Blaine drained the last of his martini and obediently followed Kurt outside.

"You don't have to do this for me. It wasn't that much money. I'm not hard up for clients," Blaine said as they gathered up their coats.

Of course he wasn't. Kurt wound his scarf carefully around his neck.

"I mean, I'm notcheapbut I can afford to have an off-night."

"I wanted to leave. I thought you might like to, too."

"Of course," Blaine responded warmly. Earnestness looked good on him. Kurt chose to believe him rather than feel guilty for possibly ruining his evening. Listening to Kurt's friends debate their sexual choices couldn't be Blaine's idea of a good time.

Their breath puffed in the cold night air and the bar door thudded dully behind them. Kurt started in the direction of home. A bubble bath and cheesecake would be perfect. If his friends couldn't celebrate with him he could do just fine on his own. There was nothing wrong with a quiet night at home (with a brief intermission to sneak out and let his friends think they beat him back to the apartment). He'd do extra Pilates in the morning to make up for the cheesecake.

Blaine followed. "Where are we going?"

"I . . . We?" Cheesecake he could share but the bubble bath was non-negotiable. He could send Blaine his separate way but he was the one who made Blaine follow him out. He wouldn't dismiss company if it was freely given like the 'we' in Blaine's question implied. He still got lonely. Cake and a bubble bath didn't fix that. "I don't have anything planned."

"Can I walk you home?"

"It's miles from here," Kurt laughed. "I have to take the subway. After I find something else to do for a couple hours, that is, before they all head back to The Single Ladies'. I don't need speed jokes on top of everything else." Assuming his friends even believed him. Storming off didn't garner too much concern in their dramatic little group.

Blaine looked at him quizzically. "Is that a strip club?"

"Oh. Um. No." He kept discovering new ways to be mortified. "My apartment. With Rachel and Mercedes. That's what everyone calls it. Santana and Tina both lived there at different points in time before moving in with their significant others, so they deemed my apartment where people live during a relationship holding period."

"Do you mind the name?" he didn't sound judgmental, just curious.

Kurt shrugged. "Maybe if it wasn't in reference to a Beyonce song where I taught them the dance we'd have another chat about how feminine doesn't equal female. They've gotten better about figuring the out distinction. And I know who I am even if sometimes they forget."

"In that case, be a gentleman and walk me home? It's not far." Blaine gave his best charming smile.

"Why, um. . . " Kurt's stomach flipped. He preened under any positive attention from a cute boy, spending time with him under duress or not. He thought he was over this. He didn't usually follow strangers wherever they wanted to take him. "Of course. That'll work."

Kurt gestured for Blaine to lead on. Unanswered questions about an anomaly like Blaine – who'd come into his life so strangely and suddenly when everything was on its head – would linger long after he'd gone. It was an inevitability. He might as well shorten the list a little and get a sense of who Blaine was before he disappeared.

Blaine looped his arm through Kurt's. "Along the way we should talk about creating a code for when you actually want to sleep with me and when you're acting."

Kurt couldn't help but laugh. He propositioned Blaine twice in the same night, and neither time was ingenuous. At least Blaine didn't seem affected by any residual embarrassment from their first meeting.

Kurt didn't spend a lot of time creating expectations for how a prostitute would be and act, but Blaine didn't fit the few he had. He looked nothing like Julia Roberts, for one. He dressed like he had money to spare. And he was so cheerful, tone constantly upbeat. Wasn't he supposed to hate his life?

"It doesn't bother you that all your friends think you're about to sleep with me?" Blaine asked.

"Who cares what they think. First point of order: no one bought that scene. Secondly, you heard them; they prefer you over my producer. They prefer talking about you over the fact that Ihavea producer."

He frequently pictured announcing his show would be produced. He spent years trying to get anyone who wasn't a friend or relative to look at it. They'd never come close before. The script lay in the hands of an actual producer becauseKurt put it there. Blaine was willing to focus on celebrating the news and they barely knew each other. Leave it to his friends to take their anxieties about sex and virginity out on him and call it in his best interest. In the fight for anyone's attention, sex won over talent every time.

"Even if they think I didn't earn it, they should be happy for me," Kurt seethed as he briskly kept pace with Blaine. "I was happy for them when they got theirhigh school diplomas."

"You should be. I don't have one."

Kurt clamped his free hand over his stupid mouth. Blaine held tight to his other and continued leading them down the street as if he didn't notice. Kurt couldn't fathom dropping out of high school. Even in the long miserable stretches quitting school altogether wasn't an option he'd entertained. "I'm sorry, I didn't –"

"Turns out it doesn't lead to getting paid more by the hour." Blaine's eyes crinkled adorably.

Kurt got that it was a joke. He was supposed to laugh. He couldn't quite make himself.

Everything felt too complicated for this hour.

With their roles reversed Kurt knew he wouldn't want Tina, or Rachel, or Mercedes, or Brittany, or Santana – especially Santana, actually, given her love of vengeance and destruction – anywhere near Will Schuester. There was no need for them to give up on their careers like that. He'd want them to know that. His anger at them receded some and left him feeling worn. He reconciled that what he wanted for them was different from what he was willing to do himself. Rules were always different for Kurt.

Approaching Dalton was like stepping through time. When they reached the entry steps, doors opened for them. Inside everything was 1) expensive and 2) we cared for. There were honest-to-goodness chandeliers. To the side of the foyer stood a grand piano. Marble steps regally spiraled up floor after floor in a dome that, with its wrought iron everywhere, reminded Kurt of a birdcage.

Kurt didn't expect anything so beautiful. It seemed right for Blaine to live somewhere like this, surrounded in beauty.

"Welcome to my home," Blaine said with self-deprecating, sweeping gesture and then grabbed Kurt's hand again. "Come on. I can give you a tour."

Kurt was torn between looking at the walls and looking at Blaine.

"It's very safe," Blaine explained as he led Kurt up the stairs. "The council looks after us. Dalton's been around for ages, but it's a well-kept secret."

"Your brothel is run by a council."Pompouswasn't a word he expected to associate with a brothel. What kind of brothel ran itself democratically?

Blaine made a face. "'Brothel' sounds tawdry."

"You let Santana call you a whore all night."

Blaine ignored his observation. "The council represents all the Warblers. They manage Dalton from budgeting to booking clients. Santana found me through them."

I asked for non-threatening but smokin'. You're welcome.Kurt shook that thought away. So Dalton knew how to deliver.

The furniture in Blaine's studio was all heavy, ornate vintage pieces. The New Yorker in him protested that they would make moving impossible. No one would want to lift that down flights and flights of stairs. The effect was gorgeous. Blaine's canary chirped at them from his hanging cage in the corner. From the hallway Kurt whistled a short tune at the bird while Blaine went inside to hang up his coat.

Blaine turned back at Kurt's hesitation at the threshold. "You can go in. it's not forbidden."

Kurt first went to the canary whistling back at him. "Do you ever let him out?"

"Pavarotti's cage is safe and has everything he needs," Blaine recited as if by memory. "He's supposed to like it best right where he is."

"Is that true?"Kurt ran his fingers over the edges of Blaine's vanity. Pictures of Old Hollywood actors were pinned around the edges – Blaine's style icons judging by his clothes. Blaine's delicate cologne permeated the studio. Kurt noted that the vanity held quality moisturizing and anti-aging creams, as well as a face mask. Next to the vanity the bookshelf overflowed with an eclectic selection of well-worn paperbacks. So this was who Blaine was besides a handsome stranger.

"I've had a few years to settle in," Blaine explained with a sweeping gesture to his knick knacks. The gesture led to almost sloshing the coffee in his hand over the side of the cup. Blaine frowned at the offending coffee. He set both cups down on the vanity.

Kurt eased himself onto the plush bed and ran his fingers over the sleek cover. Blaine must be older than he seemed. Not as old as Kurt thought he must be to be Will Schuester, but old enough to have a career as a prostitute. Or a career as anything. Kurt smoothed the comforter. He belatedly realized he picked the most inappropriate spot to sit without even thinking. He invited himself onto a stranger's bed and bolting up at that realization might be even more awkward than staying put.

Blaine stilled Kurt's restless hand with his own. "It's okay if you're nervous. You're allowed to be."

A million scenarios sprang to his overactive mind that seized onto the slightest hint of affection and build whole fantasies upon it. He really crossed a line by sitting on Blaine's bed. The intimate settling made it easier for him to imagine sexual undertones to Blaine's reassurance. Like Blaine was giving him permission to be nervous before they started. Before Blaine reached for him. Before Blaine slid onto the bed and Kurt slid back to make room. Before they tangled together on the world's softest comforter that Kurt should inquire about the make of. Before Blaine kissed away his insecurities. Before Kurt touched every inch of skin on Blaine to see if it was warmer than his hand.

He pushed the thoughts out just as quickly as they'd come. Like dropping out of high school, it didn't seem like something he could even consider. His plans did not include sleeping with prostitutes, no matter how pretty. His original plans didn't include sleeping with a producer either and that was enough of a deviation.

"You've been coming in and out of these trances all night." Blaine observed.

"Eventful night," Kurt said lightly. Like he hadn't just been thinking about having sex with Blaine. Again. He focused instead on the touch warming his hand and defrosting the rest of him. Sometimes, he was startled to find, he missed being touched. He noticed his longing for it only when someone finally made that contact. He resolved to hug Tina and his roommates more if he could feel all this from a stranger.

Blaine withdrew his hand and Kurt's urge to snatch it back startled himself. Blaine joined him on the bed. Kurt swallowed.

"I understand not liking where you're at and doing what you can to change it. It's why I'm here. I couldn't stand the thought of being where I was. So I ran. I came to Dalton. The cost of living here's steep but they let me fit in. The guys living here are my friends. Which isn't to say it was a perfect solution. Or that I've never wanted something more." Blaine looked up from his reverie. "I'm not going to tell you what to do either way."

He tilted his head. He waited. The calmness in Blaine's voice pulled the confessions out of Kurt.

"How am I going to do this?" Kurt asked quietly. As tired as he was of this topic Blaine was the only one he trusted to answer him helpfully. "As my friends so plainly pointed out, I don't know what I'm doing. I couldn't even come up with how to be sexy. I need this to work."

"Inexperienced and barely legal seems to be his thing. Maybe it'll beendearing. For what it's worth, that was the most adorable seduction I have ever been put through."

Blaine wrinkled his nose as he teased in a way he must've known would evoke affection in whomever it was aimed at. Kurt rolled his eyes in response.

"You've planned this for a while? Today's meeting wasn't spur of the moment. You knew you were going to try and seduce him."

Kurt nodded. Rachel had Will's contact information through a NYADA alumnus but she was unwilling to get in touch with a Broadway producer who was surrounded by rumors of sexual liaisons with his stars. She offered it to Kurt since he was a boy. Kurt's rumors told him he still had a shot. The script he wrote was his to sell. The impeding closing date of his off-off Broadway show made him just desperate enough to deem selling the script through whatever means necessary worth it. He called when he reached the tipping point.

"How do you picture it going?" Blaine asked.

Kurt crossed and uncrossed his legs as he tried to explain what he didn't expect anyone else to understand. "You know how inFamewhen the only work Coco can find is in porn and she starts crying as she undresses on camera until she's a naked sobbing mess and you can never stop being haunted by the scene? That's the worst that can happen."

Blaine winced. He'd never been a fan of that movie. He preferred the kind where getting your dreams didn't come with giant costs. "And the best case scenario?"

"You know that scene inFame?"

"Kurt, that's horrible!"

Kurt waved him off. "You're supposed to be horrified. At least I assume so. But theactresswho plays Coco agreed to take the part. The character can't have this horrible experience without the involvement of the actor. Either it didn't bother her or the payoff was worth it." He hoped the latter scenario panned out for himself. The first didn't seem possible.

"And you'll be the character that something horrible happens to."

It stung to have it pointed out so plainly. He wasn't a victim. Nothing washappening tohim. He was an active player in this plan. He initiated contact with the producer. He knew the producer would have certain expectations. Sex wasn't a big deal to most of the people he knew.

Blaine reached for Kurt's hand again. "Thinking of yourself as a character that's separate from your 'true' self acting out a scene isn't bad if that's what helps. If I think of sex as a performance, I matter less in it."

Kurt's jaw dropped. "Are you trying to horrify me?" What kind of advice advocated for mattering less?

Blaine scrambled to recapture Kurt's hand. "Of course not! It helps, really, Kurt. There's a certain amount of distance a transaction provides. Everyone has their roles and no one goes off script. I know exactly how much is expected of me. I'm allowed to have limits and having limits doesn't make me selfish or unworthy of what we do agree to. And if they don't like the character I can tell myself that it's not a reflection on me. With love you're supposed to give everything, do whatever it takes to make that person keep loving you. That's what being taken advantage of feels like."

That doesn't sound right.Kurt didn't actually know anything about love, of course. Idealism about such things didn't serve him in finding and maintaining relationships.

"You can pretend to know what you're doing when you don't, but the reverse is true as well. It's not that hard to fake being a virgin when someone wants theMiss Saigonexperience."

Just when Kurt thought he couldn't be more horrified. . . "Did you just make a make a musical reference to describe –"

"Virgin and whore in the same convenient wrapping? It's apt. if I'm lucky it's without the raceplay. What I'm saying is if you want opening night to work out, you might have to hold a couple rehearsals."

"Blaine. I can't sleep with you." He didn't come to Dalton to be seduced.

Blaine looked perplexed at being turned down. "Because of Will Schuester?"

"I don't even know you!"

"And that matters to you."

Kurt closed his eyes. In one night he pictured sleeping with Blaine even more times than he disingenuously propositioned him. Both were getting out of hand: he knew how quickly he could go from zero to inappropriately, overwhelmingly infatuated. His feelings bruised easily. Touch was hard. He didn't trust others with his body without years, usually, of proof that he could. All those reasons compounded in wariness toward sex. In their initial meeting he was still coming down from the heightened emotions of performing and then Blaine had been charming and flirty, letting Kurt get caught up in the circumstances. He yet again let himself imagine tangling up with Blaine on the bed, this time stripping away the fantasy to something that could actually happen, or begin, in a few moments time. No sweeping romantic gestures. No intimacy. No relationship at all, really. Just learning hands-on about sex with someone contractually obligated to be considerate.

He wasn't going to lose his inhibitions by paying them to go away. He wanted more fanfare than just getting it over with and a deeper connection than a shared love of theatrics. Nicely decorated though it was, it was still a room in a brothel with someone he was indirectly paying to be there. Blaine could probably fake being an awesome boyfriend but Kurt wanted something real.

"You don't go this long with no sexual experience without some intentionality. I grew up in Ohio and I had standards and those two facts were not compatible." He knew prostitutes and producers weren't his only options, and it wasn't just because Mercedes told him so. Sex wasn't hard to come by, it was all the conditions he placed upon the where and how and with whom that made it impossible.

"I thought New York would be easier – and it was because for once I wasn't the only openly gay person in a 50 mile range – but it turns out I'm still picky. Santana kept threatening to find a professional until last spring when I finally found a boyfriend I thought was worthwhile. Even after all that I wasn't ready soon enough and he didn't want to wait."

Blaine frowned. "He doesn't sound worthwhile at all."

Kurt shrugged. He might be slow to get there, but eventually Kurt's intolerance for bullshit pulled the breaks every time he tried dating. There were still tears, but mostly out of frustration with himself for letting some stupid guy make him feel awful. For believing he couldn't do any better until something snapped and he saw that he really, really could. Alone was better thanthat. He didn't want sex so bad that he'd compromise on expecting basic human decency like caring about someone else's feelings.

And here he was, alone and compromising anyway. Or he would be soon enough.

"It might make things easier with Will but I can't. You're not what I want either. 'Practicing' with you makes two things I don't want instead of one. You're nice and all but . . . It's fine. No one has a magical first time with someone they actually like. Or at least no one I know."

"Your friends Tina and Mike? I'm just guessing since they've been together since high school."

Kurt frowned. "Well screw them for having everything I want."

"Everything? Neither of them are famous," Blaine teased.

He hadn't thought of that.

"I guess that's not as important as you're making it out to be."

"I want to matter." More than anything else, he wanted to believe he mattered. Small minded small towns made him unwanted and here in New York he was insignificant.

"And fame is the only way you'll ever matter?"

Kurt rolled his eyes.

"Okay, I'll stop twisting your words. Like I said, you need someone on your side." Blaine sprang up. "How about this: we'll help each other. I'll give you advice and you can help me with an old dream."

"Did you want to be an actor?" Kurt asked. He tipped his head in curious appraisal. He could see it, maybe. Most actors had other jobs to support themselves, after all. Blaine definitely had presence. And a very captive audience.

"Performer. I wanted to do it all. I've always been something of a show off."

"Triple threat?"

"Of course."

Kurt never thought about having a hooker for a role model. He wasn't 100% convinced by Blaine's philosophies on how to deal with treating sex like a commodity but Blaine had to know what he was talking about. Blaine seemed at peace with his life. Kurt could learn that. Joke or not, Santana sent him just what he needed.

"Don't you want the script reading first?"

"Myprivatescript reading?" Blaine's eyes twinkled. "I can't imagine you doing all this if you didn't think it was good."

He hadn't heard Blaine sing yet. Or seen him dance or act. They'd have to believe each other.

"This really isn't about sex?" Kurt asked, his final reservation.

Blaine knocked against Kurt's shoulders. "Drink the coffee, dummy."