At only fourteen, Blaine already knew that he was gay. More than that, he was a romantic and far too sentimental for his own good. Perhaps that was why he was so taken by graffiti, by the whole clandestine operation in which he crept out in the evening, armed with a flashlight, a brush, and a paint can. He was a lover come to leave notes for his sweetheart, the Cupid searching restlessly for his Psyche. It all made more sense in his head, but still his heart beat fast as a rush of adrenaline led him to the very brick wall where he had seen Josh, Daniel, and Tyler mess around. There was an empty beer bottle lying on its side and splatters of dried paint on the ground; the overall effect was hopelessly filthy and disordered.

Blaine sat back on his heels, eyes skimming his surroundings with a jittery air. It wasn't safe to be out alone this late with no one to watch for law-keepers. Professional graffiti artists definitely moved in small but tight-knit groups.

He didn't really have anyone at school. There was Sean, the only other gay kid, though their friendship was one forged by shared miseries. Blaine would have to do this on his own.

To keep the fear at bay, he hummed as he dipped his brush into red paint.

One song glory, one song before I go

Glory, one song to leave behind

Find one song, one last refrain

Glory, from the pretty boy front man

Because wasn't that the reason why he had watched, mystified, as three of his worst harassers made something beautiful with the same hands that had introduced him to so much pain? Society said that they would end up in jail, behind the counter in fast-food restaurants, or climbing up the ranks of the skyscrapers in big cities, and maybe society was right. But Blaine stared at the remnants of green and yellow bubble letters, illegible but decorative, and he meditated on the transience of such art—on the transience of life.

Who will know that I existed after I die? Who will know even when I'm alive?

To his classmates and tormentors, he was merely a part of the high school passage. They wouldn't even remember his name a year into college. Everything that he did would be completely forgotten not even within the century and he would be yet another discarded name and identity thrown into the wind, one singular person in the masses who could only envy the few who were immortalized.

It didn't matter if no one knew his name. But to have everything in his life be worth nothing? Blaine wanted something of his, something that he did, to be remembered. To be imprinted in the mind of one person. Something that could jostle the world a little.

A young man, find the one song

Before the virus takes hold

Glory, like a sunset

One song to redeem this empty life

This could be it. This could be his one song, and if one song was all he got, then he'd better make it memorable.

His stomached squirmed as he drew winding vines with human faces as flowers. He painted little castles with all angles and no curves. He tried animals; lopsided dogs, shapeless lions, and bulbous pigeons. He felt the guilt that squeezed at his throat because he imagined the exasperation of the police who would have to find some way to clean up the scribbles. He imagined middle-aged mothers wrinkling their noses at the ghastly drawings, nudging their children away from the wall. He imagined his classmates imaging a hooded juvenile, snickering as he covered the town with his chicken scratch.

Blaine's entire body thrummed with pleasure. He would be seen. He would be acknowledged.

He drew one last sketch before he hightailed it out of there, his watch showing that it was one in the morning. It was a caricature of himself, a stick figure with obscenely curly hair, round eyes, and no words for its mouth was a “X.” It held a little brush in its little hand and looked out to the world, as if holding its breath for the criticisms, the praises, the comments.

Blaine left without signing. In the years to come, he would toy with various pseudonyms, some that he would try out and some that would never see the light of day.

B. A.

Hobbit.

Blander.

André.

Roxy.

Dapperman.

Bowtie.

There were more excursions and Blaine learned to use a spray paint can when before, he had hesitated as it seemed to be the final nail in his coffin, the coffin of the law-abiding Blaine Anderson who only wanted the world to accept him. So along with the excursions, there were several attempts to end his night-prowling. He managed for a year at Dalton before breaking down.

Perhaps it was an addiction, but he was determined to hone it as well as he could.

It was after his freshman year at college and he had returned to Ohio with his parents, visiting the ancient relatives who were far too rooted to even fathom living anywhere else. One morning, he got up early to run a few errands before he had to interact with the family, consequently forgoing the gelled hairdo that he'd maintained from Dalton. He made a small trip to the Lima Bean, his favorite coffee shop which was still holding strong against Starbucks, and there he met a both dignified and devious woman in a peculiar magenta tracksuit. She was skillfully cutting ahead by blatantly insulting and then ignoring the people she cut. He watched with an air of trepidation as she finally approached him and she smirked at his deer-in-headlights impression.

“Your miserable excuse of a life isn't worth it,” she remarked when he struggled to stand his ground. “Move it, Curly Q. Nobody stands in the way of Sue Sylvester and her piping hot caffeine.”

He dazedly let her pass, touching his curls self-consciously.

That was when the idea took hold.

“Some artists,” Blaine said, squatting on the ground where he was fitting a cap onto a paint can, “make cardboard cut-outs, like stencils. And then they spray paint to get the result. But my character, Curly, isn't hard to draw. It's easier for me when I only have to carry around paint cans. Other people make stickers or giant posters. There's this French artist who makes mosaic pieces and glues them around. There's always a creative freedom when it comes to graffiti art, which I really appreciate because we're not all gangsters who like giant bubble letters and crude words.”

He studied the can in his hand—the paint color was Monarch Orange—and then looked up at Kurt. “You filmed all of that?”

“Of course,” Kurt said, lowering his camera. He'd asked Blaine if he could bring it along because he wanted to take a few pictures, maybe record a minute or two of action. In all honesty, he hadn't expected Blaine to consent to being filmed, but Blaine replied, “I trust you and if you really want to be careful, film only my hands and the art. Besides, it's a good idea to capture all of this on camera.” What remained unspoken was the temporariness of graffiti art, of how part of its beauty came from its short life in the world. But in a world of rapidly advancing technology, even the most insignificant picture could be caught forever.

“All right, I think I'm ready to go.”

Kurt followed Blaine, filming his back and watching the ground beneath his feet. It was late at night and they only had the streetlights to guide the way, but Blaine appeared confident and sure-footed.

They stopped at a dingy motel, a mailbox, and even a fountain. Blaine altered Curly's appearance to suit each location, giving it long legs or a distorted head whenever needed. He stuck with warm colors, reds and pinks and oranges, and when Kurt asked why, he said, “They make the world look like a better place.”

Though his favorite color was red. “Which is funny because you know how I went to Dalton? Our school colors were navy blue and red. We had this awful red vest that I rarely wore because my friends said it made me look chunky.” Blaine laughed, light-hearted, and kept his voice low. His eyes were glinting in the dark and he couldn't stop smiling, white teeth flashing at Kurt.

“You look good in red,” Kurt murmured without thinking.

“Glad you approve,” Blaine grinned, shrugging his shoulders to bring attention to the dark red polo shirt he was wearing. Kurt refused to be distracted by the short sleeves of the shirt and the way Blaine's arm muscles bulged in the moonlight, no matter how his mind drifted to the many romantic novels he'd read. Moonlight, really?

“You're lucky you're as cute as you are,” he said instead of blurting out something stupid like, “Take me home and never let me go.”

“I should have known you were only in this for my face.”

“Says the man who went gaga for my cat.”

“You're a hard man to tease, Kurt Hummel. I think I like it.”

Blaine was looser as Curly Q, with a wily edge to his gentlemanly personality. It was disconcerting and Blaine noticed after a while because he shot a significant look at Kurt.

“What?”

“I had you down as a talker,” Blaine said, his tone non-offensive. “But you haven't really talked at all.”

“There's a lot that I still don't know,” Kurt answered carefully.

“What do you want to know?” Blaine faced Kurt fully, his expression open and unguarded.

Chewing on his lower lip, Kurt thought about how surreal it was to be walking the streets at night with only Blaine for company. And this made him an accomplice of sorts, didn't it? He wasn't actively participating, but he was certainly standing by and allowing Blaine to do whatever he did with the spray paint cans and the vandalizing and everything. But the issue was less about legality than it was about engaging in a relationship with someone like Blaine and having to accept this.

Though it was so easy to forget, especially since they ended their first date with ice cream from a Baskin Robbins. Blaine had seen him home with a kiss to his cheek and stepped inside for a minute to stroke Marigold and coo at her purrs.

“Have you ever been arrested?”

“Yes. A few times.”

Kurt inhaled sharply. “Jailed?”

“Fined, mostly. But I don't paint derogatory slurs around town or anything, so I've gotten off pretty lightly. I'm not high on the police's list of concerns.”

In the dim light, Kurt's eyes looked pale and gray, and he fixed those eyes on Blaine, jaw stiff.

Blaine said gently, “If this isn't something you want to deal with, I understand.” There was a brief flash of distress over his face, but it quickly smoothed over as he insisted, “I don't want to force you into accepting this part of my life. I know it's not ideal for someone who doesn't want a complicated relationship. I would be out a lot, late at night. I would get arrested a few more times. I would travel sometimes, hitting new cities. It would be stressful on anyone who got involved with me.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and Kurt wanted to smooth the lines of tension that were still visible even at night. “This isn't for everyone, Kurt.”

Kurt made a noise of frustration. “It's not... I like you, Blaine. I like the way you make me feel. I like the way you're so confident about yourself, how you've figured your life out. I even like going out at night with you because I get to see more of what makes you you. And I'm perfectly aware that if I want to date Blaine Anderson, then I would be dating Curly Q too.”

“I like you too,” Blaine softened, his attention momentarily diverted, and Kurt felt his body lighten because being with Blaine was like walking on air. Never had Kurt held such easy conversations with a guy he was interested in; even if a romantic relationship didn't work out, he knew he'd want to keep Blaine in his life as a friend.

But. “Blaine,” he said, and it came out as cautionary.

The street artist sensed it. “Then what's bothering you? Talk to me.”

“Like I said, there's a lot that I don't know and this isn't my forte. This isn't my world yet, and I want it to be because it's a part of yours. I want to know more, but I don't even know where to start.”

By the end of that spiel, Kurt was panting slightly from the force of his words. Blaine's eyebrows moved upward as he took in everything.

“Are you scared of this?”

“I am, a little. But that's not nearly as important.”

“So it's just because you're inexperienced?”

“Partially. I feel like a baby penguin who has to learn how to fly to be with a warbler.”

“I see what you did there,” Blaine chuckled, but he crossed his arms, tapping his fingers thoughtfully. “You know, I usually go out with two other artists that I know. There's safety in numbers and it helps to have an extra pair of eyes to look out for people. I could introduce you—it won't have to be at night when we're painting the town red! They have lives outside of graffiti like me and they're in the area. I could call them, see if them want to meet up?”

“Who are they?”

“They go by Pink Lady and Meerkat, but you can call them Quinn and Sebastian.”

“Quinn?” Kurt jerked involuntarily. “Quinn Fabray?”

“How'd you know?” Blaine glanced over at him, hazel eyes questioning.

“We...we went to the same high school.”

“Oh, I figured something like that should have happened. We started hanging out because we all came from Ohio. Sebastian's actually all over the place because he went to Paris—he met a bunch of street artists who were part of the early graffiti scene over there.”

Images of the former blonde Cheerio crossed Kurt's mind, and he was immediately desperate to know what happened to her. She'd taken up a decent percentage of his thoughts during McKinley, if only because she was on Finn Hudson's arm half the time. Yet she had also changed so drastically during their senior year, doing a completely 180 turn, and he could bet that no one else from their class knew where she'd ended up.

“So would you like to...accompany me? When we meet up?”

Kurt straightened his posture, chin up. “I'd love to.”

Because you didn't always get to see where your fellow classmates ended up. In the same way, you didn't always get to see how you've influenced people. As for the people who influenced you, you didn't always get the chance to tell them.

Not always. But sometimes.

They ended the rendezvous with a chaste kiss and one last gift from Blaine. He quickly painted the orange outline of a cat with big ears, long whiskers, and a sly tail. Kurt covered his mouth to refrain from laughing too hard and too joyfully, and he filmed the process and gave Blaine one last kiss.

“I'll call you,” Blaine breathed out against his lips. And he slunk away into the night.

It didn't matter then that in the morning, a more immature street artist would paint the words “Got Pussy?” right underneath the drawing. The moment had been captured and it belonged to the only two people who mattered.

During the second half of his sophomore year at high school, Kurt was having a marginally easier time at McKinley. His football stint eased a number of jocks from his back, and though he continued to be pelted by abusive slurs, the dumpster tossing and locker slamming had decreased exponentially.

His one-sided crush on Finn Hudson hadn't moved forward or backward; Finn was still obstinately straight and didn't spare a second glance for Kurt even though they were on somewhat friendly terms, friendly meaning that Finn would say, “Hi,” and Kurt would breathe out, “Hello,” in response before losing the nerve to continue a conversation. The quarterback was single at the moment, taking a break from both Rachel and Quinn (which was sort of a shame because despite his hopeless infatuation, Kurt enjoyed a good old love triangle as much as the next gossiper as long as he wasn't directly privy to all of the crazy that went on).

That didn't stop Rachel Berry from searching for more additions to the New Directions. There was this ongoing rivalry with another group, Vocal Adrenaline, and more trouble had occurred when the group's set list was leaked and they ended up winging Sectionals. It was astounding that they had won regardless of the leaked list and Kurt was occasionally bombarded by an incredibly vivid image of Principal Figgins grinding his teeth as the New Directions carried on belting songs that ranged from extremely inappropriate to extremely old.

“We barely got enough people,” Mercedes sighed as they lined up in the cafeteria. “We had to ask one of the band students to step in as our twelfth member.”

Kurt counted up, “So there's you, Rachel, Tina, Artie, Finn. And Quinn, Brittany, Santana—”

“Yeah, I still don't know why Sue would let three of her Cheerios join up. I keep thinking that she's got moments of sanity, and then she does something like this. Well, Quinn's not a Cheerio anymore, so.”

“Puck, and that's got to be because of Quinn. And those quiet football players, Mike and Matt.”

“That's why Rachel's looking for a twelfth member who ain't a band kid.”

Mercedes brought up her elbow to poke Kurt, peering at him through the curled ringlets on her forehead that he'd helped her with, but he avoided it and changed the topic swiftly. “It's a shame you never got to sing 'And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going.' Getting Rachel Berry to listen to you is like getting teeth pulled. Painful and with no benefits in the long run.”

“But she came through in the end,” Mercedes acquiesced grudgingly. “If she hadn't stepped up with 'Don't Rain On My Parade,' that would have been the end of glee.”

“I thought you were trying to wean her off of her solo addiction.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures, Kurt.”

“Does this mean I get to say 'I told you so' if she ever clamps her soul-sucking vocal chords on glee club again?”

“Kurt.”

“I'll take that as a yes.”

“You're impossible,” she rolled her eyes, but her tone was mostly fond.

They sat on a table with Tina and Artie who were sweet enough considering that they were daily exposed to a large dose of Rachel Berry, her Ego, and her Talent. Though Kurt appreciated a couple of friendly faces as much as the next person, he didn't appreciate Rachel appearing out of nowhere and hovering while talking rapidly about their New Directions assignment of the week (Mr. Schuester more or less advocated singing your feelings to the whole group, which was a good way of venting but ultimately solved nothing).

But this time as she marched over, no tray in hand because there was nothing vegan, she headed for Kurt.

“Why is she looking at me?” Kurt hissed to Mercedes, who was looking a little guilty.

“I might have mentioned you've got one hell of a voice.”

“Recently?”

“I said she pulled through, but she was getting on my nerves crowing about 'Don't Rain On My Parade.' And Kurt, we both know that your range is incredible. Give me a break.”

“You are dead to me.”

“Kurt!”

He cringed at her voice and turned around, resigned to his fate. Rachel was wearing a fire engine-red cardigan over a plaid skirt and an equally colorful headband. Her bangs and long socks only completed the Catholic schoolgirl or “naughty librarian” look that she claimed to have. Kurt, on the other hand, wanted to close his eyes and never open them again because it wasn't just her style that offended him, it was everything about her.

“We share a World History class so I believe that introductions are not needed, but there's never any harm in perfecting an entrance,” she said with barely a pause. “On the slight chance that you do not recognize me by face or name, my name is Rachel Berry and I am a featured member of our glee club, the New Directions.”

“Charmed, I'm sure,” Kurt muttered, fighting the desire to turn back to his lunch.

“I have notice that the only extracurricular you participate in is football, and while that is an admirable sport—”

“Just because Finn's in it,” Artie whispered to Tina.

“I am here to offer you a chance to audition for the New Directions as a note to make on your future college applications.”

At Kurt's twisted expression as Rachel looked at him expectantly, Mercedes jumped to his defense. “Not everyone likes sticking their fingers in every pie hole they see. If Kurt doesn't want to join, nobody's gonna force him, so back off, Berry.”

She rounded at Mercedes. “I'm sorry if I'm the only one who cares about the state of glee club, but Mr. Schuester is depending on me—”

“You?”

“Told you so,” Kurt said with no small amount of smugness.

“Shut it.”

“Well?” Rachel demanded.

He raised from his seat and picked up his tray, appetite sufficiently sated. As he walked past Rachel who was watching his every move, he inclined his head toward her. “As flattering as it is to be singled out by you, I have no intention of swaying in the background, holding hands as you slowly but surely seize every single moment of attention in a club that's turned into a one-trick pony.” When she took a step forward, most likely intent on countering his argument, he held up a hand. “You're a star, Rachel Berry, and I'm not interested in getting burned.”

The most important person in Rachel's world was herself, and that was how it should be. But the most important person in Kurt's world wasn't himself, and how could he stand against her when he realized other things mattered more, like his father and surviving McKinley?

After Rachel's presence in lunch, Kurt had a fairly uneventful day, which was a blessing. At the end of sixth period, he decided to go to the boys' locker rooms to stock up on an extra outfit or two. There were those unlucky days when he would be slushied more than once, and it never hurt to be prepared. So as he was opening his locker and carefully lining the bottom with a small towel (the locker rooms were some of the most disgusting places in the school, and that was saying something), he heard voices coming from shower stalls. They probably belonged to jocks, cleaning up after a work-out or practice, and he hurriedly finished his task and whisked out of sight into a bathroom stall.

“—I know, right?”

“Thinks he's so high and mighty now that he's played with the big boys.”

“I bet he likes it, that dirty pervert.”

“Have you ever seen his junk? What if he's actually a girl?”

“Well, I'm not about to look at Hummel for more than two seconds.”

With a sinking heart, Kurt easily discerned that they were talking about him. He crouched on top of the toilet seat, holding his bag in his arms and trembling as he was forced to listen. And to his horror, the dialogue only got worse.

“—has a crush on Hudson, doesn't he?”

“Finn Hudson? Shut up, for real?”

“He asked Hudson for help getting on the team, and he looks at him a lot. Let me tell you, Hummel's got it bad.”

“Hey, maybe Finn's got it bad too. He's already with that lame-o singing group. And he burned Quinn and the Berry girl.”

“That'd be rich.”

Their voices faded as they toweled off, changed, and ambled away. But Kurt couldn't stop shivering from his paralyzed state on top of the toilet seat. He'd taken so much crap from the students in this school, and to hear that people guessed, even knew, that he stared at Finn a second or two longer than was appropriate by the standards of the average Ohio teenager—

It was utterly humiliating and unfair because no one would have said twice if he were a girl, any girl.

He buried his head in his arms, face squished against his bag. He took deep breaths in and out, staving off a potential panic attack. (Like suffocating, like drowning, like hearing the world through another wall just like this one.)

And he let out a single sob.