That came out wrong, even in his head, but he didn't know what in the world he was meant to say...let alone what to do. He had to do something, didn't he? He couldn't just let the boy stay out there on the streets, not merely homeless but- but doing that with strange men so he could eat something?

Oh god. Dinner the night before- that was how Ricky had paid for it. Chocolate cake and coffee and sandwiches and fries- he didn't even need fries, they just sounded good, but now that the mental image of some creepy old man pawing at Ricky's thin, naked body was permanently imprinted in his mind, he couldn't enjoy the memory of the food at all. He felt queasy, like he had participated somehow.

He had. He should have known about it enough to help keep Ricky out of the situation. He should have known enough to turn down the boy's offer to pay for dinner. He had tried, but Ricky had just seemed so insistent, so proud. Like it was his job to pay back the kindness Kurt had previously shown him and make up for it by giving Kurt a meal in return...and he had been able to appreciate that. He had understood why it was important to his friend, who took every act of altruistic kindness as a debt he now owed and tried to pretend he didn't need anything, would want to pay Kurt back like that, even if it wasn't at all necessary. He had been able to understand it completely, right up until the moment when he found out exactly what Ricky had needed to do to get the money for dinner.

Kurt couldn't stop thinking about it. He wanted to - he would give anything to be able to stop thinking about what it must be like, what it must have looked like, but every time he tried to distract himself, it came back to Ricky. He tried thinking about movies - especially which ones Ricky would tease him less about seeing, or which ones Ricky would beg to go to but hate, or which ones Ricky would make fun of but love - and music - and what albums he still needed to share with his best friend - and restaurants - and what Ricky would have to do to whom in order to afford dinner-

He set his bag down heavily, glad not to see a message on the counter or table. He hated that he was relieved that Ricky hadn't called. Usually when he was happy not to see a note on the table it was because he was worried he had missed his one chance to snag the boy for the evening and would once again be at the mercy of Ricky's fickle sense of interpersonal connection until he got a call in a few days. Tonight, though...

He didn't know what to say to the boy - to anyone. He had lost all control of words beyond "What do you mean?" and "Really" since John had told him he could just take Ricky home and give him a sandwich and didn't have to have sex with him for money. Funny how that had never occurred to him as a barrier to spending time together before.

"Hey, Kurt," Mercedes called from the living room as he ran his fingertips along the edge of the tabletop, trying to stop the images that pervaded his thoughts.

He looked up and forced a faint smile, too tired to conceal the tightness of the expression. "Mercedes. No shows tonight?"

"No - I have the night off." She stretched a little then stood, walking over. "Are you running off somewhere?"

In all honesty, the idea of doing anything but taking a long bath and trying unsuccessfully to sleep felt too taxing for how mentally drained he was. It was exhausting to have his mind racing at that speed. He shook his head. "No. I'm in for the night."

"Rachel's out doing who knows what, I thought we could have dinner or go see a movie. I feel like we never even see each other lately. You work until 7, I leave for work at 6, by the time I get home you're asleep..."

The last thing he wanted to do was try to be social, but Mercedes looked so wistful about it...and she did have a point. He saw Rachel every day. The two of them had dinner together whenever she wasn't going out with a boy or he wasn't going somewhere with Ricky. And Rachel and Mercedes saw each other during the day whenever Rachel wasn't working which was almost always, especially now that they had more money as a household thanks to Mercedes' work. But he couldn't remember the last time he'd had a meal that wasn't breakfast with his oldest friend, and even if tonight wasn't the ideal time as far as he was concerned...he did miss her.

"Okay," he relented, and Mercedes grinned. "What did you have in mind?"

"We could get a pizza," she suggested.

"We would have to go out," Kurt pointed out.

"Since when do you not like going out?" she teased. "I seem to remember someone saying he would go to a different restaurant from a different country every night once he moved to New York, back when he was just a smalltown boy in Lima."

"A smalltown boy in Lima whose obligations usually ended by 3:30," Kurt replied, glancing at the clock. It was already 7:30 - late nights were more common now that he had more say over what his day involved, which seemed strange to him. He'd always assumed that having a taskmaster boss like Stu who directed him when and what to cut before he left for the day had to be more time-consuming and more exhausting, and in a way it had been. His fingers no longer ached when he got home, and the crick in his back was finally straightening out now that he wasn't bent over a cutting table all day. But as exhilarating as it was to be creative, it did leave him more drained by the time he shuffled home...plus there were some years that were downright cumbersome to trudge through, trying to find something inspiring in sketch after sketch of unflattering, matronly dresses.

Still, he really hoped he wouldn't have to go back to the cutting room now that his project was essentially done. He'd found what he considered the best of Mainbocher's ensembles, the most signature gowns, the smartest suits, the richest fabrics, and now...well, now it was up to Don what to do with them, and even assuming he liked them - which Kurt believed he should - it would go through a variety of other departments before Kurt ever saw them again, as a pattern and yardage of fabric to be painstakingly snipped out. Unless he got another assignment after this, which was a nice thought but certainly not guaranteed.

"That's true," Mercedes acknowledged with a faint smile. "We could heat up frozen dinners and watch tv. What's on Thursdays again?"

"Ozzie and Harriet, Donna Reed, then- Have you seen The Nurses?"

"A couple times, when I still lived with the girls," Mercedes replied. "Catch me up during Leave it to Beaver?"

"Last week's was pretty good," Kurt stated as he moved over to the freezer to see what tv dinners they had. He and Rachel both preferred to cook, but they were nice sometimes when he was too tired or Rachel got in too late, or if they were just cooking for one. And Mercedes liked them for an early dinner before she had to go to work, so he found the freezer well-stocked. "Turn on the oven for me?" he requested, then began to recount the episode. "A woman came into the hospital with a heart attack - she was young, too, and the man who brought her in was pretty attractive but a little bit older. He didn't want anyone to know who he was, they were making him very mysterious, but Ricky managed to guess-" he turned, holding two of the chicken dinners to see Mercedes scowling. "What's wrong? Don't tell me the oven's broken - Rachel said the girls in 3G were having trouble with theirs last week, something about the gas line-"

"No," she replied with a shake of her head. "It's fine, it's on." She shifted awkwardly, hands held stiffly in front of her, then ventured, "Kurt, can we talk about something?"

Kurt didn't like the sound of that, but he replied, "Of course."

"I know you and Ricky are...friends or something now," she began. He forgot sometimes how shy she sounded when things got serious. He was used to her sounding larger than life, telling Rachel exactly why what she thought was crazy, and especially now that she would talk about bantering back and forth with the bartenders and patrons at the club over breakfast - she'd been that way for as long as Kurt could remember, too: full of sass until her mother shot a Look in her direction and made her back down a little. She'd spent most of her life not letting things get her down by distracting herself with-...well, with conversations about why leopard print was a good fashion choice. Kurt smiled very faintly to himself at the memory of that. They were similar in that regard, retreating back to clothes - usually whether hers were awful or not. It was something he and Ricky did, too...maybe it was something everyone but Rachel did. Rachel tended to talk things to death, especially when it was what a person least wanted to discuss.

But when Mercedes got serious, she seemed so much smaller suddenly, far more withdrawn and hesitant, like she didn't think she had a right to ask anything serious. As much as he didn't like the sounds of where this was going, he simply raised an eyebrow and waited for her to continue.

"I don't like how much time he spends here," she stated. "I know you like him, but he makes me uncomfortable. He's always just kind of here, and he's so-..." She shifted again, her face twisting a little to one side in a slight grimace, eyes kind of rolling, but she fell silent and didn't explain further.

Kurt stared at her, eyebrows lowering, trying not to jump to what he thought it was about. Maybe she had a reason. Maybe there was something about having another person in the apartment that was a problem in general - there wasn't enough hot water for four showers in the morning, or they needed more chairs because she didn't want to eat breakfast over on the couch, or there was some other reason his presence was objectionable. "Why is that a problem?" he asked, his tone painstakingly even.

"He's-" She rolled her eyes a little. "C'mon, Kurt, he's just a lot to take."

He wanted desperately to be wrong about her discomfort and its source. "What do you mean?"

"He's loud-"

"He's quieter than Rachel. Let alone than you and Rachel when the two of you start bouncing off each other."

"Yeah, but it's different with Rachel. She's usually talking about men who want to take her out or why she's going to be a star or what show she'll see one day when she has enough money for tickets. Ricky's always talking about...men. About sex."

Kurt tried not to let it show on his face when the queasiness that had been lingering over the past few hours made his stomach lurch again at the knowledge that Ricky wasn't talking about men half as much as he was doing other things with them. It didn't help that what Mercedes said confirmed what he had been trying desperately to avoid. "Rachel talks about men, too, you just said so," he pointed out quietly, staring at her.

She looked at him with an uncomfortable, piteous look, like she didn't want to have to be the one to break the news to him, as she said, "It's different, Kurt. She's a girl, she's meant to. I don't care if a boy takes me out, but she does, and that's fine. But he's...he shouldn't."

"So...because you're uncomfortable with us being gay, he shouldn't come over," he concluded.

"I didn't mean you."

"Why not?" he demanded. "I am, too. I'm just like he is." He was except he wasn't. He didn't know what had happened to make Ricky suffer so much, to put him in such a predicament, but somehow it hadn't happened to him. It couldn't be tied to their arrests, so it had to be something else. Something had happened to leave him with nothing even though he was so smart and funny and kind - and open once you could pry him that way. Somehow this boy who deserved all the same good things he did had ended up huddled on cold park benches and curled up against hot, disgusting men for a few dollars, and the thought left Kurt cold and stiff, unable to move or think beyond the two-sided question he couldn't get out of his mind:

Why him?

Why not me?

"You're different," Mercedes replied. "You're Kurt. He's a strange boy I met a couple months ago. Why isn't it enough that he makes me uncomfortable?"

Because he had nowhere else to go where he could be safe and not have to do disgusting things to afford breakfast. Because somewhere along the way something had gone horribly wrong and left Ricky with no one else who would let him stay with them or care for him or stop him from doing that to himself. Because for all he knew, Blaine had traded in his navy blazer for too much eyeliner instead of for a three-piece suit and a house in the suburbs. Because if whatever had happened to Ricky had happened to him, he would want her to extend the same kindness to him that he was extending to his friend.

He couldn't say any of those, couldn't begin to explain to her the direness of his situation when she couldn't even see that Ricky shouldn't make her uncomfortable just because he was gay. Instead he replied with a simple, cool, "Because he has as much of a right to be here as you do," then turned and walked into his bedroom, closing his door behind him. Sighing, he sat on the bed, smoothing the comforter absently.

He didn't know where his friend was spending the night, be he hoped it was hospitable and came without strings. And he hoped that, if it didn't...well, if it didn't, then he hoped Ricky would call.

The phone never rang.

* * * * *

Something about standing in an overcrowded hallway with a hundred other girls who wanted the same spot she did had started to feel more impossible with Fred gone.

Rachel wasn't sure what the problem was. It wasn't like Fred had promised her things the way Cal had, so she hadn't been spared the humiliation and unending frustration that came with cattle call chorus auditions. She hadn't had any more success while she was dating him, either, so she'd been in exactly the same position a week ago that she was now. But somehow...

Maybe it was just another rejection, she reasoned to herself as she found a spot halfway down the hall to warm up. The doors were set more deeply off the hall in this building which gave her plenty of space to nestle in a threshold, put her foot up on the chair rail, and slowly stretch out her muscles. She could remember a time when she was confident going into dance class. After all, she had been dancing since she was fourteen months old - her mom swore she had great balance and a perfect turnout from the time she was six months old but no studio would let her begin classes until she was at least a year - and there was something intense and gratifying about pouring all her emotion into a movement, letting everything she was feeling surge out through her limbs. It would never surpass singing in her heart, but she had truly enjoyed dancing before. When she was still in Lima. When she didn't look at the girls to the right and left of her on the line and feel like they were all at least six inches taller and effortlessly breathtaking when they danced.

Treating the chairrail as a barre, she was attempting to move through a proper warm-up when the door behind her opened, narrowly avoiding hitting her in the hip. She jumped and turned to give whoever it was a piece of her mind – who just opened a door like that without knowing or at least expecting that someone was warming up on the other side. Didn’t they know she had an audition to warm up for? – when she heard a familiar voice tease, “I’m sorry, Rachel, I didn’t know you were right there. I think it’s the quietest you’ve ever been.”

Bobby’s grin was nearly infuriating after she’d been nearly knocked from her dancing perch, and her first instinct was a mild glower at his comment about her being loud the rest of the time. But as she recovered from being jolted out of her pre-audition mindset, she softened a little. It was pretty funny, she guessed, opening the door and expecting to just walk out only to find someone with her hand midwaup up the wall, moving through positions and plies. “Are we here for different auditions or the same one this time?” she asked. “It’s so hard to tell in buildings like these where they rent rehearsal space to practically everyone in town at some point or another during the year…”

“I’m not auditioning,” Bobby informed her. She thought for a moment he might be there to encourage her and apologize after their fight last week – she understood now what it was he’d been trying to warn her about with Fred, and why he might have been reluctant to tell her, but it was no excuse to lose their friendship and mutually-beneficial practice relationship – but it occurred to her that if he hadn’t known she was here that was unlikely. Before she could ask why he was there, he blurted out, “I’m rehearsing. Third day, so everything aches and no one knows what they’re doing, but- it’s a show. With an actual paycheck and everything.” He sounded so exuberant about it, about the novelty of success, of having a job where he would be paid to dance and sing…and she wanted to be able to share it. Really she did. But it was so frustrating, seeing everyone around her succeed while she was still standing in a hallway with 100 other girls trying to elbow for space to warm up, and even if Bobby deserved to do well – and even if she knew how talented he was – didn’t she deserve it, too?

She forced a smile, trying to at least be happy for him until he turned he turned his back and she could let her petty jealousy show again. “Congratulations. That’s really great – what show?”

“Fiddler on the Roof. I know it’s a strange name for a show, but the music’s great so far. At least what we’ve learned of it. I’m surprised you didn’t go out for it. There were a lot of ethnic girls there. It’s all about a village of Russian Jews, so there aren’t quite as many blondes around which would’ve cut out two thirds of your competition.”

She heard commotion up the hall and poked her head out of her entryway to see girls gathering their bags and shuffling into the room. “It looks like they’re starting,” she informed him. “I have to go.”

“Break a leg,” he said sincerely. “And as soon as I get my first payment, I’ll take you to dinner to celebrate. I need someone who will appreciate the story of how I quit my job at the restaurant as much as I enjoy telling it,” he added with a grin before disappearing down the hall in the other direction.

Rachel tried to pull herself back into her audition mindset, repeating affirmations to herself in her head as she walked down the hall. She was more talented than these other girls. She was just as pretty as they were, and not everyone wanted actresses who were so tall – they would tower over the boys and throw off the entire look of a party scene. She might not be the best dancer in the room but she was certainly good enough to warrant a callback because she had such presence that she could not be ignored.

She would not be ignored.

With a more genuine smile and with complete, single-minded determination, she walked into the audition room, set her back to the side with everyone else, and selected a spot at the front of the group. She wanted the people from the show to have no choice but to look at her and see how talented she was.

The combination was exactly in her comfort zone. Nothing too difficult, plenty of places she could shine, with an emphasis on dancing with expression. Perfect. By the time they had learned six counts of eight, she was convinced she had this audition in the bag. She didn’t even remember what show this was for anymore, but that wouldn’t matter – it would be on her paycheck when she got this.

It was her time. Bobby had started auditioning after she had, at least that she had known of, and they were evenly matched, which meant she should be getting her break any day now. Why couldn’t today be that day? Why couldn’t today be the day that she found the right combination of confidence, skill, and an audition that would play to her strengths?

And of course the other girls were good, the combination wasn’t hard so unless they were completely unskilled they would be guaranteed to do fine. But she had still brought such personality and grace to the combination that there was no way she wouldn’t at least be called back to sing. Then she could really wow them. Singing was where she shone the brightest – just her and the music, with nothing but her flawless vocal control to distract them from the pure emotional belting and ability to act beautifully while singing.

And so, twenty-five minutes after she had entered the room, Rachel stood in the middle of the line and felt confident about her chances, even as the casting director glanced them each slowly up and down. She had done her best – which was, of course, exceptional – and would no doubt be rewarded for her efforts with a callback for the vocal auditions in a few days. She stood tall and proud as the director’s assistant called through numbers in a bored voice, waiting to hear “42” and step forward to collect a sheet with information about the callbacks. She wondered what she should sing, if this was going to be-

“Thank you all very much,” the assistant concluded with a blas� quirk of his eyebrow. Rachel blinked, looking around, trying to figure out what had just happened, because the list couldn’t be over yet. She hadn’t heard her number, so there had to be more-

Maybe she had missed it. That could be it, she had been daydreaming pretty hard. All relevant to the audition, but distracting nonetheless. She forced a bright, confident smile and stepped up to the assistant. “Excuse me, I think I missed it. Did you call 42?”

“No.”

That made even less sense. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Check again,” she insisted, getting more frustrated by the moment. “Because I’m sure that I must be on that list, I just-“

“No,” the director replied as he heard her. “Thanks, baby, but you’re not what we’re looking for.”

She was about to protest, to ask what he could possibly mean that she wasn’t what they were looking for – she had been fantastic. And just because other directors and a couple boyfriends and basically everyone else she knew who could possibly decide that she wasn’t what they were looking for had done so already didn’t mean that was the case now. But she caught sight of the girls who were holding the callback informational sheet.

They weren’t too tall, maybe an inch or two taller than she was, which was as much a pleasant surprise as anything, though it did make her wonder what they had that she didn’t since she knew it wasn’t long legs. But they didn’t look like her, that was for sure. They looked like…well, like Julie Andrewses. Or little Mary Martins – short hair, almost all blonde though there were a few brunettes and one redhead with an adorable turned-up nose. They all had cute little noses like that – along with narrow chins, light eyes, with pale complexions and rosy cheeks, like something straight out of-…well, straight out of The Sound of Music if all seven children were around the same age. And all girls. A bevy of cute Austrians ready to flee the Nazis but not a single Jew in sight.

…Except for her.

What Bobby had said to her earlier about the show he was in suddenly made a lot more sense. She wasn’t sure what exactly made a person ‘ethnic,’ or if there was another word that was more accurate because “ethnics” was one of those antiquated words that one of her great uncles used for Poles and Italians because he thought it was less rude than the other words he knew, but…looking at those other girls, the ones who got her callback, it wasn’t hard to see what Bobby had meant.

She knew she was different from other girls in Lima, she knew she wasn’t Quinn Fabray or any of the other blonde cheerleaders, but she didn’t think she was so different – she wasn’t like Sandy Lopez or Mercedes or any of the kids they were literally trying to keep out of the school for being coloured. She wasn’t. She was Jewish, which was a big deal to her family and very important to her and her sense of self, certainly, but never in a million years had it been a reason for her to not get a role. Her mom got the lead in every production with adults because she worked hard and was very talented; Rachel had inherited her talent and strong drive from somewhere after all. And the two of them had racked up more lead roles than any mother-daughter team in history. She’d never not gotten something for being Jewish-

…Or had she?

It was hard to say, looking back over two years of fruitless auditions with literally thousands of other girls – probably tens of thousands, even! – but when she thought of who ultimately got all the roles she wanted, of whose pictures beamed up at her from every cast album in her’s and Kurt’s rather extensive collection, it was hard to deny that none of them looked like she did. They all had big, light eyes and delicate features and short, fine hair curled in a neat bob – not at all like her.

She’d never given it too much thought before, not really, anyway, not beyond wondering if maybe the reason boys didn’t notice her was because she didn’t look like one of the cheerleaders, but as she trudged slowly out of the room with her head forced high so as not to look like a sore loser, she suddenly felt very conscious of the size and shape of her face.

After all, if even Bobby thought she should get a role based on how she looked and not her talent, maybe there were others out there who factored that in. And if that was the case…then she wasn’t really sure what she should do next.

* * * * *

By the time Ricky called again, Kurt had worked himself into a constant state of nausea. In fairness, it wasn’t an unusual state for him; he’d experienced the same thing countless times before, when things were especially tense or frustrating or anxiety-inducing, but it didn’t make him feel any better to know that he’d been this upset about something before. It just made him wish all the harder he knew how to make any of it go away.

The call sounded just like any other of Ricky’s cryptic communications: a bright greeting by nickname (Kurt’s chest ached when Ricky so happily exclaimed “Vonny! Long time!” even though it had only been a few days, the same as it always was – had the past few days been longer and harder than usual? Was that why it seemed like forever?), a smooth invitation to spend time together that made it sound like Kurt was the one who had invited him, like Kurt was the one who needed the companionship and Ricky would give it only a bit begrudgingly (Kurt hated to admit that maybe he did need to see Ricky right now, to know he was okay, even though he had no idea what to say to him), an offhand reference about not being able to stay long (which always ended with an “oh, well, if you insist” and a thin boy practically passed out in Kurt’s bed all night), then a “See you soon” and the click of what Kurt could only assume was a payphone on some streetcorner.

He knew logically that nothing had changed in the past two days…but at the same time, everything had. Even just the sound of Ricky’s voice, so light and high, made him wince – how could he sound like that with everything he’d been through? Everything he had done probably even just today? How could he sound so fine when everything was wrong? When he had to do such vile things to such unsavoury characters for what Don had led him to believe was a paltry sum.

Kurt was woefully transparent, he knew that; it was easy to tell he wasn’t fine when he said he was. It didn’t take much to know that he was miserable. Usually it wasn’t a matter of no one being able to figure it out, it was that no one particularly cared – or they knew and cared but didn’t know why. But Ricky genuinely sounded fine, normal, happy, open the way that – as best Kurt could tell – was unique to him. Ricky sounded the way he always did when he was just talking to Kurt.

Not like he’d just had sex with three dirty old men to be able to buy himself a sandwich before sleeping on a park bench.

The nausea was back in full force, and Kurt swallowed hard as he hung up the phone to try to keep it at bay. Knowing from experience that working on something, having something pleasant to throw himself into, usually helped to diminish ache and emptiness and worry, and knowing from knowing too much that Ricky probably hadn’t eaten properly since they last saw each other, Kurt began to pull ingredients from the cabinet. He hadn’t made the boy his famous spaghetti sauce yet, and it would be hearty and warm and homey…none of which did Ricky have.

Did he?

Did he even have a home, a family, people who knew what he was doing and could worry about him? Or did Ricky treat his family the way Kurt did – loving them but leaving them in the dark about the realities of life in New York? He would never tell his dad just how horrible things were here, and certainly not about his nights in jail. Maybe Ricky’s family honestly had no idea. Assuming he even had family; Ricky didn’t talk about them, aside from a reference to an aunt that slipped out once – a woman on his mother’s side who walked out of her house slippers whenever she tried to cook in them, which was often. Did she know where Ricky was? Did his mother? Or was he the only person in the world who could even try to watch out for the boy?

He broke an extra handful of pasta, hoping it might sustain his friend a little longer. Just a little more. He didn’t know what else to do.

Ricky looked good enough when he arrived that it at least put one question to rest in Kurt’s mind; he didn’t need to keep asking how he hadn’t known when the boy looked okay like this. He wasn’t the drowned rat from the second evening or even the shivering, combative rodent-child from the first. He looked like he needed a shower, like he could have used a new and more weather-appropriate outfit, like he was probably a little hungry, but even those things Kurt only noticed because he knew. If he’d never heard the truth from John, he probably would have thought Ricky looked like he was finally starting to just come to visit instead of to seek out shelter.

In a way, for just a fleeting moment, he wished he didn’t know. After all, there was nothing he could really do to help…was there?

Maybe he could. Maybe he could offer Ricky a more permanent place to stay, make clear there were no strings attached. They were family, right? And that was what family did – they looked out for each other. Mercedes’ discomfort aside, there was no reason that Ricky couldn’t live in his room until Kurt could help him find a job somewhere, doing something that wasn’t so harmful. Maybe he could do something constructive with this knowledge.

“Vonny – whatever that it smells amazing,” Ricky grinned as he stepped inside, slinging his familiar duffle bag onto the floor of the entryway with a dramatic flourish. “You didn’t have to go to any trouble for me, certainly with so little notice. I was just in the neighbourhood – well, up near 92nd, and you’re the closest person I know who I thought might want to spend an evening.”

“It was no trouble, I was making some for myself anyway,” Kurt replied, his falsehood delivered smoothly enough to sound like the truth. He hadn’t been able to eat much of anything in the past few days, but fixing dinner for Ricky was absolutely what he needed to do – so it was true that it wasn’t any trouble. In fact, he insisted upon it. “Have a seat,” he added. Ricky looked at him like the invitation was a little oddly formal for them, which it was, and Kurt cringed internally as he moved over to the stove to retrieve the pasta. “So how’ve you been?”

Ricky narrowed his eyes, looking up at him skeptically. “Fine, honey, how about you? Everything okay?”

For Ricky to ask him that, with everything Kurt knew, was agonizing. Everything was fine for him. Everything was okay as far as his life was concerned – but not Ricky’s. Nothing was fine for a boy living on the streets.

He didn’t want to bring it up, not really. He and Ricky didn’t talk about serious things, usually because they didn’t need to – they didn’t need to go into detail about how they felt because they both knew they both knew. But this was important. He couldn’t help unless he at least acknowledged there was a problem…and, perhaps more vitally, until he knew the cause and extent of Ricky’s needs. If it was just about food and shelter, Kurt could easily provide that. If there were someone-…Kurt didn’t even know what, someone forcing him to do this or someone else depending on him somehow, then he needed to know that too before he could offer the kind of assistance his friend would find useful.

Besides. If there was anyone in this world who would be helpful rather than cruel, it would be him…right? It was just that he cared about Ricky so much and was so worried about him- he had to say something. He had to do something.

“You tell me,” he replied, sitting down across from him. He wore the expression he hoped would best remind Ricky that he could open up to him, that he could understand – or at least try to.

“…Well, I had a pretty good few days,” Ricky replied slowly, his tone halting and suspicious as though he was waiting to see what information Kurt might have before revealing anything. “No big deals either way…”

“Oh?” Kurt asked, trying to suss out any information he could from the non-response. Did that mean no one had paid him much? Or just that neither anything exceedingly good nor dreadfully rotten had happened since they’d seen each other last?

Ricky set down his fork and rolled his eyes. “What’s your problem, Vonny?” he asked. “You’re asking more questions than the police.”

Kurt sighed softly, looking across the table at him as he said “Ricky…it’s okay. I know things aren’t fine for you.”

He was expecting a look of relief, or one of being caught, or something. Instead he was met with a lowered brow and a puzzled gaze. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…I know how you got us dinner the other night.”

Ricky paused a moment while it sunk in, then jumped back, knocking his chair over in the process. “You take that back,” he demanded. “What, you wanna search my bag, too? I didn’t take a damned thing, I paid – you saw me pay. Who the fuck do you think you are to-“

Kurt’s eyes widened as he realized what Ricky meant – or, rather, what Ricky thought it was that he meant – and he jumped in to clarify. “No! I know. You didn’t take anything, I know that, you paid. I saw you – that’s the problem,” Kurt tried to explain. Ricky stopped mid-rant, staring down at him, eyes wide and furious at the imagined slight. That did not bode well for how he would react when Kurt brought up his actual concern, did it? “I…I know how you got the money you used to pay,” he clarified. When Ricky didn’t respond, Kurt sighed softly and came right out and said it. “I know you have…sex For money. And not just like a girl in old Hollywood movies who dates for dinner, you-…you do things and they hand you cash.”

Ricky blinked slowly, eyes narrow. “…And?”

Of the many things Kurt had anticipated he might say, that wasn’t one of them. “And…you shouldn’t have to do that. You shouldn’t have to sell yourself like that, you shouldn’t have to have sex like that – or ever but especially not like that – and you should have a romance like in all the books you like. You don’t have to do that, Ricky. You can stay here as often as you want. I can get you a job somewhere – I don’t know where, it might be the cutting room assistant which is even worse than where I started but at least it pays, and that way you wouldn’t have to-“

He was met with a flurry of Spanish and a roll of Ricky’s eyes and what he assumed was cursing but couldn’t be sure. “You-“ Ricky spat out the word, shaking his head, eyes boring holes into Kurt’s forehead. “I should have known you’d be one of of them. You rent boys, all the same – think because you have a roof over your head at the end of the month it doesn’t count what you do?” His arms crossed defensively over his chest, and Kurt blinked, having no idea what the boy was talking about.

“Rent boy?” he repeated, eyebrows lowered in confusion.

“Don’t think I don’t know about you, too, Miss Thing.” Ricky’s accent got thicker when he was upset, and now was no exception; the word ‘don’t became two syllables, ‘think’ lost its k and ‘about’ its t. The cadence faltered, speeding and slowing in different directions, and his neck developed an odd tilt and sway even as the glare became more ferocious. “I saw you with that man at Christmas. You do the same shit I do, but you get paid more at a pop and hold down another job on the side.”

Man at Christmas? Who was- “That was my father!” Kurt exclaimed, unable to keep the disgust and scandal from his face and voice as he tried desperately not to think about doing what Ricky was suggesting with his dad.

Ricky’s face registered shock and frenzy for only a moment as the boy worked to figure out how to walk back or play off the gross misinterpretation, then he rolled his eyes and his neck at the same time. “I don’t need your ‘hospitality,’” he stated firmly. “Give it to some other boy you wanna treat like your charity case.” He snatched up his bag with such force that it swung and hit the wall, then barged out with a slam of the door, leaving Kurt in the kitchen with two untouched plates of spaghetti.