Chapter Text
The weekend was a blur of buying uniforms and textbooks and trying to prepare himself for the new school.
He’d asked his dad to give him a quick recap of the terms, at which point Finn had decided to interrupt with a witty comment that earned him a silent glare in response. It wasn’t that Kurt disliked Finn, more that he knew that Finn was better than him in every way. What parent wouldn’t choose the popular, straight, football player son over the lonely, gay son who hallucinates things? It was just logic that it would only be so long before his dad and Carol replaced him with Finn.
He was trying to stop thinking like that though, because his dad really wanted him to like them. He could pretend for his dad’s sake.
He also reluctantly started taking his new meds, little pills he had to swallow every day. The figures that had followed him around since that day in the choir room begged him not to do it, but the biggest and most important rules for the school were “take your medication” and “try to keep your head down”
The figures seemed to flicker now, fade almost. He thought that maybe they were working.
His first day at school was stressful. He didn’t know anyone and the lessons seemed to be a lot harder. He’d almost forgotten the buzz of the hallways and the panic that filled him as he tried to weave through the crowds of uniformed boys.
A few of the teachers gave him odd looks, though if they were due to his craziness or the fact he wasn’t smart or rich was a mystery. One or two gave him tests, which felt pretty cruel considering he had missed a lot of school over his few months off.
The first few were okay, but then he got into math and it all came crumbling down.
The paper was full of equations he didn’t understand. Just looking at it made his head hurt. He cast his gaze around the room, watching as everyone else scribbled on their paper or sat back with a smug look on their face that said they were done. As the numbers continued to fail to fit together in his head, he became suddenly aware of a feeling that something was wrong. He looked up to see the door open up as a voice began to spill out of it.
“Who are you trying to fool? You can’t make it here. You’re crazy. Everyone is going to know sooner or later. how could you seriously believe you aren’t screwed.”
He gripped his pencil. It wasn’t real. None of that was true. It was fine. The voice wasn’t real.
"Besides, even if you weren’t crazy, you’d still be nothing but a stupid, worthless, little fa-"
The bell interrupted the voice before it could say it, signalling the end of the lesson, the start of lunch, and the certainty that Kurt was not going to pass math.
He walked to lunch, trying to make his way to the cafeteria as unscathed as possible. He ate alone, sat at a table in the corner of the hall as all the other boys joked around with their friends. He didn’t have any of those yet, at least not ones that weren’t made up by his brain. As he ate, his least favorite of his 3 main hallucinstions sat next to him occasionally saying “smash” or “ew, no” or an occasional “eh, maybe if we were drunk” every time a boy walked past.
Afterwards he was left with some time to go to his next lesson, so he wandered the halls until he didn’t know where he was. Dalton was a bigger school than McKinley, with multiple floors and everything. Kurt wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to figure out how to get around. The hallways were mostly empty at least, which gave him at least a few moments of relative peace compared to the busyness of the classrooms and cafeteria he’d come from. Honestly he didn’t think he’d be able to make it back there if he tried.
He was enjoying the quiet as he walked until he heard the piano.
It was something he vaguely recognised, though he couldn’t quite place it yet. He followed the sound until he reached a room. The door was half open, so stopped in front of it and saw the most beautiful boy sat behind the piano. He had dark hair, gelled back away from his face, he looked like he would be just a bit smaller than Kurt, which was rare, and as he played he seemed to be focused on nothing other than the keys beneath his fingers. “Oh hell yeah” said a male voice in his periphery. He shook his head and ignored him as he watched, letting himself get absorbed in the music. It allowed him to tune everything out.
It stopped abruptly. “Sorry, this was supposed to be a private practice” kurt looked up to meet the boy’s eyes. He took a second to process the words, to enamoured by the guy before him to thing properly. “Oh, i’m so sorry, i didn’t realise”
The guy’s expression seemed to change a little as their gazes met. “No, don’t worry, it’s fine” his tone seemed to have changed somewhat, now so much less annoyed.
“Really? I didn’t mean to intrude, it’s just… well i think i’m lost and i heard the piano”
“Yeah, totally” the guy answered. “You’re new here right?”
Kurt nodded “first day”
“Well,it took me a while to figure out the many hallways, but if you need i can help you get to your next class? Lunch is ending any minute now”
He didn’t want to ever stop talking to this boy. It was weird, they’d only just met but he wanted nothing more than to follow this man around forever. “Yeah, that’d be great!” He said, digging his schedule out of his bag.
The guy started leading him through the corridors, and Kurt couldn’t help but smile. They stopped outside a door that was clearly his classroom.
“I’m Kurt, by the way” he said, before the guy could walk away.
“Blaine” the guy responded