It had been the perfect weekend. The absolute perfect weekend - winning Regionals with his first ever solo in front of a competition audience, singing with Blaine looking at him like he was the most amazing person ever, followed by dinner with his family and Mercedes and Rachel, then an evening of plan-making with Mercedes for the upcoming year. There were so many things to talk about, so many songs to suggest, so many clothes to purchase because his year-long moratorium was almost over; as much as he did enjoy Dalton, he would be happy if he never saw another navy blue wool-blend blazer in his life. They had made lists of songs and potential buys for hours, flicking slowly through catalogs and circulars, and giggling over what various people in glee club would say about their song suggestions.

It would be amazing when he got back. And in the meantime, he had these last few months with Blaine before he went off to New York. As much as he hated the idea of not seeing him every day, as much as he already was trying to plan out just how much money he would need to save for the kinds of long-distance phone calls he would want to make all the time to tell his boyfriend every little detail of his day, everything about the new state of his old school and what Rachel wore that was absolutely atrocious, to ask about Blaine's classes and how fabulous New York was, to ask about whether it lived up to their dream...it was only a year. And then he would be following Blaine to New York and they would have everything.

They would have duets together for the rest of their lives.

That one might be corny even for him, he acknowledged with a smile and a roll of his eyes at himself, pausing to adjust his hair as he turned the corner toward the Commons. But he couldn't help himself - he was absolutely in love with the boy, and the boy was in love with him too, and it was like every romantic movie he'd ever seen: the soft lighting, the orchestra swelling in the background, the inability to stop beaming with unrepentant, unrestrained, untameable joy.

He'd never felt that before. Not in his life, not for more than five seconds.

For as long as he could remember, he had been sad. Lonely, even with Mercedes around. Even though he had a family that loved him, and even though he was rarely actually alone, it had felt for most of his life like nothing ever went his way. His mother had died and that had been devastating beyond words, and then the house got quiet. Even with Mrs. Jones around, who was decidedly not a quiet person, it never felt as joyous as it had when his mother had been alive. Then Carole and Finn had joined the family, and that helped - his father certainly seemed happier - but it was nothing at all compared to this.

Of course, could anything compare to the fact that he had sung a duet with a boy?

He still couldn't believe it sometimes, a happy sigh escaping as he remembered the way it felt, being up there on stage with Blaine and feeling everything else stop and melt away even just for a moment. He had sung a duet with a boy, a boy he loved. At Sectionals he had lamented that such a thing would never be an option for him, even if Blaine did like him - watching the boy and girl from the Asian school dance and being so happy and so completely in love with each other...now all that was left was actually dancing with Blaine.

He imagined Blaine would be an incredible dancer. All that natural poise and charisma, combined with what Kurt imagined were years of upper-crust dance lessons that he himself had begged for but never could afford.

This time a year ago he'd been waiting on pins and needles to find out whether he and Mercedes would ever get to do the things they'd planned, and he'd felt like he would always be strange and an outcast and alone, and now here he was - with a solo and a boy and a best friend (and a fake girlfriend who was quickly becoming more of a friend than an enemy), and the only way it could get any better was in a year when he left Ohio for good and moved to New York to reassemble everything good about his life there.

He pulled open the door to the Commons, expecting the sort of applause that had greeted Blaine at the first rehearsal after their win at Sectionals. Okay, maybe not quite that loud - his was only a duet, technically, and Blaine did still have his own solo so it was probably right that he got slightly more applause. Regardless, they had won so it only stood to reason-

Though everyone was already there, the room was deadly silent, eyes downturned toward the elaborate rug and the shined hardwood coffee table. Bill looked confused, blinking quickly, eyebrows knitted together as he tried to figure out what exactly had happened. Jeff and Nick stared blankly straight ahead, shoulder-to-shoulder, elbows resting on their knees. Sam's expression was sullen, mouth a tight frown, arms crossed over his chest as he slumped on the couch. Rick looked angry, glaring at a painting on the wall with narrow eyes and the occasional shake of his head as though he wanted to rip down the artwork and tear it to shreds with his bare hands, frame and all.

Had someone died?

His eyes immediately scanned the room for Blaine, and he let out a sigh of relief as he saw the familiar profile...but Blaine looked shell-shocked. His head was bowed, hands clasped tightly in his lap; he didn't look at anyone, didn't glance up even as the double doors swung closed behind Kurt with a dull thunk that echoed in the eerie stillness of the room.

He couldn't see anyone missing, everyone was accounted-for as far as he knew, he- he wasn't missing anyone, was he? When he was counting, he didn't think there was anyone who could have met some sort of horrible fate in the past two days-

The Council looked most grave of all. Thad looked as though someone had punched him in the stomach. Wes stared at the gavel, which he clutched tighter than usual as if it were a talisman that would save them all from whatever funk had settled over the group. David's eyes never left his notebook, posture stiff, eyebrows lowered in what looked from there like anger but Kurt couldn't be sure-

"What's going on?" Kurt ventured when no one spoke. A few heads jerked up as though they hadn't noticed him come in; Blaine's didn't.

"Let's get started," Wes suggested. His voice was tight, his words clipped more than usual, but the real tell that something serious had happened was that he didn't bang his gavel - just kept clutching it in his hands. Never before had Kurt seen him bring a meeting to order without rapping the damned thing on the table just because he enjoyed the power it brought. Even when the Warblers were quiet enough to begin the meeting, he still used the gavel.

Of course, Kurt had never heard them quite this quiet.

"As all of you are aware, as the winners of Regionals last Saturday-" No one smiled. Kurt couldn't stop grinning at the memory and no one else looked even remotely happy about it. What in the world-

Had someone complained? Had someone realized what he and Blaine were-...oh dear god, someone had figured it out, hadn't they? They knew and now everyone-

...Only no one was staring at him. If they thought it was his fault, wouldn't they either be staring at him or looking at each other and away from him? Something like that?

"-we have been given a place at Nationals, which are being held this year the weekend after Memorial Day in Baltimore, Maryland. However-" Wes paused, hesitated, as though he weren't sure how to even begin to phrase whatever was wrong.

Kurt had never seen Wes at a loss for words before. Wes always knew what to say, how to control the group of boys who, while more mature than the public school teenagers Kurt was used to, still had a tendency to want to talk instead of listen especially after a long day of classes. Wes always knew not only what to say, but what historical rationale he could give for his actions. He had a precedent for everything, always delivered in a moved voice that made it sound as though he had personally witnessed all events in Warbler history.

Wes didn't have a precedent for this. Whatever this was.

Kurt swallowed hard and perched himself on the arm of the couch, the only available space. Hands on his knees, he sat straight and waited for the explanation - to know what it was that had Wes so unable to process and advise.

"as it seems most of you already know, as Councilmember David has uncovered this weekend..." Kurt couldn't help but notice David's uncomfortable shift, the way his shoulders tensed first to one side, then the other. "...Both the hall where the competition would be hosted and all nearby hotels are segregated. Which means we have decisions to make."

* * * * *
When the meeting broke up, Blaine made his way to the door as quickly as he could without attracting attention to himself. The last thing he wanted to do was have anyone asking him what was wrong.

As if they didn't all know what was wrong. As if it wasn't bothering all of them, just-...

It was personal. It was personal for so many reasons that he couldn't get into with anyone.

"Blaine-"

Especially Kurt.

The stunning brunette walked toward him with quick, poised steps with an expression that was equal parts "How dare they?" and "I want to talk," which Blaine suspected meant that what Kurt really wanted to do was talk about how unfair it all was. And he was right, of course, but the problem was-

The problem was, what good would any of that do? A bunch of boys in a school that dated back to before the beginning of the country, talking about injustice when there was not a single thing any of them could do. They could talk all they wanted about ignorance and prejudice, but the bottom line was-

The bottom line was that his father had been right all this time, hadn't he?

"I don't want to do this now," he said quietly, looking Kurt in the eye. "Can we please not do this?"

Kurt looked taken aback for a moment, but he covered it quickly with a narrow-eyed peering look as he tried to stare past Blaine's masks to the heart of the matter; Blaine managed not to shift uncomfortably, but only just. "Let's go to the dorms," he suggested.

A few days ago, he would have jumped at that. A few days ago, he would have practically dragged Kurt there, hand-in-hand, barely repressing a beam until they were alone and he could let his guard down, spread out on his bed with this amazing boy. A few days ago, 'Let's go to the dorms' would have ended with at least some clothing being shifted dramatically, if not removed, and that would have felt good-

A few days ago it would have felt good. Now it felt felonious.

Now it was felonious.

But at the same time...at the same time being around Kurt was the only time he'd been able to feel truly good in years, and the past few months had been so amazing, and if he could just get that back. If he could somehow forget the information he'd learned over the course of the weekend and go back to something simpler, go back to thinking that maybe, just maybe-

He nodded and let Kurt lead the way to his room. Blaine paused a moment to fumble for the key, unable to even look at Kurt properly until they were inside, safe behind the thick wooden door. "Are you okay?" Kurt asked immediately, and Blaine looked away. He should have known that would be the first question, but somehow no answer would come. "Obviously what's going on is horrible, but you look worse than-"

"I'm included," he blurted out, and Kurt stared at him. That hadn't been what he'd wanted to say, when he put it that way it sounded so selfish, as if the only reason he cared about what was going on was because it impacted him personally. But in the privacy of his room, away from all the people who had no idea that more than Wes, David, Jerry, and Jim were effected by it, standing across from the boy who knew every last one of his secrets, he finally spoke aloud the words that had been vibrating through him since he'd spent too much time in the library the previous afternoon.

"What?" Kurt asked.

He tried to speak and couldn't find the words, let out a quiet sigh, and tried again. "The laws there are worse than Ohio's. It isn't just coloured-" God he hated that word "-and white. It spells out everyone separately, and that..." He shook his head and half-rolled his eyes because it felt so ridiculous to say it. He couldn't even be mad because it seemed to ludicrous. "...that includes me. The law lists white, Negro, Asian and Malay. Even if we were allowed to go as a group to the convention hall but had to stay in separate hotels, I would have to stay in a separate one from everyone else - there are laws that prohibit not only marriages with whites, but with blacks or Asians, I-...they actually thought far ahead enough to make sure that didn't happen." His parents' marriage was hardly something he was eager to emulate, but the knowledge that it would be illegal if they had lived in Maryland at the time...if his father had gone to Johns Hopkins University for his psychiatric training instead of staying in New England...

He wanted to lock his dorm room and never come out, he wanted to scrub his skin until the frustrating but generally harmless hint of olive pigmentation pinked up more than Kurt's frustratingly rosy cheeks. He wanted to blend in, he wanted to-

...to do everything he'd thought his father was crazy for doing all these years.

And he hated that.

Kurt looked outraged on his behalf, but that didn't help anything. It almost made him feel worse.

"I can't marry anyone in Maryland except-"

"You can't marry me regardless," Kurt pointed out with a cheeky grin, as if he were trying to cheer Blaine up with his horrible awkward jokes, and it didn't work. Not at all.

"I can't marry Jean, either."

The room went still at the mention of the long-unspoken name. He hadn't seen her since Kurt told him to choose, but she still represented a particular type of safety. A fallback of sorts, a...a what-if. What if Kurt was wrong about all this? What if things weren't as simple as he wanted them to be?

He'd spent most of last night wondering if it would be wrong to call her again after a few months of not speaking. It was only after her curfew had passed anyway that he had made up his mind.

"Blaine-"

"Don't," he said quietly, backing away as Kurt reached out to touch his arm.

He wanted the touch too much. He wanted to pull him onto the bed and touch him everywhere because hadn't that worked before when he'd felt disgusting? Hadn't that worked...except for the time it hadn't, but that wasn't the point.

"It's a felony."

Kurt looked more confused than ever. "Marrying-"

"No," he stated, finally meeting Kurt's eyes. "Us. What we did. What I want to do to you. All of it. It's a felony. I-in Baltimore, it's ten years in jail and a fine."

He'd never contemplated that part before. He knew about the illness part, he knew about the social part, but that...how had he never known that?

Kurt stared at him for a long moment before finally saying simply, "Okay."

"Okay?" Blaine demanded. How in the world could Kurt be so calm about all of this?

"So we don't do that in Maryland. We can't stay at the same hotel anyway, I doubt it will be a problem," he added bitterly.

Blaine stared at him, incredulous. "It's no different here," he pointed out. "Or anywhere else. I looked - it's illegal everywhere. There's not a single place in this country it's legal. Nowhere at all." His fists clenched at his sides in frustration as he added, "Including New York."

That had been the one that took his breath away when he found it. New York was supposed to be the exception, it was supposed to be different. That was supposed to be their place where they could be together - it was meant to be a free zone. A place for them, wasn't that what they'd sung? Wasn't that what Kurt had sold him on weeks ago? The only reason he'd thought they might be okay to...to be them.

Kurt had said there were other places out there where they'd be safe. That there were places outside his room where they didn't have to worry so much. Cities, he'd said, near the coast. What was Baltimore if not that?

What would make New York any different?

He wished he had never looked, but it was too late now. He wished he had never gone searching, but after David came back from the library looking so angry and telling all the Warblers he could find about their dilemma he thought...he'd thought maybe David was wrong. Not deliberately, of course, but maybe he was misunderstanding it. David was far more inclined in maths and sciences than in history and law, and he looked so clouded by anger, and maybe...maybe there was something else in the library that would help. Maybe there was the equivalent of the report, or maybe the book was old, or something- Maryland was called the Free State, he'd thought surely something about what David had found had to be wrong, and then it just...

...it wasn't wrong.

Six months ago he would have believed it, given David a consolatory clap on the shoulder, and gone on his way. He would have accepted that sometimes ignorant people were prejudiced and things would change slowly but surely and there wasn't much of anything he could do about it. But then Kurt had come along with his need to stand up for what was right and his-

-his damned dreams, and his hope, and his optimism and the need to impart those onto others in a way that made it hurt so much more...

Kurt paused at the mention of New York, but he recovered quickly. "I doubt that's right," he stated in a voice that made clear he had no doubt in his doubt: he flat-out believed that was wrong. "I'll ask Leroy about it. I know he talked about California, and while he was thin on the details I get the impression they were doing a lot more than we've done, and if you're saying that even California has one of these laws...that can't be right."

The thing was, he still wanted to believe Kurt. He wanted to believe that this was just a misunderstanding of what the law said, or a typographical error, or a strange overinclusion in a seldom-read text. He wanted to be able to crawl back into the world Kurt had painted for them both, the one where they lived in a beautiful apartment and listened to Broadway albums and held each other all night, but it felt more and more like a fantasy than a future.

How could that world exist when everything in it was illegal?

Kurt spoke as though as soon as they got out of Ohio everything would be better, because the problem was with where they were. The problem was with their backwards, ignorant, bigoted state and its insistence on hating everything that was uncommon or new. But what if Ohio wasn't even the worst place they could be? After all, at least in Ohio his parents could be married - as unhappy as they were, they weren't committing a crime. At the time he was born, had they been in Maryland, his mother would have been guilty of a felony for bearing the child of a coloured man - and out of wedlock, no less, because they couldn't-

He wondered if that would have sped up her nervous breakdown even faster, or if she would've just decided not to bother in the first place.

He wondered if his father would be even more paranoid if they lived somewhere else, or if he would've been forced to deal with it all earlier.

He wondered if his father had picked Ohio deliberately, if he'd grown up as a poor and ostracized child and dreamed of one day finding a place where he could be accepted as one of the normal people the way Kurt dreamed of New York. Maybe this was the closest they were going to get to utopia. Maybe everything else out there was worse.

"They never got their place," Blaine said quietly, and Kurt stopped midway through his babbled justification of why the law must not actually say what Blaine thought he'd seen.

"What?"

"Tony and Maria."

Kurt looked stricken for a moment, then looked at Blaine with pleading eyes as if he wanted to beg for Blaine to take it back, to say he didn't mean that, to-...to something neither of them could give words to. "They're fictional, Blaine," he stated in a tight, even tone.

Funny; last week Kurt hadn't been so keen to point that part out. A week ago they had held onto the idea of the song like a liferaft.

Now he felt like he was slipping off and plunging headlong into the freezing cold waters of reality.

* * * * *

The Warblers reconvened on Tuesday after class to vote on what to do. That had been Wes's idea, to allow everyone the opportunity to think about the options and mull over any questions they might have before ultimately casting their vote. It was a lot to give up, he had pointed out numbly, though Kurt wasn't sure whether Wes meant by attending Nationals or by forfeiting. On one hand, the Warblers hadn't performed in a national championship since 1914 when the Whiffenpoofs came down with food poisoning from the later-defunct hotdog stand at Coney Island, thereby allowing alternate-qualifier Warblers to compete in the then-all-grade acapella competition. On the other... No one had voiced the other side of things yet. No one had said much of anything at the meeting on Monday as they all spent a lot of time staring at furniture and avoiding looking at any of the coloured Warblers.

But twenty-four hours to cool off seemed to have done people a little good. Instead of the intensely empty stares, the shell-shocked expressions, the brows lowered in confusion, the Warblers looked and sounded a lot more normal. Even Wes, for whom the news had seemed to be a blow so sudden and downright shocking that he had struggled to find the correct date during one of his anecdotes on Monday, looked better. He was perhaps a bit too uptight, which was firmly in-character.

Blaine strode in, full of confidence and bravado, every ounce of it fake. He took a seat as far away from Kurt as he could get, in a position to look mostly at the Council and take his cues from them. Kurt started to gather his things to move closer, but Bill entered and happened to take the closest seat, then Jim took the seat with the best view of Blaine's eyes. With a quiet sigh of defeat, Kurt settled back into his original place and crossed his legs delicately as Wes gaveled the meeting to order.

Things really were back to normal.

"This special meeting will come to order," Wes stated. "Are there any motions at this time?"

Kurt had been in the group long enough to know what options that meant. A person could move for speeches, which meant at least one for and one against. When there had been a motion for speeches once on the question of changing the official Warbler uniform footwear from loafers to wingtips, the speeches had lasted nearly two hours - and Kurt was not ashamed to state he had spoken the longest on the subject of the wingtips' classic styling and versatility. Someone could move for a vote, which would end the meeting quickly. They could move to discuss something else entirely, but it didn't seem like anyone was eager to do that.

When no one's hand raised, Wes simply nodded. "Seeing none, then."

Still no one spoke. No hands raised. Kurt had never seen the Warblers not engage in some kind of spirited discussion over what they should or shouldn't do whenever it was the unconventional choice. They had nearly torn Blaine's head off when he had suggested changing the tie, and when Bill had posed the question of snaps rather than merely claps during one number the room had nearly exploded so fast Kurt wanted to seek out the nearest desk to assume the nuclear drill position.

After a moment without anyone jumping in, Wes demanded, "Do any of you have anything to say?"

"I think we'd be preaching to the choir," Rick suggested. When Wes raised an irritated eyebrow, Rick added, "Oh, fine. I move to vote on the question of Warbler participation at the National Championship in Baltimore, Maryland."

Wes looked pleased by the return to protocol and procedure. Smiling, he asked, "Is there a second?" A few hands went up, and David nodded in Nick's direction to indicate that was the one he had officially recorded. "Any opposition?" No hands raised, and Wes nodded. "In the interest of fairness, the Council has decided amongst itself that we will abstain from the vote."

For the first time, there was a stir amongst the Warblers. The Council wasn't voting? They always voted, even on routine matters, even as David had to count the votes and raise his hand to make clear which way he was voting lest anyone want to challenge the final numbers. Or if they abstained it was on an independent basis because one member or another didn't care about an issue, like Thad's insistence that he would defer to Blaine's song selection and didn't feel right voting one way or the other (and really, were they sure Thad wasn't also one of them? Kurt wondered). But this was different. This felt different.

Kurt raised his hand high and Wes pointed at him with the gavel. "Junior Warbler Kurt Hummel."

"Why?" he asked simply.

"Excuse me?"

"Why is the Council abstaining?"

Wes and David cast looks at each other, and Kurt wondered for a moment if Thad had even been involved in the decision. Maybe they had outvoted him. Was the Council allowed to do that? "In the interest of fairness and to avoid the appearance of undue influence," Wes replied evenly.

"What kind of undue influence would you have in this as opposed to..." Before he could finish the sentence with 'every other matter' and avoid rolling his eyes at the thought of how tight of control Wes kept on the group, he had a thought.

There were five Warblers who would be personally impacted by this, only four of whom did anyone know about. If Wes and David didn't vote, thereby cutting in half the number of people at issue in all of this...were they concerned that the guilt that these inclusive, enlightened boys might feel if they voted in their own interest instead of with their friends-

"You should," Kurt stated as he stood.

"Warbler Kurt-"

"You should vote. The entire point of this is taking away your voice, isn't it? If we go, then that's what it does - take out the members of the group who have been deemed unacceptable by the so-called 'Free State'." Would they even know how to compete without Blaine as a soloist? Would Blaine even tell anyone about it? Because he could pass for white, certainly in Ohio - would it be different in Baltimore, he wondered? Was that part of Blaine's concern, that people in Maryland would be able to tell he didn't belong in a particular place? It wasn't as though he had a big M printed on his drivers license for Malay, would he try and pretend the way he did with Jean? Assume that if no one was any the wiser-

He tried to catch Blaine's eye, but his boyfriend consciously kept his gaze away, fascinating himself instead with the edge of the Council's table.

"Warbler Kurt. While the Council appreciates your input, this particular sub-question doesn't impact you," Wes stated, his words clipped and irritated.

Of course it impacted him, Kurt thought angrily, and he wanted to say so. He wanted to say that it was incredibly personal to him - he had only ended up here in the first place because of segregation and it had followed him here anyway. He had a boyfriend who couldn't even look at him because he was so angry and ashamed and scared. Of course it impacted him - anything that impacted Blaine impacted him now. Anything that made Blaine seem so defeated and made him lose hope in their future together had a direct tie to his life, and he needed to make things right for that reason.

He wanted to go to Nationals. He would love to be a soloist. But the look on Blaine's face was enough that, even if he didn't already believe it was fundamentally wrong to support something like that, even if it weren't for the fact that Mrs. Jones would kill him and he would never be able to look Mercedes in the eye again...he couldn't vote for anything that would contribute to that.

But he couldn't say any of that without giving up each and every one of Blaine's most closely-guarded secrets. Even if he didn't agree with Blaine keeping them, he couldn't do that.

It took an exceptional amount of self-control to sit down instead of snapping back, and he crossed his arms over his chest as he listened to Wes and Thad debate the merits of secret ballot versus their usual show-of-hands. They should all have to show themselves, he thought bitterly. Being nice to a person and secretly campaigning against them was for people like Quinn Fabray, not for the Warblers. Hiding like that-

He almost missed the question being put to a vote, but snapped quickly out of his frustrated near-trance as he saw hands raising.

Every hand raising.

With the exception of the Council, as Kurt looked around, he saw every single hand in the air - even Blaine's.

Wes couldn't quite keep the smile off his face as he glanced around the room, beginning with Blaine and ending with David. "Well," he said, a note of surprise in his tone. "That settles that, then. I will send in our notice of forfeiture tomorrow."

* * * * *

The dorm room was quiet except for the sound of the two of them breathing, each staring up at the ceiling from separate beds, unable to sleep. "Hey, Kurt?" Sam whispered into the darkness.

"Yes?"

"You're awake?"

Kurt fought the urge to roll his eyes. "Did I just answer that?"

"Right," Sam said, hemming and hawing about his next question for a moment before finally asking, "People really care about stuff like this?"

He didn't need to specify what 'stuff' he meant; Nationals was all anyone could think about. If the awkward silence at the Warblers' usual table at dinner was any indication, it would probably be all anyone could think about for awhile. "Yeah," Kurt replied quietly.

How strange it must be, never knowing any of this, he thought. How bizarre to suddenly at 18 be confronted with the fact that people out there in the world cared so deeply about something so ridiculous. How off-putting...

...and yet how wonderful it must be to not have known it this whole time. To not grow up feeling like your entire town hates your best friend and trying to wrap your head around why. He wasn't sure he could imagine it, but it sounded like it would be - while perhaps more jarring for a few days - far less damaging in the longterm.

And he had, after all, struggled far less to understand how he felt than Blaine had because he didn't have any baggage to go along with it. He had never learned to hate it so he didn't need to - unlike Blaine...

Blaine, who would barely look at him right now.

"Was this what it was like? In Lima?"

"Oh, no. Definitely not." His answer was automatic, but it took another moment of thought to provide a reason. "At McKinley, there wouldn't have been a vote," he explained quietly, his voice even. "We would have just gone because I would have been the only one who stood up for Mercedes."

Mr. Schue would have made it sound like he was giving them a choice, but he wasn't good at controlling the room when they got going. Rachel would start in about how she shouldn't be deprived of the right to express herself at Nationals just because people weren't enlightened, and Quinn would jump in and glare at Sandy the whole time, as if to say 'Don't forget what we all think of you, too,' and Puck would look vaguely uncomfortable and might jump in a little because he seemed to get it - if the dinner at Breadstix in October had been any indication - but when it came down to it, it would have been him against the rest of the group and Mr. Schue would have looked at him and metaphorically washed his hands of it all. "Sorry, Kurt, looks like the group has spoken."

He would have quit in protest, and he and Mercedes would have spent the weekend going to the nickel theater to watch horrible old movies. His dad would have given Finn his 'I'm so disappointed in you' look for a week, and that would have been mildly reassuring, but that would have been the end of it.

If Sam had been there, Kurt suspected, they might have at least had two people. ...If Blaine had been there, they wouldn't have had another voice because Blaine would've stepped back the way he was right now.

He wanted to believe that wasn't true, that it was just a matter of shock. Being slapped in the face with being different after you've spent your entire life trying to blend in...that had to be hard for him, Kurt supposed. But at the same time, it scared him how scared Blaine seemed to be by it all. It reeked of the way Blaine had been before, and that...

...there was no way that would end, well.

"That's really rotten," Sam replied, sounding disgusted and angry at even the idea of it.

Kurt wished he could be angry. Instead he felt tired. "Yeah," he replied simply. All if it was rotten, the whole situation. No part of it was right.

Except for the part where he had seen every single hand in that room go up when asked who thought they should boycott the event. Seniors who were trying to get into music programs at prestigious schools, transfer students who had never been part of a winning team before, it didn't matter - every single boy had voted to stand with their teammates...because they weren't just teammates, they were friends.

The fact that such a thing could happen anywhere in Ohio meant there had to be safe places out there somewhere. He understood why Blaine couldn't see that right now, but Dalton's existence alone was proof enough that better things were out there. A year ago he could never have imagined being in a place where kids would stand up for their fellow students to be outraged over segregation, and then he'd found this place. There was no reason that this setback changed the future: New York was still what they had envisioned.

He would wait a few days and try again, Kurt resolved. Blaine was entitled to feel attacked and ashamed by it all, but in a few days he might be a little less sore about the gross injustice that he could listen to reason...and hope.