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“Why so glum, chum?”
Kurt looked up at the faux British accent and did his very best to smile. The stretch of his lips felt more like a grimace than anything else, and he quickly dropped his eyes back to the ground.
“Oh, gosh, are you okay, Kurt?” Trent’s voice was softer and sweeter as he hesitantly sat beside Kurt. The bench was garish and uncomfortable, but it was a few feet away from where the Warblers were consoling Blaine in the mall’s Starbucks.
That was good enough for him.
He hadn’t expected anyone to come find him, and Kurt watched Trent from the corner of his eye as he kept his head down. His eyes were stinging embarrassingly, and he didn’t want the taller boy to see them.
“I’m fine,” he murmured softly, glad when his voice didn’t break.
“I mean this with all due respect, really, but that sounded like a lie,” Trent hedged. His tone was playful, and his words were kind as he asked, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Kurt took a deep breath and told himself to get it together. This was nothing compared to some of the things that he’d been through at McKinley. He honestly wasn’t even sure why he was so upset!
Or, maybe that wasn’t entirely true.
Blaine knew that Kurt liked him. He had to! Kurt certainly hadn’t been obvious about anything. And, besides that, why else would Blaine have gone and on about romance during their daily coffee date? Then, only days later, he… what? Serenade a boy that he barely even knew? Outing him in the process, no less!
No, Kurt knew why he was upset. At least when he was humiliated at McKinley, it wasn’t by his “friends”.
Looking up, Kurt was prepared to tell Trent that he was completely fine, but the kind look on the other boy’s face stopped the words in his throat. Slowly, he shook his head and raised an eyebrow when Trent grimaced.
“Yeah, we didn’t think you would be very okay.”
“W-Why?” he asked, wondering when he’d become so transparent.
“A few of us were pretty sure that Blaine was planning on singing to you,” Trent explained. He pointed, and Kurt noticed that there were a few boys sitting off the side from the main grouping of Dalton blazers and watching them through the glass windows. He recognized Nick and Jeff, two of the boys who had been especially welcoming, and snorted when Jeff started waving wildly. “With all the time that the two of you have been spending together, well…”
“You weren’t the only ones,” he muttered darkly. “I… he knows that I had a crush on him, but I thought… oh, I don’t know, maybe he just wanted to be friends! Maybe he wasn’t ready or didn’t want to date someone—that would have been absolutely fine! But he never said that, and we kept doing all these things that I just—I don’t know, now I just… now I feel so silly.”
“No, you aren’t silly,” Trent told him. “From what you’ve said, I would have thought the same thing.”
“Really? I wasn’t being totally stupid, then?”
“No, not at all,” Trent said, and something about the calm surety of his voice helped ease some of Kurt’s tension.
“I just… I got so caught up with finally meeting another gay boy,” Kurt admitted quietly. He chanced a quick look at Trent, but the other boy was looking at him with a frown. Hurriedly, Kurt said, “There wasn’t anyone else like me at my old school.”
“I know,” Trent admitted. When Kurt looked up in surprise, the other boy was blushing lightly. “I went to McKinley for my Freshman year, too,” Trent explained. “But last year, my grandfather passed away, and he left my parents with a pretty big inheritance. I’d read up on Dalton’s zero-tolerance policy before, and my parents agreed that this would be a better place for me to go.”
“Oh,” Kurt breathed, his brows pulling down. “I’m… I’m sorry, Trent, I honestly didn’t remember you.”
“That’s okay,” he assured quickly. “I did everything I could not to stand out. My older brother is as straight and jock-y as they come, so when I started at McKinley, I really just tried to copy him and fly under the radar.”
“A-Are you not…” Kurt trailed off uneasily, biting into his bottom lip. He knew it wasn’t polite to ask, but the way Trent had talked about his older brother made Kurt believe that the other boy wasn’t those same things, and that could mean…
“Straight?” Trent asked softly. When Kurt nodded, he grinned. “No, I’m not. I’m about as gay as gay can be, honestly.”
Kurt felt like his entire world was flipping on its axis. When he first met Blaine and had gone for coffee with him and some of the Council, he had felt so ashamed asking if they were all gay. Who did something like that? When they had laughed, well, he’d just assumed that only Blaine was gay.
Was he really that far off?
“Blaine never said…”
“No, I wouldn’t expect him to,” Trent muttered darkly. “How is he supposed to keep you fawning after him if you know you have other options?”
“Other options?” Kurt squeaked, ignoring the rest of Trent’s statement to pick apart later when he had time.
Blaine sang all the solos. Blaine was the only one to sing all the solos, and it seemed like all the Warblers were fine with him taking the spotlight, but maybe that wasn’t the case.
Kurt had already been wrong about the school's queer population—maybe he’d been wrong about Blaine, too?
“For friends!” Trent said quickly, his cheeks turning a ruddy red that was honestly very endearing. “Other options for friends!”
Kurt raised an eyebrow, straightening up a little in his seat. That was certainly interesting—he’d never caused another boy to blush before.
“There are others?” Kurt asked, then added, “Gay boys and friend options, I mean.”
“Oh, definitely. Dalton’s zero-tolerance policy tends to drive us here, especially in a state like Ohio,” Trent told him. “Nick and Jeff are together—did you not realize that?”
Kurt’s brows flew up his forehead, and he turned back to the mall with wide eyes. Sure enough, when he focused on them, Nick and Jeff were sitting closer than two boys normally would. In fact, Nick had Jeff tucked up under his arm, and they were both looking at something on the blonde’s phone.
“I didn’t know,” he murmured thoughtfully. Were there others? Others who would have accepted him as he was? Who would have understood him in all the ways he was hoping to find in Blaine? “I thought they were just good friends.”
“They certainly started off that way,” Trent said, “but they’ve been together for about a year now.”
“That’s…”
“Trust me, I know,” Trent admitted. “Coming from the hallowed halls of McKinley, it’s hard to believe that they could even be comfortable being together openly, let alone safe. But Dalton really is different.”
“So it’s not a gay school, but…”
“We have a really active GSA that meets on Thursday nights,” Trent said. That was perhaps the most shocking thing that had happened all day. “A group of us Warbler’s go every week. Do you want to come tomorrow? I know the others would be happy for you to come along. The aforementioned friend options.”
Kurt sucked in a breath at the offer. He couldn’t even imagine starting something like a GSA at McKinley—and not only because he would undoubtedly be the only member.
Knowing that there was something like that at Dalton gave him a renewed sense of hope, stronger than anything he’d felt during his friendship with Blaine. He still felt silly, but now it wasn’t only because of another ill-advised crush.
There was an entire community of people like him at Dalton that Kurt almost missed because he’d been blinded by the allure of Blaine. Did he even really like him? Sure, they had a lot in common, but… well, as shallow as it may be, Blaine was so short.
Trent wasn’t. Trent was nearly as tall as Finn.
“I think I’d really like that,” Kurt murmured. He took another look at Trent and took in the other boy’s proud posture and clear skin. His smile was small and sincere, and it made him look especially cute. Kurt remembered what Trent had told him about options, and felt his heartbeat pick up. “Perhaps we could… get coffee together first? Just the two of us, I mean.”
Trent’s eyes went wide, and the earlier ruddy blush came back in full force as he looked down at Kurt. He bit into his bottom lip in a way that was a little distracting—Kurt was a teenage boy after all—before a bright, sunny smile stole across his face.
“That would be wonderful!” Trent chirped with a smile. “If you’re sure…”
“Definitely,” Kurt assured him, reaching out and squeezing his knee. The other boy didn’t react negatively, so Kurt kept his hand there. “I think I’ve been a little narrow-minded and singularly focused on who I’ve been spending my time with so far. It’s about time I really embrace everything that Dalton has to offer.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Trent told him. Then, he hopped to his feet and held out his elbow, and in the same faux British accent, asked, “Care to accompany me back to the Starbucks, my good sir?”
Kurt giggled even as he tucked his hand into Trent’s elbow—he was definitely as tall as Finn—and he totally pretended he couldn’t see the two thumbs up that Jeff was sending their way.
Instead, he looked up at Trent’s beaming face, and with a lightness he hadn’t felt in far too many years, affected his own accent and said, “Carry on, my good sir.”
Trent’s smile must have been infectious, too, because Kurt’s grin didn’t slip for the rest of the day.