Authors' note: Yes, there are two of us! We're not half-Asian ourselves, exactly, we're more mixed Persian and Indian but mostly Indian and it's kind of complicated (aka we're Parsi, if anyone knows what that is/wants to look it up). Also, while we don't have Blaine's experience of passing for white, we do have the experience of people not recognizing our ethnicity just by looking at us. (People frequently think I'm Hispanic and my sister is half-black...so...not really close at all, but points for effort! Or not. Either way.) Also, what happens with seven-year-old Blaine right at the beginning was something that I actually asked my mom once when I was little. In conclusion, we hope that we're doing justice to the experiences of people like Blaine. We had a blast writing this story! Enjoy the blangst. Sorry for the long-ass author's note. (Find me on tumblr! My username is rhymeswithlava over there, too.)

Warnings: Racist douchebaggery, blangst

Blaine remembers, when he was very young, trying to disavow his Filipino heritage.

"Mama," a seven-year-old Blaine asks one day, "do I look very Filipino?"

His mama hesitates, but eventually answers. "No, Blainey," she says. "No, you don't."
Blaine smiles brightly. "Oh, good!" he says, giving his mama a quick hug and skipping away to play with his toys.

It's not like Blaine doesn't like the only other Asian kid in his class — Jessica is really nice and always lets him borrow her cool Disney princess pens — but he doesn't want to stand out. He doesn't want to be the kid who comes to school with pork adobo for lunch when everyone else has sandwiches. He doesn't want to be the one whose friends ask him how he can understand his mama's English through her accent when she picks him up from school (he didn't even realize his mama had an accent, before). He can ask his mama to start giving him sandwiches for lunch, and he can start walking home from school by himself, but he can't change the way he looks. So if he doesn't look Filipino then that's just one more way he can be normal.

He has since come to appreciate the aspects of Filipino culture that he previously shunned — he embraces the summer trips back to the Philippines, the sinigang and adobo that his mom cooks instead of pasta and meatloaf like the other kids' parents. He's even trying to learn Tagalog (which is proving difficult - he still only knows the words for foods and basic commands like "hurry up" and "shut the door"). He has realized that he doesn't want to be normal (for one thing, realizing that he's gay kind of shot that horse in the face), he wants to be Blaine. And Blaine, among other things, is a hapa. He's half-Filipino and proud of it.

Unfortunately, his newfound Pinoy pride has no bearing on his appearance. As Blaine grows older, he doesn't look any more Filipino than he did when he was in first grade. And there's nothing he can do to change it.

On Kurt's first Saturday at Dalton, Blaine takes him out to lunch at a nearby Filipino restaurant. Blaine smiles fondly as he points out the various dishes on the buffet table, naming and describing each of them for Kurt as they serve themselves.

"Wow, you really know your Filipino food," Kurt laughs.

"Yeah, my mom makes it all the time," Blaine explains, gesturing vaguely to the bistek in front of them.

"Wait, really?" Kurt looks confused, and cocks his head.

Blaine sighs inwardly. Of course he doesn't know I'm Filipino, he notes somewhat bitterly. How could he? It's times like this that he really hates how he looks. He doesn't resent other people for not recognizing that he's Asian; it's not like it's their fault that he inherited most of his looks from his very white father. But his ethnic identity has always been such an important part of who he is (as much as his seven-year-old self tried to deny it), and he cannot stand having to explain that to others because he doesn't "look Asian enough."

"Um, yeah...my mom's Filipino," he replies, trying to keep his tone casual. He's pretty sure he fails epically, but Kurt doesn't seem to notice, merely replying with a slightly surprised "oh" and a nod of comprehension. He doesn't question Blaine's statement ("Wow, are you sure? You don't look Asian, like, at all."), for which Blaine is eternally grateful (because yes, he is "sure" he's Filipino, and he thinks he knows his own ethnic background better than someone who's just met him, thank you very much). Blaine quickly steers the conversation into safer territory, bringing up Wes' recent refusal to let the Warblers help Nick serenade his biology teacher. ("The Warblers haven't serenaded a teacher since the Great Flamethrower Debacle of 1945!") The conversation shifts back into a steady rhythm and he pushes the discomfort into the back of his mind.

Shortly after Christmas, Blaine is sprawled across his bed in his official Dalton-issued sweatpants as he quietly listens to his brother's voice talking animatedly over the phone.

"...And I know I nailed my Green Lantern audition, but I didn't get it. The director just wanted to 'go another way,' you know? It's like, you're either too tall, too short, too fat, too ethnic..."

Blaine is silent. He's exhausted, and it's been a long week. He understands that Cooper's mom just got remarried and of course his brother would want to spend some time with her and her new husband, but being home all break without Cooper as a buffer between Blaine and their father is always an uncomfortable experience. With Blaine's mother working extra hours at the hospital this month, tensions are running even higher than usual. This particular holiday season has been filled with the usual awkward Anderson family dinners and unspoken criticisms of his "choices," but it's hitting him harder than expected tonight. ("You know, that Sophia down the street seems very nice, maybe you should spend some time with her, take her out for a movie." "I'm just making a suggestion, Blaine." "You've never even tried dating a girl, you might enjoy it, after all.")

Cooper, as usual, completely misinterprets Blaine's silence and makes a valiant (but ultimately futile) attempt to rectify the situation. "Oh, hey, don't worry, Squirt, no director's gonna think you're too ethnic. You look totally white! You —"

Oh, god, why is he bringing this up now? Blaine's emotional state has been fragile all night without having to think about his apparent whiteness. "Um, Coop," he interrupts quickly, before Cooper can (unintentionally, of course) make him feel any worse, "um, I'm just...really tired right now, can I, um...can I talk to you later?" His voice trembles on the last few words — he's really fucking exhausted, and being reminded of his very not Pinoy-looking appearance on top of all his problems with his dad is sending him to the verge of tears. He barely hears Cooper's cheerful reply before he ends the call, dropping his phone onto the floor and burying his head into his pillow.

Of course he doesn't get it, Blaine thinks, frustrated to no end. Cooper's white. Blaine, on the other hand, is most decidedly not white, but he "passes," and he hates that word because it makes it seem like passing is something he's supposed to want (after all, opposite of "pass" is "fail," isn't it?) but he doesn't wanthis entire ethnic identity erased by people who see white and nothing else. Sure, he can tell his friends that he's a hapa and he can check "Asian" on the box when he takes standardized tests, but he can't tell every random stranger who sees him on the street that he's Pinoy and proud of it.

And he knows, in a small, bitter corner of his mind, that he's definitely benefiting from the fact that he passes because he's seen the statistics and he's read the articles and he lives in a town where 93% of the population is white and he knows that people who don't look like everyone else aren't always treated fairly. He's seen it, with Wes and David, especially, whenever they go anywhere outside their safe Dalton bubble. He knows there's discrimination and he hates it, and it's not fair because he passes (as white, as straight, as normal), so he doesn't have to deal with it. And it's not like he wants people to treat him differently because of his race, but he's getting really sick of having the fucking privilege of passing as someone who he isn't.

It's a week after Regionals and Blaine walks out of history class, searching the crowded hallway for his boyfriend (and damn, it feels good to say it; he has a boyfriend now). Unfortunately, in the sea of identical blazers and sweater-vests, it takes him a few more minutes to locate Kurt than he'd like. When he does, he immediately collapses into Kurt's waiting arms.

"What's wrong, honey?" Kurt asks, pulling him into a secluded corner and wrapping him up in a comforting hug. (Wow, Blaine really loves Kurt's hugs.)

He sighs and rests his forehead on Kurt's shoulder. "Just, we were in history and Steve was talking to Andy about this girl he met from Crawford," he explains, keeping his head right where it is, "and he was saying how she was a good, um, fuck, but how he would never date her 'cause she's Asian and something stupid about cultural differences and, and —" Blaine lifts his head from Kurt's shoulder, years of built-up indignation rising to the surface. "AND I DON'T EAT DOGS, KURT!" he yells vehemently.

Kurt is looking understandably confused, but Blaine doesn't want to stop. "I mean, dogs are adorable, Kurt. Why would I want to eat dogs, huh?" he asks. "Or baby sheep. You don't see me eating lamb, now, do you? Because I've seen baby sheep, Kurt. They're tiny and cute and I have absolutely no interest in eating them and I don't know why people would think that I would because I don't, okay?" At this point he doesn't really remember what his point is, exactly, but he hopes Kurt will understand the general idea.

"Blaine," Kurt interrupts him gently. "Honey, are you upset because of what Steve said about not dating anyone who's not white? Because it doesn't matter to me, I promise."

Blaine offers him a tiny smile. "Yeah?"

"Absolutely," Kurt promises. "Besides," he adds with a wry smile, "I like having an exotic boyfriend."

Blaine drops his head back onto Kurt's shoulder.

Exotic, he thinks, as Kurt continues to hug him, unaware of Blaine's renewed duress. Why do I have to be exotic? He really dislikes that word — it makes him feel like he's being objectified, compared to some sort of weird, rare fruit that causes weight loss. Couldn't he just say that Blaine is handsome or something and leave his "exotic-ness" out of it?(And for god's sake, he was born in Columbus, not the "strange, untamed wildernesses" of Manila.) Oh, god, he suddenly thinks, I hope Kurt doesn't have one of those creepy Asian fetishes we saw on Tyra.

He remembers when Kurt called his mother "exotic-looking" after meeting her for the first time at Sectionals, but then recalls that Kurt said Blaine looked nothing like his mother, so he doesn't know why Kurt would call him exotic except that maybe since Blaine is a hapa who looks white (dammit, why does he have to look so white), he's just "exotic" enough for Kurt to want to date him. It doesn't make much sense, but Blaine doesn't particularly care right now. He just hugs his boyfriend tighter, keeping his head down in the hope that maybe he'll look up and find out that he made this whole conversation up in his head.

When Blaine decides to transfer to McKinley he feels a healthy combination of elation and sheer terror. On one hand, he gets to spend his days with Kurt again. On the other hand, it's a long drive from Westerville. Not to mention he's back in a public school that is, as far as he can tell, only slightly less homophobic than the last one he was at (no, he hasn't forgotten Sadie Hawkins: the pain, the humiliation, the screaming). But he's thought about it endlessly this summer, and he's finally come to the conclusion that he wants to be where Kurt is no matter what.

On his first day as a McKinley student, Blaine stands in front of his dresser and tries to figure out what to wear. Over the past few weeks, unbeknownst to Kurt, Blaine has been doing some serious online shopping in preparation for his transfer to McKinley. He needed new clothes anyway if he wasn't going to be wearing his uniform five days a week, so it wasn't difficult to convince his parents to give him a little extra allowance this month. Instead of his usual "private school prep boy" style, Blaine has decided to try a different look after a comment from Kurt earlier this summer.

They're sitting on Blaine's couch looking at an old Anderson family photo album. It's not Blaine's first choice of activity, but after the last time he was at the Hummels' when Burt had sat them down and shown him a few of Kurt's more embarrassing baby photos, Kurt insists that it's only fair that he see a baby Blaine.

Kurt laughs at the photos of little Blaine in his soccer uniform, surrounded by teammates who are all at least half a head taller than him. "Never quite hit that growth spurt, did you, short stuff?"

"Hey!" Blaine pouts. "I'll have you know that I scored the most goals out of anyone on our team that year."

"Because you were so short that they didn't notice when you ran past them?"

"I resent that comment."

Kurt kisses him lightly on the top of his head and turns the page. What greets him is a particularly spectacular picture of an eight-year-old Blaine proudly standing in front of his shiny new bicycle, sporting rainbow sunglasses, a neon green bow tie on top of a black collared shirt, and bright purple pants. "Oh my god, Blaine!"

"What?"

"You look so gay!" Kurt exclaims, laughing.

"I know, right?" Blaine grins fondly at his miniature self.

"I've only ever seen you look this gay for Pride!" Kurt says.

"Mmm. Less glitter, though. And more shirt."

Later that day, they go out for coffee. The barista seriously side-eyes Kurt when he orders his grande non-fat mocha, but smiles and flirts with Blaine, who awkwardly smiles at her before Kurt possessively grabs his hand and pulls him away.

It wasn't the first time someone had mistaken Blaine for straight; similar situations have happened more times than he can count. He's not about to start wearing the horribly clashing neon colors that he wore in his youth, but he thinks maybe he can use that style as an inspiration for his new look. And if that look happens to be a little more gay than what he usually goes for, then that's cool, because he knows how hard it is for his boyfriend to feel the glares directed solely at him every time they go out in public. He's pretty sure that Kurt being forced to watch girls constantly hit on Blaine can't be too much fun either.

He examines all his new clothes, neatly folded and placed on top of his old ones. Following some deliberation, Blaine pulls out a striped bow tie and some bright red pants. After that, putting the rest of the outfit together is simple.

As Blaine gels his hair in front of the mirror, he reflects on just how easy it was to make himself look more visibly gay. All it took was a few new clothes and now he looks as queer as a three dollar bill, if he does say so himself.

He wrinkles his nose, anticipating how pale he's going to get now that the summer is over (well, okay, maybe not Kurt pale, but certainly paler than the majority of his family on his mother's side). If only he could just put on some kind of bow tie that symbolized his race. But no, unlike the ease with which he can now represent his sexuality, there is no such quick wardrobe fix for his race. People will always assumethat there's no possible way someone who looks like Blaine could be anything other than pure white. Short of introducing himself by saying, "Hi, my name is Blaine Anderson and I'm half-Filipino," he can't think of any way to get his ethnicity across. And even when he does that (and yes, he has, very occasionally, introduced himself as "Blaine Anderson, half-Filipino") people don't seem to believe him, as if they know so much more about himself than he does.

As he shakes himself out of his internal rant, he realizes that he's overgelled his hair, but he's running late, so he doesn't have time to fix it. Not wanting to spend the entire car ride frustrated and pissed off at his melanin, he reminds himself to think of Kurt. He's going to school with Kurt. His boyfriend will make everything better, he tells himself as he drives.

Also, he really likes his bow tie.

One day in September, Blaine arrives to the choir room early with Kurt. They sit next to Tina and Mike, the only other people here so far — the other couple is talking about a club meeting that they're planning to have next week.

"Ooh, for what club?" Blaine asks, curious.

"Asian Club," Tina explains. "We meet once every two weeks, mostly just to eat Asian food and have the school pay for it, but it's fun."

Well, Blaine loves food, so he's sold. "That sounds great! Can I join?"

Mike and Tina look confused. Fantastic.

Mike recovers first, perking up and offering a welcoming smile. "Sure, why not? It's not like you need to be Asian to eat Asian food!"

Blaine quickly glances at Kurt, who is engrossed in his phone (texting Mercedes, he thinks). He looks back over at the others.

"Um... I'm actually half-Filipino," he offers, with an awkward, tight-lipped smile. Wow, he really hates this part.

"Really?" Mike says, amazed. "Wow, that's so cool, you don't look Asian at all!"

Blaine doesn't really think it's that "cool" to constantly have his ethnicity overlooked, but he stays silent.

Tina, unlike Mike, seems a little embarrassed. She looks like she's about to apologize, so Blaine quickly intercepts.

"It's okay," he reassures her. "It happens all the time, really."

She nods understandingly (understandingly?), but before either one can say anything, Mercedes and Sugar walk in. Kurt immediately puts away his phone so he can discuss his weekend shopping plans with Mercedes and Sugar starts explaining loudly to everyone in the room how she's been trying to convince her rich father to buy out NASA for some bizarre reason that Blaine doesn't really care to understand. The rest of the New Directions show up in the next couple of minutes and they proceed with glee practice as usual.

The next day in history class, Blaine and Tina are working on their latest in-class project, a timeline of British-American relations before and after the Revolutionary War. At this point, they're just assembling the poster, so they're free to chat while they work.

As they cut out red, white, and blue stars to glue on their timeline, Tina suddenly says, "I'm sorry I didn't know you were Asian."

Blaine smiles distractedly at her as he tries to cut out a tiny star that won't look too lopsided. "It's okay, really. Most people have no idea," he says only a little bitterly, accidentally slicing his white star in half.

"No, but...I shouldn't have assumed," she explains. "I'm mixed, too; my mom's Jewish."

"I figured it was something like that," he says, discarding his mutilated star. "I don't know many Asians with the last name Cohen."

She looks a bit frustrated. "You'd think, but people don't realize. They just assume that because I look Asian, I can't be anything else." She sighs. "Sometimes I even think Mike forgets," she mutters.

Blaine nods thoughtfully. He definitely knows what she means. "I don't really think Kurt understands, either," he admits. "It always seems like he forgets about it until I mention something about the Philippines and then it's like he doesn't know how to react so he just, like, ignores it or changes the subject or just nods and smiles until I stop talking." He knows he's not being particularly articulate, but he hasn't ever been able to talk about this to anyone, let alone somebody who would actually understand what he's going through.

"Mike always orders sweet and sour pork when we go out to Chinese restaurants and he's always surprised when I don't want to eat any. And I'm not even Chinese!" Tina gestures wildly with her scissors and Blaine leans back in his chair. "My dad was born in Korea! Why don't we ever go to Korean restaurants? Not all Asians are the same!"

"Shhhhhh!" Their teacher viciously shushes them from across the room. Blaine feels Ms. Kellerman's beady eyes on them for the next two minutes as they hastily return to cutting their stars, even though they've amassed far more than necessary for their poster already.

Once she's turned her eyes to her next victim, Blaine whispers excitedly to Tina (while still keeping his head down — you can never be too careful), "We should go get Korean food sometime! And then one day I can take you to this great Filipino place near my house."

"That sounds great!" Tina replies, quiet but enthusiastic. "Where do you live?"

"Uh, Westerville, actually," Blaine admits, carefully gluing a star onto their poster. "It's kind of far, we might have to go on a weekend."

"Ooh, Westerville's right near Columbus, isn't it?" Tina says happily. "We can make a day out of it, maybe go shopping."

Blaine, thrilled about the prospect of shopping and eating Filipino food on his side of Ohio, eagerly claps his hands, earning him another glare from the angry Ms. Kellerman. Ducking his head, he quickly picks up his scissors yet again. Tina grabs his wrist.

"I think we have enough stars," she says.

Blaine looks down to find a huge pile of misshapen geometric shapes in front of him that might resemble stars if he squints hard enough. He begins sorting them into "usable" and "unsalvageable" piles while Tina lays her perfectly cut stars onto their (rather fabulous) timeline.

Shopping bags in tow, Blaine and Tina make their way to his car and drive out of Columbus to the same Filipino place that he had taken Kurt to almost a year earlier. To Blaine's delight, Tina tries a little bit of everything (minus the pork dishes, of course). She even takes a bit of the ginisang ampalaya, which he has assured her tastes absolutely foul. (The only member of his family who eats the bitter fruit is his grandmother, who only does so for its anti-diabetic effects.)

"So, Blaine," she says in between bites, "do you really drive this far to get to school every day?"

Blaine nods with his mouth full.

She frowns slightly. "We're like an hour and a half away, it must be really annoying."

He shrugs and delicately swallows his adobo. "It's not so bad," he says. "I have all my textbooks on tape, so I usually listen to the APUSH chapters while I'm driving."

"But why bother?" she asks, curious. "Why uproot your whole life for one person? That doesn't seem very healthy."

"Kurt is the love of my life," Blaine says honestly. "I would do anything for him." He knows that's a really cheesy answer, but it's true.

Tina looks at him a bit skeptically. "The 'doesn't seem very healthy' comment still stands," she says dryly.

"Well this halo-halo isn't very healthy, but it's delicious!" Blaine retorts, gesturing to his dessert.

Tina stares at him incredulously, and then starts laughing uncontrollably. "So — Kurt is — delicious?" she asks through her laughter, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.

Blaine almost chokes on his food, but recovers with the grace of an Anderson (if he does say so himself) and replies with an eyebrow raise of his own. "So delicious," he tries to say smoothly, before bursting into laughter himself. "No, but," he tries again, "would you do the same for Mike?"

Tina looks thoughtful. "I guess I would," she says, looking off into the distance. She looks back at him. "Well, we're teenagers," she proclaims. "I guess now is probably the best time to make possibly unhealthy decisions about our boyfriends, right?"

He grins. "We understand each other perfectly," he agrees.

"We really do," Tina says, returning the smile. "I wish Mike would understand some of this hapa stuff," she adds, sighing.

Blaine's smile fades. "Yeah, same," he mutters, viciously stabbing at his lumpia. "I mean, okay, I know it's not his fault," he tries to explain, "because honestly, Kurt is whiter than Wonder Bread and I don't think Lima's schools are really known for advocating diversity."

Tina offers him a sympathetic smile. "Yeah, Mike just really pushes the Asian on us. It's like, we're both Asian, so now we have to do everything Asian. Which is fine because I'm definitely proud of my Korean background and all, but...it would be nice to acknowledge my other side every once in awhile, you know? I mean, I know way more Hebrew than Korean."

"We should probably talk to them about this kind of stuff," Blaine admits. "You know, make them understand what we're feeling."

"Probably," Tina concedes. "Meanwhile, we should do this more often."

"Hang out in my hometown on weekends?" he asks. "Because yes, my car's gasoline budget strongly agrees with you."

"Have lunch and chat together," she corrects him.

"Well, I guess that sounds good, too," Blaine says, beaming.

"Ooh, we should start a hapa club!" she exclaims suddenly.

"Can we get the school to fund our takeout orders from various ethnic restaurants?"

"Absolutely."

It's a deal.

From then on, the Hapa Club meets every second Tuesday of the month during lunchtime. Sometimes they discuss white privilege, colorism, and passing; other times they talk about Rachel being a jerk and speculate on Brad the piano man's love life. Once Blaine tells the story about how, when he was a small 5-year-old boy visiting the Philippines, he tried to tape the sides of his eyes so they looked more like his cousins' (Tina can't stop laughing and Blaine has to remind her more than once that he was five).

He talks to Kurt about his ethnic identity issues eventually. Kurt mostly doesn't get it, but he's somewhat able to understand, after Blaine compares it to passing for straight, why his boyfriend isn't necessarily thrilled about the fact that most people think he's totally white. Blaine is pretty sure that Kurt is missing the point when he finds out that shortly after their discussion his boyfriend had slipped bronzer in his moisturizer, but he appreciates the effort nonetheless. (At some point he should probably tell Kurt that there's a whole lot more to race than just skin color, but he doesn't want to spring too much information on him at once.)

Even after finding out that there's someone else who understands his various identity crises, things aren't all sunshine and rainbows for Blaine. Apparently at some point while Blaine was out of school for his eye injury, Mr. Shuester had come to the realization that he wasn't "culturally aware" enough to be sensitive to his students' needs. (Blaine vaguely remembers hearing some such story involving a hot substitute Spanish teacher, but he was really hopped up on painkillers when Kurt explained the situation to him, so the memory's more than a bit hazy.) After Blaine recovers and returns to McKinley, Mr. Shue wants to have some sort of "Diversity Week" in glee, so he takes it upon himself to invite Mike and Tina to the front of the room to speak about "their culture" (yes, singular). He appreciates Tina immediately launching into a discussion about how incredibly rewarding it felt to study Hebrew while she was preparing for her bat mitzvah. He does not appreciate Mr. Shue telling him to "let the ethnic peopletalk" when he raises his hand to speak about his own experiences with Filipino culture.

About a week after the colossal fail that was "Diversity Week," Tina pulls Blaine aside after glee, handing him a small, lumpy package that she just extricated from her bag. He takes it, confused.

"Open it," she urges.

He does. "A t-shirt?" he asks. (Why is she giving him a t-shirt?) Then he unfolds it. His eyes light up. "It's...hapa! Kurt," he spins around to face his waiting boyfriend, "look, it says 'hapa' on it!" He points (needlessly) at the word printed boldly on the gray shirt. "Hapa!"

Kurt and Tina both grin (probably because Blaine's acting like an idiot right now, but he doesn't care, because hapa). Kurt then feels the fabric between his fingers with a look of mock-disdain. He shakes his head solemnly (though he's unable to hide his amused smile). "Polyester blend, Blaine. Polyester blend."

"I've got one, too," Tina says, after giving Kurt a playful smack on the shoulder. "Tomorrow we should wear them together!"

Blaine grins widely. "That sounds fantastic," he says.

The next day, they both wear their shirts proudly as they walk through the halls of McKinley. Even though no one else understands (or cares, for that matter) what's on their shirts, it makes them both feel just a little bit better to have their identities finally on display.