It started, as all good things should, with a cat.

First, to clear things up, Kurt did not name her McQueen or Gaga or Marie Antoinette. The cat was female, that much was certain, but he held the squirming bundle of orange fur and decidedly did not call her “Marigold.” Except he did.

Later he would say it was because she was round and her fur was ridiculously bright and her big round eyes stared up at him so sweetly, so pitifully, that he had taken her into his arms without thinking too hard about the fact that the sleeves of his white blazer (no, he hadn't watched Saturday Night Fever the weekend before, shut up) were dirtied in the process. But he didn't have a heart of stone and the cat had been pathetically desolate, peeking at him from behind a trash can and completely unresisting. He was charmed, to say the least.

So Marigold came to stay with him in the apartment he called home, and now he was rather glad pets were allowed even if he still thought the Golden Retriever in the next apartment was too loud. And having a cat turned out to be marginally easier than he'd expected. The shedding was regrettable, but Marigold did her duty at the litter box and was, for all intents and purposes, a rather silent cat. She pawed Kurt whenever her bowl was empty and scratched at his bedroom door to be let in, but she was neat and quiet. However, she was a little too fond of escaping outside, usually by squeezing her way through the front door as Kurt entered and left his home. Though she always found her way back, he suddenly realized that he would be devastated if something happened to her or if she somehow got stuck in a tree.

Then there was the business of registration, neutering, and putting a chip in Marigold, but Kurt was a man of fashion, and Alexander McQueen forbid that he let his cat prance around without a single accessory. It would also assure him on a greater level to see physical evidence of his ownership on Marigold.

He took a break from vintage-hunting one day and went to PetPals, which was where he had been getting the chicken and brown rice formula that Marigold was particularly fond of.

“Hi!”

Kurt blinked and looked up from a cage containing a fat gray hamster named King Lear, of all things. Oh, hello, he thought as a new face approached his way.

“You need any help?” the PetPal employee asked with a gentle lilt in his voice. He was wearing an olive green polo shirt with a name tag that read “Blaine,” and he had a head of near-shellacked dark hair. Kurt could all but see his reflection on that shiny surface. The man's face was handsome enough, with gleaming eyes, long lashes, flawless skin...

I would kill to have skin like that.

“Sir?” Blaine prompted uncertainly. Kurt shook himself out of his daze; no good to be staring at a potentially straight man.

“Yes, yes, um... I'm looking for a cat collar.”

“Oh, well.” Face brightening, Blaine led Kurt over to an aisle with various collars, harnesses, and leashes. “Shopping for your cat, I see. Cat or kitten?”

“Cat. She's around two years old.”

“Most of these collars are pretty easy to get out of if your cat gets stuck somewhere outside,” Blaine explained, gesturing with his hands. “So just pick a design that you like and you should be all set.”

There were a lot of patterns. Kurt chewed on his lower lip absently, but kept an eye on Blaine.

Nothing. Blaine wasn't even looking at him.

Try, try again. Kurt shifted imperceptibly towards the extremely good-looking employee. “What do you recommend?”

“What do I recommend?” Blaine tilted his head, scanning the items, and then reached out for a black one with noticeable gingham bows. “Personally? I really, really like anything with ribbons or bows. This is a good one for an adult cat. Or—here.” He handed the black one to Kurt and pulled off several colored ones with plastic or fabric bows on the sides. “These are better for kittens because they're easier to slip out of.”

To be frank, Kurt didn't have the world's greatest gaydar. He had made the occasional faux pas once or twice in the past, and he wasn't looking for a repeat performance. But as he watched Blaine return a pink collar to the rack, intent on the task, he had a hunch.

“Bow tie man, aren't you?”

Startled, Blaine dropped a collar. “Sorry?”

Kurt held up the gingham bow collar, waving it pointedly. “I just have a feeling that you're a bow tie fan,” he smirked, mentally stroking his hair back at the way Blaine sheepishly tucked his hands into his pants pockets.

“Got me there,” Blaine admitted, sounding more amused than anything else. “I'm guilty of ordering Brooks Brothers ties at least once a month whenever I have the money stored up. Otherwise I,” here he paused, looked around furtively for dramatic effect, and whispered, “go hunting on Etsy.”

“Funny,” Kurt said, “because I make bow ties on Etsy.”

“Really?”

“During my free time. I actually have a clothing store around here, and I look around thrift stores for inspiration.”

“That's great,” Blaine replied sincerely. “Wait, wait, let me guess... Timeless!”

Kurt smiled and echoed, “Got me there.”

They talked for a while longer about clothes and somehow the conversation went back to pets. Kurt spent a full minute waxing eloquent about the time Marigold had brought a dead bird back to the apartment (“She offered up the head like a sacrifice, what was I supposed to do?”) and Blaine laughed a full-body kind of laugh with crinkled eyes and shaking shoulders. “I'd have loved to see that,” he said, still chuckling quietly.

In the end, there was no way of asking Blaine if he was gay because you didn't ask people if they're gay, of course not. Kurt paid for the black collar with gingham bows and a glittering gold one as well. He watched as Blaine printed out the receipt, but alas, the charming PetPals employee did not scrawl anything else on it (like his number) and merely handed Kurt his purchases with a smile and obligatory, “Thank you and please come again.”

Disappointed, Kurt made for the door with its tinkling bell, but Blaine called out at that moment, “Excuse me, what's your name?”

He paused. “Kurt,” he said, slightly breathless. “Kurt Hummel.”

Blaine's eyes did some sort of twinkly thing that made Kurt's knees wobble just a bit. “Blaine Anderson. Nice meeting you, Kurt. Hope I'll be seeing you around.”

Kurt hoped so, too. He settled for a perfunctory nod, not trusting himself to smile because it would probably turn out creepy and please please please stick your tongue down my throat and could you hold my hand and take me to dinner after that?

It was only as Kurt left PetPals that he pondered on how Blaine's voice struck a familiar chord. He was certain that he had heard it before in some distant or recent past. Maybe it sounded similar to one of his classmates from high school? Or maybe from a song—wait, what if Blaine was a musician? Mentally scanning his memories, Kurt had to sigh out a “no” to all of his theories.

Except.

Wait. Wait just one minute.

“From your friendly neighborhood street artist!”

Kurt stood perfectly still in the middle of the sidewalk, and then covered his face. “Oh, god.”

Kurt Hummel was a baby-cheeked high school sophomore when he came out to his father. It was a tumultuous year, to say the least. In an effort to escape some of the bullying, he tried out as a kicker for the football team. As it turned out, he was a pretty damn good kicker, and if Burt Hummel was a little prouder of him because of that, who was Kurt to say no to the masses? So he joined up despite the fact that quite a few of the members treated him more or less the same, although the name-calling and locker-slamming toned down because the team couldn't afford to lose Kurt because they were losing. There were a few other silver linings, like the fact that Finn Hudson was on the team and was friendly enough to Kurt. Sort of.

“Isn't he dating Quinn?” Mercedes queried when he casually asked about Finn.

“Oh yes,” he sighed in response. “Quinn Fabray.”

“I always thought they look kind of miserable together.”

Kurt pounced because hey, it wasn't home-wrecking if they weren't married, right? “Really?”

“Now what are you thinking about, white boy?”

He and Mercedes had developed a camaraderie over a more aesthetic appreciation for fashion. It helped that she liked music as much as he did, and more often than not, she would coax him into karaoke night at one of their houses. What didn't help was that she had auditioned for glee club, although from what Kurt could tell, they only had four members and couldn't exactly afford to be picky. Along with Mercedes and Rachel, they had freshmen Asian Goth Girl and Wheelchair Boy, who were Tina and Artie respectively.

“You should join, Kurt,” Mercedes urged, nudging his shoulder with her own. He shifted back so that they weren't touching. “I mean, Berry's already trying to be the star of the New Directions—”

“The what now?”

“The New Directions. That's our name after Mr. Schue—”

“That is one unfortunate name,” he muttered under his breath.

“It'll be fun.”

“You just said that Rachel Berry was taking over. I am not going to leap out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

“What's the frying pan?”

Kurt thought about dreams. He thought about Broadway, about little girls desperately trying to prove themselves, about how he was still waiting for his voice to deepen, about the traces of dirt and other sludge on his Marc Jacobs jacket (which was a knock-off, but that wasn't the point). He thought of how he watched Finn during football practice, only to avert his gaze whenever Coach Tanaka barked out another insult to motivate the players. He thought of his father who finally stopped double-taking whenever Kurt watched “America's Next Top Model” and smiled wearily at the sequined leggings that Kurt finished making the weekend before.

Then he thought of finally standing on a stage, all by himself, and singing as high and as low as he could sing. Fearless and without a care in the world.

His heart was seized with longing and fear.

“I can't,” he told Mercedes, who was clearly dissatisfied with his answer but didn't push. Then she scooted closer, although slowly as if being coy. “What are you doing?”

She looked at him, pressing her lips together nervously. Then he got it.

He didn't know what to say because it was like a dog falling for a cat—not my type, really not my type. It couldn't happen, it couldn't happen at all, and yet he would be lying if he said he didn't consider it for a moment because wouldn't his father be pleased, happy even? Wouldn't Burt Hummel be proud to see his son get a girlfriend to go with the football player image? Wouldn't McKinley give him an easier time if he conformed to the image of the heterosexual teenager boy?

But that was a despicable thing to do, and he would never forgive himself if he hurt a girl's feelings by lying. “Mercedes... I'm gay.”

“Oh.” Now she leaned away from him, but mostly because she was leaning on her hand, thinking. “Well, I thought so anyway. It was worth a shot.” She brought her arm around his shoulder and squeezed comfortingly.

And that was that.

That evening after football practice, Kurt came out to his father.

“I know,” Burt said to his son, his face old but loving. “I've known since you were three.”

There was more to it. Kurt recalled something about a pair of sensible heels and a hug that banished all of the tension in his shoulders. There was crying because Kurt hadn't carried this around for that long, if you really had to compare, but it had been so burdensome and frightening in a place like Lima, Ohio and even more in a school like McKinley. Now two people knew and he felt as if he could take on the world no matter what because he was loved for who he was, and he wasn't alone.

“Men are poisonous,” Sugar was seething. She was folding shirts just the way Kurt liked them, the last thing she had to do before her shift was over. Lauren was puttering around with the cashier, but she glanced up at Sugar behind her pink-rimmed glasses and snorted.

“Just figuring that out, Sugar?”

“No!”

“That's a yes, then.”

“What did Rory do this time?” Kurt cut in, his attention diverted from clothes on the circular rack he was arranging.

Sugar slapped the table with the folded shirts. “He lied to me!”

“About what?” Lauren drawled, propping her elbows on the counter. She seemed far more interested in Sugar's dramatic reactions than in the actual story itself. “Did he cheat on your skinny butt or something? Because that's no surprise.”

“Rory wouldn't cheat on me,” came the immediate protest.

“Then what?”

“Okay, so you know how I threw a Valentine's Day party a couple of months ago? Well—”

Kurt stopped listening to Sugar after that. He'd heard enough about Rory, the winsome Irish exchange student, and how Sugar had been beguiled by his dreamy voice. Instead, he picked at the possibility that Blaine and Curly Q weren't one and the same. Their voices were strikingly similar, down to the timbre, but you could never be sure. He contemplated going back to PetPals and confronting Blaine, though Kurt didn't know what he would say. Graffiti was hardly a legal recreational hobby, but who was he to haul Blaine to the police station? Who was he to accuse Blaine when accusation wouldn't help anyone?

Maybe it was artistic curiosity. Why the name Curly Q? Why the funny stick figures? Why graffiti at all?

He was aware that he would be far less curious if he weren't so attracted to Blaine. But he was better at being subtle, and besides, there was no guarantee that Blaine was actually a street artist. Kurt would have to go on his instincts.

Then Sugar chose to interrupt his thoughts. “Kurt, you're a million miles away.”

He blinked himself back to reality. “What?”

Her gaze became mischievous. “Is it a boy?”

“I'll have you know that it's a man and I'm not one of your high school yuppies,” Kurt said loftily before he could have second thoughts. It was too late as Sugar stared at him, wide-eyed, and Lauren adjusted her glasses at him with a pointed look.

“Who?” Sugar demanded, dropping the blouse she was folding onto the ground. Kurt eyed it unhappily and she picked it up with an eye-roll. “Who? Who who who who whowhowho?”

“No one you would know.”

“Are you guys together yet?”

“You could use a little booty-tapping to loosen that face,” Lauren commented, holding her hands up innocuously when Kurt shot a glare at her. “I'm just saying.”

“We just met, and I was looking for a suitable collar for my cat. It's a little more complicated when you're in a homophobic world ready to squash you with a leather boot,” he sighed, sagging a bit.

Sugar pouted. “Aw.”

“He could have cancer, for all I know,” Kurt said gloomily. “Or he could have commitment issues.”

“He could be straight,” Sugar said rather sensibly, punctuating her words with a snap of her gum. “Or he could already have a boyfriend.”

Kurt considered this. “I think I'd rather he have cancer.”

“Kurt!” she gasped, eyes widening almost comically.

“It's called sarcasm, you ever heard of that?” Lauren shook her head.

It was all speculation. Kurt didn't know anything about Blaine, nothing tangible. He liked bow ties and Brooks Brothers, he worked at PetPals, he gelled his hair as if his life depended on it, and he had the warmest hazel eyes.

And he could be Curly Q.

Kurt closed Timeless early that day and went to PetPals under the guise of buying cat food for Marigold. He didn't know if Blaine would be there or not, but he sighed quietly in relief when he entered the store and saw the gelled head bent over a piece of paper, right hand scribbling idly in the silence of the late hour. Blaine looked up when he heard the bell tinkling and he pushed the paper under a folder, but he had nothing but smiles for Kurt.

“Hey! Kurt, right?” The employee made a small wave. “How's your cat?”

“She's more interested in chewing the bows off of her collar than wearing it,” Kurt admitted. He had been all but devastated when Marigold mewled petulantly once he fastened the collar on, and when he took it off, she pawed and chewed at it as if it were a new toy. He met the same result when he tried on the gold collar and had to surrender to Marigold's unflinching amber eyes.

Blaine made a sympathetic noise. “That's too bad. So what are you here for?”

“Cat food. I'm trying out different flavors because she doesn't like chicken too much.” Liar, liar, skinny jeans on fire. “I thought I could buy a couple of bags and see how she likes them?”

“Well, we have foods over at aisle three...” Blaine came around and started for a shelf, but Kurt didn't follow. “Kurt?”

Kurt pulled at his scarf. Sometimes brutal honesty was the only way to go. “You're...you're Curly Q, aren't you?”

There was an inscrutable expression on Blaine's face, but his voice was steady as he said, “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You're the street artist who has been putting those stick figure sketches all over the city. I heard you one night. You said, 'From your friendly neighborhood street artist.' That was you, wasn't it?”

When Blaine didn't answer, Kurt huffed in frustration and put a hand on his hip. “Look, I used to sing. And I don't have perfect pitch, but I know it was you because I recognized your voice even if I couldn't see your face.” Softening, “I'm not here to get you in trouble. I just wanted to say that I like your drawings even if I don't understand them.”

Blaine watched him warily, but his posture relaxed and his arm shot up so that he could smooth a hand over gelled hair.

“You,” he began, “are something else, Kurt.”