Blaine stared at the small, white pill that sat calmly in the middle of his palm, looking as harmless as a baby penguin. The dorm room was quiet and he knew that now was the perfect time. Everyone was in class, when the bell went The Warblers would perform; it was the best cover he could ask for. He felt the tears burning in his eyes, and he choked them back. How did one little thing have the power to take away life? The sun streamed in through the old but still beautiful windows and Blaine wondered why exactly everything was so tough. Sure, Dalton stopped the bullying during school hours but it didn't stop the cruel anonymous pranks that happened in the middle of the night, or the multiple times he had been beat up outside of school. Life was just getting too hard.

A sharp knock at the door jolted him out of his trance. Hurriedly wiping away the tears from his eyes, he jumped up, placing the pill under the coffee mug on his bedside dresser. He should have known he would regret auditioning for that solo in Teenage Dream. Blaine pushed his sleeves down, gripping tightly on to the cuffs so that they wouldn't scrunch up and show his scars. No one in Dalton knew he self-harmed, and he was determined to keep it that way.

"Hey Blaine, you ready?" Nick stood with his hands in his pockets, the corridor empty but the noise of students still extremely loud. Blaine just nodded and followed Nick out into the throng of the few boys that hadn't been in class rushing out of their dorms, and the few that had risked it to get their video cameras. After all, who would miss a Warblers performance?

Blaine’s heart was still fluttering after his previous predicament, so he told Nick that he would catch up. Nick just considered him solemnly for a moment, turned on his heel and ran down the staircase to tell the rest of the boys to hold up for a minute or two.

He stood at the end of the corridor and wondered what people’s reactions would be if he took the pill from under that coffee mug, fled and never came back to Dalton. Or to anywhere, in fact.

Fellow pupils pushed past, most recognising him and choosing to ignore the distant look on his face, thumping his shoulder or high-fiving him as they rushed towards the hall. Blaine just took it all in, plastering his well-practiced smile on his face. The exact same one he always used when he was around his parents.
Choosing not to decide right now with all these people staring at him, and his friends waiting for him downstairs where it would be obvious that he’d gone, Blaine shook his head to clear it and set off down the stairs.

Impatient to get his mind off of his recent thoughts, he hurried down the steps, pushing off each one with his toes to skip a few every time. As he got closer to the back of the crowd of boys on the stairs he slowed down, so as to not look suspicious or not to waste breath for the performance he was about to do. He walked past some of them on the staircase because, hell, the Warblers would kill him if he was the last one to his own show.

When he reached the third step, a pale boy wearing dark sunglasses, a navy blue blazer and looking extremely out of place but not uncomfortable tapped him lightly on the shoulder. Blaine finished his walk to the bottom of the steps and turned round to look at him.

Kurt watched as the boy he’d picked on faced him, jaw dropping slightly and face lighting up a little. He couldn’t help but feel a tad smug and gripped onto his bag strap anxiously, a small half-smile twitching at the corner of his lips. Blaine just stood and looked at this boy that had chosen to tap him on the shoulder, when there were plenty of others still streaming down the step.

All this happened quite quickly, but Kurt could see that the other curly-haired boy with hazel eyes wasn’t going to say anything anytime soon, so he started off.

“Um, excuse me, but where is everyone going exactly?” Kurt pulled his sunglasses slowly off his face, completely surpassing the fact that he was supposed to be spying.

Blaine laughed at the frankness of the statement, but replied; “The Warblers are performing!”

“...And everyone’s going to listen?” Kurt asked uncertainly.

“Yeah! The Warblers are like rock stars round here!” Blaine said, forgetting entirely that he’d just spent the last hour or so being indecisive about committing suicide.

“...Oh.”

Blaine wasn’t exactly sure why he did what he did next, but he grabbed the bright-blue eyed boy by the hand and grinned from ear to ear, “C’mon, I know a shortcut.”

Kurt was never really shy when it came to his sexuality, but being taken by the hand by an extremely attractive boy in uniform and pulled into an empty corridor was exhilarating to him. He took a sharp intake of breath, and Blaine chuckled quietly to himself, still pulling him down the corridor.

They walked in together through a side door and, on Nick’s signal, The Warblers began their a capella version of Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream.

Blaine sighed and looked at the boy he had just run down a corridor hand-in-hand with who was looking incredibly flustered and embarrassed.

“Well, I have to go. Next time don’t forget your jacket, new kid. You’ll fit right in.”

And he turned round to face his fellow Warblers, and he sang.

Kurt stared in shock, rendered utterly incoherent not only by what had just happened, but by the voice that was currently coming out of a boy that had just held his hand and tugged him slow-motion down a hallway.

Wow, he really did have good choice in shoulders to tap on.

Nick, Jeff, Thad, Wes and Trent all exchanged looks of confusion. Who was the boy that Blaine had just pulled in by the hand and was now singing to? Blaine hadn’t sung with such conviction for far too long, and from what Nick had said when he turned up before Blaine, he had seemed worse than usual. Honestly, it didn’t really matter why. As long as they got the care-free, happy Blaine back that had been around until only recently. Frankly, they all cared about him a lot. He was like the little brother that they all wanted to take care of, and he seemed to need to be taken care of.

When Blaine had arrived he’d seemed slightly reserved but eager all the same. He’d chosen to dorm and the boys had welcomed him warmly, pulling him into the crazy antics of the House where he was initiated the same night and woken up the next morning with nerf guns. Blaine joked about it being one of the worst mistakes of his life but really, he loved it at Dalton. He finally felt at home.

And that was exactly when the Warblers discovered his talent. He was sat in his dorm when most of the boys had just got out of class and were taking their coffee run. One innocent boarder that just happened to be the worst gossip and member of the Warblers was meandering past and heard him strumming his guitar and writing a song. No less than 5 minutes later, all the Warblers were assembled around the door along with nearly every other student, too. Blaine was completely oblivious and continued to sing harmlessly his recently composed song, To Have a Home.

From that point onwards, the Warblers adopted Blaine and he quickly became the lead. Which lead to this moment right now. He sang with a cheesy, lopsided grin on his face, the first his friends had seen for weeks, though they weren’t quite sure why. Why he hadn’t smiled for weeks or why he was smiling now.
But they accepted it, because they wanted this, no they needed this Blaine.
Throughout the performance Kurt stood, utterly breathless at the captivating boy singing right at him. When it finished he clapped so hard that his hands became sore, but he refused to stop clapping. His face flushed as the cute, silly, pup-like lead grinned at him and took a few bows to the audience, taking in all the applause.
Blaine wasn’t exactly sure why all the weight that had been on his heart had suddenly evacuated, but he took it willingly.