Kurt noticed that one but was too busy being terrified to comment on it.

He couldn't put a precise note on which aspect of this was making him the most anxious. For one thing, there was always a little bit of pre-competition excitement that sometimes appeared as exhilaration and sometimes - like at Sectionals - turned into nervousness. For another, and the most obvious contender: this was his first solo in a competition setting before. It wasn't his first public solo, though as he thought back to Founders' Day he realized he remembered very little of the actual performance. He remembered being hurt and feeling exhausted by Blaine's hot-and-cold act. He remembered Blaine trying to apologize afterwards because they never could stay away from each other when they sang. He remembered how much it ached to walk away...but the performance itself was all kind of a blur.

So there was that.

There was the fact that so much of this was riding on him, and while he knew the Warblers had warmed to him over the past seven months there was still a sense that he was a bit of an eccentric outsider. Especially now that they knew he was leaving at the end of the year, there was a feeling that Kurt never had been (and now never would be) truly one of them. It wasn't from everyone, but a few of the guys still looked at him with suspicion. If he messed up, there would surely be allegations of disloyalty even though he had no interest in losing. Even if Nationals weren't somewhere exciting this year, like New York, he did want to go. Baltimore still had to be better than Ohio.

A part of him was more anxious because he knew people in the audience. He wanted to impress them - a few in particular. he knew his dad would be proud of him and probably not even know if he screwed up. As much as his father was supportive, he knew nothing about choirs, or music at all really. Carole and finn would congratulate him regardless, and as he hadn't actually seen Mercedes since the ruling came down, her hug would be extra big today no matter how he performed.

But Rachel had also made the trip and would offer endless tips and pointers - all very well-meaning and far too enthusiastic. He, of course, would have done the same (albeit more sarcastic than shrill) were she performing.

The real problem, he concluded as he stood backstage and toyed nervously with his fingers, was the song.

It wasn't that he didn't love the song - he did. He loved the raw emotion of it all, and the message, and the hope intertwined through it all. He could appreciate the sentiment, as it was kind of his mantra. And obviously anything that got the Warblers performing Broadway was a good thing, in his eyes - Billboard chart-toppers were fun and a good crowd-pleaser, but they rarely contained the type of deep feelings that a Broadway musical could convey. They skimmed the surface instead of diving to the heart of overwhelming passion; singing this would be a nice change.

But popular hits were safe. This wasn't.

Music may have been the universal language, but that didn't mean its message was always understood by the listener. He didn't even want to think about how many times he'd been shot down for wanting to sing a girl song because boys didn't do such things, and that was nothing compared to what had happened during the now-infamous "South Pacific" production. No one in Lima knew the show particularly well - outside Shelby and Rachel and of course Kurt, with a handful of other semi-cultured people who owned the cast recording - and when they had done the first read-through, one of the men who had been cast as an ensemble sailor got to the intro to "Carefully Taught" and stormed out. By the next day there was an organized protest sweeping through town; how dare a community group try and use the arts to force their desegregationist agenda on the rest of them? They had struggled on for a few weeks before an anonymous arson threat shut down production.

Rachel still listed it on her resume; Kurt wanted to never speak of it again.

He wasn't entirely sure this would be any different. A few years had passed, sure, but the people he knew growing up were still the same. No one had miraculously changed their mind about Mercedes in the past few years, and even now from what he could tell there was quite a bit of unrest. People didn't take too kindly to being told they were wrong, even in song.

And that was about something that at least most of the country had either made up their minds about already or learned to live with. That was over something that had been the law for more than five years now. He and Blaine were-

If they got up there and sang this...

He wasn't sure when Blaine had stopped seeing things through such paranoid eyes.

On one hand, he was incredibly happy for that. Blaine learning to trust a little bit, to accept that he wasn't inherently a sick or evil person, was the only reason they had a chance together - Kurt understood that. He understood that it had been an enormous struggle for Blaine to accept who he was and who they were together.

What he didn't understand was how the boy who was still terrified of anyone finding out about them could be so blind when it came to the reasons this song was the wrong one to choose.

It was a song about people who were different finding a place. It was a song about forbidden love that no one can know about and dreaming of one day having a relationship that they can revel in instead of hiding. It was a song about everything they were and everything that they couldn't tell anyone they were. And while Kurt didn't know what precisely people in Ohio did to homosexuals, he did know what the people in Lima had done to anyone they perceived as different. And it wasn't pretty.

If they sang this...if they sang this song in front of all these people...and they couldn't keep their hands off each other because god only knew what happened to Kurt's willpower when Blaine was in the same room, let alone when he sang...

He could imagine the death threats already. The bomb threats. The calls to his father like Mercedes' father got?

To say nothing of the fact that they would lose, because no judge in their right mind would consider it an appropriate performance, and then he would be stuck at Dalton for the rest of the year with boys who blamed him for their performance while his family was more than two hours away getting threats from narrow-minded Ohioans who were already angry about the way things were changing too fast for their neanderthal preferences.

This was a horrible mistake, they shouldn't be-

Blaine bounced over, amping himself up for the performance with his usual jumping and loosening up; he looked like the male gymnasts Kurt had watched obsessively on television during the Olympics in Melbourne when he was 14, the way Blaine tilted his head from side to side and rolled his shoulders as he bounced on the balls of his feet. He looked over, head cocked, and asked, "Are you nervous?"

Kurt paused his twisting fingers. He thought about saying no - he wasn't nervous. He was terrified. "Please don't judge me," he offered instead. "I...I think this might be a mistake, Blaine. I think it's going to be too controversial. You know I'm not one to run away from who we are, but there's a difference between being brave and being foolhardy. Getting up there and singing this in front of everyone - there's no way it's going to end well."

Blaine stood beside him, staring out onto the stage for a moment. The curtain was still closed, and the stage was empty as the speakers crackled with the pre-show announcements. He drew in a deep breath, looking Kurt over for a moment, before replying with a quiet but certain, "It doesn't matter."

"What?" Kurt asked, staring at him. Of course it mattered. Of course it mattered that people were going to get threatened as a result, that the Warblers would hate him for ruining their shot at Nationals, that-

"We're leaving soon," Blaine pointed out with a beaming smile. "We're finding somewhere safe and that's exactly what this song is about. It'll be fine." He crossed to stand in front of Kurt, carefully but platonicly smoothing his lapel. His fingers lingered over the Warbler pin - his Warbler pin, tacked neatly onto Kurt's jacket, and Kurt smiled faintly as he felt it. He had been right: it was enough that just the two of them knew. The comfort it brought was still there.

"Maybe you should just go sing it," Kurt suggested. "It might be more acceptable to-"

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen," crackled the speaker above their heads as the emcee began his announcements, "and welcome to the 1960 Midwest Regional Show Choir Championship!"

"Kurt, it will be fine," Blaine assured him.

"How can you be so sure?" What he wanted to ask was, who in the world had replaced the terrified Blaine who was convinced they would be found out just going to the drive-in in the middle of nowhere, with someone who was perfectly content to sing their own personal love song onstage?

Blaine's smile changes suddenly, from something proud and confident to something far more tender. "Because you showed me that," he replied, looking at Kurt with so much adoration it almost made Kurt ache.

"And please give a warm welcome to our judges: local broadcasting legend and man-about-town, Rod Remington!" Kurt had often wondered if the anchor ever actually had time to do the news anymore, since every competition he had ever been part of included him as a judge whether the majority of the teams competing were from Western Ohio or not. "Former fifth member of the smash doo-wop group, The Four Swells, Jerry Bob Lee!" He wondered how hit they were if he'd never heard of them, and looking around at the Warblers - who knew every hit song in the past five years like the back of their collective hands - and the blank looks that signified a total lack of recognition, Kurt could guess that he wasn't the only one. "And Federal Court Judge and avid golf enthusiast, Patrick Sullivan!"

Something odd happened as the third judge was announced: the usual polite clapping that the well-practiced audience gave even to those they had never heard of was interrupted by a sort of disgruntled rumbling from part of the audience. An uncomfortable tenseness settled over the crowd, and the applause suddenly sounded even more polite rather than genuine or enthusiastic. It took Kurt a moment to realize why.

He knew that name.

He knew that name because it was all over newspaper articles he'd been keeping in a box under his bed. It was in a few national magazines he'd gone out and bought at the local newsstand, where the cashier looked at him strangely for buying something other than Vogue. It was on the judicial opinion he had poured over in the library for six straight nights with a law dictionary beside him, trying to understand every word, but knowing that the bottom line was...this man was the reason that he and Mercedes could go to the same school.

From the time he had read the first article about the ruling, he had been curious about the elusive Judge Sullivan. Anyone who had been appointed by a Republican president and was a wealthy Midwesterner and graduate of Notre Dame hardly seemed the type to be on the forefront of civil rights. Curiosity getting the better of him, he sidestepped quickly to the edge of the curtain and attempted to peek out through the gap into the audience. He caught a quick glimpse before the heavy velvet fell back into place and obscured his view: tall-ish, slim, with round wiry spectacles and wiry white hair. His suit was nice but plain, his tie simple and narrow, and he stood and waved at the crowd with an unreadable expression as substantial factions cheered and grumbled in equal numbers.

He looked like any ordinary man Kurt could have ever met, and it was because of him that Lima was going to have to change. He had no reason whatsoever to be the cause of that, to fix the wrongs that had been allowed to linger, and yet...

...He was from Chicago, Kurt remembered. Maybe that was the difference. He was from a city, he was from somewhere other than the cesspit of proud backwards ideology and fierce ignorance. Chief Justice Earl Warren was from California, after all, just like where Leroy said there were so many different kinds of people...maybe that was why Judge Sullivan could understand people like Mercedes and recognize the fundamental truths that were shouted down time and again in Lima.

...Maybe there were others like this Judge Sullivan out there. In the places he and Blaine would go once they could leave Ohio.

He had survived this long in a tiny town without anyone doing anything truly horrible; he would survive another year. The people in his backwards hamlet had better things to pay attention to than a show choir competition.

As long as he didn't do anything outlandish. As long as he could keep his hands off Blaine long enough to sing.

As long as Blaine still had enough of a self-preservation instinct to keep his hands off Kurt long enough to sing.

Blaine saw the change in his demeanor and squeezed his shoulder with a proud grin. "Let's go win this," he declared as the Warblers trailed onto stage and into their places on the risers. Kurt hesitated and followed a moment later, still nervous but not nearly so petrified.

At the very least, now all he had to worry about was opening his mouth and having no words come out.

As the curtain rose and the Warblers began, Kurt drew in a deep breath. He could do this. He cast a glance over at Blaine, searching out some kind of reassuring smile, but Blaine was already dutifully singing his "oo"s and couldn't do much in response.

He was on his own.

But he could do this - he'd been singing for as long as he could remember, and certainly for longer than Blaine had been around. He had been seeking out solos his entire life, and just because he finally got one and it hadn't been snatched away by Rachel because she was a girl or by Finn because he was Mr. Schuester's favourite or by Blaine because the Warblers worshiped the ground he danced on, didn't mean he was any less capable right now than he'd always known he was.

He closed his eyes for a moment, drawing in another calming breath to center himself as he stepped off the riser and began to sing.

There's a place for us
Somewhere a place for us
Peace and quiet and open air
Wait for us
Somewhere

He could picture it so clearly in that moment. He and Blaine in the apartment he'd been subconsciously decorating since he was 10, Blaine in an elegant wingback chair, holding a classic novel while Kurt lounged on the chaise with the latest issue of Vogue, singing along quietly while West Side Story played on the record player over near the window. And every once in awhile, looking over and seeing Blaine watching him, gazing over with that adoring look...that look that Kurt had no idea what he'd ever done to earn, the one that Blaine gave him now as soon as they were alone whether they were singing or not.

He looked over as he heard Blaine step off the risers to begin his verse, and there the look was - right in front of him. There were Warblers there and an entire auditorium full of people, and Blaine was looking at him like he was the most incredible person he'd ever met. He blushed under the gaze, trying desperately to look away...because he should. Because two boys couldn't sing a love song to each other onstage - because as far as anyone else was concerned, two boys couldn't be in love with each other...but he couldn't help it. He couldn't stop smiling even as he ducked his head and tried to force his gaze forward.

There's a time for us
Someday a time for us
Time together with time to spare
Time to learn
Time to care

Blaine couldn't help watching Kurt as he stepped downstage; the boy had it all. He was beautiful and smart and so incredibly talented...and the bravest person Blaine had ever met. He could stand in front of a crowd of a thousand people and sing this song even though he had told Blaine it scared him. He could stand up in a world that told him everything about him was wrong and just-...

...he could create entire worlds by sheer force of imagination. He could create a future so vivid Blaine actually believed in it.

That was the thing; when he'd selected the song, it had been because he was close to thinking it was real and he needed convincing the rest of the way. By the time he heard Kurt sing it, saw the genuine belief in his eyes, saw how moved he was by just the thought...he didn't need any more help knowing it was real. It was. That world was out there. It was waiting for them, and they would be together and happy and together and no one would be able to tell them they were wrong.

He had asked Kurt about it as they lay in bed together, bare skin touching bare skin, breathing slow and even. "This place," he had begun slowly, hesitantly, trying to pick every word carefully so he was sure he got the most accurate, thorough answer he could. "How do we find it?"

Kurt had shifted to look him more directly in the eye, then paused as he studied him. Pushing back an errant curl, he had replied, "I don't know."

"Then how do you know it exists?"

Kurt hmmed a moment, then replied simply, "Leroy told me."

"So he's been there?"

"Sort of," Kurt replied with a faint smile. "Sort of not. Awhile ago. But he said the coasts are safe, especially cities. And anywhere with as many inverts as New York has to have - with all the music and theatre and art and fashion - has to be chock full of people like us."

The way Kurt lit up when he talked about it, the way he sounded so certain even though he'd never seen it, was the way people on Sunday morning revivals talked about God. Not like his parents' friends, who acknowledged religion only in the way that all society people were good Christians - the kind of deep-seeded, all-encompassing, unshakable faith in something better being out there. In there being meaning and purpose to everything.

Anything that Kurt, a logical and intelligent boy, could be that certain of, Blaine could find reason to believe in, especially in the dim post-coital haze of evening in his dorm room. After all, Kurt had been right about everything else.

Someday
Somewhere
We'll find a new way of living
We'll find a way of forgiving
Somewhere

Kurt managed to tear his eyes away from Blaine as they began to sing together - otherwise he would move too close and fight the urge to do something potentially deadly like forget the audience was there and start touching him. It had been harder than ever since the other night, since seeing Blaine so exposed and feeling Blaine's hands on his skin, but he did have some semblance of self-preservation instincts. He wanted to find his crowd in the audience, like he had at Sectionals when Rachel stage-mothered him into having a good time...though this time, there was no way he could keep the grin off his face as he sang.

Instead, he was distracted by something else.

He had prepared himself for the audience to dislike the performance. After the way the crowd had been so divided by the judge's presence, and after South Pacific, he expected they would be polite at best, staging mass exodus at worst. But everywhere he looked, he saw...smiles.

He was singing about being madly in love with Blaine, and here were people smiling?

Okay, obviously they were doing an acceptable job of covering that part. Or the audience didn't know what they were looking at - considering Kurt doubted they would ever consider the idea of two boys being anything closer than best friends, that was entirely probable, if only because he knew he hadn't stopped smiling since Blaine had come downstage and it was much easier to fake an emotion that wasn't there than to cover one that was.

But even if they didn't recognize what the song meant to the boys singing it, did they understand...?

He found Mercedes, and she was beaming, hand over her heart as she watched him sing. It was kind of about them too, he guessed, if one ignored the fact that it came from the middle of a deep romantic love story. After waiting impatiently for most of their lives, they were finally allowed to go to school together, and that had to count for something as far as the song was concerned, right?

And New York and Broadway and their future adventures there meant just as much to Rachel as it did to him, though for completely different reasons.

Because the song wasn't just about him and Blaine and their future, was it? he realized suddenly. There was a reason some stories and songs were timeless: they transcended the limited context of the original rendition and could be applied to so many other circumstances. He and Blaine weren't the only ones who needed to go somewhere else to find belonging. They weren't the only ones that the world couldn't understand, they weren't the only ones who needed to wait not-so-patiently for the world to change before they could truly be themselves.

For the people in the audience who already had a place, it was just a nice, popular song from a musical everyone had heard of. For them, it was...whatever the Broadway equivalent of Billboard would be. But for the people in the audience who were still looking - like he was - it meant exactly what he was trying to convey.

(He wondered for a fleeting moment if there were any others like him and Blaine in the auditorium. Doubtful, he knew, because there were already two of them out of the thousand or so people in the building and really, how many of them could there be?)

There's a place for us
A time and place for us
Hold my hand and we're halfway there
Hold my hand and I'll take you there

It took immense physical restraint to not reach for Kurt's hand the way he had on the day they met, so Blaine settled for angling a little more in his direction and singing his heart out toward Kurt. When Kurt looked over at him with his coy little smile like he had the world's best secret and couldn't wait to whisper it in his ear, he almost melted.

Somehow
Someday
Somewhere

The applause was thunderous and Kurt felt almost light-headed at the sound. He glanced at Blaine out of the corner of his eye to time their bows, and as he stood he felt Blaine grab him by the shoulders and drag him to center stage. He looked around for a moment, almost bewildered, but the proud grin on Blaine's face told him all he needed to know. The cheers got louder for a moment, and he could see his father standing and applauding, hands up at eye-level in a sign of enthusiasm, Carole beside him looking so proud, Finn cheering for him...Rachel practically bouncing up and down with excitement. He beamed, bowing for a second time, then scurried into place for the next song right as the Warblers began it.

Rama lama-lama, lama-lama ding-dong
Rama lama-lama, lama-lama ding

The shift from the anguished, wistful ballad to the upbeat popular song, combined with the rush of adrenaline that came from his first ever competition solo, left Kurt feeling almost breathless and reeling. He struggled to refocus as Bill proudly and at long last got his higher-than-high mini-solo, knocking it out of the park.

Blaine looked no worse for the wear from their duet, Kurt noticed as he began the first verse. If anything he looked more invigorated than ever, downright exuberant.

Oh oh oh oh
I got a girl named Rama Lama, Rama Lama Ding Dong
She's everything to me
Rama Lama, Rama Lama Ding Dong
I'll never set her free
For she's mine, all mine

The crowd was on its feet, cheering and clapping along with the music; if they had been appreciative and moved by the duet, they wanted to start dancing to this which was exactly what they wanted. You didn't want to dance along to rote, mechanical songs with no heart - you wanted to jump up and down to songs with heart behind them. Even if it was a fluffy radio song without much emotion behind it, there was a difference between technically perfect music and music with energy...and this was definitely the latter.

He had been right, Blaine knew, but he wouldn't gloat. Them winning would be reward enough, and with a crowd response like this, it didn't matter what the other two teams did: They were going to Baltimore.

He was never more himself than when he sang, and today was the epitome of that. There were no rules. No preconceived notions of what he should do or say or how he should act, and he could just-

He could sing a duet with the most amazing boy in the world and make the audience love them for it. He could do anything.

There was nothing in the universe better than that feeling, he was absolutely certain.

I love her,
Love her, love her so.
That I'll never, never let her go.
You may be certain she's mine, all mine,
She's mine all of the time.

Kurt wasn't sure when he started swapping out all the 'she's for 'he's. Maybe it was the way Blaine kept grinning over at him with his infectious "I'm singing and people are cheering and it's fantastic" energy that made Kurt start beaming. Maybe it was the way Blaine was singing with so much genuine charisma and heart that it seemed like there was no way he could fake how happy he was - he really was in love with someone and claiming them for his own.

Maybe it was because with a made-up name like that, what other details in the song were made up?

Maybe it was because it was how he felt: in love with a boy who was everything to him that he would never let go.

Oh I got a girl named Rama Lama, Rama Lama Ding Dong
She's everything to me
Rama Lama, Rama Lama Ding Dong
I'll never set her free
For she's mine, all mine

The song ended to thunderous applause, and the boys stood neatly, evenly-spaced across the stage, hands clasped in front of themselves, as they took an orderly bow before the illusion of proper schoolboys was thrown off and they practically piled on one another for a congratulatory group hug. The cheers were deafening, and more than anything they had given every ounce of everything they had.

And they had been fantastic.

Kurt and Blaine were quickly swept to the center of the hug, everyone wanting a piece of their soloists, and Kurt felt Blaine embrace him tightly. What a difference six weeks made; after his last solo, he wanted nothing to do with him, and now...now he felt the entire world melt away as he heard Blaine whisper to him, "You're amazing."

* * * * *

Judge Patrick Sullivan knew about as much about music as he knew about cooking, and as his wife could attest to, he knew absolutely nothing about the kitchen. She had gone out of town once for a weekend with her friends in the D.A.R. and he had nearly burned down the house trying to make a tv dinner. So he wasn't entirely sure why he'd been asked to judge this competition; from the looks of his fellow judges, there weren't a lot of people chomping at the bit to decide which of the three choirs was best.

But, as there were very few lawyers wanting to take him out for a round of golf these days, and as he had nothing else to do with his Saturdays, he'd agreed. While he knew nothing about music, he did at least enjoy listening to it. He knew what he liked, at least.

And of the three groups, there was one song he really liked.

He listened silently to the other two men discuss whether there was something queer about those two boys. He had no idea - who could tell what was strange about young people anymore? When he was a child, all children wore white; by the time his youngest brother came along, he was dressed in all pink because that was a strong, manly colour while blue was dainty and feminine. Now only little girls wore pink - scores of it on his grandaughters' dresses every Sunday. Only little girls and grown men, wearing pink under their suits to go to work proper, respectable jobs.

The world changed so fast sometimes he could barely keep up.

But sometimes that was a good thing.

Growing up Irish Catholic in Chicago hadn't been especially challenging for him. But he remembered the stories his mother (Peggy, God rest her soul) had told him when he was young, about walking down the street with her father and seeing signs that said "No Irish Need Apply" - streets he walked down without a second thought, where Mick was more common a nickname than any other and most houses, including his own, had a Fighting Irish banner hanging from the front porch. He had grown up in an environment where heritage was something a person could be proud of instead of needing to worry or being pressured to lie about it...but close enough to that time to know it wasn't something to take for granted.

And even now he could see things changing. He remembered when poor Al Smith had run for President in 1928, only to lose to that damned fool, Herbert Hoover. The smear campaigns had shocked him, a young and idealistic man in his twenties and fresh out of law school; they said Smith would take orders from the Pope. That he would laze around the White House all day with illegal booze in his hand, passing out drunk instead of working. That he would repeal prohibition to let all the "ethnics" run wild in the cities.

He hadn't known he was still an 'ethnic'. As far as he was concerned, that moniker belonged to a new group - those new immigrants, who had come over in his lifetime. He made the mistake of saying so once at Sunday dinner; his mother hadn't spoken to him for three days.

She was right, of course. Who was he to judge, even if everyone else around them did? To outsiders, they were all just as low.

How sad it was that the arguments hadn't changed, he thought as he read the papers every week. The established old-guard pointed at whoever was newer, was poorer, was more easily distinguished, and said they would corrupt everything good in the country. They would destroy the cities with their looting and drunken carousing. They would destroy the morality of good, hardworking people. And schools would soon be required to teach that these people were equals unless the 'good people of America' put a stop to it.

But things had changed. Al Smith lost in a landslide because people were terrified of Catholics and the mysterious Pope, and here was this young upstart of a Senator winning primaries for the Democratic nomination for President despite his Roman Catholic faith. Whether he would win or not was anyone's guess, but the fact that his Catholicism could only be whispered about instead of being challenged outright was a monumental step in the right direction.

Someday that step would happen for the negro, he knew that; it was his fervent hope that would come sooner, rather than later.

They all had a right to their place, a right to walk through life with heads held high, to be people - not just Puerto Ricans or Italians, or Irish or Polish, but humans with a sense of dignity and belonging.

He wasn't sure how voting in these types of competitions worked; he was used to the law, in which there was a very precise series of questions a judge needed to ask himself in order to guide the path to the answer. Here he had not so much as a rubric to go by, which he took to mean it was like a particular type of case of first impression: an uncharted area of the law that was governed and defined by the absence of relevant and applicable law. In those cases, where there truly was little else to go by, he approached it from a policy standpoint: What would each outcome yield? What path would they start down if a particular action was rewarded in a certain way? Who would benefit?

There was enough sociological evidence now to show that children who grew up being told they were inferior would believe it, even if the words were never spoken. The way to combat that had to be by telling children that they weren't, in fact, any less. That they were just as entitled as everyone else.

That they all had a right to their place.

There was only one team he could legitimately vote for as the winner.