Stay Lost On Our Way Home
Title: Stay Lost On Our Way Home
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).
Author's Note: This story takes some of the ideas about the seniors passing the torch from my last fic and applies them to the first week of Blaine and Tina's senior year. I started it before Goodbye aired, so it became a little AU-ish; sorry about that! I'm not quite as psychic as I'd hoped. (Except that I was very slightly psychic about the thing with The Notebook.) Many, many thanks to stoney321 for her excellent beta skills, and to flaming-muse for being so lovely and encouraging. The title comes from C'Mon, by Fun. and Panic! at the Disco.
When Kurt left for NYADA, Blaine spent three days in bed. He watched terrible Lifetime movies and moved solely to use the bathroom and procure the only snack food in his house, which turned out to be a stale bag of pretzels from a party his parents had thrown over the summer. It was a misery which was profound and heavy and consistently terrible, and it took every ounce of his already tenuous self-control to keep from texting Kurt basically all of the time. Three entire days of this. Eventually he ran out of pretzels and resorted to the case of expensive chocolates someone had sent his mother from Belgium. She wasn’t there to be upset with him about it, and at that point he didn’t care what she thought.
On the fourth day, Tina called and said they needed a Girls’ Night.
So that was how Blaine ended up on his couch with Tina, The Notebook, and half a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, huddled in all of the blankets from all of the rooms in his house. Blaine felt his heart drop down to his stomach and then down to the floor when the characters in the movie started dancing in the middle of the street and Billie Holiday started singing about seeing you in all the old familiar places. But he felt Tina’s hand sneak into his, and glanced at her to see that she wasn’t looking at him, but her eyes were bright with tears the way he knew his own were, and he knew that she got it, in a way that no one else probably would.
* * *
“I can’t believe that Lima Middle still uses this laser background in their yearbook photos,” Tina said from where she was sprawled on her stomach on Blaine’s bed. “It’s like the definition of tacky. My dad burned his elementary school portraits when he found them a few years ago because he asked for the Tron background and it looked like he was trapped in a wormhole or something.”
Blaine grinned over his shoulder in the mirror. Tina was swinging her feet back and forth, slowly turning the pages of a yearbook she’d managed to intimidate off of one of her younger brother’s friends. “I can actually see your dad doing that.” He had met Mr. Cohen-Chang a few times during the summer, when Tina invited him to her house. Blaine had found him sort of geeky and adorable, not that he would ever tell her so. “What do you think?” he asked, turning around to face her. “Stripes or no stripes?” He held the bowties he had been considering up to his collar, side by side.
Tina looked up from the yearbook and squinted at him. “What are you looking for, here?”
“I’m planning my outfit for tomorrow.” He looked down at the ties, frowning. “I think the solid one. The stripes are a little loud with this shirt.” When he looked back up at her, he found Tina smirking at him, biting her lip to keep from laughing. He rolled his eyes and tossed the ties back into the drawer with the others, then pushed it closed. “Whatever. Your fashion sense hasn’t changed since the nineteen-sixties.”
“They say socks are in this year,” Tina said breezily, turning the page. “And pants that go down past your ankles. What did Kurt say?”
Blaine couldn’t help his quick smile at the mention of Kurt. He’d had plenty of advice, all of it unasked for and delivered with the quick-march rant of a makeover professional, peppered with compliments (would bring out your eyes, Blaine, you have such gorgeous eyes, now I miss your stupid eyes) and given while running between orientation activities at NYADA (everyone is just like Gerber Baby Girl, I don’t know how I’m going to survive four years of a thousand Rachels). He’d sent Blaine a text with a photo of his own first-day-of-classes outfit, half-turned in his full-length mirror: a barely-gray button-up under a charcoal waistcoat with a shining gunmetal silk back, dove gray jeans practically painted on. The message attached to it was, Wish me luck. Groggy and still mostly asleep at seven thirty in the morning during what was still his summer, Blaine had opened the photo and texted back that Kurt wouldn’t need it.
“I didn’t ask,” he said lightly, sitting down on the bed next to Tina’s shoulder. Tina made a derisive little noise, and he sighed. “He had suggestions.”
“Did he tell you to lose the bowties?” Tina asked. “Because that’s my main bit of advice.”
Blaine nudged her arm. “Shut up. I didn’t let you come over so you could mock my sartorial choices.” He leaned closer to look down at the book, open to two pages filled with rows of awkwardly-photographed pre-teens, all of them caught somewhere between catatonic and ecstatic. “Do you honestly think you can learn something about the freshman from their eighth grade yearbook? Most of them look like they’re dying.”
Tina shrugged, and Blaine bounced with the movement. “Our best bets for glee candidates are kids who either look really uncomfortable or really enthusiastic.” She pointed at a photo of a girl with a truly impressive piece of orthodontic equipment welded into her face. “I bet we could convince her to join.”
“Her headpiece would look awesome under the stage lights.”
Tina laughed, then trailed off, letting the pads of her fingers travel over the faces spread between the pages. “This is probably going to sound weird,” she murmured, not looking at Blaine, “but I’m sort of excited about the club being really small again.”
Blaine tilted his head, peering curiously down at the shining black of Tina’s hair. It was something that had been worrying him, a little. Building from himself, Tina, Artie, Joe and Sugar into a twelve-piece group for competitions was going to difficult. “Why?”
Tina shrugged again. “I don’t know. I guess - I like that we’re starting over. It was fun in the beginning, when we had no idea what we were doing. I mean, it was fun last year, too, but back when the club first started, we had to rely on each other so much.” Her voice softens. “It’ll be nice, to start finding new people who fit in with us and make us better.”
A smile tilted its way over Blaine’s lips, nostalgic fondness warming his chest. He loved when Tina talked about the first year of New Directions. She always sounded like Kurt did when he described how the club was back then, how important it became for all of them. They both got so hushed and breathless about it, like it was sacred, their history. It made him love both of them a little more every time.
“It will,” he agreed quietly. “I’m excited about that, too.”
Tina reached out and tucked her hand into his. “I’m glad you’re my co-captain,” she said, smiling.
Blaine squeezed her hand. “I am, too.”
“Although maybe Headpiece Girl will be a little distracting.”
“Let’s see how well she sings before we rule her out.”
* * *
Mr. Schuester started his First Day of School Morning Meeting by writing NEW NEW DIRECTIONS in big letters across the white board. That’s our lesson this week, he’d said. Let’s find out where we’re going this year. Let’s find our voice again.
The words started a little anticipatory buzz in Blaine’s head that followed him around all day. That voice was small right now; Sugar and Joe had stayed, as he’d hoped, and Artie, of course. (Artie had wheeled right over the second he’d walked through the choir room door and pulled Blaine down into what he called a “bro-hug,” followed by the most elaborate of fist-bumps.) Sam had transferred back to Kentucky to be with his family when Kurt and Finn graduated. But the voice would be growing, soon. Auditions were that afternoon, and Mr. Schue seemed optimistic about kids wanting to join. They were national champions, after all. The chairs around the five remaining members wouldn’t be empty for long.
(Those chairs were a little sad, as well. Blaine had seen Tina take a moment when her eyes passed over the place where she and Mike used to sit. As for himself, he’d taken a picture of Kurt’s preferred seat and texted it to him. Your chair misses you. Thirty seconds later, he’d gotten Kurt’s response: You’re ridiculous. Have a good first day.
Ten seconds after that: I miss it, too.)
The buzz remained, in the back of his mind, through all of his new classes, which mostly went by in a blur of syllabi and textbooks. First days were tiresome, after a while. It was all the same rules about texting and cheating, and there was always the itch to stop talking and do something, which Blaine knew he only really shared with other students in his AP classes, and even then, only a few. First days were also a minefield of first impressions, and the moment when teachers went around the class asking students to introduce themselves never got less mortifying. Blaine remembered enjoying it at Dalton, when everyone would smile at him and they would move on to the next boy. At McKinley, eyes tended to linger while the next student gave his name and his favorite color or his interesting fact. Blaine stood out. He was trying to get used to it, but it wasn’t really working.
So it was with a bit of relief that Blaine dumped all of his new books into his locker at the end of the day. He was in the process of organizing them by section of the day when he heard his name being shouted down the hallway, and turned in surprise to see Tina flying at him, holding something in her hand, shoving past underclassmen trying to scatter out of her way. She stopped just in time to keep from crashing into him and whipped her hair out of her face, smiling so brightly that she seemed to glow.
“Blaine!” she said again, as if he hadn’t heard her screaming it as she ran. “This is either the best or worst thing that’s ever happened to us.”
“What are you talking about?”
She shoved a piece of paper into his hands, and he turned it over, eyebrows furrowed. It was the sign-up sheet that Mr. Schue had tacked to the bulletin board that morning before homeroom.
“I mean,” Tina continued, “they’re both really talented. Like, crazy talented. I can’t believe they both transferred here. It’s like Rachel and Kurt were reincarnated.”
There were two names on the sheet. Written in careful, looping letters on the first line was Wade Adams. On the second line, in giant script, was Harmony Cook.
“The Gerber Baby,” Blaine murmured to himself. “She even uses gold stars.”
“I know!” Tina said. “And Wade killed at Nationals last year. He even made me like Tommy for a few minutes.”
Blaine knew. Someone had recorded Wade’s version of Starships and put it up on YouTube, and Blaine had listened to it on repeat for three weeks, until Kurt had threatened to cut off all contact with him. Unique was incredible. So was Harmony; her Buenos Aires at Sectionals was perfect. She could honestly sing the phone book and Blaine would listen, rapt. It was the same as the way he felt about Rachel’s voice. This was very, very good.
“Why would this be the worst thing that ever happened to us?” Blaine asked, handing the sheet back. “They’re amazing.”
Tina shrugged, tucking it into a folder. “Well, like I said. Kurt and Rachel. They could be serious divas.”
Blaine rolled his eyes. “I’m sure they’re fine. I date Kurt, and we're both friends with Rachel.” He shut his locker and offered her his arm. “Come on. We can’t miss these auditions, they’re going to be incredible.”
* * *
“She even did the weird little operatic cadenza at the end. I thought Mr. Schue was going to pass out.” Blaine tucked the phone closer to his ear and spread his other arm out, concentrating on walking a straight heel-to-toe line down the curb between the sidewalk and the street. The afternoon was slowly falling into evening, and the heavy sunlight splashed its way through the trees on either side of the road, throwing the shadows of leaves against the dark asphalt on his walk home.
“I’m not even a little surprised that Gerber Baby thought Think of Me was a good audition song,” Kurt sighed through the receiver. “If ever there was someone to take an opportunity to show off.”
“Come on, Kurt,” Blaine said. “You don’t even know her. Maybe she just really likes Phantom.”
“You don’t know those NYADA mixer kids, Blaine. That girl made Rachel cry. When I complimented her on Buenos Aires, she told me that this year was going to be a bloodbath. How do you know she isn’t a spy sent in to divide and conquer and then get out and rejoin her legion of evil at whatever school she actually goes to?”
Blaine snorted, then wobbled a little on the curb and stopped to rebalance himself. “I think you’re being a little paranoid. She was in the Unitards, they don't really seem to be the 'divide and conquer' type.”
“Blaine. Listen to me,” Kurt said, and Blaine smiled at how serious he sounded. “You didn't meet any of my friends for weeks after we started hanging out. That's because everyone would have thought you were a spy, coming to seduce me and then leave me brokenhearted and unable to perform at Sectionals so Dalton would beat us. I'm pretty sure it at least crossed Rachel's mind that you were paying Karofs-- David to harass me and get me to transfer and join the Warblers.”
There was the sound of a struggle on the other end of the line, until Blaine heard Kurt give a shriek of surprised pain and suddenly Rachel's voice was coming clear, if a little breathless, through the receiver. “I never thought that, Blaine!” she said, earnestly. “I always liked you! I maybe thought it a little. I've been listening to your conversation with Kurt slightly, just due to proximity, our apartment is so very small--”
“You've been invading my personal space for five minutes to hear!” Kurt shouted in the background.
“Hush, Kurt. I'm on the phone. Blaine, we just want you to be aware that New Directions has a history of sabotage, and that as captain you are expected to deal with any instances that may arise. I know it might be difficult, because you have a very friendly personality and you seem to enjoy being approachable and well-liked, but show choir is a serious enterprise, and sometimes it's necessary to destroy people. Who's to say if Harmony is secretly evil, but you never know. Have you looked into bugging her car? I can put you in touch with Lauren Zizes. She's very affordable.”
Blaine was trying very hard not to start laughing. “Thank you, Rachel,” he said, “but I'm sure that Tina and I can handle it. We're not at the point where we want to start illegally bugging anyone. But I'll be sure to call you if we get there.”
“All right, Blaine. I'm choosing to trust you. Just remember that New Directions is my baby, and if you or Tina allow anyone to destroy it from the inside, or if you yourselves run it into the ground, there will be no gift basket big enough to deter my rage. Okay?”
Blaine swallowed. Even delivered in Rachel's look at me I am so pleasant tone, that was actually terrifying. “You, um. You've got it, Rachel.”
“Have a good evening! Say 'hi' to Tina and Artie and Sugar and Joe for me!”
“Er. Will do.”
The was another, briefer sound of shuffling, and then Kurt was back. “I am so sorry about that,” he said sincerely. “She's been nuts the last few weeks. I think the level of talent here scares her. I told you about what she did to Sunshine Corazon, right? She's still one of the best, but she's not the best enough. Cry me a river.”
Blaine chose the ignore the Kurt! screamed in the background. “It's fine,” he said, smiling. “I know she's under a lot of pressure.”
Kurt snorted. “Rachel's better under pressure. She thinks of it like coal being pressed into diamonds. It's actually kind of frightening. This level of crazy only ever happens when she doesn't know how to deal with something.” He paused. “I think she misses everyone from glee.”
“I miss her, too. And you.”
Kurt sighed, and they were quiet for a moment. Blaine quit his balance-beam walk on the curb and stepped over to the sidewalk, looking down at the breaks between the pale, perfect squares. Missing Kurt was a constant ache buried deep inside of him, flaring at times to pulse warmly in his chest at a memory, or to engulf him entirely, making it difficult to breathe through how miserable it was to not have Kurt at an arm’s length, or a fifteen minute drive. It was getting a little better, over time, but not much. He missed Kurt more than he could actually put into words.
Kurt broke the silence with another sigh. “Anyway,” he lilted, “now that we’ve had our daily pity party.” Blaine laughed a little at that, and he could hear Kurt’s smile start to warm his voice. “You didn’t tell me about Wade’s audition. Is he just as amazing off-stage?”
Blaine’s own smile faded. He adjusted his bag over his shoulder. “Kurt?” he asked. “When you met Wade, did he seem - sad, to you?”
“I - well,” Kurt said, sounding confused. “I don’t know. He seemed shy. But very sweet. Why? Is he okay?”
“I - don’t know?” Blaine said. “I mean, I can’t tell if it’s just how he is, or if it’s something else, but - he sang If I Were A Boy for his audition today. And it was beautiful, Kurt, really. Tina was crying by the second line. He put so much emotion into it, and he sounded incredible.”
Wade had stood at the front of the choir room and given everything to that song. It was heartbreaking. Just the way he looked, like it was shattering him to let the words leave him. And he didn’t look at anyone. He closed his eyes, or looked at the floor, or over their heads. And when he was done, he just twitched a smile at them that didn’t really make it to his eyes, and he sat down in the stunned silence. Then Sugar reached over and wrapped her arms around him and told him that he sounded just like the girl who won MVP last year at Nationals, only better because he made her feel bad for him.
“I don’t know if there’s a problem,” Blaine murmured. “But it’s a pretty telling song choice.”
“Talk to him,” Kurt said immediately. “See if there’s something you can help him with. When he spoke to me and Mercedes for the first time last year, he made it sound like things weren’t great at home, or at school. He probably needs someone to talk to.”
Blaine stopped at the gate to his house and looked up the path to his front door. His parents’ cars weren’t in the driveway, so they hadn’t managed to make it home today. “I don’t think that I have a great track record of giving good advice,” he said slowly. “Look what happened when I tried to help you.”
“It was good advice, just not for that situation. And besides,” Kurt said, in a voice that egged Blaine into smiling again. “You probably know what you’re talking about this time.”
* * *
Blaine had intended to speak to Wade as soon as he saw him the next day, but that didn’t happen. It was like Wade disappeared the second he was out of the choir room, and no matter where Blaine looked, he was nowhere to be found. It didn’t help that at every turn, Harmony appeared, all bright-eyed and carrying sheet music, suggesting solos suited to her voice for Sectionals.
“We only have seven members, Harmony,” Blaine told her as she followed him down the hallway to his locker, after ambushing him again as he came out of Trigonometry. “We aren’t really thinking about Sectionals right now.”
“Oh, I know!” she said, hurrying to keep up with him while shuffling the music in her hands. “I’d just like to be prepared. There are only so many days between then and now, and why waste any time when we already have me? Now, I was thinking, since I was amazing at Think of Me at auditions, and I’ve seen enough recordings of Warbler performances to know that you’re a strong tenor, maybe we could sing All I Ask Of You! It’s a good duet to show off our strengths, and even if you can’t keep up with me vocally, Christine’s parts are more interesting, so the judges will notice less.”
All of this was delivered breathlessly and through a huge, bright smile, and Blaine could hardly keep up enough to be that vague, tired kind of offended that he used to be whenever Rachel or Puck said anything ridiculous. (And anyway, Raoul’s parts were obviously more interesting.) He spun his combination into his locker and pulled it open. “It’s nice that you’re thinking this far ahead,” he told her, switching his books out to the second half of the day, “but we’re really just trying to focus on getting members right now. We’re putting together some group numbers to do for the school to get kids interested in joining. If you have suggestions for those, we’d be happy to hear them.”
“Group numbers like, the group harmonizing and swaying behind the lead?”
Blaine smiled a little, straightening the notebooks he’d just swapped out. “No,” he said. “We’re doing popcorn leads. Everyone sings a few lines.”
Harmony’s smile faltered. “But there’s - there’s still a real lead, right?”
Blaine shut his locker and turned to her, resettling his bag over his shoulders. “Harmony,” he said, “It’s great that you’re so passionate about this. Really. We’re going to need that passion. But not every song is going to have a lead, and when it does have a lead, the soloist isn’t always going to be you.” He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “You have a beautiful voice, you know that. But you need to understand, in this group, that isn’t what it’s about.”
Harmony’s smile cracked right down the middle. She went very still under Blaine’s hand, and Blaine felt the stir of something uncomfortable in his stomach at the look in her eyes. She blinked a few times, then took a little aborted breath and said, “I, um. I have to--”
Then she ducked out from under Blaine’s hand and hurried off down the hallway with careful little steps, her skirt swaying prettily, Mary Janes making soft sounds on the linoleum.
Blaine stared after her, with no idea what he did.
From: Blaine
She looked terrified. Like I’d just threatened to kill her or something.
From: Kurt
This is what you get for volunteering to be in charge of a bunch of people
you knew were bound to be crazy. You should have known it would
be like herding cats.
Blaine’s AP European History teacher kept him late after class that afternoon. Or, truthfully, their conversation about King James I bled over the final bell, and Blaine only realized when he happened to glance at his watch and see that he was already ten minutes late for glee rehearsal. With hurried apologies to Mr. Singh, he gathered his bag and took off down the hall toward the opposite side of the school, where the choir room lay. He knew that Tina and Mr. Schue could run through warm-ups and start on choreography, but he felt bad for making them do it alone, and pushed faster - which is why he didn’t notice the puddle of sugary ice on the floor until he’d lost his legs from under him and fallen onto his back in the middle of the hallway.
He lay there for a moment, dazed, feeling the wet squelch under his shoulders. He blinked up at the pocked ceiling tiles, trying to pull air back in his lungs, then made himself roll over and push up onto his hands and knees, still dizzy. On the floor in front of him was a weak, melted puddle of watery purple, and moving away from it, little splashes, getting smaller, leading to the boys’ bathroom.
A little dagger of fear cut through the dizzy haze in Blaine’s head.
He pulled himself up off of the floor and carefully slip-slid his way to the bathroom, letting his hands rest on the door for a moment before he forced himself to push it open and look.
Blaine knew what slushie smelled like. He’d learned last year, when he couldn’t get the cherry out of his skin, when he had resembled a spy movie villain for a week and a half. It had clung to the inside of his head for days, and he’d never forgotten the feeling of it, past the pain of the rock salt: freezing cold and sudden and dripping into his hoodie, making him shake hard in the emergency room while he had waited to be seen. It was sticky, and embarrassing, and it had felt like neither of those things would ever wash away.
The air in the bathroom hung thick with the sugary grape smell. Wade stood at the sinks, encrusted in it. He looked like he’d been hit from all sides. The ice stained his skin bruise-purple as he scraped it from his cheek and flung it into the sink, more dripping down from his hair. He lifted his eyes to the mirror to get more, and they widened when they landed on Blaine, still standing in the doorway.
Feeling his own shock on his face, Blaine asked softly, “What happened?”
He immediately regretted it. Wade let out a miserable laugh and went back to clawing dark ice from his neck. “What does it look like?” he asked, and Blaine could hear the sway of Unique under his voice, so different from the quiet way he’d introduced himself before his song on Tuesday. He cast another handful into the sink, spraying ice across the mirror. “They threw me a Welcome Home party.”
Blaine swallowed past the sudden dryness in his throat. “God, Wade, I’m so - here, let me--” He moved for the paper towel dispenser, letting the door swing shut behind him.
Wade’s voice stopped him before he could get any closer.
“They told me it was better here,” he said, soft, but angry. Trembling a little, like he was holding it in. “Kurt and Mercedes said that New Directions took care of each other, that it was different here, but it isn’t.” He whirled around to face Blaine, who stood frozen halfway across the room. “They said it would be better!” he shouted, with tears under his voice. “But it’s not, I’m still just a freak to everyone and now it's even worse, and it's never going to get any better!”
Blaine, frozen, heart in his mouth, eyes wide and staring, could feel himself edging toward full emotional collapse. This was his responsibility, and he had screwed it up so badly. Wade was looking at him with eyes so full of misery and blame and tears, and Blaine felt his guilt roaring up around him like a tidal wave. This was what he'd been trusted to take care of, and he'd completely failed. “Please--” he managed. “Let me - I can--”
“Get OUT!” Wade shouted at him. “Just leave me alone!”
So he did. He ran. Right out of the door, and into the hallway; he slipped on the puddle but then caught himself and kept going, trying to lose the sound of Wade’s voice in the ringing echoes of his footfalls.
* * *
The metal locker doors were cool through the back of Blaine’s shirt, to his skin. He sat on the stone floor of the locker room, his arms wrapped around his legs, his head resting on his knees, staring at the wooden bench in front of him. His heart was still beating with a dull, pulsing insistence between his ears, and he closed his eyes, trying to block it out, along with everything else. It didn’t work.
Blaine was thirteen years old the first time he stopped by his locker after last period to find the word FAG sprawled across the metal in permanent-marker capitals. And the worst part was that for half a second, because in his middle school the lockers were split down the middle and paired off, Blaine thought that it might not be for him. Maybe it was for Jake Miller, who had the locker next to his, which bore the brunt of the F. But, no. Because laughter started somewhere over Blaine’s right shoulder, and when he looked, there they were, a soon-to-be-familiar group of boys, watching him, wolfish grins over blue jackets. One of them was wiggling a Sharpie between his fingers. All of them looked like they wanted to see him hurt.
Jake Miller hadn’t even looked at Blaine when he’d stopped to get his books. He’d just asked, Can you - get that off? in a high, nervous voice, and fled.
Blaine had spent an hour and a half making the lockers burnt red again.
This was supposed to be something he could help with. Bullies, homophobia - he had experience with those things. He was older now, and he knew what it was like to not be tormented all the time by narrow-minded Neanderthals, so he should have been able to help. But the second he’d come back into contact with something so obviously, humiliatingly awful, he’d run away again.
Wade had turned to look at him, and he was so angry. Blaine understood that anger, and it felt so, so awful to be on the other side of it. To receive that kind of helpless hatred.
Blaine wasn’t cut out for this.
As Blaine buried his head further against his knees, he heard the locker room door swing open, and a loud voice asked, “Blaine? Are you in here?”
“This is the boys’ locker room, Tina,” he called dully.
“Oh, God, like I actually care.” Her voice came closer, past the pneumatic swish of the door closing again. Her footsteps stopped at the end of the row of lockers where Blaine was sitting. “What are you doing? I needed you in rehearsal half an hour ago.”
She sounded annoyed, and Blaine’s guilt settled a little further in his chest. “I quit,” he said, muffled. “I can’t do this.”
Tina dropped onto the bench in front of him with all of her weight. “You can’t,” she said. “I quit first.”
Blaine raised his head to stare at her. She was looking down at her knees, her hands wringing together against them. Her face was drawn and tired. He frowned. “What happened?”
“Harmony came in with more suggestions. This time for group numbers with huge female leads.” Tina sighed and dropped her head to plunge her hands into her hair, making it fall down around her wrists and arms. “I tried to tell her that we’re focusing more on spotlighting everyone’s voices right now, and she went crazy. It was worse than any of Rachel Berry’s bitchfits, which is kind of impossible.” She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “She said that I was abusing my power, because I have no talent and I just want to keep her from being seen.” She dropped her hands. “Actually, she screamed it, and then she ran out.”
“You are so talented, Tina,” Blaine murmured, reaching out to put his hand over hers. “Really. I have no idea what she thinks she’s talking about.”
Tina just shook her head, looking up at the ceiling. “I know. I don’t know.” She sighed. “Whatever. I don’t want to do this anymore.” She looked back to him. “Wait. Why are you on the floor? What happened?”
Blaine tucked his chin back over his knees, resettling his arms around his shins. “Wade got slushied,” he said. “And he blamed me. And I ran away from him.” The words out loud like that dropped something leaden into his stomach. “We’re supposed to be leaders, right? We’re supposed to help him.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even know that anyone was bullying him.”
“That isn’t your fault, Blaine,” Tina said gently. She turned her hand palm-up under his and squeezed. “I haven’t even seen him outside of glee this week--” She trailed off, then groaned. “Which might mean that he was trying to avoid people in the hallway. I should have noticed that. It’s totally classic anti-slushie behavior.”
Blaine sighed. “It’s totally classic anti-everything behavior.”
Tina laced her fingers into his and smiled down at him softly. “This isn’t really what we thought it would be like, is it?”
“No,” Blaine agreed, twitching a smaller smile back up at her. “I didn’t expect to be like parents. Finn and Rachel weren’t like parents.”
“Finn and Rachel were the same age as us. They had the same amount of experience as everybody else, they were just louder about it.” She shrugged. “We have at least a year up on everyone in the club right now, except Artie. You have a lot of experience from the Warblers, and I’ve been running around in the background of New Directions for three years, so we know how it works. We know what it’s supposed to be like.”
Blaine watched the careful, absent way Tina’s thumb swept constant little arcs against his skin where she was holding his hand. “But it isn’t like that,” Blaine said quietly. “I want it to be the way it was before.”
Tina was silent, but she squeezed his hand again.
“I miss everyone,” Blaine said. He could feel himself starting to cry, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “I hate that they’re all gone now. I don’t know how they made everything work the way it did, but it worked, even when everyone hated each other. I miss that feeling, when I’d walk into the choir room and everyone was already there and it just felt like we all belonged.” He missed Santana, and Puck, and Rachel’s constant intensity, and Finn’s speeches, and Kurt, everything about him - Brittany, Mercedes, Sam, Quinn, Rory - they made the club feel like a family. “We make the club feel like a club,” he whispered.
“No, hey, stop--” Tina slipped off of the bench and next to Blaine, clutching his hand to her chest, and he could see with a little bubble of miserable laughter in his throat that she was about ten seconds from crying, too. “You weren’t here in freshman year, you don’t know how everything started. The first few weeks were awful.” She laughed, a little brokenly. “Everyone actually hated each other. It was all about solos and Rachel being crazy and storming out and us getting, like, constantly slushied by people who eventually joined the club anyway - it was a mess.” She rolled her eyes. “It was like us, right now. It didn’t feel good until we started really singing together.”
Blaine used his free hand to rub the tear tracks off of his face, taking little, controlled breaths that still hitched in the middle. He could feel the embarrassed blush heating his skin, but he swallowed it down. Tina didn’t care. “When was that?” he asked.
A fond look slipped over her face. “We did an invitational - it was the first actual performance we had, and Rachel wasn’t there for the first half of it, because she was being a diva and doing the musical instead, because Mr. Schue gave me a song from West Side to sing, and God forbid anyone sing anything but her - but, anyway. We sang Somebody to Love in the second half, with everyone there, finally, and - I don’t know.” She shook her head. “It just kind of came together. We were this team, suddenly. It wasn’t perfect, and we weren’t really together until the end of the year, but then it was amazing. When we thought glee was going to be disbanded, we all had a meltdown in Mr. Schue’s living room. I think that was when we all realized how much we really needed each other.”
Blaine smiled a little, imagining it. The group really must have been the definition of ragtag in the beginning, from the stories he’d heard. Full of spies and saboteurs and divas. But they all came together, eventually, and became the club he knew, full of people who would constantly fight, but also happily do anything for one another.
He let out a breath. “So you think we’ll get there?”
“Blaine.” She reached out with her free hand to take his chin and make him meet her eyes. “I promise,” she said, earnestly, like there was no way it couldn’t be true. “We’re going to get there. It’s just going to happen, one day. We won’t even need to do anything except be ourselves. That’s all it takes.”
Blaine reached out and pulled her into a hug.
She collapsed against him, laughing into his chest, and he held onto her tightly, his head tucked down against hers. “Thank you,” he said, meaning it with every fiber in his body.
Tina just nodded, and shook her hand out of his where it was trapped between them to hug him back. They must have looked strange, folded into the space between the lockers and the bench, half-lying on the floor, both sort-of crying and sort-of laughing, but Blaine didn’t care. He held her back harder, every part of him coursing with relief like oxygenated blood.
“So you aren’t quitting?” he asked quietly, with a watery smile.
He felt her back shake with a laugh. “No,” she said, muffled against his shirt. “I didn’t really mean it. Are you?”
“No,” he murmured. “There’s too much I want to see happen, to quit now.”
* * *
The night Tina asked Blaine to be her co-captain, the Chicago skyline shone curved and distorted above them in the Bean.
(The Bean, it turned out, was Blaine’s favorite part of Chicago. It was a big, metal, bean-shaped statue in the middle of a public square three blocks from their hotel; its actual name was the Cloud Gate, but he never heard anyone call it that. It was just the Bean. He and Kurt had taken a picture together under it on their first day there, during pretty much the only hour they had free between intense practice sessions. It widened and reshaped their reflections, making their smiles huge, their arms around each other long and narrow. Kurt said it was the only picture Blaine had ever taken that made him look worse, and Blaine laughed and made it the background of his phone.)
Back at the hotel, New Directions was still awake at one in the morning and bouncing on the queen beds in Mr. Schue’s hotel room, singing Queen songs and reveling in their victory. The square, spread out before Blaine and Tina in wide stretches of pavement, was quiet and empty but for them, and the bottle of sparkling cider that Tina had swiped from the ice bucket as she pulled Blaine out into the hall and down the stairs. She’d asked first, of course, grinning and whispering in his ear to see if he would mind leaving the party for a little while. I want to talk to you about something.
Beside him, Tina was staring up at the buildings caught in the metallic curve of the statue, the reflected lights falling against her face in erratic patterns that made Blaine smile. She glanced at him, and caught him looking, then smiled back. She passed him the bottle of sparkling cider, which seemed to glow emerald green when the lights struck it in the air between them, and he took it and swigged with his head tilted back. The chilled bite of it made him cough, and he passed it back to her with his hand over his mouth, glaring while she laughed at him.
She took her own swig, then set the bottle aside and leaned back on her arms, still staring up and smiling. “We won,” she said quietly.
He’d heard the words so many times in the last few hours they were starting to lose meaning, but the feeling they inspired never lessened or changed: a delighted little chill. They’d won. Nationals.
“I know,” he said. He still couldn’t believe it was true.
They fell quiet again. He reached out for the bottle and lifted it again, taking a smaller swallow this time, enjoying the crisp taste that always reminded him of holidays and young victories and Kurt, oddly enough, who always complemented a home-cooked meal for two with sparkling something-or-other in the place of wine. When he placed it back on the pavement with a tiny clink, his arm caught the refracted light in little dots, and he moved to watch the spread of them over his hands, like fireflies gathered together on his palms.
“Artie doesn’t want to be my co-captain next year,” Tina said, out of nowhere.
Blaine blinked, then looked over at her, eyebrows furrowed. “What?” he asked. “Why not?”
Tina shrugged, sighing. “He said that Mr. Schue is expecting him to direct two musicals next year, one in fall and one in spring, plus he wants to start working with community theater.” She glanced at him with a small smile. “He says that he doesn’t want to have to take care of the casts of the musicals and the glee club, and everything else, all at the same time. And he wants the co-captain to be the male lead of the club.”
Blaine frowned. “Artie is going to be the male lead of the club.”
But Tina was shaking her head, smile growing a little bit. “Nope.” She pointed at him, squinting and rotating her finger in little circles. “I’m looking at the male lead right now.”
Blaine was almost tempted to look over his shoulder for someone standing behind him. He could feel his surprise pushing a warm blush into his cheeks, and was suddenly glad for the dark. “But--” he spluttered, “I’ve only been here for a year. Artie’s been here since the beginning. He deserves to be male lead.”
Tina dropped her hand, grinning. “I thought so, too, but Artie doesn’t see it that way. He says that your stage presence is stronger than his, and you have more experience singing lead, so you should do it.” A touch of fond wonder spread over her face, gentling her expression. “Artie’s just like that. I don’t know why I was so surprised. Although he said he has full control over whether or not he gets solos at competitions.”
Blaine laughed. “Deal. Whatever he wants.” He could feel excitement starting to well up in his chest. He’d loved the opportunities he’d had this year, but singing lead again, for this group - that was going to be amazing. But - “Wait,” he said, frowning again. “You’re asking me to be co-captain?”
Tina nodded. “I know it’s sort of sudden. Sorry. Just - I think you could do it.” She tilted her head, looking at him, with half of the lights in Chicago falling in patches over her face. “I’d like to do it with you,” she said easily. “We could make a good team.”
Blaine smiled. It felt silly and fond and too wide for his face. “I think so, too,” he said. He held his hand out between them. “I’m in.”
They shook on it, with their clasped hands casting one long shadow under the belly of the Bean.
* * *
“We’ll find him tomorrow,” Tina said, looking over Blaine’s shoulder as he held open the door to the boys’ bathroom. The air was still tinged with grape and sugar, the sink Wade had been standing at still puddled and tacky with it, but Wade was long gone. She put her hand on Blaine’s arm. “We’ll talk to both of them, him and Harmony. Okay?
We can do it together.”
Part Two
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).
Author's Note: This story takes some of the ideas about the seniors passing the torch from my last fic and applies them to the first week of Blaine and Tina's senior year. I started it before Goodbye aired, so it became a little AU-ish; sorry about that! I'm not quite as psychic as I'd hoped. (Except that I was very slightly psychic about the thing with The Notebook.) Many, many thanks to stoney321 for her excellent beta skills, and to flaming-muse for being so lovely and encouraging. The title comes from C'Mon, by Fun. and Panic! at the Disco.
When Kurt left for NYADA, Blaine spent three days in bed. He watched terrible Lifetime movies and moved solely to use the bathroom and procure the only snack food in his house, which turned out to be a stale bag of pretzels from a party his parents had thrown over the summer. It was a misery which was profound and heavy and consistently terrible, and it took every ounce of his already tenuous self-control to keep from texting Kurt basically all of the time. Three entire days of this. Eventually he ran out of pretzels and resorted to the case of expensive chocolates someone had sent his mother from Belgium. She wasn’t there to be upset with him about it, and at that point he didn’t care what she thought.
On the fourth day, Tina called and said they needed a Girls’ Night.
So that was how Blaine ended up on his couch with Tina, The Notebook, and half a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, huddled in all of the blankets from all of the rooms in his house. Blaine felt his heart drop down to his stomach and then down to the floor when the characters in the movie started dancing in the middle of the street and Billie Holiday started singing about seeing you in all the old familiar places. But he felt Tina’s hand sneak into his, and glanced at her to see that she wasn’t looking at him, but her eyes were bright with tears the way he knew his own were, and he knew that she got it, in a way that no one else probably would.
* * *
“I can’t believe that Lima Middle still uses this laser background in their yearbook photos,” Tina said from where she was sprawled on her stomach on Blaine’s bed. “It’s like the definition of tacky. My dad burned his elementary school portraits when he found them a few years ago because he asked for the Tron background and it looked like he was trapped in a wormhole or something.”
Blaine grinned over his shoulder in the mirror. Tina was swinging her feet back and forth, slowly turning the pages of a yearbook she’d managed to intimidate off of one of her younger brother’s friends. “I can actually see your dad doing that.” He had met Mr. Cohen-Chang a few times during the summer, when Tina invited him to her house. Blaine had found him sort of geeky and adorable, not that he would ever tell her so. “What do you think?” he asked, turning around to face her. “Stripes or no stripes?” He held the bowties he had been considering up to his collar, side by side.
Tina looked up from the yearbook and squinted at him. “What are you looking for, here?”
“I’m planning my outfit for tomorrow.” He looked down at the ties, frowning. “I think the solid one. The stripes are a little loud with this shirt.” When he looked back up at her, he found Tina smirking at him, biting her lip to keep from laughing. He rolled his eyes and tossed the ties back into the drawer with the others, then pushed it closed. “Whatever. Your fashion sense hasn’t changed since the nineteen-sixties.”
“They say socks are in this year,” Tina said breezily, turning the page. “And pants that go down past your ankles. What did Kurt say?”
Blaine couldn’t help his quick smile at the mention of Kurt. He’d had plenty of advice, all of it unasked for and delivered with the quick-march rant of a makeover professional, peppered with compliments (would bring out your eyes, Blaine, you have such gorgeous eyes, now I miss your stupid eyes) and given while running between orientation activities at NYADA (everyone is just like Gerber Baby Girl, I don’t know how I’m going to survive four years of a thousand Rachels). He’d sent Blaine a text with a photo of his own first-day-of-classes outfit, half-turned in his full-length mirror: a barely-gray button-up under a charcoal waistcoat with a shining gunmetal silk back, dove gray jeans practically painted on. The message attached to it was, Wish me luck. Groggy and still mostly asleep at seven thirty in the morning during what was still his summer, Blaine had opened the photo and texted back that Kurt wouldn’t need it.
“I didn’t ask,” he said lightly, sitting down on the bed next to Tina’s shoulder. Tina made a derisive little noise, and he sighed. “He had suggestions.”
“Did he tell you to lose the bowties?” Tina asked. “Because that’s my main bit of advice.”
Blaine nudged her arm. “Shut up. I didn’t let you come over so you could mock my sartorial choices.” He leaned closer to look down at the book, open to two pages filled with rows of awkwardly-photographed pre-teens, all of them caught somewhere between catatonic and ecstatic. “Do you honestly think you can learn something about the freshman from their eighth grade yearbook? Most of them look like they’re dying.”
Tina shrugged, and Blaine bounced with the movement. “Our best bets for glee candidates are kids who either look really uncomfortable or really enthusiastic.” She pointed at a photo of a girl with a truly impressive piece of orthodontic equipment welded into her face. “I bet we could convince her to join.”
“Her headpiece would look awesome under the stage lights.”
Tina laughed, then trailed off, letting the pads of her fingers travel over the faces spread between the pages. “This is probably going to sound weird,” she murmured, not looking at Blaine, “but I’m sort of excited about the club being really small again.”
Blaine tilted his head, peering curiously down at the shining black of Tina’s hair. It was something that had been worrying him, a little. Building from himself, Tina, Artie, Joe and Sugar into a twelve-piece group for competitions was going to difficult. “Why?”
Tina shrugged again. “I don’t know. I guess - I like that we’re starting over. It was fun in the beginning, when we had no idea what we were doing. I mean, it was fun last year, too, but back when the club first started, we had to rely on each other so much.” Her voice softens. “It’ll be nice, to start finding new people who fit in with us and make us better.”
A smile tilted its way over Blaine’s lips, nostalgic fondness warming his chest. He loved when Tina talked about the first year of New Directions. She always sounded like Kurt did when he described how the club was back then, how important it became for all of them. They both got so hushed and breathless about it, like it was sacred, their history. It made him love both of them a little more every time.
“It will,” he agreed quietly. “I’m excited about that, too.”
Tina reached out and tucked her hand into his. “I’m glad you’re my co-captain,” she said, smiling.
Blaine squeezed her hand. “I am, too.”
“Although maybe Headpiece Girl will be a little distracting.”
“Let’s see how well she sings before we rule her out.”
* * *
Mr. Schuester started his First Day of School Morning Meeting by writing NEW NEW DIRECTIONS in big letters across the white board. That’s our lesson this week, he’d said. Let’s find out where we’re going this year. Let’s find our voice again.
The words started a little anticipatory buzz in Blaine’s head that followed him around all day. That voice was small right now; Sugar and Joe had stayed, as he’d hoped, and Artie, of course. (Artie had wheeled right over the second he’d walked through the choir room door and pulled Blaine down into what he called a “bro-hug,” followed by the most elaborate of fist-bumps.) Sam had transferred back to Kentucky to be with his family when Kurt and Finn graduated. But the voice would be growing, soon. Auditions were that afternoon, and Mr. Schue seemed optimistic about kids wanting to join. They were national champions, after all. The chairs around the five remaining members wouldn’t be empty for long.
(Those chairs were a little sad, as well. Blaine had seen Tina take a moment when her eyes passed over the place where she and Mike used to sit. As for himself, he’d taken a picture of Kurt’s preferred seat and texted it to him. Your chair misses you. Thirty seconds later, he’d gotten Kurt’s response: You’re ridiculous. Have a good first day.
Ten seconds after that: I miss it, too.)
The buzz remained, in the back of his mind, through all of his new classes, which mostly went by in a blur of syllabi and textbooks. First days were tiresome, after a while. It was all the same rules about texting and cheating, and there was always the itch to stop talking and do something, which Blaine knew he only really shared with other students in his AP classes, and even then, only a few. First days were also a minefield of first impressions, and the moment when teachers went around the class asking students to introduce themselves never got less mortifying. Blaine remembered enjoying it at Dalton, when everyone would smile at him and they would move on to the next boy. At McKinley, eyes tended to linger while the next student gave his name and his favorite color or his interesting fact. Blaine stood out. He was trying to get used to it, but it wasn’t really working.
So it was with a bit of relief that Blaine dumped all of his new books into his locker at the end of the day. He was in the process of organizing them by section of the day when he heard his name being shouted down the hallway, and turned in surprise to see Tina flying at him, holding something in her hand, shoving past underclassmen trying to scatter out of her way. She stopped just in time to keep from crashing into him and whipped her hair out of her face, smiling so brightly that she seemed to glow.
“Blaine!” she said again, as if he hadn’t heard her screaming it as she ran. “This is either the best or worst thing that’s ever happened to us.”
“What are you talking about?”
She shoved a piece of paper into his hands, and he turned it over, eyebrows furrowed. It was the sign-up sheet that Mr. Schue had tacked to the bulletin board that morning before homeroom.
“I mean,” Tina continued, “they’re both really talented. Like, crazy talented. I can’t believe they both transferred here. It’s like Rachel and Kurt were reincarnated.”
There were two names on the sheet. Written in careful, looping letters on the first line was Wade Adams. On the second line, in giant script, was Harmony Cook.
“The Gerber Baby,” Blaine murmured to himself. “She even uses gold stars.”
“I know!” Tina said. “And Wade killed at Nationals last year. He even made me like Tommy for a few minutes.”
Blaine knew. Someone had recorded Wade’s version of Starships and put it up on YouTube, and Blaine had listened to it on repeat for three weeks, until Kurt had threatened to cut off all contact with him. Unique was incredible. So was Harmony; her Buenos Aires at Sectionals was perfect. She could honestly sing the phone book and Blaine would listen, rapt. It was the same as the way he felt about Rachel’s voice. This was very, very good.
“Why would this be the worst thing that ever happened to us?” Blaine asked, handing the sheet back. “They’re amazing.”
Tina shrugged, tucking it into a folder. “Well, like I said. Kurt and Rachel. They could be serious divas.”
Blaine rolled his eyes. “I’m sure they’re fine. I date Kurt, and we're both friends with Rachel.” He shut his locker and offered her his arm. “Come on. We can’t miss these auditions, they’re going to be incredible.”
* * *
“She even did the weird little operatic cadenza at the end. I thought Mr. Schue was going to pass out.” Blaine tucked the phone closer to his ear and spread his other arm out, concentrating on walking a straight heel-to-toe line down the curb between the sidewalk and the street. The afternoon was slowly falling into evening, and the heavy sunlight splashed its way through the trees on either side of the road, throwing the shadows of leaves against the dark asphalt on his walk home.
“I’m not even a little surprised that Gerber Baby thought Think of Me was a good audition song,” Kurt sighed through the receiver. “If ever there was someone to take an opportunity to show off.”
“Come on, Kurt,” Blaine said. “You don’t even know her. Maybe she just really likes Phantom.”
“You don’t know those NYADA mixer kids, Blaine. That girl made Rachel cry. When I complimented her on Buenos Aires, she told me that this year was going to be a bloodbath. How do you know she isn’t a spy sent in to divide and conquer and then get out and rejoin her legion of evil at whatever school she actually goes to?”
Blaine snorted, then wobbled a little on the curb and stopped to rebalance himself. “I think you’re being a little paranoid. She was in the Unitards, they don't really seem to be the 'divide and conquer' type.”
“Blaine. Listen to me,” Kurt said, and Blaine smiled at how serious he sounded. “You didn't meet any of my friends for weeks after we started hanging out. That's because everyone would have thought you were a spy, coming to seduce me and then leave me brokenhearted and unable to perform at Sectionals so Dalton would beat us. I'm pretty sure it at least crossed Rachel's mind that you were paying Karofs-- David to harass me and get me to transfer and join the Warblers.”
There was the sound of a struggle on the other end of the line, until Blaine heard Kurt give a shriek of surprised pain and suddenly Rachel's voice was coming clear, if a little breathless, through the receiver. “I never thought that, Blaine!” she said, earnestly. “I always liked you! I maybe thought it a little. I've been listening to your conversation with Kurt slightly, just due to proximity, our apartment is so very small--”
“You've been invading my personal space for five minutes to hear!” Kurt shouted in the background.
“Hush, Kurt. I'm on the phone. Blaine, we just want you to be aware that New Directions has a history of sabotage, and that as captain you are expected to deal with any instances that may arise. I know it might be difficult, because you have a very friendly personality and you seem to enjoy being approachable and well-liked, but show choir is a serious enterprise, and sometimes it's necessary to destroy people. Who's to say if Harmony is secretly evil, but you never know. Have you looked into bugging her car? I can put you in touch with Lauren Zizes. She's very affordable.”
Blaine was trying very hard not to start laughing. “Thank you, Rachel,” he said, “but I'm sure that Tina and I can handle it. We're not at the point where we want to start illegally bugging anyone. But I'll be sure to call you if we get there.”
“All right, Blaine. I'm choosing to trust you. Just remember that New Directions is my baby, and if you or Tina allow anyone to destroy it from the inside, or if you yourselves run it into the ground, there will be no gift basket big enough to deter my rage. Okay?”
Blaine swallowed. Even delivered in Rachel's look at me I am so pleasant tone, that was actually terrifying. “You, um. You've got it, Rachel.”
“Have a good evening! Say 'hi' to Tina and Artie and Sugar and Joe for me!”
“Er. Will do.”
The was another, briefer sound of shuffling, and then Kurt was back. “I am so sorry about that,” he said sincerely. “She's been nuts the last few weeks. I think the level of talent here scares her. I told you about what she did to Sunshine Corazon, right? She's still one of the best, but she's not the best enough. Cry me a river.”
Blaine chose the ignore the Kurt! screamed in the background. “It's fine,” he said, smiling. “I know she's under a lot of pressure.”
Kurt snorted. “Rachel's better under pressure. She thinks of it like coal being pressed into diamonds. It's actually kind of frightening. This level of crazy only ever happens when she doesn't know how to deal with something.” He paused. “I think she misses everyone from glee.”
“I miss her, too. And you.”
Kurt sighed, and they were quiet for a moment. Blaine quit his balance-beam walk on the curb and stepped over to the sidewalk, looking down at the breaks between the pale, perfect squares. Missing Kurt was a constant ache buried deep inside of him, flaring at times to pulse warmly in his chest at a memory, or to engulf him entirely, making it difficult to breathe through how miserable it was to not have Kurt at an arm’s length, or a fifteen minute drive. It was getting a little better, over time, but not much. He missed Kurt more than he could actually put into words.
Kurt broke the silence with another sigh. “Anyway,” he lilted, “now that we’ve had our daily pity party.” Blaine laughed a little at that, and he could hear Kurt’s smile start to warm his voice. “You didn’t tell me about Wade’s audition. Is he just as amazing off-stage?”
Blaine’s own smile faded. He adjusted his bag over his shoulder. “Kurt?” he asked. “When you met Wade, did he seem - sad, to you?”
“I - well,” Kurt said, sounding confused. “I don’t know. He seemed shy. But very sweet. Why? Is he okay?”
“I - don’t know?” Blaine said. “I mean, I can’t tell if it’s just how he is, or if it’s something else, but - he sang If I Were A Boy for his audition today. And it was beautiful, Kurt, really. Tina was crying by the second line. He put so much emotion into it, and he sounded incredible.”
Wade had stood at the front of the choir room and given everything to that song. It was heartbreaking. Just the way he looked, like it was shattering him to let the words leave him. And he didn’t look at anyone. He closed his eyes, or looked at the floor, or over their heads. And when he was done, he just twitched a smile at them that didn’t really make it to his eyes, and he sat down in the stunned silence. Then Sugar reached over and wrapped her arms around him and told him that he sounded just like the girl who won MVP last year at Nationals, only better because he made her feel bad for him.
“I don’t know if there’s a problem,” Blaine murmured. “But it’s a pretty telling song choice.”
“Talk to him,” Kurt said immediately. “See if there’s something you can help him with. When he spoke to me and Mercedes for the first time last year, he made it sound like things weren’t great at home, or at school. He probably needs someone to talk to.”
Blaine stopped at the gate to his house and looked up the path to his front door. His parents’ cars weren’t in the driveway, so they hadn’t managed to make it home today. “I don’t think that I have a great track record of giving good advice,” he said slowly. “Look what happened when I tried to help you.”
“It was good advice, just not for that situation. And besides,” Kurt said, in a voice that egged Blaine into smiling again. “You probably know what you’re talking about this time.”
* * *
Blaine had intended to speak to Wade as soon as he saw him the next day, but that didn’t happen. It was like Wade disappeared the second he was out of the choir room, and no matter where Blaine looked, he was nowhere to be found. It didn’t help that at every turn, Harmony appeared, all bright-eyed and carrying sheet music, suggesting solos suited to her voice for Sectionals.
“We only have seven members, Harmony,” Blaine told her as she followed him down the hallway to his locker, after ambushing him again as he came out of Trigonometry. “We aren’t really thinking about Sectionals right now.”
“Oh, I know!” she said, hurrying to keep up with him while shuffling the music in her hands. “I’d just like to be prepared. There are only so many days between then and now, and why waste any time when we already have me? Now, I was thinking, since I was amazing at Think of Me at auditions, and I’ve seen enough recordings of Warbler performances to know that you’re a strong tenor, maybe we could sing All I Ask Of You! It’s a good duet to show off our strengths, and even if you can’t keep up with me vocally, Christine’s parts are more interesting, so the judges will notice less.”
All of this was delivered breathlessly and through a huge, bright smile, and Blaine could hardly keep up enough to be that vague, tired kind of offended that he used to be whenever Rachel or Puck said anything ridiculous. (And anyway, Raoul’s parts were obviously more interesting.) He spun his combination into his locker and pulled it open. “It’s nice that you’re thinking this far ahead,” he told her, switching his books out to the second half of the day, “but we’re really just trying to focus on getting members right now. We’re putting together some group numbers to do for the school to get kids interested in joining. If you have suggestions for those, we’d be happy to hear them.”
“Group numbers like, the group harmonizing and swaying behind the lead?”
Blaine smiled a little, straightening the notebooks he’d just swapped out. “No,” he said. “We’re doing popcorn leads. Everyone sings a few lines.”
Harmony’s smile faltered. “But there’s - there’s still a real lead, right?”
Blaine shut his locker and turned to her, resettling his bag over his shoulders. “Harmony,” he said, “It’s great that you’re so passionate about this. Really. We’re going to need that passion. But not every song is going to have a lead, and when it does have a lead, the soloist isn’t always going to be you.” He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “You have a beautiful voice, you know that. But you need to understand, in this group, that isn’t what it’s about.”
Harmony’s smile cracked right down the middle. She went very still under Blaine’s hand, and Blaine felt the stir of something uncomfortable in his stomach at the look in her eyes. She blinked a few times, then took a little aborted breath and said, “I, um. I have to--”
Then she ducked out from under Blaine’s hand and hurried off down the hallway with careful little steps, her skirt swaying prettily, Mary Janes making soft sounds on the linoleum.
Blaine stared after her, with no idea what he did.
From: Blaine
She looked terrified. Like I’d just threatened to kill her or something.
From: Kurt
This is what you get for volunteering to be in charge of a bunch of people
you knew were bound to be crazy. You should have known it would
be like herding cats.
Blaine’s AP European History teacher kept him late after class that afternoon. Or, truthfully, their conversation about King James I bled over the final bell, and Blaine only realized when he happened to glance at his watch and see that he was already ten minutes late for glee rehearsal. With hurried apologies to Mr. Singh, he gathered his bag and took off down the hall toward the opposite side of the school, where the choir room lay. He knew that Tina and Mr. Schue could run through warm-ups and start on choreography, but he felt bad for making them do it alone, and pushed faster - which is why he didn’t notice the puddle of sugary ice on the floor until he’d lost his legs from under him and fallen onto his back in the middle of the hallway.
He lay there for a moment, dazed, feeling the wet squelch under his shoulders. He blinked up at the pocked ceiling tiles, trying to pull air back in his lungs, then made himself roll over and push up onto his hands and knees, still dizzy. On the floor in front of him was a weak, melted puddle of watery purple, and moving away from it, little splashes, getting smaller, leading to the boys’ bathroom.
A little dagger of fear cut through the dizzy haze in Blaine’s head.
He pulled himself up off of the floor and carefully slip-slid his way to the bathroom, letting his hands rest on the door for a moment before he forced himself to push it open and look.
Blaine knew what slushie smelled like. He’d learned last year, when he couldn’t get the cherry out of his skin, when he had resembled a spy movie villain for a week and a half. It had clung to the inside of his head for days, and he’d never forgotten the feeling of it, past the pain of the rock salt: freezing cold and sudden and dripping into his hoodie, making him shake hard in the emergency room while he had waited to be seen. It was sticky, and embarrassing, and it had felt like neither of those things would ever wash away.
The air in the bathroom hung thick with the sugary grape smell. Wade stood at the sinks, encrusted in it. He looked like he’d been hit from all sides. The ice stained his skin bruise-purple as he scraped it from his cheek and flung it into the sink, more dripping down from his hair. He lifted his eyes to the mirror to get more, and they widened when they landed on Blaine, still standing in the doorway.
Feeling his own shock on his face, Blaine asked softly, “What happened?”
He immediately regretted it. Wade let out a miserable laugh and went back to clawing dark ice from his neck. “What does it look like?” he asked, and Blaine could hear the sway of Unique under his voice, so different from the quiet way he’d introduced himself before his song on Tuesday. He cast another handful into the sink, spraying ice across the mirror. “They threw me a Welcome Home party.”
Blaine swallowed past the sudden dryness in his throat. “God, Wade, I’m so - here, let me--” He moved for the paper towel dispenser, letting the door swing shut behind him.
Wade’s voice stopped him before he could get any closer.
“They told me it was better here,” he said, soft, but angry. Trembling a little, like he was holding it in. “Kurt and Mercedes said that New Directions took care of each other, that it was different here, but it isn’t.” He whirled around to face Blaine, who stood frozen halfway across the room. “They said it would be better!” he shouted, with tears under his voice. “But it’s not, I’m still just a freak to everyone and now it's even worse, and it's never going to get any better!”
Blaine, frozen, heart in his mouth, eyes wide and staring, could feel himself edging toward full emotional collapse. This was his responsibility, and he had screwed it up so badly. Wade was looking at him with eyes so full of misery and blame and tears, and Blaine felt his guilt roaring up around him like a tidal wave. This was what he'd been trusted to take care of, and he'd completely failed. “Please--” he managed. “Let me - I can--”
“Get OUT!” Wade shouted at him. “Just leave me alone!”
So he did. He ran. Right out of the door, and into the hallway; he slipped on the puddle but then caught himself and kept going, trying to lose the sound of Wade’s voice in the ringing echoes of his footfalls.
* * *
The metal locker doors were cool through the back of Blaine’s shirt, to his skin. He sat on the stone floor of the locker room, his arms wrapped around his legs, his head resting on his knees, staring at the wooden bench in front of him. His heart was still beating with a dull, pulsing insistence between his ears, and he closed his eyes, trying to block it out, along with everything else. It didn’t work.
Blaine was thirteen years old the first time he stopped by his locker after last period to find the word FAG sprawled across the metal in permanent-marker capitals. And the worst part was that for half a second, because in his middle school the lockers were split down the middle and paired off, Blaine thought that it might not be for him. Maybe it was for Jake Miller, who had the locker next to his, which bore the brunt of the F. But, no. Because laughter started somewhere over Blaine’s right shoulder, and when he looked, there they were, a soon-to-be-familiar group of boys, watching him, wolfish grins over blue jackets. One of them was wiggling a Sharpie between his fingers. All of them looked like they wanted to see him hurt.
Jake Miller hadn’t even looked at Blaine when he’d stopped to get his books. He’d just asked, Can you - get that off? in a high, nervous voice, and fled.
Blaine had spent an hour and a half making the lockers burnt red again.
This was supposed to be something he could help with. Bullies, homophobia - he had experience with those things. He was older now, and he knew what it was like to not be tormented all the time by narrow-minded Neanderthals, so he should have been able to help. But the second he’d come back into contact with something so obviously, humiliatingly awful, he’d run away again.
Wade had turned to look at him, and he was so angry. Blaine understood that anger, and it felt so, so awful to be on the other side of it. To receive that kind of helpless hatred.
Blaine wasn’t cut out for this.
As Blaine buried his head further against his knees, he heard the locker room door swing open, and a loud voice asked, “Blaine? Are you in here?”
“This is the boys’ locker room, Tina,” he called dully.
“Oh, God, like I actually care.” Her voice came closer, past the pneumatic swish of the door closing again. Her footsteps stopped at the end of the row of lockers where Blaine was sitting. “What are you doing? I needed you in rehearsal half an hour ago.”
She sounded annoyed, and Blaine’s guilt settled a little further in his chest. “I quit,” he said, muffled. “I can’t do this.”
Tina dropped onto the bench in front of him with all of her weight. “You can’t,” she said. “I quit first.”
Blaine raised his head to stare at her. She was looking down at her knees, her hands wringing together against them. Her face was drawn and tired. He frowned. “What happened?”
“Harmony came in with more suggestions. This time for group numbers with huge female leads.” Tina sighed and dropped her head to plunge her hands into her hair, making it fall down around her wrists and arms. “I tried to tell her that we’re focusing more on spotlighting everyone’s voices right now, and she went crazy. It was worse than any of Rachel Berry’s bitchfits, which is kind of impossible.” She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “She said that I was abusing my power, because I have no talent and I just want to keep her from being seen.” She dropped her hands. “Actually, she screamed it, and then she ran out.”
“You are so talented, Tina,” Blaine murmured, reaching out to put his hand over hers. “Really. I have no idea what she thinks she’s talking about.”
Tina just shook her head, looking up at the ceiling. “I know. I don’t know.” She sighed. “Whatever. I don’t want to do this anymore.” She looked back to him. “Wait. Why are you on the floor? What happened?”
Blaine tucked his chin back over his knees, resettling his arms around his shins. “Wade got slushied,” he said. “And he blamed me. And I ran away from him.” The words out loud like that dropped something leaden into his stomach. “We’re supposed to be leaders, right? We’re supposed to help him.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even know that anyone was bullying him.”
“That isn’t your fault, Blaine,” Tina said gently. She turned her hand palm-up under his and squeezed. “I haven’t even seen him outside of glee this week--” She trailed off, then groaned. “Which might mean that he was trying to avoid people in the hallway. I should have noticed that. It’s totally classic anti-slushie behavior.”
Blaine sighed. “It’s totally classic anti-everything behavior.”
Tina laced her fingers into his and smiled down at him softly. “This isn’t really what we thought it would be like, is it?”
“No,” Blaine agreed, twitching a smaller smile back up at her. “I didn’t expect to be like parents. Finn and Rachel weren’t like parents.”
“Finn and Rachel were the same age as us. They had the same amount of experience as everybody else, they were just louder about it.” She shrugged. “We have at least a year up on everyone in the club right now, except Artie. You have a lot of experience from the Warblers, and I’ve been running around in the background of New Directions for three years, so we know how it works. We know what it’s supposed to be like.”
Blaine watched the careful, absent way Tina’s thumb swept constant little arcs against his skin where she was holding his hand. “But it isn’t like that,” Blaine said quietly. “I want it to be the way it was before.”
Tina was silent, but she squeezed his hand again.
“I miss everyone,” Blaine said. He could feel himself starting to cry, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “I hate that they’re all gone now. I don’t know how they made everything work the way it did, but it worked, even when everyone hated each other. I miss that feeling, when I’d walk into the choir room and everyone was already there and it just felt like we all belonged.” He missed Santana, and Puck, and Rachel’s constant intensity, and Finn’s speeches, and Kurt, everything about him - Brittany, Mercedes, Sam, Quinn, Rory - they made the club feel like a family. “We make the club feel like a club,” he whispered.
“No, hey, stop--” Tina slipped off of the bench and next to Blaine, clutching his hand to her chest, and he could see with a little bubble of miserable laughter in his throat that she was about ten seconds from crying, too. “You weren’t here in freshman year, you don’t know how everything started. The first few weeks were awful.” She laughed, a little brokenly. “Everyone actually hated each other. It was all about solos and Rachel being crazy and storming out and us getting, like, constantly slushied by people who eventually joined the club anyway - it was a mess.” She rolled her eyes. “It was like us, right now. It didn’t feel good until we started really singing together.”
Blaine used his free hand to rub the tear tracks off of his face, taking little, controlled breaths that still hitched in the middle. He could feel the embarrassed blush heating his skin, but he swallowed it down. Tina didn’t care. “When was that?” he asked.
A fond look slipped over her face. “We did an invitational - it was the first actual performance we had, and Rachel wasn’t there for the first half of it, because she was being a diva and doing the musical instead, because Mr. Schue gave me a song from West Side to sing, and God forbid anyone sing anything but her - but, anyway. We sang Somebody to Love in the second half, with everyone there, finally, and - I don’t know.” She shook her head. “It just kind of came together. We were this team, suddenly. It wasn’t perfect, and we weren’t really together until the end of the year, but then it was amazing. When we thought glee was going to be disbanded, we all had a meltdown in Mr. Schue’s living room. I think that was when we all realized how much we really needed each other.”
Blaine smiled a little, imagining it. The group really must have been the definition of ragtag in the beginning, from the stories he’d heard. Full of spies and saboteurs and divas. But they all came together, eventually, and became the club he knew, full of people who would constantly fight, but also happily do anything for one another.
He let out a breath. “So you think we’ll get there?”
“Blaine.” She reached out with her free hand to take his chin and make him meet her eyes. “I promise,” she said, earnestly, like there was no way it couldn’t be true. “We’re going to get there. It’s just going to happen, one day. We won’t even need to do anything except be ourselves. That’s all it takes.”
Blaine reached out and pulled her into a hug.
She collapsed against him, laughing into his chest, and he held onto her tightly, his head tucked down against hers. “Thank you,” he said, meaning it with every fiber in his body.
Tina just nodded, and shook her hand out of his where it was trapped between them to hug him back. They must have looked strange, folded into the space between the lockers and the bench, half-lying on the floor, both sort-of crying and sort-of laughing, but Blaine didn’t care. He held her back harder, every part of him coursing with relief like oxygenated blood.
“So you aren’t quitting?” he asked quietly, with a watery smile.
He felt her back shake with a laugh. “No,” she said, muffled against his shirt. “I didn’t really mean it. Are you?”
“No,” he murmured. “There’s too much I want to see happen, to quit now.”
* * *
The night Tina asked Blaine to be her co-captain, the Chicago skyline shone curved and distorted above them in the Bean.
(The Bean, it turned out, was Blaine’s favorite part of Chicago. It was a big, metal, bean-shaped statue in the middle of a public square three blocks from their hotel; its actual name was the Cloud Gate, but he never heard anyone call it that. It was just the Bean. He and Kurt had taken a picture together under it on their first day there, during pretty much the only hour they had free between intense practice sessions. It widened and reshaped their reflections, making their smiles huge, their arms around each other long and narrow. Kurt said it was the only picture Blaine had ever taken that made him look worse, and Blaine laughed and made it the background of his phone.)
Back at the hotel, New Directions was still awake at one in the morning and bouncing on the queen beds in Mr. Schue’s hotel room, singing Queen songs and reveling in their victory. The square, spread out before Blaine and Tina in wide stretches of pavement, was quiet and empty but for them, and the bottle of sparkling cider that Tina had swiped from the ice bucket as she pulled Blaine out into the hall and down the stairs. She’d asked first, of course, grinning and whispering in his ear to see if he would mind leaving the party for a little while. I want to talk to you about something.
Beside him, Tina was staring up at the buildings caught in the metallic curve of the statue, the reflected lights falling against her face in erratic patterns that made Blaine smile. She glanced at him, and caught him looking, then smiled back. She passed him the bottle of sparkling cider, which seemed to glow emerald green when the lights struck it in the air between them, and he took it and swigged with his head tilted back. The chilled bite of it made him cough, and he passed it back to her with his hand over his mouth, glaring while she laughed at him.
She took her own swig, then set the bottle aside and leaned back on her arms, still staring up and smiling. “We won,” she said quietly.
He’d heard the words so many times in the last few hours they were starting to lose meaning, but the feeling they inspired never lessened or changed: a delighted little chill. They’d won. Nationals.
“I know,” he said. He still couldn’t believe it was true.
They fell quiet again. He reached out for the bottle and lifted it again, taking a smaller swallow this time, enjoying the crisp taste that always reminded him of holidays and young victories and Kurt, oddly enough, who always complemented a home-cooked meal for two with sparkling something-or-other in the place of wine. When he placed it back on the pavement with a tiny clink, his arm caught the refracted light in little dots, and he moved to watch the spread of them over his hands, like fireflies gathered together on his palms.
“Artie doesn’t want to be my co-captain next year,” Tina said, out of nowhere.
Blaine blinked, then looked over at her, eyebrows furrowed. “What?” he asked. “Why not?”
Tina shrugged, sighing. “He said that Mr. Schue is expecting him to direct two musicals next year, one in fall and one in spring, plus he wants to start working with community theater.” She glanced at him with a small smile. “He says that he doesn’t want to have to take care of the casts of the musicals and the glee club, and everything else, all at the same time. And he wants the co-captain to be the male lead of the club.”
Blaine frowned. “Artie is going to be the male lead of the club.”
But Tina was shaking her head, smile growing a little bit. “Nope.” She pointed at him, squinting and rotating her finger in little circles. “I’m looking at the male lead right now.”
Blaine was almost tempted to look over his shoulder for someone standing behind him. He could feel his surprise pushing a warm blush into his cheeks, and was suddenly glad for the dark. “But--” he spluttered, “I’ve only been here for a year. Artie’s been here since the beginning. He deserves to be male lead.”
Tina dropped her hand, grinning. “I thought so, too, but Artie doesn’t see it that way. He says that your stage presence is stronger than his, and you have more experience singing lead, so you should do it.” A touch of fond wonder spread over her face, gentling her expression. “Artie’s just like that. I don’t know why I was so surprised. Although he said he has full control over whether or not he gets solos at competitions.”
Blaine laughed. “Deal. Whatever he wants.” He could feel excitement starting to well up in his chest. He’d loved the opportunities he’d had this year, but singing lead again, for this group - that was going to be amazing. But - “Wait,” he said, frowning again. “You’re asking me to be co-captain?”
Tina nodded. “I know it’s sort of sudden. Sorry. Just - I think you could do it.” She tilted her head, looking at him, with half of the lights in Chicago falling in patches over her face. “I’d like to do it with you,” she said easily. “We could make a good team.”
Blaine smiled. It felt silly and fond and too wide for his face. “I think so, too,” he said. He held his hand out between them. “I’m in.”
They shook on it, with their clasped hands casting one long shadow under the belly of the Bean.
* * *
“We’ll find him tomorrow,” Tina said, looking over Blaine’s shoulder as he held open the door to the boys’ bathroom. The air was still tinged with grape and sugar, the sink Wade had been standing at still puddled and tacky with it, but Wade was long gone. She put her hand on Blaine’s arm. “We’ll talk to both of them, him and Harmony. Okay?
We can do it together.”
Part Two