They were the last family left in the parking lot. Kurt shouldn't have been entirely surprised - he wasn't exactly looking forward to the moment his dad would get into the truck and pull away down the long driveway towards the freshly-paved road on which the school sat - but something about the way his dad checked the truck for the third time "to make sure we didn't forget anything" made him realize just how much the two of them were used to each other. Had relied on each other over the years. Even with Mrs. Jones always around, and Mercedes of course, he and his dad had been each other's support since his mom died, and now he was going to just be here by himself.

It was unnerving to say the least.

He knew logically that the day would come; after all, he had been planning on moving to New York the moment he graduated from high school for as long as he could remember. This was just suddenly too soon, was all.

"Well," Burt said, jaw tight, lips pressed together tightly. He adjusted his tie awkwardly - an article of clothing he never wore by choice and had donned only because he wanted to make sure Kurt made a good impression at this new fancy school of his - and looked forlornly at the truck. "I think you got everything."

Kurt nodded and drew in a slow deep breath. "I think so," he confirmed.

"If you forgot anything back home, let me know and I'll run it up. Or we can get you one of those weekend pass things."

"They don't usually give them in the first month except when there's an emergency. Something about making sure we settle in," Kurt replied. His plans of going back in two weeks had been firmly dashed at the orientation session.

"Oh," Burt said, wondering what else there was to say to that. "Then I guess call if you need anything and I'll bring it." He dug into the pocket of his trousers and pressed a roll of dimes into Kurt's hand. "Anytime, you got it? Even if you don't need something."

Kurt's fingers tightened around the cylinder and his fingertips dug at the paper wrapper. "Okay," he confirmed, feeling his eyes start to sting. Even though his father was the one person who had never tried to tell him it wasn't okay to cry, it still felt so ridiculous. Embarrassing. Here he was at a great school surrounded by boys who seemed all right, and he was crying in the parking lot because he didn't want his dad to leave. No wonder everyone called him a sissy.

His dad drew him into a tight hug, which he returned, and mumbled, "Love you, kid. 'M proud of you."

That broke his resolve completely and the tears fell as he whispered "Love you too, Dad."

"You, um." Burt pulled back and cleared his throat. "You take care of yourself, you got that? Make sure you're eating and all that since no one's here to pester you about it."

"Got it," he promised.

With an almost herculean effort, Burt stepped away, then turned and walked the few remaining feet to his truck. Kurt hastily batted his tears away with the back of his hand, the roll of change to call home with still clenched in his fist.

He would be okay, he knew that. It just seemed so lonely. So strange, not having his dad right down the hall in case anything happened - not that anything would, he'd just gotten used to it.

After taking a moment to calm himself, he turned and slowly began to walk back to his new home. The sun was beginning to set over the grove of trees, casting a pinkish glow over the unnamed stream of water that was too small to be considered a river, but that ran all the way through town and cut across the edge of main campus. It really was a beautiful place, he thought with a kind of sad, resigned consolatory feeling. The campus was incredible, and every person he'd met had seemed genuinely nice, and the food seemed okay, and his room wasn't disgusting, and maybe he could make all of this work out well. Maybe he would even like it better than the alternatives - he had never been fond of McKinley, after all, and the people here seemed kind and interesting and worldly. He bet some of them had even flown on planes before.

"Are you lost?" A familiar voice snapped him from his reverie as he saw Blaine half-jogging towards him.

"What? Oh, no, I was just saying goodbye to my dad in the parking lot, and now...what are you doing out here?" And so disheveled? Kurt wanted to add. Blaine's jacket was over one arm, his shirt sleeves rolled up messily, his tie askew. Only his hair seemed in perfect order, held immobile by the large quantity of Brylcreme.

"I was helping some of the boys from Crew move the shell back," Blaine replied as he reached up to brush some sweat away from the back of his neck. He seemed to perpetually wear that smile, Kurt realized, whether his mouth was upturned or not - there was something in his eyes that just always seemed to be, well...smiling at him. He wasn't used to that. He was used to guys like Finn, who seemed perpetually kind of disinterested and occasionally downright annoyed. This was new, and though he couldn't precisely identify why, he knew that he liked it. "they had a talk for potential new recruits and brought it out to demonstrate. Do you row?"

"No," Kurt replied simply. He wasn't sure what about him suggested he might even have considered it before.

"Oh." Blaine's open expression seemed to close off a little at the short negative reply.

That wasn't what he wanted, not at all. He wanted Blaine to keep talking. He wanted to keep seeing that look. "Do you?" he asked with as interested expression as he could muster.

"No. I used to. I can't now, though, it conflicts with cross country," Blaine replied.

"You run?" Kurt asked.

Blaine nodded. "Ten miles every morning but Sunday. More on Saturday if I don't have too much work to get done. This is my favourite place in the mornings, it's so peaceful and..."

"Beautiful," Kurt supplied softly.

Blaine grinned. "Exactly." He turned to stare out over the pink-tinged water, and Kurt did the same so that they were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, the edge of Blaine's jacket occasionally brushing Kurt's hand where it draped over the crook of Blaine's elbow. "You should try it sometime."

"I might." Kurt hesitated, then - in absence of anything else to say to keep the conversation going, added, "You were amazing."

"What? Oh - thanks," Blaine smiled again, but it seemed almost shy. Almost. More like Kurt's praise ruined the moment somehow by making it about him, though Kurt wasn't sure how or why. "We should get back, it's starting to get dark and the campus is hard enough to navigate when it's all new. Want me to walk you?"

Kurt found himself grinning at the prospect. Realizing that was probably a little too enthusiastic a response just for an offer to help make sure he didn't get lost in the woods somewhere never to be found again, he tried to look a little more subdued as he replied, "Sure. If it's not out of your way."

"Oh, it's no problem," Blaine assured him. "All the dorms are pretty close together. What year are you?"

"Junior," Kurt replied as they started walking.

"Ahh, Everett - I remember it well," Blaine said with a fond kind of grin like there were so many stories he could never repeat that had taken place in those hallowed halls. Which meant Blaine was a senior, too - good to know. He wasn't sure what use that information was, but it seemed like something useful. "So what brings you to Dalton?"

"It's a great school," Kurt offered simply. It was the explanation he preferred to give until he knew someone. He'd made the mistake too many times of trying to express his outrage over his town's backwards ways, only to discover that the person he was talking to had no more sympathy for his perspective than the idiot next door who referred to Mercedes as a thief whenever she was in the neighbourhood (and that was, Kurt was absolutely certain, the nicest thing he could think of to call her). He didn't hide how he felt about all of it, about the ridiculous assumptions and the downright offensive words; he didn't smooth himself over and avoid Mercedes in public - almost the opposite. But there were times it was just easier to not delve into the entire lengthy history of just how screwed-up the people he knew were.

Only he wouldn't have to worry about that here.

The image of the Warblers, all singing together without anyone in that room caring that there were non-white people standing next to white people. That, when they finished and all clapped each other on the back in hearty congratulations, boys of different races touched each other and no one went to go wash their hands or scrub down their uniforms because they knew it didn't matter. They knew that the people who said it did were just ignorant.

He knew other schools weren't like his; for one thing, only a few schools in Ohio had been shut down over the issue, but it seemed like every school at least made a fuss about it. There were protesters, or surges in violence, or death threats...but not here.

This was how it was supposed to be.

He felt an unexpected swell of emotion, of pride but also of...anger. Frustration. Resentment. He had to leave his best friend behind to find this? His best friend, who needed this more than he did? He had to run away to somewhere else because his town was so bigoted that they would literally rather have no one in the city limits get an education than see Mercedes walk into a classroom?

"Yeah, but there are a lot of great schools around here - why here?" Blaine asked, then looked over and saw the expression on Kurt's face, the threatening tears, the tightness around his mouth. "What's wrong?" he asked, concerned.

"Can I-" Kurt swallowed to steady his voice and continued, "-ask you a question?"

"Sure," Blaine replied. "Whatever you want."

"All the guys in the Warblers, they really...don't care when people are-" He struggled to find a way of saying it that wouldn't make him sound like a racist jerk, like he thought it should matter. He knew it shouldn't, except it did to everyone around him. "...different?"

Blaine blinked, confused. "We're all different. Only the uniforms are the same," he added, trying to joke. "I'm sorry, I don't think I know what you mean."

"You and all the boys. No one acted like any of them were any different, not even the two on either side of you."

Blaine thought a moment about who had been standing near him. "You mean Wes and David?" he asked, eyebrows knitting together.

"Maybe. I don't know anyone's names yet."

"If you're asking what I think you're asking, then the answer is yes - they're part of the group and no, no one cares. Dalton integrated voluntarily back in the 1920s and we have a strict non-harassment policy. Anyone who comes here and tries to say something about it doesn't last long. Everyone is treated the same. Everyone is equal. It's as simple as that."

Kurt's mouth tightened further as his eyes started to burn. As simple as that? He couldn't imagine such a thing. He couldn't fathom a world where everyone knew what he'd been feeling since he was- well, forever, really, but certainly since he was 7. A school that had known it back around the time his father had been a child?

"I take it things were different at your old school," Blaine offered gently.

"My best friend Mercedes...we were supposed to be able to go to school together this year. We'd been looking forward to it for months - years, really, but it was real a few months ago, and now the school has closed its doors because she and her friends will apparently somehow damage the rest of the people I know. And I can't-...I try to let it not bother me, to stand up when I can, but listening to people talk about her like that is..." He shook his head, lacking the words to express how simultaneously frustrating and heart-wrenching it was. Knowing that legislatures literally sat and debated the pseudo-scientific reports to try to figure out which was more damaging: telling someone they were worth less than any other human being for something they couldn't help, or 'forcing' the rest of the town to acknowledge that not all people were exactly the same. Knowing that everyone was pretty much at the mercy of people with this deeply-ingrained and completely illogical discomfort and out-right hatred until they all died out.

How had these people avoided that? Dalton was incredible, but it was only a high school. He could remember hearing comments starting-...well probably about the same time people had started calling him names for not being like other boys. It all started so early, how had these boys (and their families) never had that part ingrained in them, too?

Blaine nodded and placed his hand on Kurt's shoulder. "I understand," he said with a sad smile. Kurt wanted to believe it - he really did - but in his entire life, very few people who had said that to him had actually understood. "The school I went to before this was...not nearly so accepting," he offered, his voice taking on a kind of halting quality as if not sounding hurt took too much energy to keep his sentences flowing. "I'm part-Pinoy."

"What's that?"

"About half my family's from the Philippines," he explained. "I don't look it, neither does my dad really, but most of my cousins... I can pass for white, for 'normal,' but they can't. Listening to people at my old school talk about everyone who wasn't pale to a certain level really..." Over the course of the few sentences, the smile melted out of his gaze, replaced by something more genuine, sadder. Worry. Guilt. Regret. His jaw was tight, and he gave a quick shake of his head.

"Did they know about you?" Kurt asked quietly.

Blaine licked his lips and hesitated a moment before he ground out a simple, "No." He hesitated, then added, "Only a few people here do because it doesn't matter. Wes saw one of my family photos once and joked that I must be adopted. At my old school, no one knew because I chose not to let anyone. Here, I don't tell people because it doesn't make a difference. It's a lot better here." They ascended the front steps of Everett House and Blaine held open the door, allowing Kurt to enter first, and suddenly the vulnerability and regret Kurt had seen too briefly in Blaine's eyes was gone, replaced by that constant-smile look. It suddenly seemed so much more hollow than it had a few minutes ago. "Which room are you in?"

"207," Kurt replied, pausing a moment to remember which direction the stairs were from here, but Blaine grabbed his hand and led him. "Or I could just follow you."

Blaine grinned. "We encourage people to listen to upperclassmen around here, especially the new kids," he joked. "Let's see, now I was down that way," he pointed to the left, "in 224 last year, so you'd be down this way-" He led Kurt to the right, which surely enough was the correct direction.

As they approached the room, the door was open and Kurt could see someone hunched over the desk on the side of the room with the blue rug. Apparently his roommate had returned. He felt a nervous tightening in his stomach; he was stuck with this boy, whoever he was, whatever he liked, whatever views he might hold...there was no getting away from him. Kurt had only really experienced that once before, with Finn, which hadn't gone so well in the beginning, and he didn't exactly relish the idea of doing it without at least his father to step in and play referee. Though it did make him feel a little better that, at the very least, he wasn't going to have to hide photos of the important people in his life for fear that this boy would make a crack about the Joneses, that wasn't at all the only area of his life that he'd been teased over. What if the boy was one of the athletic types who had stared at him and called him a girl from the time he was five? Or one of the guys who liked to go sneak alcohol every weekend and would come home completely drunk long after curfew?

"Hey, Sam!" Blaine said brightly, and the roommate's head jerked up. He looked like he could be the blond guy Blaine had been dancing with at the beginning of the performance in the Commons, though at this point Kurt had seen so many boys in identical clothes that he was beginning to have no idea who was who anymore. Obviously Blaine knew him, in any event. "You're rooming with Sam?" he asked, turning to Kurt.

Kurt wasn't sure how precisely to answer that. "If this is Sam, and Sam isn't coopting someone else's desk, then I suppose I am."

"Oh - that's your stuff over there?" Sam asked, turning in his desk chair to face them at the door. The peroxide-platinum was a few shades lighter than Kurt would have chosen for the boy's hair, it washed him out a little too much. Even so, anyone who spent that much time and effort on his own appearance was probably someone he could handle rooming with and who either wouldn't mock the regime de beaute that consumed at least an hour of Kurt's day...or would at least know enough to keep his mouth shut around other people who would make it an issue. Sam removed the dark hornrimmed glasses he was wearing and tossed them absently on his desk, blinked a few times quickly, and fixed Kurt with a vaguely curious look.

"Yes." Kurt crossed the room to extend his hand. "Kurt Hummel."

"Sam Evans." The handshake was firm, if a little confused, with broad hands and slightly-rough fingers in a way Kurt wouldn't have expected from a boy his age at a prep school.

"Sam's in Warblers," Blaine offered from his place still in the doorway. "Speaking of which: Nick said he can do English at 6 on Wednesdays, so Jeff was going to switch to Thursday at lunch if that's okay."

"Sure," Sam replied with a nervous half-smile. "Whenever works for them, y'know?"

"Planning something fun?" Kurt asked brightly.

"Not exactly." Sam's eyes flicked down towards the already-full desk.

"Sam's on probation," Blaine explained with an apologetic glance to the fellow-Warbler. "Another semester without picking his grades up and we have to kick him out. We don't want to, so all of us are getting together to help him. He's the only reason I passed physics last year, and he hadn't even taken it yet because it's a Junior class, but something about tests..."

"Screws me up every time," Sam filled in.

"Not this year," Blaine stated with a confident smile. "We'll make sure of it." The look from Blaine seemed to be at least a little reassuring to Sam, Kurt saw, and he found himself feeling almost...irritated by it in a way he couldn't explain without feeling like a jerk. Blaine was a nice guy; he was smiling at someone who also seemed like a perfectly nice guy who felt self-conscious about having trouble in class at a school where that was taken seriously. What about that should have him feeling this way? Why did he feel jealous over it, as if he had any claim to the reassuring, confident look? The closest thing he could compare it to was when Mercedes used to talk about her best friend at school and he felt - irrationally and for about five seconds - like the girl would somehow take his place in Mercedes' life. Or like a more mild version of what he felt when his dad and Finn would go to football games on the weekends sometimes.

That didn't make any sense. He'd known them for practically his whole life. He'd known Blaine for maybe three hours. Why would he be jealous over-

"I'll see you later - 3:00 rehearsal tomorrow," Blaine added for Sam as he headed out of the room and, one could assume, back to his own dorm.

Kurt sat stiffly on the edge of his bed, crossing his legs at the knees. "So," Sam said slowly.

"Yes?"

"...I dunno, I'm not really good at this," Sam offered with a sheepish grin.

"I've never tried," Kurt allowed. Smalltalk had never been his strong suit, and he tended to get nervous around new people and knew that the last thing he should do was tr to use humour. That never served him as well as he expected it to. "So you're a Warbler."

"Yeah," Sam replied. "You sing?"

"Oh, definitely," Kurt replied enthusiastically. "I was in my old school's glee club, but I've been singing practically since I was born. Or so my father claims when he tells me to turn it down and I tell him I have to practice."

"You should audition," Sam urged.

"Maybe." They were amazing, and the technical challenge of the type of music they performed was intriguing; he couldn't remember the last time music had challenged him. The amount of concentration it would take to stay perfectly on pitch in the middle of an eight-part harmony invigorated him, and he found himself smiling at the thought. "Probably," he amended, but the grin he wore meant 'definitely.'

"Yeah?" Sam smiled. "Neat." Glancing back at the desk and the mountain of work he already had - and classes hadn't even started yet - he asked, "You know anything about history?"

"Some," Kurt replied. "It's not my best, but not my worst."

"What's your best?"

"Languages," he said confidently. From the time he'd found his mother's old french text book behind the photo albums when he was nine, he'd been obsessed; now he could understand most of what Edith Piaf sang by about his third listen; not bad considering McKinley offered only Greek and Latin due to budget cuts. He'd always caught on much more quickly than his classmates in his Greek class and was the only student in McKinley history to be permitted to take both courses at the same time.

"Really?" Sam asked, eyes lighting up. "Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo." When Kurt just stared at him, eyes wide with a skeptically-raised brow, Sam's face fell. "This is why the guys say I'll never get a girlfriend," he mumbled.