Kurt sighed as he carefully placed his last bottle of moisturiser, to help uneven skin tones, into his already over flowing toiletries bag. He glanced at himself in the mirror, he looked tired. The stress of life at McKinley had seriously tampered with his sleeping pattern and he hadn’t slept properly in what seemed like months.

He sat on the edge of the bathtub and absent-mindedly smoothed out his Ralph Lauren sweater cardigan. A million thoughts rushed through his mind at once, Karofsky, being pushed into lockers, that kiss. He shuddered at the thought, the hair on the back of his neck standing up as he heard Karofsky’s voice in his head, “I’ll kill you.”His unpleasant thoughts were interrupted by the buzz of his phone. His heart fluttered as he opened up a text from Blaine.

Hey you :- ) what time will you be getting here? – B x

Kurt replied with a non-committed soon, preferring the element of surprise and carried his toiletries bag downstairs.

“Hey there kiddo, you all ready to go?” Burt asked annoyingly ruffling Kurt’s perfectly placed head of hair.

“Yeah, do you think four suitcases of sweater jumpers are too many?” he was greeted by an incredulous look from Finn. “I’m totally kidding; I think I could have squeezed another one in there somewhere.” Finn shook his head as he carried the last of Kurt’s stuff to the car.

“Well we better hit the road then, give you most of the day to unpack” Carole said. There was a sad look in her eyes. Kurt swallowed, trying not to think about the fact that he was moving away from his new step family. He hadn’t realized that he would have gotten this attached to Finn and Carole.

It had been awkward when he’d gotten home from glee club, leaving the rest of his friends shell shocked after he announced he was moving to Dalton. Finn had come home shortly after and sat in his bedroom in silence for a solid 30 minutes before he just pulled Kurt into a bone crunching hug then left murmuring something about visiting Rachel.

It seemed all too soon that he was pulling up outside of Dalton. He opened the car door and took a deep breath looking up at the stunning castle. As aesthetically pleasing as it was, Kurt’s heart still longed for the artificially lit and linoleum lined halls of McKinley.

“That’s the last box” Burt sighed dropping it onto Kurt’s bed. It was awkward, Burt, Finn, Carole and Kurt just stood looking at each other for a few minutes before his new step family said goodbye with a hug and a kiss from Carole before stepping outside of Kurt’s small room to leave him with his dad.

“Make sure you don’t start eating bacon again, just because I’m gone it does not mean you can start pouring fat back into your body” Kurt tried to lighten the mood but Burt just stared at him, his eyes glassy.

“Listen, Kurt. I don’t want you to feel bad okay? Your happiness is far more important to me and to Carole than a honey moon. I-I just want you to feel safe and be happy again. I’ll miss you kid.” Burt pulled him into a hug and with a final squeeze walked out of the room.

Kurt looked around, trying to compose himself; he felt he may cry at any moment. After a couple of minutes of feeling sorry for himself he decided to get down to business, it was time to start decorating his tiny room. One of the plus sides of being a mid-year transfer, he got a single dorm room, for no extra cost on top of his already hefty tuition fees. He plugged in his IPod dock and started playing the Patti LuPone Gypsy soundtrack. He immediately relaxed a little and started to unpack boxes humming along to ‘Have an Eggroll Mr Goldstone’.

~~~

“Dude staring at your phone won’t make it go off, believe me I’ve tried the whole Jedi mind tricks on mine.” David sighed dumping himself next to Blaine on the couch in the Warbler commons. Wes sat on his other side shooting him a look.

“What?” Blaine sighed staring back at him.
“Well, shouldn’t Kurt be here by now?” He looked into Blaine’s eyes searching for an answer as Blaine simply shrugged his shoulders.
“Uh, I guess so, I messaged him earlier but he’s probably busy.” He tried to make it seem as though he didn’t really care that his best friend had moved to his school.
Truth was that he could barely contain how excited he was and was a little disappointed that Kurt hadn’t messaged him the second he’d gotten to Dalton.
“Well it’s pretty lucky then that I know which room he’s in!” Wes grinned at him standing upand holding his hand out to Blaine “Come on, he’s a Warbler now and I know all” his eyes glinted.
Blaine tried to look non-committed as he stood up, but he knew his smile was giving himself away to his two friends.

“Listen, he may want to be alone, I remember how hard it was for me when I moved here, and he’s probably upset.” Blaine strung off the reasons why they should leave Kurt to it but before he knew it they were standing outside his door.
David immediately started banging on it and Blaine was sure he heard a yelp on the other side.
Within seconds the door was wrenched open and there stood Kurt in all his designer clothing glory, he’d obviously been working hard, his hair was coming out of it’s perfect coif and his already pink cheeks were brightly flushed.
"Hey, how did you know which room I was in?” He breathed his eyes narrowing directly looking at Wes.
“I have my ways, may we come in?” Wes winked at Blaine as Kurt stood by to let them in the room, not making eye contact with Blaine.
“Kurt, this looks incredible! How come I can’t make our room look like this?” David exclaimed. Blaine had to admit, it looked amazing.
“Because David you don’t pick up after yourself, you don’t even make your own bed.” Wes sighed rolling his eyes.
“Wait, what do you mean make his own bed? Wes don’t tell me you make it for him” Kurt stifled a laugh as Wes ducked his head. Blaine saved his friend.
“Kurt it really does look amazing, I’m sure you’ll be seeing a lot more of us considering how untidy our rooms are.” Blaine smiled at him but Kurt averted his eyes.
“As long as you keep your messy ways to your own room then there will be no problem.” There was a fairly awkward silence as Kurt put the finishing touches to his bed fluffing up a white cased pillow.
“Well, we’ll leave you to it, we’ll save you a seat at dinner” Wes winked at Blaine as he and David left. Blaine shrugged off the knowing look he’d gotten from his friend and turned to face Kurt.

“How are you?” He asked softly.

“Fine” Kurt said, his voice sounded high and sweet as ever, but there was an unmistakable shakiness to it. Blaine moved over to him and put his hand on his shoulder, turning him around to face him.

“Kurt?” he asked again “It’s okay to be, apprehensive, about being here. It’s your first night away from your home, from your family. We’ve all been there.”
“I just, don’t want to seem weak, it’s all I ever seem to be lately” Kurt sighed lowering himself onto his bed.
“You don’t, not at all. Is, is that why you didn’t tell me you were here?”
“Yes, I mean, I should be really happy that I’m finally at a school where everyone accepts me, it’s just, a little far from home. I didn’t want to be upset in front of you and have you think you did something.” Kurt bit his lip and looked up at Blaine from behind his eyelashes. Blaine just smiled at him before pulling him up off of his bed and grabbing his bag from the floor.
“Come on, I’ll buy you lunch.”