"I am sure with your ability to never stop speaking and knack for finding ways to further tear yourself apart over everything, you will find a way to expose an even bloodier, destroyed yet disarmingly confident sense of self." Kurt flipped the page of the Vogue in his lap as he spoke.

Rachel twisted around on her stool to regard Kurt face to face, a frown on her mouth. "Maybe you're right…"

Mercedes and Kurt exchanged a look before Kurt's attention returned to his magazine. "Mr. Schu hasn't come up with a new Journey medley for you yet?"

"We are all trying to think creatively and with open minds, Kurt," Rachel looked away and added, reluctantly, "And I think we're out of popular Journey songs."

Kurt's phone buzzed on the bed, announcing to all a new text message had arrived. "Blaine" was printed across the screen in clean black letters beneath the image of a closed envelope. Kurt abandoned his article about the upcoming Barcelona shows to snatch up his cell.

"Courage! Honor! Integrity!" Read the message. Kurt smiled but wrinkled his brow in confusion. Another message came before he could respond to the first.

"…It's been awhile since I sent you a one liner of encouragement. Thought I'd throw a few out there."

Kurt chuckled aloud before responding "Thanks. I was starting to feel insecure and uninspired."

"Always here to offer inspiration, creativity, anything along those lines ;)"

Mercedes let out a low whistle, "Mmm, if that boy was straight, I swear…"

Kurt blushed but gave his best friend a withering look, "Privacy, personal messages. Do either of those things mean anything to you?"

"Ha, not a chance when it comes to you, White Boy," She smiled, "You gonna respond to him or not?"

Kurt tried to act irritated, but then smiled coyly at the girls. He held out his phone so Mercedes could easily read his response. "I'll supply the creativity if you bring the inspiration ;)"

Mercedes let out a loud laugh, "I never thought I'd see the day when Kurt Hummel was a tease."

Kurt offered a look of offended innocence. "Who says I'm teasing?"

Rachel-previously in deep thought regarding her upcoming Nationals performance- suddenly keyed back into the conversation. "So you and Blaine have…you know."

Kurt looked between the two girls before dropping the act with a sigh and a light blush, "No, we live in the safe territory between minor groping and passionate making out."

"Any plans to move up a couple bases?" Mercedes waggled her eyebrows.

Kurt smoothed his pajama bottoms lightly around his knees as he considered, "At some point…I don't know, it's so impossible to tell with him. We haven't even said I love you, yet. I'm not sure if he's just waiting for me to be comfortable enough or if he's fine where we are- physically and emotionally, I mean."

"Kurt," Rachel pulled herself onto the bed and looked at him pointedly, "It doesn't matter what the men want. It has to be about our needs and our comfort. We are the stars, not the arm candy and trophy wives of our confused, na�ve counterparts."

"I'm not sure what the current situation is between you and Finn," Kurt said, rolling his eyes, "But Blaine is not confused nor na�ve…at least I don't think he is."

"She does have a point, Kurt," Mercedes said slowly, "You shouldn't rush into something just because you're worried he's going to get impatient. You two should talk about it."

Kurt let out a fluttery laugh, "Blaine may seem prepared to chat about anything with preplanned speech quality, but half the time we discuss intimate things he gets so flighty he has to change the topic."

"What do you mean?" Rachel frowned, "Finn and I could always discuss anything that was on my mind."

Kurt bit back any scathing remarks toward Rachel's last comment, "He just… if I get too close to certain things, he clams up and then he gives me that devastating Frank Sinatra smile of his and all of the sudden we're so caught up in something else I can't possibly bring back up what I wanted to talk to him about."

"You sure you're not just imagining this? We both do that sometimes," Rachel offered a comforting pat to Kurt's knee, "And remember the conversation we had about flaws? Now that you and Blaine are an item, you're going to see some things in him you didn't before, like when Finn and I-"

Mercedes cut her off smoothly, "I think what Rachel is trying to say is that maybe Blaine's good at talking about some things and when you hit something he doesn't know how to deal with he copes by dancing around it."

"Oh, he dances around it all right," Kurt rolled his eyes, and started numbering things off on his fingers, "He dances, kisses, smiles, laughs, licks his way around and toward anything he wants."

"Licks?" Rachel and Mercedes both leaned in, dying for more details.

Kurt blushed deeply, shaking his head adamantly, and babbling out an explanation, "The other day, he- it wasn't like a sexual thing- it was like a dog. He licked my face like a tragically attention-hungry puppy."

The girls exchanged a look before simultaneously bursting into laughter. Mercedes just barely choking out, "Oh, Kurt, you got yo' hands full with that one."

Kurt was so busy trying to quell the blood rush to his cheeks that he couldn't react fast enough when his phone vibrated again.

Mercedes snatched it up with lightning speed, using one hand to hold Kurt back while she opened up the message. "He wants to know if you can meet up right now."

"What?" Kurt renewed his struggle against Mercedes, groping for his phone. "He did not say that."

"Well, it was implied." Mercedes laughed, finally relinquishing the phone to Kurt.

The message was only a kissy smiley face. Kurt gave Mercedes one last scathing look before responding with the same flirtatious face to Blaine.

"So, are you gonna go sweep him off his feet? Lick him a little?" Mercedes and Rachel dissolved into giggles once more.

Kurt threw the abandoned Vogue at Mercedes, "I am in the middle of a slumber party with my two former best friends and I do not ditch out on my engagements."

"We're sorry, you know we're only playin' with you," Mercedes squeezed Kurt's hand, "And you have our full permission to go have a slumber party with yo' boy instead as long as we get full details."

"It wouldn't be their first sleep over," Rachel gave Kurt a knowing grin. "Or even their second."

"Hold up, what?" Mercedes eyes went wide.

"Rachel, don't be melodramatic," Kurt made a mental note to tell Finn to keep his mouth shut from time to time, "He spent the night on the couch last Friday. My dad wouldn't let him drive home in the storm."

"You didn't have a romantic midnight meeting?" Rachel hugged her knees to her chest.

"I planned on it, but he…" Kurt regarded both girls for a moment, "He…had a nightmare."

"You tried to get romantic for your boyfriend and he said he couldn't get with you cause he had a nightmare?" Mercedes looked nonplussed.

"No, no," Kurt frowned, feeling uncomfortable exposing such a personal moment, but the desire to finally be able to discuss it was too strong for him to just change the subject, "He was having a nightmare when I went upstairs. I woke him up, but he was so…shaken isn't the right word…it was like he had actually just seen a ghost or something. I've never seen him like that, except-"

Except that same night for the briefest of seconds when his hand had clamped around Kurt's wrist; he opted not to mention that moment to his girlfriends.

"Did you ask him about it?" Mercedes looked concerned.

"Once I calmed him down, yes, but he said he couldn't remember what it was about. I've tried bringing it up a couple times since then, but he acts like it never even happened."

"We all have bad dreams, maybe he just doesn't think it was that big of a deal." Mercedes offered.

"He wasn't just a little freaked out, 'Cedes. It took him a good three or four minutes to even talk to me. And even when I went back down to my bedroom he still seemed upset." Kurt looked at the picture of he and Blaine acting as his current cell phone background. Blaine's signature smile and happy eyes looked back at him.

"He's lying to you." Rachel stated flatly.

Kurt bristled a little at the accusation. "Excuse me?"

"He remembers what that dream was about," Rachel nodded her head confidently, "The question is, why won't he tell you?"

"Maybe he's embarrassed," Mercedes soothed, "Or maybe it's personal."

But Rachel's words had confirmed the little voice that had been nagging at Kurt for the past few days, "I'm his boyfriend, why wouldn't he confide in me?"

"You said for yourself he's not good at talking about a lot of things. Give him some time to come to it for himself."

"I practically had to force him to admit his feelings for me." Kurt replied dubiously.

Rachel's head was bobbing up and down again, "You have to make him open up to you, Kurt. It's not right for them to keep things from us."

Normally Kurt would have made some dry remark about the fact that, yet again, Rachel had managed to make things about herself and Finn, but he couldn't help but think that maybe, for once, she was right.

"Don't go knocking down doors he's not ready to open, Kurt, that just spells trouble, and you have a good thing going with Blaine," Mercedes warned, giving Rachel an irritated frown, "Besides, how would you feel if he just shoved into all your business?"

"He does, just in a very Blaine-ish way," Kurt put on his best puppy dog eyes and placed a hand above Mercedes' elbow, "Come on, Kurt, what is it? You know you can tell me."

Mercedes smiled at Kurt's Blaine impression, but shook her head, "You think he'd push it though if you decided not to share?"

Kurt shrugged, "All this opening up can't just keep coming from one side though. I feel like he knows everything about me and I know nothing about him."

"So ask him point blank and if he doesn't want to tell, don't make him," Mercedes shrugged.

"Or," Rachel chimed in; "You can work him into a corner until he has to tell you what you want to know."

"Rachel, you will be the reason this couple blows up-" Mercedes went off on Rachel's 'crazy white girl antics', but Kurt sat in silence.

He suddenly had a flash of Blaine's face when he'd first awoken from the nightmare- cornered; terrified.