He looked exactly like the kind of guy several boys at Dalton had tried to get away from.

Lucky for us, he wasn't.

He was stubborn, though, and often moody, and he didi have quite a bit of a temper, but he was also good-looking, and he could be charming and nice if he wanted to be, and even without trying he soon became one of the most popular students. He never made a secret of being gay, and even though he never talked about how he had gotten so badly injured, we all assumed there was a connection between the two, and that that was the reason he had transferred. In retrospect, I guess you could say that was true, although in a more roundabout way than most of us had thought it was.

When Blaine transferred, literally in the middle of the first semester, he came in as a senior, but he'd either missed a substantial amount of time at his previous school or the level had just been that much lower, because after a week or two he switched to junior year. Secretly, the Warblers were happy because it meant they got to keep him for another year, and initially Blaine himself didn't seem to mind that much, but as the end of the school year came near he became even moodier than usual. Mr. Prim, our P.E. teacher, got him into boxing -after a lot of discussing back and forth with his parents, apparently, who seemed to be incredibly worried he'd hurt himself- and that helped somewhat, but I remember us hoping a long, relaxed, summer would do him good, and come September he'd be back to the charming, dapper, guy we knew he could be.

But he wasn't.

On the contrary, even.

To make matters worse he got sick - he got migraines, was often dizzy, ... We all urged him to go home, to get rest, but he flat out refused. Even during the weekends, and even if his parents didn't live that far away, he stayed at school, no matter how sick he got. And then, when he finally seemed to start recovering somewhat, two things happened.

The first thing was Kurt, and if you weren't there it's hard to describe exactly what it was he did to Blaine - even we, who saw him on a day-to-day basis, could hardly believe the effect Kurt had. It wasn't as if Blaine suddenly became a ray of sunshine, puking rainbows and unicorns everywhere he went, but he was a lot calmer, a lot more patient. Especially after Kurt transferred, it seemed like taking Kurt under his wing was the purpose Blaine had missed before: something he could focus on, a goal to be achieved.

Needless to say it didn't take long for the betting pools to start up. Which is why we were all the more surprised when thing number two happened.

Jeremiah.

He came out of nowhere, but Blaine absolutely wanted to serenade him, and we all wanted to see him happy, so we went along with it: we performed a GAP attack, and Blaine got a date. Which ended... badly.

As usual, Blaine never told anyone what went wrong - simply locked himself up in his room for a week. He missed Warbler practice. Not even Kurt could get him out of his funk, and the Warbler Council started freaking out big time because we needed Blaine for Regionals. But then, one day, he walked into the Warbler Commons, a big smile on his face, as if nothing had happened, and things went back to normal. More or less, at least.

Blaine wasn't the same after that. He got even more dapper, more charming, more polite, and while none of that seemed like a bad thing at first, he also became a little... emptier in a way, although I think that, outside of the Warblers, nobody knew him well enough to notice. Similarly, his relationship with Kurt became more distant and warmer both at the same time, but Blaine graduated and left for NYU without them getting actually together. To this day I don't know where the betting money went.

This is probably the point where I need to make a confession. See, when Kurt transferred, he became my roommate, and I think it's fair to say we became quite close. Not as close as he was to Blaine, obviously. Or rather, unfortunately. For me. Since I was pretty much head over heels for him since day one. In my defense, I was really respectful. I never told him. I definitely never pressured him. But I definitely didn't hold back when he kissed me at the Halloween party senior year, either.

We dated for most of our senior year which, given we were still sharing a room, resulted in a much-less-than-average number of hours of sleep. We were 17 and we were each other's first boyfriend, after all. I don't remember exactly how we broke up, it just kind of happened, even though we still remained close after. We even talked about getting a place together in New York, but in the end I went on dorms, and Kurt moved in with Blaine. I couldn't blame him: Blaine's parents owned the apartment, and when Blaine's brother Gary moved out to live with his boyfriend, Kurt could take over his room for a quarter of the price he'd have paid elsewhere.

And so the betting pools were opened again.

D-Day turned out to be March 11, and while we were all happy for them, I think it's safe to say our main reaction was relief. Even if they wouldn't let go of each other unless really necessary, all the PDA was definitely better than the longing looks and smoldering glances we'd had to endure before that.

Unfortunately, it didn't last long. Just a little under two months, to be exact.

Kurt called me on a Sunday early May, in panic. He didn't make much sense to me at first, saying he'd spend the day at the hospital and had thrown Blaine out, so I just went over, to try to calm him down and get the whole story. Which turned out to be a whole lot more complicated than I had anticipated.

Of course, I only know the story as Kurt told it to me, but apparently they had gone to a party the night before where Blaine had gotten drunk, very drunk even, so when they got home, he was quite a bit more handsy than usual. Not that Kurt minded - he'd complained to me more than once about how Blaine was extremely reluctant to take things one step further (or really, anywhere at all) in the bedroom. And so, things went down, that night. Unprotected things. Which shouldn't have been a problem - Kurt and I had been each other's first and only, and we'd always been safe, and in the four years that I had known Blaine he had never had a boyfriend.

As it turns out a careless one night stand at 16 is all it takes to become HIV positive.

Blaine's one night stand had been with Brad, a friend of his brother Gary, who had traded him his virginity for the virus. It was the reason Blaine had been so beat up when he first transferred. It was the reason the date with Jeremiah had gone so horribly wrong. It was the reason his parents hadn't wanted him to take up boxing. It was the reason why he'd been so sick starting senior year. It was the reason why Blaine had held back on dating Kurt for so long. It was the reason why he hadn't been willing to have sex with Kurt.

He had never told anyone.

The morning after the party, when Kurt filled in the blanks in Blaine's memory and Blaine realized what had happened, he rushed Kurt to the hospital, got him tested and put on therapy. As soon as they got home, Kurt and him got into a fight, Kurt threw him out, and called me.

I have to admit I was about ready to tear Blaine's head off that afternoon, even after Kurt told me he would only be on therapy for a month, and that there was a reasonable chance he would not get infected. I'm sure Rachel, Mercedes, and Kurt's parents felt the same way, and I still think Blaine was lucky Finn wasn't told because he was away on military training at that moment and they didn't want him to give that up - which he most likely would have had he heard what had happened. As it was, however, Kurt made us all promise we wouldn't tell anyone else and after a week he let Blaine come back.

Three weeks later he stopped therapy.

Two months after that he was declared fit, healthy, and HIV negative.

And now, almost five months later, Kurt and Blaine are still trying to pick up the pieces of their relationship.