"I feel like we may not have entirely thought this through". The teenage boy frowned, peering around the corner of the building and into the school corridor. He turned back to his companion, and added "We should have at least come looking less conspicuous."

The second boy adjusted the lapel of his distinctive school blazer self consciously, then grinned at his friend and with an excited "Wait, I've got it, Wes!" put on the dark sunglasses he had been holding. "Better?" He asked.

"Brilliant, David," Wes rolled his eyed with distain. "Your talents are wasted here. With cunning like that-"

"TARGET MOVING! TARGET MOVING!" David cut him off with a flailing arm to the side of his head, pointing to the group of people moving down the hall towards them.

Not quite ready to put their plan into action (and, truth be told, still trying to solidify it in his mind), Wes pulled David out of sight, and they flattened themselves against the wall, drawing interested looks from the lunch crowd passing them by. The group in question, however, had gone in a different direction, and Wes let out a sigh of relief. His small smile of triumph soon disappeared, though, as his phone rang and he glanced at the caller ID. Caught.

"Is it him?" David asked, with a tone of mixed excitement and trepidation, while the phone continued to ring insistently.

"He must have gone back to the room for something." Wes thought for a moment, before shrugging at the phone. "What do you think?"

"Pick up. He'll just keep calling."

Wes flipped open his phone with a big smile and said (as casually as he could) " Hey, my friend. What's up?"

There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment before an eerily calm voice could be heard.

"WHERE. IS. IT."

Wes stifled a laugh, and decided that, at this point, ignorance was his best shot. "Where's what, Blaine?"

The calm voice grew a shade more impatient at this. "Wes, do NOT screw with me. WHAT have you done with it?"

The hallway was almost deserted by this point, so Wes had put his phone on speaker. David chimed in with what he believed sounded like innocent surprise. "Why, Blaine, if you've lost something, you should go check with Security. I know they have a lost and found for all of the dorms, and I'm sure-"

"David, if you do not tell me what you have done with it, then I am going to tell your girlfriend about the time I was watching RENT in my room, and you came by to borrow my history book and stayed 'til the end..."

Wes saw slight hesitation in David's eyes and interrupted. "Blaine, I don't really think -"

" ...And sobbed for half an hour after it finished." Blaine concluded, managing to sound both triumphant and threatening at the same time.

Wes decided quickly that this conversation was not advancing his brilliant plan in any way, and so began to plot an exit strategy. " Listen, Blaine, I'm sure you just misplaced whatever it was. It's probably somewhere on the floor of your room, or behind your desk -"

David perked up "Yeah, your roommate is kind of a slob, so-"

"Hey!" The roommate in question interjected automatically, before a quick reminder – in the form of David's elbow to his ribs – brought him back to the point. "I mean, yeah. It's a mess. Papers everywhere."

He felt like he was finally getting the hang of this, so David piped up eagerly " Yeah, a small notebook could easily be left under some -" He realized his mistake when Wes pushed him, hard, into the wall they were standing next to, with a look that clearly said 'Well, you've done it now.' "Ow! I mean – if that's what's missing. Or whatever it is."

Blaine had clearly missed none of the exchange, or the performance for his benefit, and took in an audible breath before speaking. "Wes. David. You two are my closest friends, and I do not want to be angry with you. But I want the notebook back. Now. Bring it back to our room, Wes, and I will consider listening to whatever ridiculous explanation you have. Quite why my book of scribbles and half finished song lyrics is so interesting to you, I don't know. But it's private, and so I would like you to retu-"

The second lunch bell rang through the halls, releasing those classes that hadn't ended yet, and Wes' efforts to muffle the noise into the phone proved futile. Blaine's voice paused at the sound, and after a moment resumed, laced with confusion. "That isn't the Dalton bell. Aren't you guys here? That sounds more like the -" In the pause that followed Wes could almost see the epiphany that was surely visible on his friend's face. There was a small gasp of remembrance as he placed the sound, and then Blaine's voice cracked in disbelief. "- Are you two at McKinley?"

Wes looked at David in determination. "It's time. Operation Sugarplum has commenced. Phase one, go!"

He was going to fucking kill them.

Relax, they said. It's for your own good, they said. We're just sick of the same minor chords being played over and over night and day, they said. They added that if they heard Blaine sing the chorus of Just the Way You Are one more time, they could not be held fully responsible for their actions. Blaine slapped his palms on the steering wheel in frustration, cursing both the 45 minute drive (and that was if he sped at levels that would have made his old driver's ed teacher frown and then pass out) to Lima and the stupidity of the two people who would soon hold the title of his former best friends. Unless he got to them in time. He pulled onto the freeway, fervently hoping that Wes and David's (now doubtful) humanity would cause them to pick up their damn phones, only to be greeted by Wes' chirpy suggestion that he leave his name and number, and he'd get back to him as soon as possible. Blaine had already left several threatening messages since the pair had hung up on him from their hallway HQ, having justified their actions as the service of their "wonderfulest-and-most-talented-but-utterly-sickening-when-in-love best friend". He figured one more message couldn't hurt. "Wes. This is Blaine. Again. This is a reminder that I know where you sleep. Less that five feet from me. And I know your fears. And I know your girlfriend. Think VERY carefully about how you want this to play out." He ended the call. The messages had ranged from pleading to threatening as his level of panic rose and fell, and as he threw his phone onto the passenger seat he considered, for the hundredth time in the last ten minutes, a pre-emptive strike. Text Kurt. Warn him that your former best friends are entirely insane and have let themselves loose on an unsuspecting public high school population. He could see the text.

Whatever they tell you is made up, he'd write. They must've had too much coffee. Or red bull. Last time I let Wes near an energy drink ;P.

It would be an easy out. A comfortable, jokey lie. A thousand people probably did the same kind of thing each day. Evaporated the tension. But he hadn't sent it. He hadn't even started to type it. And why was that? It was not, Blaine told himself, because he was secretly curious about what Kurt's reaction would be to the words he had scribbled down, guitar in hand. It was not appropriate for Kurt to know any of that. It was not even appropriate for Blaine think it, no matter how much his friends told him otherwise. He was Kurt's friend, for crying out loud.

And it was certainly not because he thought this idiotic idea of Wes' (he was fairly sure he knew the mastermind behind this was not David) had any merit. It was definitely because he had some small glimmer of hope that his friends were not entirely devoid of humanity after all. Maybe they'd decide they were being absurd and drive back to Dalton. They'd laugh about it (ie: at him) later, sure, but his thoughts – the inspired, frustrated and yes, slightly lovesick at times, outbursts - would remain unknown and unspoken. And, Blaine admitted sheepishly, he genuinely didn't want to lie to Kurt, as ridiculous as that seemed. Keeping his feelings in check was just about excusable as white lie of omission, but derailing his well meaning (but decidedly evil) friends would have to be done subtly. Preferably before anyone read Kurt anything from that notebook.

Even as a hormonal teenage boy, Blaine had always been wary of attracting the emotional/tortured-gay-teenage-musician label people seemed ready to stick on him. He didn't write music to capture and release the pain. He wrote music because to him it seemed the clearest, most pure way to express anything at all. Being a genuinely outgoing and friendly guy helped, but he made an effort not to play into the stereotype any more than he could help. Until recently, that hadn't been a problem.

He'd played guitar in the common rooms, leading sing-a-longs of oldies and pop songs, strummed through Warblers practice, accompanying his friends if they needed acoustic guitar backing, and sat in his room quietly plucking at chords and words, piecing together the words that explained who he was and where he had come from. Since he had transferred to Dalton his songs had mostly been full of hope. As cliché as he knew it was, Dalton had offered him an escape from the hell that his conservative public high school had become. And those feeling seeped into his music.

The notebook itself wouldn't seem to be much of a big deal. Blaine had never been one to keep a journal. But if phrases, ideas, or chords (or in rare cases fully formed song lyrics) occurred to him, he'd scribble them down before they slipped back into the recesses of his mind. Or sometimes he would just doodle during class (Even at brilliant schools like Dalton there are classes where it's necessary to scratch out a masterpiece or two). The book was a fragmented look into Blaine's thoughts and desires, and it wouldn't take a genius to figure out what (or who) the central theme would prove to have been over the last few months... or the way in which the tone and content of the songs had changed. In fact, two morons seemed to have jumped to conclusions on those subjects fairly quickly.

He had thought he might genuinely pass out when he realized the book was gone from his desk. Then he had needed to sit down for a moment when he remembered Wes innocently picking it up and commenting that he'd been writing a lot more recently. It had been on his desk last night. And in the morning it was gone. And so was his roommate. His evil roommate and the third member of their trio, David. At McKinley. With the book.

Blaine's cheeks colored slightly remembering some of the phrases he knew were recorded in his hurried, inspired scrawl. He pushed down a little more on the accelerator.

If only they didn't have the damn notebook.