Even if Kurt wasn't sure he would ever feel at-ease letting Ricky pay for things now that he knew where the money came from, he had to admit that the food smelled heavenly. It reminded him of the smells that came from the block of restaurants over past the Chinese Community Center back in Lima - and though the sight of ducks hanging in the windows on the street where Ricky had taken him was a little disconcerting, the scent of crispy orange-infused skin was more than good enough to make him hungry despite the visual. "One of these days you'll move further downtown, Vonny, and we won't have to walk so far to eat - I'm starving."

Kurt's stomach twisted a little as he asked, "Have you had anything since-"

Ricky looked at him with a deadpan expression, and Kurt could tell he was barely restraining the urge to roll his eyes. "Lunch at the automat around noon, but it's almost nine now," he pointed out. "Please don't tell me you're gonna ask every time." Kurt forced a faint smile as he unlocked the front door of his building, and Ricky sighed. "I really am fine. It's just hard to get a place - first month, last month, deposit, plus most places don't wanna rent to someone like me. And sure, there are bad days. But I ate, baby, you've gotta let me do what I do without trying to protect me so much." His tone was softer than it had been in the park, and Kurt liked to believe it was at least partly appreciative. Like maybe Ricky didn't mind him trying to help, it was just new for him - Kurt would certainly be able to understand that. Or maybe Ricky appreciated the end result but not the hovering.

He would try not to, anyway. As long as Ricky didn't stop showing up again: he thought that was a fair compromise.

As they trudged up the stairs toward the apartment, he could hear Mercedes singing, though it was tough to make out what exactly until they arrived on the fifth floor landing. It wasn't her usual fare - usually the only men she sang along with were Ray Charles and maybe Chuck Berry once in a blue moon, and it was much too short and upbeat for her to really show off, which made Kurt guess she was probably just getting ready to the radio, but it was nice to hear. She didn't sing around the house as much anymore. Maybe it was because she wasn't really interested in Broadway the way he and Rachel were, and that was what was usually on the turntable. Besides, she sang all night, every night, which meant she probably shouldn't strain her voice any more than she already did if she wanted to be able to keep her vocal strength up. But it had been awhile since he'd heard her play around with music like that; he'd missed it more than he realized.

It was also good to hear her sounding like herself again. Like she had when they were high schoolers in Ohio and he could hear her singing from the time he hit the front porch of her family's home - or, at the very least, from the time he was on the third step up to her room. She hadn't sounded like that when she was part of that group and they kept trying to change her. This...

Their differences aside, it was good to hear how she sounded. The next time his dad asked how they were - either on behalf of her mother or on his own - he could report back honestly about at least one member of their household.

Maybe two members now. Maybe.

He grinned and handed Ricky the second bag of food as he fished out his key, then unlocked the door and pushed it open. Surely enough, Mercedes was bopping her way through the living room, suitcases open across the floor, clothes draped over the couch as she tried to figure out what to wear.

Who was that man?

I'd like to shake his hand

He made my baby fall in love with me!

"Hey," he offered brightly, and she lifted her head. Her grin faded as she took in both of them and a slightly uncomfortable look came over her. Kurt barely managed not to sigh or grimace - he didn't know what her problem was or why she couldn't just get over it for both their sakes, but for now it simply...was what it was, he supposed. "We brought food if you have time - it smells so good, it's from this Chinese place that Ricky swore was right next to where we were but was really twenty blocks away."

"It's not my fault you're not a New Yorker," Ricky replied with a smirk, and Kurt rolled his eyes fondly. "And probably only 15. Besides, I said it was on 22nd, you knew where we were!"

"It could've been 12th. Or 4th. Or 6th. Or any other number below about 25. How was I supposed to know?" But he was learning his way around down there - he'd found the park where Ricky was on the first try, hadn't he?

"Oh Vonny," Ricky sighed dramatically with a roll of his eyes and a piteous shake of his head. "Get out the food, I'm gonna go change." He took his duffel automatically into Kurt's room, closing the door behind himself, and Kurt began to set out the square containers of food. They covered almost the entire table - he might have gotten a few too many options, he thought with a rueful grin, but it all had sounded so good and it was pretty late... his stomach rumbled in agreement as he moved to the cabinet to retrieve plates.

"It does smell good," Mercedes offered as she walked over to the table, looking like she was considering whether eating with him was a good idea, and Kurt sighed softly to himself. "If there's enough," she added, and he quirked his eyebrow at her skeptically.

"Mercedes. There is no room left on the table for any more food. This makes my first Thanksgiving here with Rachel look like a tiny, intimate affair - and you remember how I do up Thanksgiving." She smiled faintly in acknowledgment, and he continued. "There's plenty. Come eat with us." He held out a plate, and she hesitated for only another moment before taking it and beginning to scoop out food from the assorted containers.

"What's this one?"

"Chicken something. I don't know, Ricky swears it's amazing." Mercedes seemed satisfied with the answer and took a few pieces, and that seemed like as good a time as any to announce, "He's staying here for awhile." She looked over at him with an unreadable look, and he added, "If you knew the things I know, you would agree it's a good idea."

He braced for the backlash, for the questions about why he had to be there and make her uncomfortable, about why he had to stay there when they were already so crowded, but they never came. Instead, he was met with a simple, "Okay. But only if he stays in your room - I'm not giving up the living room."

"...Really."

"There's no room for my suitcases in your room, and I know you're not gonna give up your mirror in the mornings," she pointed out. "Besides, I've slept in a bed with you, and you kick."

"I do not!" he replied, taken aback, but things did feel more like they used to when she teased him.

"Mmhmm," she replied dryly. "You do. Not as much as Rachel though."

"Well, that's true," he agreed. "No one kicks as much as she does."

"It's like she's doing Swan Lake in her sleep," Mercedes grumbled as she dug into her food, opting for a fork despite the chopsticks Kurt had proudly laid on the table.

"I can never tell if she thinks she's Clara or Ginger Rogers. Were you there the time that Carole came running upstairs because she swore one of us had been hurt after Rachel knocked half the books off my bookshelf with an inappropriate jete?"

"No!" Mercedes laughed, eyes wide. "Your room was much too tiny for that."

"Oh, believe me - I know," he replied, placing his hand over his chest in a gesture of sincere reassurance. "I knew that before she leapt and almost slammed into the door in the process." Mercedes started giggling at the image, and Kurt couldn't help but follow suit. "And the best part," he added, laughing harder at the memory, "was that my dad was right behind her to see if we'd left the door half-open the way we were meant to!" The look on his dad's face had been priceless: stern, ready to lecture him about respecting Rachel and treating her like the young lady she was, expecting to find the two of them in a state of partial-undress or at least being mussed from heavy kissing, only to see Rachel sprawled across the floor beside the door, clutching her foot, eyes wide in panic, with books strewn all over, while Kurt sat on his vanity bench with what he was sure had been a look of pure confusion and skepticism because how in the world could she have possibly-

"Too bad my mom wasn't still working there, she would have loved to tease you about that," Mercedes smirked, and Kurt looked a little sheepish because there was nothing like Mercedes' mother's look to make him feel like a disobedient child, but it was true - she would have given him a hard time about it for months.

"Tease him about what?" Ricky asked as he emerged, eyes bright with the potential to tease his friend about something - or maybe they just looked that way without his eyes surrounded by thick, dark liner. His makeup was gone, scrubbed off until his cheeks were pinker than Kurt had seen them, and he had changed out of the horrible drapery dress into a pair of soft-looking, well-worn pajama bottoms. They hung off his hips as he slipped on the mismatched top, then strode over and picked up a plate before beginning to fill it happily with steaming, fragrant food.

"His girlfriend," Mercedes joked. Kurt wasn't sure why that was ok to tease him about, why she didn't feel awkward making fun of the fact that his relationship with Rachel was an open-secret fraud, but why the idea of him actually dating a boy made her so uncomfortable considering they were, in his mind, two sides of the same coin. Why would he have a fake girlfriend if he were actually interested in a girl? Though he supposed that, since Rachel's relationship with him was just as fake, but she was willing - if not eager - to find a real boyfriend, maybe it was different.

Or maybe she was trying. He hoped so, anyway.

Ricky looked over at him with a mixture of disgust and pity. "Oh baby, no - not you too.." he started, then paused. "What girl in their right mind would believe you? That gorgeous man over on Canal, sure, but not you! No offense, of course, but it's like when my tia would try to throw me at girls, who took one look at me and tried to get me to do their makeup instead." When Kurt just stared at him a moment, unsure where to even begin, he added, "Not their fault mine was better."

"She means Rachel." Ricky almost choked, and he quickly assured him, "It was just to get us both out of Ohio."

"Oh, I get it," Ricky nodded. "Marriage of convenience. It's better that way than the other, where the girl has no idea- oh, hey, I love this song," he announced as the music changed. "California must be amazing - none of this rushing from place to place like New Yorkers, just boys and beaches as far as the eye can see."

"In the movies there are a lot more girls than boys," Mercedes pointed out, and Kurt was about to reluctantly agree - then ask if Ricky had seen Gidget because he still loved that one - when Ricky stiffened and rolled his eyes.

"Not on any beach I'd go to," he replied with an irritated tilt of his head. "The movies make it look like there are women all over Manhattan, too, but I know where to look." He shifted, his posture stiff, and everything about him more closely resembled the Ricky that Kurt saw at the parks than the one who usually stood in his apartment.

But he couldn't worry about that. Not only was he getting used to the on-off switch his friend seemed to have, and not only did he understand why it was there, but he found himself distracted by a thought: Beaches full of boys. Places like Ricky was used to, just on another coast, with more sand and fewer stores and linen instead of overcoats... he hoped Blaine wasn't there. Or, more precisely: he hoped Blaine was on beaches and enjoying himself, and he would even go so far as to think he hoped Blaine was surrounded by boys somewhere instead of sitting on a blanket beside a girl as she rubbed tanning oil over herself. But he hoped the boy he'd loved, who had been so sweet to him when he wasn't terrified...he hoped the boy wasn't having to resort to entrees into Ricky's world. He still didn't know what had happened to his friend to lead him into such a dark underbelly, but he hoped the same fate hadn't befallen Blaine. For that matter, he hoped the boy he'd loved wasn't one of the patrons of boys like Ricky, either - sneaking through the darkened streets at night, while his wife slept in their shared home, searching for someone to take away the itch he wanted to forget about in the morning...

Just as it was hard to think about New York as a city without thinking about its disappointments and the lies he'd been fed about the life he would have there, it was hard to hear the word 'California' without imagining what might be for the handsome, charismatic, utterly insecure boy he'd once known. He only wished it could be the life Ricky was imagining for all California boys...but his experience here made him more skeptical. No one dreamed about becoming Ricky one day, but somehow he came about anyway.

"They're doing a summer hits night," Mercedes offered, snapping Kurt out of his thoughts. "Since Memorial Day is Thursday."

"How is it summer already?" Kurt asked.

"I don't know. It's strange without school to keep time by," Mercedes agreed. "This time last year I was wrapping up finals and making plans to move up here. Everything was changing in May and June. Same thing the year before that - you and Rachel were getting ready to move, we were graduating...and the year before that-"

The year before that, plans were happening without Kurt knowing anything about it, but he didn't think that was the right thing to mention - especially not when Mercedes was still not at ease with certain things.

"-You were finally coming home from that fancy school so we could finally go to McKinley together."

They had been so excited for that before the fact. They had waited for that day for years, and then when it had finally happened he'd spent most of the summer trying to distract himself from the worst betrayal he'd ever experienced, from the boy he'd thought he would spend forever with. He hadn't even really been able to enjoy the victory. But he forced a faint smile of acknowledgement anyway. Mercedes' face fell a little, and she uncomfortable look she'd had for most of the past few months settled back into place, as though once they were removed from a conversation about their good times before, she didn't know how to be around him anymore.

She was trying, he knew that, but that didn't make things any more comfortable. Especially not when Ricky was reverting into his cool, stiff stance in the chair, legs crossed tightly, back arched in a way that Kurt knew would look right on one of the benches downtown but which looked just sad and desperate perched on his kitchen chair. With the happy, nostalgic chatter gone, the two seemed to have remembered they didn't like or trust each other, and he...well. He didn't know exactly what to say to either of them.

The sound of the lock in the tumbler to announce Rachel's arrival left him wondering whether her ability to make every conversation about herself would be a godsend or another cause for awkwardness and frustration. On one hand, it meant Ricky would clam up more the way he did around anyone who wasn't Kurt, and Mercedes would either roll her eyes or get competitive, and neither of those would help matters. On the other, he had a feeling that well-meaning-yet-flawed plans of a path to stardom might break the ice again, might be something that would help-

Then he saw her.

The first thing he noticed, oddly enough, wasn't the colour; it wasn't even the length, as for all he knew from that position the lack of hair visible down her back was because she had tied it up in a bun for dance. No - it was the nest of puffed-up curls perched at the front of her head that caught his attention the moment she stepped inside. He wondered if she had found an old ratted switch in some costume bin - though why anyone would have kept such a thing, let alone, she would have ever put it on her head, least of all where her bangs had once been, was beyond him. Then she turned to lock the door behind her, and he gasped as he saw how short the back of her hair was; where once long, dark hair had swung to her mid-back, now...now it was almost shorter than his hair. Not quite, but too close for his comfort.

And the colour...

It wasn't blonde, not quite, but it wasn't dark anymore, and it wasn't quite red, not exactly auburn - he supposed maybe it was closest to a strawberry blonde, but really it just looked like the mutt of all haircolours, void of distinguishing characteristics except for a list of things that it wasn't. As she stepped forward toward the kitchen, he could see light glinting off platinum blonde highlights scattered unevenly through the curls, strewn in a way that might have been careful before the monstrosity of a 'style' had been formed, but was now just a mess.

"Oh. My. God."

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, and Rachel beamed for a moment at having clearly stunned him before she caught sight of his face - of all their faces, because Kurt didn't have to look at either of his friends beside him to know that they were similarly unimpressed. He could hear Ricky trying not to start laughing, and Mercedes shifting like she knew something she wanted to say but also knew she shouldn't. He tried to come up with something to say, but he couldn't get anything cruel or snide to come out.

"What did you do?" Mercedes asked finally, at the same time that Ricky said piteously, "Oh, girlie, no..."

Rachel raised a hand to the back of her hair, self-consciously trying to at one smooth it down and fluff it up to make it look like there was something there when there wasn't. "I thought it needed a change," she offered. She forced a smile, but it looked nervous, and Kurt wished she could give her confirmation but it was-...it was bad. "You don't understand, I go into auditions and it's nothing but blondes a foot taller than me, and they're who get the roles. Directors want Mary Martin types, not-...not ethnic girls like me-"

"If you're 'ethnic' what am I, hm?" Ricky asked with a roll of his eyes, and Kurt shot him a look, but Mercedes laughed under her breath in what Kurt assumed was as much agreement as it was amusement.

Rachel faltered at the interruption but kept going. "So I thought it would be best to give them a little bit of what they wanted - not completely, I mean I didn't go all blonde, the hairdresser asked me when I got there if I wanted to look like Marilyn Monroe and I said no."

"She died alone and miserable," Mercedes pointed out.

"But was successful when she was alive - but it doesn't matter. I wasn't going to go that far, I would look ridiculous." Before Ricky could say anything, Kurt held up his hand; he supposed it was a credit to their friendship that Ricky kept his mouth shut, because he knew it definitely wasn't out of loyalty to the girl whose feelings would be hurt.

Contrary to what Rachel probably thought, he did care about that. He cared about her, and seeing her insecure enough to think she should get a frankly horrible haircut...he couldn't be cruel to her in that moment. He couldn't compare her hair to deranged woodland creatures or ask what dyes had exploded to create quite that colour, not when she seemed so lost.

"So I thought this was a nice way to look like the directors want - so they can see past how I look and at least consider me, then my talent will blow them away," she stated.

"Rachel, why-" he started to ask, but before he could even get out the question she jumped in in a frustrated rush.

"Everything was all wrong," she stated. "My hair was too dark, it was too long and heavy, and the bangs - I liked them, but no one else did. Besides, it made my face look shorter and my nose look even bigger than it is, and this should help minimize all that."

"You thought it would make you nose look smaller?" Ricky asked, incredulous, and Kurt shot him a look. Just because he was right didn't mean it needed said - especially not tonight, and Rachel would figure it out on her own at some point...or maybe not, she still hadn't figured out what proportions looked right on her and what made her torso look short while her legs looked freakishly long, what made her chest look completely flat even though there were breasts under there somewhere - Kurt knew, somewhere, just not...readily visible to men who wanted to find them. And maybe it had taken her forever to figure out that knee socks weren't okay on anyone who had graduated from high school, but-

...Okay, maybe she wouldn't figure it out on her own. But she could be told in a couple days.

Ricky rolled his eyes at Kurt's sharp glare. "Well it doesn't, anyone can see that. All her features look darker, I'm not gonna lie about it," he pointed out.

Rachel's eyes widened as she surmised slowly, "...So it's worse?"

"I don't know that I'd say worse..." Mercedes began softly.

Rachel turned to stare at herself in the reflection of the kitchen window, studying, tilting her head to and fro for a moment before her eyes widened. "...It is," she confirmed, her voice resigned for just a moment before she turned to them and demanded, "Put it back!"

"What?" Kurt asked.

"You know about things like this, I know you could tell even if you were being very sweet and trying to spare my feelings - thank you, but there's no time for that, we have to get it back the way it was."

"Rachel-"

"You don't understand, I have been trying for almost two years to make it and there is no way that I just cut off all my hair to help make myself more desirable to casting directors and producers only to look less like what they want. Okay? There is no way I cut off all my hair to-...oh my god, I cut off all my hair..." Kurt stood and walked over to her, taking her by the shoulders and guiding her away from any reflections, over to the couch, sitting her down as she lamented, "I ruined it, didn't I?"

"Ruined what?" he asked, trying not to sound as dry at her melodramatic tone as he wanted to.

"My chances - it's going to take forever to grow out...Even if I get it dyed back tomorrow, the length...what do you think? Is it just the colour?" She was clinging to hope, wanting him to say that dying it back to brown would save everything else and let her still be Mary Martin, and even as much as he wanted to spare her he still had to be honest.

"The colour might be a start, but the shape...with the curls..."

She sighed dramatically, slumping onto the couch, resting her chin sulkily against the back of the cushion, and Kurt took a seat in the easy chair, not sure what exactly to say to her. He could appreciate why she was upset, even if she was overreacting in her quintessentially Rachel way: she'd been trying just as hard as he had to get all the things she'd dreamed of - in many ways, she'd been fighting harder than he had. At least when it came to their careers...he at least had an inroads toward what he wanted. He wasn't moving quickly, and for all he knew he would be stuck in the basement again as soon as Don didn't have a side project for him to work on, but at least he didn't have to prove himself over and over again every week, day in and day out. He had more than enough rejection in his life, and maybe...just maybe...Rachel had more.

And he had been used to it before they moved. He had been thrown out of restaurants in Lima for his friendship with Mercedes, he had been shoved by every boy in school by the time he was 7, he had been abandoned by the one boy he thought he might have a future with, and all of that on top of losing his mother and feeling inexplicably wrong for a decade. By the time they got to New York-...yes, he'd expected more, he'd expected everything to be perfect. But at least he had known how to deal with disappointment. Feeling isolated and out of sync with the rest of the world wasn't a new feeling for him; he'd thought that made everything worse for him, because he'd been expecting Oz: a place where he could be the hero, be someone who was inspirational and admired. But maybe...maybe it was even worse for Rachel than it was for him. She didn't know how to not be the standout. She didn't know how to not be the best, the star. Between her mother's influence and her honest-to-god talent, she'd never had that a day in her life before they moved. She'd never had to reassure herself because everyone else told her how great she was. Maybe no one their age liked her much, and he could understand why - he had once been among them - but at least the thing she prided herself on the most was appreciated by the adults in town. Directors in Ohio could see how talented she was, could see her in these roles in a way that no one in New York could.

She wasn't just being dramatic about her hair, or even about a director liking her or not. It was so much bigger than all of that.

He stood, ready to go to their records and pull out the Wonderful Town soundtrack, the one they had listened to over and over after they moved - to sing about why oh why oh why-oh they had ever left their home state where they were (or at least she was) appreciated...but the radio provided a much better option.

Come on baby

Let's do the twist

During the summer before their senior year of high school, after he'd come back from Dalton and spent a solid week in his room not wanting to speak to anyone, torn between whether or not to write to Blaine - he did have his address at home, after all, and he could easily find an address at Stanford - and demand that Blaine undo both the breakup and his plans...after a week of listening to nothing but ballads about men who got away and the girls whose hearts they left broken behind them, Rachel had begun to come over and park herself in his room. At first he thought she was trying to move in on Finn, since they would be in Ohio for another year and since Quinn still hadn't been seen or heard from so Finn had gone on a date with one of the cheerleaders whose name no one could remember in an attempt to move on, but after awhile her forced brightness and insistence on listening to upbeat songs on the radio had worked their magic. He couldn't even count how many times they'd danced together up in his room, teasing each other and rolling their eyes at how they looked...and at least slowly bringing him back to feeling human again instead of someone who was so down in the dumps he couldn't bear the thought of dealing with people.

Now he could return the favour.

He held out his hand to her, and when she just stared at him he urged, "Come on."

"No."

Come on baby

Let's do the twist

"Let's dance."

"No," she replied, her tone verging into the petulant. "I look ridiculous."

"No more than I do," he replied. "Or every other person on the planet doing this dance. It's kind of designed to make everyone look silly. Come on."

Take me by my little hand

And go like this

Rachel sighed dramatically and gave him a put-upon look that he almost felt proud of - she had learned it from him, clearly - but put her hand in his and let him pull her up and past the coffee table, twisting along with him half-heartedly, rolling her eyes a little at how bad of an idea it was, but Kurt knew otherwise. He remembered giving her that look a thousand times in the first couple weeks, especially when she made him do the dance every single time the song came on - and it was the song of the summer that year, so that was roughly every half hour- he'd been ready to throw her out for good. But eventually it had worked.

A smile started to crack on Rachel's face, and Kurt felt a brief shining moment of victory before he heard Ricky burst out laughing behind him. He turned his head quickly, hips still moving, to demand, "What?"

"Vonny, what do you think you're doing?"

"What?" Kurt asked, not understanding.

"What in the world is that dance?"

"The Twist - what? You know the Beach Boys but not Chubby Checker? I thought everyone with a radio knew-"

Ricky gave him a deadpan look. "Yes, we do," he replied with an irritated roll of his head. "But that? Is not a twist. That's a little...shimmy thing." The waggling hand movement he did in the direction of Kurt's hips came with a sad shake of his head, as though he regretted it had come to this. "See? Like this." Ricky moved over closer to him and Rachel, beginning to dance; unlike Kurt's stylized shimmy or Rachel's very classic side-to-side movement with occasional dips down and stiffly bent elbows, Ricky's hips rocked in doubletime even as they swayed to the beat, and somehow he looked effortless in it. "C'mon, baby, with your hips - I know they're skinny, but they work," he teased, then stared at Rachel and his hips stilled. "Okay, okay, stop. Just stop."

"What?" she asked, sounding more indignant and hurt than the comment would ordinarily cause.

"You're so stiff. Like a little windup toy, back and forth-" he imitated, and Kurt almost laughed at how spot-on it was. "Like this- okay? Feel..." Ricky grasped her hips lightly, guiding them, rolling his eyes at how stubborn she was.

Kurt caught sight of Mercedes still sitting over at the table, watching them awkwardly. He didn't know what her problem was, if it was that Ricky still made her so uncomfortable - though after earlier he wasn't sure he understood why, the two of them had managed to laugh at him and at Rachel just fine together - in a nice way, he guessed, but still. Or maybe she just felt left-out. She had certainly felt that way when he first started fake-dating Rachel, so maybe...

...Maybe she really was trying but wasn't sure how all the time. He could appreciate that and try to meet her halfway. He missed being each other's family, especially out here where there were so few hallmarks of home, and she was the only one who would understand anything he talked about before about age 15. She was the only other person in this entire city who knew so many things about him, who knew about the year he borrowed Grace-from-down-the-street's Brownie uniform and worn it to school for Halloween, who knew what his old house looked like - the one before his dad married Carole. She was the only other person in the world who knew why he slept with his bottom drawer open sometimes - because when he was 8 the bottom drawer of his parents' dresser was the only thing that still smelled and felt like his mom in the house, and then the dresser was moved into his room when he was 11, and then it got to be a habit. They had so much history together, so much intimacy in a way that only family could bring, and he owed it to her to try - or, at least, to appreciate her trying.

They owed it to one another.

He walked over to her and held out his hand. "Mercedes," he said with a soft smile. "Dance with me?"

Ricky giggled loudly, and she glanced past Kurt's shoulder for a moment; he looked back to see Ricky trying to demonstrate how to dance and Rachel bouncing on the balls of her feet while trying to twist like a bird trying to leap and flap and use its tail all at once- He felt a hand in his and turned to see Mercedes flash him a smile in return and stand, then lead him over to the couch to start twisting the way the three of them had in Lima during the worst summer of his teenage life - just with one extra member.

* * * * *

"Vonny?" The voice was quiet in the darkness of Kurt's bedroom that night. He knew from experience that he couldn't easily roll to face Ricky in the narrow bed, and that even if he could he would only see his friend's profile illuminated in the narrow strips of moonlight streaming through the window.

"Yeah?" he whispered back, staring up at the ceiling.

"I'm sorry about earlier. Chattering then icy- I know it doesn't make for the best party guest," he offered, and Kurt could hear the awkward, forced smile in his voice. The words 'I'm sorry' probably didn't come easy for Ricky - less easy than for most people, which was saying quite a bit.

"You were fine," Kurt assured him. "Mercedes will warm up to you pretty quickly if the two of you can bond over teasing me. And Rachel likes you already."

"I'm sure the offer to fix her hair and teach her what to do with curls didn't hurt," Ricky observed, and Kurt laughed softly in agreement. They fell comfortably silent before Ricky added, "I don't know how to be with you but around other people." Kurt wasn't sure what to say, and after a moment Ricky continued haltingly, "It's hard to let the wall down for you but not for them, so it's...all over the place."

There was a lot Ricky wasn't saying, and Kurt knew it. He knew exactly how it felt to try to let down his guard and let people in, to be terrified of being hurt again, or arrested, or abandoned by boys who didn't believe his dreams were possible. He knew how dangerous hope seemed, and trust, and friendship... Ricky didn't need to utter the words "I'm scared" for Kurt to know they were just beneath jokes the jokes about Rachel's curls. "I understand," he stated quietly, with absolute sincerity, and the response came in the same tone and spirit:

"I know."