He knew that it was partly his own fault, having so many to fill out. Most of his classmates had to only complete one - their first-choice school, almost guaranteed to be where their father had gone, where a spot was practically reserved for them already by virtue of their name alone. Possibly a second application if they wanted something safe, fun, a potential leveraging point, or maybe if their father had multiple degrees. There were several of those at Dalton, and he was among them.

This was supposed to be easy. He had done everything right. He was attending a fantastic, well-known preparatory school with high grades; he would graduate with honours in June, he knew already, and he had a substantial and varied list of extracurriculars.

Getting in wasn't the problem, he concluded without sounding overly confident. Deciding what he wanted - that was the rub.

Because it wasn't as simple as just sending them all in. If he got back a letter of acceptance from some of these programs, he would have a very hard time turning it down, and not only because saying "No" to Yale was just crazy. But if his father found out he'd been accepted to Yale - which he inevitably would because he had an entire network of Eli's he could ask about these things - and turned it down for anything other than his other alma mater, Princeton?

Blaine honestly wasn't sure what would happen then. He knew it wouldn't be good. He knew there would be a long lecture expounding on all the ways he was disappointing the family and bringing dishonour to his father with his ungratefulness. He knew there would be an argument about it during which he might actually see his father display some sort of human emotion - and even if that emotion was anger, he almost wanted to see that. He wondered if his father would be one of those slow burn types or the kind who exploded then immediately pulled back. If there would be a vein popping out of his neck or forehead somewhere that Blaine had never seen because they kept everything so forcibly even at home. If he would be the type to slap his ungrateful son, like many of his friends' fathers would, or if it would be far more seething with a turn and a storm away, all clenched fists that never flew.

He wasn't sure why he found himself almost wanting to know. He wasn't that boy, he wasn't the one who enjoyed making trouble for his parents - not like Logan, who took pride in every time his parents got called into the Headmaster's office, or Christopher who seemed to take delight in every time he could get his father to lose his temper. Blaine had never been someone who enjoyed toeing the line; he was happy to stay far back from it...except when it came to things like this. When it came to this, when it came to performing, when it came to not wanting to deny the things that he cared about - narrow as they may be - he went beyond the mere surly, bitter insults he came up with during a silent dinner.

He almost wanted to actively defy them. To purposefully pick somewhere they had never heard of so he could stop trying to belnd into his father's shadow and just...

...Just what?

That was where he always got stuck. Because after he told his father he wasn't going to Yale - or to Princeton, or even to Harvard which his father would have hated but would be better than this kind of thing....after the fight and the metaphorical kicking and screaming...then what happened? Then did he go to some other school and try to strike out on his own with no support? Assume that whatever money was in his trust (and he knew it was a sizable sum by now) would cover whatever he needed for tuition and he could make up the rest? Put off school until he could save enough on his own?

Or would he be shoved into therapy and given a host of drugs to make sure he never spoke out again, the way his mother had? Did he become the next Anderson robot, smiling absently at people without realizing they were even there?

And all of that was without the more barbaric treatments for his more disgusting condition. All of that, all of the fake niceness and mechanical social scene that wouldn't allow him to express an honest emotion ever again, that was standard. That was what most adults became anyway, some just faster and less naturally than others. That was what everyone turned into someday, and putting it off was like trying to postpone puberty because he didn't want his voice to change: impossible. In fact, he would probably be heading down that path at whichever elite school he might select, anyway. But the other therapies-

He didn't need those yet, he reminded himself as he picked the top application from the stack and began to fill in his name and vital statistics without paying much attention. Not as long as he kept himself in check. Besides, that would require someone knowing.

Well, someone other than Kurt.

Still, the question remained unanswered, he concluded as he stared at the application to Columbia in front of him. If he told his father he wasn't going to one of the Ivy League schools he would have preferred but was going somewhere else instead, what would happen?

A part of him desperately wanted to know, to see the look of shock on his father's face - to see if his mother was even capable of being surprised by anything anymore. But the majority of him didn't want to think about it. Didn't want to contemplate it. It was too...too risky.

Some rules existed for a reason. Some edicts had a purpose behind them and needed to be followed because the alternative was far worse.

For a fleeting moment, he wondered if any of the adults he knew had felt like this when they were his age, had wanted to tell their fathers with all their expectations and the burdens of impending disappointment to leave them alone, to go away and let them live their own lives. If any of them had struck out into the great unknown by themselves and what had become of it.

Obviously not much, he reasoned, if he knew the person. Not when everyone he knew was so monolithic, uniform.

Even if he wanted to break that - and he wasn't sure he did ...he wasn't sure that he could, not as predestined as everything around him seemed.

He glanced from the Yale application on the top of the pile to the Columbia on in front of him, then back again. For now...for now he should just fill them all out, he concluded. It would buy him time to figure out what he wanted.

He was exhausted already and wasn't even a full page in. He hadn't gotten to anything more taxing than his parents' date of birth and his head already ached.

There was plenty of time to do this later. For now, he concluded, he needed to do something fun. Something expressive. Something that would make him feel less like he was destined to grow up to be his father, wearing an expensive suit and either a forced, disinterested smile or no expression at all. Shoving himself out of his chair, he sifted through his albums until he found the one he needed and carried it out of the room.

He found Kurt in the Commons, which was ideal. Kurt sat at the table over near the fireplace, bent over a textbook and looking bored out of his mind: all precisely what he needed in a willing victim. After all, if he was going to blow off things he should be doing, he should at least pretend to be doing it because he had other, more time-sensitive things he needed to be doing. And he did: the song needed to be ready in a week, and with everyone gearing up for pre-break projects and quizzes, it might be hard to track Kurt down any other time.

"Hey," he offered with a smile that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Kurt looked up in surprise at the intrusion, then relaxed a little and returned the smile tightly. "You scared me."

"Well, good, because I'm actually Marley's ghost, and I'm here to tell you to stop studying so hard." He eyed the book open on the table, Kurt's notebook beside it, and hoped desperately Kurt would agree to be irresponsible with him just this once. Just long enough that he could stop feeling so...penned-in by everything he was meant to become one day and allowed to be a little freer and a lot more emotive.

He just needed five minutes. Five minutes of singing a song he needed to be rehearsing anyway. It was perfect.

Kurt rolled his eyes a little, then looked suspicious. "What's the album?"

"I need you to help me practice something."

Kurt looked intrigued, sitting up a little straighter as he crossed his legs and laced his fingers over the kneecap. "Do tell."

"I'm singing a duet in the Columbus Historical Society's annual Christmas Showcase."

"Are you wearing the costume from the initiation?" Kurt asked. "I'm sure it would be a crowd pleaser."

The last thing he wanted to think about - even after the stack of applications waiting on his desk and well below any possible studying he could be doing at that moment - was that evening. The way they just kept staring at each other and how much of a coward he was that he couldn't help his friend who needed him. Of how desperately he had wanted to touch Kurt's neck and see if it was as soft as it looked. Of how glad he'd been that his jacket was as long as it was.

Surely there had to be something he could think about that fell between all of the things he was expected but didn't want, and the things he didn't want to want but seemed to anyway.

He laughed nervously and replied, "No. No, I think it's some sort of 1940s garb, possibly war-era - I suggested an Andrews Sisters kind of a thing for Jean and she seems to be pushing the organizers for that now."

Kurt's smile faltered, grew stiffer. Jean. The name had been coming up a lot since Sectionals, and he hated it every time. Jean, the convenient, unknowing potential girlfriend that Blaine was stringing along even though he knew he was a homosexual. Not that the two of them had actually gotten that far, as much as Kurt could tell, even if Blaine wasn't nearly as open with him now as he had been earlier in the fall. "Ah," he replied. "She would make a very good Patty."

"That's what I thought," Blaine replied proudly. "But I need your help. I haven't sung with anyone as a duet in awhile, usually when I sing it's either me with the Warblers backing me up, or just me with the radio or the record player. And I haven't sung with someone above me in..." He thought a moment. He'd last attended a co-ed school when he was 12 and his voice hadn't dropped yet. "Ever, actually," he amended. "So I thought that you could sing the girl part, help me get used to it."

Kurt hesitated, then wondered why. Why in the world was he turning down a chance to sing with Blaine? The boy was amazingly talented and completely entrancing when he sang, and they hadn't really gotten a chance to do anything together. Aside from occasionally both singing along to the same verse when they laid on Blaine's floor and listened to soundtracks, they hadn't done any singing just the two of them. In fact, Blaine had barely heard him sing at all, which was just a travesty; for one thing, he was incredibly proud of his voice. For another, if he wanted any chance of getting a solo or even a prominent line, he needed to impress people in charge, and Blaine was the ultimate de facto leader. If Blaine liked singing with him, it could lead to a lot more duets for him in the future.

And he kind of adored the way Blaine lit up when he sang. Who was he to turn that down?

"What song is it?"

"'Baby It's Cold Outside,'" Blaine reported, turning the album so he could see the cover.

"A personal favourite," Kurt offered, and it was. He loved the original with Esther WIlliams, even if he did like the Dinah Shore a little bit better.

"Me, too," Blaine replied as he walked over to the record player in the corner, put it on, and half-danced back over toward Kurt.

I really can't stay-

"Wait," Blaine said, stopping before he could sing his own line. "That's the wrong octave."

"What are you talking about?"

"You're singing in the same octave as me, the entire point was that you have the highest voice in the group-"

"Okay, first of all, Bill's is technically higher. And second of all, what does it matter?"

"I'm not used to singing with girls, I need to get used to it."

Kurt wondered if Blaine realized how that sounded, how intentional it made everything seem. "So it's just this song, then? This duet's the problem?"

Blaine looked at Kurt curiously, confused. "I don't want to make a fool of myself. Okay, an even bigger fool of myself," he added, since he was certain that whatever he was wearing would be ridiculous even if it were meant to just be a showier interpretation of a military uniform. "Please, could you just-"

Kurt wanted to say no. But the earnest look on Blaine's face was so-...

He nodded and managed to keep himself from rolling his eyes. "Okay." Blaine's grin as he moved over to reset the needle was worth it.

Almost.

I really can't stay
But baby it's cold outside
I've got to go away
But baby it's cold outside

The thing was, it wasn't just that the higher octave wasn't in the comfortable part of his range. It would have been three years ago, when he could out-soprano any soprano in town. But now that his voice had settled into something a little closer to a male range - at least by operatic standards where his status as a countertenor was firmly cemented - the octave above Blaine's voice felt strained. Forced.

And feminine.

That wasn't something he minded generally, he'd gotten more than used to being called girly. He had always preferred the company of girls to the boys, especially as he got older. But the way Blaine had prodded it made him feel awkward, like some kind of stand-in. A substitute for what Blaine thought he really wanted.

He didn't want to sing a song with Blaine as the closest thing Blaine could find to a girl. He didn't want Blaine to see him like that, it was-...it wasn't real. He didn't want to put on a skirt and a wig and pretend to be the girl like in a Shakespearean production, where the youngest and most feminine boy became the object of men's affections because they could pretend he wasn't really a boy at all. He wanted to stand on a stage with Blaine and sing songs together with each of them as them, as artists and-

And more, if he was being honest, but he couldn't let himself go there right now. Not when Blaine was trying to make him...whatever this was. Because he was staring at Blaine and unable to tear his gaze away from the grinning, flirtatious boy while Blaine pictured him as some kind of strange brunette Jean he'd make do with until he got to see the girl he really wanted to perform with.

This evening has been so very nice...

Kurt cursed his wistfulness as he sang the line. Did he want to give away every feeling he ever had? He knew what his complexion did as soon as he even considered being interested or emotional in any way - he knew better. He knew how to mask things better. Why wasn't he trying harder?

Why couldn't he just try a little harder to not show he felt this way? Why couldn't he try harder and not feel it at all?

I'll hold your hands - they're just like ice.

With a charming smile, Blaine reached down and touched the back of the hand resting on Kurt's knee, and Kurt's stomach gave a little surge of excitement. If he was powerless over Blaine's smile and voice, then he was doomed by Blaine's touch and just knew beyond a doubt he would do something stupid if it kept happening.

If Blaine...wanted a girl, then he...then he wanted a girl, and Kurt was going to have to accept that fact. If Blaine was happy with his- with Jean and wanted to sing and dance with girls now, no matter how he'd felt in the past, then that...that wasn't something he could change and definitely not something they could talk about.

Kurt shoved himself out of the chair, clasping his hands behind his back as he walked across the room. He needed to get away from Blaine and his stupid grin and his broad, strong hands with their tender touch or he was going to lose his mind and do something really, really stupid. Something like he had wanted to do in the initiation had there not been two dozen other boys around.

He'd thought he had a chance for sure then; now he wasn't so certain. It was just all so murky, and every time he tried to bring up the topic of liking boys, Blaine shut him down. But he wasn't sure what that meant, either - did Blaine not want to talk about it because he found it disgusting? Or because he felt something and simply didn't want anyone else to know?

My mother will start to worry
Beautiful, what's your hurry?

He almost let out a sigh at hearing the word 'beautiful' fall from Blaine's lips in his direction before reminding himself that it was only a lyric, and that if Blaine really meant it he meant it only inasmuch as he thought the girl Kurt was playing was beautiful. But really it was just a lyric.

My father will be pacing the floor
Listen to the fireplace roar
So really I better scurry

He looked back at Blaine and found the boy staring at him with a pleading expression that felt so genuine. He wanted to believe it. He wanted to pretend it meant something, and that Blaine really did want-

It was a song, he reminded himself. Nothing more. And his tendency to overanalyze things until he created hope that wasn't there had been a longstanding problem that led to nothing but disappointment his entire life.

Beautiful, please don't hurry
But maybe just half a drink more
Put some records on while I pour

It wasn't fair, Blaine thought frustratedly, how easy it was for music to manipulate emotions.

He'd always considered the two to go hand-in-hand. He sang to get out whatever he was feeling, to exorcise any demons that were lurking and release every pent-up annoyance and feeling of anger contained within him. He sang to keep himself from shouting joyous news from the rooftops and to, on a few occasions, express the kind of deep sorrow that defied any words or description other than the slow build and whispered ebb of a great ballad.

But sometimes the music was what made him feel a certain way, instead of his emotions serving as the starting point for song selection. Sometimes if he was in a bad mood and he put on an upbeat song it made him feel better. A few times he'd ruined a perfectly good day by putting on something depressing.

And right now, he had a song making him downright flirty.

He didn't want to be. He didn't feel that way. He didn't genuinely want to chase Kurt around the room playfully...except when the song was on, when he sang the lyrics, he felt this overwhelming urge to just act it all out. To let the barely-restrained, thinly-veiled game of tag on the record play itself out over the expanse of the Commons.

But then what? he wondered.

The neighbours might think
Baby it's bad out there

Kurt twirled past Blaine, circling his way over to the arm of the leather sofa. He perched and watched as Blaine spun then took up residence across from him.

Blaine kept staring at him.

He was Blaine's spot when he twirled, and then his eyes just kept boring into Kurt, like he physically couldn't bring himself to look away.

That didn't make any sense, Kurt reminded himself. Because if the idea of not being able to look away was one of the signs that a person was interested in the person singing - if that was why he was afraid to be caught staring at Blaine when he performed-

Was this-

No. That couldn't be it.

Could it?

Say what's in this drink?
No cabs to be had out there

The earnest expression seemed oddly less overtly lovestruck than the previous one, despite Blaine insisting so plaintively that he stay. But the boy's eyes never moved from him - whenever he glanced down or away or otherwise forced his gaze off of the lead Warbler, Kurt looked back to find Blaine's eyes still locked firmly on him.

Blaine couldn't stop staring at him.

The thought seemed like it should be illuminated in the neon lights of a Broadway marquis in his brain for how much his heart leapt at the realization. The boy he liked, whom he could barely stop looking at (and even then only because it had been a few months' worth of practicing and he'd trained himself to be able to, at the very least, perform the necessary choreography without keeping his eyes on Blaine at all times) couldn't stop looking at him.

That meant they both felt this. That it wasn't something unrequited - that Blaine was in love with him too.

He felt dizzy, like he wanted to jump up on top of a couch and squeal with glee, hands clapped together. Blaine was in love with him. He had to be. That was why he kept staring. Blaine liked him - more than liked him! - and that meant Blaine was pursuing him. Musically, of course, how they communicated anything important.

I wish I knew how
Your eyes are like starlight now
to break this spell

He didn't, honestly. He never wanted the spell to end, the two of them staring at each other as Blaine looked dreamily into his eyes- Kurt's breath hitched a little between his lines, not enough that Blaine probably noticed.

The moment was intense, heavy with a look no one had ever given him. Like the idea of having to not see his eyes was making Blaine miserable. Like he wanted to stay in the spell forever, too, and would hate when it ended.

He stood, walking around the back of the couch, glancing back at Blaine in a test. He needed to see if this really was what he thought - if Blaine still couldn't take his eyes away, let alone followed, that would be his sign. If he broke the moment, as much as he hated it to, and the boy he liked still followed, that had to mean something.

I'll take your hat - your hair looks swell

It was his goddamned eyes.

Everything else he could get past, but the eyes, with their mix of blue and green and grey and the way they lit up when Kurt sang?

But that didn't mean anything. Not about that. Not about his condition and whether he was getting worse.

After all, everyone had eyes. It wasn't like he was fixated on Kurt's long, lean legs or his thin torso or the very faint shadow lurking under his porcelain complexion. Everyone had eyes, a lot of girls had really pretty ones and if he could just find someone more appropriate with the same...whatever it was that made him want to just stare at Kurt's forever...

Besides. The only reason he was finding Kurt this attractive right now was because he was picturing him with bobbed hair in a Andrews Sisters-esque faux uniform. Maybe trimmed with sequins because Kurt would like that. That was why he couldn't stop looking.

If Kurt were a girl, this would be fine. But Kurt wasn't, even with that voice of his, so he just needed to find a girl with a lot of the qualities he liked about Kurt. After all, he was more like a girl than not, wasn't he? It shouldn't be such a tall order.

Except it was.

Because he'd seen girls with beautiful eyes before but none of them made him feel like this. And Rachel was interested in all the same things he and Kurt talked about, but he didn't find himself staring at her. And Jean could be bitingly sarcastic sometimes in a way he found incredibly endearing in Kurt but it wasn't the same. It wasn't the same rush when he saw them that he got when he saw this boy in front of him.

And he hated that. Hated him for not being-

Hated himself more though. Especially as he followed Kurt around the back of the couch to sit beside him, his stomach fluttering as he playfully bumped Kurt's shoulder.

I ought to say no, no, no sir
Mind if I move in closer?

Why wasn't he stronger?

Other boys, they could feel this way and make it stop. They could feel this way about someone and ignore it, or shove it aside, or stop it entirely. There were people who stopped feeling this way through sheer force of will...and he used to be one of them.

But now Kurt was here and smiling and he couldn't-

At least I'm gonna say that I tried

Kurt could barely restrain the ecstatic grin that threatened to spill onto his face when Blaine followed him. He was right. He was completely, one hundred percent right about what Blaine wanted and how he felt.

He could barely remember to breathe and kept almost forgetting the words because all he could think about was Blaine smile and the fact that it was for him. All of this, it wasn't just a song that was naturally flirty, it was for him, because Blaine liked him, the way he had liked Blaine for months now.

And that meant there was no point in hiding how he felt anymore. He didn't have to watch how he looked when Blaine was in the room, at least not as long as it was just the two of them.. He didn't have to pretend he didn't want to just lean over and touch him and kiss him and be near him.

He could stop being restrained. He could do what he felt.

The knowledge alone felt like an enormous burden had been lifted, as if the wall separating them was suddenly made of flimsy paper instead of thick stone and he'd been handed a sharp knife to cut it down. If he'd thought that the conversation on the way back from Lima months ago had felt good, knowing that he wasn't the only one who felt the way that he did? This felt a million times better because not only was he not alone, but he could be with someone.

What's the sense in hurting my pride?
I really can't stay
Baby don't hold out
Oh but it's cold outside

Blaine tore his eyes away from Kurt as he moved to the piano bench and reached past him to play a few bars of the interlude with his right hand; his left hand skimmed awkwardly against Kurt's sleeve. He pulled it back quickly, unnerved by the overwhelming urge to reach out and grab Kurt's arm, and scurried a safe distance to the fireplace...but his gaze returned to where it had been, locked firmly on Kurt in a way that was starting to feel like it bordered on truly psychotic instead of merely the manifestation of a psychosexual perversion.

Kurt stood smoothly with a polished grace and strode to lean against the mantle not far from Blaine. His voice settled into its more natural octave, sounding far better against Blaine's than it had in the strained falsetto; he wondered if Blaine would correct him, try to start the song over again in an effort to make him into something other than this.

I've got to get home

The sound of Kurt's voice overlapping with his But baby you'll freeze out there was jarring, suddenly masculine and equal instead of what the dynamic had been, and Blaine tried not to react. He wanted to; he wanted to tell Kurt to put things back the way they had been, to change it all back and make this less- Less awful. Less wrong.

Boys didn't sing duets together. Certainly not like this. Not staring at each other and flirting and wanting, and if Kurt could just be the girl again he could stop this horrible burning ache in his gut and the desperate need a little lower and just-...he could feel normal if Kurt was someone else right now. If Kurt were anyone else, he wouldn't feel like this.

That was part of the problem.

Say, lend me a coat
It's up to your knees up there
You've really been grand

Kurt walked past him, brushing their shoulders together with a sly grin as he ran his hand slowly along the length of Blaine's arm. He'd never felt like this before, more Betty Garrett than Esther Williams, and it was invigorating. It made him bold - assertive in a way he wasn't used to, but it added to the heady mix of adrenaline and musical power and confidence and giddiness in the knowledge that Blaine couldn't stop looking at him. He peeled off toward the couch, able to feel Blaine's eyes on him and unable to stop smiling.

I thrill when you touch my hand
But don't you see?

Blaine didn't know what was wrong with him.

Well - okay. He knew what was really wrong with him, what the underlying problem in all of this was, without which none of this would be happening. He was all too well aware of that as he watched Kurt sashay his way around that damned couch looking so- so- incredible that he couldn't help himself.

But why couldn't he help himself? He'd been succeeding for years. He'd kept himself from feeling this intensely about anyone even with songs involved, but something about Kurt just-

He wanted to cry. He wanted to run from the room as fast as his legs could carry him. He wanted to shove Kurt down and away and tell him to leave him the hell alone and stop being so beautiful. He wanted to go do painful things to himself to try and bring back the association between this feeling right here and physical agony because apparently the link between this feeling and emotional anguish wasn't enough to stop him.

But none of those were as much as he wanted Kurt.

As if pulled by magnets, he walked slowly around to the other side of the couch, dropping to his knees on the seat.

How can you do this thing to me?

Kurt noted that Blaine followed him, almost euphoric as he sang his warning. Blaine's last chance to back out, to step back, to look away-

There's bound to be talk tomorrow...at least there will be plenty implied...

Blaine didn't move away, almost leaning toward him as he sang If you got pneumonia and died with this little pout like he would be so sad if that happened but not as sad as if Kurt left right now.

No way in the world was Kurt leaving right now. Not with those gorgeous light brown eyes staring into his, with the two of them singing so close that he could feel when Blaine inhaled. The smell of his aftershave was almost overpowering at this distance, and though the scent of shampoo and hair product wasn't quite as intense when it wasn't his own on Blaine, its unfamiliarity was intriguing.

He knew what Blaine looked like and had spent more than his share of time committing every memory of the handsome boy to memory over the past few months. What he sounded like was the stuff of dreams - literally. But with the knowledge of what Blaine smelled like imprinting itself on his memory over a series of song lyrics, Kurt was suddenly struck by the intense desire to know what Blaine felt like.

Tasted like.

I really can't stay he murmured more than sang, leaning more heavily on the back of the couch. Blaine didn't move back, just kept staring at him like he was something entrancing and lovely, and he just-

He couldn't help himself. He'd been holding himself back for more than three months now - closer to four if he counted the first time they met and how much he had wanted to just be near Blaine from that instant, and now that he knew how Blaine felt about him...

Shifting forward to rest more weight on his hips against the back of the couch, Kurt leaned in and pressed his lips against Blaine's. They were a little chapped from the winter cold but not badly, and though he tasted faintly of mint he really just tasted like lips which was a revelation in and of itself. Kurt hadn't thought about lips having their own taste before. His left hand came up to cup Blaine's jaw, and he reveled in the feeling of the rough hint of stubble under his thumb.

What felt like it lasted forever was really barely more than a moment.

He heard a sharp inhale, a gasping intake of breath, then felt Blaine move backward quickly - too quickly. Blaine stumbled back off the edge of the couch, nearly running over his own foot in his attempt to race out of the Commons, leaving Kurt alone and bewildered by the couch as the last strains of "Baby It's Cold Outside" played on the abandoned turntable.