Sighing, he turned to walk up the stairs, kicking the door shut behind him in a practiced move. As much as he wanted to deny it, he couldn’t truthfully tell himself that their overprotective senses were wrong in this instance. He was definitely attracted to Kurt.

Still, he mused as he reached his doorway and kicked off his shoes, they had no right to imply anything illicit by just the fact that Kurt had asked him to call him by his first name. Blaine was nineteen. And Kurt hadn’t done anything wrong. Kurt knew nothing about Mark.

Mark. Mark. Blaine threw himself backward on his bed and squeezed his eyes shut. He tried his hardest to will away the various memories his mind always conjured up when that name was mentioned. As usual though, he failed.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

The cold bathroom floor, all things considered, was not an ideal place to rest your head. But, Blaine had to admit, at least there were pretty patterns on the floor. The dark red was in stark contrast to the snow- no… not snow, that was so clich�… the… pristine white of the floor. The splotches made by the blood streaming from his face were marring the floor in some sort of strange pattern. Blaine thought it was beautiful. He should frame it. It could be in some kind of neo-miniwhoseywhatsit art galleria. Gallery. Damn it was so hard to think when his head was hurting this much.

“Happy Birthday Fag.”

Was that what they’d said right before they punched him in the face the first time? Wow it was his birthday wasn’t it? Sixteen years. It’d been a pretty good sixteen years. It was only recently that it had all turned to shit. And how many people could say that they had had a good, solid, almost sixteen years of happiness? He really shouldn’t complain.

“Blaine? Blaine! What the hell?”

All of a sudden Blaine felt a pair of strong arms wrap themselves around his chest and hoist him up from where he had been lying on his stomach, turning him around into a sort of odd embrace in his apparent savior’s lap. He felt hands pushing his matted curls back from his face -was it matted with sweat or blood? Was he even hot enough for it to be sweat? If not then that meant he was bleeding near his hairline too. He couldn’t to be bothered to care– and he heard a frantic voice repeating his name –whoever it was was being so loud, and his head just hurt so much, shut up, shut up voice– and then finally he saw a vaguely familiar face swimming before his eyes –were faces supposed to be that blurry?- before he decided keeping his eyes open was just too much of an effort.

It was only roughly ten minutes later, waiting in the nurse’s office for his parent’s and the ambulance, a million people running around, trying to talk to him, everything around him in utter chaos, that his muddy brain was able to put a name to the blurry-faced savior whose shoulder his tired head was resting against.

“Where the hell is my so- Blaine! Oh my god, Angelica, he’s here!”

“Blaine? Honey? Oh B, we’re going to get you to the hospital now, don’t worry baby. Where is that damn ambulance?”

“Mr. Reese, thank you so much for finding him, we cannot thank you enough.”

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

“Mr. Reese?”

The man in question looked up from the book he’d been reading alone at his desk in an empty classroom. “Blaine! How are you feeling?”

“All right. Listen, I just wanted to um, thank you, for finding me and-”

“It was no problem Blaine. God of course it was no problem. I’m just glad I found you. When did you get back?”

“They discharged me yesterday morning after I spoke with the police, and told me I could come back to school today.” God. Blaine had never felt so awkward in his entire life.

“Well,” his teacher paused for a moment, seemingly searching for something in his face, which he was sure held a suitably awkward and embarrassing expression. The man apparently found whatever he was looking for. Standing up, he crossed the classroom in a few quick strides and ushered Blaine into a chair with a friendly hand on shoulder. “Come on in, sit and talk with me a little while.”

Hesitating only slightly, Blaine complied when he saw the broad grin on the face of his teacher. At first it was slightly awkward, but soon as if by some mystic force the older man got the younger to open up, in a way he hadn’t with anyone since the whole school had been made aware of his sexuality. For some reason, with Mark Reese he felt safe.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

Blaine began to rely on that connection more and more in the coming weeks. The physical attacks had grown less conspicuous since the incident in the bathroom had led to the perpetrators being arrested, mostly things like a slight “accidental” shove into a locker or a just-this-side-of-too-hard-to-be-accidental jostle in the hallways. But that didn’t mean there weren’t notes stuffed in his locker, classmate graded paper’s handed back with slurs written in between the margins, no one volunteering to be his partner in group projects, whisper’s of “fag” in crowded hallways between classes. The architect’s of those oh-so-daring actions had grown bolder with news of his attack. And Blaine couldn’t take them alone anymore.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

The slight touch of fingertips skating across his bare back was all it took to bring Blaine back from the hazy stage between waking and sleeping and fully to the land of the living. Sighing in contentment, he rolled away from the fingers and smiled at the man they belonged to.

“You have to go soon.” The man said, his answering grin dimming slightly as Blaine’s did. “Wouldn’t want your parent’s to be worried.”

“Mm, you mean suspicious?” Blaine said impishly, his own wandering fingers pulling the man’s face to his for a chaste kiss. He chuckled slightly, and pushed the man away before he could respond, wiggling the covers away from where they rested on his bare hips and getting off of the bed as he did so. Knowing what it would do to the man still on the bed, he let out a groan as he stretched his arms above his head, taut muscles relaxing from the exertion of the last couple hours. Sure enough, seconds later he felt hands on his hips pull him back against a strong chest and hot breath ghost over his neck.

“Well... they won't be home anyway right? It'd be irresponsible to make you go home to an empty house... an empty bed.” Blaine shivered as the husky voice tickled his ear. He spun around in the embrace and pushed the man back onto the bed, giving him a sly grin and meeting the other’s intense gaze with one equally charged with lust.

“Thought you’d feel that way.”

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

“Mark?”

“I told you not to call me that at school. It’s inappropriate.” The bastard didn’t even look up at the doorway where Blaine stood.

“Oh so now you’re worried about being inappropriate?” Blaine’s voice dripped with derision but Mark seemed unfazed, “It’s funny, when you’re down on your knees in your apartment it seems perfectly ok. Tell me, Mr. Reese, how is it perfectly… appropriate to be in that position with one of your students, but not to have him call you by your first name?”

That at least seemed to garner a reaction. Slamming the paper’s he’d been grading down, Mark stalked toward the door to close it and grabbed Blaine’s arm to drag him further into the classroom, “Fuck Blaine shut up! Anyone could hear you! You know it’s not like that.”

“Oh yeah? Then what’s it like? Because it seems pretty obvious to me.”

“God damn it Blaine, it’s not like that. I love you! It’s just that… no one would understand.”

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

Blaine had understood though. He understood that now he was just living in some bad teen soap opera. Mark might “love him”, but he would never… could never make it known to the world. Blaine now knew he deserved better. In fact, he reflected, it was Mark that taught him that.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

He’d transferred to Dalton the very next day. It had been a little too easy to convince his parent’s, who knew something was wrong, knew the bullying had turned psychological but that it was more than that, and had no idea what it was. They were lost, guilty, and scared and Blaine, who was feeling the exact same things, capitalized on those volatile emotions and got himself transferred. Luckily both his uncle and grandfather had gone to the expensive private school with the alluring zero-tolerance policies, so he was immediately accepted as a legacy.

The night before his first day, he spent hours writing a letter to Mark and mailed it, explaining everything, why he had to leave, and promised he would never tell anyone what had transpired between them.

He never heard back.