of the club entirely, or if he was avoiding Blaine, or if he’d just needed to go home - so he had Tina write to him herself, explaining that she needed to talk to him after school in the choir room about a possible solo for the recruitment performances they were planning. If he’d given up the club, he would ignore it. If he was just avoiding Blaine, he would come.
When Mr. Schuester wandered into the choir room fifteen minutes after the final bell to find Blaine and Tina sitting together in the front row, he stopped in his tracks. “Hey, guys," he said slowly, confused. "Did I miss a memo?”
“Drama,” Blaine and Tina said at the same time.
“Already?”
“We’re dealing with it,” Tina said.
“Although,” Blaine said quickly, glancing at Tina. She raised her eyebrows at him, questioning, but he just looked back at Mr. Schue. “Mr. Schuester, Wade’s being bullied. I found him after he was slushied yesterday.”
Mr. Schue frowned, absently lifting his bag to lay it down on the piano. “I was worried about that,” he said.
“Is there anything you can do about it?” Tina asked.
“I’ll talk to Principal Figgins.”
“Can you talk to Coach Sylvester, as well?” When both Schue and Tina stared at him in confusion, Blaine felt himself color a little. “When Kurt was being bullied, she kept an eye on him. I know she’s kind of - distracted, right now, but maybe she could get Coach Washington to help. She seems just as crazy and unpredictable.”
“Don’t I know it,” Mr. Schuester mumbled, taking the sheet music from the piano’s music stand and sliding it carefully into his bag. “I’ll talk to all of them. Okay?”
Tina smiled gratefully. “Thanks, Mr. Schue.”
“No problem.”
There was a cough in the doorway, and all three of them looked at once to see Wade, standing awkwardly between the hall and the choir room. He was watching them with apprehension.
Mr. Schue quickly closed his bag and slung it back over his shoulder. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” he said with a wave at Tina and Blaine as he turned to leave. Wade stepped into the room to get out of his way, and as he passed, Mr. Schue put a hand on Wade’s shoulder and gave it a brief squeeze. Then he left, and it was just the three of them, alone. Wade still hadn’t said anything. His hands were wrapped in the straps of his bookbag, holding tight to them like a lifeline. The anxiety in his face was echoed in the tenseness of his shoulders, and the way he held himself up, like to stand any taller would make him a target. The image made every part of Blaine ache with sympathy - and it made him so, so tired with remembering what it felt like to be that, to stand like that. No matter how much time passed between then and now, it still felt so close, chasing him down. It was what had made him tell Kurt to stand up. It’s what made him leave his seat now and cross to the door to pull it closed.
“Hi, Wade,” he said gently, turning to him. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
Wade hesitated for a moment, before releasing his bag and shrugging it off of his shoulders. “Something tells me this isn’t actually about a solo.”
“Not really.” Tina looked a little guilty. “Sorry.”
Wade crossed over and dropped down on the piano bench, facing away from the keys. As Blaine began to follow back across the room to Tina, Wade looked up at him and said, “I’m sorry.” It made Blaine stop walking, surprised. Wade just kept watching him with a beseeching sort of expression. “I didn’t really mean it, what I said in the bathroom yesterday,” he continued. “I was mad. It wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. You just wanted to help.”
“It’s fine,” Blaine said with relief. It felt like he was pushing something heavy off of his chest. “Honestly. I’m sorry, too.”
Wade just shook his head.
Blaine sat back down next to Tina, who asked into the ensuing silence, “Why didn’t you tell us that you were being bullied?”
Wade only shrugged. His head went down, shoulders hunched. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “I didn’t know what to do. I was embarrassed, I guess. I guess I thought - when I moved here, I thought, oh, good, I get to go to McKinley. I told Kurt and Mercedes last year that I wanted to transfer, but I didn’t think it would actually happen.” His face flashed with something painful, before cinching tight, closing off darkly. “I really wish it hadn’t,” he whispered.
Blaine could feel something more moving behind those words. Something more than just a slushie, something much worse than that. “Because of the bullying?” he asked carefully.
Wade shook his head again, and took a wet little breath.
Tina was up out of her chair immediately and flying over to him, wrapping her arms around him and holding on tightly. “Shh,” she whispered, when Wade let out a surprised sob. “It’s okay, it’s totally okay.” He wrapped his arms around her, too, clasping them around her back and pulling her closer, his head pressed against her chest. Blaine could see tears coursing silently down his cheeks.
Blaine, frozen solid in his chair, was suddenly, deeply grateful for Tina. Tina was so much better at physical comfort than Blaine. Tina would throw herself around a crying stranger at a bus station to make that person feel better, happily and without question. Blaine couldn’t. Even being familiar with Wade, and his own identity, and the open-mindedness that would come with it, Blaine was afraid of touching people he didn’t really know. He’d had the idea that his touch wasn’t welcome drilled into his brain through his whole stay in middle school. He’d had it literally beaten into him during his freshman year of high school.
So he was so, so glad, in that moment, and so many before and after it, that Tina was his co-captain.
“They kicked me out,” Wade sobbed into Tina’s chest. “They - they said - they were embarrassed, they told me I had to change, and I wouldn’t, and my whole family hated me because I was famous for being a f-freak, so they told me I had to leave until I - until I got over it.”
Blaine’s his heart lodged itself in his throat and beat heavily between his collarbones.
Tina was rubbing Wade’s back, her cheek against the top of his head. “It’s okay,” she repeated. Blaine could hear the telling waver in her voice. “I’m so sorry, Wade.”
Blaine stood, almost automatically, and walked across the room to them. He laid a hand on Tina’s back, and one on Wade’s shoulder. “Where--” he tried to ask, but his voice was strangled. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, in through his nose, out through his mouth. He tried again. “Where are you staying?”
Wade’s crying was starting to calm down. He was taking breaths like Blaine’s, huge lungfuls of air moving slowly in and out of him. “My grandmother,” he said, muffled against Tina. “She’s the only one who--” He didn’t finish. He just said, almost broken, “She loves me.”
“She lives in Lima?” Tina asked. “That’s why you transferred?”
Wade nodded. He let go of Tina, and she stepped back to give him room to rub the tear tracks off of his face with both hands. He sniffed one more time. “Sorry,” he said weakly.
“It’s fine,” Blaine murmured. He stepped away to grab a chair and pull it closer, turning it around and sitting on it backwards, with his arms crossed over the back. Tina settled next to Wade on the bench with her arm around him, flush against his side. “I’m glad that there was someone you could go to.”
“Me, too,” Wade said. “I didn’t think there would be, but -- after Nationals, and after my parents - she told me that she didn’t care who I was, I was family. I don’t think anyone talks to her anymore.” He wiped at his eyes again, taking another breath. “I spent the whole summer trying to get away from everything that happened last year, but everyone knows.”
“You were trying to get away from it?” Tina asked, eyebrows drawing together. “I thought you loved being Unique.”
Wade closed his eyes, shaking his head back and forth. “I do, but -- look what happened. Maybe I - maybe things would be easier for everyone if I were -- normal.”
“You are normal,” Blaine said, so fiercely that it made Wade look up at him in surprise. Blaine could feel his anger boiling low in his stomach - anger at Wade’s family, anger at the kids who tried to take the strength out of him, anger that he could still feel the sympathetic ache in his ribs from size twelve dress shoes, anger that anyone, ever, could be made to say the words if I were normal. “Listen to me, Wade,” he said, reaching out to capture both of Wade’s hands in his. Wade blinked back at him, but met his eyes. “I can’t know exactly how you feel, because we’re different people with difference circumstances. But I know what it feels like to try and suppress something about yourself to make things easier for other people. You need to do what feels right for you.” He softened a little. “If you aren’t sure about your identity, that’s fine. You have all the time in the world to figure yourself out. You’re fifteen. But please, don’t let anyone tell you who you need to be for them. Only you have any say in who you are.”
He let go of Wade’s hands and sat back, and Wade kept staring at him with big, overwhelmed eyes. “I--” he said, and faltered for a moment. His eyes filled with tears again. “I’m still not sure. About me. For me. But I feel more like myself when I’m Unique, more than when I’m not. There’s just nowhere I can be her where people won’t hate me for it.”
“Here,” Tina said softly. She tucked her head against Wade’s shoulder. “Be Unique here, in this room, in glee.”
Blaine nodded. “If you can’t be Unique everywhere, you can start in here. We won’t judge you, or hurt you, or anything. That’s what this club is for. You can express yourself however you want to, be whoever you want to be. We’ll be here for you no matter what. And we’ll do our best to take care of you.”
The tears were back to coursing down Wade’s cheeks, and he wiped them away with delicate little swipes of his fingers. His smile was tremulous and small, but it was present, brightening his face. “Kids in Vocal Adrenaline didn’t even know each other’s names.”
“Vocal Adrenaline is a musical war machine,” Blaine said, copying Wade’s smile and letting it grow bigger. “We’re kind of the eternal underdogs.”
“Underdogs with heart,” Tina added.
“Underdogs with heart and a National Championship,” Blaine concluded, and Wade laughed.
Blaine stood out of his chair and set it back over with the others, before returning to Wade and offering him a hand. When Wade took it, Blaine pulled him up from the piano bench and into a hug. “Your audition was beautiful,” Blaine said, drawing back. “I know you meant what you were singing. New Directions kind of has this tradition of singing what we’re feeling, and I think you’ll be really good at doing that.” He tilted his head, grinning crookedly at Wade. “You’re always welcome to put something together. As Wade or Unique, whoever you want. We’ll always want to hear your voice.”
Wade looked very pleased. He bent down to retrieve his bag and slipped it back over his shoulders, then turned to look at Tina, then to Blaine. He smiled. “I’ll think about it.”
* * *
Blaine woke up the next morning to three emails on his phone. The first, which he allowed himself to read while still cocooned in a nest of blankets, was from Mr. Schuester, assuring him that he'd spoken to Principal Figgins, Coach Sylvester and Coach Washington, and that Figgins was looking into reinstating the Bully Whips. Blaine sent him a quick reply to thank him, then rolled out of bed to start getting ready for school.
He saved Coach Sylvester's email until he was awake enough to deal with it, fixing his hair in the bathroom mirror after his shower with the phone balanced against the taps. Hearing her insane message relayed to him in the calm, vaguely bored voice of his text-to-speech app was an exercise in surrealism, and he gave up listening somewhere around, Even though I'm profoundly distracted by the impending birth of my first child, I'll have Becky Jackson give Coach Washington a few tips about taking down a hostile entity, which I picked up in my extensive spy training for the CIA.
It ended, As you are still somehow romantically attached to Porcelain, despite your obvious inability to dress yourself, I won’t find a way to punish you for daring to interrupt my third trimester with your nattering requests.
Blaine snorted and dictated an email back with his hands full of hair gel, thanking Coach Sue and apologizing for the inconvenience. It took Vlingo four tries to get the word inconvenience right.
He saved the final email until he was on his way out of the front door, plucking his keys from the hooks next to the doorframe.
From: hummelk2353@students.nyada.edu
Subject: Personally, I don’t find it particularly flattering.
I found this on my hard drive last night when I was procrastinating. Rachel took it. She seems insistent that you’ll like it.
I love you. Have a good day!
Attached was a picture of Kurt, laughing with his head thrown back and his eyes closed, outside somewhere that Blaine didn’t recognize. His hair was windblown, the top two buttons of his shirt open with the faintest shadows of his collarbones visible. Rachel had obviously caught him while he wasn’t looking, and it was gorgeous, to see him totally candid like that. It warmed Blaine from his hair to his toes, and he stood on the front porch of his house at eight in the morning, smiling dopily, staring down at his phone.
Eventually, he made the picture his new background, slipped the phone into his pocket, and went to school.
The day was shockingly uneventful. Joe approached him before lunch to give some suggestions for the recruitment numbers - all of them were either vaguely religious or classic rock, which seemed to be all Joe ever really listened to before he started at McKinley. Which was fine, obviously. They were good suggestions, and Blaine almost kept Joe too late in the hallway discussing them. He’d ended up having to run for Spanish, his dreads flying behind him, one hand raised to wave, while Blaine laughed and waved back before heading for the cafeteria.
Harmony wasn’t there again, which he chose not to take as a bad sign. If she was quitting, she would tell them. He saw Tina frown at the empty seat once or twice. She apparently didn’t have the same thought.
Between sixth and seventh period, he was accosted in the boys’ locker room by Roz Washington. It was like trying to pass a test for which the questions were in Mandarin. She looked him up and down with her arms folded over her chest and interrogated him about Wade, and who was bothering him, and why. In the end, she said, If that boy is a beautiful black woman on the inside, then that’s who he is, and nobody’s gonna keep him from walking down that hallway being whoever the hell he wants. You hear he’s in trouble, you come running to me. You got it? Tell him, too.
Blaine had enough time to nod before she turned around and left him standing next to his gym locker.
Given how intimidating Coach Washington was when she was just being helpful, Blaine had good feelings about Wade being under her protection.
He’d almost escaped the day completely unscathed and was pulling the books he needed for homework out of his locker when Tina appeared at his elbow in the empty hallway and wrapped her hand around his arm, looking panicked. “Come on!” she shouted, pulling at him. “We need to go.”
“But--” Blaine, confused, tried to pull his arm away. “What are you--”
“Unique just walked in,” Tina said, frustrated, “and the rugby team saw her.”
All of the air seemed to disappear from Blaine’s lungs at once. He fumbled to slam his locker closed one-handed, and Tina took off, dragging him along, down the hall, around a corner, down another hall. “I tried to tell Coach Washington,” Tina called over the sound of their running footsteps, “but she wasn’t in her office, and I didn’t know where--”
Blaine planted his feet and yanked her to a halt, almost making both of them fall over. “Stop!” he said in a whisper. “Shh.” He tucked them both against the wall, sneaking up slowly to the corner. He’d definitely just seen-
“What are you doing?” Tina asked.
“Harmony just ran by,” Blaine whispered. He’d seen her dash past the mouth of the hallway, a look of pure determination on her face. “Come on, come on--” He pulled Tina up to the corner with him and peered around to see what was going on.
Down the hall, four rugby jocks had Unique backed against a bank of frosted windows. She looked equal parts angry and terrified, with the sequins of her dress catching and reflecting the muted light, splintering it into pale shapes along the floor and ceiling. The jocks just looked angry, like they were all so morally affronted by what they were looking at that they couldn’t get their mouths to untwist out of bared white teeth, like circling dogs. Josh Coleman had the lead of his three nameless flunkies, and he was saying something too quietly for Blaine to hear, but it looked awful, from the way Unique’s face became more and more enraged and humiliated.
But then Harmony was there. She slipped into the space between Josh and Wade, and Blaine could only see her expression in profile, but she looked intense. It was the razor-blade focus that Blaine had noticed the previous day, turned deadly. Unique looked surprised, eyebrows raised, anger slipping off of her face as Harmony leaned forward to start speaking. Josh Coleman had about half a foot on Harmony and had to look down to see her, and at first he just looked amused, casting his eyes from side to side at his buddies, like they were sharing in a joke. But then his face paled a little, and he pulled his attention back to Harmony, who was really leaning into it now, her voice never getting any louder than to fill the space between them.
“What’s she saying?” Tina asked, watching transfixed, the way Blaine was, unable to take his eyes away from the way that the jocks were starting to shift uncomfortably and glance at each other, and at Josh, who was getting more and more pale, his eyes huge with horrified shock.
“I have no idea,” Blaine murmured.
Unique was starting to smile now, sort of reluctantly, listening to whatever Harmony was saying and biting her lip to keep from laughing as the nameless rugby guys started to take little steps away from Harmony and Josh. Her stream of speaking was breathless and unbroken, and she started to poke him in the chest with her pointer finger, as if accusing him of something, and he just stood there, taking it, looking too shocked and horrified to react.
“What the hell are you two doing?” said a voice behind Blaine and Tina, and they both jumped and looked to see Coach Washington with her hands on her hips, staring at them. “I hear from four separate people that Asian Horror Movie’s running around this school looking for me, and then I find the two of you peeking around a corner like cartoon characters in a rejected Disney movie from the nineties. You do realize that I have things to do that don’t involve your sorry asses, right?”
“Unique’s in trouble,” Tina said quickly. “Or, well, she was, but--”
“Then why are the two of you just sitting here watching?” Coach Washington sounded like she was actually angry at them, as she moved around them to the corner to look out for herself. Then she frowned, looking confused.
“They, uh,” Blaine said, shrugging helplessly. “I think they have it under control.”
Roz Washington whistled low. “They sure do,” she said. “I don’t know what that little girl is saying to him, but he looks like he’s about to catch fire.” She stepped back, looking at them. “Well, I’m here, so I might as well put the fear of God into that little ratfaced bastard. You tell me if anyone else gives Unique any trouble. And tell Red Beret to use her voodoo powers for good.” Then Coach Washington stepped out into the hall, and Tina and Blaine piled back against the corner to watch as she stomped down to where Harmony was still speaking and grabbed Josh Coleman by the ear. She said something to Harmony and Unique, and then dragged him off towards her office, drawing his flunkies behind her.
Harmony seemed to take a big breath. Then she turned around and stuck her hand out for Unique to shake, smiling. Blaine caught I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced on her lips, before Unique started to laugh, and reached out to take Harmony’s hand.
Tina’s body relaxed next to Blaine’s. “I have no idea what just happened,” she murmured, “but I’m really glad it did.”
“Agreed,” Blaine breathed.
They looked at each other, and smiled. Tina took his hand in hers and squeezed.
Harmony never told them what she said to Josh, and when Wade was asked, he'd just smile with this far-off, pleased expression.
Unique had come back into the school decked out in full regalia because she'd had something prepared for glee club that required being the real me, as she phrased it, standing at the front of the choir room while the jazz band settled themselves for her number. Or at least as real as I can figure out so far. She'd smiled, and pulled Harmony up to the front, saying that they'd decided to do this number together. Harmony added that they'd only had a little while to practice with each other, but she was great at improvising. Then the song started.
And Blaine was blown away, sitting there listening to the club's two newest members sing the hell out of Pink's 18 Wheeler.
They meant it so much. They both threw themselves into it, and the change was totally staggering in Harmony, who, Blaine realized now, had never really sung something for herself in front of him. It was phenomenal to see the real fun in her eyes, and the way that she and Unique kept looking at each other, singing at each other, almost laughing. Their voices blended beautifully. It was so, so obvious, from the way Harmony moved and smiled and meant every word, that she was going to stay.
And it was such a relief to see Unique swinging back into who she was when she performed, big and dramatic and totally gorgeous, If I Were A Boy left behind for something fantastic and loud. Being herself. It was amazing to watch.
They charged the tiers and pulled Tina and Sugar out of their seats amid delighted laughter, dragging them to the front to sing and dance out the rest of the song. Tina looked ecstatic, mid-waltz with Harmony, laughing with her head cast back while Sugar and Unique shimmied nearby, and Blaine, not to be outplayed, leapt out of his seat and over to Joe and Artie, who danced with him, grinning and singing backup. Joe pulled Mr. Schue, who had been watching and laughing and clapping along, out of his seat to dance, too.
Across the room, Blaine met Tina's eye as she came out of a spin with Sugar. He could see that sudden knowledge in her, too, knocking into both of them, huge and bright, he was sure, on both of their faces.
This is what glee club was supposed to feel like.
* * *
“So, congratulations,” Kurt said, sounding fond even through the phone. “You survived your first week as glee club co-captain.”
Blaine grinned, squinting up at the sky. It was a little while before Friday’s glee rehearsal, and it was beautiful outside, the sun out and washing everything with bright gold. Blaine had sneaked out into the empty courtyard behind the cafeteria and was laying back on one of the cement tiers, his head pillowed on his free arm, his legs dangling over the edge at the knee. The stone was warm beneath him, radiating heat through his shirt and into his skin, and it felt wonderful. But, honestly, not as nice as hearing Kurt’s voice. “Did you think I wouldn’t make it?” he asked.
“Of course I thought you’d make it,” Kurt said, as if that much was obvious. “I knew you would be good at this kind of thing.”
That was actually a surprise. Blaine blinked. “Really?”
“Why do you sound so shocked?” Kurt asked, laughing. But then he softened, and Blaine felt Kurt’s voice almost like it was a physical thing, winding its way around Blaine’s body in a warm, absent sort of hug. “You’re good with people, Blaine, no matter what you think. And people like you. They like you you, not just the part of you that you want people to like. You’re a good person. You care, way more than you really need to. It’s one of the things that’s really admirable about you.”
Blaine could feel his surprise and pleasure moving through him, like it was in his blood, making every part it touched warm and luminous. “I--” he said, sort of breathless, with no idea what else to say. “Thank you. I wish you’d been here to tell me that for the last few days.”
Kurt laughed. “I think you did fine without me constantly texting you courage.” Blaine felt a blush crawl over his cheeks and neck at the vaguely mortifying reminder. Kurt’s voice softened again. “You did a good job, Blaine. Everything isn’t totally solved, but what ever is, really, with that group? You worked with what you had. I’m really proud of you.”
Blaine was not going to start tearing up in the courtyard when anyone could just waltz by and see him. He took his arm out from beneath his head and pressed it over his eyes, swallowing hard and trying to breathe normally. I'm really proud of you. Kurt could say that so easily, like there was no other way he could feel. No matter how many times Blaine heard it, it was overwhelming, like it was too bright, or too deep.
“Blaine?” Kurt asked, concerned. “Are you there?”
“Yep,” Blaine said in a strangled voice. “Give me a sec.”
“Oh my god, I love you,” Kurt said, laughing. “I’m sorry. I don’t know my own strength.”
“You really don’t,” Blaine managed. He drew his hand back to press it over one cheek and then the other. Warm, but not wet. He let out a shaking breath. “Okay. Sorry. Crisis averted.”
“You really did do a good job, though,” Kurt said. “Just wait until you start dealing with pregnancy scares and people cheating with each other. Glee’s going to be a volatile little family of talent and crazy in no time.”
“I just hope that we get more members,” Blaine said. He sat up a little on his elbow, looking out over the empty tables and chairs at the bottom of the courtyard. “No one else seems to be interested. We’re putting together some numbers, but I don’t know how well they’re gonna work.”
“Oh, they’ll come,” Kurt said.
“You sound so sure,” Blaine said, smiling.
“Of course I am,” Kurt said. “When word gets around about what you guys did for Unique - you know why we joined glee in the first place, Blaine. It’s safe. You can be who you are. And now everyone will know that, and you’ll have kids trickling in all quarter, who’re too scared or weird to join any of the other clubs, but they know that glee is a place where other people feel accepted and have fun and stick up for each other. You’re going to be up to competition standards in no time, believe me. You’ll be tripping over new talent by Christmas break.”
Blaine was rendered breathless again. He shook his head to clear it, sitting up fully, letting his feet swing and knock against the cement stair. “There’s this plaque on the wall in the choir room,” he said softly. “I never noticed it before this week.”
“Lillian Adler?” Kurt asked, and Blaine could hear the smile in his voice. “I think she was Mr. Schue’s glee club coach. ‘By its very definition--’”
“’Glee is about opening yourself up to joy,’” Blaine finished. He smiled himself, once again casting his head back to stare up at the cloudless blue sky. “I want to make sure that’s the way things work this year. I think that’s how it’s always been.”
“You can do it,” Kurt said, and Blaine knew he really believed. “Lead by example.”
“I’m gonna try,” Blaine agreed. He brought the phone down to look at the time before pressing it back to his ear. “I have to get going. Glee practice. We’re doing the wrap-up song.”
“Oo, what song?” Kurt asked.
Blaine grinned. “C’Mon, by Fun. and Panic! at the Disco. Tina suggested it.”
“I’ll have to look it up.”
“I think it works.” Blaine tucked the phone closer to his ear. “I love you. I’ll talk to you tonight.”
“I love you, too,” Kurt murmured, very warm. “Talk to you tonight. Have fun.”
“Definitely.”
So c’mon, c’mon, with everything falling down around me, I’d like to believe in all the possibilities.
There was a moment, on the stage, with the lights hot above him and the boards solid beneath him, when Blaine came to a realization:
They were good.
The voices swelling around him were strong and bright, layering into harmonies beneath the duet that he was sharing with Tina. They made the song full and resonant, making Blaine feel like he was being lifted up and carried along by it, making it feel effortless, and so fun, and so freeing. They were all so happy, and Blaine could feel it in every word as they all sang together, this great crescendo swept up by the band, sweeping into him as he stood at the center of the stage and let himself feel it. There were no pockets where old voices were missing, no little vocal ghosts or holes in the choreography. This was theirs, his and Tina’s and Artie’s and everyone else’s.
This was the new voice of New Directions. They’d found it.
As Tina drew out the last word of the song with the two of them stood at the very edge of the stage, she gave a little curtsy to Mr. Schue clapping and whooping in the seats. When she straightened back up, she met Blaine’s eyes with a brilliant smile. She looked so proud. Blaine felt the exact same way.
He dipped his own flourished little bow at their audience of one, and was immediately tackled by six laughing, excited bodies, jumping, group-hugging, shrieking about how great that was, how good they were together, how fun. Blaine hugged back, and shrieked back, and was so, so excited.
This year was going to be amazing.