Kurt liked to say he was oblivious, and once he got what the difference was between that and 'obvious', he was kind of offended. He wasn't that blind to what was going on around him...at least, he didn't like to think he was. But he guessed he didn't always pay attention to details other people did - he thought it was just Kurt who got stuff like that, though, and Kurt was kind of weird.

Finn thought he could say that now since they were brothers, and big brothers always thought their little brothers were weird, didn't they? Even if Kurt wasn't that much younger than he was, it still counted. And he was a lot taller, which made Kurt definitely the little brother.

But even through the phone, even he could tell Quinn was about ready to kill him.

"You told them? I told you not to! In fact, I specifically told you not to!"

He could picture her angry expression, the way her hazel eyes would be all narrow and glaring at him, the way her mouth got all tight when she was mad. He would be seeing that expression until one of them died - and he guessed he would probably be seeing it a lot, if past experience was anything to go by.

"What was I supposed to do? He asked, I-"

"You may be dumb, but you're smarter than that, Finn! What are we supposed to do now? What happens when they start telling other parents-"

"They don't talk to other parents," Finn tried to point out. It was true - his mom talked to Puck's mom, but she wouldn't be talking about this until she could stop looking like she might cry or something. And Burt talked to other parents when they came into the shop, but only ever about good stuff like how Kurt was doing well at Dalton or how good he was doing at learning the car stuff.

...He'd be doing car stuff for as long as he'd be seeing the angry look on Quinn's face, he realized hopelessly. Not that he didn't like it - he didn't mind it, and he was kinda good at it he guessed, but it wasn't what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He wanted to be a teacher or something - maybe like Mr. Schue, or maybe like a football coach or something. Even if he didn't like going to school 'cause teachers made you do all kinds of work, he didn't hate being there the way some of the guys on the team did. He kinda liked it as long as he could ditch the homework part.

That wasn't going to happen now.

"And now they're going to tell my parents!" Quinn practically sobbed.

"Yeah, about that..." Finn started.

"What?" she snapped.

"I'm s'posed to be finding out when we can all have dinner together to work something out."

There was a long silence, then an incredulous, "Excuse me?"

"Well, 'cause we need to figure out the arrangements for everything. For the wedding." He heard a sharp inhale, then a long silence, then a kind of gaspy whimpery sound, and he added, "We need to get married. I-...for you. And I want to - for our baby."

He wasn't lying about that part. Even if he had no idea what he was going to do, and even if he didn't really like the idea of being yelled at forever, he did want to be a dad to this baby. He knew how lousy it felt to not have one around, and his options were either to be the deadbeat like Puck's dad...or to be a real father, y'know, with the marriage and the house and the breakfast every morning and dinner every night and all that stuff like they had now.

And he did love Quinn - he did. He had for awhile.

"I don't want that," she stated tightly.

"We would have been getting married soon anyway, right? I mean, we're 18 already, what are we waiting for? If school comes back this year, that's about it right?" Because the only thing that might have been legitimate reason to wait was if he'd gotten into, like, OSU or something and was going to go to college...but they both knew his grades weren't good enough for that, meaning even if he hadn't gotten Quinn pregnant this early he probably wouldn't have been able to become a teacher. "Mom and Burt said they'd help us get a place, and we can fix it up...I mean, if Burt helps, I guess if I did it there'd probably be water and boards and stuff everywhere, but it won't be so bad. And Kurt can help with curtains and that stuff, he's really good at-"

"No," she replied harshly.

"Okay, fine, you can do the curtains. I just thought since you're not-"

"No. I don't care about curtains. We're not doing this. You don't listen to me, why should I-"

"I thought you told me I was supposed to figure out what to do. You keep saying I've gotta figure things out because this is my baby, too - I did. This is what we're doing."

Okay, so Burt had figured it out for him. But maybe he was right - even if this wasn't what anyone really wanted, it was kind of the only real option. What else were they going to do? Have Quinn stay with her parents and raise the baby over there while he lived where he was and just went over there to visit after work or something? Have Quinn move in with them? Did that mean Quinn would be allowed in his room with the door closed? Should he move in with Quinn and her parents? Because her parents were kinda scary and he didn't really think that would go very well for him. Even if their house was crazy-big so it would fit them better, it was also a place he could break a lot of things easily and that didn't seem like a very good idea.

"No," Quinn stated again. "You can keep your proposal, don't even think about buying a ring. We are not doing this, you and me. You have no idea how to actually take care of a child, I'm not going to raise it with you until you figure out what you're doing."

He wanted to know if she knew what she was doing, either. Because sometimes she was a lot smarter than he was, so maybe she did. Maybe she had like, cousins or something and she knew more about what a baby needed, 'cause he knew that he didn't have any idea. But she thought she could have a baby without her parents finding out, and that didn't sound quite right.

He wasn't that smart, but even he knew better than that.

* * * * *

Blaine gripped the steering wheel tightly and stared ahead at the road. The trip between Lima and Westerville wasn't horrible, but it was long enough that the awkward silence felt like it had been going on forever even though it had been less than half an hour.

Well, not quite silence. The radio was on, and Kurt sang quietly in the passenger seat, beaming as Fleta whistled his song back in turn. The cage sat on his lap, since there wasn't exactly another place for it in the 1957 Caprice's tiny interior. When Blaine's father presented him with the car, his uncle - who had never cared too much if people noticed him and in fact seemed to enjoy when they did - joked "Well, at least you won't have to worry about him getting a girl in the backseat!"

He didn't want to think about what would happen if anyone knew that who he really thought about getting into the backseat of a car was a boy who sang duets with birds better than Snow White ever could.

Seriously - was Kurt some kind of strange non-princess character out of a Disney feature? With his pale, pale skin that looked so soft, and his perfect hair that was just voluminous enough but not nearly as unruly as Blaine's, and those eyes, and he wore bright colours and talked to canaries. Why couldn't Kurt just be a girl, be one of those princesses, so he could be attracted to him without feeling so disgusted with himself?

Why couldn't it just be easier?

Kurt said something, and it took Blaine's brain a full minute to disengage enough to ask, "What?"

"I said, I can stop if you want - I know it's probably distracting. Especially with Fleta here," he added in this kind of babytalk that should have sounded ridiculous. It did, but Blaine didn't care.

"It's fine."

"I can put the cover on-"

"No, really. It's fine."

But then silence really did set in, with just the radio between them. The only station they could pick up played decade-old country tunes; they had spent the first five minutes of the trip agreeing that it was horrible, but Kurt sang along anyway like he couldn't help himself...until Blaine stopped him.

They lasted all of five minutes before Blaine felt like he had to something, had to engage in some kind of conversation instead of sitting silently like this all the way back to the north side of Columbus. Had to talk about something so he wouldn't just focus on stupid things like the fact that from here he could smell the faint scent of Kurt's aftershave and he wasn't allowed to think about that anymore.

So. Conversation. Starting with the topic sure to remind him that the things he was feeling were completely, 100% off-limits.

"So you and Rachel," Blaine began slowly, trying to keep his tone conversational rather than overtly curious, like he was just asking and cared only insofar as it was polite to. "Are you two...?"

"Dating," Kurt replied. The word felt foreign in his mouth, sounded strange as it came out, was even more bizarre to envision. Holding hands with Rachel around town. Helping her pick out clothes - okay, more like picking out her clothes and telling her what she would be wearing or else - to go on a date, then holding open the door for her and pulling out her chair. At some point having to kiss her - he was trying to simultaneously get himself ready for that and yet not actually think about it. He just knew she would be wearing some horrible lipstick or gloss that would keep his own lips shining for far too long.

Blaine swallowed hard. So he had been right. Well...right in that he'd realized he'd been wrong before. Kurt had a girlfriend - Kurt liked girls, or at least was capable of liking girls. He really was the only one this sick. "Oh," he almost squeaked out, wondering why nothing he did could moisten his throat enough to produce a regular sound.

Uh oh. If Blaine did like him, Kurt realized, then saying he had a girlfriend was hardly the way to let the guy know that he was available and had particular feelings he would very much like reciprocated. "Of course, it's just an arrangement," he added breezily, with a flippant gesture as if it were merely an afterthought; it wasn't. It was the entire lynchpin, the point of it all, but he couldn't sound like he was trying too hard. Couldn't sound like he was announcing his feelings to Blaine because if he was wrong - if Blaine really wasn't like him - then that would be mortifying at best, dangerous at worst.

An arrangement? Blaine couldn't even imagine what that might mean, if that was a good sign or a bad one, and he swallowed again. "Oh?"

Kurt nodded. "Yes." He wasn't sure how to even begin explaining it, especially if he wasn't going to come right out and say 'She knows that I'm a homosexual and has taken pity on me because of her father and his male lover-' That word felt too intimate even in the confines of his brain, let alone to stretch between them in the Caprice's tiny interior. So he began with the easier part to explain. "She wanted a boyfriend who won't tie her to Ohio. She knows that I'm planning on going to New York as soon as I graduate, and since she will be as well, it seemed like an ideal situation."

Ideal under the circumstances, at any rate. Truly ideal would have been being able to date whomever he wanted - including the boy currently trying very hard not to stare at him in confusion - without needing someone to help diffuse any questions. Ideal would be Rachel realizing she didn't need to date anyone, certainly not someone who didn't want to date her for anything but cover and companionship, and just going off to New York because that was her dream - a dream she had been articulating, by the way, for at least as long as Kurt had known her. No boy in his right mind was going to expect her to give that up for him. Not even his dim-witted stepbrother would be that naive.

But ideal would also mean being able to go to his own school, with his friends, and being able to live at home with his family, instead of going to Dalton.

...Or would it? Because were it not for Dalton and its library, he would have never found a word to describe himself, even as terrifying as the diagnosis was. And if it weren't for this school, he would never have met Blaine, which was a terrifying thought. Especially if it turned out that Blaine was one, too.

The thought emboldened him enough that he decided to press his luck a little bit. Feel things out a little deeper. "She and I have known each other a long time, but she's not really my...type." If his tone got a little coy on the last half of the sentence, it was entirely unintentional but not unwelcome.

Blaine blinked, his fingertips clenching more tightly against the hard plastic wheel. Dating a girl who wasn't a boy's type usually only happened when he was trying to attract someone else by making that someone else jealous of the non-girlfriend, or when the boy wanted to date someone who wasn't available, or...

...or in several of his father's patients who tried to force themselves to-

Like he'd tried to force himself to-

He laughed, trying to sound warmly amused; it came out a short staccato burst of nervous chuckling that he worried made him seem deranged. "Really?" he asked, adding, "She's sort of mine, actually, which is why I was asking. She seems like a really great girl, Kurt, you should- you shouldn't overlook that, even though I know you've known her longer than I have."

Blaine wasn't lying. If he was going to like or date or try to date a girl, Rachel would be it. She was smart, exuberant, interested in musicals, incredibly talented - though not quite as talented as she thought she was - ambitious...all qualities he looked for. Just not qualities he found nearly as attractive in women as he found them in men. But qualities that were, nonetheless, endearing, that he could absolutely-

"Yes, but she's still a girl," Kurt stated. He didn't know why he was still going there, Blaine's babbling about Rachel being great was fraught with nervousness, the way Rachel had gotten when she talked about Finn a year or two ago. The way he felt when he thought about Blaine: disorganized, like his mind was racing and he couldn't quite sit still.

But he had to know. He had to put it all out there because if this kept going in the way it had been- It had been less than a month and he already felt less to explode. And knowing that Rachel knew his secret, even as terrifying as it was, had made him feel a little more at-ease somehow. Even though he didn't particularly like or trust her, even if he couldn't guarantee that she wouldn't use the information against him somehow or at least use it to gain an advantage of some kind within their own pseudo-relationship...he felt less alone. Less isolated. Less like he was separate from every other person he'd ever met.

Maybe if more people knew, he would feel less and less like that until it was almost like he felt normal.

And if there was anyone he did feel like he could trust, it was Blaine. He still couldn't pinpoint precisely why, but it was there - something reassuring about the boy, about his steadiness, his charm, his warmth. The way Blaine treated him differently than any other male he had ever met. If there was anyone he could tell, that someone had to be Blaine because he didn't know who else it might be at this point other than possibly Mercedes.

"I prefer being around boys," he added. He still couldn't say the word, wasn't sure how much he could push, and this was at least ambiguous enough. If Blaine understood, he understood - if he didn't, well. Then Kurt didn't want to be too explicit in what he was attempting to say anyway, did he? If Blaine thought he was talking about being in the company of boys because they were easier to understand, the way Finn preferred to hang around with boys like Puck and their football buddies, then Kurt wasn't going to clue him in. But if Blaine was like he was, he would understand. He would get what Kurt was saying.

At least, he hoped so.

At the admission, Blaine only barely managed to keep himself from jerking the wheel to the side and steering off the road, careening into a ditch. He tried to keep breathing, but it felt so-

Kurt was one. Kurt was sick like he was, he wasn't normal, he wasn't-

They were both like this.

He had been right.

He swallowed hard, choked a little, and tried again; the lump in his throat made it difficult to even attempt to moisten his mouth . Maybe it was because all the liquid seemed to have moved up a little higher as the backs of his eyes prickled with sudden tears for absolutely no reason he could discern. What was there to get emotional over? To feel like he might burst into tears over?

He really was a sissy fag, wasn't he?

But at least he wasn't the only one.

He wasn't sure what that helped. He had no idea why that made him feel like this, like there was something extra he could do now - not that something extra that it took two similarly-inclined men for, of course, he would never do that. That would be much too far and mean he needed immediate treatment. That would mean he was getting worse, and he knew thanks to his father that once men started, once the erotic feelings gave way to action, that the case got much more difficult. But it still felt...comforting, a little bit. To know that someone else felt like he did. Somehow he knew, who wasn't just a mysterious case number, a faceless man on his father's tufted leather office couch.

It was also terrifying. After all, this was all Kurt's fault; without him around, Blaine could be almost normal. He could force himself to like girls like Rachel, he could just be ambivalent about dating in general.

Kurt made everything so much harder.

He tried to speak, to say something, but he had no idea what to say and he couldn't unclench his jaw enough to even get out a squeak of acknowledgment. He heard Kurt ask quietly, sounding nervous but gentle all at the same time, "Do you ever-...do you ever feel like that?"

He was torn between wanting to jump up and down and throw his arms around Kurt and hug and kiss him until he couldn't breathe, and wanting to pull the car over and fling himself from it and run until his legs couldn't carry him anymore. On one hand, he'd been wishing so desperately only a couple nights earlier for someone who could understand him. Someone who would know what he was going through. Someone who saw what was wrong with him and actually cared. Someone who would make him feel like he wasn't a disgusting freak because he wasn't completely alone in the world.

On the other hand...someone knew what was wrong with him. Someone knew what he was going through. Someone knew what a disgusting freak he was.

Someone knew his secret.

On top of that was a more vile concern. The feelings he'd been having, that had only gotten stronger over his teenage years and more forceful still since meeting Kurt, the desire to do things...exactly two things had been stopping him: the knowledge that it was wrong, a symptom of an illness and a sign that illness was progressing...and the fear of what would happen if he tried to make a move on a boy who didn't want him.

If Kurt was like him...if Kurt felt like he did, was sick like he was, wanted the things he wanted-

There would be very little stopping him, in the grand scheme of things. Because the fact that it was a sickness didn't seem to matter in the moment - not when he was in Kurt's bed and surrounded by the scent of his shampoo and his aftershave and imagining Kurt stretched across the pillows-

He glanced over nervously, keeping his gaze as far away from wherever he thought Kurt's eyes might be as he possibly could; the boy had shifted in his seat, moving closer to the door, seemed to almost withdraw as much as he could. He looked - not scared per se, but definitely nervous. He thought he was wrong. He thought he'd chanced it and Blaine wasn't-

Blaine wanted to say something. He wanted to spill everything he'd been feeling for the past six years to Kurt and just let it flow until he could breathe again without this weight on his chest. He wanted to explode with gratitude to know he wasn't the only one except his father's patients. But he couldn't get his mouth to cooperate, and even if he could...he had no idea what to say.

He simply turned his eyes back to the road, drew in a deep breath, and nodded.

Kurt's eyes widened as he saw Blaine nod. Did that mean he understood? That he agreed? That he would rather be around boys than girls? Would rather date boys than girls? Did Blaine even know what the question was that he was agreeing to?

It had taken too long for an answer for Blaine not to know, Kurt concluded. The Warbler looked too scared over agreeing for him to think it was about preferring the Warblers to hanging out with girls from Crawford. A few of the boys at Dalton were afraid of girls because they never saw them, but they weren't that scared of them. Not like this. Not like they were paralyzed with fear, kind of scared, and Blaine looked like he couldn't physically force his eyes from the road again because he was too terrified of what he might look at or what response he might get.

He needed to say something reassuring, he concluded, but he didn't know how - he was too busy feeling like he might burst into joyous tears.

There were others. There was at least one other. He thought there were 30 in the whole country and they were all at least 30 years old and he could never in a million years find one of them - not with like 175 million people in the United States.

The boy he was in love with could love him back. He'd almost forgotten about that part, being so incredibly euphorically glad that there was another person he could talk to that it took him a second to remember why he'd asked in the first place.

"I thought I was the only one," Kurt whispered, almost more to Fleta than to Blaine, staring intently at the cage. He didn't know what else to say.

"Y-" Blaine cleared his throat and managed a quiet, "You're not."

It felt like that knowledge should fix everything - like that should make everything okay now. Like now that they knew, Kurt should be able to declare everything he wanted, to talk about how scared he still was by all of this, to ask Blaine when he knew and how he found out because if it had been the materials in the Dalton library because that would be too amazing a coincidence. But something about the way Blaine sat there, so...so stiff, shoulders hunched, hands tight on the wheel, jaw clenched-

They couldn't talk about it. Not yet.

But it still felt better just to know. At least, it did to Kurt.