Blaine sat picking at a few left over croutons in his salad at lunch among his group of glee club friends at lunch. Here and there was chatter about different songs that they were planning on singing for this week's glee lesson. Blaine already knew what song he was going to sing and he already had the arrangement for it as well.

"Hey!" Brittany exclaimed as she skipped over to the table. She took a seat next to Tina Cohen-Chang and looked like she had the newest gossip that she was ready to spew. "Did you guys see the new kid?"

"Yeah," Mike said between sips of soda. "He's in all my advanced placement classes."

"And I saw him talking to coach Roz this morning. I heard he's on the swim team," Sam added.

"Did you see his clothes?" Tina asked. "They're all designer and his fashion is impeccable."

Santana craned her neck. "Designer?! He must have money. Is he hot?"

"Who cares?" Sugar added. "Everyone's hot when they have money."

"Can he sing?" Rachel asked.

"Guys!" Blaine interrupted. "He's just a kid like the rest of us. He's not royalty or anything."

Brittany was looking at another table on the far end of the cafeteria. "Based on what I can see, he looks like teen royalty to me. He's got everyone at the popular table laughing and eating out of his palm."

"Screw this. I'm going over. I'm McKinley's top ho and I still have enough cred to sit with those losers." She grabbed Brittany's hand and had her in tow in seconds.

After a roll of his eyes, Blaine went back to picking at his croutons. The fact that everyone went crazy for this new kid before even knowing him bothered him. It bothered him because he was the center of attention when it came to the insults from the jocks. Popularity seemed to come easy to the new kid when Blaine didn't have the bully free immunity that he got so easily. It wasn't fair.

"Are you really thinking about graduating early?" Artie asked. "You'd miss out on another year of defending our national championship."

Blaine looked up again, pointed his pitiful gaze at Artie across the table. "Spend another year of being pushed around and taunted by Lima's finest losers in this place? No thank you." His eyes moved over to look at the same people he hated. He was about to scowl, but his attention was taken when a large right tackle got up from the table and gave way to a beautiful new face.

The beautiful face belonged to a lithe boy, no- not a boy, a young man. He had a worldly air to him. He sat straight up and his shoulders didn't sag forward or down. His skin was perfectly pale and without one blemish that Blaine could see. The boy laughed and showed perfect teeth and dimples like a cherub. Instantly, Blaine was smitten. He was perfect.

A pair of blue eyes flicked and met his own. Blaine flinched and sat up, startled. When he realized he was leering and openly staring, he averted his eyes quickly and looked wide-eyed at his empty salad bowl.

"Is that him?" Tina asked. Blaine didn't move.

Mike looked in Tina's eye line direction. "The skinny kid sitting next to Quinn? Yeah. His name is Kurt. Nice guy. Really smart."

Really hot,

Blaine added in his mind. "I'm going to go to my locker." Blaine gathered his things and stood up from the table. "See you guys later." He tossed his empty salad bowl and milk carton in the trash and rushed off to his locker.

23, 48, 6.

He clicked the dial on his locker combo and lifted the latch to open the lock. He always liked the sound of a combination lock and a locker opening. He just had taken his books out of his bag when he felt the hard shove of a football player's shoulder. Blaine's books dropped to the floor and he slammed against the cold metal.

"Ass muncher! Fucking freak!" Different jocks taunted.

Blaine looked up to see the faces of his assailants, though he knew the owners of the voices already. Only, this time, they were joined by a beautiful face as well. He felt like his heart fell. Blaine's perfect dream guy wasn't perfect after all. He quietly spied Kurt's face as if to telekinetically say "I thought you were different, but you're one of them." Kurt's face looked back at him with alarm.

True, Kurt hadn't insulted Blaine like the others and he wasn't the one who shoved him, but he was with them and didn't help him, so that made him as equally guilty as the others. He thought he saw Kurt wince for a millisecond and one of the other jocks shoved him again. "Why don't you take a picture? It'll last longer, butt pirate."

"What's your problem?!" Kurt said with a raised voice. "He was literally just at his locker, minding his own business, and you went out of your way to do this? So not cool!"

Everyone, including Blaine gawked at Kurt. He had no need to stand up for Blaine. Kurt hadn't even known him and he came to his rescue, albeit a delayed one, but attempted to help nonetheless. "What was that?" a large jock demanded at Kurt.

"Dude, my father is a state congressman. I can't get caught up in this kind of shit. It'll get back to my dad."

"What? Afraid you'll get grounded?"

"No. Afraid the newspapers and Channel Nine News will say that my dad can't control or straighten out his son. You think you're popular?" Kurt declared, standing up and talking down to the jock. "Everyone in the state of Ohio and the White House knows who I am. You try pulling this shit and not caring that the country is going to label you an asshole." His eyes didn't move a muscle. He was daring the jock to move or come back from what Kurt said. "Just leave the kid alone. He didn't do anything to you."

"The kid's a fag."

"So? Was there something about the way he took his books out of his bag that offended you? If he minds his own business, you can mind yours."

"Fuck this!" announced a smaller jock named Ian. He was on the wrestling team.

Kurt promptly got in his way. "I said leave him alone."

"Or what? You going to tell your Daddy on us?"

"That's real funny coming from a guy who follows Karofsky around like a little pet. You sure you're not the gay one, Ian?"

Ian began to advance on Kurt, who didn't budge. Like Blaine thought earlier, Kurt had something Blaine didn't, immunity. Karofsky got in Ian's way and stopped him. "Cool the fuck down and let's get out of here." It seemed like everyone had forgotten that Blaine was even there, but he didn't move in fear that whatever hierarchy Kurt was setting up now would change and he would be pummeled. Despite what Blaine thought earlier, it turned out that Kurt really was teen royalty. His father was a state politician and Kurt was famous throughout the state because of this. His face was in every newspaper next to his father and Hummel was a household name. Not even the jocks would try anything with Kurt in fear that they would lose their status at this school. But whatever status they had, it was clear, Kurt was now the new King of McKinley High School… and he just defended and stood up for Blaine.

Without saying anything, the jocks and Kurt started to walk away from Blaine. Blaine still didn't move. He stared after the pack of boys in utter astonishment at what had just transpired. Then he saw it. Kurt, behind the rest, chanced looking behind him and gave Blaine a half smile.

Feeling stunned and confused, Blaine quickly gathered his things for his next couple classes and hurried off to class. He didn't know why Kurt did that. No one had ever stood up for him like that, not even his friends, ever. Blaine tried to shove it out of his head for his next class because it was one that he enjoyed, Art class. He would have sat down sooner, but there was already someone in the classroom other than the normal Artsy kids who ate lunch in the classroom instead of the cafeteria.

Figures, Blaine thought as he forced himself to unfreeze in the doorway and walk to his seat. Kurt was in his class. He sat right behind him, in fact, with his things perfectly organized in front of him. Blaine took out a sketch pad and a box full of different types of pencils for drawing or sketching. He was trying to ignore his pounding heartbeat and pretend that Kurt Hummel wasn't sitting behind him. He flipped to a blank page and absently started drawing a detailed picture of one of the plastic chairs in the choir room on the tiled floor.

"Hey!" Kurt called, leaning forward to get closer to Blaine. "Hey, guy." It occurred to Kurt that he didn't know the name of the boy he defended in the hallway.

Blaine's hand halted its actions. Please don't ask me about the hallway. Please don't ask me something about the hallway, he chanted in his head. He turned around in his seat, fear present on his face.

Kurt smiled, showing his perfect teeth and adorable dimples. "Hi. Sorry if I'm bugging you," he paused and waited for a response from Blaine, but Blaine just shook his head very quickly. "Is this a lecture class or are we going to be doing something? I like art, but I think talking about it is boring." This time Blaine nodded and Kurt laughed. "Well, which one is it? A lecture or- hey, you draw?" his attention was averted to Blaine's sketchpad. "Are you any good? Can I see?" Blaine blinked a few times, but silently handed over his pad.

He watched nervously as Kurt flipped through the pages. "Wow. You're really good. I like this one." Kurt tapped his index finger on a drawing of Blaine's room complete with detailed accents and his unmade bed. "Is this your room?" Blaine's head bobbed up and down again. Kurt laughed softly again. "Do you ever talk?" Blaine nodded his head once more, still in utter shock and awe, which elicited another chuckled from Kurt. "I'm Kurt," he introduced, offering Blaine his hand.

Blaine gulped and stared at the hand in front of him.

"Blaine!" Noah Puckerman called out as he entered the classroom and sat next to Blaine. "Dude, please tell me that I can borrow the Spanish notes. I couldn't make it to class today because I was hooking up with a Cheerio under the bleachers." Both Kurt and Blaine were looking at Puck. For a second Puck got the idea that he was interrupting something. "Sup," he said to Kurt. "I'm Puck."

"Kurt."

"Oh yeah. You're that congressman's kid."

"That's me."

"Welcome to McKinley, Bro." The bell rang and Puck turned around.

Kurt handed the sketchpad back to Blaine, but not before he held onto it for too long and caught Blaine's gaze. "Nice to meet you, Blaine."

Blaine gulped again and nodded in the affirmative one last time.

"Dude, was I interrupting something?" Puck whispered to Blaine once class started.

"No," Blaine whispered back. "He was just looking at my sketches."

"Is he into dudes?"

"He's hanging out with the jocks." He rolled his eyes like this should have been an obvious answer. "Do you think he's into guys?" he finished sarcastically.

"You're gay and you hang out with jocks."

"You, Finn, Mike, and Sam are in glee club too. Even though you all are the most popular guys in school, you don't count because you're in Homo Explosion."

"I'm just saying, dude. He's extremely well-groomed. He could be, ya know." He bent his hand to make it look limp, an action Blaine chose to ignore just because it was Puck and he meant well.

"Puck, the only person out in this school is me and despite my suspicions of other people, no one is coming out to march in the parade anytime soon."

"But-"

"Shh, I'm trying to work."

That was the end of the discussion. The rest of the class was spent with Blaine using Puck as a model for a sketch as Puck attempted to paint a clown jumping into a giant cake.