I'M SORRY. I'm so terrible at updating. In my defense, I finished the next few chapters, and they'll be up shortly. I know. I suck.

But, hey, at least I actually got around to doing this.

Please R&R! I love feedback!

The front door slammed shut behind Blaine as he angrily threw his backpack onto the nearest chair, not bothering to take off his shoes. He shrugged off his coat and tossed it into a corner, then tore up the stairs as quickly as he could. Tears stung his eyes as he flung open the door to his bedroom and collapsed on his plaid bedspread. How the hell could he be so freaking STUPID? He had almost gotten through to Kurt, almost earned his trust, then he had to go and try to be perceptive and screw everything up. And then Kurt had left him alone at the table, and Blaine had felt like he could just die, just curl up into a little ball and let the world leave him behind. He was humiliated and angry and so, so incredibly sorry for what he had done. He wanted to run as fast as he could over to Kurt's house and catch him in his arms and tell him that it was all going to be okay.

But he couldn't do that. Not anymore.

Possibly not ever, now that he had screwed everything up.

A knock on Blaine's bedroom door jolted him out of his bitter reverie. "Blaine? You in there?"

Blaine sat up in surprise. The voice that had called out on the other side of the door had been none but his brother's. His brother, who was currently living across the country and hadn't mentioned anything about coming to visit.

"Cooper?" called Blaine, almost in disbelief.

Sure enough, it was his brother's voice that he heard again. "Yeah, it's me. What are you doing home?"

"Me? What about you? Why are you even here?"

"Whoa, okay. If you're pissed off about something, no need to take it out on your big bro."

"Sorry. I'm just...mad."

"Um...okay." Cooper paused. Blaine wondered if he should say something, but it was his brother who spoke first. "I'm gonna be downstairs."

"No," Blaine found himself saying, almost against his own will.

He could almost see the bewildered look on Cooper's face. "What?"

"I need to talk to somebody, and you're kind of the only person around. Even though I still don't know why you're even in Lima."

"Oh." A brief pause followed, and Blaine wondered what his brother was going to do. "Can I come in?"

"Yeah."

The door creaked open, and Cooper stepped in, dressed in his customary leather jacket and black jeans. "What's up? Girl problems?"

"Boy problems," Blaine groaned, then proceeded to hide his face in a pillow.

Cooper sighed. "Oh, right, you're gay. I give a lot of advice on girls to my friends, since they just kind of, I don't know, gravitate towards me. So I talk about girl problems a lot." He stopped. "Are guy problems kind of the same? Or is it, like, a whole different ballgame?"

"Sort of," said Blaine, his voice muffled.

Another very awkward silence followed. Blaine wondered if asking Cooper for advice had been the right decision.

It was Cooper who broke the silence this time. "Listen, dude, I've never, you know, BEEN WITH a guy, but I do know this about girls." He leaned in close to Blaine, who turned his head a millimeter so he could hear Cooper better. "Girls...they have lots of layers. They might seem like they're one thing on the outside, but they're really someone completely different on the inside. It's like...like a vanilla cake."

"I hate vanilla cake. It's too sweet. Besides, Cooper, that's a really bad analogy. You can't really compare people to food."

"Yeah, you can, actually," said Cooper, shifting into a more comfortable sitting position. "Like you just said, you hate vanilla cake, right?" Blaine nodded into the pillow. "But you love the frosting." After a slight hesitation, Blaine nodded again. Cooper continued slowly, carefully, like he was testing a frozen skating pond to make sure that it wouldn't collapse beneath his feet. "See, girls- well, not just girls, I guess- PEOPLE can sometimes be like vanilla cake with frosting. When you first see it, all you see is the frosting, and it looks really good, right? But...but after you cut into it, you can see the vanilla cake inside, the kind you don't like. And it's too late to put the piece back, because after you touch it, nobody else wants to because they automatically think you always have a cold. No offense," he added, after Blaine shot him a surprisingly bitchy glare for a sixteen-year-old boy. "They do it to me, too."

Blaine sunk back into the pillow. "That's shockingly insightful for you, Cooper, but it's really not helping." He rolled over onto his back and wached the fan do lazy twirls on his ceiling. "He tries to seem really cool and sexy on the outside, but there's something...something off about him. I can't put my finger on it yet."

Cooper sighed and flopped down next to Blaine. Blaine, surprised at Cooper's sudden display of affection, shied away from him a little bit. Cooper didn't notice. "Is he...is he like a Barbie?"

"What?"

"You know, plastic on the outisde, nothing on the inside. Like that Evans kid in Glee club."

"How do you know about Sam?"

"I had your bedroom bugged when I was thirteen so you wouldn't keep stealing my clothes."

Blaine rolled his eyes. "Of course you did. Anyway, no, I don't think he's a...a Barbie. There's just something...weird about him. Like... it's almost like the look you see on those war veterans' faces. Like, you know they've seen terrible things, but they keep it all packed down. They don't talk about it."

Cooper didn't say anything, obviously deep in thought. "Well..." he said finally, "maybe he went through a war, too."

"He's sixteen."

"Not that kind of war, dumbass. Like...a war with youself. Like he's fighting things nobody else can see."

Blaine was silent for for a second before he spoke again, contemplating Cooper's abnormally deep answer. "Maybe."

Cooper stood up abruptly. "Well, I gotta go make dinner now-"

"You mean you have to order Chinese from that place down the street."

"Well, yeah. Anyway, good luck with your troubles, and I'm going to go try to find that Chinese place's number-"

Blaine sat up before Cooper could walk out. "Hey, Coop, could I ask you one more question?"

Cooper turned around. "Ask away, little bro."

"Why are you even here? Shouldn't you still be in LA?"

Cooper stepped closer to Blaine. "They gave me a weeklong break, so I decided to visit the old casa." Upon seeing the confused look on Blaine's face, Cooper grinned. "I'm not a jerk all the time, Blainers." He ruffled Blaine's hair (or tried to, seeing as it was cemented down with gel), and left the room.

"Just most of the time!" Blaine called after his brother. Cooper laughed from down the hallway.

As soon as Blaine was sure that Cooper was safely downstairs, he grabbed his laptop from beide his bed and flipped it open. After logging in and opening his Internet browser, he typed "kurt hummel" into the Google search bar, curious to see if some information about Kurt could be found on the web. Maybe he had a Facebook page, or a Twitter, or an Instagram. Anything.

But as soon as Blaine hit the enter key, he was instantly disappointed. There were a few results for the name, like some guy in Sweden and another guy working for Microsoft, but none of them were the real Kurt. Crap. He continued scrolling through the pages, desperate for any information on this strange boy. But there was nothing.

However, after a couple minutes of clicking desperately on every link and finding nothing about the Kurt he knew, something caught his eye. "Head Cheerleader Leads Squad To Eighth Consecutive Regional Championship". Blaine clicked on the blue lettering, his heart pounding in anticipation.

February 8th, 2011

Lima, Ohio- Special Correspondent Emily Ackerman recently spoke to Sue Sylvester, the coach of the McKinley High cheerleading squad (better known within the school as "Cheerios"), which has won seven consecutive National championships since 2003. Sylvester was refreshingly frank in her conversation, stating that her cheerleaders are "champions in every aspect of their lives". It seems that this may be true, as the McKinley High Cheerios recently snagged another first-pace trophy at Regionals last weekend. The performance was both visually and athletically breathtaking, with amazing special effects and stunning leaps and jumps by the cheerleaders themselves. However, the crown jewel of the performance was Lima's own Kurt Hummel, one of the only males on the squad, who performed stunning acrobatics and dance steps with the other cheerleaders in the performance. Ackerman spoke to Hummel as well, who performed a seven-minute Celine Dion medley entirely in French at last year's Nationals, winning the Cheerios the competition.

Hummel, a young teenager in his junior year at McKinley High, stated that "cheerleading is all about winning. Sometimes you have to pick between teams, so when you do, pick the one that will help you come out on top...I've had to make some very tough decisions in my life, and when I do, I just ask myself, will this help me succeed? Is it worth my time? If it's not, and it's pointless, I don't keep doing it."

Blaine closed his laptop slowly, something like anxiety clutching at his heart. He barely registered Cooper calling from downstairs, telling him that dinner was ready. He just stood up slowly and took a deep breath, willing himself to stay compsed. There was something so mysterious about Kurt, like...like he was somebody different than he let on. Like he had been somebody different.

And that whole thing about things being worth his time...what wasn't worth his time? Wasn't Blaine? Or was Blaine simply a distraction, something to play around with to keep his mind off everything else? Blaine bit his lip, one burning question rooting itself into his mind.

Who was Kurt Hummel? And who had he been before?

So. There it is. It's short and sweet.

The story's gonna pick up speed soon. After the next few chapters, it starts moving really fast. I promise!

I hope you liked it!