Hiram Berry lived in a modest, largely nondescript ranch house in Olmstead Falls, about twenty minutes from Cleveland and close enough to the airport that there was the occasional dull roar of a jet overhead. As Kurt walked up the well-kept front path, Rachel half-clinging to his arm and chattering excitedly away, he glanced up at the sudden sound of the engine. From here it seemed as though he could, if he had a long enough rope, lasso the wing and be carried away to whatever exotic location the plane was going to. He stared longingly up at it the way he had since he was younger, wondering where the rich and important people on that plane were going. Maybe New York. Maybe somewhere even further, beyond even the reaches of his overactive imagination as a place he might go someday - London. Paris. Milan. Most likely, judging by their location in relationship to Cleveland Hopkins Airport, it was going to Los Angeles or somewhere equally warm and ritzy.

For the first time in Kurt's life, his actual destination almost seemed more interesting.

He was nervous, a little queasy, as Rachel led him up the front steps and rapped on the door. "In the spring these will all be rose bushes," she stated, her fingers curled around his bicep while her other hand rested on his forearm. "All white. We used to have them at home, but my dad was the only one who ever tended them. He's not great in the garden, but he enjoys it. My mom hates it, says it takes up too much time she could be devoting to shepherding her talent." She paused a moment, glanced over at him, and squeezed his arm just a bit. "You're going to love them."

He wasn't sure if this was what Finn felt like the first time he'd gone to meet the Fabrays. Probably not, he concluded, since this wasn't an actual date and he wasn't really taking out Mr. Berry's little princess, but in a way the stakes tonight seemed even higher. This might be his only shot, at least for awhile, and if this didn't go well - if they didn't like him, if they didn't want to talk to him and tell him the intimate details of their life...and he couldn't say he would blame them for that, but if they didn't, then what was he supposed to do? Because he needed to figure out what he was supposed to do now that he knew who he was, and if the only people around who might be able to help him ultimately couldn't-

The door opened to reveal a slight forty-something man with round glasses and very little hair. He wore a brown polo shirt that practically hung off his narrow frame and seemed to almost shrink on himself just standing there, even in the threshold of his own home. A sort of unassuming, forgettable fellow, he appeared nothing like his daughter who prided herself on being the center of attention - or his ex-wife who was much the same. But he seemed pleasant enough, a soft smile appearing as he saw his daughter standing before him. "Rachel. Please come in."

They hadn't made it fully into the entryway before Rachel began the introductions. "Kurt, I'd like you to meet my father, Hiram Berry. Dad, this is Kurt Hummel- my fake boyfriend," she stated proudly. When Mr. Berry glanced at Kurt inquisitively, Rachel explained, "Kurt's a homosexual. You probably a have a lot in common, and I thought the least I could do - as his devoted girlfriend," she added with an exaggerated wink, "was to introduce him to you. And to Leroy."

Mr. Berry fidgeted but extended his hand. "Nice to meet you, Kurt."

"Nice to meet you too," he replied automatically, though 'nice' didn't begin to cover it. Intimidating. Immense. Incredible.

And yet at the same time, it felt...strange. Awkward. As though he had no idea what he could even ask about, where to begin. Mr. Berry didn't seem to be the kind of person who would volunteer information freely, in stark contrast to Rachel, and if that meant Kurt would be responsible for steering the conversation...it wasn't so much that he was uncomfortable asking these sorts of intimate questions, though he was; mostly he just didn't know enough to know what to ask in the first place.

He felt gauche, even standing in a home that was neither large nor intimidatingly perfect on its own. He recognized a few paintings and posters that seemed like they matched or coordinated with things in Rachel's house, as though Mr. Berry had been allowed to keep one piece from each set as a token when he left. It looked like a fragment of a life, like a tiny consolation hung in too big a space to make it seem like it fit, and he wondered suddenly if that was what he was doomed for. If the best he could hope for was a single painting where there should have been six.

"How've you been?" Hiram asked Rachel, glancing awkwardly between her and Kurt as though he wasn't sure whether he was supposed to be asking Kurt questions or not, whether he should be treating this like any other date or not, and Kurt didn't have any better answers for him. He had begun reading etiquette books cover to cover when he was six, determined to succeed in any potential future dinners, but somehow this felt more like a cross between a meeting of a secret society and being a third-wheel at a family gathering.

"Well," Rachel said excitedly. "Auditions for Oklahoma are next week, so I've been practicing the dream ballet. I think if I can incorporate that into whatever other audition piece I select, it will really give me a leg up on the competition." Kurt had a mental image of Rachel breaking midway through her 16-bar vocal audition to perform a dance and barely restrained himself from laughing, because that would absolutely be something she would do. He should suggest it, then find a way to sneak in and watch the director's face.

That might be a little mean, especially considering what she was doing for him. It wasn't easy going from rivals to friends-ish to steadies even if they both knew the last one wasn't entirely true.

"I love that piece," Mr. Berry said with a bit of a dreamy expression as he seemed to hear it playing in his head, fingers moving slightly in tiny conducting motions as though a miniature orchestra sat just beyond the front hall.

"I remember," Rachel replied with a faint, sentimental smile. "I remember sitting on your lap and listening to it, then making you play it again so I could dance to it. You said I was perfect, even though I couldn't even do a proper arabesque yet."

Mr. Berry looked stricken, though Kurt wasn't sure whether it was because he was surprised that Rachel remembered such a thing or at the idea that she had said something about herself and her abilities was imperfect, even in retrospect. Kurt was certainly more surprised by the latter. But he moved on quickly to ask, "Can I get you two anything to drink?" as he led them toward the living room.

The room looked surprisingly normal. Kurt wasn't entirely sure what he'd been expecting, but for some reason this wasn't it - the same wood paneling as in his old house, the same sliding glass door out to a cement patio, the same square-edged furniture that almost everyone's family had in their living room including his own. The combination of greys and golds was one he liked in his wardrobe but found almost uninspired in the decor. Not something he would have selected if he had his own home to style however he wished.

He wasn't sure why he'd expected otherwise. Maybe because in his fantasies about what it was like to be an adult - a homosexual adult with his own life and another homosexual adult around - his home would look far less pedestrian and conventional. He had expected Rachel's father would be the same, but maybe he should just have been glad that Rachel's affinity for plaid wasn't hereditary as far as he could tell.

There was a print hanging above the long gold couch; it stood out instantly, seeming to jump off the wall and shout "look at me, I have vibrant colours!" - violets and lilacs and deep blues contrasting against the light ochres, with strong intersecting lines and geometric shapes. It looked nothing like the rest of the house, nothing like Rachel and certainly nothing like Mr. Berry - it was too bold.

"Kurt?"

"Water's fine," he replied absently, studying it. It wasn't the type of art he was usually attracted to - truth be told, he wasn't much for classical visual arts in general; he responded much more strongly to the audio than to the visual with the exception of fashion. But there was something intriguing about it, about its relationship to the rest of the house-

"Please don't say you think it looks like the Emerald City," said a new voice from behind him, and Kurt turned suddenly to find himself face-to-face with a black man he didn't recognize - presumably the infamous lover. The man was taller than Mr. Berry and dressed neatly in a pink shirt, tie, and grey flannel suit that accentuated and elongated his lean frame.

Kurt didn't know what to say to the request. "I-..." He found himself staring a little, looking the man up and down for any sign that he might have more in common with him than he did with Mr. Berry. Obviously the most important thing was shared, he knew that much, but it still felt off-putting. He didn't feel the kind of instant kinship he'd thought he would, the kind he shared with Blaine. While the hesitance and slight discomfort felt like certain conversations with Blaine where conversations got too personal, too focused on their mutual proclivities, everything beyond that felt like...well, like any other meeting of a friend's parents.

"Well it does," Mr. Berry protested, and when he walked back in there was something different about him. He seemed less awkward and stiff than when it was just himself and Rachel standing there, less restrained. There was a fondness in his voice and just a bit mincier step in his walk - slight enough that Kurt wondered if he was just imagining it, trying to project something there that would link the two of them together where there was nothing.

Leroy shot a fond smile and a roll of his eyes over his shoulder, then turned back to Kurt. "At least once a week he has to say that's what it looks like," he stated. "We've had it for four years." His voice was deeper than Kurt's but he spoke from his head more than from his chest, with a feminine, almost-lilting pattern that felt instantly familiar. He held out his hand. "Leroy Washington. And you must be Rachel's infamous non-boyfriend."

"Yes, sir. Kurt Hummel."

Mr. Berry waited until the two had shaken hands before he pressed a tumbler of water into Kurt's palm, then handed a glass of wine to Leroy. The linger of his touch on Leroy's arm and the faint, private smile between the two of them - part appreciation but not just for the drink, part as though they were sharing a wonderful secret of something they were about to initiate Kurt into, all wrapped in genuine fondness - was subtle enough to go unnoticed by most.

To Kurt, it spoke volumes he could never adequately express.

* * * * *

It was normal to be nervous on a date, Blaine told himself as he got dressed. Plenty of boys were nervous before they took a girl out. Maybe not most of the boys he knew, but considering most of them didn't actually pay much attention to the girls they took out...and maybe they were all nervous and he just didn't know it because guys didn't talk about things like that. Especially if they genuinely liked the girl they were taking out and wanted her to have a good time - not Jeff or Nick or Bill or a few of the others, who took girls out just to feed their own egos and hopefully get to make out at the end of the night, but the boys who liked girls the way he liked Jean.

And the reason he was nervous definitely didn't have anything to do with the dream he'd had last night - the one that started with Kurt kissing him, then moved quickly into Touching, then ended with him needing to change his sheets when he woke up. The one that had him scrubbing his skin as hard as he could in the hottest shower he could manage to get at Dalton at 4:30 in the morning and left him unable to return to sleep when he was done.

The one that made him feel so warm and happy it disgusted him.

He tightened his tie and plucked his blazer from its hanger in the closet. Kurt would critique it, he was sure - would tell him not to wear this shade of grey and not to pair it with the red in the tie, or would tell him to pick different shoes, or something, and he wished he didn't care. He wished he didn't give a damn what Kurt thought, what Kurt wanted him to do. Why did he care anyway? It wasn't Kurt's date to go on. It was his. He was going out with Jean tonight, and Kurt could get the hell out of his head right about now. It was none of Kurt's business who he dated.

Kurt hadn't stopped by his room in days. Had barely talked to him between classes or at rehearsals. Maybe dating was a good thing for everyone involved: He could go be happy with Jean, and Kurt could just...move on. Stop fixating on him and be less sick.

He hoped it worked both ways.

Pushing the thoughts aside and selecting a different jacket, he hurried out to his car. His palms sweated as he reached into his pocket for the keys, fumbling with the door. This wasn't something he had done much of before, and he wasn't very good at it. He knew that from the get-go. He had no idea what to do on a date or how to act beyond what basic societal edicts and etiquette taught him. He knew how to be a gentleman; he hadn't the faintest clue how to be a boyfriend.

It didn't help that his number one coping mechanism, acting out how he felt through song, was off the table. It was probably not acceptable to jump up on a table and start singing declarations of love and to Jean's beauty. At least not during dinner. Though she would probably appreciate it, knowing that she loved and understood music as much as he did. Very few people in the world could probably appreciate that kind of gesture like that - himself, Jean, Kurt, and Rachel.

At the thought of singing that kind of song to Kurt, that kind of declaration of how he felt and wanted to stop feeling as soon as humanly possible, he swallowed hard. He imagined scratching out the boy's name from the list, scribbling over it again and again with thick black pen lines until it was nothing but a mess of dark ink between the names of two attractive, assertive, appropriate women.

Much better.

He started the car and began the short drive over to Crawford, wondering just how many giggling girls he would have to endure on the way to pick her up.

* * * * *
Dinner was awkward. It would have been quiet and awkward were it not for Rachel, which came as no surprise to anyone there. Unfortunately, what she contributed by keeping the table from not falling into uncomfortable silence, she made up for by making the entire table uncomfortable as she attempted to play the perfect matchmaker.

"So Kurt, did you know that my dad once met the understudy for the role of Nettie in the Original Broadway Cast of Carousel?" she asked over the first few bites of casserole. "He was working as an accountant to the stars...well, as many stars as we can get in Ohio, anyway," she added, dropping the flourish as if it suddenly occurred to her that maybe there weren't any actual stars around. "But with a job like that, and being around those kinds of incredibly talented and driven people, is it any wonder he signed me up for dance lessons the next week?"

"Actually that was your mother's decision," Mr. Berry replied awkwardly. "She wanted to earlier, but the earliest the class would let you in was five." Leroy and Kurt exchanged hesitant glances across the corner of the table; watching family squabble was painful. Watching family too distant to know how to fight try to forge a connection was excrutiating.

He had to ask. He had so many things he wanted to find out, things he needed to know if he was ever going to be remotely okay, and this might be his only chance. For one thing, one of his first questions was how to find other people and there was no way to ask that if you didn't have other people first, and they were the only ones he had any connection to, any in with. But at the same time, was it appropriate to just bring up a person's intimate relationships over dinner? It felt too personal a conversation to have over a dish containing macaroni. Was it something he should save for later, get their address and begin writing them instead? Or could he ask them?

Could he speak any of the words he wanted to out loud without either blushing or crying? Was there any way to have this conversation even if he thought it was appropriate?

But he needed to know. For himself. For Blaine. For the two of them and what they might be and what they could be, if only they knew where to aim themselves as they moved and grew.

"I don't know what to call him," he said abruptly, cutting off Rachel's question about something involving bone structure. Everyone turned to stare at Kurt, Rachel looking more confused than any of them, and he tried to explain, "There's a boy at school. We're together all the time, we do things together, we kiss, but we...I don't know what to call him."

Hiram looked stunned, but Leroy smiled broadly. "You like him?" he asked with a tone that made clear he knew the answer. Even so, Kurt felt blush spread over his cheeks and a grin creep across his face.

He more than liked Blaine. He loved Blaine like he hadn't loved anyone except his parents, even other people he considered family. He ached when Blaine didn't look at him during rehearsal and he wanted to just be as close as humanly possible to him when they were in the same room. He felt incomplete if he didn't see Blaine during the day and he wanted to share every single piece of the world with him, all day, all the time. "Yes," he finally replied quietly, the word encompassing as much as it possibly could but still not enough. "Very much."

"And he likes you?" Leroy prompted.

"Are you sure he likes you?" Hiram amended, casting a nervous glance at Leroy.

"He's more cautious than I am," Leroy informed Kurt before directing at Hiram the statement, "If you'd waited until you were sure I liked you, we would still be waiting in apartments and watching for the other to walk by in a red necktie."

"Red ties?" Kurt asked.

"It's a code," Hiram explained. "In some places, at least. To know who's...safe, and who isn't. A lot of people aren't, you know, even if you think they might be. Even if they seem like they could be."

Rachel covered a laugh. "Kurt's school is private, they all wear red ties - well, red and blue striped."

Leroy's eyes lit up. "It's all-boys?" Kurt wasn't sure what to make of his enthusiasm. It felt a little...lecherous, and he remembered what the book had said about homosexuality being comorbid with inappropriate contact with young boys. A part of him had instantly liked Leroy, but maybe this wasn't the best idea. "That's fantastic - for you, I mean," he added quickly, seeing Kurt's nervous expression. "All-male environments tend to be a little higher percentage of us than elsewhere."

Kurt was skeptical. "Really." Because from what he'd seen of the football team, of Finn's group of friends, of pretty much every male-oriented group he'd ever been in, they were the most likely to call him out for being a sissy. He highly doubted they were all secretly attracted to him.

"I was in the Navy during the war," he replied. "That was where I first really...I mean, I knew. I knew when I was your age - younger, actually. But I couldn't find anyone before that. Not in college, certainly not in high school. It wasn't easy, the Navy had rules and we were in separate quarters from the white sailors," he added with a roll of his eyes at the antiquated policy. "But there were places on-base out there where you could find someone any time, day or night. It wasn't the smartest thing, maybe, but I was 24 and it seemed like good fun." Hiram looked queasy and nervous even hearing the story, and Leroy chuckled. "That was one of the few good things about being there, you're just jealous."

"Of anonymous trysts with old men? Not hardly," Hiram replied with a high, tight laugh, and Leroy shot him a judgmental look that Kurt didn't quite understand but reminded him of watching his dad and Carole attempt to not-fight in front of he and Finn. Not about anything serious, but knowing exactly what the other was going to try to say before it came out.

"I'm not advising that - certainly not here," Leroy cautioned Kurt. "The last thing I want to do is tell you something that would get you in trouble. Something that could get you hurt. I know people are more open now than we ever used to be, even than I would be comfortable with and I'm eternally too open for Hiram's tastes, but you have to be careful."

That much Kurt knew almost instinctively. "Yes," he confirmed. "So how do you..."

"What? Know if he likes you?"

"No," he said slowly, considering his words carefully. "He likes me. He's made that much - though nothing else - perfectly clear. But what do you do...after that?" Because obviously at some point you got this, a house and a man you lived with, though hopefully without a child or two from a sham of a marriage. But what came in between? He doubted this was the next step?

"Talk," Hiram replied with a fond smile in Leroy's direction. "I used to go to his apartment and we would sit in the living room and talk on a Saturday night until the sun was coming up on Sunday. About everything. Anything. About music, and plays, and art..." Kurt couldn't help but sigh happily at that - he and Blaine did that. Not staying up that late, they had curfew, but talking about everything like that, until hours had passed without notice. In the Commons, in his room, in Blaine's room if Sam was around or they wanted the record player, in the dining hall, just...everywhere.

"And sometimes more," Leroy replied with a faint nostalgic smile. When Hiram coughed and had to take quick gulps of his water, Leroy quickly clarified, "Going places. Nowhere-...here's the thing, Kurt. You can go places with each other, you just have to be careful where you go together. You can live in the same home, just not together, not to anyone who doesn't already understand. You see? So we could go get dinner at a restaurant in Columbus where plenty of bachelors dined, we just had to act like we weren't...unsavoury characters," he offered with a look of disdain as though the euphemism was the nicest thing he could come up with that people had said about them. "But if there are other people - other people like you, or like us - around, then it's safer. Some cities have restaurants, Columbus had a bar for awhile." Kurt remembered the article he'd read about the state liquor board trying to shut down the bar for catering to homosexuals; the idea of an entire bar full of people like him was almost enough to make his head spin as he suddenly realized what that would be like - a whole room of boys talking to other boys, but not like the Warblers. Not like Dalton. Like...like this, like this dinner, but without Rachel because she wouldn't be allowed into a homosexual bar.

The idea of walking into a place and knowing that there were others like him there, just knowing because it was right there in the place's name or clientele, was at once exhilarating and terrifying. He'd never been around anyone like himself, even aside from the issue of sexual so-called deviance.

"You shouldn't be telling him this," Hiram stated. "He's young. Remember how foolish you were at his age?"

"Not nearly as foolish as you were, getting ma-" Leroy cut himself off and changed tactics. "There are some places with a lot of people. That means safety. That's where you want to go - not here. Here's horrible. Here means constantly watching over your shoulder and Hiram telling me to walk ten feet from him at all times in public." Kurt looked over at Rachel's father in surprise. He couldn't imagine telling Blaine such a thing. For that matter, even as uncomfortable as Blaine was with him these days, as much as Blaine wanted to try to date Jean instead, he couldn't imagine Blaine ever telling him such a thing either. "It's not his fault," Leroy tried to explain, glancing over apologetically. "He comes by his paranoia honestly, and people are...cruel. Or they can be. It's not easy. It's not nice. But we have so much here. This home is enough." He looked over at Hiram again, and though neither of them moved from their places at the head and foot of the table, the glance that passed between them felt like an embrace. It felt like holding hands and being close and warm and loving to one another though neither of them moved.

As long as he could have that much in public, Kurt could live without the rest he concluded. If he could have Blaine looking at him like that, he could surrender everything else.

But still, he didn't understand. "Why not go somewhere with people, so it's safe?"

The two men glanced at each other, then Hiram glanced at Rachel before glancing back. "I didn't want to go too far," he stated finally.

"Because of me?" It hadn't occurred to Kurt until that moment that Rachel hadn't spoken since this part of the conversation began, and he realized it was probably the longest she'd ever gone without speaking. He wasn't sure if it was because she was uncomfortable and didn't want to think about her father and his attractions, if it was because she was being ignored and knew no amount of attempted attention-grabbing would distract them from the important topic at hand, or if she was genuinely more interested in helping Kurt get information; he suspected it wasn't the latter, but he was grateful anyway.

"Yes," Hiram replied quietly. "Not once you started coming up here. I- I know I couldn't stay, but at least now..."

Rachel nodded slowly before glancing at Kurt nervously. "We're going to New York at the end of next year," she stated. "We're going to be stars on Broadway, legends in this new Golden Age." Kurt was about to ask why in the world she was stating this when it occurred to him: What if New York wasn't one of the safe places? Was he going to have to make the same kind of choice between safety and his dream the way Mr. Berry had? What kind of choice could that possibly be? And if he did choose somewhere safer over the glimmer of the Broadway footlights, what did that mean for Rachel? For their arrangement?

For that matter, what did it mean for Rachel if New York was safe? If he didn't need a fake girlfriend anymore because he could walk down the street proudly hand-in-hand with his actual boyfriend?

(Boyfriend, he concluded, was definitely the right term. For now at least.)

"New York is safe," Leroy assured him. "There are a lot of us there. Anywhere on the coasts, or so I hear. I know a lot of sailors settled out west after the War. But New York...you should be okay there. You and the boy you like," he added with a teasing wink as he stood. "Who's ready for dessert? I made cake."

It was nothing like he'd envisioned - no grand soiree, no elegantly-decorated apartment, no big city, no fabulous and cultured friends to share the night with. There were no appetizers or cocktails, no stunning gowns or handsome men in tuxedos, not even so much as a single song played on a grand piano in the living room. But Kurt had never seen anything he wanted so much, nor anything so beautiful.

* * * * *

Dinner had gone suitably well, Blaine concluded as he and Jean walked slowly through the park across from Crawford's grounds. It was a heavily-patrolled area, she claimed, such that anyone who hung out in cars was reprimanded and strictly punished if it happened more than once. But walking around in plain sight, provided one didn't stop to tarry too long on a bench or attempt to sneak off beyond the well-lit footpaths, was perfectly acceptable.

"You're sure you're okay?" Blaine checked. It was a chilly evening but not bad at all for late January in Ohio, but he had the benefit of long trousers while Jean was in a skirt and heels.

"Fine," she replied with a sly smile as she fluffed the fur collar of her coat. "But it's sweet of you to ask." She held onto his arm as they walked, her hand resting in the crook of his elbow as they moved slowly along the path. "So what does your week look like?"

He had a hunch, based purely on previous interaction, that she was asking for purposes of arranging another date without being the one to expressly arrange the next date. "I would love to take you out again," he stated, because it was true. She had been delightful company for the evening, and they had spent most of dinner joking about pop songs and talking about the perils of being the frontman (or frontwoman, he supposed?) of a talented group of singers - constantly feeling the desire to spread the wealth of solos but not necessarily sure if it was their place to turn down the endorsement of their peers. "Unfortunately, our Founders' Day is coming up, which means I have about four times as many rehearsals as usual for the next ten days or so."

"Ohh," she nodded with a knowing smile. "I know how those go. Always having to showcase the pride and joy of the school, the most successful of the student groups..."

"Exactly," he replied, glad she didn't think it was an excuse. "The Warblers are such a huge part of their appeal for alumni donations, I think we brought in something like half the scholarship funds last year. And we always get good press, especially with Regionals coming up in two months. So we do a huge showcase."

"So do we, for ours - which is horrible because it's always right before graduation, so we're trying to get Senior Night together, plus whatever we're doing for the ceremony itself, and Founders on top of it all." She shook her head. "Yours is at least staggered nicely."

"Staggered from performances, yes, but always barely two weeks after exams," he chuckled. "So we have to put everything together in ten days - nominate soloists, select songs based on who has earned solos, arranging which is such an intense process for acapella music, plus actually rehearsing and getting ready to perform." The solo nomination process was always a big deal, too, and often turned into a fight. The Warblers had a history of rewarding initiative both in the group and outside of it, and Founders Day was the opportunity for a first-year Warbler to really shine. Of course upperclassmen were eligible as well, and at least a few of them would end up with their own songs. The Council always sang something themselves, which he knew Thad, David, and Wes had been working on for a few months already. But nominating others who were not usually featured often turned into a strange political battle, with everyone trying to nominate everyone without nominating themselves as was prohibited by the rules. Alliances were made, people made deals, with preference essentially given to those who made the most complicated back-room arrangements possible because it meant it was more difficult to trace things back to them.

Some years were fine. Some years were genuinely based on who had been an asset to the group over the year, who had been working hard, who had shone on lesser lines in competition. His sophomore year, on the other hand, it had devolved into a giant conspiracy theory when Jim's ex-best-friend nominated Richie for a solo after Richie stole Jim's girlfriend, and the next thing Blaine knew he had ended up with four solos because he was the only featured singer the entire group could agree on.

That was how he'd gotten his place in the spotlight. He wondered who would take that place when he graduated. There were a few promising underclassmen, but almost none of them were serious enough about music or the group to live up to that kind of pressure, let alone to thrive in it as he had. Kurt could, certainly, but Blaine wasn't sure he wanted to be the one supporting him. Not if it meant-...it would certainly mean spending more time with Kurt, working with new soloists almost always fell to the lead particularly if they didn't hate each other.

He didn't hate Kurt. He had the opposite problem, particularly when Kurt sang...

"We should start planning something for our groups to do together," Blaine stated as they rounded the final bend toward the road, approaching campus, Jean stepping carefully around the ice.

"After your competition, I'm guessing," Jean replied, nodding. "Sometime in the spring?"

"Probably," Blaine confirmed.

"Isn't it a little early?"

"Something tells me it'll take a few rehearsals of doing nothing before any of the Warblers are ready to buckle down and work," he replied with a grin and a roll of his eyes. "They don't know what to do around girls."

"Other than treat us like ladies?" Jean teased.

"Most of them can't even manage that." He chuckled to himself as he pictured Nick and Jeff at Sectionals, and the look on Wes's face as though trying to figure out which if any of them he could flirt with without his girlfriend breaking up with him, and the way Rick kept sidling up to girls and subtly flexing his strong biceps, and poor Sam who just kept staring at them as though they were gorgeous porcelain statues he was afraid to go near for fear they would break - or would break him like that girl in Lima.

"Fortunately for us both, you can," she replied. She slowed to a halt, bringing Blaine with her. "I've had a lovely time tonight, Blaine."

He smiled down at her and replied honestly, "So have I." But it was starting to get to that point in the evening where he was meant to do something, and he wasn't entirely sure he knew...how, exactly. Obviously kiss her goodnight, she had seemed to send him all the signals that she wouldn't be opposed to it, that it wouldn't make her think that he thought that she was easy or anything like that, but it felt foreign. Mysterious. Like grasping in the dark for some kind of lamp without knowing what lamps there might be or at what height. He wasn't sure if he should...what, exactly? How he should move, what to do with his hands, whether there was a moment that was better than others...

He'd only kissed one person before, and that had just felt right. Except for the part where it felt horribly, vilely wrong, that was; it had felt like the right moment and the right musical background and the right setting and the absolute wrong person. But here he was with the right person, no music, a passable setting, and no idea if it might be the right moment or not.

If he didn't know, that meant it probably wasn't the right one, didn't it?

He couldn't be deterred by that, though. Because he was starting to really like her - in a way that could only be good for him, he knew. He enjoyed her company, she didn't leave him frustrated and scratching his head the way some of the girls his friends had gone with did, and they understood each other's passions. At least the truly important one. Which meant that Jean was absolutely someone he could date. She was someone he could be involved with, could go steady with. Someone who could get the Kurt in his head, the glasz-eyed judgmental Jiminy Cricket that had taken up residence in his every thought, to shut up and leave him alone. Someone who could let him be normal and healthy and successful and happy all at the same time.

It had to be possible. He refused to give up on that thought yet. He refused to believe that he really did have to choose between being passionate and being healthy. He just had to try harder to balance them. And Jean...Jean could help him strike that balance.

Nervously, he cupped her face and hoped his palm wasn't too sweaty on her cheek. She looked at him, eyes shining in the lamplight, as he leaned in to kiss her. It felt...okay. Unremarkable. Not bad, but not electric. Not like storybook romances or like the swell of a crescendo at that crucial moment in a musical. Not like he felt the world melt away and dissolve into an empty street for him to sing and dance down the boulevard in wonder. Not like clutching each other on a footbridge away from the prying eyes of townsfolk. Not like dreamily ascending the stairs and unable to sleep because the night has been so incredible. Not like putting his arm around her on a carousel and being unable to take his eyes off her. Not like being alone together on a magical island and feeling alive for the first time in a warzone.

Not like sliding up the bed to kiss the amazing boy who talked to animals and knew brand new musicals backwards and forwards and sang about the beauty of being gloriously ordinary when he was anything but.

It felt fine. Nothing more. Nothing like it was meant to feel if you kissed the person you really liked.

He just had to try harder, he told himself. It was a light, mostly-chaste kiss, maybe he just needed to pour more of himself into it. How could he expect to get anything out of it if he wasn't putting everything he had in? He deepened the kiss, one hand encircling Jean's back, lips moving quickly as he tried desperately to get something - anything - to feel half as good as it was supposed to. If he could just try harder, this could be right. If he could just be a little better, put in a little more of himself, be a little more invested, a little more intense, just a little bit more-

He could do this. He just had to work a little harder for it. That was all. He could have this the way everyone else could, he could make this feel as good as he had imagined it. Maybe he was just setting his expectations too high anyway, and maybe this was what it was meant to feel like and he was just someone who demanded too much from himself. No - he just wasn't trying hard enough, he concluded. He wasn't giving it everything because he was still thinking of other things that he didn't want, comparing her to something that felt way too good for anyone to deserve.

Of course it felt good. It was bad for him. Cake tasted better than vegetables and always would. That didn't mean he should expect vegetables to taste like sugar and chocolate just because he liked sweets. Quite the opposite, really.

If he tried a little harder-

Jean pulled back, placing a hand on his chest when he tried to move forward to keep kissing her. He was almost there, he swore, just another few minutes and he'd- "Blaine," she said quietly. "I-...I like you but that's...I-I think that's enough for now." His eyes flew open, and she looked embarrassed in the pools of lamplight. Flustered. Ashamed. "I know I'm not a shrinking violet, but that doesn't mean I'm that kind of girl." She worried her lower lip with her teeth, glancing at him every so often for a fleeting second before going back to staring anywhere but near his face.

Oh god. That hadn't been what he was trying to do at all. "I'm sorry," he said quietly, trying to meet her gaze so she could see that he really meant it. "I didn't assume that, I wasn't trying to-...I didn't mean it like that." He withdrew his hands from near her, dropping them to his sides. "I guess I just...get intense sometimes. I feel too much." It was the problem he always had, wasn't it? Feeling too much? Only in this case it was more about not feeling enough - trying to find a way to stop being numb when he shouldn't be, to awaken something within him that he knew was there, down there somewhere. To try to get past this barrier of unfeeling until he could get to the overly-expressive, overly-intense feelings he knew were down there because he'd felt them before. "I didn't mean to offend you, Jean, I would never think that." She studied him for a moment, trying to assess his sincerity, and appeared to find it valid. She nodded and began to walk toward the park's entrance, waiting until Blaine fell into step beside her before going very far. "I really am sorry."

"It's fine," she replied.

He thought for a moment of trying to explain, but there was no way that would be a good idea. Even if he were capable of explaining why without telling her about how he knew the feelings lurked deeper, without telling her about the other person he'd kissed...no one ever wanted to be told that kissing them was fine instead of amazing.

He needed to learn to control himself better, he chastised himself. If he didn't want to end up like his mother, a robot of a human being, he needed to keep a tighter grip on his emotions - or at least on his outward displays of them. Acting out feelings in song was dangerous enough, but acting them out in other ways was downright destructive. Self-destructive more than anything, he supposed.

He squeezed her hand gently as they said goodnight at Crawford's front gate, the furthest he was allowed to go this time of night. "I'll call you this week," he offered, hoping he hadn't ruined his chance.

She smiled faintly. "I'd like that."

"And not next weekend, but the following one - after the Showcase is over - I would enjoy taking you out again." He might have been pressing his luck, but she just gave a sly smile and a little wave as she slipped back onto campus and into the darkness beyond the well-lit gates. He walked slowly to his car, pausing to collect himself for a moment before he drove back toward Dalton.

He was exhausted. Being a gentleman was draining, and fixing mistakes after failing to be a gentleman was moreso. He needed a good night's sleep to straighten himself out.

He had a feeling the dream would return again, with its warm feelings and intense pleasure and sticky sheets. He almost wanted them to; that terrified him.

It was the deepest thing he'd felt all night.