He wanted to - oh, did he want to. He kept trying even once it had become clear that no amount of staring up at the ceiling was going to make him able to relax enough. He needed to get to sleep because otherwise he was going to drive himself crazy thinking so much.

The boy in his bed shouldn't have seemed as novel now that he routinely had a boy in his room, but Sam was...well, Sam was Sam, he was sweet and goofy and an all-around nice guy, but he didn't make Kurt's stomach flutter like this. He didn't make Kurt notice his aftershave or wonder what his hands would feel like in his. He didn't captivate Kurt's attention as soon as he walked in the room.

Blaine did.

Blaine's breathing had managed to capture Kurt's interest for a solid ten minutes earlier in the night - sometime around 2, while it was past 4 now, almost 5. The slight hitch on the inhale, the way he almost held his breath as he shifted into a new position, the way his back moved with every exhale-

And that was nothing compared to the exorbitant amount of time he'd spent analyzing Blaine's hair. It was slicked down but not plastered, leaving it fluffed against the pillow now that it had dried; Kurt wanted to play with it. He wanted to grab his wide assortment of products, and a spray bottle, and just experiment until he found something that looked better than the strictly-parted thing. Though the side-slicked look did suit Blaine, Kurt supposed, especially in uniform. It smelled like his own shampoo, and for some reason Kurt couldn't identify that made him feel dizzy and smiley and overwhelmed, as though that was somehow just so damned intimate he couldn't stand it. He wondered what the hair would feel like under his fingers - it looked coarse from here, in the moonlight, against the stark white pillowcase, but he wanted to know. To know what it would feel like to run his hands through Blaine's hair. To run his fingertips down along the shorter hairs on the side of Blaine's head, down the sideburns, onto the dark stubble that intruded on pale, soft skin...across his jaw, his chin, his bottom lip-

Kurt pushed himself up off the bed quickly, crossing to the window. Blaine didn't stir, for which he was grateful - he didn't know that even he had wits quick enough to explain away what he was thinking of.

What was he doing?

Either Blaine was like him, or he wasn't. Either he could reciprocate these feelings, or he couldn't. Kurt could either make a move, or he couldn't - he should, or he shouldn't - and this extended limbo state of hell needed to just end already. The sensation of looking and feeling and wanting so badly it literally made his chest ache until it felt like his torso was collapsing in on itself - it needed to end. He either needed to do something about how he felt, or he needed to get over it, and he didn't think there was any middle ground here.

But how was he supposed to get over it?

And could he get over something that never actually existed?

It didn't help that he had no idea how any of this was supposed to work. He knew how he felt, he knew how others theoretically felt, he didn't know how a person was supposed to navigate the way out of their own secret and into someone else's when no one was about to go around telling anyone else how they felt. If that was the way they felt, anyway. How was a person supposed to know if someone else was a homosexual if no one was willing to admit to it? Were there signs he was missing? He had to begrudgingly admit there were plenty of signs when it came to love and romance and relationships that he had never learned - Blaine's comments from earlier about Sam, about Sam not being able to stop looking at Quinn, seemed a perfect example. Maybe there were obvious tells about a man that indicated he was interested in men for something other than fraternal companionship, and he simply didn't know what they were. For all he knew, Blaine had given him every signal to indicate he was similarly-oriented and Kurt just didn't know it.

Or Blaine had no idea how Kurt felt. He wasn't sure if that was better or worse. Potentially less embarrassing for now, potentially disastrous for later.

But even assuming Blaine was like him...what was he supposed to do next? He knew vaguely how it worked when there was a boy and a girl - the boy asked the girl if she wanted to go out this weekend, though early enough in the week to be courteous. He picked her up and met her parents and they went to dinner and he held open doors and slid out chairs and was at his most gentlemanly self, then he paid for dinner and escorted her home...and after awhile, they went steady though he wasn't quite sure how that worked either because he usually just heard the squealing afterward from the girl who was excitedly showing off her steady's pin, and then they got to the point where they were Finn and Quinn and pretty much destined to be engaged after high school. How did any of that work when there were two boys? They couldn't very well go to dinner together, or to a movie, or walk around the park holding hands. Obviously there was no engagement - only a man and a woman could get married, of course, there would be no point if you couldn't form a family anyway. But even simple details like who would pay for dinner seemed overwhelming and confusing.

How did a boy even ask another boy to go on a date? Who decided who asked whom?

What did two boys do when it came to dating? Did they each take a fake girlfriend and make them sit in the front seats at the drive-in while they kissed in the backseat, like Kurt had done countless times with Finn and Quinn? That felt kind of rude and potentially dangerous in its exposure all at once. He didn't particularly like Rachel a lot of the time, but that still didn't seem right. And he doubted it would be accepted very well by a girl whose trademark was the constant need to be the center of attention.

Ah, Rachel. With her ridiculous proposal that managed to not seem like the worst idea ever.

He sighed and sank onto the bench of his vanity. He wanted to dismiss her idea out of hand. After all, they didn't even get along a lot of the time - she was so irritatingly driven in a way that made him want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her and tell her that every time she thought people didn't like her because she was Jewish, really they didn't like her because she insisted on being right every single time there was a conversation. She hogged every solo, including ones he was more suited for, she could be conniving when she wanted something she felt was not being given to her, and she tried to control everyone around her. ...But, he had to admit, he did at least a few of those same things when it suited him. Particularly when he was still at McKinley and needed to fight for everything he wanted in a system that seemed like total anarchy. While she got away with a lot more than he ever had, contrary to the usual nature of things and girls getting a worse reputation than boys for doing the same thing, he had begrudgingly acknowledge that their instincts were the same - the outcome was just different.

The problem was, that meant he wasn't sure he trusted her plan. He wasn't sure he trusted her - not on something this grand. To nail a fantastic note during a solo in a competition, absolutely - she was flawless. To keep his secret when she was notoriously bad at holding juicy tidbits of gossip to herself? Not in a million years.

Except...

No one in town - or at least no one their age in town - knew about her father. There had been comments, occasionally a joke or two about how her dad and Puck's dad must be the same guy because he wasn't around and they were both Jewish (before Rachel pointed out that Judaism was carried on the mothers' lineage and Puck just punched the guy because he could), but her father's "homosexual negro lover" remained a secret. She had at least managed to keep that bit of information to herself.

That didn't guarantee his safety, but it was a hint that she might be physically capable of holding onto a secret.

She no longer had an ax to grind with him, he realized suddenly. She had no motive to trick him into something here. They no longer competed for solos, and there would never be a time that they would be in legitimate competition for a boyfriend because either a boy would be like him or he wouldn't be and any boys who weren't homosexuals would automatically be Rachel's for the taking, and not his.

(The word got easier to think every time he did it. While hearing it earlier had been terrifying, he supposed that - in time - he'd be able to say it aloud. Not yet, but someday. Soon-ish, maybe.)

So at the very least he could believe her motives, even if he wasn't so sure about her execution.

But that brought him to the bigger question: Was this even a good idea in the first place?

After all, what if Blaine was capable of returning his feelings but was afraid to now that he had a girlfriend? What if that was a surefire sign that he wasn't a homosexual (was there a word for that other than "normal"? He should find that out.) Did he even need a girlfriend?

...If he didn't date Rachel, thereby ensuring her portion of the trade, did that mean she would then have an ax to grind and might reveal his secret?

He needed to get more answers before he could give her one, he concluded. Tilting the small clock towards the window to check the time, he saw it was just about 5 - by the time he finished his shower, his morning skin routine, his hair, selecting the perfect outfit to wear back to school, and grabbed a quick breakfast, he could go over to ask her the things he needed to.

There were no physical reminders of Blaine in his shower, but somehow the knowledge that Blaine had been in here the previous night (naked! his brain seemed to want to remind him, as though in big marquee lights above the showerhead) gave him the same dizzying impression of intimacy that the scent of his shampoo on Blaine's hair had given him. He shivered despite the warmth of the water and tried to ignore the warm stirrings of arousal in his gut - and lower.

Just because he was a homosexual did not give him the right to be that predatory - thinking about the boy in the shower like that. He swallowed hard and focused intently on washing his hair, on the homework he needed to finish when he got back to school, on the questions he specifically needed to ask Rachel, and managed to nip the pleasurable urges in the bud.

He made sure to leave a note for Blaine explaining his whereabouts before walking quietly downstairs to get breakfast. He was surprised to see his dad and Finn sitting at the kitchen table in silence, each staring off into space in separate directions. "Good morning," he ventured.

His dad looked over in surprise, and Finn jumped. "Morning, Kurt," came the low response.

"Looks like everyone's getting an early start today," he offered in a bright voice.

"Yeah, guess so," Finn replied. He hadn't been able to sleep either, spending the entire night haunted by white lace dresses and screaming infants.

"I'm going over to ask Rachel a few questions, then say a quick goodbye to Mercedes," Kurt stated as he popped two slices of bread into the toaster. "I shouldn't be more than an hour or so. We should be leaving before lunchtime so we can settle back in, and I know Blaine and I both have homework."

"Sounds fine," Burt nodded, then hesitated and added, "Say, would it be a problem for you to get back next weekend?"

Kurt's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why?"

"There may be a family thing going on then."

"What kind of family thing? It's no one's birthday, your anniversary isn't for another month-"

"Kurt, just- can you leave the weekend open or not?"

Kurt blinked, surprised by his father's sudden exasperated tone. "Sure," he replied, eyeing first his dad, then the conspicuously-silent Finn. "I can leave it open."

"And get one of those passes or whatever?"

"I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem." Blaine could get him a pass if he couldn't talk the Council into getting it for him, at any rate.

"Good." Burt nodded and took a long swig of his coffee, then returned to staring into space.

Kurt plucked the now-done toast and began to butter the slices carefully. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," he said quietly.

"It doesn't seem that way."

"We've gotta tell Mom first," Finn reported softly.

If that wasn't a red flag, nothing was. His father not being able to tell him something was big enough, but the knowledge that he couldn't be informed until they had first told Carole- That meant it was big. Bigger than someone's surprise party. And had to do with Finn somehow.

He wanted to know, but at the same time...he didn't even want to know.

* * * * *

Shelby Corcoran was the type of woman who, if she were a little taller and wore her hair pulled back into a chignon, would have made an excellent tyrannical ballet instructor in a turn-of-the-century French ballet company.

Kurt had met her many times over the years at various school functions, competitions, the occasional local production of Oklahoma! or Kiss Me, Kate. He knew little about her other than the fact that she was the only person who believed in Rachel's excellence more than Rachel did, but for all her stage mother qualities she was also herself a failed star. He wasn't sure precisely what had happened to keep Rachel's mother in the area, though he suspected judging form the previous night's conversation that it had to do with Rachel's father (and Rachel), but she certainly tried to perform whenever and wherever she could. That appeared to be a genetic trait. His personal favourite example was when she had lobbied endlessly to get the Lima Players to put on South Pacific (and how she had gotten the rights to do so, considering it was barely five years old, Kurt had no idea) the year he and Rachel were 14. She had attempted to simultaneously fight for the almost-all-white group to cast her daughter as Ngana, the girl who is supposed to be both half-Polynesian and a fairly young child...and attempted to snare the role of Nellie for herself.

She wasn't an unkind woman, just intense in a way Kurt had learned to accept as immutable in Rachel, but the way she stared him down as she opened the door at half past seven gave him pause anyway. "Kurt. What are you doing here?"

"I'm very sorry for not calling, I'm going back to school in a couple hours and I needed to ask Rachel about something. Is she awake by chance? I know she usually is by now, to rehearse." He gave his sweetest - albeit also his most awkward - smile.

She looked at him skeptically, knowing he was up to something but not being quite sure what, but stepped back and allowed, "For a few minutes. She's upstairs."

As if he couldn't just follow the sounds of a familiar soprano belting out Doris Day and find Rachel wherever his ears led him.

Kurt rapped on the door, feeling suddenly nervous, and the music stopped. He tried to remember everything he wanted to ask, the entire list he'd come up with the shower while trying not to think of Blaine being so close and in his bed and having been in his shower just a few hours before, but it was like now that he was here the logical, list-making part of his brain was subsiding and the slightly-paranoid part was taking over. That was the wrong thing for a time like this.

He drew in a deep breath and decided that his best bet was to channel the paranoia and anxiety into cynical shrewdness, skeptical hesitance. It was getting harder to re-don the masks he'd shed at Dalton, and that was one of them...but he supposed that, for Rachel, he would make an exception.

She opened her bedroom door and looked surprised. "Kurt."

"May I come in?" he asked evenly.

"Oh, of course. I wasn't expecting you - when you said that you needed time to think about it I didn't think you would mean twelve hours."

"Nine," he corrected as he stepped stiffly into her room. It really was a disgusting shade of pink that made him think of a nursery - not unlike her wardrobe, he supposed, so at least the entire package went together. Along with the stuffed bears on her flowery bedspread, the white rocking chair in the corner, the canopy bed...

Oh god. He would be essentially dating a toddler. That felt far creepier than dating a boy.

"How would this work?" he asked.

She sat on the bed, looking up at him curiously. "Well," she said, "What's important is what other people see, right? So it's entirely about appearances. We're both performers, Kurt, that shouldn't be difficult - and while you lack my years of formal training, I've seen you in enough productions to know that you're a very good actor."

She didn't know the half of it. She had no idea how much he kept hidden beyond the secret she knew about. How much of his life he'd been acting just to walk down the halls. She thought what he did onstage was a convincing performance? He'd managed a decade of walking around feeling like he might burst into tears at any moment and no one knew; that was impressive. Though pretending to like Rachel even when she was being her most obnoxious version of herself might prove more difficult still.

She reached over to the nightstand to pick up a notebook. "I've taken the liberty of crafting a backstory-"

He held up his hand to cut her off. "We don't need a separate backstory, Rachel; I asked you for a date after you sang to me last night is sufficient."

"No," she replied, looking horrified. "You can't say that - people have to think you made a move first. Before I sang. Otherwise they'll think that I was the one who asked you out and not vice versa. What will people think about that?"

"About what they'll say to the fact that you're bossing me around from day one and attempting to control the entire relationship when I'm the boy?" he replied coldly. "Also, I haven't said yes yet."

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said. I haven't decided if I'm agreeing to this preposterous proposal yet. I need more information first." He paused then clarified, "So no one would know except us."

"That's the idea, isn't it?"

He supposed it was, but that didn't exactly address his real concern: Blaine. What if the boy did like him but thought he couldn't ask him out now because he didn't know that Rachel wasn't a real girlfriend? Because for all he knew, that Laura girl Blaine had gone with a few times earlier in the year could have been just as fake, but no one in the Warblers knew. Or she could have been real - she could still be real. He had no idea.

But he wasn't sure how to ask that. Instead, he asked the more pertinent and non-person-specific question. "What happens if we find someone we would actually like to date?" Rachel looked caught off-guard by the question, and Kurt was surprised she hadn't thought that part through before she proposed it. Was she really that tied-up in her crush on Finn that she saw no potential to date anyone else as long as he was unavailable? That was just sad. It had been like three years now, that needed to be let go. Immediately. "Because even if I agree to this scheme...if I happened to find a boy who could - I'm not saying I think I will, but on the off chance I found someone who was similarly inclined...I don't know that I could pass that up, not even in the name of preventing rumours. People have been saying things about me for as long as I can remember. I'm used to that. But if a boy were ever to express interest."

Rachel nodded, thought a moment, then said, "If you had to keep it secret anyway, which you would, then I don't see the harm. Provided I have the same right to date someone if I find someone that I really like."

"Only if you're keeping that part just as secret," Kurt pointed out.

"Oh, I know," she assured him. "No boys really want to be seen dating me, either. It's not that different."

It was all the difference in the world, Kurt thought irritatedly. She had never been shown a medical book that said she was a schizophrenic and had to spend the next several days panicking before scouring the library for any other information that might say she wasn't crazy - the best of which told her there were maybe three dozen people like her in the entire country. The reputation problem a boy might have if he dated an unpopular girl was nothing compared to what would happen if anyone suspected he liked a boy-

He didn't want to argue with her. Not already. Not right now. Not when he hadn't slept and was still trying to sort everything out. "You do know that it can't be Finn," he pointed out with an arched eyebrow. "If he were to break up with Quinn tomorrow, you wouldn't be able to date him without us calling off our arrangement. Puckerman wouldn't object to dating a girl who is publicly dating someone else, but Finn would, and he would object even more strongly because we're brothers. He's not always the brightest bulb, but he does have at least a little sense of family obligation. Even to keep him from stealing who - for all intents and purposes - is his brother's girl."

Rachel swallowed hard, thinking, and Kurt wondered if he'd hit a wall - pushed too hard and tried to convince her to sacrifice something too big for her to agree to. Maybe it wasn't fair, but it needed to be said. Maybe it wasn't particularly equitable considering he still had the right to date Blaine if that opportunity arose, but she was giving up her similarly-monumental crush. But her being able to date both boys would be a red flag that even Finn would see. "Okay," she said quietly.

"Excuse me?"

"I said, okay. He's with Quinn, I understand that, so I can-...I suppose that I can agree not to date him since it will remain something that's not a valid option anyway."

Wow, Kurt thought. Rachel had grown. He wasn't sure how to process that, what to say in response.

He had so many other questions, but they were all...awkward. Personal. Things he wasn't quite sure how to word and where to begin or end. "Can I ask you a question?" His voice was quiet as he sat hesitantly on the edge of her bed, and she seemed thrown off by the sudden change in the conversation's tone. When she nodded, he drew in a breath, then stopped. Where could he even start?

He wanted to talk to someone. He needed to talk to someone, to feel a little less like he was drowning under this secret, and if he was deciding that Rachel was trustworthy - which, he supposed, he was - that meant he could talk to her, but he didn't know where to begin. Where to start trying to pluck questions from. What was most important to be sure he found out first. What really mattered in all of this.

What Rachel might even know the answer to.

That was where to start, he decided. "Do you-" His voice was quivering and he paused to steady it. "-still talk to your father?"

Her eyes widened, but to her credit she managed to avoid anything cliche like a dramatic gasp or tearing up. Not that the question should have been that big of a deal, but she was Rachel and never so happy as when she was doing something overly melodramatic. Her response was as quiet as the question: "A little. Not often. I'd like to, but I'm not supposed to - my mom doesn't want me to. I'm not supposed to know why, but I do."

"So you're sure that he-"

"Absolutely," she replied quickly. "Without a doubt."

Kurt nodded slowly, then asked, "And he and his b- boyfriend-"

He'd said the word a thousand times before, he didn't know why it felt so simultaneously dirty and warm - like he wasn't sure whether he should want to run from the word at top speed because it terrified him, or like he wanted to crawl into the space the word occupied, all the promise it held, and stay there where it was safe.

"...They're happy?" he asked finally.

Rachel pursed her lips, hesitated, then responded, "It's no better where they live than here, you know. Lima may be unbearably regressive, but it's certainly not the only place. Did you know that there are other schools in Cleveland - in the city, where a majority are non-white students, that are refusing to integrate? To say nothing of the township somewhere up there where the white part of the town petitioned the state for incorporation to set up its own school system that would serve only the incorporated portion."

"So it's because they're an interracial couple, not because-"

"Oh, no one's supposed to know they're a couple at all," Rachel stated. "I'm not meant to know that part. They live in a two-bedroom house and try to pretend that the room I stay in is unoccupied most of the year."

"So they're not happy," Kurt concluded quietly. Who would be, under those circumstances? Who could ever hope for that, right? Not when he was what he was, not when-

"I don't know," she allowed. "I- I've only seen them together a couple times, usually they make some excuse about Leroy needing to go out of town for a trip or something. And I can only go up there when I can sneak off because technically Dad lost custody of me in the divorce, but...I think they might be." She reached over and clasped his hand. "I know you're lonely. I know it must be hard to-...I know it's hard for me to watch the boy I'm in love with with someone else, I can only imagine how much harder it is for you, with there being so few homosexuals out there. At least now we won't be alone."

It wasn't remotely the same thing, but he wasn't sure he could explain that to her. He wasn't sure if she already knew and it was her consolation to herself as well as to him.

"How did you know?" he asked.

"I overheard my parents fighting when I was seven."

"No, I meant...about me."

"Oh! Oh, that. Well, I had had my suspicions for years. Most boys don't know musicals the way you do, or listen to Connie Francis, or understand the emotional depth of a well-executed ballad. That's not always a guarantee, though - Rex Harrison is a notorious womanizer, Richard Rogers is married and has a daughter - though I suppose that doesn't mean much," she added with a faint smile as if to say 'because here I am', then continued, "But the way you were staring at Blaine last night..."

Kurt swallowed hard. "Did anyone else notice that?"

"I don't think so. I don't know. It won't matter if you have a girlfriend - most people only see what they want to." Her not-so-subtle attempt at coercion earned a skeptical eyebrow raise from Kurt.

He thought about what she'd said - about how she'd known for years. First, it was a little unfair that she had known longer than he had; if anyone were going to know, he thought surely he should be the first. But more importantly...everything she had listed were conversations both of them had had with Blaine. Did that mean- Because as much as he thought Rex's Tony for My Fair Lady was well-deserved, the actor was hardly a connoisseur of fine emotional ballads. Blaine could have entire conversations at length about the musical power of West Side Story versus The Music Man, the differences between the way Judy Garland sang a song in 1940 and how she sang it in 1955, the emotional depth of "Smile (Though Your Heart is Aching)". That had to mean something, didn't it?

Did it mean the same thing whether he was having the conversation with Rachel or with Kurt? Did that matter? Kurt had no idea. He felt like it should, like that had to be a sign that Blaine was able to reciprocate his advances.

He just had no idea what those advances should be.

"Just out of curiosity, can you tell about other people?" he asked, trying to play it coy and deliberately nonspecific.

"I'm not sure on Blaine," she stated before he could attempt to obfuscate further. "I think he was flirting with me the other night, and he was certainly paying attention to Brittany last night."

Just what he needed, he thought with a roll of his eyes and a barely-covered defeated sigh. He could be making the entire thing up in his head and he wouldn't know until or unless he attempted to broach the subject in what could end up brilliant or could be disastrous. He was on his own.

But he had to try.

He stood and walked toward the door. "I need to get back - school is more than two hours from here," he stated.

"Of course," she replied.

he turned to look at her, all eager and looking like she might break into another overly-moved ballad, then around the hideous room, the open closet door that revealed any number of horrors lurking within. "If we're dating, do I get wardrobe approval?"

She glanced down at her turquoise and gold plaid skirt, then up at him. "What's wrong with my-"

"I don't have time to give you a complete answer to that, Rachel, suffice it to say the list would be long."

She folded her hands nervously in her lap, fingers twisting a little as she considered it, then replied, "I suppose so. I mean, a great Hollywood couple does always look well-coordinated and put-together, right?"

He smiled faintly - victory, however small, deserved recognition. And he supposed that, if he were going to date any girl, she should at least be someone who could understand his desire to feel like a revamped Boagey and Bacall with a Teddy twist. "Then it's a deal," he stated.

Rachel grinned and started to say something about how this was great and she would start planning their first date immediately, but he was already down the stairs. Dating Rachel would be challenging enough; dating Rachel and having to pretend to listen to her all the time just might be more than he could handle.