“Oh, give me a break!” Kurt exclaims out of nowhere, cutting short the conversation he’d been leading about the upcoming Regionals, and McKinley High’s chances of grabbing the gold.

Which is of course, obviously.

He starts rifling through his book bag like his life depends on it, then searching the pockets of his letterman jacket – first patting them down, then shoving his hands deep in as if expecting them to open up, revealing storage areas previously unknown.

“What’s wrong now?” Mercedes groans, looking up from her lunch - tater tots and celery sticks, her own personal compromise. She’s trying to slim down, but she refuses to spend the rest of her life eating like a rabbit to get there. Though, at present, the number of tater tots on her plate are dwindling while the celery sticks seem to be multiplying.

“My stupid phone!” Kurt huffs, searching his bag a second time, removing its contents piece by piece to be sure he’s covered his bases. “I’ve lost it … again! What does this make?”

The third time this week, Blaine thinks.

“I think this makes the third time this week,” Mercedes offers.

Blaine, pretending to appear deeply enthralled by his Calculus textbook, bites his lower lip and smiles, choosing to overlook how stalker-ish it is that he knows that.

“Well, you know what this means …” Kurt tosses down his bag in frustration, then re-thinks that and rescues it from the filthy ground.

“That you’re not responsible enough to own a phone?” Santana supplies. Kurt and Mercedes (and from his far corner of the cafeteria – Blaine) glare.

“Thank you, Satan,” Kurt snaps.

“Why don’t you trade up to an iPhone?” Mercedes stabs a celery stick with her fork, then changes her mind and spears another tot. “You’ve only wanted one forever.”

“Because losing a $500 phone would be less devastating than losing that crappy $100 one?” Santana says. She puts her hands up in defense as another round of glares heads her way. “Hey! I’m just sayin’.”

“I did want one until I found out that I won’t be able to keep my old number for some stupid reason,” Kurt explains, choosing to ignore negative comments from the peanut gallery. “That’s going to be a hassle.”

“But it’s worth it,” Mercedes sings, flashing her own iPhone with its shiny gold cover, knowing how much Kurt’s been coveting it.

“I don’t think I have it in my budget to buy a new phone,” Kurt argues, gathering up his things and getting ready to let Mercedes persuade him to buy one anyway.

“Nonsense. They’re on sale. And you know how much you love shopping for stuff on sale.”

“True, true.”

“Plus, it’ll give us an excuse to skip next period.”

“Cedes!” Kurt hisses, winding his arm inside hers as they hurry out of the cafeteria, huddled close together as if that will make what they’re doing less conspicuous. “You’re so bad!”

“Yes, but you love me anyway.”

“I do.”

Blaine peeks over the edge of his book and watches the friends leave. They get swallowed by the mob of students loitering outside the cafeteria doors, and then poof. They’re gone. Blaine sighs. Welp, there goes his master plan. That would be just his luck, Kurt losing his phone the day after Blaine managed to get his number. Kurt didn’t give it to him. Blaine paid Noah Puckerman, the boy with the stickiest fingers in McKinley, $20 to swipe the number for him. To be fair, Blaine doesn’t know if what he has is Kurt’s real number, or if he’d been swindled out of twenty bucks.

But he’d been optimistic.

Blaine didn’t have a plan past getting the number. In fact, he had no idea what he was going to do with Kurt’s number (provided it was his). But now, he doesn’t even have a chance.

Not like he had any before. What did Blaine think – Head Cheerio and most popular boy in school Kurt Hummel was going to date nerd boy Blaine Anderson simply because he managed to get Kurt’s number? Kurt probably wouldn’t give Blaine the time of day once he found out because how creepy is that? Paying some lowlife to get a hold of your phone number? And Kurt would be right. Kurt’s number was unlisted in the student directory for a reason.

And that reason probably looked a lot like Blaine.

Blaine takes his phone out of his pocket and pulls up Kurt’s number. Just seeing it there, with Kurt’s name at the top, makes his heart flutter. He imagines what it would be like if he had permission to have it. If Kurt had given it to him for real and he hadn’t spent his allowance on it. If the two of them were friends …

… or boyfriends.

But with Kurt’s phone gone, Blaine has to start over from scratch. Maybe this is a lesson well learned. Maybe he should just grow a pair, go up to Kurt, and say hi, tell him how handsome he is, how talented, how long he’s admired him from afar ...

Yeah, right. Blaine might also sprout a pair of wings and start circling Kurt’s house at night like a giant bat.

That conversation would earn Blaine a permanent spot in the dumpster out behind the cafeteria – the one the lunch ladies toss the expired coleslaw and uneaten seafood salad in – after the football team finds out.

According to Brett Bukowski, that smell never comes out.

And it wouldn’t matter one lick to Kurt because Kurt has no clue who Blaine is anyway. Not that Kurt abides by bullying. He absolutely doesn’t. In fact, it’s been Kurt’s personal mission to abolish bullying ay McKinley High School once and for all. But Blaine would have to be on Kurt’s radar in order for him to care.

And Blaine isn’t.

Blaine has been sitting behind Kurt in nearly every one of his classes for the past three years. They even went to elementary school together. It was only for a few months when they were eight years old. They sat next to each other in class, and at the same table at lunch. Kurt even helped Blaine straighten his bowtie once. But at some point in the middle of the year, Kurt’s mother passed away, and his father sent him to a private school. Kurt looked different back then, but Blaine recognized him right away, the first moment he saw him.

Kurt doesn’t seem to remember.

Kurt has said hi and bye in passing, but only ever speaks to Blaine to ask him to pass notes to Mercedes. He doesn’t know why he thought getting Kurt’s number would change anything, but at the time it seemed like an inspired idea.

A stroke of genius.

With the depth of his own pathos sinking inside his stomach, he gives composing a text to Kurt a try, just to see what it feels like.

To: Kurt

Hey, Kurt! How have you been? I just wanted to tell you your hair looks really nice today. See you in class J

Blaine smiles. It’s such a simple message, the kind two friends would definitely send to one another. But he’d never have the courage. Because they’re not friends, and probably never will be.

Blaine’s smile fades as he exits out of his messaging app and puts his phone in his book bag. He packs his belongings and makes his way to the library before the end-of-lunch bell rings. He doesn’t enjoy picking his way through the crowd that floods the hallways after lunch. Too often he gets bumped or locker checked, and not even by people picking on him. Sometimes just by accident.

Because he’s small, and insignificant, and easy to overlook.

It doesn’t have to be this way, though. By rights, he’s done with high school. He finished the last of his required courses the end of junior year, and is actually a sophomore at Lima Community College. Being a year ahead in his classes meant two things for Blaine – either graduating a semester early and taking advantage of his early acceptance to Harvard, or filling that time with the extracurricular, throw-away classes he didn’t get the opportunity to take.

He opted for the latter.

Ironically, he didn’t want to grow up just yet.

Most of his high school career has been abysmal, that’s true. He’d been tossed in dumpsters more times than he wanted to remember, stuffed in one particular locker so many times the door had been removed by the janitor permanently. Blaine only had a few months to fix that, to do something, anything, that would erase the pain and misery of those first three years.

Maybe that’s why getting Kurt’s number was so important to him.

He cringes. Just thinking that, he feels like the lazily written protagonist in a late 80s rom-com, the kind you look back on 30 years later and realize how fundamentally flawed it truly was.

How much you should have been rooting for anyone but the “hero”.

He gets to the library five minutes before the bell. He sets his things down at the tutoring desk (tucked in a far, secluded corner) and takes out his phone, figuring he’ll scroll through his Instagram feed before the first student shows up.

But the notification that pops up before Instagram opens makes his heart stop.

Message sent.

“What?” Blaine mutters, re-opening his messaging app and checking his sent message log. His stopped heart dislodges from its place inside his ribcage and drops to his knees as he sees the first message on the screen – his message to Kurt. “No … no!” Blaine checks Google to see if there’s any way to stop the message from being sent, desperate to get it back, but it’s too late. The message is gone, on its way to who knows where. If that wasn’t Kurt’s number, well, no harm no foul. But if it was …

… that phone’s lost anyway, isn’t it? Kurt will have a new phone by the end of the school day and, from the sounds of it, a new phone number. So, in theory, Blaine should have nothing to worry about.

But, unfortunately, that’s not how Blaine’s brain works.

Just to be on the safe side (and keep himself out of the dumpster) he decides to compose another message to counteract the first one. But what should it say? Sorry, wrong number? How likely is that when he opened the text Hey, Kurt? Should he try to convince Kurt that he knows another Kurt and that that message was meant for him? What are the odds? Besides, that wouldn’t explain how Blaine got Kurt’s number in the first place. Kurt is a smart boy. He’d never buy that excuse. No sane person would! He takes a deep breath and starts typing, hoping he can come up with something on the fly that will sound halfway reasonable.

To: Kurt

I’m sorry! I’m so so sorry that I sent you that text! Please ignore it! I promise, I won’t do it again!

Blaine sends the message before he really gets the chance to read it. Then, realizing that Kurt probably has no idea who sent him either message, he quickly follows up with:

To: Kurt

This is Blaine, by the way. Blaine Anderson.

After he sends that message, his poor, overworked heart withers and dies. He’s such an idiot! How can a boy with a 5.0 GPA and early acceptance into one of the most prestigious universities in America be such a phenomenal imbecile? He never identified himself in the first message, nor the second one. What are the odds anyone in Kurt’s friend circle has Blaine’s number? Blaine rarely gives it out. Kurt would have never known who sent the first message to begin with, and Blaine would have gotten away with it.

Unless Noah told. That’s a distinct possibility. He probably would. But shit!

Blaine’s skin prickles with cold despite the fact that he’s sitting beside a heating vent going full blast; his head swims with the reality of what his life might end up looking like for the next week or two.

Strangely enough, when he pictures it, he only sees darkness.

Blaine’s head drops to the desk with a hard thunk. What’s left for him now? Does he pick up his bag, walk out of school, and never look back? Hitchhike to Harvard and camp out on the main lawn until the start of summer school?

No.

He’s been carrying this secret with him, deep inside, for so long. He has to let it go. Even if it’s to empty cyberspace, he has to give it up.

He’s dug himself in deep this time. He might as well fill in the hole.

He lifts his head, and composes another message.

To: Kurt

You don’t know me … at least, I don’t think you do. You’ve only spoken to me a handful of times, but otherwise, you don’t seem to know I exist.

Blaine chuckles. That’s the understatement of the century. And it’s not because Kurt is one of those popular kids who has his head shoved so far up his own ass that he doesn’t associate with people outside of his social circle.

Quite on the contrary.

It’s simply that Kurt is completely and utterly out of Blaine’s league.

To: Kurt

But you and I have history, so to speak.

To: Kurt

Well, to be honest, it’s more like an anecdote.

To: Kurt

I sit behind you in a few classes and I’ve always wanted to say hi to you, but …

To: Kurt

I’m just too afraid.

To: Kurt

I’m afraid of being laughed at. But also … I get picked on a lot, and I’m afraid of becoming more of a target than I already am.

Blaine’s hands shake as he writes that. Even if Kurt never reads this, and odds are he won’t, the fear is still too real.

To Kurt:

But I look up to you so much.

To: Kurt

You’re smart and popular, and you have so many friends.

To: Kurt

You sing in Glee Club and you’re captain of the Cheerios.

To: Kurt

You’re doing everything I would have done if I’d had more courage.

To: Kurt

Speaking of courage …

Blaine hesitates, a small voice in his head screaming, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Turn back now before it’s too late!” But another voice reminds him that Kurt is never going to see these messages.

So what would it hurt to go for broke?

To: Kurt

I’ve been trying to find the courage to ask you out forever.

To: Kurt

Nothing major. Not like prom. I wouldn’t want your reputation to tank because of me. Just coffee.

To: Kurt

I know that you’ll think I like you because you’re Head Cheerio, because you’re popular, but that’s not it. I swear.

To: Kurt

There are hundreds of reasons to like you that have nothing to do with you being popular.

Blaine bites his lower lip, knowing he’s going to step over some lines, drudge up some past that maybe he shouldn’t, but he can’t make himself stop typing.

To: Kurt

When Coach Sylvester wanted you to lose weight after you joined the Cheerios, I saw how hard that was on you. But then you told her that if she didn’t want you on the squad plus or minus a few pounds, that she could go to hell. And she made you captain.

To: Kurt

You ran for student body president on a platform to end bullying, because you overcame bullying yourself, and even a death threat to get where you are.

To: Kurt

But when that other Cheerio won (I think because she promised to go topless one day a month), you were so gracious in defeat. And then you still went on to get the superintendent to ban dodgeball in all public schools, for which I, personally, thank you.

To: Kurt

You were so strong after your dad got sick.

To: Kurt

I heard you spent every night with him at the hospital, and then came to school every morning. I don’t think I could have done that.

To: Kurt

You brought that boy Sam some clothes when his parents lost their home last year.

To: Kurt

And I’ve seen you stand up for the Glee Club against the football players, even against Coach Sylvester.

To: Kurt

You’ve been out and proud in school for years now, and have paved a way for LGBT kids in our school to feel safer and more accepted, which is difficult when you consider the mental Neanderthals we’re surrounded by every day.

To: Kurt

No matter what life threw at you, you never gave up.

To: Kurt

You’re a good person.

Blaine looks at his phone after that last message. He could end it there, but that’s not the end. He takes in a breath and holds it. He has nothing to lose, he reminds himself.

To: Kurt

So, if I don’t sound like a total loser, and you think that maybe the two of us could be, you know, friends …

To: Kurt

I’m in the library, at the tutoring desk. Maybe you could stop by, and we could talk.

That first little voice rings in his head, “Mayday! Mayday!” and Blaine steps his remarks back a bit.

To: Kurt

Or not. I know you’re a busy guy. I’m sorry for bothering you.

To: Kurt

Just so you know, I’m not a stalker, so please don’t call the police on me.

“Ugh!” Blaine moans, dropping his head back onto the desk. “Why? Why did you text that? You pathetic loser!”

He turns off his phone and sets it aside.

And … that’s it.

That’s all he had in him to say.

He did it, though. He overcame his fear and told Kurt how he felt … in the safest, most non-consequence facing way possible.

He should feel relieved.

But he doesn’t.

He sent those messages, expressed all of those feelings, but they just disappeared into the ether, never to be retrieved (once Blaine clears his message history), their intended recipient totally unaware of their existence. What good would it have done if Kurt had read them anyway? What would that change except to make Blaine seem like more of a loser than he already feels?

He thought he’d feel lighter after admitting all of that, like he’d accomplished something. But he doesn’t.

He feels vacant.

Empty.

Vaguely incomplete.

He knocks his head on the desk a few times, chanting, “You. Are. Such. An. Idiot. You. Are. Such. An …”

“Hey. Are you busy?”

Blaine stops chanting and sighs. “Do I look busy?” He doesn’t care that he sounds snippy. Only five or so people come to see him on the regular anyhow, and most of them have witnessed him in the midst of an existential crisis before.

“Well, you look like you might be having some sort of episode. If that’s the case, I can come back.” A giggle follows that remark that sends a chill down Blaine’s spine.

That’s no regular.

That’s Kurt.

Blaine looks up, a nervous smile plastered to his face as he tries to remain calm. This is a coincidence. That’s all. Nothing but a weird, wacky, one-in-a-million, kick-you-in-the-crotch coincidence. Blaine is here to tutor. Lots of kids, from the cheerleading squad to the football players, come to see him. Even the ones who have tossed him into dumpsters stroll in as if there’s no bad blood between them to ask Blaine for help bringing up their grades. So this isn’t that out of the ordinary.

Except that Kurt has a 4.8 GPA. He’s never needed tutoring, so why would he be here?

It can’t have anything to do with those messages. No way. That phone is gone, those messages went nowhere.

So … why today of all days? Why on the one day Blaine bore his heart to him – or to his lost phone – through dozens of inane text messages, would Kurt show up for tutoring?

Blaine can’t begin to guess. But once this does turn out to be one big, crazy coincidence, he’s going to buy a ton of lottery tickets because fate is obviously working overtime.

“Uh, no. No, I’m not. I … is there something I can help you with?” Blaine asks.

“I … I wanted to show you something.” Kurt reaches into his book bag, pulls out his phone, and shows it to Blaine. Blaine exhales, relieved. That’s all. Kurt got his new phone and he’s showing it off, probably to everyone he sees. He happened to be in the library, noticed Blaine sitting at the tutoring desk, and decided to brag.

Completely reasonable.

But when Blaine takes a second look, he sees it’s not a new phone. It’s Kurt’s old phone. There’s a message displayed on the screen. It only takes Blaine three seconds and the words please don’t call the police for him to know that it’s his message.

Not the first message Blaine sent, but the last.

“Your name is Blaine Anderson,” Kurt says, letting out a breath as if he’d been holding it for an hour now. “You sit behind me in science, math, and economics. Last year, you sat behind me in history, math, and AP European Literature.” Kurt takes a step towards the empty chair in front of Blaine’s desk. “We met for the first time in elementary school. You wore a bowtie to school every day. I used to wear suits, and my hair …” Kurt runs a self-conscious hand through his bangs “… was less highlighted then.”

“I … I remember,” Blaine says, swallowing heavy.

“So do I." Kurt takes a seat. And with a small, bashful smile, he takes Blaine’s hand. “Can we talk?”