Now, anyone involved in music seemed to rank above your normal students and far above the sub-zero bottom dwellers that were the nerds and outcasts, but the show choir was the tip of the top of the social ladder. There was a never-ending battle for supremacy raging underneath the surface between the cheerios, the jocks and the performers but despite the hold they had over the general student body, the athletics department just couldn’t quite hold a candle to the arts.

This didn’t, of course, mean the school was free from bullying and fights but it was quite the turn on your traditional high school. It was the performers that often found themselves with passes out of their dull classes or taking day trips to perform while the other students, including those involved in athletics, were stuck behind a desk. Free periods and study halls didn’t mean being stuck in a stuffy room with a grouchy teachers aide, it meant practice and hard work and sometimes a little goofing off.

That was where Kurt Hummel was currently, seated behind the choir directors desk, his elegant fingers tapping away at the keyboard. “Rachel, for god’s sake would you stop that? I can’t concentrate and you know I need to get this set list typed up before Mr. Schue gets back. He’s expecting it.”

His best friend in the entire world, one Rachel Berry, was in the office with him, moving to the music coming from her earbuds. There was a piano along one wall but Kurt had forbid her from touching it while he worked. Clearly he’d needed to be more precise. Rachel pouted a little as she pulled the buds from her ears. “But Kurt you know I have to work on the choreography for this new number, Finn’s going to be watching!”

Kurt rolled his eyes and went back to typing. “Rachel, Finn has two left feet. Do you honestly think that as long as you don’t trip over yourself he’s going to notice if you got that shuffle-ball-change, right in the 18th measure?”

Finn Hudson was McKinley’s star quarterback, but then again that was like saying he was the Captain of the Titanic. The McKinley football team was worse than terrible. It had gotten to the point that most of the crowd at the games was there to see the marching bands halftime show instead of the game itself. Still, that Letterman jacket had some clout and Rachel was entirely smitten. Finn wasn’t in the show choir with Rachel and Kurt, he (as Kurt had said) had two left feet. He was quite the drummer and an adequate singer but one needed to be well-rounded in the arts when you were in glee.

Kurt had harbored a slight crush on Finn his sophomore year but now that the two were step-brothers that was something brought up only if you wished to suffer Kurt’s wrath. He’d never told Rachel though he suspected she knew anyway, and it had made things a little awkward between brothers for a time.

“But I’ll know, Kurt. I’ll know, and I think that’s worse,” Rachel moaned, hunching her shoulders for a time.

“Well, if you simply have to practice then kindly take it out into the choir room so I can finish this in peace,” Kurt replied.

To anyone else his (no pun intended) curt, almost bitchy way of talking might have seemed to imply he hated Rachel, but in all honesty they were best friends. Kurt’s sharp tongue and quick wit were just another part of him Rachel adored and in turn, something she’d gotten used to over the years. It was when Kurt didn’t talk you needed to be worried because it was usually followed shortly after by a verbal evisceration.

“Fine...” She huffed and flounced out of the office into the main part of the choir room.

With a fond smile, Kurt looked up over the computer, leaning to his right just a bit to peer out the window into the room at Rachel. He laughed, shaking his head at her shimmying as he went back to work. Rachel was such a diva, but he wouldn’t have loved her any other way.

Rachel Berry was the groomed for success daughter of two wealthy fathers. Her gay dads, as she called them affectionately, were a successful lawyer and a retired Broadway legend. They had high hopes for her and she had much to live up to. Rachel had been performing and taking lessons to improve since she was old enough to walk, talk, and sing. The arts were her life and being on top of the show choir as it’s female lead was a perfect jumping off point to get into any prestigious performing arts school in the country.

She and Kurt had been best friends since they first met in junior high. Back then they’d been nothing, two little kids grasping for the bottom rung of the ladder, clawing their way to the top just like the rest. Kurt, admittedly, had spent more time than he liked to think about stuffed in dumpsters and lockers or shut into the boys bathroom with no escape until another student entered.

Things had changed since then. Now, Kurt was the choir director’s secretary, a favorite of the teachers, and a star member of the glee club. While his counter-tenor vocal range kept him from being a true leading man in competition, it didn’t hinder his success as a soloist for their other performances.

Kurt Hummel was a far different story from Rachel. He grew up wearing his mother’s heels when he played dress up but still learning about cars from his father and helping in the shop the older man owned. It wasn’t a surprise to anyone who knew him when Kurt came out as gay his sophomore year. Kurt had a flair for fashion matched by few even in the business and no matter what he wore, he wore it well and with his head held high. His more modest upbringing meant that Kurt didn’t have the contacts that Rachel had in the performing arts world but his resume was filled with clubs and performances worthy of consideration at the same schools.

When the sounds of music filled the choir room, and in turn the office he sat in, Kurt rolled his eyes. He typed up the last song then hit print, rising from his chair. The heels of his designer boots clicked across the linoleum floor as he exited the office.

“You’re just lucky I’m finished.” He shouted over the music to his friend. Rachel only laughed and kept dancing, singing along to the tune. “I’m going to go pick up the papers from the printer, I’ll be back!” Kurt informed and then slipped out of the room, closing the door behind him to leave Rachel in her own little world.

The two shared this period as a study hall but Kurt had never even been to the study hall save for the first day to give the aid his pass to work for Mr. Schuester, their choir director. Rachel, he assumed, had done the same, though she was often more hindrance than help.

Despite his best efforts, Kurt found himself humming the tune of Rachel’s song as he walked down the hall. The printer for the choir room for some obscure reason was down the hall, to the left, down another hall, to the left again, to the right, to another left and inside a special ed classroom. The band room adjacent to the choir room had it’s own printer, two in fact, but they weren’t linked with the choir room. No one ever seemed to have an answer when he asked about it either so Kurt liked to think of his walks to the printer as a little exercise.

Kurt had just looked up, his hand going out to grasp the special ed rooms doorknob when he was nearly knocked over. Someone was walking out of the room and in a hurry. He stumbled back, just barely catching his balance but it didn’t matter. Two strong hands grasped his biceps securely, keeping him upright.

“Whoa! Sorry about that. I need to learn to look where I’m going down here. You’re the second person I’ve nearly taken out today.”

The voice that went along with those two strong, warm hands was even better than the hands themselves. Kurt’s blue eyes snapped up to see what face belonged to that silky smooth, rich baritone and felt his heart nearly beat out of his chest.

God, his savior was gorgeous.