Blaine was happy to see Kurt looking a lot more cheerful and lighter now that he was free from the curse and the heavy burden that came with it. He was spending more time with the other Warblers and becoming better friends with them. Kurt no longer had days where he didn't want to sit by the Warblers at meal times – preferring to just sit with Blaine – now they sat beside them every meal time, joining in with their conversations and joking around. Blaine knew the Warblers would have noticed the sudden change in Kurt's behaviour, but he guessed that they thought Kurt had just finally come out of his shell and was now completely comfortable in his new school and had recovered from his past experiences at McKinley – if Blaine hadn't been close to Kurt it's what he would have guessed. Kurt had started texting Mercedes and Rachel – they had given him their numbers on Sunday – and was slowly becoming friends with them again. He wasn't talking to them as often as he had done when they had been friends, but it was a step in the right direction. The only thing that still worried Blaine was that Burt was still in the dark about his and Kurt's relationship. They had talked about it over lunch one day and decided telling him in person would be better than over the phone, so they were to tell him at Sectionals that Sunday which Burt would be attending to see Kurt perform.

The Warblers were spending as much of their free time as they could rehearsing for Sectionals, the council squeezing in extra Warbler meetings whenever they could. All those extra meetings plus their usual classes and homework load meant that Kurt and Blaine didn't have any opportunities to spend some time alone together. So when Wes suggested that they spend Wednesday afternoon's meeting practicing their duet together whilst the remaining Warblers practiced the choreography for one of their other numbers as some people were still struggling with it, they jumped at the chance of having some alone time, even if they were practicing for Sectionals.

"Where should we go to rehearse?" Blaine asked as he and Kurt left the choir room.

"Your room?" Kurt suggested. "The common rooms will be too crowded at this time."

Blaine nodded, leading the way up the stairs. "Sounds good to me."

Blaine pushed open his bedroom door and stepped aside to let Kurt in. Closing the door, he stepped over to his iPod speakers. "Do you want the music on or are you alright singing without it?"

Kurt sat down on the bed. "I think we've sung it enough times to be able to do it without the music."

They sang 'Candles' through once, both smiling when they were finished.

"I think we're as close to perfect as we're going to get." Kurt said. "We really don't need this extra time to practice."

"Do you want to go back down to the meeting?"

Kurt shook his head, a small smirk appearing on his face. "We both know the choreography; we could make better use of this time."

Blaine's heart began to race and his breathing hitched as he took in the look on Kurt's face and the meaning behind his words. His eyes fluttered shut as Kurt leant forwards, brushing their lips together, and causing a shiver to run down Blaine's spine. He kept the kiss slow and soft at first, his thumb gently caressing Kurt's cheekbone, but it quickly became apparent that Kurt wanted more as he pressed himself closer to Blaine, kissing him with increasing passion and vigour. Blaine moaned against Kurt's mouth, tugging him closer by pulling on his tie, and sucked Kurt's bottom lip into his mouth. Kurt's hands were in Blaine's hair, working the curls free from the gel as he slid his tongue into Blaine's mouth. Their tongues slid together and Blaine's blazer slipped off his shoulders and fell to the floor when Kurt's hands dropped from his hair to run down his shoulders and smooth across his chest. The blood was racing through Blaine's veins, his breath was escaping his mouth in short gasps, and his hands were shaking, but he barely noticed; all he could see, hear, feel, and taste was Kurt – all he cared about was Kurt.

Blaine didn't know how he ended up hovering over Kurt whilst he placed open-mouthed kisses to the soft skin of his neck, but Kurt was somehow lying back on the bed, his blazer discarded on the floor, his tie loosened, and the top few buttons of his shirt undone.

"Blaine..." Kurt moaned as Blaine sucked and bit at Kurt's neck and collarbone. He tugged more of the buttons on Kurt's shirt open, exposing more of his pale, lightly muscled chest and stomach, and began to trail his fingers lightly over him, a path of goose bumps marking where his fingers had been. He felt Kurt pulling at the buttons on his own shirt as he kissed his way back up to Kurt's mouth. And then Kurt's hands were on him, pushing him so they rolled over onto their sides. Kurt's hands were smoothing over Blaine's stomach, his mouth on Blaine's clavicle, and he should probably be worried at how loud he had just moaned Kurt's name and if other people could hear them, but he was in complete bliss and couldn't care about anything else outside of what was happening on his bed.

Needing to kiss Kurt again, he shifted to try and capture Kurt's mouth with his. Seeing what he was trying to do, Kurt grabbed Blaine's loosened tie and pulled him whilst rolling onto his back so that Blaine was on top of him again. They kissed slightly sloppily until Kurt pulled away and moved his mouth to Blaine's ear.

"I love you." He said breathlessly.

Blaine kissed him again, this time with more passion and a little less frantically. "I love you too." He said against Kurt's lips. He felt Kurt's mouth curve up into a smile and they both smiled into another kiss.

"Hey guys, how's the- whoa!"

Blaine jumped away from Kurt, moving backwards on the bed until his back hit the wall. Kurt had scrambled upright, his hands immediately going to the buttons on his shirt and doing them up. His cheeks were flushed, his lips swollen, his hair tousled, and there were very obvious marks beginning to show on his neck and collarbone – Blaine knew he looked very similar.

Wes hovered awkwardly in the doorway for a moment, staring at the window to avoid looking at his two friends. "Just- just text me or something when it's- when you're finished." He stood by the door for another few seconds, his hand on the handle. "Yeah..." He backed quickly out the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

Kurt abandoned the attempt to button his shirt. "Oh, god." He groaned, leaning his head back against the headboard.

Blaine was only just starting to get his breath back. "At least we weren't on his bed."

Kurt ignored this. "I can't believe we got caught by Wes! We'll never hear the end of this."

Blaine shifted up the bed until he was next to Kurt. "There's always the chance he's too scarred to repeat what he saw to anyone else."

Kurt laughed, resting his head on top of Blaine's when Blaine laid his head on Kurt's shoulder. Blaine shivered as Kurt lightly traced a finger over one of the marks he had made on Blaine's collarbone. "It's a slim chance though isn't it?" He murmured.

"Very slim." Blaine agreed.

"Kurt? There's a girl waiting in the foyer for you." Trent stopped Kurt and Blaine in the corridor on their way to the boarder's wing.

Kurt frowned, confused. "A girl?"

Trent rubbed his chin. "I think she said her name was Rachel."

Kurt exchanged a surprised look with Blaine; what was Rachel doing at Dalton in the middle of the week asking to see Kurt?

"Thanks, Trent." Trent smiled and walked away and Kurt turned to Blaine. "You go on upstairs; I'd better go see what Rachel wants."

Blaine squeezed his shoulder briefly before heading off in the direction Trent had gone in.

When Kurt arrived in the foyer he found Rachel standing off to one side, twisting her hands together with her head down.

"Rachel, what are you doing here?"

Rachel's head shot up and Kurt recognised the expression on her face immediately, he had seen the same look reflected in his mirror everyday for the majority of the last four years – anxiety and guilt.

Rachel rushed forward to meet him. "Kurt, I'm so, so sorry. I forgot that he didn't know yet. I've been putting so much time into practicing for Sectionals lately that my head was full of the competition and Glee club, and it- it just slipped my mind, and-"

Kurt cut her off; she was talking too fast and letting her mouth run away with her like she always did when she was nervous. "What are you talking about?"

Rachel bit her lip and averted her eyes, suddenly becoming very interested in smoothing out her skirt. "I- well- well, I ran into your Dad in Lima today and we started talking – he knew we had met up on Sunday – and well, I might have..." She mumbled something too low for Kurt to hear, he moved closer to her.

"You might have what?" He asked, knowing in the pit of his stomach that he wasn't going to like what she was about to say.

Rachel blew out a frustrated sigh, still avoiding Kurt's eyes. "I sort of let slip that you and Blaine are dating."

"You what?" Kurt shrieked, his voice shooting through several octaves.

Rachel looked like she would rather be anywhere else but here; her eyes were now darting around the foyer as if looking for an escape route.

"Rachel, you knew I hadn't told my Dad yet! I told you I was waiting until a good time when I could tell him in person! I explicitly told you on Sunday to keep it to yourself!"

Kurt couldn't believe this was happening. He knew Rachel was a bit prone to letting things slip when she was worked up and excited about something – she tended to babble and not think about what she was saying – but she had always managed to keep secrets that he and Mercedes had told her during their sleepovers to herself.

Rachel had taken a step back at his indignant shriek and was now looking pleadingly at him. "I'm so sorry, Kurt."

Kurt shook his head, furious at Rachel for being a blabber-mouth and furious at himself for not listening to Blaine and telling his Dad earlier. "Mercedes managed to keep it to herself, why couldn't you?" Kurt glared down at the short girl.

Rachel stepped closer to him, but Kurt backed away. She finally tried to meet his eyes, but Kurt fixed his eyes on a point on the wall above her head, his teeth clenched to prevent him from screaming at Rachel. Now his Dad knew that he had still been keeping a secret from him, had still been lying to him.

"Kurt," she looked up at him with big, pleading eyes. "I really didn't mean to and I am so sorry, but don't you think since I forgave you for how you treated me, you should forgive me?"

"That was different, Rachel!" He shouted at her, not caring that a couple of boys crossing the foyer were looking over curiously. "I was being tormented daily and was depressed! You just let your big mouth run away with you!"

Rachel's face crumpled with hurt, but Kurt just spun on his heel to leave. "See you at Sectionals." He told her over his shoulder before striding off towards the boarder's wing. He heard her call after him but he ignored her, marching purposefully away, his hands clenched into fists by his side.

Kurt strode into Blaine's room, not bothering to knock, to find Blaine sitting at his desk working through his homework whilst an amused-looking Wes sat at his desk, his books open in front of him, facing Blaine with a smirk on his face. The smirk widened when he saw Kurt.

"I'll just leave you two alone together." He gathered his books together, winked suggestively at Kurt, and left the room with a shout of "Keep it PG!"

Blaine sighed and dropped his pen down onto his notebook. "He's been teasing me and making suggestive comments the whole time we were here." He spun around in his chair to face Kurt who had sat down in the chair Wes had just abandoned, looking livid. "What did Rachel want?"

Kurt blew out a heavy sigh of frustration. "She told my Dad that you and I are dating."

Blaine's eyes widened. "She what? When?"

"She ran into him earlier today and started rambling on about who knows what and accidently told him." Kurt ran a hand through his hair agitatedly.

"I knew we should have told your Dad on Friday night." Blaine sighed.

"I wish we had done." Kurt said wearily. "It's all my fault really, not Rachel's – though she shouldn't have told him when I told her to keep it secret – but I should have listened to you, and I should have learned my lesson about lying and keeping secrets after the curse." He pulled his phone out of his blazer pocket. "I'm surprised my Dad hasn't called me about this."

"Are you going to call him now and try to explain?" Blaine asked.

Kurt stared down at the phone, chewing on his bottom lip. "I don't know. It isn't the sort of thing I can do easily over the phone, but it really isn't a good idea to leave it until I see him at Sectionals on Sunday." He shoved his phone back in his pocket.

"We don't really have time to go to Lima before Sunday either, not with all these Warbler meetings and homework."

Kurt groaned, realising Blaine was right. "Public confrontation at Sectionals it is then."