The music was Kurt's choice, and for the first time in weeks Rachel didn't even try to challenge him on it, try to suggest something more "upbeat" - who could be upbeat? Not the girl tucked into an afghan, staring at a rapidly-cooling cup of tea with a mournful expression at having discovered the entire world was a lie, that was for sure. Not the one flopped into the armchair and glowering defeatedly at the boxes the contained every bit of property she had in New York. Mercedes' apartment had been taken care of by their manager to keep the group together and under his watchful eye, so after her storm-out... Kurt wished he could have seen her do it, from her retelling it sounded like quite the spectacular display of strength. Unfortunately for her, it had ended with temporary homelessness. He was just glad there was less fighting this time than the last time Mercedes had been living on their couch; he suspected it was because neither of them could really muster the energy or determination to quarrel beyond picking snits over who should run down to the store for dinner ingredients.

He usually did, on his way home from a long day of cutting out oversize turndown collars. He wasn't sure when those had become part of Mainbocher's repertoire, they certainly hadn't been last fall; if they had, he wouldn't have spent months cutting tulle until his hands ached. But at least it forced him to get up and out of the house. He could only imagine if he didn't have that, how tempting it would be to do absolutely nothing all day the way his girls seemed to be going.

Not that he could blame them. After all, he'd been dealing with the realities of this city and the lives they would never lead for months now. He'd gotten used to the idea that life as he knew it would never measure up to anything he'd envisioned for himself gradually over time, sinking slowly - the two of them had the rug pulled out from under them suddenly, and now, as they stared up from the bottom of the same pit, only he wasn't bewildered by it; Rachel and Mercedes were still looking around, wild-eyed, trying to figure out how such a thing could have happened.

He wished he could have more empathy for them, because he remembered too well how much it hurt to come to the unavoidable conclusion that their high school dreams had been foolish, unrealistic, even completely impossible...but empathy required more energy than he had. He settled instead for making rounds of tea and being sure to pick up dinner on his way home from work. It was small, but it was constructive.

"What happened to us?" Rachel asked, sounding almost child-like in her confusion as she looked at the two of them. "We were supposed to do great things. We were going to be stars, and now look at us."

Neither of them said anything. Mercedes rolled her eyes and went back to staring in the general direction of the boxes stacked up in the corner of the room, while Kurt wasn't sure what in the world to say. As much as he had started to feel like everything good he'd ever dreamed for himself was just retroactively creating hope so he could dash it himself, he knew she was right. He'd had dreams, he'd had big dreams. When they moved here...he'd thought he was going to conquer the fashion world. Find a boyfriend. Find someone he could throw parties with and grow old together, someone who could make him feel the way Blaine did- but better. The way he had imagined feeling with Blaine once Blaine stopped being so scared. A year and a half later, and he was further than ever from finding it and terrified to even start looking. Not as long as a boyfriend was synonymous with being shoved into the back of a crowded paddy wagon and strip-searched while a half-dozen former football players pointed and laughed. He shivered at the memory, and Rachel absently held out a corner of the blanket; he shook his head, shrugging into the warmth of his sweater, and she withdrew her hand dejectedly.

"What happened to us?" she asked again, to herself this time as she tucked herself deeper into the corner of the couch.

"New York happened," Kurt replied quietly with a deep sigh. "Reality. This city isn't anything like we imagined it. We thought it would be a place where people skipped through the streets singing, where we could find boys who would understand us and appreciate our talents, and instead..."

Her eyes widened and she stared at him with a look that was equal parts stunned and relieved. "For you, too?"

"What?"

"It's as disappointing for you as it is for me?"

There were times Kurt thought he knew just how self-absorbed Rachel could be, and then she would surprise him with the most ludicrous of statements. Had she not noticed? Had she honestly not seen how lonely and defeated he was? How frustrated by everything around him? Was his roommate genuinely so blind that she didn't realize every one of his hopes and dreams had been dashed?

Considering how she'd gotten into this funk, he supposed it was a silly question. Of course she was. Rachel saw what she wanted to. Sometimes that myopic worldview fed her determination and helped her - he doubted they ever would have been able to come here in the first place were it not for the two of them and their single-minded efforts to leave Ohio. But he wished that maybe, just for a few minutes, either of them had thought to- that either of them could have known enough to pause, to...to maybe never come at all.

There were probably boys at the drive-in back near Westerville, and they had only been raided and arrested once. Unlike the places he'd been able to find. And there were couples there, men who came with each other week after week. Boyfriends. Maybe even homosexual husbands. All the things he had expected to find in New York in larger quantities with more safety. All the things he wanted so desperately but couldn't find in what was meant to be the easiest place in the world to find them.

"Yes," he replied simply. New York was exactly as much of a disappointment for him as it was for her - maybe more. Though she hadn't lost the only relationship she'd ever had because of this damned place. If he hadn't pushed, maybe...Blaine might have-...

"You know...I'm sure if we started packing now, we could be out by the end of the month..." Rachel sounded as defeated by that possibility as he felt, but after a year and a half, it seemed like an attractive option. If they left then, they wouldn't have to pay another months' expensive rent, and in a few weeks they could be back in a place that, while it was far from perfect, at least felt warmer than this damned city. At least there were people there who might ask how he was doing and care about the answer - people other than Rachel, who could be relied on to ask but not necessarily to care about the answer except to give her own...and Mercedes, now that she had nothing to do and was around again instead of constantly being dragged from one effort to another with ultimately nothing to show of it. "If you call your dad-"

"Are you two crazy?" Mercedes interjected, staring at them.

"I'm sure he can take your things, too, Mercedes, even if it takes a second trip," Rachel offered. "The truck was completely full when we moved the first time, so I don't think it would all fit in the same load this time anyway, since we didn't have a couch yet, and there's the new television set."

"You're talking about going back to Ohio?"

"Well, if things here are the lie they seem to be, what choice do we have? We moved here to pursue dreams that can't exist anymore, not in a world where men can just use you for whatever they want and throw you away as soon as a prettier blonde girl comes along - not in a world where talent counts for absolutely nothing."

Mercedes turned to fix Kurt with her skeptical stare. "You're seriously considering this?" she asked, and he shifted under her gaze. What choice did he have? He'd come to New York to live a fabulous life, and, as was becoming increasingly clear, his life was never going to resemble anything like his fantasy. The city was cold and mean, and Lima sounded so warm...or at least home did. Home, with his dad and Carole, and...he would have a job waiting for him there. His dad wouldn't have to hire someone else to man the shop while Finn was in the Navy because he would be able to pick up the slack - he'd been changing tires for as long as he could remember, it seemed only logical. They wouldn't have to spend the extra money to pay some other person to help run the family business, and he would have - quite frankly - more prospects for career advancement at Hummel Tires and Lube than at Mainbocher. His housing would be cheaper - free, even - which would give him back the clothing budget he'd missed so badly, and he was certain the housework had been sorely neglected with Carole working so much these days.

"Maybe it's the best thing for everyone," he replied quietly. "Between my dad and his shop, and how much he worries about me here...and face it, Rachel's right. The dreams we had aren't going to happen in this city any more than they'll happen in Lima, so why not move where the cost of living is lower? We could get a much better place to live at home than here if we really wanted to."

"Kurt, you've had a list of reasons you wanted to get out of Ohio from the time I've known you. Half of it's in crayon, but it's still true."

He knew the list she meant. He'd shown it to her after they'd been friends for probably only about two weeks. They were talking about what they wanted to be when they grew up. Mercedes said she was going to be a lady at church in a fancy hat who sang solos in the choir, and Kurt said he was going to be a famous person in New York because that was where Broadway was (Judy Garland had taught him what Broadway was, what with giving her regards and all). When she had asked if he would miss home, like her cousin did when he moved to Chicago, he shook his head, retrieved his list from its hiding place in the liner notes of Meet Me In St. Louis, and showed her. He still remembered some of them - mostly he just remembered writing it. Pulling it out whenever things at school were awful, whenever people spat at the two of them in the street, whenever he felt like he would be apart from everyone around him for his entire life. The list had grown substantially over the past decade and change, but he remembered the very last entry:

To prove him them wrong.

He wished he were. He wished he could, but so far everything he'd thought would be proven wrong had been proven right, and he felt like that had to invalidate at least part of the list. Plus so much of it was childish and dumb, things like more than one place to eat and the subway that he'd thought sounded exotic and futuristic until he'd actually ridden on it.

But there were better things on there, too. Things like being able to go places with Mercedes and not be stared at. Like being able to find more than homespun cotton in fabric stores and seeing styles change from year to year instead of people who wore the same shirts and jeans until they wore out. The feeling of people rushing around, of going somewhere and doing something instead of the stagnation of Lima, the sense that everyone was just trapped in the small town and waiting for the next artificial milestone he would never have. Unless he wanted to measure his life in marriage and children and fishing trips, he was pretty sure Lima wasn't going to give him much in the way of satisfaction on that front.

Even if he wasn't anywhere near hitting any of the milestones he'd dreamed of...at least other people were hitting them. At least other people were striving for them. No one in Lima would understand why one of the things he wanted most out of life was to see one of his original designs on a person on the street, but people here could understand that...even if they were his direct competition. He dreamed of seeing a person he actually knew - namely Rachel - onstage in a Broadway show, belting her heart out, and of going to the record store to buy Mercedes' album, and even if those things weren't going to happen, at least those weren't laughable dreams here. People were working towards the same things they were, they engaged in the same flights of fancy. That was part of the problem, really: competition.

But she might have a point.

"I can call your dad and have him get the list and send it, if you want," Mercedes added with a pointed look. "Or he can read it over the phone if you really need an intervention."

"No," Kurt replied. "But thank you."

"This week was awful. But look at you two - you won't get off the couch! Yeah, Rachel, a guy used you. But do you know how many guys are in this city? I gave up my entire chance at having a record...but it was right. If they can't like me for who I am, I don't want them to have me. I lost out because I was too good, but that doesn't mean I'm sitting around here and sulking. Let's go out."

"Out where?" Kurt asked wearily.

"Anywhere with a piano and a microphone. I'm gonna sing my heart out tonight, and no one can stop me."

* * * * *

Even through the thick smoke that hung in the air, Kurt could see he didn't really belong here.

The bar was old - historic, the old man working coatcheck had boasted - and had a longstanding feel to it. It reminded Kurt of the Black Cat they used to go to that way; he could imagine decades' worth of teenagers going there and looking back on it fondly as they aged. Only here, at this well-named Hot House, everything was pushed back a decade or two as the mostly-thirty-something crowd milled between tables, chatting and laughing with friends over the jazzy saxophone onstage. It didn't feel like the bar where his coworkers congregated sometimes after work, where people seemed to be forever passing through, proving themselves to be the best one in the room, before moving on to somewhere else; nor was it like the bar he'd gone to before his second arrest, where people slunk in and out and tried to do whatever it was they were there to do as quickly as possible. The Hot House seemed lived-in, comfortable, unpretentious...and loud.

Mercedes had picked this place because she said there was meant to be an open mic night. Kurt wasn't sure yet; in Lima, any time people were allowed to get up and perform without prior audition, there were always at least a few who were awful, and the band onstage certainly sounded professional. Not that he knew much about jazz, except for the few Mr. Jones really liked, but it sounded good and the crowd didn't seem to disagree with him - and they definitely seemed to know a lot more about jazz than he did.

It was strange, he realized as he surveyed the room slowly. He had known Mercedes most of his life, and for a long time he had gone almost everywhere her family went - everywhere but church, really. If she wasn't at his house while his mom took care of things, then he was at her house listening to records and talking about clothes and rolling their eyes at John's bad jokes, and when errands needed run or they were going to the shopping center, he went with them. He had been stared at then, been asked what he was going with them, been harassed - not as badly as Mercedes had been for going around with him, but enough to have a taste of it and be able to anticipate when and where might be safe. But never in his life had he been with her in public and been the only white person in the room.

He knew it shouldn't have surprised him - the club was up in Harlem, she knew about it thanks to one of Regina's ex-boyfriends - but it was still offputting for a moment. "I stick out like a sore thumb," he whispered to her as he noticed the stares. He lifted his chin a little higher in an instinctive act of defiance, even as he felt questioning looks burning into him, and he suddenly wondered if this was such a good idea. Going out had never worked well for him in the past, and he didn't have reason to think it would be better now. He knew he probably wouldn't be arrested just for stepping outside his front door, but there were bans on serving alcohol to homosexuals, and he could see the bar from here. People were arrested all the time, according to the newspaper, and if-

"Okay, you've gotta relax," she told him. "If I could put up with years of Breadstix with your guys' glee club, you can handle one night." He opened his mouth to protest, and she looked at him the way her mom would - the expression clearly asked 'how dumb do you think I am? I know you, boy,' and he knew better than to try to explain himself. He'd given up on that somewhere around age 9. She smirked at her victory and led him over to the first two seats she saw together. "Is anyone sitting here?" she asked.

The younger-looking of the two gentlemen across the table fixed Kurt with a hard glare. "What's he doing here?"

"Ignore him," the other man instructed them. "He's been hearing too many stories about the Cotton Club lately down at the Temple."

Kurt didn't even know what that meant, but Mercedes either did or covered well because she replied simply, "He's not taking over anything, he's with me."

"And just who are you?" The question was more flirtatious than threatening, and Mercedes rolled her eyes a little. "I'm here to sing."

"You any good?"

She grinned, putting on just enough bravado to puff up the genuine pride as she replied, "Pretty good." It had been awhile since he'd seen her even a little confident - it reminded him of how she'd sounded when they still lived in Ohio and someone would ask about her future plans. She knew she was good. She knew she was better than good. And tonight, no one was going to be able to tell her otherwise.

He wondered if there were some kind of open mic equivalent for fashion. Maybe something like this was all he needed to get some of his confidence back, to start breaking down the ambivalence that had clouded over him since November. Probably not, he concluded glumly as he sat down, trying to ignore the younger guy's suspicious glare. Mercedes hadn't sunk as deep as he had, she'd been knocked down by the setback but scrambled up. She had other things going for her, she hadn't given up all hope. She'd only been down a few days, and he...

...He wasn't sure what it would take to recover from a year of hopelessness.

But at least an evening out couldn't hurt. Besides, if there ever were such a thing as a place he could go and just make beautiful, interesting clothes for people to see, he would want Mercedes to come support him. Rachel, too, even though she had informed them both that she would be no good to either of them and decided to stay in and go to bed early instead.

"You better get up there then," the older man encouraged with a jerk of his chin toward the stage and a sly grin. "Don't wanna miss your chance."

Mercedes regarded him a second, trying to size him up and see if he was trying to lead her astray, if that wasn't how this worked at all, but as the band finished their song and the crowd applauded, she decided it was worth trying. Guy had no reason to lie to her, it was how things usually worked back home, and she wanted to get started. She wanted to get up on that stage and just feel like herself again - to sing like herself again. She ascended the stairs with just a quick glance out of the corner of her eye to see Kurt still sitting there to cheer her on, then walked over to the bandleader.

"It okay if I jump in?" she asked, sounding more confident than she felt, and he nodded and gave her a prompting look. A thousand songs ran through her head, and she picked the first one that felt right. She hadn't gotten to sing it in a long time, and it wasn't a new song, but he hoped these guys might know it - it was jazzy, so they might... "I Don't Hurt Anymore? Dinah Washington?"

He grinned, impressed by her choice, and nodded again. "Sing it, little sister."

She only barely fought the urge to roll her eyes - she'd never understood the sister thing, not at school and certainly not now. For one thing, Kurt was more her brother than those random guys at the table. John was more into it than she was, but he got to call her his sister anyway. But the bandleader meant it affectionately and seemed encouraging enough, so she simply smiled and stepped forward to take her place at the microphone. It had been awhile since she'd sung anything by herself, without backup, and she glanced back first to see if the girls were ready before remembering it was just her.

It was all about her.

Her favourite kind of moment onstage.

She drew in a deep breath and sang the first note a cappella, in full voice, belting it out in a way she hadn't been allowed to belt in-...she couldn't even remember how long. Even before the meetings with people from the label and image consultants and studio people, Rocko had tried to tone down that part of her voice. He said no one would know what to do with it, that it would scare people.

As far as she could tell, it didn't scare people...but it did make them shut up and take notice of her.

Conversations stopped, trailed off, as she sang the first line - "I don't hurt anymore" - so that by the time the band came in to vamp behind her, the patrons were nearly silent, watching her, unable to not watch her. She sounded fantastic - she knew she did. She knew her voice well enough to be sure of it, and their reaction fed her confidence further as she belted out the first verse.

All my teardrops are dried

No more walking the floor

With that burning inside

The audience was digging it, swaying and bobbing in time to the blues riff the band played behind her, and the energy it gave her felt incredible. It had been years since she'd been able to do anything close to this; singing in church was important to her, and she loved doing it, but it wasn't about her, or even about her music. It was about praising something much bigger and more important than herself, and she was more like a vessel for it than anything. But this was about her, about her talent, about her voice, about them loving her. She hadn't felt that since the last competition she'd done at her first high school; she didn't get any solos once she was at McKinley, something about being accessible to the judges, and Mr. Schue was never good at spreading parts around when Rachel and Sandy protested it. But for a few minutes, when she was fifteen, she had ruled that auditorium with nothing but a microphone and her God-given abilities, and it had made her feel like she was flying.

This was better.

It was fewer people, but they understood what she was doing. It was a song she loved, unlike the solo had been, and it hadn't occurred to her back then just how different music was for different people. She knew she and Kurt had different tastes, but that was because she didn't like musicals as much as he did. Then John went off to college and started sending back albums, talking all about "our people" and "our music", and she...she never got it. Even when she went down south for school-...it wasn't until she stood on the stage in front of a bar full of patrons who knew Dinah Washington - who loved Dinah Washington - that she got what the fuss was about.

Just to think it could be

Time has opened the door

And at last I am free

No I don't hurt anymore

She let her voice soar above the music, fueled by the cheers whenever she did. Rocko would have said she was showing off too much, that she was sounding too big. Too soulful. Too much. He had all these euphemisms when what she thought he was really trying to say was...not like a white girl. Not like those wispy girlgroups made up of three or four girls who looked like Rachel in a blonde wig. They were trying to be popular, and Ella never got her due - neither did Dinah, or Billie, or anyone else she listened to. Not for how good they were, compared to other singers at the same time. And only one at a time could make it even that far. There couldn't be a group of girls who sounded like she sounded, not if they wanted to ever get a hit record.

But maybe that would change.

Her mom talked about listening to the radio when she was Mercedes' age and not being able to hear any black singers unless she turned on a different station. They could never have been on the big shows everyone listened to - and then they could, but they couldn't sound like they were. "They had to drain the soul out," she said. But Sam Cooke was popular and he had soul, singing mournful ballads about growing up with nothing but sounding nothing like the hillbilly campfire songs from the Depression. And everyone knew Ray Charles, and Chuck Berry... and ten years ago there were almost no women on the radio, but now they were all over the place - all those girls Kurt listened to?

Maybe she would get her shot, just not yet.

She didn't like it, she didn't want to wait, to hang out around New York doing nothing until people could understand her voice well enough to know how great it was. But standing onstage in her bright pink dress, with no one telling her to be smaller or meeker or lighter or how to do her hair or to wear black so the lights could wash her out better?

She might be able to survive off of this until her day came. For one thing, she couldn't imagine that standing in a recording booth could ever feel half as good as this did - even if it didn't mean having a record she could find in a store or take home to her parents.

No use to deny

I wanted to die

The day you said we were through

But now I find

You're out of my mind

And I can't believe that it's true

Kurt hadn't heard Mercedes sing like this in what seemed like forever. She'd been spending so much time and energy trying to make that ridiculous manager of hers happy, to fit into that group of girls she didn't even really like...and he'd been encouraging her. He'd been telling her to just lose more weight, to let them change her name, to wear whatever they told her and do her hair however they wanted...and for what? So she could give up this, her incredible voice, and make herself smaller to be able to blend in with girls who didn't have the same belting power? So she could be more like him - miserable, out of place, alone, and uncomfortable? So she could be as disillusioned with the city and with the world as he and Rachel both were now?

No, he assured himself. It wasn't that he was trying to keep her miserable; he just didn't know there were other things out there. He had gotten so locked into his own ambitious, all-or-nothing head that he let himself think that the only way she could find happiness or success was by being as miserable as he was, by doing whatever it took. He'd let himself believe that was all there was; he wasn't trying to sabotage her, he was trying to help her see what could be out there if she did what people wanted.

But it looked like she had found something much better.

I've forgotten somehow

How I cared so before

And it's wonderful now

That I don't hurt anymore

He hadn't sung in far too long - anything besides mournful ballads when everything felt like too much to handle without expressing himself - so he'd forgotten just how incredible the experience of singing in front of people could be. Music these days for him was...well, like fashion: a career path, made up of auditions and requirements and meetings and discussions about what people did or did not want to see or hear and making an innate form of expression into something technical and analytical. No wonder it didn't feel like it used to or do the job it needed to do for him anymore.

But watching the way Mercedes had lit up, feeling the way the entire room was clearly into what she was singing, knowing all of them could see the amazing things he saw in Mercedes...it was so warm, so supportive, so energetic and downright jubilant. And she deserved every bit of it - after months of people not understanding her music, and years of people not understanding her, she deserved that kind of warmth.

No use to deny

I wanted to die

The day you said we were through

But now I find

You're out of my mind

And I can't believe that it's true

Looking around the room at all the people cheering and clapping and dancing to the song, he couldn't help but remember the way the Commons had looked the first time he ever saw the Warblers perform. It was a similar enthusiasm, so different from the derision of all things musical he had known at McKinley, so refreshing in its excitement over the performance...

Of course, who wouldn't be excited to watch Blaine? His ex boyfriend had an undeniable stage presence, especially when he looked straight at him, singling him out of all those boys, fixing him with those beautiful golden-brown eyes...

But that wasn't why that moment had been great. Not really. In retrospect it seemed that way, maybe, but that wasn't the biggest part of it. Yes, Blaine had taken his breath away, but he hadn't known yet what that meant. What he'd known at the time was that, even as the only boy not in a uniform, it was the least out-of-place he had ever felt in his sixteen years. He'd known he wanted to talk to Blaine because there was something there. And he'd known that...maybe, if this group were at Dalton, he could...he didn't know yet. But he remembered his dad telling him that, with a group like that, he would fit in just fine...and he remembered believing it. He'd never had it before, he'd yet to find it since, but that little enclave of boys who listened to him and appreciated his voice...

He was glad Mercedes had found that now, too. Maybe there would even be a boy in here who couldn't take his eyes off her and would make something more of the performance. He just hoped, for her sake, that there wouldn't be a swift, terrified breakup at the end of it all. They wouldn't be able to tell at first, it would all seem so sweet, so conversational, and then...

...that was the thing, he realized very slowly. With him and Blaine. It hadn't started that way, it hadn't started as a relationship or as being homosexuals together, it had started as being homosexuals...together. Not as a couple, but as two people who didn't have anyone else in the world to talk to about any of it. He'd felt so much for Blaine the first time they met, but he hadn't put any of the reasons why together until later, and Blaine had known who he was but claimed time and time again that it was during "Over the Rainbow" when he first realized anything bigger might be there, and they'd talked before that. And between when they knew how they felt and when they - okay, he - had finally tried to act on it, there had been months of...of listening to Judy Garland records and having conversations - slow, hesitant, halting conversations about how each of them felt. Talking about how they knew and what it meant...and even if most of the time, he was the one to do the talking because Blaine was too afraid to utter the words or was terrified that someone might overhear, it was still the first time in his life he'd been able to talk about musicals with a boy. Or to have someone to read Vogue with every month. Or to ask how he knew and for how long.

That was what he needed so badly. Someone to talk to. Someone else who understood how he felt and-...and what it was like to be terrified to walk down the street now because every police car meant the potential for another night in jail. He couldn't talk to Rachel or Mercedes about things like that, they wouldn't understand. Mercedes had her own problems, and Rachel had...well, her own drama, at any rate...but they couldn't understand what it was like to be in this place that was supposed to have so much promise on a personal level (not just professional) and see it all go up in smoke. They didn't know about how much time he spent standing in front of his closet and counting his articles of clothing as he put them on, trying to prepare himself for the moment when beefy hands would steer him into removing them and counting them in reverse. No one he knew understood that or could possibly relate.

...Except maybe...

What he wanted desperately was a boyfriend - someone to share a loft with and a life with, someone to be his homosexual husband one day. But what he needed was a friend. A place like this, a community, and someone to go with him and chatter all the way home about how it felt. Someone to share things with instead of taking them in and pushing them further and further down in himself until the only way to let them out was to sob his way through wrenching ballads or risk suffocation under the weight of his own crushed dreams.

The reason Mercedes was glowing up there onstage wasn't because of the potential for a man to call her own, it was because there was a bar filled with people who understood and appreciated her, who saw how incredible her voice was.

I've forgotten somehow

How I cared so before

And it's wonderful now

That I don't hurt anymore

The applause and cheers in the bar were nearly deafening, but Kurt was the first one to leap to his feet and clapped the hardest and fastest.

* * * * *

Kurt drew in a deep breath as he stood in front of the office directory in the main lobby. He couldn't ask the secretaries - they would want to know why he was trying to find someone so high above him, and he didn't have a ready excuse he could work out in so little time. If he waited a couple weeks, he was sure he would be able to come up with a great legitimate reason to go up there, but not yet.

And he needed it soon. If he didn't go soon, he would forget what it was he was looking for, he would forget what seeing Mercedes in a room full of people who could appreciate her felt like, and he would never get up the nerve again.

There were too many people with the same name, and he had to start narrowing it down based on general department and who was likely to work hours similar to his, who was on a high enough floor to be high enough in the chain but not so high as to be outside of the realm of possibility. That narrowed him down to two possibilities on opposite ends of the building. With a memo in hand that needed to be delivered to one of the junior designers so that he could maintain deniability of he went knocking on the door of the wrong gentleman - "I'm so sorry, I was looking for Needlemayer, is he not on this floor?" - he quickly jotted down both office numbers and set off through the building.

Maybe this was crazy. Maybe the man had given up on him and written him off when he didn't say yes right away. Maybe - more likely - it was all a trap anyway. He'd believed the first guy to come along even when he shouldn't have, and he had been arrested; what evidence in the world did he have that would indicate he would fare any better here? And when he went wherever this guy suggested and was arrested for a third time and had to leave the city in disgrace, he would only have himself to blame for being the fool who trusted too much. One of these days he would look back on his failures in life and know that this was the moment where he could have saved his career and his dignity but he didn't because Mercedes had a good night at a bar in Harlem he'd never heard of. This right here would be the moment...

...that he realized he was even more dramatic than Rachel.

He rolled his eyes at himself and continued down the hall, trying to remind himself of the feeling at the bar, of what it was like to be part of a group of 18 boys in a single (hideous) uniform, of what it might be like to talk about West Side Story in a tiny apartment instead of a tiny dorm room, of why this could-

He heard a familiar voice coming from down the hall, and his steps quickened as he doublechecked the number on the sheet in front of him. This was definitely the right place. He turned the corner into the office suite and realized only then that he didn't know what precisely to say. Here the man was, having a conversation with his secretary, and what was he supposed to say? "Please show me other homosexual places where I might not be arrested" seemed a little on-the-nose for a public conversation, and "How did you find your lover?" seemed too personal to ever be asked; "Is the offer still open?" would be far too vague, and "How are you?" would be even worse. But how should he-

Don looked over, and the familiar warm smile appeared. "Kurt. Good to see you. Do you need something?" he asked, the confusion appearing thankfully only in his eyes and not in his voice. His secretary tapped away at her work quickly, ignoring the conversation until or unless a buzzword she needed came up, and Don gave Kurt a concerned look.

He forced a jovial grin and held up the paper. "I need your signature on this, please - this will only take a minute?" He hoped Don would understand that he wanted to talk in private without saying something that might arouse suspicions, and he was in luck; the man nodded knowingly and started into his office.

"Of course. Rose, remind me to make that call around 3:15 - until then, I'll be reviewing these sketches," he said, then beckoned Kurt to follow him. Once the door was closed behind him, he asked quietly, "Is everything okay?"

It wasn't, but it was. It wasn't but it might be? It might never have been in the first place? He didn't know how to answer the question with anything but the request for which he had come. "Take me to where the boys are?"