Blaine knew that if he wanted to get Kurt to pay more attention to him, he had to put in a little more effort. He wasn’t stupid, as much as Kurt clearly thought he was. That was actually one of the things he thought most charming about himself, he breezed through the work at Dalton, when he deigned to do it. So people knew he was going to make something of himself, although he had so much money from his family that he didn’t really need to. But the knowledge was there and it made him appear hotter to all those that were attracted to men. 

Well that was normally how it worked. He was attractive, rich, and intelligent and had an unbelievably charming smile; guys fell at his feet with little to no effort on Blaine’s part. But Kurt Hummel was different, and he knew he needed to make the effort in order to make Kurt interested in him.

“Kurt,” he called, approaching the boy in the corridor after lunch one day.

He didn’t miss the way Kurt rolled his eyes when he turned to face him, but that only made Blaine smile as Kurt asked him what he wanted.

“Do you have notes from Chemistry yesterday?” Blaine asked innocently. “I missed class because I was practicing my solo for Sectionals tomorrow and could really use some notes if you have them.”

“You want to borrow my Chemistry notes?” Kurt said, disbelievingly, his arms folded, his defenses obviously on high alert.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay,” Kurt still seemed a little unsure, but he smiled and nodded nonetheless. “Meet me in the library just after last class? We can photocopy them if you’d like.”

Blaine found himself smiling more that day, as he made his way through his classes. It was still the same cocky smile that he wore, but it was there more than it had been in recent times. Kurt had played exactly into his hands and he knew it was only a matter of time before he cracked.

When he arrived at the library, he immediately sought out Kurt, finding him easily even amongst the identically dressed boys. Kurt somehow managed to make that uniform look good on him, and with his easily identifiable hair and innocent confidence, was difficult to miss.

He smiled a greeting as he sidled along next to Kurt, who was near the photocopiers, a binder tucked under his arm as he waited.

“Hey,” Kurt smiled. “I was going to start copying these but I didn’t know exactly what you needed. Do you want to take a look at them and just copy what you want?” He gestured to a nearby table and Blaine took the offered filed with a thank you, taking a seat a little closer to Kurt than was probably necessary.

“These notes are incredible, Kurt,” Blaine offered the compliment easily as he flicked through the folder. “Your handwriting is adorable, like you.”

Blaine was probably laying it on a bit thick, but he could see the blush that had crept into Kurt’s cheeks, and knew that his words were having the desired affect. He silently looked over the notes for a few more moments, sensing Kurt watching him, seeing his pink cheeks out of the corner of his eye. Blaine smiled to himself at how easy this all was.

Standing, he made as though he was going to go to the copy machine. However when Kurt stood as well, he grabbed his hand and started leading him to the nearby book shelves, weaving in and out of the shelves to get further and further away from the other students and teachers in the library.

“Blaine,” Kurt hissed. “What are you doing?" 

“I just wanted to talk in private quickly,” he explained, giving Kurt’s hand a gentle squeeze.

Finally settling on a destination, a quiet corner of the library where there was a wall that he could lean back against, Blaine tugged Kurt’s hand so that the boy fell into him with a soft thump, their lips connecting on impact, and his hands sliding around to rest on Kurt’s lower back, pulling him in so that their bodies were flush together.

Kurt’s hands came up to rest on his shoulders, gripping slightly as their tongues met. Blaine could feel Kurt’s heart beating rapidly against his own, feel his hot skin beneath his hands and his body tremble as he nibbled lightly on his bottom lip, drawing him in even closer. The kiss was hot. The incredible feeling of Kurt against him was all Blaine was aware of as they melted into each other.

But then of course, Kurt was pulling away. “No,” he was whispering. “Not again.”

Blaine chose to ignore him, knowing how much Kurt was enjoying this, and how much he himself just couldn’t get enough of the way Kurt taste (like mint, with the tiniest hint of coffee). He latched his lips back onto Kurt’s, for they were still pressed up together, leaning against the cold library wall.

Mere moments later however, Kurt pulled himself from Blaine’s grasp, taking a definitive step back. 

“Stop it, Blaine,” Kurt was most certainly angry now. He started running his hands through his hair, which Blaine had never before seen with a strand out of place.

Blaine’s heart clenched strangely when he heard Kurt mutter, “God, for once it’d be nice to get a kiss that wasn’t forced on me.” He was offended and so curious and inexplicably angry that Kurt might have had someone force themselves on him in the past. Not to mention the guilt that was kicking in. 

“Seriously, Blaine,” Kurt was saying before Blaine had the chance to question his muttering. “I would have considered saying yes to a date with you if you had actually approached me like a normal human being and not some idiot with a self-entitlement complex. I can see there is more to you than this; I know you’re a smart guy. So use your brain for once, please.”

Needless to say, Blaine once again walked away from an encounter with Kurt Hummel completely dumbfounded. He had become needy and pining, he was a walking cliché and he knew it.

--- 

The most exciting thing about Sectionals, in Blaine’s opinion, was that they got to get away from the walls of Dalton for a day. They got to interact with other schools, and just be out in public in general. He loved Dalton, the environment it offered, the boys, the camaraderie of the Warblers, but there was something in being out and about as a group that Blaine really enjoyed.

The others were just as excited as he was, particularly Kurt, who had spent the entire bus ride to the competition talking to Nick and Jeff about his friends from the New Directions, who they would be competing against that day. It unnerved Blaine that he kept mentioning some boy called Finn. He would admit to no one but himself that he was feeling that strange creeping notion of jealousy in the back of his mind as Kurt grinned about the prospect of meeting up with the boy. 

“I mean,” Kurt had been explaining to some of the Warblers during the ride. “I saw Finn when I went home last weekend, and Mercedes, but that wasn’t really enough and I didn’t get to see the rest of the group.” 

Blaine had gripped his own thigh in frustration, wanting to know exactly who they were talking about. 

As soon as the Warblers walked into the foyer of the auditorium and moved towards the registration area, Kurt was basically running over to a group of teenagers, immediately enveloped into hugs. It made Blaine wonder why he’d transferred in the first place if he had this many close friends at his old school. 

An unusually tall boy was pulling Kurt into a hug then, lifting him off the ground and spinning him around. 

“Finn!” Kurt screamed, although he was laughing, clearly enjoying the moment. “People are staring.” 

“Dude,” a guy with a Mohawk said as Finn put Kurt down on his feet. “We’re a show choir competition. I bet all the lady boys here are loving it.”

Despite his offensive words and the reprimanding “Puck!” and punch on the arm from Kurt that it earned him, the two were still hugging hello a second later. Blaine couldn’t quite explain the tightening in his chest at the sight of Kurt hugging the two other boys, so easily joking around with them, but it made him scowl nonetheless. And he was suddenly less than enthusiastic about the competition and rather eager to get back to Dalton. 

They tied with New Directions in the competition, which meant that they were both through to the Regionals round. They were all excited and proud of their success, but Blaine couldn’t help but blame the fact that they hadn’t won outright on how distracted he had been throughout their performance, constantly thinking about other things. 

That night, just half an hour before curfew, Blaine still couldn’t stop running through the day in his head. Needing answers, he left his room and walked quickly down the hall. Stopping four doors down, he knocked insistently.   

“Blaine, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Nick said with surprise when he opened the door and found Blaine standing there.  “We haven’t actually spoken in a while.” 

“Kurt doesn’t have a boy friend does he?” He jumped straight into it. 

“What?” Nick was clearly confused as hell, and he stepped completely out of his room, closing the door behind him and leaning back against it. 

“I saw him with that Finn guy at Sectionals and I thought that would be a good explanation for why he won’t go out with me.” Blaine looked sheepishly down at the floor. 

“Finn is his brother.” 

“And Puck?” 

“His brother’s very straight best friend.” 

Blaine couldn’t help but sigh with relief. 

“Seriously Blaine, you need help,” Nick said, obviously frustrated. “You don’t know Kurt at all, why are you even bothering with this?” 

“I have my reasons.” 

“I’ve known you for a long time, don’t play innocent with me,” Nick’s face softened.  “I’ve known you since before this whole…thing started.” 

“Are you going to help me or just keep judging me?” Blaine sounded so resigned.

Sighing, Nick shook his head, as though disbelieving what he was about to say. “What do you want me to do to help you?” 

“Convince Kurt to go out with me?”

“Now that is the exact opposite of how you’re going to win him over.” Nick said, shaking his head in disappointment. 

“Well then tell me what I need to do.” Blaine said. 

“You need to start by not calling him those cheap pet names like ‘babe’ or just rudely by his last name and then waggling your eyebrows. He won’t stop bitching about that.” 

“He bitches about me?” He said without thinking, cringing at the look of disdain Nick directed at him. 

“The point is,” Nick continued. “If you know anything about Kurt, you’ll know that you are going about this whole thing in completely the wrong way. You need to make an effort to get to know him. Woo him.” 

“Woo him?” 

“Just don’t screw him over, okay? I still haven’t forgiven you for seducing Jeff, and Kurt deserves better than being treated like you normally treat your ‘dates’.” Nick smiled grimly at him to show that he wasn’t actually mad, and then he simply waved good night and shuffled back inside his room, leaving Blaine alone in the hallway.

Blaine couldn’t deny, as he walked back to his own dorm, that Nick was right, at least a little bit. He knew only a little more than nothing about Kurt, and surely that would seem suspicious to him, having someone chasing him so adamantly for seemingly no reason other than to get into his pants.

So Blaine sat down at his desk that night with his laptop open in front of him. First stop, Facebook.

He found Kurt’s page easily, although the profile picture wasn’t actually him, but one of Glinda and Elphaba from Wicked and the rest of his page was set to private. It was definitely Kurt though, because they had several of the Warblers as mutual friends. On a whim, he clicked the ‘Add Friend’ button, uncertain whether or not Kurt would actually accept the request, but it was worth a shot. 

Not finding much information from Facebook, he turned to Google.

He searched ‘Kurt Hummel.’ Nothing of interest. He searched ‘Hummel’ and found only some company called ‘Hummel Tires and Lube’ in the business directory.

Then he searched ‘New Directions’ and hit the jackpot. Someone named Rachel Berry had uploaded a bunch of videos of the club performing on her MySpace page. Really? Blaine thought. Who uses MySpace these days?

Regardless, he opened the link in a new tab and was now privy to Kurt singing and dancing in a variety of different outfits, and even if he was rarely a soloist, Blaine’s eyes were glued to Kurt whenever he was on the screen. He was forever grateful for public schools and their lack of uniforms and their penchant for dressing up for their performances. 

By the time he was watching ‘Happy Days Are Here Again/Get Happy” Blaine was grinning. He’d never admit it, but he definitely had a hidden obsession with Judy Garland and musicals in general; Kurt’s singing was just beautiful and his outfit was bold, daring and incredibly stylish. 

A few minutes later however, he returned to the Google search, his smile dropping when he discovered a blog run by ‘JBI’. He hadn’t even watched the videos yet but he was already mad at the sight of some horrible anonymous comments (“I reali dnt like u jew fro but im so happy there is video of that fcking fairy gettn ownd LOL”). The blood was boiling in Blaine’s veins as he waited for the videos to load. He knew he should exit the site now; this was a serious invasion of privacy and he should be using his money to get the damn website shut down immediately. He knew that he would die of embarrassment if footage of his own humiliation at the hands of homophobes was ever seen by anyone at Dalton. But then the video stopped buffering and a boy with a serious afro was shoving his microphone into the faces of kids from New Directions with rude and invasive questions and he couldn’t look away.

It was a while before Kurt was even shown, and Blaine had almost given up when Kurt appeared in a beautiful black coat, trying to get away from the insistent interviewer. He was carrying himself strong and confident, as he calmly and apparently pointlessly told the world to stop anonymously abusing him online. 

It took Blaine a moment to work out that the disgusting red substance dripping down Kurt’s face was an Ice slushie, like one you’d buy at a 7/11. Although his face was shocked and embarrassed it looked as though he had definitely had this happen to him before. How was that school still selling slushies if they were being used for this purpose? No wonder Kurt had transferred.

While he felt physically ill at what he had seen, at how horrible these people were he just couldn’t stop. He couldn’t help but replay the section of Kurt talking, over and over, admiring the look of defiance and determination in the boy’s eyes and how he didn’t break, even in the face of this appalling treatment. What Nick had said about getting to know Kurt and ‘wooing’ him really started to play on Blaine’s mind. This guy was definitely worth whatever it would take to get him to go out with him. Blaine pulled his own bottom lip into his mouth with his teeth, deep in thought as he considered what to do next. 

Backspacing ‘New Directions’ from the search bar, he smiled as he inputted a new enquiry.

How do you woo another boy?