He was onstage, singing and dancing. A blackened audience somewhere beyond the blinding stage lights. Broadway. He'd made it! He'd done it! Kurt watched as the members of New Directions did a group dance beside him. They were good, really good, but he was the star of the show, and everyone knew it. He was ready to belt out his final note when he felt something on his forehead- rain? He reached up to brush it away, but when he saw his fingers he was horrified to see them streaked with red. He knew he wasn't bleeding though. He wasn't sure how he knew it, but he knew it. His voice faltered as he looked around wildly. No one else seemed to notice anything was wrong at all.

"Kurt!" A voice from down front called out in a loud stage whisper. He squinted until the stage lights faded and he could clearly make out Blaine, standing just below the edge of the stage. His own forehead emitting a slow, black trail down his cheek. Despite the macabre image and his seeping forehead, Blaine looked excited.

"What do I do?" Kurt motioned toward his forehead. "How do I make it stop?"

"Smile, Kurt! Just keep smiling!" Blaine motioned at his own exaggerated grin, demoing how Kurt should act.

Kurt tried to smile, his former glee peers still dancing around him. When he finally managed to pull the expression off, he heard a dull roar above him. He looked up to see a giant mass of red falling down toward him. He was going to drown in it, he was sure. He looked back to Blaine, alarmed. But Blaine was still mouthing at him to smile.

---

Kurt awoke with a start. His cell phone was blasting off "Cell Block Tango". He smashed down the dismiss button with irritation before rubbing his eyes and reorienting himself to the bedroom. Finn was still face down in his bed.

Kurt padded over to the bathroom and cranked on the shower, standing listlessly until he could see curls of steam crawling out over the top of the curtain rod. He slipped in and exulted in the hot water, trying to liven himself. He loved Dalton, but the drive over required even earlier mornings than McKinley had. At least the uniform meant he didn't have to dedicate so much time to selecting his outfit for the day. Kurt scrubbed shampoo into his head, contemplating the dream, but when he imagined Blaine- looking up at him with pride and moving in that quick frenzy that meant he was excited, he felt only affection- Kurt forced himself from the comforting warmth of the shower, willing to leave the sweet embrace of hot steam for the claws of cold outside the curtain for the man he knew he would be seeing in a matter of mere hours. When he headed up the stairs, Finn hadn't moved from his prone position. Kurt greeted his father and Carol briefly in the kitchen, pouring coffee into his travel mug.

"Is Finn up yet?" Carol was busy at the stove.

"Of course not." Kurt smiled briefly at her.

"He'll be up as soon as he catches a whiff of syrup." Burt said confidently from behind his newspaper.

Kurt watched as his stepmother transferred pancakes from her skillet to a plate. "Pancakes seem like quite the labor to take on for a Monday."

"Your little friend liked them so much the other day, I guess it just put me back in the mood to cook again." Carol smiled.

Kurt shook his head with a smile, "Blaine likeseverything. He'd shave his head before he complained about the actions of any adult. But, in your case, he did seem to really enjoy them."

"Would you like some before you go?" Carol used her spatula to motion at the plate. "I made plenty."

Kurt managed to control the almost involuntary wrinkling of his nose, "No, thank you. I really should get going."

"Eat something, kid," His father glanced over at him pointedly.

Kurt pulled an apple from the bowl on the table, calling over his shoulder, "Don't let him even try to get you to fix him bacon, Carol."

He heard Carol's laugh and his father's low complains as the door clicked shut behind him.

At school, he greeted a few fellow Warblers as he placed some of his things in his locker, smiling briefly at the strip of black and white photo booth pictures taped to the inside of the door. When he slammed the door shut, he found the other occupant of the photographs leaned against the locker banks, "Morning, Beautiful."

Kurt smiled at Blaine, letting him take him by the hand and parade him up the stairs toward their first classes, "Congratulations, your culinary compliments this weekend have turned Carol into a pancake producing princess."

Blaine smiled, "I like pancakes."

"I'm aware." Kurt reminisced fondly over Blaine that Saturday morning, happily swallowing down not one, but three of Carol's pancakes, drowned in syrup. An endless shower of compliments dished out toward his meal's creator between bites and no shadow of the previous night's terror. Kurt almost felt he had dreamt it.

"You still in there?" Fingers waved briefly in front of Kurt's vision, bringing him back to the present.

He rubbed his eyes with his free hand, "Sorry, just a little tired."

"Didn't sleep well? Finn snoring too loud?" Blaine guessed.

"If Finn's snoring kept me awake, I would be dead by now from sleep depravation. It was just… a weird dream…"

They had arrived at Blaine's classroom, "Well, maybe we can talk about it over coffee later. Figure it out."

Kurt studied his face for any hint of a memory of Friday night. He found none, "Right. Sounds great."

Blaine squeezed his hand once before releasing it and entering the room, greeting peers with a clap on the shoulder or a nod.

As promised, he and Blaine met up for their usual coffee between school hours and Warblers practice.

"So," Blaine said, resting his elbows on the table between them, his hands wrapped around the paper cup in front of him, "Lets hear about this dream."

Kurt picked at the coffee collar around his own steaming cup for a moment, considering how to best explain.

"Is it a bad dream?" Blaine ventured.

Kurt started to shake his head, but then stopped, "I don't know really…I had it Saturday night, too."

"Ah, a reoccurring dream," Blaine smiled, "How Freudian."

Kurt laughed a little, "I guess so; it…it starts out with me on stage. On Broadway."

Blaine grinned, "Maybe you're psychic. Seeing the future in dreams."

"I hope not," Kurt explained the rest as best he could, his eyes set on the coffee collar he was slowly pulling apart at the seam.

When he finished, Blaine was silent.

Kurt looked up from his cup. Blaine had his fingers folded at the level of his face, his mouth resting at the edge of his folded thumbs. He looked like he was praying. His eyes met Kurt's, but he seemed deep in thought.

"Well, doctor, what's the verdict?" Kurt took a drink from his cup, still regarding the handsome boy across from him.

Blaine remained silent for a moment longer before dropping his folded hands and leaning back in his chair; a grin on his face, "I'm at a loss."

"The great Blaine Anderson, mentor extraordinaire, has no words of wisdom for his prot�g�?" Kurt raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.

Blaine smiled slightly, leaning back on the table once again, "Conglomeration of synaptic firings; your brain sorting short term and long term memories; cognitive hedging. Do any of those work for you?"

Kurt had undone the last spot of glue on the paper ring and it fell from his cup, rendered useless, "You think that's all dreams are?"

Blaine took a drink from his cup, studying Kurt's dismantled handiwork on the table between them, "Sometimes… Other times I think it's how our unconscious tries to make sense of things…those little things you notice during the day that you never gave much thought to."

Kurt watched Blaine's face carefully, but tried to sound casual as he spoke, "What about nightmares?"

Blaine yet again gave no indication that he remembered Friday night, "I think nightmares can be the same thing, but… they're the things we lock away from our conscious thoughts. The things we don't want to think about that come sneaking out."

"Things you don't want to remember," Kurt quipped.

Blaine flinched just slightly, "Probably that too."

Kurt opened his mouth to respond, but suddenly Blaine was smiling, his eyes lifted to Kurt's and he spoke before Kurt had the chance to question him.

"I don't think many of us can claim actually having come to school naked in the past, though, and I think we've all had that dream, so probably more paranoia than repressed experiences."

Kurt had no choice but to follow Blaine's musings rather than entertain his own, "No, I suppose not. Maybe I have a repressed fear that you don't think I smile enough."

"I would enjoy it if you smiled more. It's adorable and I could never get too much of it." Blaine gave Kurt a wink.

Kurt flashed Blaine a grin and they both laughed. They fell into a momentary comfortable silence before Kurt tried one last time to get Blaine to reveal something to him, "Or maybe I think you like to make everything okay for-"

Blaine glanced at his watch and jumped to his feet, shrugging his bag over his shoulder, "We're late. Wes is going to kill us."

Kurt glanced down at his phone and confirmed that they were indeed eight minutes late for Warblers' practice. He hurried after Blaine, their fingers entwined and conversation left at the table with their abandoned coffee cups.