Blaine's fingers strummed on the acoustic guitar with a steady persistence that was quickly spiraling towards irritation. It had been awhile since he'd written an original song, so the process that evening was going achingly slow.
"Two empty seats on a train,
Oh I wish..
Oh I wish that y-"

"Ugh, no.." He muttered, pulling his left hand away from the guitar strings to pick up his pen and scribble clumsily in the notebook sitting next to him on the porch steps. The evening was smoldering as it was late August and Blaine was already wearing the sleeveless Henley and sweatpants he usually wore to bed. His father was due home from work any minute now and the sixteen-year old was not looking forward to having dinner with his old man. The next day would be the beginning of Blaine's junior year at a new school and the stress and worry was already piling up on him, without factoring in his dad's ever-disapproving stare over beef stew.
The front door creaked open at that moment and Blaine's mother poked her head out. "Honey, do you want to watch the X-Factor with me?" she asked hopefully, examining the way her son was hunching over his guitar. It worried her every time Blaine isolated himself like this.
But Blaine could practically hear the things his dark-haired mother wasn't saying and an involuntary fake smile graced his features as he turned his head to look at her. "I'm actually trying to finish something and I'm a little tired, anyway, Mom." He tried to make his tone sound as courteous as possible, seeing as she wasn't the parent that annoyed him ceaselessly. "Is it okay if I skip dinner tonight?"
Gina Anderson frowned.
"Are you nervous about tomorrow?" she inquired gently, stepping out onto the porch and sitting down next to Blaine.
Blaine suppressed a sigh. He started strumming on the guitar again but only halfheartedly this time. "A little but I'll be okay."
Gina observed the way his golden brown eyes looked troubled and placed a hand between his shoulder blades, rubbing slow circles. "I'm worried about you," she said simply.
Blaine knew what she meant immediately, which only made his guilt sink in deeper. "I haven't done anything, Mom," he told her, meeting her gaze steadily. "I haven't done anything since January." It wasn't entirely true but Blaine decided that his mom didn't need to know about the one time he'd slipped up and taken drugs just to forget about someone's rejection. It was humiliating that he could picture the vomiting that had occurred afterwards so vividly.
"I promise," he added thickly, feeling a lump rising in his throat.
"I know, honey," his mother gave him a warm sideways hug before standing up. "Just don't stay up too late. Tomorrow's a new day."
Once she had gone back inside, Blaine glanced up at the blackberry-tinted sky above the identical houses lining his neighborhood. Everything looked the same as it had since he was twelve years old. That knowledge felt surreal when he considered how much he had changed inside since then; how many un-childlike things he'd experienced in just a short time. It was jarring and sad, to say the least.

Despite the flawless sunshine streaming in through his bedroom window the next morning, Blaine woke with no desire to start the day. At 6:45, his hair was an unruly mess and it took him twice as much as time in the bathroom, trying to get it to cooperate under a decent amount of gel.
He picked out a black Flower Bomb t-shirt, that his mother hated,and a pair of skinny jeans then headed downstairs for breakfast.
In the bright tiled kitchen, his mother was pouring coffee into a travel mug while his dad sat at the wobbly table, reading The Daily Reporter and picking absentmindedly at his eggs.
Blaine grinned when his mother wrinkled her nose at his choice of apparel.
"I don't do flannel, Mom," he said before she could comment.
Gina rolled her eyes good-naturedly.
Tyler Anderson glanced up over the top of the paper at his well-groomed but slightly tired-looking son. "Blaine, you have to be there early to get your class schedule," he felt the need to remind the boy.
Blaine reached for the box of Honeyed Oats disinterestedly. "I know, Dad. I still have time."
Tyler looked at the clock on the wall and didn't say anything.
"Well, I'm off," Gina exclaimed then, slinging her purse over her shoulder and pausing to kiss each of the Anderson men on the cheek. "See you two later!"
Tyler waited till he heard the front door closing before he set down the newspaper and studied his son more closely. "Blaine?"
"Here it comes," Blaine thought as he avoided his father's cold green eyes while shoving a spoonful of soggy cereal into his mouth.
Ever since that night five months ago when he'd come home completely buzzed off Ecstasy and anger and his ex-boyfriend's cruel laughter, Blaine and his dad had found ways to argue almost every moment they were alone together. Sometimes it was like the fighting was a car and they would put on the brakes only when Blaine's mother was in the room. The second she'd leave, they'd feel free to accelerate with more blame pointed at each other.
Blaine felt incredibly sad when he remembered playing football in the backyard and learning to cook steaks on the barbeque pit with the man sitting across from him. How had he screwed everything up? Now it was as if those memories were merely fantasies, rolling around in his head. Now he couldn't recall a time when his father wasn't disappointed every time he looked at him.
"Try to stay out of trouble," Tyler Anderson said. "That's all I'm asking."
Blaine's jaw tightened and he chewed the last of his cereal with a queasy stomach. To be fair, though, he didn't think he deserved his father's forgiveness. In Blaine's mind, he had been an idiot, falling for Sebastian.

Lima was only an hour away from his home in Westerville, so Blaine pulled into the parking lot of McKinley High School fifteen minutes early.
He headed towards the front office immediately to pick up his class schedule and convince the principal that he wasn't as bad as his father had inevitably made him out to be.
Blaine cringed as he remembered meeting Principal Figgins during student orientation with his parents. The coffee-skinned man had looked Blaine up and down with a steely glare as his mother had mumbled something about her son wanting to make a clean start. Blaine's father hadn't been so merciful in clarifying, however, that that he wanted to stay off the drugs and "peer pressure". That had been one of the most humiliating moments of Blaine's young life.
Now as he reached the front office, he noticed two jocks leaned on either side of the door.
"Nice glasses, freak," the African-American one said as Blaine passed. But he barely glanced their way, seeing as the Titans hadn't won a game in over a year so Blaine didn't understand what they had to feel conceited about.
Sauntering over to the secretary's desk, he told the lady behind it his name and waited for her to dig his file. The woman pulled out a sheet of paper from a folder in front of her but before handing it to him, she said, "Principal Figgins wants to see you in his office before your first class."
Blaine suppressed a sigh but kept his expression blank.
There were chairs pushed up against the wall next to the door to Figgins' office. A girl with pink hair sat next to a guy with a Mohawk who kept giving Blaine the stink eye now and then. The girl smiled invitingly as he brushed by.
Thankfully, Figgins didn't keep Blaine for long. After explaining the school's no smoking/no fighting policy, he let him speed off to his first class after the warning bell rang. Blaine noticed a strange smell akin to road kill when he'd been inside Figgins' office and he was grateful to finally be headed to his English class.
"Hey, cutie, hold up!" a slightly husky feminine called suddenly as he started down the long hallways.
Blaine didn't break stride, even as he glanced to his right and saw the girl with pink hair jogging along beside him.
She was very pretty, despite her tragically asymmetrical haircut and grunge taste in style.
"Are you new here?" she asked Blaine, seeming unaware of his haste or not caring either way.
Blaine nodded without slowing down.
"I figured. No one here looks remotely as cool.." She trailed off with a hint of longing in her voice.
Blaine glanced at her sideways, his lips turning up at the corners in an amused smile. She was flirting. "I doubt that," he said lightly.
"Seriously," the girl continued, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. "This place blows."
Blaine didn't respond as he navigated through the swarm of students in multi-colored sweaters. Coming from Dalton Academy, he was used to seeing only uniforms. The new sight of speeding bodies had sort of a kaleidoscopic effect and Blaine was glad he'd kept his shades on.
"I'm Quinn," the girl declared as he spotted the open door of Mrs. Pemberton's English class. "I eat lunch with a group of friends under the bleachers. If you don't have anything better to do, you can join us."
Blaine came to a complete stop and extended his hand to the girl as he figured she wasn't totally exhausting. "I'm Blaine."
Quinn smiled mischievously, placing her hand in his for a brief instant before when pulling back with a smirk. Blaine found a cigarette tucked between his pointer and middle finger.
He glanced up to see Quinn giving him a wink and turning around, walking back towards the double doors at the end of the hall.
"Maybe this place won't be so bad," Blaine thought as he tucked the cigarette she had given him in the pocket of his jeans.

Spanish with Mr. Shuester was just as tedious and mediocre as the other classes Blaine had attended that morning. While the blue-eyed man wasn't condescending or unfairly strict, Blaine got the impression that Will Shuester only agreed to teach the class because he considered the subject effortless.
So the work wasn't challenging in the least, especially for Blaine who spoke both Spanish and Italian fluently. While his fellow classmates repeated rudimentary nouns and phrases over and over, Blaine doodled on his arm with a sharpie.
At one point, he noticed the Asian boy in the desk next him staring openly at the tattoo stenciled across his left wrist. It was a half angel wing with the elemental symbol for water bordering one of the protruding feathers. Blaine's old irritation returned and he found himself glaring at the kid and asking sharply, "Do you need something?"
"No," the boy mumbled, dropping his gaze to the text book sitting unopened on his desk. Blaine let out an audible sigh and turned to stare out one of the windows.
He didn't notice Mr. Shuester pausing mid-lecture to study him curiously from the front of the room.

As lunchtime rolled by, Blaine decided to take Quinn up on her offer to eat under the bleachers with her and her "friends".
The only form of sustenance he'd brought with him that day due to his intense nervousness, which he fished out of locker as the sounds of laughter and teenage gossip swirled around him.
"Did you think it was really going to last? a girl in a tight cheerleading uniform was saying loudly as she ambled past. "I mean, she slept with his best friend!"
Her companion, a redhead in a short denim, agreed fervently.
"Totally! But I still can't believe he's dating Rachel Berry now. Talk about offensive.."
Blaine tuned out the rest of what the girls were saying as he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. Closing his locker, he pulled it out of the back pocket of his jeans, and without looking at the number, answered.
"Hey."
"Blaine! Man, how's it going?"
The energetic voice on the other end belonged to his friend, David, from Dalton Academy. Blaine felt a rush of embarrassment as he recalled the last time they had spoken.
"I'm good." He cleared his throat before continuing. "H-how are you, David?"
"Dude, I'm great but it feels really weird not seeing you around," David replied in his usually charming voice.
Blaine allowed himself a genuine smile as he leaned against his locker. "Yeah, believe me, it feels weird being in a new school."
"Wes says hi."
"Tell him I say hi back and that I miss fight club."
David laughed. "Those were the days, huh?"
"Totally," Blaine exhaled sadly. "Everything's so messed up now.."
"Hey, Blaine, don't think about it, alright?" David interrupted. "That's not why I'm calling. I just wanted to wish you luck on your first day and let you know that we're still around if you want to hang out or just talk...Okay?"
Blaine took a deep breath. "How can you say that, man?" His hand tightened around the phone. "You saw everything that happened that week. How can you not be angry at me? Dean Wilson asked me point blank and I-"
"Dude!" David cut in with a bit more edge this time. He sounded exasperated. "It doesn't matter anymore."
From the corner of his eye, Blaine noticed a kid with frizzy brown hair and glasses staring at him intently from a few lockers away. He lowered his voice as he answered David. "Okay, I'm sorry."
He didn't know what there was left to say.
"It's cool, man. I gotta go now but you should come over this weekend. We can watch football or take turns on my brother's bike. Also, I remember how much you love my mom's dinners."
Blaine chuckled, feeling his mood lift momentarily. "Sounds awesome."
"Great!" David exclaimed jollily. "I'll text you when I get out of class on Friday so you'll know what time, okay?"
"Alright. I'll see you then."
"Take care, dude."
"Bye, David."
Blaine heard a click as David hung up and turning in the direction of the back exit doors at then end of the hallway."

He found Quinn outside under the shade of the bleachers with her back pressed against the chain link fence that bordered the football field.
"You came," Quinn mused, chewing on some gum and raking her moss green eyes over Blaine's body in a semi casual manner.
Blaine shrugged. "Why would you think I wouldn't?"
Quinn mirrored his shrug. Blaine smirked. He was beginning to like this girl.
Then as if just realizing that they weren't alone, Quinn tilted her head towards the three girls lingering nearby. "This is Sheila, Ronnie and The Mac."
Blaine nodded to each of the girls wearing similar grunge outfits. The third girl Quinn had introduced as The Mac, was wearing the shortest leather mini skirt Blaine had ever seen. She gave him a sultry half smile that almost came across as challenging.
"You look like you'd be good in bed," she said brazenly.
Blaine couldn't help chuckling at that. "Sorry, sweetheart. I don't play for your team."
The brunette just shrugged.
Quinn took the cigarette out of her mouth and exhaled a cloud of smoke in the side of Blaine's. He didn't flinch, which impressed Quinn and made her ask, "Is it true that you got kicked out of some fancy private school for sleeping with one of the male teachers?"
Blaine, having unwrapped his lunch a second ago, almost choked on a huge bite of chocolate bar. Swallowing loudly, he turned to Quinn, raising an eyebrow quizzically. "Is that story going around?" He tried to keep a light incredulous tone to his voice and not freak her out by how seriously pissed he felt upon hearing this.
Quinn looked unfazed, however. "That's only one of the theories people are making up for why you transferred to this crap shack. I mean, why would anyone enroll here unless they were forced to?"
Blaine's eyes drifted to the football field where a group of cheerleaders in bright red uniforms was assembling on the grass. He could see a tall woman with short blond hair marching behind, carrying a bullhorn.
"Well, I was expelled, actually," Blaine murmured quietly, watching as the cheerleaders began to stretch. "But I didn't have an affair with a balding teacher."
Quinn nodded, smiling. She got the impression that he was reluctant to go into detail about his past, and while she understood what that was like, given her own notoriety at McKinley, she also wanted Blaine to know that she wouldn't criticize.
"I figured it wasn't real," she said with an unexpected gentleness that caused Blaine to turn his eyes away from cheerleading practice back to her face.
"Another rumor is that the cops found five pounds of marijuana in your locker."
Blaine bit down on the last piece of candy bar and crumpled the wrapper in his palm. "Actually," he said, tossing it over the fence. "That one is true."