The car slowed to a stop, and the door opened to reveal Rocko, decked out in a flamboyant double-breasted suit with a loud silk pocket square and a fedora. As Mercedes stepped out, Regina slipping out of the back seat followed by Shirley and Eva in turn, he removed the cigarette from his mouth, letting it dangle between his fingers as he held out his arms. "There's my girls," he beamed proudly. "Big day today."

"It's just pictures, we're not going to the moon," Mercedes pointed out, and Rocko fixed her with a warning look, the kind that said "I can take all this back in a second if you don't want it," and she fell silent. Kurt did have a point, she guessed. She was trying to get her dream, and if she wanted to see her name on an album someday...she supposed there would be pictures to go with it. Though on the other hand...what was he gonna do? Kick her out for not being excited enough about a photo shoot? He kept Eva in when she caused fights with everyone and broke every rule he made, he kept Regina in no matter how much she complained to him. She was easy compared to the two of them, and if Rocko kicked every girl out of the group who crossed him he'd be left with Shirley and no one else. He needed them as much as they needed him.

"Now. Let's go get some photos." Rocko flashed another grin and turned dramatically to lead the girls into the dingy building. What looked crumbling from the outside was anything but when they entered: dark, but bustling as people rushed about, fussing with lights and the set and dragging wardrobe trolleys that held more gowns than Mercedes had ever seen in her life. They rolled past the girls who stood, gobsmacked, just past the threshold, then curved in a wide arc to make their way across the large, dim workspace and behind the set. The set was exceedingly simple: a stark white backdrop and floorcloth, with a podium covered in light pink plush velvet. But the way people rushed around it, scurrying to tweak lights and sweep the floorcloth to make sure it was pristine, to carry large palettes of makeup behind the backdrop, Mercedes couldn't help but feel like it was huge.

This was a real, live set. For a photo shoot to go on an album.

Well, so Rocko claimed. Or at least to get them signed to a label so they could have an album. Either way. It counted as a big step.

"We're really making it," Regina said quietly beside her, and as much as Mercedes usually thought the cheesy stuff was dumb, she couldn't help it. She had been dreaming of being a singing star since she could remember, and here she was on a set with real photographers and makeup people and that whole rack of gowns she'd seen? Those were for her. All of this was her domain now.

She was going to be a star. They were making it.

By the time they were led back to hair and makeup stations, Mercedes really felt like a star. The entire thing was surreal, as one woman powdered her face with a thick layer of light brown powder and another gave her nails a quick manicure to make sure they looked their best in the picture, in case she was posed in such a way that they were visible. A layer of pale pink, an emery board, and ten minutes later she leaned back slightly in the chair while blush was applied to her cheeks. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see two women working quickly on Regina's hair and another helping Eva into a dress while she complained about it not being flashy enough. Mercedes wanted to ask just how dumb her roommate was that she didn't know how sequins looked in a photo - did she not own a record where they tried that on the album cover? Or looked at a magazine lately?

Maybe she just knew because of Kurt. He liked to point out stuff like that. He would love all of this, too, all the bustle of the fashion stuff. She wondered if he would be able to enjoy it or be too busy lamenting his own career to appreciate her own...even if maybe he had a point. Sometimes success meant sacrifice, and even though she thought he was rude for taking away her dinner, she guessed a couple days of eating broth might be worth the payoff.

Besides. She wanted to look damn good on the album cover she sent home to her parents to prove she had made it big in the big city.

"Okay," the woman said, stepping back a second to check Mercedes' makeup, then she nodded to someone over Mercedes' shoulder. He came into view in the mirror carrying a foam head with a wig on top.

"What's that for?" she asked, eyes narrowing.

"For pictures. It's a better texture than your hair - more even." Mercedes's eyes narrowed as she tried to figure out what exactly that meant. Her hair was certainly an even texture, it felt the same all the way through - why else would she do her relaxers? The wig was a flip, like a bunch of girls she'd gone to high school with only exaggerated just a little, curling out on the sides with a bang that she would never, ever wear.

She looked over to see if anyone else was getting the same treatment, and from the looks of it only Eva was. Regina's hair was being puffed out slightly into a bob, and Shirley's long smooth locks were being twisted and curled and pinned on top of her head like a prom queen. "Why?"

"Rocko insisted." She looked from the woman to the man as though waiting for them to give her the actual answer to her question, but neither did. When a few seconds of silence passed, the man simply smoothed the wig onto her head and set about eagerly fixing it, fingers moving quickly to pin the wig into place but avoid mussing its smooth, shiny surface.

It felt funny on her head, heavy and awkward, but...there was more than that. Looking in the mirror, she barely recognized herself - with this hair and the light powder covering her neck and face, set off with dramatic stage makeup. It wasn't quite how she'd envisioned herself looking when she became a star, at any rate. But then, she also hadn't planned on having to rely on a girl she would rather strangle than put up with another day, and she had pictured herself onstage, not in stage face. She would look right in the photos. Besides - it wasn't like they hadn't changed her hair before.

"There we go - go see Maria for your dress."

Mercedes had to admit, she was a little nervous about the dress. She hadn't lost as much weight as Rocko would have liked, even though she had tried and had eaten like she was supposed to - not to Kurt's strict standards, maybe, but he was obsessive over things in a way she never would be. She liked things more than being as thin as Rachel. Things like french fries. And chocolate cake. But for something like this, where maybe Rocko was right about their whole future riding on it...she wished she could've done a little more maybe. She slipped out of the chair and walked over, keeping her head as still as she could to not unseat the wig even though it was pinned pretty tightly. She could already see the dresses on Eva and Shirley - black silk cut straight across the bust, with lace trim at the neck and straps, with an A-line skirt that Mercedes just knew was going to make her look bigger than she was. She didn't go in the same way Eva did, and Shirley had no curves at all, she was practically straighter than Rachel. What if Kurt had been more right than he realized, and this was going to mean she didn't make it? Either because the picture didn't work so the whole group failed, or because Rocko kicked her out of the group like he threatened sometimes? Not just her, but any of them who was acting up. He had yet to follow through on any of it, but maybe she really wasn't cut out for all of this like she thought.

"Here ya go, hon." Maria unzipped the dress and held it for Mercedes to step into, sliding it up into place and zipping it. To Mercedes' surprise, it wasn't too small in the least - it was actually almost too big. Maybe she really had lost more than she'd thought by eating healthy for the week, she thought proudly as Maria began to take in the back with pins, not caring if they showed because she would only be viewed from the front anyway.

"Oh good," Maria mumbled to herself, smiling and shaking her head as she drew in the bust until it was snug against Mercedes' skin. "Rocko said he had a big girl but didn't say how big, and I was afraid I might-"

Mercedes blinked, going from pleased to borderline homicidal in a matter of moments. "He said what?"

"Girls, on-set please! All of you, now!" A pleasant-sounding man with a clipboard directed from the edge of the makeup table.

"Just one more- there," Maria said as she fastened one last pin into the back of Mercedes' dress. "Go ahead, dear." Mercedes smoothed the front of the dress awkwardly, frowning at how the extra fabric bulk shifted oddly behind her as she walked. She followed Regina out onto the set, stomach fluttering excitedly. This wasn't about the dress her jerk of a manager thought she would be too big for, or the hairstyle - because honestly, they had changed her hair plenty of times before, it was just never this artificial before. It wasn't about the strange makeup that made her face look funny in the mirror. All these people were here for her...well, for her and her girls. A couple years ago, when she was sitting in a girls' dormitory, she could never have dreamed this would actually happen, but now as the lights flashed brighter and a guy began to move Shirley and Regina into place on either side of the podium, with Rocko wheeling and dealing just off-set...it was really happening.

She felt right here. It wasn't quite like being onstage, but it felt exhilarating nonetheless. She could imagine doing this for a long time, having people rush around and fetch drinks and fix her makeup and fluff her dress. It was like being queen, only better because she didn't just get it by being born to the right parents; she'd earned this. That was her voice on their demos, and she sounded damn good. It made the reward feel all the sweeter.

"Where the hell do you think you're standing?" Eva demanded shrilly as Regina moved in front of her, leaning against the side of the podium.

"Where they put me," Regina shot back over her shoulder with a roll of her eyes, then gave an exaggerated flip of her overly-styled hair so it swept across Eva's face.

"I will rip that out of your head - by the roots!"

So much for the world of a music star.

As Rocko swept in to calm the waters and patronizingly talk each of the girls down, Shirley made a quick exit, coming to stand beside Mercedes on the sidelines. "Can't they ever stop?" she asked, rolling her eyes.

"No," Mercedes replied. "I don't know how you didn't smack at least one of them in the car on the way over - I almost did."

"What would I even say?" She smiled faintly as though she knew it was futile to even try piping up. "'No, stop that'? Please. They don't listen to me."

"You've gotta make them listen." Mercedes looked Shirley up and down - fit into her dress perfectly, slim arms clasped behind her back, hair piled on top of her head, with all the spitfire of a 12-year-old whose biggest dream was to be prom queen one day with that hair. "You've gotta stand up for yourself when they start stuff. They will run over you if you let them - you've gotta dish it out as well as they do. Eva doesn't push me around because she knows she can't."

"Except when she locks you out of your room so she can make out with her boyfriend."

Mercedes wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or proud that Shirley pointed that out...or amused that Shirley thought that was all Eva was doing. "Better than walking in on it," she replied, and Shirley laughed. "Just learn to have more of a backbone, you know?"

"You're right, it's just not so easy," Shirley offered, and Mercedes shrugged because she could understand that, but she wasn't sure how to explain to a person how to tell someone else to knock something off. It was one of her many gifts, cultivated from an early age over her mother's - and especially over her father's - objections, but it served a person well when used properly. For one thing, it got her out of a backseat between two girls who could start a catfight over literally anything.

"Okay, girls, let's try this again," Rocko called as he stepped off the set, Regina and Eva for now mutually sulking around the podium.

"Are we taking bets on how long this lasts?" Mercedes joked as she walked out, starting to take her place at the front of the podium, across from Regina.

"Actually." The director moved over to take her gently by the arm. "We're going to put you up here." he guided her to the back half of the podium, next to Eva, then lightly grasped Shirley's hand and drew her to the front side with a fond smile. "Like that, exactly."

Shirley was taller than she was; Mercedes had known that for quite awhile now, but it was suddenly evident by just how much when she was suddenly standing behind the girl. Probably by about four inches. And that was before the updo added more height. "Excuse me?" she asked, popping her head out so no one could miss her. "Why is she up front here when she's the tallest of all of us?"

"Don't worry, we'll fix it - Mark? Would you?" the director called, and a young man brought over a short stepladder. It took Mercedes a second to realize what he wanted and move out of his way, but he quickly and expertly set it, checking the angle to camera before stepping back and offering her a hand. She couldn't see over Shirley's hair until she was on the second step, her fingertips resting awkwardly on the podium, but the director called out "Great! Okay, now let's get started..."

It felt like hours passed, standing up on a narrow step in uncomfortable heels - and why did they put them in heels when they were only photographing the group from their waists up? - with a giant smile pasted on her face until her cheeks started to ache, then the muscles there started to twitch so it felt like her face was vibrating. Her shoulder went numb after about twenty minutes, then they changed her position to lean more heavily onto the podium which sent pins and needles down her arm. They shifted her behind Shirley no fewer than six times and told them all to look sweeter, look more wholesome, look polished, and when Regina couldn't keep a straight face because she was thinking of too many jokes and nasty things to say about Eva being wholesome and polished, Rocko cleared his throat and shot her a dirty look that would have made Mercedes start laughing if she thought she could move her cheeks.

And to top it all off, it was sweltering.

The studio that had seemed so cool, with its white-painted cinderblock walls and drafts, when they arrived had heated up quickly once the lights went up, and Mercedes swore more people just kept piling in - she didn't know what any of them did, but they were all white and all very busy doing nothing at all. They would scurry from one end of the room to the other with a clipboard, pick up a hat and scurry back across the room to hand it to a different person than the one they had just spoken with, only to repeat the whole movement over again but this time with a necklace, none of which ever ended up on-set as far as Mercedes could tell. Maybe they didn't even do anything but bring coffee every so often, she concluded. Maybe it was like the equivalent of those kids who were even lower on the ladder than Kurt in the fashion world, who were there just hoping someone would notice them and let them do something else. Like those girls who worked as secretaries at record label offices because they thought they could get discovered enough to at least be a studio musician, then get her big break.

She was so glad she wasn't stuck doing that. If she had to kiss someone's butt all day while they made her run around with hats, she wouldn't last five minutes before she would get back on the bus to school, she would hate it that much. She didn't get people coffee. No way.

But she hadn't realized that, when people talked about the bright lights of show business, they meant it literally.

By the time the director of the photo shoot called "Makeup!", Mercedes was so dripping with sweat that she was surprised the director hadn't already yelled at her for the powder caking to her cheeks and forehead in wet, uneven patterns. The women from earlier swooped in with handfuls of compacts and brushes and shadows to touch all four of them up as quickly as possible, starting with Mercedes. She stepped off the ladder, flexing her feet painfully inside the shoes, and tried to figure out whether taking off her shoes would make it better or worse. They wouldn't be able to tell, so she could probably get away with it, and the things hurt. But standing in nothing but stockings on a wooden ladder rung for hours might hurt more. She tried to stretch her cheek muscles even as the woman attempted to fluff more light brown powder all over her, sighing and shaking her head as it looked wet and ruined almost as soon as it hit Mercedes' clammy skin.

"Hey - excuse me?" she asked one of the many scurriers as one walked past. "Can we turn these lights down? I'm boiling up here, I think they want to kill me for what I'm doing to the makeup."

He rolled his eyes. "No. 'Course not," he replied sarcastically. "Sorry." With a flick of his eyebrows that looked like he might be sorry or might think she was a diva for even asking, he kept walking around to the back of the set.

What the hell kind of answer did he think that was? Groaning in her heels, she waved off the makeup lady and marched after him. "Why not? I know you don't get to call the shots or anything, but you could at least ask!"

"Because I know the answer," he shot back. He gave her a pitying look as he added, "Look, I'm sure you girls are...swell. But they keep the lights so bright 'cause they've gotta lighten you up. How else are they gonna sell you? When lights are turned that bright that long, they get hot. So they have to put more powder on you - which doesn't match your skin either. So...sorry. But no, they won't turn it down. And I'm not gonna ask because the last time I did? I'm not about to let them fire me when I'm only a couple weeks away from my bus ticket out of here." He shrugged and walked back toward the rack of wig "options" mumbling something about her not being worth a sit-in in Mobile, leaving Mercedes standing beside the rack of unworn gowns.

"Mercedes!" Rocko said, popping around the back of the set and snapping his fingers. "We need you back out there." Mercedes just nodded dumbly and walked out to take her place again on the step ladder, pasting on her best fake smile. It was amazing how easy muscle memory made it.

* * * * *

His picture was in the newspaper.

Kurt arrived at work to find it taped to another box of netting - right there on the front page of the Metro section of the New York Times, under the headline "Police Crack Down on Homosexual Establishments; Hundreds Arrested." A picture of the paddy wagon right before they shoved him in, face-first, with a clear image of his face, eyes wide, mouth tight. The hands shoving him into the already-crowded vehicle were just as beefy as they had felt, and Kurt subconsciously rubbed his forearms where he swore he could still feel the phantom grip of calloused fingers on his delicate skin. He looked stunned in the image, as though he'd had no idea this was coming.

Maybe he hadn't at the time, but looking back it felt like he should have known all along. He should have believed Mercedes, should have known anywhere that seemed halfway good was too good to be true, he shouldn't have gone in the first place. He should have...

It didn't matter anymore, though, did it? Too late to change any of it.

But now he was definitely going to be fired. No one employed people who got arrested, Kurt knew that much, and if he knew anything about his current job it was that he was most definitely expendable. Replaceable, certainly. Any fool could cut silk and satin according to muslins - probably better than he could, given the collar incident, and it wasn't as though he was like some of the other boys in the company. Some of them had close ties with people further up, had enough friends throughout the line that someone could stand up for them. Some of them even had friends who would vouch for them instead of stabbing them in the back to get their position - those were admittedly more rare.

He had neither. He had no one.

He found himself spending the morning alternating between wondering just how much tulle he would have to cut before his boss came down to tell him he would no longer be employed, how much his boss had known before he suggested that bar...because even as obnoxious as Stu was, he couldn't possibly have known the place was going to be raided, could he? Even assuming Kurt had been wrong about Stu's motives - completely and utterly wrong, even if Stu was just an ambitious jerk who had so little moral compass and so few feelings he had never been able to comprehend theoretical loneliness let alone felt it himself...even assuming that Kurt had managed to create an entire human side to his boss in his head because he was so desperate to believe that he wasn't alone. Even then. Stu couldn't have known when a bar was going to be raided. And surely he wasn't devious enough to call in the raid himself, was he? No, that-

No one could be that evil, could they?

He didn't know anymore.

He wondered a lot about the men in Ohio who had been caught in the drive-in sting at...at their theater, his and Blaine's. He wondered if any of them got fired from their jobs they had at the time. He imagined they must have been, if only because the only news story he had been able to find prior to coming to terms with himself had been about homosexuals at a bar in Columbus and Leroy had told him that was common and the men usually lost their jobs. It was why Hiram was so afraid of everything - well, that and Rachel, but he wasn't technically meant to see her anyway. He wondered if any of the men turned out okay after that, or what ever happened to them. Or their boyfriends, he knew at least a few of them had been couples at the time - they had seen them together a few times.

He wondered if that was really the beginning of the end of them. If that was what had made Blaine know he couldn't do any of this, that he couldn't trust anyone or anything anymore - not even Kurt. Not even what Kurt had been so sure of.

He wondered if maybe Blaine had been the smart one in all of this. If maybe he should have listened and not come out here. If maybe he should have settled for a dorm room somewhere covered with ivy, or a town in California, or somewhere else where they would never tell anyone how they felt for one another. If maybe everything he'd envisioned about being proud to be himself for even five minutes was just as ridiculous as finding loneliness in Stu's past when there was nothing but deception and ambition.

He wasn't sure of any of it anymore.

The netting was rougher today than the tulle from a few days ago, and it tore up his fingers the longer he tried to manipulate it. What were they trying to make - tutus? Those were high-fashion, certainly. And next they could make tap costumes because obviously that was the direction they were going in now. He had no doubt he would be in charge of beading and sequining until his fingers bled. Or fell off. Or he quit. It refused to lie flat no matter how many places he weighted it to measure the pieces, and as soon as he tried to cut more than one layer at once it slid across the table like a piece of paper under a ceiling fan. "Oh just stay already," he groaned pitifully as he chased the half-cut line with the tip of his scissors, trying to wrangle it back into place without cutting a giant angle in the so-called fabric.

"Having fun?" Stu sing-songed from the door, a look of schadenfreude on his face but with something darker - not merely being happy about Kurt's misfortune, but twisted delight in bringing about his public humiliation. A few of his friends crowded around him, trying to get a good look at Kurt, and it took everything in him not to let them see how agonizing it had been. He held his back stiff, his mouth tight, eyes just a bit too wide as he simply looked up at them like he didn't care about the comment. Or the fact that they were staring at him. Or the fact that he had trusted him. Or-

He swallowed hard, corners of his mouth twitching just a little, and his eyes fixed Stu with a sharp glare, watching as he and his cronies disappeared down the hall with uproarious laughter as though his misfortune was the funniest thing they had ever seen, but the tears mercifully held back until they had passed his door.

Kurt had been humiliated plenty of times in his life. He had been shoved into every borderline-disgusting substance or refuse that could be found in Lima at some point in time. He had been invited to classmates' parties as a joke, he'd had every rumour possible spread about him in middle school, and he had once managed to nearly fall on his face trying to dance in the choir room. He had found out at a bonfire with every person he was close to in the entire school that his boyfriend was leaving him for the opposite coast and had a shouting match at more than a few rites of passage, and he had listened to his brother trying to feel up his girlfriend on more occasions than he cared to count - only to face questions from his brother about why, when it was Finn's turn to chaperon Kurt's 'dates', Kurt didn't try to make out with Rachel in the backseat. But nothing remotely compared to the realization that he had made up every ounce of humanity he had attributed to Stu, that he had created it out of nothing at all, and that he had a second arrest on his record and the entire city was going to know about it.

The only thing he could console himself with was the fact that no one in the city except Rachel and Mercedes had his father's address, so there was no way his family could ever get a copy of this. And that neither Rachel nor Mercedes regularly read the Metro section - only the Arts.

The sound of whispering outside his door made the tears just fall harder. Everyone around here knew, it seemed. Stu had certainly made sure plenty of people saw the newspaper before he put it in Kurt's workroom. Or enough people read the Times to find it on their own, but he wasn't betting on that. He would bet everything it was all his boss's fault at this point. Of course it was. Because apparently making one mistake meant being ruined for life with-

"I told you it was him!" he heard the hushed voice and almost choked on his own throat as he tried to pull himself together. Really? Hadn't he been punished enough? Hadn't he suffered enough for believing what he thought was a good-faith suggestion by someone who turned out to be a snake? Did he really have to-

"I can't believe you recognized a boy in a newspaper picture," came another whisper, this one genuinely incredulous.

"You just can't believe I spent that much time studying the picture to ID people."

"You're right, I think it's unhealthy. And a little obsessive."

"I think we know too many people who could've been in that picture. And we know a lawyer."

Kurt tilted his head, his hands stilling on the tulle as he tried to figure out who the men outside were. And what they were talking about - beyond the obvious. It was easy to tell that one of the men knew who he was because he was in the picture, but how did they know other people who could have been in the picture with him? Others who went to that bar? How did they know- there were six bars raided the same night, how did they even know what bar Kurt had been at? And how did they know him? No one around here knew him except the girls in the front office who liked how he dressed and asked his opinions on their makeup...well, them and Stu, but these voices weren't laughing at him. Pointing, yes, but laughing...not quite.

A familiar face appeared in the doorway - the third-echelon man with the smile like Blaine's who told him goodnight like he actually meant it. His dark brown eyes were so worried and compassionate that it made Kurt want to sob, just curl up in the middle of the room and lose it kind of bawling. He was just so exhausted and ashamed and it was like the first time a person was asking why he looked half-dead because Rachel had been lost in her own mind with something she wasn't ready to talk about, either, and that one look- "Are you okay?"

He wasn't going to cry in front of his boss's boss's boss. He wasn't. He swore up and down he wouldn't, even as he could feel the tears working their way forward. With a proud jut of his chin and a rigidly-stiff back, he replied with a very quiet, high, "Why wouldn't I be?"

The man stepped into the room, gesturing for whoever his companion was to enter as well. The second man was taller, boxier, with dark hair worn too long and nearly-black eyes. "Oh sweetie...we've all been there..." The first man shot his taller friend a look and paused to close the door behind them. "We've all been there," he repeated more sympathetically.

Kurt wasn't sure he understood. Was he saying that he had been arrested, too? For-...for this? That he was-

Oh, wow. Did that mean-

"I'm Don," the first man said in a calm tone with a reassuring smile, as if he could sense that Kurt was starting to try to process everything too quickly and needed to take a step back. "And this is John...my lover."

My lover. He said it so casually, like it was a perfectly normal introduction to make, but Kurt felt like his world stopped spinning for a moment. His lover. The man he-...he shared things with, his more-than-a-boyfriend, his-...

He had a million questions but couldn't find a way to get to any of them, couldn't pull any of them from where they were spinning through his brain to his throat enough to give voice to the things he wanted to know so badly - how had they found each other? What was it like, having one? How long had they been together?

Were they happy?

"Why in the world would you go there? Of all the places-"

"Exactly," John jumped in, shaking his head. "You have to come out with us instead. We have safer places. Promise," he added with a grin, but Kurt felt sick.

He wanted to believe them. He wanted to believe in the earnest smiles and the way the two of them glanced at one another before speaking. He wanted to say yes, absolutely - they should take him to a nice safe place where he could meet a boyfriend before disappearing back into the safety of his apartment except for possibly going out to another safe place for dinner every so often. He wanted to ask them where they had met and where other boys met other boys and how long had they been together because neither one looked too much older than he was - unless they were much older and just looked younger, considering he still looked like a high school student. He wanted to go with them.

Really, he wanted to believe John's earnest smile.

But the problem was, he did believe it.

He did. He believed it. He believed that Don and John (and he couldn't tell if the matching names were adorable or an unfortunate coincidence) wanted to help him. He believed Don's tender expression and John's earnest grin. He believed that they wanted to take him somewhere safe because they understood what he had gone through. He believed that they wanted to show him kindness because they had been through the same humiliating experiences, and that maybe he could find a boyfriend and some genuine friendships out of this entire mortifying affair.

But he had believed the same thing about Stu. He had really, truly, and honestly believed that Stu wanted to help him because he knew true loneliness. He had convinced himself of kindness and altruism where neither existed - where neither had reason to exist except for his own desperation. There was absolutely no reason he should have thought that Stu was out to help anyone but himself, and yet he had made the entire thing up in his head and then convinced himself it had been real all along, only to end up in jail.

He had believed New York would be an amazing fantasyland with homosexual couples on every corner, where he and Blaine could skip through the streets holding hands and singing love songs to one another, based on no evidence at all except stories Leroy had of California and the vague missive that he should "head for the coasts" because that's where the homosexuals used to hang out on Naval bases 20-some years ago. He had made up an entire future that had no basis in reality and not known any of it until it was too late.

Hell, he had believed that he and Blaine had a future together. He had believed that Blaine really was committed to New York the way he was, that his boyfriend was invested in all of this and going to go come a year ahead of him to start preparing their life together.

This was what he did. He seized on tiny hints of moments to draw out something that represented the smallest glimmer of hope, and then he built the whole thing up in his head - adding details and creating a backstory for every single action until before he knew it, he believed something so genuinely and so fervently that he would act on anything that made sense in the world he had created...

And it never ended well.

Mercedes had tried to tell him he did this before, and he had tuned her out, claiming she was just-...just uncomfortable with him, or just didn't like Blaine, or just didn't understand what it was he saw because she hadn't been there. But maybe she really was right. He made these things up and then wondered why they weren't true, why he ended up heartbroken - or in jail - when there had never been any reason to believe things would work out the way he planned.

So the problem wasn't that he didn't believe that, with the way the two of them looked like they wanted to start holding hands and the tender concern on both their faces, they wanted to help him; he had no doubt in his mind that they did. But his sense of doubt rarely - if ever - lined up with reality.

And he couldn't go through another disappointment like that right now. Certainly not if it involved another night in jail.

"No," he forced out quietly, the word having to practically be shoved from his throat so roughly it hurt. "Thank you, but. I can't."

He wasn't about to jump into things again. He couldn't.

He was done.