It wasn't late, by Blaine's standards, when he said goodnight to Kurt at Dalton's heavy entrance doors. Right before Kurt left, Blaine plucked the iPhone out of Kurt's hands and called his own phone, not caring if it was forward or not. Now he had a way to reach Kurt and turn their talk of collaborating into action. He hadn't planned to demand a place for himself in Kurt's show – his own audacity startled him – but he was glad for it. Opportunities like this didn't come around. Maybe something good could come of one of his spontaneous decisions.

He resisted leaning in for a kiss when Kurt loitered in the doorway for a moment before bouncing down the steps and waving from the street.

When he turned back, Sebastian smirked at him. Blaine hadn't realized anyone was behind him, let alone so close.

Sebastian toyed with the trim on Blaine's vintage-esque cardigan. "Do I have to treat you to a malt shake and pin you before I take you behind the bleachers?"

Blaine sidestepped him on the way to the stairs. "You know how much I'm worth." It was a high cost but not prohibitive for Sebastian. He'd fronted the money before. Plenty, before he became a Warbler himself. Blaine really wished, if one of his clients had to make a career change, he would have picked a different whorehouse. He never figured out how to coexist with someone he used to work for.

Blaine continued on to his room without trying to negotiate more. Let Sebastian take up the bookkeeping with Thad if he was so interested. Sebastian could spend his money however he liked but Blaine wasn't going to encourage him. Sometimes attention from Sebastian felt so good, but he didn't feel that lonely at the moment and manners weren't enough to fuel that backslide on its own.

"Someone's feeling unfriendly today."

Blaine's steps halted. He hated feeling ungracious. Every time he tried not to engage with Sebastian he felt mean. Pleasantries weren't too much to ask for; it was all the asking that followed pleasantries that led to trouble. He couldn't win.

Blaine turned back. He liked being liked. Being eager to please made him excellent at his job. His clients adored him. They wanted his company enough to pay hundreds – or for the repeat visitors, thousands – of dollars for the pleasure of it and no regular client had yet to come close to the amount of money Sebastian dropped on Blaine.

Sebastian smirked as he caught up with Blaine on the stairs. "Are you always this sweet with clients? Giving tours, showing off Dalton . . ."

"I'm whatever they want me to be." Blaine laughed hollowly at the obviousness of his response. Sebastian knew that.

"What's someone so squeaky clean doing with us creatures of the underworld? And I do mean squeaky; that voice could shatter glass. We should check the chandeliers. If you're recruiting you should keep in mind that clients come to Dalton for men, not pre-op little girls."

If Dalton gave a finder's fee, what amount would make unintentionally recruiting Sebastian worth it?Blaine toyed with some value estimates to soothe the nerves Sebastian was grating. Thad always charged clients who weren't nice more for him.

"So I'm right that she's your personal charity case? Some poor lost kid who needs a place to stay and a way to earn it? Mmm. God, you used to be so hot when that was you. Whatwouldn'tyou do?"

Sebastian was the only client who really tried to woo him. Blaine knew he shouldn't be flattered by the effort: the goal was always something for free. Telling Blaine he looked nice was a negotiation tactic and the only thing Sebastian's lines said about Blaine was how gullible he was.

"He needs something. I'm not sure what yet." He could help Kurt. Mess though Blaine was, he liked the idea of helping. In a non-predatory way. They could befriends.

Sebastian leaned in close. "My needs are a lot easier to figure out. They require you, in my room, in 30 minutes."

"That gives you 30 minutes to work out the budget with Thad."

"I thought you were in a giving mood today. Old times' sake and all. I bet it's been on your mind."

He hated haggling. Like he was asking too much, like his opinion of himself was too high. Thad handled the finances for a reason. Once upon a time, Blaine was foolish enough to believe his wealthy regular client who so openly desired him would whisk his away from Dalton instead of join him there, and of course Blaine would give Sebastian whatever he wanted despite what they agreed to.

Not anymore,Blaine told himself firmly. "I need to know what's expected of me."

"Fine. I'll do your silly paperwork." Like he was humoring Blaine. But it was better than nothing. "30 minutes."

Blaine slipped into his room where his canary chirped in greeting. He assigned Kurt's name to the missed call in his cell phone. He'd call in a day or two. He'd give Kurt the opportunity to say something first. Right now he needed coffee, a shower, and to get dressed in something that would appeal to Sebastian. Later, when he had time, he'd think on the possibilities Kurt's show could offer.

"One day, Pavarotti. We'll fly right out of here and onto a real stage," Blaine promised and laughed to himself when the bird chirped back. Maybe his canary could hold him to it.

***

Kurt didn't know what to make of the number hastily added to his phone, with "Warbler" in place of a last name, from Blaine politely but insistently inviting himself into Kurt's life. He debated what to do with it on the subway ride home. Doubts crept into his mind about inviting a very charming stranger into his show. He could just delete the number and dismiss their interaction as part of the weird of the night. Blaine would be the worst kind of crush to allow himself: seemingly attainable but inappropriate and certain to end in heartbreak or questionable compromises. Kurt couldn't afford distractions once rehearsals started.

One the way out of Dalton, Kurt had stopped in front of the window at the top of the stairs to take in the view. At the slight hint of resistance Blaine halted his forward progression. New York was surreal at night – after arriving Kurt assumed he's get used to it but had long since given up that notion. He could see the East River and knew his home was somewhere in the distance beyond all those lights.

"You're not from here," Blaine observed as he watched Kurt watch the city.

"Is anyone? Well, I mean, I know logically people are. From here. But I don't know anyone who didn't pick up and move here because it's where they longed to be. Unless . . .?"

"No, still true. It's home but I'll never be able to say it's where I'm from. When I left it was the only place I could see myself being."

Kurt liked that explanation: home but not where he's from. He picked this place for himself but it didn't explain all of who he was.

He wondered where Blaine was from. And why he chose to be here. No one moved to New York without some kind of dream.

They had a deal, and Kurt would stick to it. Once upon a time Blaine wanted to be a performer too. Blaine might understand Kurt's choices better than anyone else, but more importantly, Kurt couldn't refuse to afford someone the opportunity to attain a dream when it was within his power to do so.

Rachel barged into Kurt's room shortly after he made it home, asked for permission to hug him before doing so, and told him they all interfered because they loved him.

Kurt knew that anyway, but it was nice to hear. Their relationship only functioned with a lot of forgiveness: they were just similar enough to see all their worst traits in the other and leaned toward meddling as a problem solving technique. Apologies were often assumed rather than offered outright, but then there were the in-between moments like this where they'd try to make it up to each other and earn forgiveness for all their other slights too.

"Are we easier to stomach on a smaller scale?" Rachel asked as she pulled out of the hug. "We can just talk, you and me, and I swear I'll do my best to listen without judging or lecturing or giving any kind of unsolicited advice."

"Big promise on your part." It came out mostly civil.

Rachel clambered onto his bed, crossing her legs, dropping a pillow into her lap and arranging the comforter to cover her feet. She smoothed her hands over the pillow. "Remember how we did this when you first moved to New York?"

Kurt smiled at the memory that coaxed him into sliding next to her. "I was going to get a hotel but I couldn't stand the thought of leaving you." The city overwhelmed him with its promise and its dangers that scared him for both their sake. Rachel had been living and functioning in this place forweeksand he didn't know how. He crawled under her covers and they turned out the lights and he didn't sleep. Her roommate yelled at them for killing the mood with their high pitchedthis is realandoh my god you made itexclamations. Kurt joked she was upset that sex couldn't compete with the rush they were feeling.

"What scared you the most?"

"I didn't know." Catastrophe wasn't hard to imagine. He sold his car, his only possession of value, knowing how quickly rent would eat that money like it never existed. What if he built life here up too much in his mind where even the grandest place on earth couldn't measure up? Wasting his time, his dad's support, putting unnecessary distance between them. His family lived too far to rush to his aid at a moment's notice. Rachel was the only person, outside of himself, that he could count on. The moment he stepped off the plane he knew his life was altered.

"And yet here we are. When we first met, I bet this isn't how you thought we'd end up!"

Kurt's stomach turned. "Please don't build this up into how I'm disappointing you now."

Rachel just leaned into him. "Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if we went through with getting married."

She didn't need to specify who "we" was. Kurt tipped his head at the seemingly unrelated years old drama between her and his brother. "Rachel, that was high school. The moment's gone."

"It's not like by graduating it stopped having any bearing on our lives. I don't think you stop forgetting about what could have been. We made a lot of decisions then about who we wanted to be."

His one sustaining thought was getting out, not what kind of person he molded himself into in the process. A stubborn, single-minded one, no doubt, who would tell anyone to their face that his dreams were bigger than them. Half of his high school memories were just fantasies he concocted while in that hellish concrete building. Being different would keep him from beingstuck.Only he still felt stuck because he'd gotten out but he hadn't gotten what he really wanted.

"I was really sure that's what I wanted – we would get married and I would be good at that. Because what I really wanted seemed so far away and I needed to want something, something I could make happen. I knew if I didn't succeed I'd be devastated. So I tried to change my goals. I wasn't myself without them, you knew that. Same way you knew that, lead role on the line or not, I'd regret getting naked on film for it."

Exhaustion hit hard. His off-off Broadway show, closed now or not, took a lot out of him, and then the emotional mess that followed used up his reserve "coping with other people's feelings" for the week. Maybe coping with his own as well. "Rachel, it's too late for this."

"Never! We all understand ambition, Kurt. Do you think there's a single one of us who wouldn't claw our way to the top? Who doesn't take stupid chances? Who doesn't have a problem with single-minded focus? Sometimes I want so much I get tripped up in how to go about it."

He knew how intensely Rachel wanted things. That one commonality held their friendship through fights over boys, overstepped boundaries, and personal living space.

Kurt tried to weigh her words. He spoke carefully. "This isn't me being scared of ambition."

"Just that it's not enough." Rachel captured his hand and squeezed. "Remember that time Brittany thought a sex tape could get Santana what she wanted? Or that time you almost rigged an election before I did it for you? Or that time I sent a girl to a crack house rather than accept additional competition?"

Kurt snorted. He remembered now that she mentioned it. Questionable choices seemed to be their forte.

"And how many times did we quit something we loved just so somebody would notice? We all worried wanting wasn't enough because often it wasn't. We tried for shortcuts. But we didn't need them."

He liked to think he was the least prone to terrible decision making when trying to succeed. That he didn't have the same drive to be the best and get into the spotlight at all costs. His friends were the ones who lacked perspective and a solid grasp of consequences. He raised the bar in regrettable decisions tonight.

"My show's over. It closed. I'm not dramatically storming off." His show left him. He would have stayed if it was an option. Or pursued other options if he had any.

"Only metaphorically," she corrected. "I know how tempting it sounds. I don't fault you for being tempted. I don't think it's right for you. As much as I resented you, I'm glad you were there for me when I needed you to know me best."

Kurt took a chance on her understanding and not pushing harder or turning his words against him. "You know that feeling you got when you first came here?"

Rachel laughed. "Nauseous? Terrified but pretending to be brave."

"So close. Your dreams are so close you can see them." He closed his eyes. "And you think how easily we could have missed out on this. We would've never known what we were missing. Sometimes what comes next seems terrifying, but you have a chance to make things happen for yourself and you can't ignore it."

"Yeah," she murmured as she tipped her head against his shoulder. "I know that feeling." He could feel her biting back more to say, but if there was anyone who could be swayed bywantingit was Rachel.

He sent a quick text to his phone's newest contact -I'll let you know when we start- before setting his phone aside. He smiled, hours later while still in bed but unable to sleep, when it buzzed.

***

"Oh, no, we're not staying," Santana said as Blaine seated himself at her table in their agreed-upon meeting place in midtown. "Get something to go if you believe in eating."

He trailed behind her to the counter. He needed more sleep to understand her this early in the morning. He rubbed his eyes.

"We're bringing Brits breakfast. Even dancers have to eat," Santana explained. "No matter how they pretend they don't. Shouldn't leave her alone too long with the Black Swans anyway."

Blaine placed his coffee order – and then his bagel order when he realized the only diet Santana had seen from him so far was a liquid one – and slipped a couple extra bills into the tip jar.

"I have never heard a New Yorker say 'please' that much. If you keep that up people are going to think you're a tourist."

"Nothing wrong with asking nicely." He took a swig of coffee and resumed trailing after her, this time out into the cold.

"Don't think I'm paying for Kurt's stunt last night," Santana said. "Boy can act on stage but he's terrible at making himself be something he's not."

Blaine smiled. "That's probably a good quality."

"Doubt it pays as well as morphing yourself into whatever people want you to be."

Blaine's smile waned.

Santana gave him and appraising look. "What's left to tweak? So nice, sopolite,probably friends with assorted woodland creatures who come at the sound of your voice. Sexless Ken doll should be just his type. Shouldn't have told him you're a whore and scared him off."

"The only false pretenses I give my clients are the ones they create for themselves. Lying about my profession isn't ethical." Yet another reason to never let himself be a gift to someone else.

"Poster boy for Sesame Street right here," she sneered.

Blaine stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Well now you really look like a tourist." Santana steered him to toward the buildings and away from foot traffic. "What?"

The council was supposed to handle things like this. He didn't do confrontation and negotiations. He just wanted to be what people wanted him to be. He couldn't pretend on something like this, though. "You're gay, right? What do you get out of this? I thought, when you contacted me, that I was just for fun, or that I was some kind of rite of passage deal. He didn't expect me and then he didn't want me. That means I wasn't a gift. You're spending a lot of money on someone else and all I've seen you do with him is fight."

"Spit it out, hobbit."

The words came out in a rush. "I won't be aweapon.I don't trick people into sleeping with me."

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "I wish I could have gotten to Brittany instead of a shitty rapist. Notfirst; instead of. Although, you know, it sucks that was her first impression of sex. Kurt's signing himself up to be taken advantage of. I'm not okay with that, and he won't be okay with that as soon as he comes to his senses. Either he realizes sleeping with the cute,harmlessboy I picked out for him is infinitely more appealing than what that douche bag's offering, or he realizes by hanging out with you that he ain't low enough to become a whore himself. Be sexy or be pathetic, I don't care which, but for the love of god pickone."

She set off again.

Blaine had a hard time sussing out what was real and what was show with her. One moment she seemed vulnerable underneath the posturing, and the next was viciously erasing that image. He chose to believe the former even as he pulled away.

"I charge extra to clients who are mean," Blaine noted with a sassy lift of his chin, his voice mild as he caught up. He could act like her words upset him less than they did for her sake, because he could tell she was hurting and somehow that mattered more. He would mull later, on his own time, to figure out why it bothered him and what, if anything, he would do about it.

Brittany lit up when they approached. Santana shoved the bagel bag at Blaine and molded herself to Brittany's lips as if they'd been apart days instead of hours. They joined Brittany in standing in line waiting to be chosen. Blaine tried to maintain a respectful distance to appease grumblings from the women in line anddidn't he know he was in the wrong place? Santana and Brittany linked their pinkies linked together. Blaine liked the simplicity of it, the sureness in the way they reached for each other and met in the middle for a simple but meaningful touch. They made it so easy to tell they were in love. He used to want what they had so badly.

"You ever stand in an audition line?" Santana asked.

Blaine shook his head. "Not like this." Small little things in Ohio back when he lived there and nothing more. His time in New York focused more on survival. Once he joined Dalton he forgot about the outside world. Waiting in line for an audition seemed almost romantic despite how miserable the reality no doubt could be. All that hope that this moment could change your life.

"Kurt told me he invited you to be in the show. You know that seduction through musical theater's a shitty return on your time investment."

Blaine nodded. He hadn't thought about performing in years, but the sudden want gnawed at him. He could be so good at performing.

"That mean our deal is still on?"

Blaine shrugged. "I'm just a boy who can't say no."