It was enough knowing that Kurt was a mere ten feet away getting undressed and ready for a shower, it was another thing entirely to just stand there and subject himself to having to listen to the running water and imagine Kurt in there.

Soapy... with water running all over his body... such a nice body.

Blaine groaned and headed down to Wes and David's room; he'd use their bathroom for his now cold shower.

Kurt was folding his pants neatly and setting them on the sink when it finally hit him. He had just had an almost normal interaction on his part with Blaine. Considering that said boy had been a rambling half-dressed wreck for his part of the interaction mattered very little to Kurt, because all this meant was that he was probably going to survive these next four months! He hadn't stuttered, blushed like a maniac and frozen on the spot after his little laugh-a-thon (he chose to carefully ignore the blushing and the freezing on the spot that had preceded it); he had simply talked to Blaine like a normal human being, teased him a little and gone on his merry way to the shower.

Yes, it might have been a little flirtatious but the world hadn't ended had it?

After all Blaine was just begging to be flirted with after that whole flustered, flushed and floundering routine of his.

And all because he was still wearing my gloves. Well judging by his tearing them off and handing them to me red as a lobster, I'm assuming it's because of the gloves. That has to mean something right? If he was embarrassed to be caught wearing them even after he had taken off his coat and blazer and tie and was half-way through taking off his shirt, that has to mean something.

Kurt stepped into the shower, swinging one leg over the edge of the clawed tub followed by the other until he was directly under the surprisingly strong jet of warm water.

I mean, why would he still have the gloves on anyway? Because he didn't want to take them off, right? Maybe I'm not the only one feeling something between us here.

Kurt grabbed his travel sized shampoo bottle and began to lather his hair. He thought absent-mindlessly about how he'd have to go to a pharmacy to pick up some more before the week was out.

Oh god, what if I hadn't walked in when I did? Would he have continued getting undressed with the gloves on?

Kurt rinsed out his hair and opted not to repeat; his hair was likely damaged from the long air plane ride, better not to damage it further. He put in conditioner and started soaping himself up as he let the conditioner treat his hair.

Wouldn't that have been a sight. His chest was beautiful, I bet the rest of him is just as sun-kissed, and muscled, and gorgeous, the bastard.

Images were flooding Kurt's mind as he rinsed off the soap and conditioner; Blaine lying on his bed, touching himself all over with Kurt's gloves, flushed as red as he was when Kurt walked in, sweating and panting and speaking delicious words in Italian, none of which Kurt understood but his own name, being uttered between broken moans. And then it was Kurt's gloved hands touching Blaine, driving him slowly to the edge of pleasure. Blaine shot up his hands to touch Kurt as well and Kurt could almost feel his hands on his body.

But that was because Kurt had slowly begun stroking his chest and cock, lost in his sudden fantasies. Once Kurt realized that the hands touching him were all too familiar, his eyes snapped open and he took his hands off of himself as though they had been burnt.

A voice rang out in his head.

Kurt,tell me you were not just masturbating to some ridiculous fantasy about some boy you just met.

...no?

Kurt could feel the bitch glare his mind was giving him. He put his hand on the shower regulator and twisted it until it went from hot to freezing. His subconscious mind may have started something it oughtn't have, but no way in hell he was letting himself finish.

In another bathroom, a similarly cold shower had already taken place, and Blaine was now occupying his time trying to figure out what on earth he was going to do with his hair.

I shouldn't have let it grow out so much, I should know by now that if I give it an inch my hair will take a curly disastrous mile.

Blaine kept running his hand through his hair as if simply by willing it, it would cooperate and turn smooth and complacent. He cursed himself for not bringing down his toiletries with him in his rushed escape from his room but then he realized that he probably hadn't packed his once precious hair gel anyway, since he had let up on using it since his current... despondency began.

Blaine's expression darkened slightly at the memory of the incident that had started it all, and at the realization that he really had let him affect him as deeply as Wes liked to think. He ran his hand through his hair again, trying desperately to make it understand that he just needed to control this only little thing in his life right now, he just needed it to lieflat.

This is hopeless. I don't know why I'm even bothering in the first place.

And then the pair of bright multicoloured eyes that had haunted him since he first saw them just a few hours ago- good lord has it only been a few hours?-came back to him, and he knew why he had to make an effort to at least pretend like his life wasn't falling apart at the seams. That hewasn't falling apart at the seams. He thought of the boy's perfectly coiffed hair, hair that managed to look impeccable even after a seven hour flight.

Blaine sighed and brought his hand down from his head. How on earth was he going to compete with that? How could he have deluded himself enough to think that perfect boy with perfect hair would want to be with, or deal with, or even associate with his curly mess?

Blaine stared forlornly at his reflection in the mirror, trying to ignore the little voice inside his head that was mocking him for letting his hair become an analogy for his insecurities.

Blaine couldn't deal with this, not right now.

He shut his eyes and drew a slow breath, willing himself to stop his downward spiral and to snap on the Dalton mask he had perfected long ago. The bubbly boy he was when he performed or when he was hanging around with Wes and David was not acceptable for the hallowed halls of Dalton; he knew that and had accordingly constructed the suitable persona for the situation: Dalton Blaine.

Dalton Blaine was smooth, Dalton Blaine was charming, Dalton Blaine had everything under control. He smiled with his lips and not with his eyes, because Blaine's natural smile was this ridiculous crinkly thing with too many teeth showing and too much exuberance for a Dalton man. Dalton Blaine didn't get flustered and worried about what beautiful French boys thought of him and of his hair because Dalton men don't have crushes, or sex, or urges to join men they barely knew in the shower.

Dalton Blaine was the perfect mask to put on because Dalton Blaine didn't let himself feel. At least, not enough to let himself get hurt.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. If my life is a play then it's a commedia dell'arte and I will wear my masks until they are as much a part of me and as molded to my skin as Arlecchino's mask is molded to Ferruccio Soleri.

Blaine took one last deep breath and as he felt his body adapt- his posture straightening, the tension in his shoulders leaving him, his head held tall and proud- before he finally opened his eyes.

The boy in the reflection looked like somebody else.

Perfect. A perfect boy with only his slightly unfortunate hair to hint at something else.

Before he could start to wish for his once beloved hair gel once again Blaine turned around and exited his friend's bathroom. He thanked his friends politely and left the room quickly but smoothly- looking like he had pressing matters to attend to but nothing so important that it should drastically affect his demeanour. Dalton Blaine's gait.

He missed in his haste the look of worry and panic reflected on his best friends' faces.

"Tu penses pas que c'est bizarre que, genre, on est parti de France � 1:00 et que c'est seulement 3:00? On a pris, genre, une heure � nous installer depuis qu'on est arriv�s de l'a�roport. C'est comme si on a voyag� dans le temps. Ou genre que le vol ne c'est pas pass�. C'est come la Matrice..." Don't you think it's weird that, like, we left France at 1:00 and that it's only 3:00? We took like, an hour to settle in here since we got here from the airport. It's like we travelled in time. Or like the flight didn't happen. Like the Matrix...

Kurt shot his brother an unimpressed look from his spot in front of his Finn's dresser. Having showered and already unpacked all of his clothes into the empty dresser in his room, he took it upon himself to lend his incompetent brother a hand, knowing that if he didn't, the poor clothes would probably stay in his suitcase until he had worn them all.

"Tu me niases, non? Tu comprends le concept des fuseaux horaires, non?" You're kidding me right? You do understand the concept of time zones, no?

"Ah, ouais..." Oh, yeah...

Kurt resisted the urge to slam his head on the dresser door, stopping himself only out of fear that if he did, he would end up as thick as Finn one day.

Perish the thought.

Kurt instead ignored his brother and continued to carefully hang and re-fold all the clothes that Finn had carelessly shoved into his suitcase. At the bottom were some neatly folded clothes and Kurt could just picture the scene as clearly as he had been there himself: Carole standing in front of Finn's closet, grabbing clothes from the pile on the floor and folding them lovingly before placing them in the suitcase on his bed, all while chastising her son for being such a slob, until Burt called for something, or the food on the stove started smelling ready and leaving Finn to finish up by himself.

Kurt smiled a little and folded the last shirt with the same care Carole would, telling himself that he was definitely not missing his step-mother already.

"Et voil�! Fini. Range ta valise en sous de ton lit et viens visiter les filles avec moi, j'm'ennui d�j�." And voil�! Done. Put your suitcase away under your bed and come visit the girls with me, I'm bored already.

"Euh, ben, j'y irais avec toi mais Monsieur Schue a dit que les gar�ons sont interdits d'aller sur l'�tage des filles." Uh, I would dude, but Mr.Schue said that the boys aren't allowed to go on the girls' floor.

"Comment �a que j'ai pas re�u le message?" Why didn't I get the message?

"J'pense que c'est parce que t'es gai, bro." I think it's because you're gay, bro.

"Ah."

Kurt stared at Finn for a moment, wondering whether he should be offended or not. In the end he figured Mr. Schue's slight bigotry worked out to his advantage since he could go visit his girls and therefore didn't have to spend all his time stuck to his brother or the Italians, so with one last haughty look at Finn he turned around and left with a "too bad for you then" said over his shoulder with a little wave. As he exited, he caught sight of Blaine who had left the opposite room moments before. He looked a bit different though, even from behind. Kurt told himself it was just nonsense before heading down to Rachel and Santana's room to make sure they hadn't destroyed it (or each other) yet. He would kill the couple of hours until dinner time with his girls and forget all about half-naked, glove-wearing, adorably curly-haired Italians.

Dinner was a pretty quiet affair for all sorts of reasons, but Kurt figured it was mostly because everybody was feeling the jet-forward; even though it was only six o'clock it felt like past midnight to everybody and it had been a long, long day. Even Rachel and Kurt who had napped on the plane were showing signs of total exhaustion, and Rachel liked to appear inhuman in her energy at all times.

Another reason for the silence was that apparently hadn't been kidding when he talked about enforcing the English only rule, but the fact is that at this point, the kids knew very little English at all, so it was mostly Sam and Mr. Schuester yammering about all the sights they'd get to see and what Sam would probably get up to while the kids took English lessons at the immersion school they'd be attending for the next four months.

"I'll probably just stick around to help them out. I mean, I thought about getting a job tutoring some of the other kids to earn some spending money but my dyslexia might make that a little difficult..."

"I'm sure you'll find something Sam," replied Mr. Schue. "Maybe you can get a tutoring job that focuses more on the spoken part of English than the written."

Sam shot his teacher a small smile from his big lips and went back to picking at his food; the time difference was messing with his appetite.

"Yeah, maybe. Thanks Mr. Schue."

"Um, you could help with us Italian students" said Wes piping up from his spot beside Schuester at the head of the table. "We are quite, um, diligent with the literature but the speaking is not so easy. We will you pay, clear."

Sam looked at the Asian Italian in shock, not expecting him to have kept up with the conversation or for him to care about what Sam would do, but after he shook off his initial surprise with smiled widely at the teen sitting across from him.

"Sure! That'd be awesome! And you say 'pay you'not 'you pay'. Also it's clearly, not clear."

"Oh no, you are very clear" replied Wes, missing the point.

Kurt looked on from his seat at the opposite end of the table, as their stilted conversation continued with a smile on his lips. He was glad Sam was making friends and that he had found himself a sort of job; he knew it hadn't been easy on his family to pay for the trip. His smiled slipped a bit once he looked a few seats down at Blaine.

He looked different, but Kurt couldn't put his finger on how.He thought he'd been imagining things when he saw him leave his friends' and Sam's rooms earlier this afternoon but now he knew he had been right. It looked like Blaine was... restrained, or muffled maybe. Like he wasn't being himself, even though Kurt, who had had all of three interactions with the man, could hardly be called an expert on how Blaine is. Regardless, Kurt's line of sight kept wandering over to Blaine's spot at the middle of the table, watching him slice the chicken they were eating with the utmost care and precision, and bring the small bites to his mouth with a grace that seemed beyond his years, a grace not meant to be had by stumbling awkward teenagers who blushed beautiful when they were caught stripping his clothes with borrowed gloves still on.

Kurt was puzzled as to why this bothered him so much.

"Alors, Kurt, um, you uh, merde, need buy... shampoing?"

"Shampoo, Rachel, it's shampoo in English", offered Sam from the end of the table.

"Oui, uh, yes. Shampoo? At la pharmacie?"

"Yes, sinon-"

"Otherwise, Kurt", said Sam.

"Otherwise, my hair will souffrir."

"Suffer."

"Merci, Sam."

"You're welcome", said the blond, either oblivious to the other's irritation or deftly ignoring it.

"The your hair is, um, pretty", said a voice from the middle of the table in a soft tone that seemed as though it hadn't meant to speak at all.

When Kurt saw Blaine's slightly surprised look he figured it must have surprised him too.

"Merci. Yours are more though," Kurt replied, blushing to the tip of his ears. He took a strand of his hair and twirled it in a pale imitation of Blaine's bouncy head of hair to try and convey the message that he liked his curly locks.

The weird muffled or restrained look to Blaine slipped a little and Kurt saw his eyes shining brightly for a moment, before the light was snuffed out and Blaine replied with a smile.

But his eyes remained impassive and Kurt didn't get a glimpse of the boy's pearly white teeth. Kurt looked down at his food and continued eating in silence.

No matter how handsome it was, Kurt decided he didn't like that smile on Blaine's face.

That night, everybody crashed the minute their heads hit the pillow, regardless of the early hour. Kurt had changed into his pyjamas in the bathroom after Thad had his turn, and by the time Blaine had exited the bathroom himself, both boys were fast asleep.

Blaine didn't stay awake tossing and turning about how he was sleeping next to what could very well be the boy of his dreams. Dalton Blaine was still there, the mask easier to keep on when he didn't wash it away along with his hair gel for the night.

And if he spent the night dreaming about soft pale skin, leather gloves and blue eyes, Blaine told himself it didn't reflect on his skills as an actor.