“Hello?” he mumbled, still rubbing the drowsiness from his eyes.

“Kurt, it’s me,” Rachel announced. She sounded rather breathless.

“Oh, hey. I’ll go and find Finn, he’s just-” Kurt began.

“Wait!” Rachel cried. “I want to talk to you, too.”

“Oh,” Kurt said rather blankly. His lack of enthusiasm could almost be tasted.

“This won’t take long,” Rachel promised. She hurried on. “Do you remember when I said my dads had something to tell me?”

“Yeah…” Kurt said slowly.

“Well, it’s- oh my God, Kurt, I have a brother!” Rachel practically yelled down his ear. Kurt jerked in shock.

“Really? Since when?” he cried, tangling his fingers in the phone cord.

“Well, since birth!” Rachel explained. “He’s my twin! My surrogate mother decided she wanted to keep one of us, and my dads really wanted a girl, so they took me and she took Blaine.”

“Blaine? Is that his name?” Kurt asked, finally taking interest in the situation.

“Yeah! Blaine Anderson. I’m really tempted to look him up on Facebook, do you think it’s too soon?” Rachel fretted.

“Calm down,” Kurt warned. “What do you even know about this Blaine?” He sat down on the arm of the sofa, the phone nestled closer to his ear.

“He lives in San Francisco,” Rachel revealed. “He has to have an incredible voice too, right? Imagine the potential, Kurt. Imagine.”

“Are you going to meet him?” Kurt said.

“That’s the other thing,” Rachel went on. “He’s coming here to live with us. Kurt he’s coming to McKinley!” She almost exploded.

“Really?” Kurt spluttered. “But why?”

“Well… here’s the hitch,” Rachel sighed. “Blaine’s a bit of a, shall we say, trouble maker.” She paused. “He just got released from juvie.”

“Oh my God,” Kurt gasped. “What did he do, kill a guy?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “My dads weren’t really clear on that bit. I’m not sure I want to know.”

“Rachel, he’s coming to live with you! What if he’s a total psycho?” Kurt pointed out.

“Ssh. He won’t be. He’s my brother,” Rachel insisted.

“Hm, I don’t know,” Kurt muttered ominously.

“Is Finn there yet? I’m dying to tell him,” Rachel said, ignoring Kurt’s tone.

“Sure, I’ll go call him,” Kurt replied.

“Okay. And Kurt?” Rachel said. “It was really nice talking to you properly again.”

Kurt paused. He’d just had a real, full length conversation that didn’t involve him being false or checking his watch. The first real conversation he’d had since the beginning of the summer, probably. Did this mean things were getting better now? Kurt didn’t want to get his hopes up.

——

“Can you believe we’re about to meet Rachel’s brother?” Finn said to Kurt the next morning over breakfast.

“What’s his name again?” Burt added as he stabbed at his bacon.

“Blaine,” Kurt said rather abruptly, surprising himself. The whole table turned to stare at him. Again, Rachel’s knock on the door couldn’t have come at a better time. Finn and Kurt got up, slinging their bags over their shoulders, and went out to meet her.

Rachel stood on the doorstep. “He’s in the car,” she whispered. “Be nice.”

Finn shrugged, taking Rachel’s hand as they descended down the path together. Kurt swallowed, following meekly behind. Rachel’s car, it’s roof down again, was in the same place as before, only today it wasn’t empty.

Sat in the passenger seat, dirty sneakers propped up on the dashboard, was the type of guy Kurt didn’t believe existed in the real world. He looked a lot like Rachel, with thick waves of dark hair gelled with precision atop his head. He was short, Kurt observed, but for what he lacked in height he made up for with tanned, rippling muscle. But it was Blaine’s eyes that really captured Kurt. Even from this far, he could see could make out the gorgeous mix of hazel and amber, blazing like hot coals and framed with long, thick eyelashes.

Apart from Blaine’s whole rugged, devil-may-care attitude, there was also a hint of dapperness about him. He yawned, accentuating his strong jaw line and making Kurt’s stomach flutter with a feeling he wasn’t quite acquainted with. Rachel walked over to the car. “Blaine,” she sighed. “Can you please not put your feet on the dash?”

Kurt admired her bravery. He wouldn’t have uttered an “excuse me” to Blaine in a crowd. Blaine grunted, swinging his feet down to meet the floor. Finn hesitated before making do with the back seat. “Hey man,” he said lightly. Blaine turned to look at him with an arched eyebrow.

“Uh, hi,” he said. His voice was low and easy, like waves of velvet. Kurt knew he was gaping, but he couldn’t stop himself. Then Blaine caught him staring and gave Kurt a strange, slightly intimidating look. Kurt blushed and flopped down beside Finn.

“Blaine this is Kurt,” Rachel explained. “Finn’s brother and my best friend.” She beamed.

Blaine nodded mutely, resuming his brooding stare out of the window. Rachel switched on her radio and a moment later Blaine fished in the pockets of his leather jacket, eventually extracting an iPod. He fixed the earphones in to his ears, burrowing down lower in his seat and closing his eyes as his head jerked almost imperceptibly to the music. Kurt could hear the pulsing bass all the way from the back seat.

Nobody spoke on the ride to school. When Rachel finally pulled up in the school parking lot Blaine was the first to get out. Kurt stole a look at how Blaine’s dark jeans clung to his thighs, which strained like tree trunks from beneath the denim. Kurt didn’t even what to think about what a body like that was capable of doing.

“I have to go to the office to pick up my time table and locker key,” Blaine explained. Kurt was already addicted to the sound of his voice. “Apparently.” Blaine added this as if the whole idea was pointless to him.

“Never stop talking. Say more things!” Kurt wanted to yell.

Except he didn’t, and Blaine strode from the car park without so much as backwards glance.

“He seems… okay,” Finn said lamely.

“It’s been so hard trying to get through to him,” Rachel muttered. “Last night at dinner was so awkward.”

Kurt made his excuses to disappear to his French class. He walked through the halls in a daze, his every thought wrapped up around Blaine. Then, out of no where, an arm shot out, sending Kurt flying in to the wall of lockers beside him. His head knocked off the metal, his ear catching one of combination locks.

“Those guys should have finished you off, fag.”

Kurt looked up blindly to see David Karofsky hovering above him.

“Hey,” said the voice Kurt had spent the past five minutes fantasising about. “Leave him alone.”

Kurt turned and his heart jolted in his throat. Blaine was stood facing Karofsky with a death stare, his fists balled up at his sides. Karosfky stepped forwards. Compared to Blaine he was a giant. Karofsky seemed to realise this, and it stirred inside him some sick courage. He proceeded with a smug grin.

“Oh yeah? And what are you gonna do about it,” Karofsky snarled.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll push you so hard in to one of those fucking lockers that you’ll end up in Narnia,” the calm agression in Blaine’s voice was enough to make Kurt want to run for the hills himself. “Though I’m already guessing you’ve spent long enough in a closet. If you know what I mean.”

Karofsky instantly started, then he let his retort die on his tongue, giving Blaine a snarling stare as he walked away. Kurt shakily got to his feet.

“Thanks,” he mumbled bashfully. He hated how the first moment he and Blaine had shared together had had to involve Blaine coming to his rescue as if he were a complete hopeless case. Which on reflection Kurt supposed he was.

“I can’t stand bullies,” Blaine confessed.

“Did you sort out your time table?” Kurt enquired. He didn’t really want to get on the subject of bullies. Blaine probably already regarded him a total loser.

“Yeah,” Blaine replied. He paused to look at Kurt, his eyes blazing so strongly that Kurt felt scalded by their stare. “But that doesn’t mean I want to compare classes with you. Like I said, I just can’t stand bullies.”

With one last blink of those captivating eyes, Blaine was gone.

——

After math Kurt had a class with Rachel. He began his interrogation the moment they took their seats. “What exactly have your dads told you about Blaine so far?” he shot. “What was he in juvie for?”

Rachel looked nervous. “He got in to a fight. Put this other guy in hospital. He was in a coma for four days, they thought he’d never wake up.” She said all of this rather briskly whilst she took notes from the board.

“Really? Wow, Karofsky got away light-” Kurt stopped talking as Rachel gave him a questioning stare.

“Karofsky? What?” she muttered.

“Nothing,” Kurt assured her. He wanted to keep the moment all to himself; that way at least if he had made it up during his day dreaming then no one else would know. Looking back it seemed too bizarre to be real. God, Kurt hoped that it was real.

Santana Lopez, fellow Glee club member and Cheerio, span around in her seat to address Rachel bluntly. “Word on the street is that the new guy is your bro. He’s a Berry I wouldn’t mind squeezing the juice out of myself - if you catch my drift.”

“Anderson,” Rachel swiftly corrected her.

“Where’ve you been hiding him?” Santana demanded to know.

“Blaine’s as new to me as he is to you,” Rachel replied coolly.

“Blaine,” Santana repeated, letting the name roll around on her tongue. She smiled privately to herself, then turned around again.

“Blaine?” Rachel whispered furiously. “Who’s she trying to fool? Everyone knows that she and Brit-“

“Ms Berry, problem?” Mr Brewster boomed from the front of the class.

Rachel blushed. “No, sir.”

“So is that everything?” Kurt mumbled a while later.

“Why are you so interested?” Rachel questioned curiously, raising her eyebrow in a way that was eerily similar to the way Blaine had arched his at Finn.

“No reason,” Kurt said quickly.

Rachel paused as if wondering to relay her next piece of information. “Something happened to him when he was a kid,” she revealed in a whisper so low that Kurt barely caught it.

“What, something bad?” he hissed back.

“My dads won’t tell me,” Rachel sighed. “They said it’s not their business to tell. I suppose I’ll just have to find out from Blaine himself.”

Kurt sat back to think about it. Immediately Blaine’s words from earlier chimed through his head like bells. I can’t stand bullies. I can’t stand bullies. Was it possible that Blaine had been badly bullied as a child? Had something horrific come of it? Kurt instantly felt a rush of sympathy towards Blaine. If it was true, then Kurt felt he could relate. He’d been bullied all the way through high school, the time when his sexuality had first started to flourish more obviously in front of the eyes of his peers.

Already Kurt was having different thoughts concerning Blaine. He didn’t see the arrogant bad boy he had witnessed before. Instead Kurt saw somebody who was just as vulnerable as him. Somebody who had lost their way and had nobody by their side to guide them. Kurt could be that guide, he knew he could. The only problem was that Blaine didn’t seem like the type of person who could be easily swayed.