He had two parents who claimed to love him unconditionally, a puppy named Mia who really did love him unconditionally, and too many friends for him to possibly count at such a young age.

He even had a best friend, a lovely girl with pretty blonde hair and bronze eyes. Her name was Quinn, and she had the biggest collection of Barbie dolls that Blaine had ever seen.

She would sit next to him in class and help him with his Math, and at lunchtime the two of them would hide around the back of one of the classrooms and play with Quinn's Barbies until the bell rang.

They never really wanted to hide, but all the other girls would tease Quinn for still liking Barbie, and the boys would pick on Blaine because he would rather play with Quinn and her Barbies than play football with them. So they sat themselves away from all the other kids, hidden away in their own little world where liking Barbie was okay.

It was a friendship Blaine now considers to be one of many things he took for granted as a child, because despite all the irregular things about him as a boy, Quinn had never once questioned him. She had never asked why he liked his two ken dolls to be dads together, and she never asked him why he wasn't like all the other boys that played football and spat on the ground.

She's probably one of the only people Blaine has ever known that never judged him for his choices, and just like Mia, she seemed to love him as unconditionally as he loved her.

They had known each other for three years when Santana had come along, the resident new girl at their school, dressed in a pretty blue dress and a bashed up pair of shoes that looked so loved it made Blaine smile. She had found them after about a week of being there, peeking her head around the wall of their hiding place and smiling timidly at them.

Quinn had been the first to introduce herself, picking up her favourite mermaid Barbie from the floor and offering it to the dark haired girl who plopped down next to her and introduced herself with a bright smile before picking up a hairbrush and proceeding to neaten up the Barbie doll.

She sat with them in their classes, and soon enough Blaine felt that he loved her just as much as he loved Quinn, even though the two of them were so infinitely different.

Sometimes, when the girls were making fun of Quinn like they usually did, Santana would stand up and make some snappy remark that would make Blaine's jaw drop onto the ground. She would pull herself up to her full height and put her hands on her hips, and then all the girls would leave Quinn alone for a few more days.

They had become inseparable as time went on, and Blaine had gotten to such a point that he couldn't imagine surviving the rest of his life without the two of them being there for him to help with his math and make him laugh.

When his parents had told him they were moving to another town, Blaine had been devastated. He remembers the crestfallen looks on both Quinn and Santana's faces when he told them like it had happened yesterday, the tears shining on Quinn's cheeks as she hugged him, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead and telling him that she would never forget about him.

Santana had been just as upset as Quinn, biting at her bottom lip as her little shoulders shook and her hands balled into tight fists. "You're always going to be my best friend," she had whispered, "I promise."

Blaine feels like that had been the moment that his heart had first broken, seeing his two best friends crying in front of him, and knowing there was nothing he could do to fix it, because his parents were making him move away, and he was never going to find two friends like this ever again. He had told them that he would always love them, and when he had clambered into his car on the day he was leaving forever, Santana had tied a single piece of blue string around his right wrist, smiled weakly at him, and slammed the car door shut.

He still has that piece of string around his wrist now, though all the colour has drained out of it and it's edges are frayed and brown. It's all he has left of that part of his life, the Ken dolls are long gone, and Mia is looking old and grey nowadays, her head resting in his lap when he arrives home from school everyday, throwing the Dalton blazer over the back of his desk chair and collapsing onto his bed, scratching behind her ears as he lets his eyes close with a longing sigh.

So much has changed since his time with Quinn and Santana, he has scars on his back and calluses on his fingers, his curls have been forced into submission, and his parents no longer pretend to love him.

He's learned now that the world is a lot uglier than it was to a ten year old, and that people are far more unforgiving and violent when you turn out to be the only gay kid in your school.

His parents had transferred him to Dalton when he reached high school, had told him that his grades had to stay high, or else they would simply throw him back into the public system without a second thought. Blaine threw himself into his schoolwork at first, keeping his head down and doing his best to keep his distance from all the other students.

It only took a few weeks before two somewhat eccentric students had pounced on him in the hallway, introducing themselves as Wes and David, and dragging him off to their lunch table without even asking him for his own name.

"You're Blaine, right?" the boy named Wes had asked.

"Can you sing?" the one named David asked before Blaine could answer.

"Uh, I guess," Blaine had blinked at the two of them in confusion, cracked his knuckles under the table out of habit and shuffled uncomfortably as Wes started speaking about 'The Warblers' and how they were holding auditions that afternoon. Blaine never really had a choice in the matter, being dragged along by the pair of them the second he stepped out of his Geography classroom that afternoon and down a corridor Blaine had never even seen before.

The Warblers have become like a family to Blaine, and their trusting gaze reminds him so intimately of his days back in Elementary school that it makes him shiver. He hadn't seen either of his best friends since he had left Lima, but he never lets a day go by without thinking about them.

He keeps on promising himself that one day he'll just drive right back into Lima and seek out the two girls, pull them into a hug and never let either of them go. He still wonders if Quinn is as impartial and understanding as she used to be, and whether Santana even remembers tying the piece of string around his wrist.

It's nearly broken a few times over the years, the first being the time he got it caught on a piece of wire fence at his old school. His heart had started racing when he realised, and he spent a good five minutes trying to unhook it as carefully as possible from the wire. It was still blue back then. The other time that it had almost broken was the time that a few of his friends had beaten the crap out of him at a football game.

He remembers Alex, a tall blonde boy that had befriended him in his first week, hooking his fingers under the string as he held Blaine's arms against the ground, laughed at how wide his eyes went at the action and spat in his face. Somehow, Blaine had crawled away from that with the string and a tiny shred of his dignity still intact.

He'd become fond of it, and protective, hiding it under the cuff of his white button up at school to avoid obvious questions, and playing with it on the nights when he couldn't sleep.

Right now, he's sitting at the lunch table toying with it, running callused fingers across it's surface and smiling stupidly to himself. He can feel Wes' eyes on him, but he doesn't take any notice, dropping his hands back to the table and staring down at his lunch.

"So Blaine," David calls loudly across the table.

"Hmm?" He replies, keeping his eyes on his lunch.

"There's a football game on this Saturday, Wes and I were going to see if we could score seats behind the cheer leaders, wanna come?"

Blaine scoffs, looking up at the two boys incredulously, "Okay, one, what the hell are your girlfriends going to say? And two, why would I want to go to a football game? I hate football, you know that," he raises a hand to silence David's obvious answer, "and I'm definitely not going for the short skirts."

Wes seems to think very hard about this, "Oh! I know, you can go for the players, I'm sure you'd love a little muscle to-"

"Don't even finish that sentence, Wesley."

"Why not?"

"Because this is Ohio." Blaine turns his attention back to his cold lunch and wrinkles his nose. "Because I don't want to get the shit beaten out of me by the same muscle you expect me to perve on. And anyway, I'm not really into muscles."

"What are you into then?" Wes prods, pointing his fork at Blaine as though he can coax a truthful answer out of him with it.

"Oh, I dunno," Blaine pretends to think for a moment, "Boys in blazers, dark hair, gavel wielding..." Wes' face goes a very odd shade of white as David starts to cackle next to him. Blaine smiles, "I'm joking, Wes."

"Oh, thank god!" Wes punches David in the arm as he continues laughing loudly, pointing at Wes and holding a hand to his ribs. "Shut up, would you?" Wes glares at him, before turning back to his own lunch and muttering under his breath.

Blaine shakes his head, spearing his fork into a very unappealing piece of carrot as David finally starts to calm down.

When he finally catches his breath, he stays silent for a whole five seconds, before his loud voice draws Blaine's attention again, "Don't cheer leading squads have guys, too?" he asks.

"I wouldn't have a clue."

"I don't think Westerville High do, their coach has a bit of a weird thing about guys, or something." Wes narrows his eyes and thinks, before looking back to David. "What's the other school, again?"

"William McKinley, their cheer leading squad's won nationals like a million times in a row apparently."

"You guys know way too much about this, seriously." Blaine laughs lightly.

"Hey!" David points at him,"You may think being in an all boys school is like some weird kind of wonderland, but we definitely do not."

"Yeah, you're lucky you're not boarding, seriously, some of those guys up there must be growing cultures or something in their rooms, because it reeks." David nods solemnly as Wes pats him gently on the arm. "How do expect us to waste our time on the weekends?"

"Uh, go visit your girl-"

"Enough with the attitude Blaine Anderson," Wes clicks his fingers dramatically and Blaine rolls his eyes.

"Whatever."

"So anyway, back to the point," David silences Wes' protest with a finger, "You coming to this football game or do we have to give the third ticket to Thad?"

Wes shudders and practically jumps across the table at Blaine, knocking his own food aside as he grabs hold of Blaine's lapels, "Please come," he whines, "If I have to sit through another football game with Thad I think I may actually rip my own hair out."

"I'm sure McKinley has some guys cheer leaders?" David adds helpfully as he drags Wes back across the table.

Blaine sighs and picks up his schoolbag, "Fine, I'll go."

"I LOVE YOU!" Wes yells at the top of his lungs and just about pounces back across the table. Everyone around them turns to look as David struggles to hold him away from a shocked looking Blaine, who stands very abruptly and leaves the two of them to it.

They're definitely two of the oddest people Blaine's ever met, but for some reason he finds their quirks far more endearing than most of the frustrated students around them. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that they have trusted him so blindly for so long, they know next to nothing about his past, they don't question his home life, in fact, Blaine's amazed that they even know that he's gay.

That seemed to be something they figured out pretty quickly, though, because if Blaine remembers correctly, it had only taken ten or so minutes of meeting him for them to ask if he had a boyfriend. He had sat so still in that moment that he's pretty sure his heart had actually stopped beating. Nobody had ever reacted positively to Blaine's sexuality, his parents had pushed him away as subtly as they could, and when the kids at his school caught wind of it, well, Blaine's back can tell that story for him just fine.

Of course, nowadays Blaine's sexuality was very much old news at Dalton, though he doubts it had ever really been new news in the first place. Dalton is so unlike everywhere else in Ohio, even the coffee shop down the street is like some whole other world. It's almost like Dalton is the classroom he and Quinn had once hidden behind to play Barbie.

When Blaine steps out of Geography at the end of the day, he has every intention of driving straight over to that coffee shop he had been thinking about and injecting some caffeine into his frazzled brain. He almost asks Wes and David to tag along, before thinking better of it and walking out to his car on his own. There really is so much Blaine can take of Wes and David's crazy before he starts feeling like he's going to implode.

The drive is quite, his radio turned low so the soft melody is barely a hum in his ears.

He orders his coffee and sits down near a window, watching a couple banter outside while he drinks, fidgeting with the rim of his cup and sighing. He likes to think that things have gotten better since he left his old school, Wes and David seem to think so, considering the amount of push and shove they put in to try and find Blaine a boyfriend.

He wouldn't say he's reluctant so much, but nobody really seems to appeal to him around here. Nobody can make him laugh all the time, get under his skin enough for him to really open his eyes and notice them, but he doesn't mind. Honestly, he's sure that he can wait it out til college, where the people are less likely to kill you on the street.

Even if he really, really wants a boyfriend.

His fingers curl tight around his half empty coffee cup and he draws his eyes away from the affectionate display outside. He lives in Ohio, and in Ohio, the boys think you're weird if you don't play football, and they think you're dirt if you're gay.

Maybe he'll move to New York when he graduates, find a shoebox of an apartment to live in and play guitar on street corners to pay the rent. At least the people are kinder there. Maybe he'll find himself a someone handsome and smart, and they can live in the shoebox together and get a bird or something.

He steps out of the coffee shop with his hands stuffed into his pockets, climbs into his car and starts the engine. Maybe one day he'll find someone to love him.

He shrugs his blazer off and drapes it over the vacant passenger seat, turns the radio up and pulls out of the little parking lot. Maybe if he gets home quick enough he won't have to put up with another interrogation from his father.

Blaine doesn't even know what he's doing.

His knuckles are white on the steering wheel and his keys still swing in the ignition, eyes wide and staring straight ahead into the darkness.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, but still he doesn't move. He doesn't know how he had let Wes and David persuade him so easily that coming to a football game was such a great idea. He can hear the rumble of crowds as they climb the bleachers a few hundred meters away, feel his phone buzz again in his pocket, and he finally moves, switching off his headlights and stuffing his keys into his pocket.

He swallows thickly, pulls his phone out and glares down at the fifteen messages Wes and David have sent him in the ten minutes it took him to drive here. He doesn't even bother to check them, climbing out of his car and cringing at the loud crunch of gravel under his feet.

Okay, so maybe he's overreacting, just the slightest bit, but Blaine's pretty sure that being back at a public school is about the most terrifying thing in the entire world, especially considering he's here for a football game of all things. Maybe he should just call and tell Wes he's sick or something, get back in his car and drive home to hide under the blankets in his bed, at least nobody's going to beat the crap out of him there.

As if on cue, his phone start buzzing again in his hand, and he glances down to see Wes' name flashing across the screen. He'll just tell him he's sick.

"Hey Wes, I-"

"Dude, are you here yet? We saved you a seat."

"Well, uh-"

"You're going to love it, seriously, wait til you get an eyeful of the head cheerleader."

"Wes, how many times do I have to tell you-"

"-You're not into the skirts, I know that, idiot. I'm pretty sure that he's definitely not wearing a skirt though."

"Wait, what?"

"The head cheerleader, he isn't wearing a skirt." Wes shouts through the earpiece, "Just, hurry up, Blaine, we're on the McKinley end."

Blaine sighs heavily and looks over towards the field, then back to his car longingly, "Fine, I'm coming."

"Okay, Bye!" the dial tone begins ringing in his ear as Wes hangs up. He drops the phone back into his pocket and huffs to himself. They really shouldn't be as persuasive as they are, but then again. McKinley's head cheerleader is a guy?

He's going to get the crap beaten out of him if he even looks at him, he just knows it. Cheer leaders are like the Royalty of High School, and Blaine was the scum on their shoes. For some reason that he cannot fathom, he's already walking off in the direction of the field, chewing on his bottom lip and trying to push all the thoughts of big football players kicking his teeth out.

He's going to kill Wes and David.