He's fifteen, and the leaves are changing, which means it's autumn and that means it's time for Dalton. He channels all his insecurities into his hair and then gels it down to a caged perfection. He refuses to be nervous. If anyone does anything, he can report them, and for once it will make a difference. That alone is enough to make the squirming sickness in his stomach settle into something a little more like traditional nerves than blind terror.

He doesn't tell anyone how he's feeling, but when he's in the shower and the bathroom mirror fogs up, he writes lyrics into it with the pad of his finger. He can't think of a song that fits, so he writes his own, then sings along to it under the cover of the faucet. His parents aren't speaking to him. He doubts they've even noticed they're doing it, but beyond the perfunctory hello's and have a nice day's that they spew out upon entering leaving the house, they have nothing left to say to him.

He doesn't mind, though. He doesn't have much to say to them, either.

His first day at Dalton he gels his hair down like he's been practicing, folds himself into a perfectly ironed shirt and blazer, takes three tries to do up his tie but eventually manages without having to ask his father for help. That, he feels, is an achievement in itself, so when they drop him off at the gates he's already in a good mood. He is shown around by the vice principal and handed a schedule and map, commended on his smart uniform (keep it up, that's the kind of neatness we like all year round here at Dalton) and then sent on his way. His first class is English. He is silently assigned a seat, and the friendly boy to his left introduces himself, and it is nice.

The whole day, really, is nice.

Everyone is calm and friendly and sure, a little bit repressed, but you can't have everything and if it means he won't have to worry about people tearing up his books, he'll take it. Teachers are strict but obviously know what they're talking about, and nobody mucks about in class. Nobody asks why Blaine transferred, where he came from, or if he's gayer than a double rainbow. It's like his past doesn't exist.

He goes home smiling, and when his parents ask, he actually tells them about his day.

*

Still fifteen, he wraps himself in a thick coat and a scarf with the Dalton colours on, prepares himself for the cold. A few months at a different school and already he can barely recognise himself. He's been taller than his peers all his life, but now he's missed a growth spurt and they've overtaken, so he's had to find other ways to stick out besides his height. He does this by being bubbly, smiling a lot, climbing over furniture to create the impression of being totally laid back and authoritative. His hair remains plastered to his skull, and his parents smile over the dinner table to hide a thousand unsaid things.

He makes some friends, and for the first time since he can remember, he starts singing in front of people.

That's what ends up changing his life, because oh my god, something is actually making him happy.

*

He's fifteen, and he doesn't mean to audition for the Warblers. People never believe him when he says it was an accident, but it was. He'd seen them around school, sure, at their little performances or just walking down the halls in a clump, been blown away by their immaculate appearances and smooth vocals. He's probably fallen in love with each one of them at some point or another by the time he's been at Dalton two months. But he still never means to audition.

He's discovered in a winter haze by a guy he later learns is called Daniel, and is on the senior council at the time. Blaine's just walking through the courtyard, totally innocent, kicking his feet through the thin layer of snow on the ground and smiling because nobody's tried to make him eat it yet. To him, that makes Dalton the height of civilisation. He's never wished he was back at his old school once.

Then, all of a sudden, he can hear the faint tune of a catchy Christmas song straining out of one of the windows above him. He tries to ignore it for a second, but it's one of those ones that probably come from inside the devil himself and worm their way through your brain until you can never think of anything else again.

He hates himself for it, but he starts to hum along.

Then, because after a quick glance he ascertains that nobody is around, he switches to singing.

It's silly but he knows all the words and he's happy and he doesn't really care, 'cus nobody's gonna steal his bag or draw dicks on his face with sharpie at Dalton, not even if he swoons over Johnny Depp or makes an idiot of himself singing cheesy songs in public. There might be a few guys who'd roll their eyes or purse their lips, but nobody can do anything or say anything. And he can report them if they do. Dalton genuinely is a dream come true.

He smiles thinking that, and sings a little louder. He stops messing about when he hits a high note and uses every breath in his lungs to keep it up just as long as the singer in the original. He almost feels proud of himself then, cus he's noticed lately that he's been doing that more and more. He's not had another growth spurt as far as he can see, but maybe his lungs are developing anyway, becoming out of proportion with his short frame. He likes that idea. He drops his bag and starts doing a spectacularly goofy dance around the fountain while he sings.

When the song ends and he spins around with a grin on his face, ready to continue across the courtyard, he's met with three smiling and all too familiar faces. His heart drops and he blushes.

"Oh, hi," he says, because they're staring at him and not even trying to hide it. He hates that he recognises them, but of course he does cus they're the closest thing to royalty Dalton has. They're Warblers. And what if they're mad at him? What if they want to keep the impromptu performances for themselves? They're smiling, though, so there's nothing to suggest that's the case, but he's still hopelessly scared. After all, they're cool. And he is most definitely the opposite. He can gel his hair down and ditch his geeky glasses for contacts and hide in his uniform as much as he wants, but the fact remains that Blaine Anderson is always going to be a bit of a loser.

There's a weird look on their faces as he waits for their response to his greeting. Blaine can't quite place it. If he didn't know better, he'd say they looked impressed.

"Hi," says the blonde one, who's standing in the middle. "I'm Daniel. This is David, and Wes."

He gestures to the others, one handsome and dark skinned, the other Asian with a softly cheeky grin.

"I'm Blaine," Blaine replies hesitantly, just because it seems like the sensible thing to do. Smile, shake hands, introduce yourself, and hope beyond hope that nobody bring up the fact that you were just caught doing a mortifying dance around the school grounds, singing at the top of your painfully untrained voice. It's ingrained in him. The politeness. The avoidance of anything awkward.

"Well, Blaine," says Daniel. "Congratulations, you just auditioned for the Warblers."

That doesn't make any sense. Blaine tries to say as much.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"You're an amazing singer. We lost a lot of our main talent when last year's seniors graduated. We need your voice."

Blaine is fantastically flattered for a second, before he realises what must be going on.

"There's no need to be mean," he says, picking up his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. "I know I'm not great or anything, but you don't have to make fun of me. I didn't know anyone else was out here, or I would have kept quiet."

Three pairs of eyebrows raise at him in perfect unison.

"We're not kidding, Blaine," David assures him.

"You were really amazing," Wes adds, shooting him a small, semi-encouraging smile. Blaine has gone from embarrassed to ecstatic to upset to completely confused in just the few short minutes he's been talking to them. He's not usually one for mood swings, but he wonders if the hectic life of the performer is so strong in these near-rock-stars that the drama has rubbed off on him already.

"I - I don't - I mean, I've never sung before," he stutters out, half wishing he could just run away and never see them again.

"What? You've not had vocal training, or anything?"

He shakes his head and then gives a semi-apologetic shrug, though he's not sure he knows what he's sorry for.

"Okay, now you have to join. If this is what you sound like raw I can't imagine how good you'll be with a little training."

"Yeah, just come to the meeting tonight and do that in front of everyone."

Blaine must still be looking dubious, because Daniel claps him lightly on the shoulder and tries to reassure him.

"We swear we're not joking. If anyone so much as tries to laugh at you, you have permission to punch me straight in the face."

Blaine looks at Daniel's soft, friendly face, and then thinks back to summer boxing lessons and a haze of sweat and aching muscles and the harsh swing of the punch bag every time he knocked it with a little more force than he'd been able to before. And he thinks, yeah, okay. I could do that. Take care of myself, if I needed to. If people tried to start something with me. He wouldn't hit Daniel, though, of course not, even if it did turn out that they were playing a horrible joke on him just to try and make him embarrass himself but still. It's nice. Just, knowing that he could. He's never really felt, before, that he doesn't have anything to be afraid of. But now he knows he can take care of himself. Wholly and completely.

So he still doesn't quite trust them, but he nods, too.

"What song would I need to sing?" he asks.

Later that night he stands in Dalton's horrifically fancy choir room and is told he's been unanimously voted in to the Warblers. He's not sure how it happened, but he seems to have found his thing.

*

He's coming up to sixteen the first time he invites his parents to hear him sing. It's not his first solo, and it's not a competition or anything, but for some reason he feels it's important for them to hear him. When he'd joined the Warblers, he'd assumed he was going to be humming in the background like most of the new kids. He was wrong. They'd lost their three most popular soloists through last year's graduation, and they were clearly a little bit lost. There wasn't a star; nobody really stood out, between the uniforms and the orderly meetings and the perfect harmonising. So, within a month of joining, Blaine was asked to audition for a solo. He got it on the spot. Of course, everyone made a point of telling him how unusual that was - how normally it was years until you got noticed, and only seniors got competition solos, and how really they were breaking a lot of traditions for him just by letting him join this late in the term anyway. But he still got the vibe that nobody really minded. Some of them even looked a little bit proud of him.

And now six months have gone past, where they've done sectionals and regionals and unfortunately not got to nationals, but they've had a good time trying and more importantly, Blaine has been singing. A lot. While everyone else hums behind him. And there's going to be no break in that pattern tonight, when Blaine will be dancing around at some fancy alumni thing with his own personal charming army behind him. He's kind of okay about it, not crippling nervous like usual which he hopes is a good sign that he's improving, so he decides that he's going to invite his parents.

His dad seems a little unsure of how to answer when he first brings it up. They've developed a careful policy in their house of dealing with Blaine's sexuality by a brilliant and enforced method of complete avoidance of the topic, but this kind of thing is just... Well, it's really gay. At least in his dad's eyes. Blaine knows that, and he hasn't even told them yet that he'll be singing a girl's song. David and him had originally sat down together to try and go through and change all the pronouns, but it was getting too complicated and in the end he just told them all that it didn't matter. It was art, after all. And art was designed to push boundaries, right?

So he asks his parents.

They pause for half a second too long before they say yes, but Blaine decides not to notice, because at least they'd agreed to go. He feels like things are starting, maybe, to get better.

*

He's a day away from sixteen, so he's hanging out at his house with Wes, David and a guy called Nick, watching films and eating pizza. Kind of like a party. Blaine hasn't had a birthday party for ages, not since the days of clowns and balloons and dressing up as Harry Potter characters had passed, and none of the other kids would accept an invite from him anyway. Blaine doesn't really know if his taste in movies is synonymous with other guys', because he doesn't get off on explosions and car chases and things like that, but the fact that these are people he knows from Glee club gives him the courage to pull out his collection of musicals.

He's glad he does. David's face lights up as he begins to root through them and Wes immediately starts talking about Audrey Hepburn being his first crush.

"That's the first reason I liked Liz," he admits with a laugh. "She was tiny, and she had the hair, like, y'know?"

Pixie cut, 50's era, Blaine thinks, but doesn't say it because sometimes he just feels so gay. He's met Wes' girlfriend - he has to admit, she does have an air of Hepburn about her, but apart from that her redeeming qualities are few and far between. Everyone is secretly hoping they'll break up soon, but nobody says it, because they're all in a good mood that night.

"You always had a thing for old fashioned girls," David acknowledges. "My first celebrity crush was Jennifer Aniston. My sisters made me watch Friends and I never went back. Had the entire boxset."

They all laughed a bit and Blaine kind of thought that was it and started to move back towards the movie selections, but then Nick was talking.

"Mine was Drew Barrymore," he says, leaning back on his elbows and smiling. "Charlie's Angels spurred pretty much my entire sexual awakening. Puberty wouldn't have been the same without it."

They're all laughing and swapping stories and being so casual about everything, and Blaine's hopelessly confused, because he might never have had close friends before but he's heard guys in the locker room and in class and they don't talk about stuff like this. Not in this easy, non competitive, totally comfortable way, with no pressure and no bragging and no embarrassment. He doesn't know what to do, but it's amazing, the idea that sometimes it's okay to just talk, not just because it's the opposite of the never ending suppression he has been taught, but also because it is so utterly without the agenda of impressing anyone or pleasing anyone or serving a particular purpose that he falls in love with it.

Talking.

What a wonderful thing to do. He decides to do it a lot, now that he is this new him.

So when Wes turns to him with a smile and offers Jennifer Aniston's not bad, but Audrey Hepburn is a classic, don't you think Blaine? he doesn't nod quickly or blush or cringe in awkwardness like usual. Instead he grins at then, runs a hand gently over his perfectly gelled back hair, pretends like he's not dizzy from nerves.

"Can't say I'd really thought about it," he admits. "I spent most of my adolescence fawning over Gene Kelly."

He knows they won't find it uncomfortable. He figures they'll smile a little and maybe it'll be a tiny bit awkward, just because it's not common ground or whatever and he's still the minority here, but they won't hold it against him or think any less of him just because he brings up his sexuality in conversation. These are the new, brilliant people he is going to surround his new self with, and they don't have a problem with him being gay.

He knows all this, yet he's still blown away by what happens next.

"That's cool," says Wes, not even a moments hesitation. "I had a total crush on him when I saw Singing in the Rain. Must have been about fourteen. I had a poster of him in my room and everything."

David and Nick both laugh, and Blaine tries to look like it's no big deal but his heart feels like it's to explode because he just can't deal with this. These people are not only kind and accepting of him, but they're so comfortable in their own sexualities that they can actually talk about other guys without feeling threatened or needing to beat someone up under the bleachers or... He decides he's never going to leave Dalton. Not ever. He's going to hide in the dorms for three years and get a university degree online, and then come back to teach there up until the day he's quite literally forced to retire.

"Yeah, at least you guys went to mixed middle schools," David responds, grinning now. "I've been at all boys my whole life. I pretty much had no choice but to fantasise about guys when I was fourteen."

None of them look at him like he's crazy. He's dating a girl from their sister school and Blaine bets she wouldn't judge him if she was hearing that, either. He's straight and he's amazing and they're all so amazing and Blaine just...

He doesn't realise he's lost faith that there are good people in the world until he finds some again.