Title: Just Listen (1/?)
Author: foreternityblue
Pairing: Blaine/Kurt
Rating: PG-13
Chapter Word Count: 2, 541
Summary: Blaine Anderson was McKinley High School's social enigma from the moment he stepped through into the hallways his freshman year. Everyone loved and adored him and he was energetic and loud-until an incident in the middle of sophomore year that absolutely no one could figure out. Kurt Hummel was the bullied gay kid who always had a secret interest in the mystery that was Blaine Anderson. When they get partnered for a long project, maybe, just maybe, Kurt will be able to solve the mystery of what happened to Blaine personally in their sophomore year. Klaine AU
Author's Note: No, I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing so much right now, especially since I just posted a long oneshot yesterday. This particular idea kind of attacked me today when I was sitting in class daydreaming, and I wrote out an entire outline for it within one class period, so I decided I may as well start to write it. No use in wasting a kind of good story idea, right? I'll be writing for the "Perfect" verse as I work on this story, though.

There was always that certain social enigma that was so out of reach from everyone else in school, yet at the same time so in reach. There was always that person who could float from group to group, being welcomed anywhere and everywhere simply because that was who that person was. There was always that person that, somehow, everyone loved and nobody, not even the most hateful people, could find anything that made them dislikeable to the point of hatred. That person always existed in schools.

McKinley High School was no exception.

Or, well, it used to be, anyways.

Blaine Anderson was McKinley High's enigma from the moment he stepped through the doors on his first day in freshman year. Even all of the seniors loved him at that point in time, and, normally, seniors hated all freshmen.

Blaine seemed to be everywhere, though. He was on the soccer team, the debate team, he was in orchestra, part of the science club—he was kind of crazy, actually. At the same time, he somehow always had so much energy. He was always smiling and being polite and saying hi to everyone as if every single student was a really good friend from his childhood or something.

Maybe, to him, everyone was.

Girls adored him; guys envied and liked him as a friend. Blaine Anderson didn't really date anyone, though. Quinn Fabray dated him for a little while, but they broke it off. All the Cheerios and Quinn herself said she ended it, everyone else knew that Blaine did (she went off to date Finn Hudson anyways). Some people said that Blaine slept with girls, never dated them. Others said that he liked to keep his relationships secret, no matter whom he was dating.

Blaine's closest guy friend was apparently Wesley Kim (he went to another school, though), his closest girl friend was, amazingly enough, Santana Lopez, even though they never really publicly spoke to each other. Everyone knew that they were close, though, even without proof.

Suddenly, though, for some unknown reason, in the middle of sophomore year, Blaine missed a week of school and when he came back, he came back silent. Isolated. He didn't speak to anyone and constantly had music playing in his ear. Nobody knew what happened. There were rumors, of course, but no one would ever prove them to be correct. Or, for that matter, incorrect.

And, so, the small town high school in Lima, Ohio, lost its social enigma. It never got one back. Plenty of people tried to take Blaine Anderson's place, but no one did, or could, of course.

People lost interest in the previous mystery that was Blaine Anderson, since people always wondered how the kid could be so happy all the time and have so many friends yet get amazing grades no matter what. Actually, not everyone lost interest. Just the main popular people at first, like the football players and the Cheerios (cheerleaders) and quite a few other groups of multiple people, for example.

The high school's glee club, the New Directions, didn't exactly lose interest in Blaine immediately. They tried to pull Blaine towards them, they tried to be his friends, but he resisted silently and ignored any offers they gave him politely in a way that no one understood. Blaine Anderson had been an amazing singer. He was never an official member of the New Directions, but he had stopped by often and jammed with them from time to time.

By the end of sophomore year, most of them lost interest in trying to pull the Eurasian towards them, as well, though that was mostly due to Santana telling all of them to just back off of him.

Most of them. Kurt Elizabeth Hummel (no one was sure if the middle name was serious or if it was just self-given anymore), on the other hand, never quite lost sight of the quiet, music-obsessed teenager. He had always been interested in Blaine, merely because how he managed to be a looser while being a popular kid never made sense. No even his stepbrother, Finn Hudson, could manage to do that (he tried to be that kid after Blaine faded out and failed miserably). Plus, no one could deny it; Blaine Anderson was one of, if not the, cutest guy in school. That gave Kurt plenty of reasons to watch him.

He just did it quietly, secretly, and from afar. He was really only as secretive about it as he was in order to avoid the wrath of Santana, though, because no one wants to get on her bad side.

However, it wasn't like Kurt was a stalker about it. If he saw Blaine in the hall, he'd watch him from a distance and when he'd get out of view, Kurt would move on to whatever he was doing. He didn't know anything personal about Blaine, just his first and last name. Nothing else made itself known.

Kurt was okay with that.

Yes, one could say that Kurt wasn't exactly up to date with Blaine Anderson gossip. Honestly, he kind of ignored it when everyone was talking about it and by the time he was really truly interested in it, during junior year, nobody was talking about it. He took it into his own hands to find out as much as possible from as few people as possible.

"Mercedes," Kurt asked his best friend as he opened his locker, transferring the books in the crook of his arm into the metal box, which honestly was what a locker was, "what do you know about Blaine?"

The plus-sized, but still absolutely gorgeous, girl looked over at the taller pale teenager, an eyebrow raised, "Why, boo?" she asked, using the pet name that she gave just about everybody, "Taking an interest in the quiet kid?" there was a teasing tone in her voice, and Kurt could tell without looking that she was smiling a little bit.

Kurt shrugged, glancing down the hall and stopping his movements when he saw Blaine walk across the hall adjacent to the one that he was in, watching the dark-haired teenager walk by with his ear buds in his ear, as per usual, "He's in my English class," Kurt finally said honestly, if not a little breathlessly, not looking away from the other hall until Blaine was completely out of sight and down the hall, "I just don't know much about him, so I was wondering."

"Nobody really knows much about him," Mercedes responded, glancing at him just as he went back to shifting his French stuff for his English stuff, coincidentally, "even when he was Mr. Popular, nobody knew too much about him. I'm pretty sure that the last rumor that was spread about him was that he's gay," Kurt raised an eyebrow at this. No one could get that rumor spread about them and not get bullied for it. Except for Blaine, apparently. How he did it, Kurt did not know, "Not a single person knew what went down with him, not even Santana."

"What does Santana have to do with Blaine? Apart from being his best friend, that is," Kurt asked, grabbing his English book and grabbing his locker door, staring over at Mercedes before he bothered to close it. Sure, best friends told each other everything but it didn't really seem like Santana and Blaine hung out that much.

The African American girl looked up at him, obviously confused, "You didn't know that Santana dated Blaine last year a while before and after the incident?" Kurt shook his head slowly because that made no sense. Santana was always extremely out there with whom she dated— "They kind of kept it on the down low the entire time," … well, that explained why Santana seemingly wasn't "dating" anyone for a few months last year, "but they had a thing for a while. Apparently they were closer than everyone thought they were, before they dated. Anyways, not even Santana knows much about what happened, and if she does she isn't going to say anything about it any time soon, if ever," Mercedes finished, shrugging and grabbing the last book she needed before shutting the locker.

Kurt blinked, a little shocked, closing his locker slowly, "How did I miss that?" he asked rhetorically, and Mercedes shrugged in response. Kurt sighed, shaking his head a little bit, "Well, I guess I'll see you later, 'Cedes," he said with a small smile, before walking past his best friend and down the hall, hearing her say her goodbye before walking the opposite direction.

Blaine and Santana dated. Kurt supposed that could be true… Blaine was, after all, apparently secretive about relationships. It just didn't sound like something Santana herself would do, keeping a relationship with the most popular boy in school a secret. Then again, Santana wasn't exactly everything she made herself seem to be…

Kurt sighed a little bit, trying to clear his head so he could get to English on time without any run-ins with stupid Neanderthals—

Halfway to his English classroom, Kurt was suddenly shoved to the side by a very solid body, and he collided roughly with the wall, dropping his books abruptly and sliding down to the floor with a small groan because, damn it, his shoulder had just healed from the last bruise that he got. He looked up angrily and saw a football player whose name he couldn't quite remember at that moment, "What is your problem?" he demanded angrily.

The football player laughed cruelly, grinning meanly down at the short (compared to him) brunet, "No fags allowed in my hallway, Lady!" he spat before turning around and continuing down the hallway, laughing to himself and receiving a few pats on the back from fellow brick heads that were lining the hall.

Kurt sighed and reached out for his books, gathering the ones closest to him. He was about to grab the one furthest from where he sat until someone else was grabbing it, and he looked up again, ready to tell off another jerk who was probably going to throw the book into the trash can that was next to the bathrooms or something—

He stopped when he found Blaine Anderson in front of him, holding his book and staring at him with horribly beautiful hazel eyes that Kurt had never seen this up close and personal because even when Blaine would stop by the choir room last year Kurt kept his cautious distance, the hand holding said book outstretched and a neutral expression on his face.

Kurt took the book, still a little shell-shocked, "Thanks…" he breathed quietly, forgetting for a moment that Blaine couldn't hear him.

Well, actually, it seemed like Blaine could hear him or was at least reading his lips effortlessly, since he nodded mutely before turning and heading back down the hall, most likely continuing to their shared English classroom.

Kurt sat there for a few more moments before standing up since class was seriously about to start, starting to jog down the hall despite wearing boots that really weren't made for rushing. He blamed the stupid football player who pushed him.

Kurt made it into his classroom just as the bell rang, and sat down at his desk quickly as the teacher, Mrs. Coleman, started to take role.

He looked at the board to see that they were doing today, and tried not to groan too loudly when he saw, in big, curving letters on the board:

Projects to be handed out and assigned today

Of course. The big project for juniors who decided to take AP English. It was a several month long project that had to be done with a partner that the teacher assigned. Honestly, it wasn't the work that Kurt was dreading, like most people, it was who he was going to be partnered with. He was always annoyingly unlucky when it came to predetermined partners that no one had any say in the deciding of.

Oh well. What happened, happened, Kurt supposed.

Kurt glanced around the room and found Blaine sitting on basically the clear other side of the room, ear buds still in, staring off into space. For some reason, he never got in trouble for listening to his music during class and he always had nearly flawless notes, in rather straight, perfect handwriting, whenever Kurt would pass him to get to the pencil sharpener. Apparently, Blaine was freakishly good at reading lips.

As Mrs. Coleman was starting class, Kurt gazed subconsciously over at Blaine, leaning his cheek against his hand, trying to figure out that the dark haired teenager was thinking at the moment. He was such a mystery and it was just odd, seeing Blaine staring directly at the teacher rather than staring off into space blankly. His defined jaw was tensed slightly and the look in his hazel eyes was so concentrated. Blaine was still an amazing student, evidently. Everyone expected him to be their class' valedictorian… at the same time, no one expected him to give a speech.

That was another odd thing about Blaine Anderson. No one, apparently, had heard him say a single word since last year… and, now that Kurt thought about it, when he was actually listening to the buzz about Blaine, Santana had never been one of those people saying she hadn't heard anything from him. If anything, she had been quiet throughout the whole thing and always changed the subject to something else… and she was one of the biggest gossips in school.

Well that was definitely odd.

Kurt's attention was drawn away from the quiet student and to his teacher when she called his name, obviously about to tell him is assigned partner. He held his breath as she scanned the list quickly, because he just knew that he was going to get paired with a football player because every teacher wanted all of their students to pass and Kurt was always the one to do most (if not all) of the work no matter who he was partners with—

"Kurt, you'll be working with Blaine Anderson for this project," she announced, interrupting his worried thought process, smiling over at him a little bit as if she knew that he was freaking out about his partner.

Well, that was unexpected.

Not unwelcome, though.

Kurt looked over at his partner for the project and found Blaine leaned over his desk, scribbling into a notebook, a very slight frown on his face and—was that a somewhat hopeful look in his eyes?

Kurt's eyebrow arched upwards at this as he leaned forwards onto his desk slightly, tilting his head to the side just as Blaine looked away from the notebook and looked at Kurt. They locked eyes for a few moments, before Blaine gave a slight, pretty random, nod and ended up looking back off into space. Kurt continued to stare at him for a little while longer before sighing a little and staring off into space himself, tapping his fingers against the desk.

One thing was definite to Kurt.

This was going to be an interesting, quite possibly long several months.

Though, maybe, just maybe, he'll learn more about the strange Blaine Anderson.