Kurt wasn't sure he would ever get used to the fact that, in most of the city, the only way to tell how far along the change in seasons was was by what jackets people were wearing. Among men of any standing whatsoever, the pattern was like clockwork. Labor Day meant an end to seersucker jackets and soon the whole city seemed to swelter their way through early September in the lightest-weight wool they could manage while still appearing fashionable and well-to-do as the last gasp of steamy summer weather hung on a few weeks longer than the rules of fashion allowed. Early October brought lightweight trench coats in tans and camels and pale streaked greys, but by a week before Halloween when the first cold front swept into the city and left people complaining about temperatures that they would rejoice over come March, the streets were filled with subtle variations on the same woolen overcoat: knee-length, single-breasted, with a notch lapel. Early evening brought entire blocks of nothing but fedoras and overcoats to the point where Kurt found himself surreptitiously counting the number of greys versus blacks versus browns and silently cheering the men who dared to wear tweed.

He'd had such high hopes for this city. He had imagined a world of swirling frock coats and elegant cloaks and an assortment of interesting hats and a bevy of accessories. He had pictured a world where, with a nearly-unlimited number of retailers, the men of New York could have their choice of a variety of styles and colours. And surely with the level of sophistication, class, and education that New Yorkers had, the men - or at least their wives, Kurt supposed - should be able to select something a little more interesting, to style it accordingly. He had dreamed of a world with fashion in vibrant hues and daring cuts and wound up in a world of felted grey wool single-breasted overcoats.

Nothing had turned out the way he had planned it.

He knew now that perhaps it had been just a bit naive to assume that the city would stop upon their arrival, then whir to life because they were going to set the world ablaze with their talent. But surely it was supposed to be more than this. Surely they were supposed to have better than this by now - it had been almost seventeen months! He was supposed to be a design assistant at the right hand of Hubert de Givenchy, creating simple, elegant looks to be worn by icons like Jackie Kennedy and - his personal muse of the moment - Audrey Hepburn - all on the way to creating his own House. That was how everyone he admired had begun his career: working under a few major designers before striking out on their own to critical acclaim and immense success. Dior and Balmain had worked as primary designers for Lucien Lelong before opening their houses, and Yves Saint Laurent had worked for Dior until he was drafted and had recently opened his own house that the entire fashion world was taken with. Givenchy had worked for Jacques Fath and Robert Piguet and the incredible Elisa Schiaparelli (Kurt's most recent fashion discovery and current obsession) before creating his own line at only 25; Kurt had a lot of ground to make up in the next 5 years to meet the same benchmark. He was supposed to be well on his way to that goal, to taking the fashion world by storm. He wasn't supposed to be the assistant fabric-cutter for Mainbocher, where the last fresh idea had been corsets in the late 30s.

And that was still doing better than Rachel. Rachel, who had yet to set foot on a stage for anything other than an audition. Rachel, who got secretarial job after secretarial job, only to quit within two or three weeks because the hours conflicted with an audition that she was certain would lead to her big break.

They were supposed to be stars. They were supposed to have taken the world - or at least the city - by storm. But someone had neglected to point out a simple fact to them, Kurt realized now: Just like they had flocked to New York, fleeing from their small town to the center of the cultural universe, armed with what they considered to be a fresh new taken on the glamourous-yet-old things? So had people just like them, from every other small town in the country. The streets were filled with them - you could spot them easily in winter as they lacked the uniform overcoat and dressed more like Finn - and on particularly bad days, Kurt wanted to stand at the bus depot or walk into the main concourse of Pennsylvania Station down on 31st and scream at them all to go back home. He honestly wasn't sure whether his goal was to get as much of his competition out of the city as he could, or to tell them to save themselves - to get out while they still could, before their dreams and souls had been destroyed by the harsh reality of the grimy city, when they could still go back to their hometowns with their heads held high and do something with their lives there.

That wasn't an option for them, he knew. They would go crazy if they went back to Ohio. But maybe, for some of the kids hanging down there, his shouting might serve as useful guidance as well as his own catharsis.

In the first few months, they had talked about it - going back. When things got really awful, when their tiny apartment's electricity went out for three days because the creepy landlord didn't pay the building's bills; when the first shooting down the block happened; when they found out that theirs was the neighbourhood in West Side Story - and, in fact, their building had been considered for the exterior shorts before the director moved it a couple blocks down and one over, delaying the construction project there for months...that first summer, they had talked about it a lot. But their mutual love of musicals had a solution for everything; a few rousing verses of Ohio, complete with their own ad-libbed gripes about their former home and its backwoods, backwards, bigoted attitudes always helped diffuse the urge to leave the city as quickly as possible.

They didn't talk about it anymore. Kurt wasn't sure if it was because things were better or just because they couldn't bear the thought of skulking back, expertly-millinered hat in-hand, and admitting failure. For his part, things were certainly no less bleak than they had been a year ago, but he wasn't about to admit it to anyone - not even Rachel.

Oddly, it was easier to get along with her now that they had no common pursuits. Maybe it really had just been competition keeping them at each other's throats all these years. He actually enjoyed her company now, even if he didn't always need to hear her rendition of "Cock-Eyed Optimist" a dozen times the night before every audition. Even so, he couldn't help but feel a little bitter at their continued faux-relationship: it wasn't supposed to be necessary once they got here.

Maybe that was what bothered him the most, what angered him more than any other slight and unfounded expectation. Seventeen months in the city that was supposed to have plenty of people around whom he would be safe, surrounded by individuals with creative pursuits that Kurt had thought for quite awhile meant people like himself, and nothing. No one to talk to. No groups. No places to go. No one who could understand what it felt like keeping this particular secret under wraps so long after he thought he would have to.

No one to love.

It was never supposed to be like that. It wasn't supposed to be him and Rachel crammed into a two-bedroom apartment that barely fit one person where he was strictly prohibited from painting any walls or hanging anything semi-permanent. It wasn't supposed to be going home to quiet evenings with the least-expensive dinner the two of them could find, to enjoy their one and only luxury: the secondhand television set. It was supposed to be elegant dinner parties with large groups of friends in an enormous, immaculately-decorated apartment, on the arm of-

...He thought of him a lot. More than he would ever admit to anyone. More than he wanted to admit to himself. Some days it was in anger, hoping Blaine was as miserable in California as he was in New York because that was the only way there could be justice in the universe. Some days it was idle curiosity, wondering merely what Blaine was doing. If he was enjoying school. If he had found a group to sing with, because the idea of Blaine giving up music the way Kurt had was too painful to even contemplate.

Some days he woke up with an empty spot in his chest so cavernous that it felt like he could never fill it up, like someone had dug all the way through him and he had a hole in him so wide that, were someone to walk into his bedroom at that moment, they would be able to see the sheets through him. Some days it felt like he would never in his life be able to stop feeling alone and abandoned and betrayed.

Those were usually the days that led to being angry and spiteful. He knew Blaine didn't miss him, and that was what made it all the worse.

He was supposed to have found someone else by now, a handsome man who understood his passions and wouldn't be ashamed of him. But so far, nothing even came close. So far he hadn't even been able to meet a single other confirmed homosexual, though he had his suspicions about a few of his coworkers and several boys Rachel had talked about having an interest in.

Which was why he stood on the street corner, tugging his coat more tightly around himself against the cold October night air. The streetlights pooling on West 59th Street lit just as far as the edge of the park, where the first row of trees hadn't quite lost their leaves yet. The scarlets and siennas and goldenrods weren't nearly as vibrant as the hues back home and peaked about two weeks later than Kurt was used to; still, it was nice to see some authentic indicator of the change in season - something that wasn't the same identical trench coats with ugly ties peeking out above the double-breasted tan collar.

It had been five weeks since he had seen The Scarf. He had been working late, courtesy of a tailor who underestimated the size of the pleats in the design which meant Kurt had to completely redrape, recalculate, and recut the pattern pieces; he had emerged from the subway at Columbus Circle around 10 and was just about to turn up Broadway when he saw it - a silk scarf in vibrant pinks and tans, with an intriguingly geometric prints. He had never seen anything like it; every scarf he had seen was either solid-coloured chiffon or some synthetic imitation thereof, or with some sort of swirling floral print, or once every so often something with polka dots. This was exquisite, modern and chic, and Kurt instantly wanted it.

His attention was drawn almost immediately to the wearer of The Scarf. Who else in the city where sameness was almost as required as it had been in Ohio, would have such a work of art around their neck? It was tied just so around the slim, pale neck of a man with delicate features - a narrow, upturned nose, a weak pointed chin, large dark eyes that stood out against his light skin even in the dim light of evening. He walked with another gentleman, broader than the wearer of The Scarf, with neatly-parted brown hair. Though he wore the same jacket as every other man in town, The Scarf's owner had an air about him when he walked that made him stand out - an intrinsic grace, a way of walking that seemed light and neat.

This man was like him. Kurt knew in a way he hadn't since he'd gotten hints of a kinship from Blaine early in their friendship - this man, ad possibly also his companion, was a homosexual, too. But what could he do? He couldn't very well shout across the circle "Take me to other men!". He practically sprinted across the street toward the two, but they disappeared around the corner too quickly for him to catch up. By the time he turned onto Central Park West, all traces of the men - and The Scarf - were gone.

But Kurt had never been someone who gave up quite that easily.

Mercedes thought he was crazy when he started planning their evenings around hanging out on a street corner. He didn't see what the problem was - especially in early fall, when the air was crisp and fresh and such a nice change from their respective claustrophobic, stuffy apartments. Why not spend time sitting on a bench at Columbus Circle with his eyes trained on the park in case The Scarf - or possibly the same man with an even more striking scarf - walked past? Sure, there were more than a few guys who walked past on their way from Kurt's neighbourhood down toward Hells Kitchen to get into fights that he chose to imagine more like West Side Story than like the gruesome stories he heard on the news, and at a certain point it did get too cold to enjoy sitting on the edge of the fountain, but this was important.

Really, he swore, Mercedes was just irritated because it meant her roommate beat her home and locked her out of their bedroom so she could entertain her boyfriend until all hours of the night. Of course, with four girls in a two-bedroom apartment, he was shocked none of them had killed anyone with a high heel. Supposedly having them all live together made rehearsing and recording easier, but from the stories she told him, Kurt was beginning to think their manager just wanted to keep all of them where he could see them. Either way, she had jumped at the chance to get out of the apartment with him and Rachel, and he had to admit he wasn't too disappointed that he didn't have to listen to the two of them bicker all night.

She stopped coming with him around Columbus Day, and he had to admit that he missed her company. The time passed a lot slower when he was just staring into space, and while he thought at first that it meant he would pay more attention because he wouldn't be distracted by all the gossip about her crazy roommates, or telling her about his obnoxious boss who asked him questions that had nothing to do with the task at hand, or talking about what movies they would go see once either of them had enough money that they could spare a little to go out for the night...but in reality, he spent a lot more time daydreaming as he stared at the corner of the park.

He wondered if the The Scarf might show up.

He wondered where the guy had bought it. Where he'd found such a thing, because Kurt had been doing more than his share of window-shopping over the past year and had never seen anything like it. Maybe the man bought it in Europe - something that stylish was probably from Paris or Milan, somewhere he dreamed of going...somewhere that a year ago would have seemed within reach, but now all he saw were dollar signs as he tried to contemplate where in the world he would ever come up with the hundreds of dollars it would take to make a trip like that.

Were there people like him in Europe, like them? He assumed there had to be, he doubted there was something specifically American about the phenomenon, especially considering it was far from a tolerated condition. Maybe there were even more there, living among beautiful people who designed scarves like That One and wore them with that kind of grace.

He wondered where the guy had been going. If he was coming from somewhere important, or going to somewhere important, because very few people would wear that work of art around their neck just to walk around the park. He would, of course, but he was wearing a Schiaparelli shoe hat in classic black and shocking pink. He understood that every moment was an opportunity for fashion, but no one else he knew did. So either this gentleman understood it as well, or he was going somewhere where he needed to look his best. Either way, Kurt needed to find him and get to know him.

He wondered if the other man was The Scarf's boyfriend. He wondered if the one with so much grace had found someone at all.

He wondered if he was lonely.

He refused to give a certain someone the satisfaction of wondering if that person had been right. It felt like it, sometimes - like New York, for all its glitz and glamour and star power, wasn't any better than Ohio. Nothing was different now except a few new-to-him luxe pieces in his wardrobe and a much, much smaller living space, and a lot less money, and a lot less optimism. He felt darker now - enough that he didn't care how melodramatic that was - and for a moment he would almost let himself wonder if, had he stayed, things would be better.

If he hadn't insisted on this so hard. If he hadn't pushed-

Or maybe he should have stopped being so proud and called him. He knew at least a few of the Warblers could get in touch with him if he really wanted, and maybe he should have just sucked it up and called California. Or been impulsive and moved out there, tried to find-

He wondered if things could have been different. If what he'd been looking forward to and dreaming of for his entire life wasn't actually anything like what he'd envisioned, he wondered what was stopping him now except pride and the passage of time.

...He wondered if Blaine was happy.

He wondered if Blaine ever wondered about him.

He was wondering so hard that he almost missed it - the sound of people laughing. The laughter was high-pitched but not as high as Mercedes, nervous, almost giddy, like two people who have gotten away with something they never expected to - as though the adrenaline of what they had done and the nervous energy over getting caught released at exactly the same time to leave the two people gasping and tittering excitedly. His head jerked up when he heard it, a strange sound this time of night in this part of town; it was hardly the epicenter of bars that catered toward the young crowd, and most people around here who got away with something illicit knew better than to give themselves away like that. After listening for a moment to the giggles growing closer, he saw the source: two men emerging from the Park via one of the tree-lined pathways.

At a first glance, they looked like any of the students in the area - dressed casually, disheveled, hanging off each other as they laughed. Drunken college boys, Kurt sighed as he reached up to adjust his hat. Drunken college boys with exceedingly high giggly voices, yes, but still-

But there was something about the way they interacted with each other that was different. This wasn't Finn and Puckerman touching each other, it wasn't a wild Warbler party during a ridiculous ceremony, this was...it was the sort of casual touching Blaine had done with him forever - long before they became boyfriends. It wasn't quite as though these two boys were boyfriends, but it was more than best friends-

...or maybe...

After beaming and laughing and jostling each other for another moment or two, the boys stood up straighter. They drew in a few deep breaths that still came out with choking guffaws and exhilarated grins, then turned to walk across 59th Street. Their touch changed as they set off, their movements became stiffer and less friendly, less familiar, nothing but an occasional glance visible between them.

And then they were gone.

Kurt bounced slightly on his feet. He had to go somewhere, to figure out where they had come from - or where they were going, or what had them laughing. Or who they were. Or what they were doing next.

...Or what they had done that they were amazed hadn't gotten them caught.

He quickly discarded the idea of following them across the south border of the park; that was the way he came many nights, he knew there was nothing there. The Scarf had walked the opposite direction and turned up the west side, and Kurt found himself more ready to follow that pair than the boys that left him at once curious and uneasy. But perhaps most importantly...it was obvious from the way they were acting that they were coming from whatever the excitement was rather than going to it. Unless their exhilaration came from outrunning their parents or dorm monitors who told them not to go out, Kurt was reasonably certain that whatever interesting way the boys were spending their night had to be back the way they had come.

Drawing in a deep breath, he straightened his jacket and strode across the circle, across several lanes of lazy evening traffic, and stepped onto the sidewalk. With another moment's hesitation, he decided it was now or never and slipped into Central Park.

The path was poorly illuminated, mostly lights from afar streaming weakly through the half-bare trees and casting dappled artificial moonlight over the uneven pavement. This was a horrible idea, he knew that - it was reckless, it was dangerous, and it was almost certainly going to lead to nothing good. With every step, he was increasingly certain that the boys he had seen were just half-drunk college students coming from a really good party and going downtown to meet friends. So they leaned on each other a little too much; that didn't mean anything. All it meant was that they were laughing too hard to stand upright, there was no reason at all to believe that they were like him...or would lead him to people like him...or had anything whatsoever to do with his quest to find as many homosexuals as he could on this godforsaken disappointment of an island.

Hell, he just needed to find one. He had been happy enough with just one other homosexual in Westerville. Couples could be fine and healthy and happy together - like Rachel's dad. Like Man #16. Like he used to be. So really, if he could just find one - ad the law of large numbers said that surely he should be able to find at least that many in and among people with similar inverted interests to his own-

There was a rustle in the bushes, and he jumped, letting out a startled sound. Why had he left his umbrella at the office? At least it would be something to swing at whoever was lurking and ready to attack him. At least then he could prevent himself from-...something. Although he knew that anyone lurking in the bushes of Central Park at- god, it had to be almost 10 by now - probably would wield more than a stick, so really it would just make him feel better, but didn't that count for something? Didn't feeling better and having peace of mind at least-

The rustling stopped, and he heard a loud shushing noise. Kurt stood still, eyes squeezed shut and waiting for the end to come...but it never did. After the shush, there was silence for a few moments, then the rustling began again. He hurried past the bushes, wishing he had a bag to clutch or something to grip onto other than his hat, something to do with his hands because he did better when his fingers had something to do. That was the real reason he wished he had his umbrella - it would give him something to twirl in his hands and something to think about other than the noise and what type of murderer or thug or wild cat might be lurking in there and whether he could run any faster in these boots. The winklepickers were sleek and gorgeous but hardly practical with their pointed toes and tight ankles. The exaggerated toe of the boot caught on a bump in the path and Kurt flew forward with a terrified gasp, his arms flopping out at his sides as though he could somehow catch himself on nothing but the air.

He didn't fall. He caught himself with an additional awkward step, the way he had on a few occasions when he hoped no one could see him, but the near-spill left him even more shaken than hearing the sound. He stood straighter, trying to catch his breath. What was he doing? Why in the world had he thought this was a good idea? He needed to get out of here immediately, because he had no idea what - or who - might be around and what they might do to him.

...But that required either going back the way he had come, past the bushes where he knew someone was, or finding some other way out of the park. He had walked through here only a couple times before, always during the day, usually much further up than he was now. He didn't have the first idea where to even begin.

At least out the way he came was shorter.

He drew in a deep breath to calm himself down and started to turn around as he heard a grunt, then a groan, coming from the bushes. With as much speed as he could manage without winding up flat on his stomach on the path, he scurried further into the park.

Despite having lived only a few blocks west of the park for more than a year, he had been there only a few times - to the Central Park Zoo with Rachel shortly after they had moved there, on a "Welcome to New York" picnic in June after Mercedes had left Spellman without warning at the end of the semestre and taken the bus up to the city, only telling anyone of her plan to drop out of school and be a singer after she literally showed up on Kurt and Rachel's doorstep ...maybe one other time, but he couldn't figure out when as he tried to get his bearings. He should know where he was, he knew that - the rest of this part of town was a grid, it was easy to follow as long as you knew what street you were on or what streets you were crossing, shouldn't he be able to figure out where he was and make his way out here? he wondered as he followed the curved road around the ballfields. Were those north of where he'd been? Or were they to the east, closer to the south end of the park? He didn't think he passed them when he had been there before, but where all had he been?

Why didn't they light this place better?

Kurt lost track of how long he'd been wandering, he just knew it felt like it had been hours. The silence and near-absolute darkness were beginning to make him paranoid he was going to just fall into one of the large bodies of water on the premises - how would he know not to when he could barely see his hands in front of his face? His heart leapt in relief as he saw light pooling on the intersection ahead of him - that meant he had to be getting closer to civilization, didn't it? He remembered a road running almost parallel to Central Park West at some point, maybe that was where he was and he just had to cut over a little to get home. Once he found himself to the outer edge of the park, he would be fine - he could find his way home from almost any point in the city except, apparently, for anywhere with trees.

Why had he done this? he asked himself, shaking his head. Why in the world had he decided that he needed to wander through a park that was probably full of murderers and thieves at this time of night anyway? Over two boys hanging off each other? What kind of a reason was that? What had he been thinking? Being foolhardy was one thing and was bad enough, but this-

Maybe New York had done more than make him broke and disillusioned - maybe it had made him reckless. Maybe it had made him take stupid, unnecessary chances, because he didn't remember ever being quite this ridiculous before. While he had never been someone who took a lot of stock in the way that things were done or in bowing to people's prejudices, and he had no qualms about putting himself out there where performances or his own self-interest in general were at stake, but this...

Of course, Blaine had always told him he didn't understand the risk before he leapt into something.

He was about to begin blaming his exboyfriend (the 'ex' part of that still made him wince) for this entire decision-making process - because if Blaine would have just gone along with the plan, none of this would be happening and they could be kissing in their bedroom at their apartment that they may or may not share with Rachel instead of wandering through the urban garden at what surely had to be past midnight with no sense of direction - when a flash of pink caught his eye. Was that The Scarf he saw? No - he had to be imagining things. Making it all up in his head in some desperate attempt to justify his own lunacy. After all, he could barely see further than the lamp at the intersection some 50 feet ahead of him, there was no way he could identify accessories under these conditions.

Or could he? His eyes traveled upward from the silken work of art to the wearer, and his heart felt like it stopped. The delicate-featured gentleman was walking, this time with another man that Kurt didn't recognize, along the lit cross-street; they were talking quietly, and Kurt couldn't make out a single word they were saying, but they seemed far less giddy than the college boys had. He quickened his pace and rounded the corner, trying to catch up to the men. Their pace was quick, purposeful - they were certainly on their way to something.

This was perfect. Now he could find where The Scarf went, where he found other people like them...even just where he went shopping. He just needed to keep up and figure out-

The pair made a left turn, then another quick left off the major road and onto another unlit path. Kurt almost turned back then, hesitating for just a moment before the second left, but the idea of losing The Scarf again...it would all be for nothing if that happened. Five weeks of waiting and watching and freezing would be rendered worthless if he went back now...He hurried to follow them, but suddenly they were gone. His heart sank and sped up, and he tried to run faster, and saw the stone archway only seconds before he slammed into the edge of it. He sucked in a sharp breath and looked around frantically for The Scarf-

What he saw left him truly breathless.

There were men scattered throughout the woods ahead of them. Dozens of them - maybe a hundred, maybe more. They stood in singles and pairs, some leaning up against the trees, some encamped behind bushes, some just standing out in the open, ranging in age from probably just barely older than him to mid-50s...

...doing things he had never even thought of before.

There were men standing back-to-front in pairs (and one threesome which made his eyes practically bug out of his head), pants loosened or down, hips rocking hard against one another, mouths open and panting and moaning obscenely. One man had his arms practically wrapped around a narrow tree as the man behind him jerked against him, causing the man in front to slam repeatedly into the rough bark as he drew in sharp breaths and the man in back whispered something in the other's ear - Kurt had the feeling he didn't even want to know what. Another pair were practically folded over a row of hedges; a third pair rutted frantically against each other against the stone archway just to Kurt's left, and he jumped back with a startled yelp. The two men barely even noticed him and kept doing what they were doing. He stepped forward a few feet, eyes wide as saucers, a permanent blush settling in on his cheeks.

Everything about this was wrong. It was so-...this was something people should do themselves, in their home or maybe the backseat of a car like their heterosexual counterparts. It wasn't something that should be done in a public park, in the middle of a group of other people. He shouldn't be able to see a man with his pants and wool coat open with another man kneeling in front of him - that was something that should be reserved for home. For...for a dorm room with a boy you were in love with, not-

This wasn't at all what he wanted to find. When he wanted to find homosexuals, he wanted to find a boyfriend - someone he could love, could share little intimate moments with. This was the antithesis of intimacy, it was raunch and filth and made him completely uncomfortable.

He was debating how to get back out of the area without having to pass the two men jerking against each other, he caught sight of something else. A man stood by himself, glancing out with feigned disinterest as others walked past. After a few walked by with no interaction, a slim boy who looked barely his own age walked by. They locked eyes for a second, then another, then another, before the boy jerked his head to the side with a smirk. The man nodded and followed the boy off behind the nearest tree.

That was something Kurt had seen before. At the drive-in in Ohio, there had been men who hung out near the side, beyond where the cars were parked, and looked at each other like that before disappearing into the grove of pine trees behind the snack stand. When it had been raided, there was talk of sexual acts going on, which Kurt hadn't understood at the time. When he and Blaine - and later he and Blaine and Rachel - had gone there, they had spent the entire time in the front seat of the car, so he had assumed that must mean people were acting like, well, like Finn and Quinn in the backseats, but maybe...maybe this was what happened. Maybe the men who went behind the trees were doing this.

Which just meant he needed to find the other section.

This was definitely not something he wanted any part of, but he just needed to find the date part. The place where boyfriends could go and spend time together and be safe. It shouldn't be too far away, right? Probably just further into the park, or maybe a little closer to the outside of the park just in a different direction. Or on the lake - that would be romantic, with a view of the boathouse and a place they could bring a picnic? That would be incredible.

Of course, even if he could find the date section, that didn't mean he could find someone to take on a date, because he doubted that anyone at the lake with his boyfriend would be open to the idea of dating him, but he didn't necessarily need to find someone tonight. He just needed to know where to start looking more effectively so he didn't spend the next 5 weeks sitting outside all night to try to follow a man with exquisite taste in accessories.

Which meant he needed to ask someone where to find the other area.

He drew in a deep breath and walked slowly between couples doing things that were more appealing in theory than in visual reality and took the spot of the man who had just left. It looked like a lot of people walked past there, so it seemed like a logical place to stake out a post. All he needed now was someone to stop and tell him how to get back to the main area where a boy could find out where to go about looking for a boyfriend. This was- well, not perfect, he never needed to think about some of the mental images that were permanently seared into his mind and written all over his blushing cheeks, but outstanding. He finally had a plan.

A guy who looked to be around 30, maybe 35, with sideslicked blond hair and hideous brown slacks peeking out from beneath his coat, started past and Kurt stepped just barely into his path. "Hi," he said with a forced brightness as he extended his hand. "Kurt Hummel."

The man he hoped would assist him looked at him as though he had lost his mind. "I don't need to know that," he said, not shaking the outstretched hand.

That was rude, but he was hardly the first New Yorker Kurt had met who didn't seem to have time for pleasantries. They weren't nearly as impolite as people in Ohio tended to make them sound like, but they were very brusque. Goal-oriented and focused, really. Undeterred, Kurt withdrew his hand and simply replied, "Okay. Could I ask, where-"

The man looked him up and down, almost sneering at Kurt's hat, but giving a sort of shrug. "Sure," he replied, leading Kurt off the main path. That was odd, he thought, but maybe the guy just wasn't that conversational. That the guy knew what he wanted without ever asking "Show me where the couples are" was a really good sign, it meant that was the bigger section, right? It meant-

The feeling of the guy's hand on his pants made him freeze. He sucked in a sharp breath too shocked to say anything. This was wrong, this was all wrong, it wasn't what he wanted- but as the hand began to rub slowly, it felt good. He swallowed hard, absolutely mortified by his body's automatic reaction to the pleasurable sensation. "I..."

"Shhhh," the man practically purred in his hear as he leaned in to kiss his neck. "I'll do you good." It sounded like it was meant to be a promise, but it felt more like a threat. This wasn't what Kurt wanted. He tried to say so, to tell the man that all he wanted was to know where the dates were, where he could go that wouldn't be like this, where he could go if he wanted something sweet and meaningful and soft instead of this rushed, hedonistic, seedy underworld. He tried to say anything but could barely let out a soft whimper as the lips on his neck found a spot that felt way too good for how disgusting he felt.

A few feet away, a high-pitched voice shrieked "LILY!", and suddenly everything that had felt like slow motion sped up to a dizzying pace. "Shit!" the man gasped, pulling back and disappearing between the trees, running in the opposite direction of the path as quickly as he could. All around Kurt, men were hurrying - tugging up trousers, holding them up in clenched fists as they ran seemingly in all directions past him. Where a few minutes earlier there had been couples communicating with complex unspoken codes, now Kurt saw only individuals in loud, frantic chaos.

He needed to get out of here. He didn't know what was going on, but it was obvious that it wasn't good.

His head was spinning as he dizzily made his way back toward the path. He couldn't figure out which direction he should go - everyone was trying to make a break for it in a different direction - but he knew that if he tried to cut through the trees the way some people were, he would never make it out of this park, let alone quickly. Maybe he could find his way back to the well-lit crosspath where he'd found The Scarf, that had looked like a main road. That might get him out of here. But he couldn't remember which direction he had come from, how to get back there. Everything felt like it was moving too quickly around him - or maybe he was moving too slow, he didn't know - and he was so out-of-sorts that he had no idea where to even begin.

The stone arch. He had come through there. He had come through there and then seen the men necking...well, doing more than necking, but he didn't know what to call it, what to call any of what had happened...but that arch led back to where he was trying to go. That was the way out.

Relieved to have found clarity, however small its piece in relationship so the much bigger questions of the night, Kurt made a break for it. His hat slipped off and he held his hand on top of it as he ran, unwilling to slow down and keep it on more gracefully. He wanted to go home. He wanted to go back to his apartment and listen to Wonderful Town with Rachel and wax nostalgic about a place he had never liked until he left it. He wanted to barricade himself in his room and figure out here precisely he should start to restructure his plan to search for a boyfriend because clearly this was not yielding the result he wanted. He wanted-

He almost ran smack into the chest of a tall, burly police officer standing just on the other side of the stone archway. "Sorry!" he gasped automatically, then looked at whom he had hit. Surely the officer would know how to get him home. "Excuse me. Hi. I need to get home, I was wondering-" he babbled, out of breath and out of sorts and-

The first sign of trouble was the word the police used. He'd heard it a few times, but usually it was something else. Usually people said 'perverts' or 'deviants' or 'sexual inverts' or the euphemistic 'psychiatric cases' or even 'sodomites.' But when the officer growled, "You're coming with me, faggot," his stomach clenched. That wasn't the voice of someone who was going to show him how to get back to the subway or where Central Park West was, that wasn't a good kind of 'you're coming with me', that was-

An image flashed into his mind suddenly: the newspaper after the drive-in - their drive-in, the closest thing to a public safe-haven he and Blaine had ever been able to find - had been raided, there was a picture of the screen being blocked by a police paddywagon as men were loaded in, covering their faces and trying to hide from the cameras as police manhadled the supposed-perverts toward the station. At the time he had been shaken by the fact that it could have been them. It could have been him under arrest because they had just been there and probably knew some of the people who were arrested and they couldn't be safe anywhere.

This wasn't supposed to be happening to him here. This was supposed to be a safe place. That was the entire reason he'd come here, because he wasn't supposed to have to worry about that. He was supposed to be able to find people and be himself and be safe-

The officer shoved him into the crowded paddywagon where men were already packed onto both benches and crouched in the space in the middle of the car, ducked beneath the low ceilings. Kurt barely had time to get his balance before another man was shoved in after him and he fell forward against the shoulder of the guy in front of him. The door slammed closed and he heard the engine rev before the wagon jerked forward and the men on either side of him swayed and shifted with the motion.

Oh god.