Clark Kent and Cinderella

By: RavenHeart101

Disclaimer: No ownership available.

Summary: They had been best friends for as long as they could remember. Back when Jesse wasn't a conceited, soul-less automaton. Back when Blaine wasn't a dapper Dalton boy. Back when the two of them knew nothing about New Directions or Rachel Berry or Kurt Hummel. Back when they were both two little boys who played pretend and had Disney sing-a longs at all their birthday parties.

A: N: Random plot bunny is random.

They met a long time ago. Back when Jesse wasn't a conceited, soul-less automaton. Back when Blaine wasn't a dapper Dalton boy. Back when the two of them knew nothing about New Directions or Rachel Berry or Kurt Hummel. Back when they were both two little boys who played pretend and had Disney sing-a longs at all their birthday parties.

Jesse St. James was attending his father's law office the day that the two met. He had the day off from school and his mother couldn't take him to the modeling agency with her because none of her models would get any work done. They'd be too busy cooing over how adorable he was. Jesse didn't blame them. He really was adorable. He sat back in the couch in his father's office, his wide eyes taking in the tall shelves of books that reached to the roof. His Superman converse scuffed against the burgundy rug. His hands played restlessly with the leather arm rest, his nails digging under the metal and then pulling out with a small squelch as they rubbed against the rough exterior material. He sighed, his brown, curly hair fluffing as the breath angled upwards. His father's work was boring. "Sit up Jesse." His father's stern voice cut through his anguished thoughts. The little boy pushed himself up by his elbows, taking a moment to frown before schooling his features to something more acceptable to the lawyer.

His father shook his head at him before turning back to his paperwork. His pen rubbed against the page, the phone breaking through the silence every once in a while. Jesse hid another sigh, scratching at his leg, the itchy material of the corduroy pants his mother had insisted he wear because "he had to look like a gentleman for any of Daddy's clients". He blinked over at the door, wishing that he could be outside of the office, wishing he could be sitting with his father's assistant even. It wasn't as though he liked her, but the old lady would let him sing along to whatever was on the radio. Sometimes she'd even join in. She wasn't the best singer in the world, but she was much more entertaining than his father was at the moment.

"Send her up." Jesse turned back to his father, looking confused for a moment because his father looked happy for a moment. Devilishly happy. Jesse didn't understand that look on his father's face but he was pretty sure that it wasn't good. The man's brown eyes were sparkling at him in a way that his father's eyes only sparkled when he was planning something. Jesse shifted nervously, his tiny hand reaching out to brush a curl off of his forehead. "We're going to have a visitor Jesse." His father's voice was curt as always. Cold. Unemotional. Calculating. "She's bringing her son up with her. He's a little younger than you, but the two of your should get along." Which was his father's code for you two will get along. If you know what's good for you.

Jesse nodded along, his fingers going back to their tango with the leather arm rest. He swallowed, gazing down at his converse. His dress shoes didn't fit him anymore, so his mother had allowed him to wear his Superman shoes with his father for the day on the promise that it wouldn't happen again. He kicked his feet out a few more times, counting down to when the doors leading into his father's office were pushed open by the old secretary who had plenty of candy in the second drawer of her desk. He stood up like a proper gentleman, his back straight and his hands by his sides. His father did the same, only he came out from behind his desk and walked over to the tall woman with a large smile. Well she wasn't all that tall. She was about as tall as his grandmother, but she wasn't horribly short like a five year old either. Jesse guessed she was pretty enough.

She was wearing a slimming bright red dress and her black hair fell down her face in ringlets and bounced over her shoulders. Her heels where high enough to add a few inches to her height, and they were bright enough to match the dress perfectly, as were her lips. Everything looked painted onto her tan skin. But it wasn't her that caught his eye. The little boy who was hiding behind her legs was. He wasn't dressed as smartly as Jesse. He was wearing Power Rangers light up sneakers, a pink T-shirt, light blue jeans, and dark, round rimmed glasses that looked as though they were going to fall off his nose. He was younger than him by three years, it looked like. Jesse looked up at his father in desperation, but the man was too busy looking at the woman in adoration. He never looked at Jesse's mother like that. "Is that Jesse?" She had an accent. A rich accent that was indistinguishable. Jesse had never heard anything like it before.

He looked back up at his father, his hands nervously tugging at his blue and white polo. He bent his head as his father answered, looking up at the woman through his lightly colored eyelashes. "Yes." He nodded at the boy, smiling at him for a moment before turning back to the brightly dressed woman. "Jesse why don't you and Blaine go play in Justine's office." It wasn't a request. It was an order if Jesse had ever heard one. He frowned, wondering who Blaine was, before the woman pushed the little boy towards him. He couldn't have been anymore than six years old to Jesse's nine. It was a bit scary. He took a step towards the door, waiting for the small boy to follow.

But the boy didn't follow. He simply looked up at his mother through the lenses of his glasses, his mouth moving silently (or what was silent to him) as his mother knelt down to look him in the face. "Go on sweetheart. I'm sure Jesse would love to do a sing along with you." Jesse's head whipped to look at the little boy, who was blushing a bit. A smile tugged at his lips at the thought of a sing along partner better than old lady Justine. "Go on, darling." She patted his jean clad butt with a perfectly manicured hand, wiggling the fingers at the two of them, her bright red smile taking up the bottom half of her face.

They sat away from each other for a while in silence as their parents conversed in his father's office until Jesse couldn't take anymore silence. He wanted to do a sing along, and this little boy wasn't about to stop him from doing so. "Every little thing I do, never seems enough for you. You don't wanna lose it again, but I'm not like them. Baby, when you finally, get to love somebody. Guess what? It's gonna be me." He sang along to the radio loudly, boisterously. The curly haired child looked at him in shock as he sang directly to Justine, his voice reverberating through the office. "It's gunna be me!" He finished with a flourish, standing proudly on the leather couch outside of his father's office. Justine clapped enthusiastically, her smile pulling at her wrinkles. He sat back with a wide smile, relishing at the happy faces that filled the secretary's office. Applause made his spirit soar more than compliments ever could.

A tiny tug on his shirt brought him back to reality. A pair of big, hazel eyes stared up at him unblinkingly, in amazement. They reflected against the glass that shielded them from the world. "Do you know Backstreet Boys?" Jesse looked at him in shock. Who didn't know Backstreet Boys? They were only the second best boy band ever (second to 'Nsync, of couse)!

"Who doesn't know Backstreet Boys?" He answered back irritably. Was this six year old seriously insulting his intelligence?

The boy blushed for a moment before picking at his pink shirt. "I think you would do really good singing their newest song."

Jesse looked at him in confusion for a moment. "Which one?"

"Uhm... Being Lonely?" He took a guess at the title, his soft voice causing Jesse to have to lean closer to hear him.

"You mean Show Me The Meaning of Being Lonely?" Jesse might have sounded a bit snooty, but, really, who claimed to know songs if they didn't bother to know the title?

Blaine nodded enthusiastically, his curls bouncing on top of his head and his hazel eyes sparkling. "Yeah! I think you'd be really good at singing it!"

Jesse hummed, sitting back in his seat for a moment, thinking of what the boy said. And then the song came on the radio, the opening bars playing out softly before picking up volume. He smiled slightly before his voice joined that of the singer. Blaine's eyes looked at him in wide amazement.

Yeah. Jesse had totally just made a new best friend.

The two of them meet up weekly after that. On Saturdays when both of them are out of school and Blaine's mother visits his father. Jesse literally spends all of his afternoon waiting until the clock reaches three o'clock and he can hear the little pitter-patter of Blaine's nearly invisible footfalls against the wooden floor boards. This carries on for a year, until it's Jesse's birthday and he had to decide who to invite to his birthday party. Of course Giselle is invited, the two of them were dating, but Jesse wanted his new best friend to come to the party. He was sure that the two of them would kill Giselle on his new karaoke machine, Blaine picking the songs and Jesse singing to every one of them.

The two of them had a system, you see. Jesse was the singer, Blaine was the quiet observer. He would request songs and Jesse would sing them and Blaine would clap and be happy and amazed. He hero worshiped Jesse. And Jesse was perfectly fine with that. He bristled under all of the attention. But, anyway, Jesse was actually excited for his birthday party this year simply because he would get to see Blaine.

The boy didn't say much, he was oddly quiet. But he had agreed to ask his mother about Jesse's party and then he had showed up a bit late, but still earlier than some people with his hand in the grasp of his mothers. He was wearing his Power Ranger sneakers again and another pair of jeans but this time he adorned a Superman T-shirt. Jesse was jealous for all of a second before he caught sight of the present tucked under the smaller boy's arm that was decorated in similar Superman wrapping paper. He smiled widely at Jesse, allowing the older boy to see that he had lost one of his teeth before handing the boy's present to Jesse's mother and hugging his around the waist until she forced him to let go.

Blaine had looked like he was going to cry, and Jesse really didn't want him to cry, so he had proclaimed, rather loudly, that Blaine was going to "pick songs for me to sing and wow the audience with!" and offered him his hand. The boy blushed again, but he took it cautiously, allowing himself to be lead down the St. James long hallway and into the play room where Jesse's father was setting up the karaoke machine. "Daddy, Blaine's going to pick out songs for me to sing." He said with a smug smile aimed at his father. The older man laughed gently, gazing at Blaine for a moment, and the boy's messy curls, concern almost shinning in his eyes before he nodded and patted both of the boy's heads as he left them to do their thing. And that was how the two of them spent most of the party.

It was only once Giselle came that things went wrong. Jesse was trying to convince Blaine to sing a song with him when the girl had waltzed up to Jesse and captured his attention with the request to watch a movie. He agreed readily, jumping from foot to foot as he gazed at the movies in front of him. "I think we should watch Cinderella." Giselle said snootily. Jesse frowned, while he loved the Disney classics he wasn't sure if Blaine would. And he really didn't want to single the boy out by making him watch something he didn't want to.

In the end he didn't have to worry because it turned out that Blaine loved Cinderella more than any of the girls present at the party.

By the time Jesse was entering Middle School and Blaine was moving onto a new Elementary School the two of them had seen so much of each other that they were considered members of both families. Jesse hadn't ever really gone to Blaine's house, but he had seen plenty of the younger boy's mother. And he may have been teased because his best friend was a third grader, but Jesse thought Blaine was pretty awesome.

The younger boy was always there whenever Jesse needed to complain about Giselle or about how much it sucked to be so awesome. And Jesse was always there to listen to Blaine talk quietly about his parents fights and how he didn't want to marry a princess but he wanted to marry a prince. Jesse hadn't known that something was wrong with that until he had heard John Hickes telling Henry Talman about how he was acting gay by hanging around with so many girls and "did he have a crush on him? Because that totally was not right". Jesse had felt some sort of cold feeling climb into his stomach and he had thought for a moment that he was sick, but then he realized that he wasn't sick. He was just angry and scared and quite possibly terrified of what would happen if someone like John Hickes found out that his best friend wanted to marry a prince like Cinderella.

So maybe Jesse had started seeing Blaine in a new light. Maybe he had began hiding their play dates, and maybe he had stopped watching Disney movies with Blaine. Maybe he had stopped trying to convince the younger boy to try out for the school musical because that would just draw more attention to the boy's abnormalities and that wouldn't do any good. Therefore, instead, Jesse tried out for as many musicals as he could. He joined his school's show choir and was steadily rising to the star. He was letting the attention get dropped on him for a reason other than that it made him feel good, because he was protecting Blaine from getting the attention himself.

It was when Blaine came to his house on a Friday night after school that Jesse saw the first bruise. The boy had started bawling when Jesse had asked him what happened and he had spilled that he had made a Valentine for Freddy in his class because he was nice and he liked Freddy and that Freddy had pushed him off the monkey bars because they were for "boy boys and not girl boys like him". Jesse had hugged him and they had watched Cinderella for the millionth time and Jesse let Blaine pick out another song for him to sing until Blaine's mother had come to pick him up from the St. James household.

The Monday at school was when John Hickes had let slip that it was possible to "catch the gay" from someone who was gay. Jesse had demanded to know how. He didn't want to be gay. And if he could catch the gay by hanging out with Blaine didn't that mean that he was? The logic didn't make much sense in some minds, but it made sense in John Hickes'. "You hug 'em or hold hands with 'em or kiss 'em. Breathing near them even."

Jesse didn't have his mother set up a play date for him and Blaine for the next two months. And then he had gone to his father's office for the day again, because he may have been twelve years old but that still wasn't old enough for him to be home all by himself. Even if the butler was there with him.

He had sighed and whined the whole time because his father's office was boring. And Jesse St. James was the kind of person who didn't do boring. But he had gone along, because he didn't want to upset his mother. And that was why he had ran into Blaine and his mother again.

This time the younger boy looked more cleaned up than he had last time. He was quietly sitting in his seat an Artemis Foul book that Jesse hadn't yet been able to get from the library open in front of him. He was jealous, but he let it go pretty fast because Blaine had a cut on his cheek that looked a bit painful. Moreover, there was no way that a nine year old could possibly read Artemis Foul and understand what was going on (he ignored the voice in his head that was reminding him that Blaine had read the first two Harry Potter books already and the he understood them more than Jesse had). He almost asked his father if they could leave, but his father had a determined frown marring his face as he pulled himself up to Blaine's mother and ushered her into his office. Jesse knew the drill by now.

He sat as far away from Blaine as he could, drumming his fingers against the thick leather of the couch that had once taken up residence in his father's office. He held his breath for a long time, only taking deep, heaving breaths when he could. He didn't want to catch "the gay". His black dress shoes scuffed against the wooden floor, the black glittering like an afterthought from the sun's rays. It was eerily quiet in his father's office ever since Justine had retired three years back.

He felt a sharp poke in his arm and his eyes fell onto hazel behind not-so-thick glasses and curly hair. He sharply inhaled a long breath, attempting to hold it for as long as he could. "What's this word?" Blaine asked softly, his quiet voice ringing almost too loudly in the too quiet office. The giant Eurasian man flitted between tables in the Knightsbridge bistro, hiding the usual security items and clearing exit routes. The page read. His hand rested above the word "bistro" and Jesse had to use his extensive brain to figure out how to phrase it to the nine year old so that he would understand.

"A really tiny restaurant." He settled with, his mouth struggling to take in another gulp of breath.

"Oh." Blaine said in realization before blinking up at him with a smile. "Thank you Jess!" Jesse nodded back at him, willing the younger boy to go back to reading on the other side of the leather couch before he passed out from lack of oxygen. Blaine, however, merely poked him in the side again. "Why are you holding your breath?" His voice held confusion, his hazel eyes looking at Jesse as though he had all of the answers.

"I... don't... wanna... catch... the... gay." Jesse stuttered out. But he felt bad about his honesty when Blaine's face collapsed a little and his hazel eyes began to water. He finally heaved a deep breath and the boy stood up and stomped his foot, his arms crossing over his chest in a stubborn manner.

"You can't catch it you dummy!" His lower lip quivered.

"Well John Hickes said you could!" Jesse defended uselessly. He could feel his resolve loosen with each gathering tear in the other boy's eyes. He felt bad. And Jesse St. James wasn't used to feeling bad for anyone. "And I don't want to catch it so I can't hang out with you anymore!"

"I won't be it anymore!" Blaine said earnestly, his voice cracking and a few tears trailing down his cheek and into his cut. "I won't! I won't!"

And Jesse supposed it was okay then. Because if Blaine wasn't gay anymore than he didn't have to worry about catching the gay anymore and the two of them could go back to weekly Disney marathons and sing-a-longs that Jesse would be doing the singing for. The two of them could go back to being friends.

That was exactly what happened.

Blaine had entered middle school when Jesse entered high school. It wasn't as odd now that Jesse was best friends with someone three years younger than him, but it was still a little odd according to Giselle and John Hickes. But, anyway, high school brought Jesse's first girlfriend (Nicole Layne) and Vocal Adrenaline and Jesse becoming popular. Middle school brought more teasing and more bullying and even less friends for Blaine. But he didn't complain to Jesse about it passed the first month because he didn't want to tell Jesse why he was being picked on. He had promised the older boy that he wouldn't be gay anymore, and damn him if he wasn't going to at least pretend that he wasn't.

But Jesse had given him advice on how to fit in at the Middle School and Blaine followed his advice. He joined the school's show choir, and he joined the school's baseball and soccer teams, and he got good grades. He wasn't as popular as Jesse had been, and he was still being bullied, but he had put up a front that he wasn't gay. And it seemed as though it was working and he was being picked on simply because Blaine was Blaine.

Anyway, their weekly Disney marathons soon became monthly because Jesse had Vocal Adrenaline practices and Blaine had soccer practice. Their school schedules clashed and the two of them found it very hard to consider the other a good friend when they rarely saw one another.

Jesse was constantly telling Blaine stories about how wonderful Carmel High was and how much Blaine would love it there. And Blaine was good with piano and guitar so he should "definitely go for Jazz Band when he was here". And then the two of them could perform together, Jesse as the lead of Vocal Adrenaline and Blaine was the lead for the Jazz Band.

But Blaine didn't want that. Blaine loved playing piano and guitar and violin, but he, sincerely, wanted to sing. He wasn't bad, and he really thought he would be able to become second lead to Jesse's first when he was in Vocal Adrenaline. That was to say that Blaine hoped it would be so. If he ever got over his crippling stage fright to ever sing in front of someone like Jesse St. James, let alone compete with him for solos. It was obvious who would win them.

So Blaine decided to stick with Jazz Band like Jesse encouraged him to do.

Ninth grade was the worst for Blaine. The moment he stepped through the door he had a bottle of milk dropped over his head. From that day on Blaine was singled out, targeted, by John Hickes and his mini-me cronies. And it was pissing him off.

They only picked on him when he wasn't with Jesse, which wasn't a whole lot since the two friends spent a lot of time together. But whenever Jesse was in class or at Vocal Adrenaline practice, or hanging around with his girlfriend of the year Blaine would find himself with a bottle of milk dumped over his head, and his body being propelled towards the lockers. Sometimes he would be pushed into a desk in his classes. Sometimes he would be tripped in the hallway. But not with Jesse there. Never with Jesse there, because Jesse was the most popular boy in school and they could misjudge the distance between the two and accidentally send Jesse flying into the lockers instead of the "fag".

Blaine had enough of it by the time the first month of school rolled around. He had gone home, sat forlornly on the couch and stared at the blank television as tears brimmed over his eyes. His mother found him like that when she got home from work. She asked him what was wrong and Blaine had turned his face away from her and hidden it in the couch. He didn't want her to know.

"Come on sweetheart. Tell mommy what's wrong." Her voice had cooed to him as her hand had smoothed down his curls.

He had sniffled and shook his head, wiping at his eyes and willing the tears to go away. It worked until his father had walked into the room demanding that Blaine man up and stop acting like "such a little fag". It was somewhere around there that he had lost it. It had just come out. It had spilled out and he had spoke with so much hatred. So much self hatred. His father had looked at him as though he was positively furious and his mother had looked just plain shocked but the damage was done. His father's fist had met his cheek before Blaine could do anything more than stand from the couch. He was then sent to his room with no promise of dinner.

He found the pocket knife his father had given him as a gift in his jacket pocket and added the first scar that he had created onto the skin on his forearm.

Jesse had noticed the bruise the next day and he had questioned him about it. Blaine hadn't bothered to lie. He was too tired to do so. His parents had been up all night fighting and he had been wide awake until five in the morning. He only had half an hour of sleep to run off of. "I will kill him." Jesse had vowed in venom. A venom that surprised both of them because hadn't Blaine just revealed that he was gay? And shouldn't that be a problem?

But neither of them had much time to say anything because George Hickes, John's little brother, had decided that now would be a good time to shove Blaine into a row of lockers and throw a bottle of milk over his head. Jesse stared at him in shock, and Blaine did the same. Because no one attacked him when he was with Jesse. No one dared. His glasses clattered to the floor and broke as some person ran passed them to get to her next class.

"It'll get better." Jesse had assured him that night when Blaine slept over his house. "They'll grow up."

They didn't.

Blaine's first high school crush was on a boy named Nick Brently. He was Vocal Adrenaline's second male lead (second to Jesse's first) and he was tall and handsome and kind. He was also on the football and hockey teams. He was smart, and he was vindictive and Jesse hated his guts because he reminded him of himself. Nick was the definition of soul-less automaton. He was also a sophomore.

Blaine would wait for Jesse to give him a ride home after school and after his Vocal Adrenaline practices because Jesse didn't want him home alone with his father at all. And he figured Gregory Anderson wouldn't try anything if he was there as a witness. Nick had always left the dressing room after Jesse, and he had always stopped to talk to Blaine. About useless things. About what they were learning in English (because Blaine was in a sophomore English class) or about the football plays in the last college game. Jesse didn't bother to get to know what they talked about, he just kept an eye on the two of them because Nick seemed a little too interested in Blaine.

"You know he can sing?" Nick had asked Jesse one afternoon when Blaine was running particularly late. It didn't make sense to Jesse why Blaine was late, because he was pretty sure Nick had been talking to him at the end of practice but he figured that the younger boy had run off to his locker to pick up a book or something.

"He's mentioned it." And Blaine had. In passing. He had mentioned to Jesse about how he was thinking about auditioning for Vocal Adrenaline next year. And Jesse had promised him that as long as he had a voice that could even marginally compare to his that he was as good as golden. He found himself hoping that Blaine would replace annoyingly deviant Nick.

"He's very good."

Jesse nodded in agreement, jealousy and suspicion creeping up his spine because why would Blaine let Nick listen to him sing and not let Jesse? "Do you know where he is?" His voice might have been a bit accusing but he figured he was allowed to accuse. Blaine was now thirty minutes late. He was never later than five minutes.

Nick smiled at him. "In the closet." His heart dropped with his bag and he found himself pushing the younger, yet taller, boy against a row of lockers. His hand was fisted in Nick's shirt collar. The football player had the decency to look scared.

"Where." Cold. Calculated. Soul-less.

Nick hastily pointed down the hallway and Jesse had torn down it and opened the door that could only be opened from the outside to find his best friend bloody and bruised and terrified and bleeding way too much for it to be normal.

Blaine never returned to Carmel High and Nick graduated with honors a year the year after Jesse.

Dalton Academy for Boys had been suggested by Jesse's father. It was a good school. It was a very good school. And Blaine fit in there... well once Jesse took some liberties to cut his hair and get him contacts and smarten up his closet. He guessed it was a good thing, because Blaine had been smiling more than Jesse had ever seen him smile in Carmel and he had actually gotten over his stage fright and had joined Dalton's acapella group, the Warblers, and he was hitting it big there.

Jesse thought that he deserved it. The two of them were closer than they had ever been, and Jesse found himself begging Blaine to help when he actually began falling for one Miss Rachel Berry. Not that he ever really told Blaine her last name, only her first and that she was a phenomenal singer. He had showed up at Blaine's house in anguish when Vocal Adrenaline won Regionals, and, for once, he let himself not be the soul-less automaton he said he was. He had cried into Blaine's Dalton blazer (the boy had just gotten home from school) and he had apologized so many times that the other boy must have gotten tired of hearing it. "I'm going to apologize to her." He had said with determination later that night. "I'm going to go right up to her house and do one of those grand romantic gestures you always go on about and I'm going to tell her that I'm sorry and that she is more important than another national title and that I think I'm in love with her-"

"No." Blaine cut him off, turning around from his DVD case to face Jesse and send him a strong look of disapproval.

"What?" Jesse sat up in shock. "Why?"

"What you did was wrong Jess." He said simply, throwing Superman over at his long time friend. "You were cold and you were just plain mean. If you want me to honest I'm ashamed to even stay in the same room as you."

Jesse's head dropped and another moan passed through his lips. "I'm an ass."

"Yes you are." Blaine said simply before shrugging and jumping down on his bed next to the elder boy. "But you're not as much of one as you like to think you are."

"What?" He asked miserably, confused as he ever was. Sometimes gay guys were just as confusing as women.

"You feel bad Jesse. And that's something that a lot of asses don't. Now shut up and drown your sorrows in Clark Kent's amazing bod. Notice how I said Clark Kent and not Superman. Men-in-tights have no appeal." Jesse wrinkled his nose at his friend, wondering just when he had grown up so much to talk like that.

Blaine's first, and only, boyfriend was Kurt Hummel. When Jesse heard about that while he was in UCLA he had warned Blaine not to get involved with anyone from New Directions. "You're a little too late, Jess." Blaine had teased, his lips tugging up in a lovestruck smile.

"Seriously, B. They're not good." Jesse cautioned from his dormitory. The boy snorted at him, a curl falling over his forehead from it's gelled perch on the top of his head.

Blaine shrugged. "I don't see what your problem is. They're very nice. Nicer than Vocal Adrenaline anyway." Jesse had flushed in a small hint of shame.

"Just throw my name in a casual conversation and we'll see what happens."

And Blaine did just that. For some reason the fact that he didn't tell Kurt that his best friend was Jesse St. James caused a huge fight that lead to a series of threats sent Blaine's way from New Directions. To say that Jesse was shocked was beyond his comprehension. It was outrageous. That could be why Jesse found himself standing outside of the McKinley High School's auditorium waiting for their performance to finish and for Kurt Hummel to exit the room so that he could get some sort of stern talking to. And when the fashionista did everyone did. "Jesse?" Rachel was the first to notice him standing behind the doors. She was more beautiful than he remembered her being, but he teared his gaze away from her and let his eyes find one Kurt Hummel.

"I'm here to do my obligatory threat." Kurt raised a single eyebrow at him in question as the rest of New Directions stared. Finn Hudson took a step forward and looked as though he was trying to snarl. Really he looked like he was having trouble pushing something out but Jesse knew when to keep his mouth shut. "You hurt him like you already have and I will make sure you never make it out of this hick town. Got it?" He didn't wait for an answer, instead turning his back on the New Directions and strutting out of the school.

He guessed it was his job to defend Blaine. Especially since he had done such a terrible job of it when they were in Carmel. They had been best friends for as long as they could remember. Back when Jesse was just Jesse St. James and not even thinking about marrying Quinn Fabray and back with Blaine was just Blaine Anderson and not even had enough imagination to dream up someone like Kurt Hummel. Back when they had arguments about Backstreet Boys and 'Nsync. Back when they had sing-a-longs and Disney marathons. Back when there was Clark Kent and Cinderella.

Now they were brothers.