Apparently the idea of a military-style costume had been good, just not for their song - he'd seen the couple singing a duet version of "I'll be Home for Christmas" walking around in exactly the paired ensemble he had envisioned for Jean and himself before the show. He supposed that made sense and everything, more sense than for a song about wanting to stay after a party, but it would have been a lot better than...whatever the hell this was.

They were going for some sort of 1920s opulence because the crazed tech director thought "What's in this drink?" was a reference to moonshine (Blaine wasn't even asking what the tech director had been drinking when he decided that)...and because nobody in the Columbus Historical Society had any post-war costumes or props. Jean had tried to point out that the song didn't exist in the 1920s, but that seemed to matter less than the spectacle of the two of them onstage in what Jean had started referring to as the "Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald look."

He had lucked out; the striped doublebreasted suit was ugly but not insane. The worst part of his costume was the white fedora that kept wanting to fall off. Poor Jean....well. They weren't sure where the sequin-covered cloche had come from or what deranged, gaudy woman had worn it nearly four decades ago, but it was hardly the only part of Jean's ensemble that required practice to avoid making beads clack together loudly enough to distract from the singing.

I've got to get home, she sang, flitting around the makeshift bar that served as their main set piece.

But baby it's bad out there. He leaned against the bar, pretending to stare at her longingly.

Say, lend me a coat
It's up to your knees out there
You've really been grand
I thrill when you touch my hand he sang convincingly, but when she grazed his hand he felt none of the terrifyingly electric shivers working their way up his arm that he had gotten when Kurt had-

No. No. He wasn't going there. Not ever, but certanily not right now on a stage in front of a couple hundred well-dressed potential contacts who were donating large sums of money in exchange for getting to see the show.

If there was one thing Blaine knew how to do, it was how to act out emotions in song whether he necessarily felt them or not. Just because every moment wasn't Judy Garland's 'Smile' didn't mean now was the time to be distracted.

But don't you see
How can you do this thing to me?

It was so much less anguished than the previous week. This felt better. It felt less overwhelming, less terrifyingly intense - a kind of mildly pleasant feeling. He preferred it this way, to be entirely honest.

But her smile didn't fill him with the same giddy kind of excitement that Kurt's did. He didn't want to write sonnets to the mysterious colour of her eyes.

There's bound to be talk tomorrow, she sang with a coy look that seemed amplified by the pounds of eye makeup they had put her in, leaning over the bar.

Think of my lifelong sorrow
At least there will be plenty implied
If you got pneumonia and died
I really can't stay
Get over that holdout

He leaned over the bar, close like he was going to kiss her, but the moment felt fake, staged, not at all realistic. They both knew it; it had felt that way during rehearsal, too. He could fake it well enough to make it look real from the audience, but he and Jean knew it wasn't one of those magical performances where the people onstage were acting out how they really felt through song.

Maybe he was just too hard on himself. That was the point of acting, right? Doris Day and Rock Hudson probably weren't actually in love with each other - even though he wasn't married to that secretary anymore. But the audience believed it. That was the important part.

It was all perception.

Jean broke the moment at the choreographed time, reaching over to grab his fedora and place it on her head over the sequined, bead-tasseled monstrosity of a hat on her own head with a teasing grin as they sang the final line. The applause was hearty, not thunderous, but one of the loudest of the night which was more than enough to send Blaine's adrenaline pumping. He whisked Jean offstage and back toward the dressing rooms where everyone was milling around, waiting to go on or comparing post-show notes and waiting for the curtain call.

"That went great," she grinned, flushed and practically bouncing in her heels, beads clacking as she made her way quickly down the stairs.

"They really loved it."

"Of course they did - even if you took a few liberties with notes in there," she teased.

"You mean like you took liberties with the choreography?" he shot back, grinning. "You must've sat on every stool on that set."

"It was playful."

"It looked like you were tired or something."

Jean gave an indignant gasp, swatting playfully at his arm. "You try doing that in these shoes and then talk to me about what makes a person tired," she shot back as they reached the bottom landing of the stairs. Blaine turned to face her, poised to make some kind of snappy retort, but the positioning gave him pause; Jean stood with her back to the cement block wall, one hand resting on the bottom few inches of the metal handrail. He faced her, one hand just above hers on the railing, fedora in the other. As people descended the stairs and made the turn of the landing, he found himself moving closer to her, watching the way she looked up at him.

She was shorter than he was, which wasn't the case with every girl he'd ever been around unfortunately, and he liked it. It made him feel strong and like he had the upper hand, even though she seemed determined to thwart that at every turn - never let him think he was the one in charge and she was some shrinking violet. He liked that part better, actually. Of all the things that felt right to him no matter how many social rules it broke, this was the least wrong - merely unconventional rather than unacceptable.

"What are you doing tomorrow night?" she asked.

"Mm?" he replied, getting distracted by the way her eyes looked in this dim light - a little more vibrant, tiny bit greener-

And like Kurt's.

He swallowed hard and tried to shove the thought away, dragging his gaze down to her lips (which looked nothing like Kurt's, fuller and less spread and with just a hint of heart-shaped pout), as she said in a quiet voice, "I think you should ask me out."

"I-" He wondered what it would be like to kiss her, if maybe...maybe it would feel nice. Maybe he would want her then. "I can't tomorrow," he said apologetically. "My parents' annual Christmas party."

"Oh?"

The look on her face...she was waiting to either get an invitation or hear that he was taking someone else. He wasn't, but he wasn't about to ask her. The key to these parties was to get in and out of conversations as quickly as possible without anyone noticing and thinking him rude, to talk only about as impersonal, professional a topic as he could muster. If he showed up to this soiree with a new girl, he would spend all night bombarded by questions about what they meant to each other and what a catch she might be eh (nudge nudge) and about her background and breeding and what her father did. It would be excrutiating, make him want to crawl out of his skin and scream and jump on top of the dining table to just let everything out, to exorcise every demon clawing its way through his chest - especially that one.

"It's a small gathering," he lied. "But next week sometime, I'd love to take you out - if you're free."

She gave a little pout and a sad sigh. "My parents and I leave the day after Christmas to go visit relatives in Wisconsin. We get back the day before school starts again."

"Then I guess...we'll see each other then?" he offered lamely. "After you get back."

She offered a sad smile. "Yes. After I get back."

There was a quiet moment that felt surprisingly empty and expectant, as though he was meant to say something but didn't know what. Maybe-...maybe he should kiss her. Just to see, you know, maybe he hadn't given it enough of a chance. Maybe he just needed to sing more with girls, to kiss girls, maybe that was where the intensity was and he was just missing it because he hadn't done enough of it.

But it didn't feel right, and he got the feeling that if Jean really wanted him to kiss her, she would have given him a pretty big sign. He didn't imagine her to be the kind who held back and waited to be pursued, not like other girls - not if she was the one saying he should ask her out.

Still, he should try. Even if she didn't feel a particularly pressing need to kiss him, he needed to know. To see, to prove to himself that this could work.

Cupping her face, he leaned in-...and chickened out. He kissed her cheek, and she smiled shyly before kissing his in return. She studied him a moment, then seemed to decide the moment was gone and ducked out from between him and the wall to walk down the hall to the dressing room.

* * * * *

The party was exactly as he remembered it from previous years: long, stuffy, and filled with people whose entire lives could be reduced to perfectly practiced sentences about absolutely nothing of substance.

He smiled charmingly as he wound his way through the men's corner of the living room, where the smell of cigar smoke hung thick around the collars of wool suits and pre-dinner scotch seemed to mean downing at least three - slowly, of course, they weren't like those drunks who just swallowed down everything to numb their pain; they drank to enjoy the taste and the burn as they recounted tales of business trips to California and associates in other countries who didn't understand local customs to be met with guffawing laughter even by those who similarly misunderstood the joke.

The women, meanwhile, gathered in the sitting room. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but he gathered from the expression on his mother's face that it wasn't any more interesting than what was going on where he was. Not that there was much variety in her expression - or anyone's in that house.

The smile slipped for a moment and he found himself feeling almost guilty, as though he were secretly the only person in that room who wasn't a robot and therefore was able to actually change expressions. The only one capable of feeling anything, because they clearly felt nothing at all. Not the way they backslapped and laughed at things that weren't funny and responded to tales of a person losing a life's fortune in a bad gamble with hmms and "That's too bad, but y'know, I told him to stay away from that track."

When he was younger, he wondered if maybe he'd gotten some other part that no one else had, something that made him feel. Then he turned 12 and realized what other feelings he had that no one else did, and it stopped seeming like such a great secret advantage and more like a curse.

This was the goal, he reminded himself, feeling a sharp pang of despair in his chest. This was what he would grow up to become, this was...this was the ultimate aspiration of anyone who didn't want to grow up to be a freak, an outcast, something sick or pitiable. If he was going to be a healthy, productive member of adult society, then this - all of this - was what he should be aiming himself toward.

He wanted that, he knew. When push came to shove, he wanted all of this - from the bland canapes and too many drinks, to the flawlessly elegant wife in a party dress that cost too much to be worn only once. He wanted what it represented. He could feel uneasy when his father talked about normalcy like it was the be-all and end-all, but he had never actually wanted anything else. Not really. He might talk about wishing he could be more open about his family heritage or even think for a fleeting moment how nice it might be to feel less stigmatized by his illness (after all, no one blamed diabetics for their condition, right? Generally no one tried to fire them for having a glandular malfunction), but when he really thought about it for more than five seconds...he wanted this.

Didn't he?

Because if he was going to say that he didn't want any of this, shouldn't he have some better idea of what it was that he did want? Otherwise, he was simply one of those ungrateful, rebellious teenagers that they made movies about who flew in the face of convention for no other reason than to say that they could. As much as he could understand Jim's frustration in "Rebel Without a Cause," ultimately at the end of the movie he started conforming, right? He introduced Judy to his parents ...and the lack of convention meant death. Plato died in the end. Was that-

Was he seriously standing in the middle of a party debating which character he was in a James Dean movie?

It was oddly less depressing than looking around him. An entire room of people at a party and not one of them looked happy. Not even remotely alive. Just existing. He wondered if any of the rest of them secretly felt as miserable as he did, if he could see it in their eyes or something if he looked hard enough...or if he really was born too different. He couldn't imagine any of the people in that house getting up on a stage and expressing themselves the way he did, or painting something moving, or feeling anything-

Except for maybe his mother.

She used to, he remembered that. He vaguely remembered her singing songs around the house when just the two of them were around when he was young. before the incident. Before whatever had happened at one of these parties to make his father practically cart her off to the asylum and return her exactly as she had been, minus one soul.

Was that what would happen to him? Would he just keep standing in these rooms full of people yet completely alone, until one day he cracked and started yelling or ranting or singing, get a tranquilizer in the arm, and wake up with part of him missing?

Would it just ebb away gradually until he didn't even know it was gone?

Did his mother care enough to miss it?

"Is something bothering you?" his father's voice startled him, and he turned to look too quickly.

"I'm sorry sir?"

"You seem distant tonight."

Apparently the analysis of genuine emotions took a person too far away to be an emotionless robot, he thought bitterly. Instead he pasted on his best smile. "No, sir, I'm fine."

"Good then. I want you to meet someone." He didn't let his smile slip as his father led him over to a colleague who evidently had some sort of connection to Yale and wanted to ask about his application.

He knew exactly the practiced answers to give.

* * * * *

Once the house was empty again - save his parents at opposite ends of the house downstairs, and the help flitting around the kitchen to clean up - Blaine practically barricaded himself in his room. He felt stiff, aching from trying to hold his perfect posture and keep his gestures narrow and appropriate. His shoulders were sore, as though he'd been carrying tension in them all night without realizing it, and as his fingers carefully unknotted his tie and unfastened the first button, the sense of relief that washed over him was monumental.

It really had been a long night, when just taking off his tie felt that good - he wasn't someone who minded wearing a tie, to him it was such a mundane part of clothing that it was like saying he was bothered by wearing a shirt. There wasn't any question of it.

But tonight...

Dinner had felt longer than usual somehow, as though every single person had to ask every single other person the same question twenty times. Maybe it just appeared that way because he was already frustrated with the whole thing - that was more likely. He doubted that his parents' friends had suddenly gotten more ridiculous over the course of a year, or that they had actually multiplied like he thought at one point.

The girl he was paired with, the other party to make the table even, was a sophomore at Ratcliffe. She had wavy blonde hair and a mystified expression that reminded him of that friend of Kurt's over in Lima. He wanted to be able to attribute the simultaneous warm and icy feelings in his stomach to her, but even he couldn't convince himself of that one.

Oh Kurt he thought as he slid off his jacket and laid it neatly over his desk chair. Why did the boy have to be so frustrating? Why couldn't he just be appropriate? There was no reason they couldn't have been friends if Kurt hadn't done something stupid like go and try to kiss him. If Kurt could just behave himself and understand that even if he wasn't ready to stop being sick yet...if he just knew that at the very least he needed to not act on those feelings when he had them...

Feeling a certain way was still an illness, of course, but it wasn't nearly as bad as acting on it. Acting on it meant he had given in to his impulses and now...

That made him severe, didn't it?

His heart ached for Kurt. The poor boy just didn't understand the way things had to be. He didn't know how sick he was.

And Blaine didn't have the heart to tell him.

He flicked open the buttons of his shirt slowly as he padded to the record player and selected an album. He needed to exorcise the feelings he'd been holding in all evening, to just get them all out there and start feeling better instead of exhausted and half-dead. He smiled faintly as he saw it - the perfect song to act it all out.

Oh yes, I'm the great pretender
Pretending that I'm feeling well
My need is such
I pretend too much
I'm lonely but no one can tell

Did he pretend too much? He wasn't entirely sure. He knew he felt like any pretending was too much, but maybe that was just the effect of the night. Maybe he didn't pretend enough. After all, sometimes if a person pretended to feel a certain way for long enough, they could feel it - that was what he did with music all the time. Or like in "The King and I": "The result of this deception is very hard to tell/For when I fool the people I feel, I fool myself as well."

If he pretended to feel like everyone else for long enough, that might make him actually like them. Hell, that might be what everyone else felt like. Maybe every person in his parents' party was secretly alive under that thick exterior and just so far under a mask of pretending that they had even fooled themselves into thinking they weren't.

But was that any better?

Oh yes, I'm the great pretender
Adrift in a world of my own
I play the game
But to my real shame
You've left me to dream all alone

Because as much as he wanted to stop feeling some of these things...a certain thing in particular that he shoved back every time it started to bubble up...there was something even more terrifying about not feeling anything at all. As wrong as some of his feelings were, as much as he wanted to get rid of them...was it worth it?

He knew what it would mean, trying to go fix himself and get rid of this once and for all. He would turn into his mother. He would become the guy who stared blankly at drink glasses in his hand and wore fake smiles that didn't ever seem to have someone behind them. He would stop feeling any of the good things, too, he would just feel nothing - like going from a world of bright, vibrant hues back to the black and white fields of Kansas.

Was it worth that? Could anything ever be worth that?

His mother didn't sing anymore. She had never sung much, but now it wasn't at all. None of his parents' friends did except the occasional innocuous, insipid carol plinked out on the grand piano in the living room. Nothing with purpose. Nothing with emotion. Nothing that meant anything.

Could anything be worth giving that up?

Too real is this feeling of make-believe
Too real when I feel what my heart can't conceal

The way his heart poured out on those lines - would it be better to fix himself than to feel that, whatever that was? The mixture of anguish and exuberance that defied any better explanation but made him feel so much better when it came out...was it better to get rid of that in exchange for not being sick anymore?

Oh yes, I'm the great pretender
Just laughing and gay like a clown
I seem to be
What I'm not, you see
I'm wearing my heart like a crown
Pretending that you're still around

And that was only taking the emotional into account. The physical- He shuddered to think about it. Standard protocol in his father's practice for latent cases was a combination of antipsychotic medications and electroshock therapy to fix the neurological impulses that kept misfiring, causing attraction where attraction should never be.

Non-latent cases meant aversion therapy, and he wanted to avoid that at all cost. He shuddered, his voice faltering as he thought about it, legs involuntarily squeezing tightly together as if to protect his testicles from what would await them if ever his case progressed.

There was no need to cure latent cases, he concluded. Action was the real problem. Action was where the immoral conduct came in. Everyone had immoral thoughts - he thought sometimes about wanting to shove a particular teacher, or any number of students from his old school. As long as he kept remembering that was wrong, that it would get him in trouble and would just be mean and violent and wrong, he wouldn't give into his impulses and everything was fine.

He was fine.

And if controlling his impulses was the price he had to pay for feeling human instead of like one of those frightening creatures at Disneyland or the even more frightening creatures in his parents' living room, then...then so be it. Because even the tumultuous feelings over...that thing Kurt had tried to do to him...even that wasn't worth giving up music.

He changed into his pajamas, selecting a book from the shelf, and settled in to read while listening to the rest of the Platters' album.

* * * * *

It didn't start as a dream, it started as a memory.

He was singing in the Commons with Kurt, that same damned song that had been stuck in his had for weeks, only this time he knew from the time he gazed into Kurt's eyes that he wanted to kiss him. He reached past him to pluck out the interlude on the piano, and that was it. By the time he scurried over to the fireplace, he knew he had played hard to get exactly long enough for Kurt to want to get him.

And oh, how he wanted Kurt to want to get him. How he wanted Kurt.

Kurt sidled up next to him near the mantle to sing about how he needed Blaine to lend him a coat, and that was Blaine's cue. He took hold of Kurt's jacket lapels roughly, noticing the glistening Warbler pin on the left side, and pressed him backwards against the alcove to the right of the fireplace. Kurt gasped softly as his back his the wood paneling, the small of his back arching to avoid the chair rail molding, but Blaine didn't care. He couldn't help himself anymore - the lips looked delicious, and he was determined to find out if they were or not.

He leaned in and kissed Kurt hard and fast, desperate to taste him and hear him and feel him. He tasted minty and sweet and made little gasped, keening noises against Blaine's lips. With every movement of their mouths, Kurt arched forward a little more until he was almost rubbing against Blaine's leg.

Kurt was hard; when he pressed forward, Blaine realized that they both were. He didn't know why he hadn't noticed before. They both wanted this, wanted each other so much-

He reached down to fumble with Kurt's belt then the button of his trousers, and kept feeling like Kurt should be telling him to stop though he couldn't for the life of him figure out why. He pulled the belt out from the loops, wanting it fully out of the way rather than just moved a little, and Kurt giggled at the noise it made slapping at the carriers then skittering across the wooden floor.

Kurt reached down to rub his palm over Blaine's growing erection, almost purring with this pleased grin on his face like he was winning some contest or something, like he was proving just how amazing he was. He groaned, and Kurt leaned in to nuzzle his neck; the feeling of Kurt's hot breath against the skin just below his ear was almost more incredible than the feeling of Kurt squeezing his cock and that was really saying something.

He wanted Kurt to do that again - and keep doing it over and over - but there was something he needed first.

He nipped at Kurt's neck, leaving dark red marks on the fine porcelain skin, pressing his leg between Kurt's as he began to rise up on his toes and sink back down again, letting his thigh rub against Kurt's growing erection. Kurt's mewling was incredible, like he desperately wanted more but was afraid to ask, and Blaine was more than happy to take care of that. He sank to his knees, almost falling, and just stared at the tenting cloth in front of his face. With a shaky, excited inhale, he reached to lower Kurt's zipper, then reached in to fish out what he really wanted. He heard Kurt gasp as his fingers closed around the hardon, and he let out a soft sigh as he felt the soft, smooth skin in his palm. It was softer than his own - the skin, at least.

It was like the world stopped for a moment when he saw the prick - big and thick and leaking and hard, so damn hard, and his mouth was practically watering as he sat there and stared at it. Kurt spoke for the first time since they stopped singing, practically growling, "Taste it" and that was all the encouragement he needed. Blaine surged forward, taking the entire impossibly large thing into his mouth and sucking as hard as he could, bobbing up and down and feeling his own cock grow and swell until it felt like it was completely filling the front of his pants such that he couldn't even move.

Blaine awakened partway from the dream, enough to recognize that the erection of seemingly improbable size and hardness - at least it still seemed bigger than usual, but that might have just been the sleep talking - was his own. He closed his eyes, reaching down into his pajama pants to grasp himself as he attempted to reconjur the images from the dream.

His mind had skipped the next little part, somehow, because now they were on the big leather couch - Blaine was lying on his back, legs up over the couch arms, and completely naked from the waist down. Kurt knelt on the arm, his legs straddling Blaine's knees, and leaned forward toward Blaine's swollen cock. He could see Kurt's still-engorged dick swaying heavily between his legs, and his round, pale ass was up such that when he leaned forward Blaine had an incredible view of Kurt's long, slim back from neck until it disappeared over the crest of his buttcheeks. Kurt licked his thin, pale, pink lips and formed a deliberate O-shape before lowering his mouth-

In his bed, Blaine stroked himself firmly, timing them with the images of Kurt's bobbing head. At some point - probably about when, in the half-dream, Kurt lifted up to release a hot puff of air over the head of Blaine's cock - Blaine shoved down his pajama pants to his knees, trying to get a better angle and more room because oh dear god the things that Kurt was doing within the confines of his brain. With the mental image of Kurt sinking all the way down, cheeks hollowed from the suction, Blaine came hard over his hand and stomach with a groan into the empty darkness of his bedroom.

Breathing hard, he rolled onto his back, hand wiping on the sheet beside him as his brain attempted to start firing normally. Should he go back to sleep now? he wondered dimly with a faint smile on his face, endorphins coursing through his still-sleepy body. He wondered if he could get back into the dream now - it wasn't every night he thought of a boy licking his-

He sat bolt upright as the realization of what he'd done hit him, his lungs clenching in his chest to the point where it felt like he could barely breathe.

Oh god. Oh no. No no no no no no. What had he done?

The mental image of Kurt and his beautiful, disgusting mouth sent panic through him, starting in his chest and shooting up to his cheeks where the skin flushed hot before rocketing down to his stomach where an icy clench began. He hastily pulled his pajama bottoms back into place and stumbled across the hall to the bathroom, feeling like he might throw up. What he'd done- that crossed a line. It crossed a line from being latently ill into being sick. It went from just wanting to almost doing and if he were in a room with Kurt-

...If he had the opportunity...

He had wanted it when Kurt kissed him. He had wanted to take Kurt's face in his hands and just kiss him until their lips were chapped and they felt like they couldn't breathe because they'd spent so long sucking in oxygen in deep gasps between kisses. He had wanted to pull him close and see if his body felt as leanly muscular as it looked like it might beneath the uniform and those fancy coats he liked to wear. He had wanted-

Just like tonight he had wanted. Wanted so deeply that he didn't resist it and in fact indulged it. He had at least been able to push Kurt away before Christmas. Now? With how much he had enjoyed the thought of doing all of those filthy, disgusting, hot things in that dream, as easily as that had brought him to orgasm...

He had only stopped wanting when he thought about what it meant, and that terrified him. Because what happened if Kurt tried to kiss him again? Now that he had gotten sicker, would he be able to control himself and step back again?

He leaned back against the wall heavily, breathing ragged, forehead and neck and back drenched in sweat that made his hair stick down in matted curls. He needed a shower. He just wasn't sure whether it should be scalding hot to scrub every reminder of what he'd done from his skin, or ice cold to prevent him from wanting anymore.

He didn't feel horny; he felt filthy.

Twisting the knob for hot water, he stepped under the spray and gasped at how hot it was. It hurt, but he didn't care. It was better than- He grabbed the washcloth and began to frantically scrub the dried cum off his stomach. It shouldn't be there. It should never have been there. He shouldn't have been thinking about Kurt, he should...he should be thinking of Jean if he was going to think of anyone - a girl he halfway liked, even if he found the entire idea kind of revolting and downright shocking.

Except it wasn't. Something had to be new to be shocking, and this...this wasn't new at all. Not thinking about it, anyway. Not picturing- Usually he was able to stop it was all. It wasn't even new to be thinking about Kurt - not after the weekend he'd spent at Kurt's house and in Kurt's bed, when Kurt had left early and he woke up just smelling Kurt everywhere and practically able to still feel the boy beside him, and he had thought about...pictured...imagined the feeling of Kurt's soft hands on his face and the hard press of their bodies against each other-

Even now, under the spray so hot it made him feel like his skin was burning off, he found himself wanting that. Wanting to feel Kurt's leg up around his hip and his breath against his neck and to smell his cologne a thousand times more intense than on the pillow. Wanting to taste the strange and intriguing mint-and-tea combination he'd noticed on Kurt's lips in the split second he hesitated before pulling back. Wanting to see Kurt unfasten each layer of clothing until he was left standing bare-chested beside the bed, lean and pale and not at all like the muscular men in magazines that his father's patients had seen - or tried to sneak if they were difficult cases. Wanting to feel Kurt press down against him wanting just as much - just as hard-

Oh god.

A panicked, anguish-filled sob clawed its way up from his throat as he felt the unwanted biological reflex kicking in again, his cock bobbing slowly upward with every thought of Kurt being near him. He tried scrubbing at it hard with the washcloth, hoping that maybe the roughness of the terrycloth fabric and the harshness of his motions would deter it, but it almost made things worse. No. No no no, he wasn't going to-...thinking it while he was asleep was one thing, he couldn't help what he dreamed about. Acting on it through the fog of recent awakening was a bad sign but didn't inherently mean-

But wanting it this much when he was fully awake, fully conscious of what it would mean and why it was wrong to want this?

That meant he couldn't fix this himself anymore. If even trying to cause himself pain in the hopes of holding onto a fragment of negative association wasn't working - if even knowing he was going to feel this rightfully filthy and diseased after the fact didn't stop him from wanting-

And not just from desiring, but from acting...

He needed help.

He sank against the wall of the shower, the tiles feeling icy against his back in a way that left him dizzy and disoriented. Why was this happening to him? he wondered with a choked-off gasp, thankful at least for the way the shock of the cold stopped his burgeoning erection. He...he was trying to do everything right. He had identified a problem. he knew this was wrong. He knew he wasn't supposed to want it and he was trying every single negative association he could think of - that was the protocol. He knew that. The protocol was to associate pain and unpleasurable things with unnatural sexual attraction to prevent future desire. He'd learned about the phenomenon generally in his health class during the tiny unit fragment on psychology. If he associated enough bad things with being like this, that was supposed to be enough.

He was doing everything right. Why wasn't it stopping?

He raked his hands over his face, leaning more heavily against the wall. Why couldn't he fix this? What was he doing wrong? Should...should he be avoiding everyone that made him feel this way? Kurt, in particular? Should he be trying to stay away?

He couldn't, came the visceral response. The idea of not seeing Kurt at school, of avoiding him between classes, of not talking to him after Warbler practice or during lunch- felt like something was curling up and dying inside him at even the thought of that kind of action. He couldn't look into those amazing eyes and say no. He couldn't look at Kurt and hear him ask about doing something and walk the other direction.

Which meant this really wasn't something he could do on his own anymore. He needed- oh god, he needed help. He needed help so badly. If he was this bad off? He needed help now.

Maybe not right this second, he allowed. He didn't think he would be a danger to himself or anyone else at 3:00 on Christmas morning. He could- He drew in a shaky breath, trying to calm himself and steady his twitching fingers. He could wait until morning. Really he could wait a couple days - he wasn't going to ruin Christmas.

Assuming they even acknowledged him when he spoke, that would kill the day and be a constant annual reminder of his illness. Like how he had gotten the chickenpox once on Easter and now, every year, he spent spring break feeling the phantom itch unscratchable beneath his skin. Or how he thought about his disgusting urges every year during Initiation. He didn't want to have to think about his disease every Christmas, too.

With any luck, he wouldn't have to think about it ever again once he got help.

His stomach clenched violently and left him feeling choked as he realized this meant he had progressed past the point of even just the medication he was afraid of. This meant electrodes on-

No. It was...it would be worth it, he tried to reassure himself. It was just like a bigger version of the pin trick, something that would be more permanent. He hadn't minded the pin so much at the time, it was only when it stopped working that it caused a problem. This would...it would be good for him. Fix him.

This would be worth it, he concluded. Feelings alone wouldn't be worth losing the brighter colours in the world, but for action, for something of this severity...

"Yes," he whispered into the unforgiving echo of the shower. It sounded impossibly loud to his ears. "I'll tell them."

Sometime soon, at least.

* * * * *

"Sometime soon" turned into ten days.

He meant to. He wanted to. But there was no good way of saying it.

How could he dash everything they wanted for him? How did you tell someone that you were sick, especially when they were people you couldn't really tell anything important to? How were you supposed to have a deep conversation with people for whom 'deep' meant correcting posture or speaking in generalities about the best way to defeat the communists and secure the American way of life from those godless machines? How did you bring up to your mother and father the subject of an illness for which the cure was arduous and it was widely known to be a disease caused by parents?

How could you tell someone you were ruined and it was all their fault?

He had never been good at expressing himself in any way other than song, and he didn't think there was an appropriate melody to sing about how disgusting and disturbed he was. Even if they weren't the kind of people who would find his bursting into song incredibly inappropriate regardless of its subject or message, that wouldn't be a very good idea. Which meant he was left with words, and trying to figure out the best way of addressing a topic he didn't want to ever have to talk about.

He'd never been a brave guy, always choosing avoidance and deflection instead of confrontation, running away instead of fighting to the death, and he had no idea what to say.

Kurt would know, he thought with a wry smile and a choking laugh as he sat in his room every morning and tried to summon the strength to tell them over breakfast. Today I'll tell them. Today I'll get help. Then he'd get stuck on the next sentence and curse the fact that he didn't know what to say and think that Kurt would know because Kurt was better at confrontation than he was.

Too bad Kurt was also far sicker than he. At least he knew he was ill. He wasn't resistant. Kurt still...

If they banded together maybe- Use his knowledge and Kurt's bravery? They could go tell his father together and save themselves both. Save each other.

But that would require knowing how to talk to Kurt. Or feeling strong enough to be in the same room as the beautiful, beautiful boy and not act on what he felt.

That was even more impossible than telling his parents.

On the night before he was due to leave for school, knowing his time had run out and his options had dwindled, he found himself standing outside the closed door of his father's study. He had learned from an early age not to bother him there unless it was "a matter of exceeding importance," which almost nothing in his life ever rose to. His admission to Yale or Princeton might, but short of that...

This would, he knew. If he could say anything, which he didn't know.

Four times he rose his fist to knock, mentally rehearsing his speech in his head - about how he'd felt this way for so long and he knew it was a sickness and he was sorry and he had tried so hard to resist but he couldn't fight anymore and he wanted - no, needed, he corrected himself - help. But each time-

He couldn't. He couldn't say it out loud, he couldn't open his mouth and say-

"Yes, Blaine?"

He looked up quickly and saw his father standing, hand on the doorknob, staring at him as he stood just outside the study. Blaine stood up straighter, wondering if he'd been the one to knock or if his father had opened the door of his own volition; his hand was at his side, so he suspected the latter. "I'm sorry, sir-"

"Are you lurking for a reason?"

Blaine swallowed hard and tried to remember any of the words of his speech, but he couldn't. He couldn't remember any of what he wanted to say except that he was terrified, and he knew that wasn't something to ever admit to his father. Of all the people in the world he wasn't going to admit fear to, it was the man who had told Blaine from birth that fear was the ultimate sign of weakness, all while fearing every person who might look at the family and see something unusual or exotic.

"Sir, if you have a moment, I wanted to tell you-..."

that I'm sick.

His father looked at him expectantly, eyebrows raised, face slack yet impatient. He seemed taller somehow, backlit by the lamp of his study, and it took everything in Blaine not to shift from one foot to the other or twist his neck to try and get out some of the nervous energy as he attempted to conjur up the words.

that I don't think it's your fault but I can't be sure because I've felt this way for as long as I can remember but you've always been my parents so I suppose there's no way of figuring it out for certain.

He wondered if this was how his father's patients felt; if that was all he would be to his father now. No longer a potential legacy, just another disturbed individual climbing the walls of the asylum and barely able to figure out who they were, let alone who they used to be. Not a family member, just a shell that fit nicely into a Christmas card photograph.

that I tried to stop feeling this way but I can't.

Why couldn't he say it?

Kurt could say it. Kurt, who could defeat this thing if he tried hard enough but who seemed to either be incapable of trying, or didn't know he was supposed to, or was a "difficult case" who would let his pride stand in the way of getting better and live his entire life in misery.

Blaine's heart ached at the thought. He wanted good things for Kurt so much, and those good things could never happen as long as Kurt was like this. It was a simple fact of the world.

that I'm madly in love with my best friend and had a disgusting dream about him that was the most amazing thing I've ever even thought of and I can't possibly want to act on that and oh please god-

"that I appreciate you introducing me to your alumni friends while I was here," he finished breathlessly. His father looked mildly surprised, but it barely registered. "I should know about schools in the next two or three months, for sure, but I imagine their influence will do a world of good in vouching for my good character and work ethic. I appreciate the connections."

His father nodded curtly. "Of course," he replied, his tone distant and disinterested even on the topic of school as he edged past his son to retrieve something from the kitchen, leaving Blaine feeling breathless and boneless against the wall.

He'd lost his chance, and his nerve. Tomorrow Edgar would drive him back to school and he wouldn't be able to say anything unless he made a special appointment to come home and see his father. he was giving up the opportunity to get better for at least another three months, most likely, and in the meantime-

He hated himself for not being stronger. After all, if he were stronger he wouldn't need help. If he were stronger, he could go back to being who he was a month ago and not feel like his entire body was going to explode if he kept going on like this.

But mostly he hated himself for not being brave enough to stand up and do the right thing.

It really was his own fault he was sick.