I got your email – relax, I had to get a new phone and a new number. Details later. Love you!

Blaine breathed out a sigh of relief, but it was momentary. What could have happened that Kurt would need to get a new phone?

He knew he wouldn’t be able to relax until he’d actually spoken to Kurt.

Call me when you get a chance, okay? He texted back, and then dressed quickly, intent on getting to work.

*

Kurt frowned when he saw Blaine’s text. It meant that his attempt at playing cool hadn’t worked, even in a typed format. He sighed, messing with the settings on his new phone while Mr. Schue droned on about something or another in Spanish. Kurt wouldn’t even be taking it this year, but French was full and he needed another language credit.

Class dismissed him to lunch and he went quickly through the line, grabbing a salad and finding his friends at one of the tables. He opened his food, poured on the dressing and then took a few bites while dialing Blaine’s phone number.

Blaine answered on the second ring.

“Hi,” Blaine said.

“Hi, Kurt repeated. “You wanted me to call you?”

“I want you to tell me why you needed a new phone,” Blaine replied. “Something happened, didn’t it?”

“You could say that,” Kurt muttered. “Some of the puckheads on the hockey team decided to steal my phone to see if they could find any information about you and me on it.”

“Oh, no,” Blaine breathed. “Do I need to change my phone number? Should I be on the lookout for a series of inappropriate texts being published on the internet somewhere?”

“No, and no,” Kurt laughed a little. “They didn’t get very far before I tried to get my phone back, so they decided it would be better to play hockey with it.” Blaine made a noise. “Yeah. My dad was not pleased when he heard about it.”

“I bet.”

“So I went and got a new phone, and my dad insisted on a new phone number too. We were at the phone store forever.”

“Why didn’t you call me when you got back?” Kurt heard a weird tone in Blaine’s voice. “I was running worse case scenarios when I didn’t hear from you.”

“I’m sorry, Blaine,” Kurt replied with a wince. He knew what Blaine must have thought – after Kurt had done a similar thing last winter. He’d let anger and hurt take control and he’d pushed Blaine away instead of letting him explain some very incriminating photographs. Kurt knew that Blaine had probably spent the entire night worrying that something else had happened and Kurt would be done with him again.

“Once we got home, we realized that the phone was having network issues, and it didn’t start working right until this morning.” Kurt paused. “And then Rachel came over to work on campaign stuff, and I lost all track of time, and before I knew it, it was time to get up for school.”

“How do you lose track of time?”

“I fell asleep on the couch while she was talking,” Kurt answered.

Blaine let out a laugh. “You’re kidding?”

“I fell asleep in my clothes, Blaine. I would never joke about that.”

“So what’s going to happen to the guys who broke your phone?” Blaine asked.

“My dad was in here earlier, yelling about them getting suspended, but they only got detention,” Kurt sighed. “And they only got that because it was considered destruction of personal property and that phone cost over a hundred dollars.”

“When you’re Class President, you’ll change things,” Blaine spoke with confidence.

“I’m going to try,” Kurt agreed. “My lunch is almost over; I’ll call you later, okay?”

Kurt hung up his phone and then hurried through his lunch. Early polls had put him in the lead for Class President and right now his biggest competition was Rick “The Stick,” one of the hockey guys. He had to do all he could to beat him. Kurt was going to make sure that the people who’d hurt him wouldn’t be allowed to hurt anyone else.

*

Blaine couldn’t stop thinking about what Kurt had told him. Neither one of them had imagined that the bullying would pick up with them going public. He felt bad, like it was his fault somehow, even though rationally, he knew it was just small minded people trying to keep Kurt down.

Thoughts about what he could do to help ran through the back of his head as filmed the rest of the day, though his scenes turned out much better than they had the day before.

When he got home, he took a quick shower and then sat down and sent off an email:

Hi Santana,

I still have your email address from when I sent those autographs to you last year. I hope you don’t mind me contacting you, but I had an idea to try and help out with Kurt’s campaign that I wanted to run past you.

Thanks,
Blaine

Blaine added in his phone number and a request for Santana to call him and then waited. His phone finally rang an hour later.

“Well, well, lover boy,” Santana said when he answered. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“I need your help,” Blaine jumped in immediately.

“I’m listening,” Santana replied.

“I want to do something for Kurt’s campaign,” Blaine told her. “Something that will help him win. I had a great idea, if you and the other Cheerios would be willing.”

“The real question is, Boy Wonder,” Santana began when he was done. “What’s in it for me?”

*

When Kurt got home, he found his dad and Mr. Schue deep in a planning session for his father’s campaign. Kurt set his cheerleading stuff down in the hall and went into the living room. It was sad how much he actually looked forward to uniform days. No one touched him when he was wearing it.

“Kurt, just the person we wanted to see,” his father said.

“What’s going on?”

“Will and I were just going over some ideas,” Burt told him. “We’re going to run on a platform supporting anti-bullying law reform and protection of school arts programs.”

“Wow,” Kurt replied. “That’s… that’s amazing, Dad.”

“Something needs to be done, and if the schools won’t do it, we’ll make the laws force them to do it.”

“Do you need me to do anything?” Kurt asked.

“We were thinking that maybe you could give an interview.” Mr. Schue suggested. “We don’t have the details worked out, but because of your familiarity with the issues and your association with Blaine, you’re kind of a well-known name now.”

“You really think that would help?”

“I really do,” Burt agreed. “Will you do it, bud?”

“Sure, I guess.” His dad and Mr. Schue thanked him, but as Kurt went upstairs to start on his homework, he couldn’t help but wonder what he’d just gotten himself into.