Blaine Anderson hated summer. It was a fact. He hated a lot of things, but he was quite sure that summer was up there first on the list. Maybe hate was too much of a strong word. Despise? Abhor? It wasn't even a whim. He had a very long, very specific list of reasons why he hated summer. It was too hot, for one. He had a habit of wearing nothing less than long sleeved shirts and gloves, and that wasn't going to change soon or because of the seasons. There was also the fact that there was no school in summer. That was both a good and a bad thing. Bad because, simply put, he loved to learn. He loved the challenge of getting a new subject, a new thing in this world and get to made it his by learning everything about it. Sure, William McKinley High School wasn't the challenge he ached for, but he was only a year away from the true stuff. MIT. He was going to get into that place, and start actually learning stuff. And, most importantly, he was going to get away from this stupid school. It wasn't the studying that he hated, but the people. So, you see, Blaine Anderson wasn't quite a normal boy. In many ways. At the end of each class he prayed-even if he did not believe in god- that they got homework, and he silently cheered while his classmates groaned at the mention of exams. He wasn't a nerd, no matter what ninety percent of the school called him. He just liked to learn. It kept him occupied. Busy. It kept him less lonely.

He strolled across campus to the building. His house was further east, and to access school from the front he would have to make a huge, unpractical detour. There were both ups and downs from this route. An advantage was that he avoided the dumpsters where the jocks gathered to throw nerds and losers into them. He had ended inside one of those far too many times, and he didn’t appreciate the smell, the dirty clothes, or the touching. Besides, when the dumpsters where empty, it hurt like hell and he had trouble getting out. He wasn't particularly tall. Or even average. He was in fact pretty short.

He was also gay, which surely did nothing in his favor. He knew now that he should have never come out, but McKinley had been an empty promise. One of the "it" couples was a gay one, and he naively thought it was safe. At night, when he was scrubbing stains from his Yves Saint Laurent shirts, he cursed and devised ways to satisfactory kill that "it" couple. He blamed it all to them.

Kurt Hummel and Sebastian Smythe.

Which brought him to the disadvantages of getting to school by walking across the campus: Early cheerios practice.

He clutched his leather messenger bag and tried to make himself small. Well, smaller. The group was still practicing some routine, so they were busy and, if he was lucky, would pay no attention to him. It wasn't all of them that mocked him, the actually verbal ones where few, but the others laughed or did nothing to stop it, which Blaine hated the most. That was precisely why he Hated Kurt Hummel even more that his boyfriend. Sebastian was a jerk, but at least he was an honest jerk. Kurt had no personality, he couldn’t agree with the bullies nor disagree, and that pissed Blaine off. He was just there, smiling without meaning it and looking pretty. Oh yes, Blaine hated his guts, but he wasn't blind. Kurt Hummel was gorgeous. Fair, perfectly smooth skin, to the point where their cheerio coach called him "porcelain". His hair was always styled in a way that seemed straight out of some fashion catalog, and his body was delectably toned from practice but not overly muscular and burly. Tall, long legs, and delicate but strong hands with long fingers. Pianist fingers, Blaine always thought. And his fashion sense was stunning. He wore his Jacobs, his McQueens and Dolce and Gabanna like they were designed for him.

But all of that paled in comparison with his eyes. It was the only feature that Blaine loved and hated about Hummel, simply because it made  him human. All the other stuff made him look like a fabricated, albeit gorgeous model. Fake and deliberate. But his eyes were imperfect, and that's why Blaine had trouble looking away from them in the extremely rare occasions where he got to be close enough. One of the eyes was smaller than the other, or at least, it looked that way when he laughed, which wasn't often. He usually had this cool, cold indifference around him, like he thought he was better that all of them. But when he laughed? Blaine could feel himself smiling in return. Those cold grey eyes turned into galaxies, pools of stars and green and blue sparks that twinkled and shined with merry and life.

Too bad his personality sucked, Blaine needed to remind himself, when he heard Hummel's high pitch voice shout at the girls in the pyramid to be steady. He had the most beautiful voice, when he was not using it to bring someone down with his scathing, biting retorts. He was sure that if Hummel sung, it would be beautiful. But the boy wasn't in any singing clubs, so he probably couldn’t do it. Blaine secretly hoped that was the case, because if Kurt Hummel, in addition to being hot as hell, could also sing, the world would have proven itself to be highly unfair. Blaine, once again, reminded himself of his lousy personality. He was almost by the bleachers now. Only a couple more meters and he would be safe.

"Honestly, Anderson, when are you going to learn how to dress yourself with something that doesn’t make you look homeschooled?" said an acid, amused smooth voice from somewhere over his head, and Blaine didn’t need to look to know that Sebastian's meerkat face was staring down at him.

"The day you learn how to actually spell homeschooled," Blaine muttered, barely audible. You don’t reply to them, he had learned early in the game. Answering only made things worse, and he couldn’t get angry either. He was not allowed to get angry, couldn’t afford it. It was trouble, because he wasn’t particularly... Normal.

"Do you actually hear me, Anderson, or are you so close to the floor that all you can  perceive is earth vibrations?" oh the height jokes again, how fucking original. No, don’t get angry, Blaine. Just don’t react. How long where the bleachers anyway? Didn’t Sebastian have better things to do than walk along the top step and throw insults at him? Didn’t he have a boyfriend to stare at? He chanced a glance at the field, through the plastic seats of the bleachers, and he got the sporadic glimpse of that perfect body clad in the cheerios fitting uniform. In a flash of visual, he thought he had seen Kurt frowning at Sebastian. Probably pissed off that his boyfriend wasn't paying attention to him.

"Oh, I see," Sebastian said, fake realization tainting his voice "you actually have the hots for my boyfriend. How cute"

No, seriously. How fucking long where those bleachers? He could see the end, only six meters and, say, thirty six centimeters. In the USA system that's twenty point eight three periodic feet. How much would that be in Armstrong? Probably...

"That's right, run along, you don’t want to miss Losers Club"

He hadn’t noticed he was walking faster, but he must have, because he had already left the bleachers far behind him.

Sebastian Smythe. What a jerk. He actually hated that guy. It was right up there, next to summer. Slightly lower on the list than Hummel, that’s for sure, but close enough. He was handsome, yes, but he was such a douche bag that no amount of pretty could fix it. The only thing that made him hate Sebastian a small, diminutive fraction less that Kurt, was that he was a douche bag to everyone, even teachers. No one dared to say anything to him. His father was some big state attorney or something. He was untouchable, and he could get away with anything. People that used their parent’s power as their own pissed him off. Blaine felt himself getting annoyed once he crossed the threshold and started navigating the hallways. He started with the breathing exercises his dad had taught him ever since... Well, he didn’t want to remember that. Not now. It would probably make him angrier. He got to his locker and opened it, taking out his books for first period and a novel he had been nursing for a few days now. He was too early, again. It was the price to pay in order to avoid the multitude. He closed the door and turned, only to see a group of jocks walking towards his general direction. He tensed and unconsciously tugged at his long sleeves to hide his hands because he forgot to wear gloves today. It exposed his neck a bit, but that was ok. They almost never went for the neck, it was the hands that gave him most trouble. Maybe, if he was lucky, they wouldn’t see him.

"Anderson! What the fuck are you doing here?"

Right. Same old story. He clutched his books tighter with his cloth clad hands, almost like a shield. A shield to protect them. Blaine felt the well known signs of anger build up inside of him. He tried to go back to his breathing exercises, but it was useless. He instead tried to focus on analyzing the situation in front of him. Three guys, the usual suspects. Nothing elaborate because it wasn’t planned, they were there, they were bored, and he was at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

"What the fuck? Why don’t you answer, freak?" something inside Blaine struggled to get to the surface at that nickname. But it was only because he was gay, he tried to remind himself. It was only that, they didn’t know. Nobody knew, and as long as he can remember those stupid breathing exercises, it would remain unknown.

"Dude, maybe he's like, sick or something. Voiceless or some shit"

"Don't be an idiot," spat the biggest of them. Karofsky, Blaine's mind supplied. "He’s only a pansy coward who won’t talk back"

I am not a coward. Breathe, Blaine.

"Shit, he's boring as fuck. Why don’t you get outta my face?"

Because you're standing in the way, dickhead. No, don’t answer, Blaine. Come on. They'll get bored, they always do.

"Ugh, he's such a dweeb, get out," Karofsky was about to push him aside, but the hand was too high. He was too tall, Blaine too short, and his neck too exposed. Blaine flinched and pushed himself away from them and against the lockers. The movement was fast and he crashed against them hard, but he didn’t feel the pain. The situation was escalating to where he didn’t want it to get. Usually, the stay still and don’t answer them tactic worked fine. Not today. Tough luck.

"Don't touch me," Blaine said, almost polite. He was trying so hard to keep calm. His mind had his favorite litany on loop. Don’t get angry, don’t get scared, don’t feel. But he was a fucking human. He couldn’t not feel.

"What? Don’t touch you? Afraid you'll get a hard on? I bet you would love that"

The other celebrated the joke with tons of laughter, but it was the tone and the eyes of Karofsky that started to freak him out.

Scared. Scared. Panic.

"Just... Don’t touch me," Blaine almost pleaded. It was as if he was trying to make himself disappear inside the lockers by the force he was pushing against them, but Karofsky was towering over him, close. Too close. Karofsky's hand reached out. Blaine panicked. He couldn’t panic, and that only made it worse. It was a vicious, vicious circle.

A scream rang through the empty hallways, ended by a loud metal crashing noise. It was the sound of Karofsky's body hitting the lockers. In a second, the boy was lying on the floor, unconscious.

Shit, shit, shit.

"What the fuck did you do to him?!" screamed one of the other guys, But Blaine wasn’t listening. He was too busy panicking. Quick footsteps could be heard from one of the adjacent hallways and the irate and pissed off figure of Sue Sylvester came into view. Blaine was shaking. He wasn’t sure he could justify this one.

"What the hell happened here?!" Sue demanded, and the jocks where quick to blame him. He couldn’t even speak, he was frozen in place.

"Anderson must have pushed him and then he went flying! Shit, we were just talking," said one of the big guys, staring from Blaine to Sue to Karofsky, who was still on the floor were the Cheerios Coach was checking him.

"I somehow doubt it," snapped Sylvester, glaring at them. "You two will take Karofsky to the infirmary; he’s just passed out, the hit wasn’t that bad" the two boys grabbed Karofsky, sending murderous glares his way. Blaine just stood there, frozen to the core.

"Anderson, follow me!"

Blaine did. How in hell was he going to get out if this? His mind was racing so fast, that he didn't even watched where he was going. Soon, he found himself in Sue's office.

"Sit down, Elvis Kid." trying to ignore the random nickname, Blaine sat in front of her. She stared at him hard and for long seconds. Blaine felt like he was being scanned to the soul. The silence was making him nervous.

"I didn’t thought you had it in you," she finally said. Blaine was so confused; his head was starting to ache.

"Um, sorry, what do I have?"

"The guts, Anderson. The guts. Not everyone can stand up to three of those guys. Now where the hell do you keep all that strength in that miniature body of yours?" she wondered, but it sounded like she was just thinking aloud, so he opted not to answer. Besides, it’s not like he could give her the real answer. No. That would go wonderful. You see, Coach Sylvester, I’m what society calls a mutant, even if it has nothing to do with genes, and my so called power is to harm or push people away when they touch me. That’s why Karofsky went flying, Coach, so would you be so kind and not call the authorities? Thank you very much, and have a nice day.

No, somehow, he didn’t think that would go very well. He almost smiled at the absurd scenario, but he remembered he was still in deep shit, and the grin was erased.

"Anyway, you have to understand that I don't tolerate violence. I won’t have people pushing others around unless it’s me doing it. Logically, I would have to punish you. Now, torture was something I couldn’t negotiate in my contract with Figgings, so I’m making you tutor one of my kids, which should be torture enough. And this will have to go on your record."

"No! I..." Blaine exclaimed suddenly, and Sue merely lifted an eyebrow "I'm trying to get into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I.... I can't have anything like that on my record. I swear it was an accident! I didn’t mean to... I warned them... I.... Please, just. I'll do anything!" Blaine finished, lamely, and Sue looked at him up and down. When she slowly smiled, Blaine had the nagging sensation that his outburst was somehow part of her plan.

"Well, I could do with a water boy, I always wondered what it would feel like to have an actual slave. Congratulations, Anderson, you're the new Cheerios mascot," before Blaine could even try to sputter some complaint, she opened her agenda and scribbled something down. "Find the Cheerios schedule on your own and be there from tomorrow on. Wednesdays and Fridays after school you’re tutoring for two hours in the library. Now get the hell out of my office."

Blaine got up silently, cursing and groaning in the safety of his mind. He walked dejectedly to the door and turned before leaving.

"What subjects am I going to be tutoring and to whom?" he asked, resignedly. If he was going to try and cram some knowledge into a stupid girl or boy’s brain, he better have some good teaching techniques ready, at least. Sue didn’t even look up to answer.

"Science and Italian to Kurt Hummel"

Blaine felt his heart drop to his stomach. Surely he had done something really bad in his previous life, because this was the worst thing ever.

­­X_X_X_X

"You look like someone just kicked your newborn puppy," Rachel said as soon as Blaine sat down next to her in Lit class. Blaine simply groaned and let his forehead hit the desk. It hurt like hell, but he didn’t care. Rachel reached out and rubbed his back, being careful not to touch his skin. Blaine felt comforted almost immediately. He couldn’t let many people touch him, and some days he missed that simple comfort terribly. Rachel Berry was one of the few friends he had, but she was more that that. She was like him. A freak, according to some people. A mutant, according to the sci-fi loving population. For them, it was a curse most of the time, and a secret. The fact that people like them existed had been popular knowledge since only a few months ago, and the governments hadn’t made up their minds about what to do with them. Blaine hadn’t told anyone except his family. The only reason Rachel knew was because of a mutual accident that had happened a year ago. He found her freaking out in one of the empty classes one day, talking nonstop about Broadway and casts and movies and everything, almost vomiting precise facts one after the other. Blaine had found it amusing until he saw her panicked face. He rushed to her, tried to help her, and she grabbed Blaine's ungloved hand -something that he made sure would not happen again in the future- and then she started screaming in pain. Blaine had taken his hand away in time to not leave any lasting wound, but the secret was out. They had talked, and realizing they had the same... situation, they bonded. It was nice, having someone who actually understood what this was about; that they weren’t 'mutants'; that it wasn’t cool, it wasn’t an x-men movie and they didn’t save the world at night in a league of justice. Someone who knew it was not a genetic mutation, but a psychological one. Few studies were made, and the ones that were made, had to be done in secrecy, but it was known, at least to them, that the true nature of those called powers resided in the mind. If anything, more than powers, they where evolved versions of phobias. That’s what they were known as in their circles, at least. They originated because of a normal psychological condition, a common fear, a simple trauma. When those got serious, they turned into phobias, or real psychological problems. Schizophrenia, bipolarity, OCD, you name it. But not for them. For a few, the body changed to compensate what the mind was lacking. It worked sort of like what the senses did when, for example, if you lost sight, your touch or hearing capacity grew to compensate. This was a strange version of that, but much harder to talk about. The way the body compensated, the 'power', that was easy to converse about, but having to explain what lead you to that, what phobia or psychological damage you had escaped from, that, in some cases, was even more of a secret. Rachel had shared hers that day. She explained to him that she had been obsessed with stardom and fame since little, and it grew to a point were she was scared of being forgotten. It was athazagoraphobia driven to its peak, so much so that her body compensated by remembering absolutely everything. She had to make exercises to put her mind blank in order to stop absorbing things, because sometimes it drove her insane. Blaine was reticent to share his situation until Rachel let out casually something about her 'dads', and Blaine shared his story, that he had been bullied for being gay to the point of getting beaten up, and it had made such damage to his mind that he started to develop a phobia to being touched. Before a shrink could start to treat him, his body did the job. It was manageable, in some cases. When he was feeling safe and trusted someone, they could touch him without being physically pushed away or hurting, but when he was in panic or fear, unsure and unsafe; his skin became dangerous to touch. An unknown force, like a magnetic field, pushed away anyone that was close, and if they actually touched him, pain would start to spread from the contact point, slowly spreading through the whole body. There was a way to lose that condition but to the price of letting the mind run the natural course of the trauma and quite possibly make you insane. There had been a few cases of people who forced themselves to change the power and deal with the trauma instead, but all of them ended up committing suicide. The stats spoke for themselves.

Rachel kept rubbing his back in circles and he tried to push through the fog that the comforting contact put him in, and sat straighter.

"Coach Sue gave me detention," he said, still unable to believe this was happening to him.

"What? Why? If you want I can go and complain to the faculty! My dads..."

"No, no," he stopped her before she went full mode into one of her tirades. Blaine rubbed his temples to try and stop the imminent headache. "It was sort of my fault. Or at least it has to be if I don’t want to be forced out of the closet," Rachel frowned, not getting the point since everyone knew Blaine was gay, until she got the code. The other closet. She leaned in, lowering the volume of her voice to a proper conspiracy whisper. Her dramatic antics never failed to amuse him.

"Oh my god, did you hurt anyone?"

"Karofsky, but he’s ok. They were being idiots in the hallway and they cornered me. I warned them not to touch me, but…"

"Yeah, like they would listen,” she finished for him “Blaine, this is awful, did they find out?"

"No, that's the point. I was lucky and the angle helped, so they all think I pushed Karofsky into the lockers. I am lucky to only have this stupid detention and not get sent into prison or some lab. I can’t do a thing about it," he said, pissed off but dejectedly. Rachel knew the frustration of being accused of something and not being able to even defend oneself.

"That really sucks, Blaine. What are they making you do? Maybe I can help you"

Blaine smiled at her. Most of the time, she was really ambitious and selfish, but she was a good girl, and a good friend.

"That is the worst part of all of this. I actually think I rather go to prison," he deadpanned.

"Blaine!" she admonished in return.

"I have to attend cheerios practices, Rachel," he finally said, with the voice of a man who just got his death sentence "Sue will make me water mascot of the cheerios for the whole year. It’s awful!"

"Oh... Well, that doesn’t sound so bad," she said, fixing her skirt to avoid Blaine’s eyes.

"Not bad? Not b... Rachel, I hate cheerios. I hate cheerleading! And I’m being forced to watch a bunch of stupid, superficial, empty minded boys and girls jump around and feel like they're the best thing to ever happen to this school!"

"Oh don’t be so dramatic!” She said, rolling her eyes “At least the boys are hot," Rachel offered, and Blaine shook his head, amused despite his anger.

"They might be hot but they're idiots. And Sebastian Stupid Smythe is there all the time. This is going to be so humiliating!"

"But there's something else, right?" Rachel noticed, sharp as ever. Her power let her be more assertive than others so it was hard to hide something for her. Blaine lowered his voice.

"I have to tutor Hummel twice a week," he said, grimacing.

Rachel let out a squeal of happiness that, according to Blaine, it was completely out of place.

"What was that?" Blaine asked, frowning at her while she covered her mouth to try and hide her excitement.

"It’s just that... It’s Kurt Hummel! You're tutoring the most gorgeous boy in the whole school! Oh you two would look so good together!" she gushed, and Blaine stared at her like she had gone mad.

"Rachel, there is so much wrong with what you just said, that I can’t even begin explaining"

"I know, he has a boyfriend. But Sebastian is a jerk and he treats Kurt like crap"

"You're missing the point! That is only one thing that’s wrong, and its not even the most important one. And if Sebastian treats him like crap it’s because he lets him, which leads me to the actual point: Kurt Hummel is shallow, superficial, lacks personality and has no drive at all. The only thing going for him is how hot he is," Rachel started nodding effusively until Blaine raised a finger to indicate he wasn’t over "but even that is hard to appreciate because he’s such an ice queen all the time. So, no, Rachel, this is not good".

"He has a really cute brother, too," the brunette piped in, trying to be sly and failing.

"Oh my god, Rachel, are you even listening to me, or is your mind so full of perverted thoughts of the Hudson-Hummel brothers that you can’t hear?"

"I'm just saying! Of all punishments, being forced to stare at Hummel all day sounds fine to me"

"I don’t even recognize you right now," Blaine muttered, sitting normally in his seat when the teacher finally arrived and deciding to ignore the stranger that was now occupying the place of what was once his friend.

Rachel simply smiled knowingly and faced forward to focus on their class, and Blaine tried to do the same, and pushing all thoughts of stupid popular cheerio boys and their jerk boyfriends out off his mind.

The day had started like crap, and it only promised to get worse.

Sometimes, Blaine Anderson also hated his life.