While waiting for Tina and Quinn to figure out what exactly they wanted to buy, Kurt got a call. Mercedes, who was standing next to him, frowned as he fumbled to get the phone out of his pocket.

"Santana?" he asked, confused. Santana and Brittany had wanted to go inside the Gap, while the other girls would rather check out some jewellery – one guess with which group Kurt had chosen to go. "What's wrong? We're meeting up – "

"You have to come here, now." Santana's tone was final, as if she'd rather they be there now than in a second. "There's an unnaturally high amount of guys from that private school – what was it called again? The one we tied with at Sectionals."

"Dalton?" Kurt asked, and now, Mercedes looked more interested. When they had opted to go shopping in Westerville for a change, they had known that they might run into some boys from their rival school, but they hadn't really figured out what to do when the situation would actually arise.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Santana said. "Anyway, I don't know if they're the Garglers – " At this point, Kurt didn't even bother correcting her anymore. It was as if she (and Puck) purposefully pronounced the name of the other group wrong. " – but you might want to come anyway. There's too many of them here for it to be a coincidence."

At that moment, Tina and Quinn emerged from the store they'd been in up until now. "We'll be right there," Kurt promised Santana, and hung up. "We're going to the Gap," he announced to the other girls. "As much as I don't want to be seen there – even if nobody knows us here – there's a whole bunch of Dalton guys there."

"Warblers?" Tina asked as they took off.

"Santana said she wasn't sure, but something was up," Kurt replied.

Luckily, the Gap wasn't too far from where they'd been, so it didn't take a very long time to get there. Kurt wrinkled his nose before following the girls in. When they spotted Brittany (who seemed to be talking to one of the dummies on display) and Santana, the Latina waved them over impatiently.

"Good, you made it," she said hurriedly. From where they were standing, Kurt could see at least six or seven boys in Dalton uniforms.

"What are they doing?" Quinn asked, looking around as well.

"Looks like they're all waiting for something," Mercedes replied. The Dalton boys were all trying just a little too hard not to get noticed and trying to blend in with the background.

Alright, maybe the other customers fell for it, but Kurt knew – and he was sure the girls did too – that if there were so many people in the same attire in one place, something was bound to happen sooner or later. So he turned around and started searching through the nearest rack of clothes as well, attempting to look inconspicuous.

"You do realise those are tights, right?" Mercedes asked apprehensively, and Kurt jumped away from the rack as quickly as possible. As if being in the Gap wasn't bad enough, he had also pretended to be looking at Rachel Berry approved clothing? He didn't know how he was going to live with himself from now on.

While he tried to recover, Santana was snickering in the background, and Tina and Quinn tried to pry Brittany away from the dummies she was talking to. Then, they moved a little, so they could at least see the cash register and the exit, and they waited.

And then, the show started.

A guy Kurt thought he recognised as the Warblers' lead singer from Sectionals stepped forward, and Santana hummed appreciatively, already checking him out. The guy gestured towards a nearby team mate and suddenly, they heard the opening notes of what sounded like Beethoven's fifth symphony – sung, a cappella, of course.

"What – " Kurt started, but Quinn interrupted him.

"They're going to sing!" she exclaimed (a little redundantly), and Mercedes and Tina were already whipping out their phones to film the performance – this was the chance to see what the competition was up to, and they might want to watch it another time in more detail. Plus, none of them really wanted to suffer the wrath of one Rachel Berry if she ever were to find out that they'd seen the Warblers perform and not taped it or anything.

The lead singer started singing, but Kurt didn't recognise the song. He just knew that it wasn't really Beethoven's fifth. The girls seemed to know the song, though, so it was probably just him.

"Who's he singing to?" Brittany asked, confused, and Mercedes and Tina moved forward just a little bit, to avoid only taping their talk and not the song.

That was a good question. Kurt had no idea. Then, Santana sighed and said, "Looks like he's following that guy over there around the store." She looked rather downtrodden, even though the guy probably wouldn't have given her a second glance if he had been following a girl instead.

Still, Kurt thought it was pretty fascinating that apparently, the Warblers' lead singer was gay. Or bi. And none of the other Warblers seemed to have much of a problem assisting him in serenading some male Gap employee. Now it was Kurt's turn to hum appreciatively.

Indeed, the boy kept on stalking the employee – who appeared to be almost fleeing away from him – around the store during the song. Kurt hadn't thought much of it at first, but wasn't this song a little too… sexual? To him, it sounded like there were a whole lot of innuendo's hidden (or maybe not really hidden) in the song.

"This sounds like something you or Puck would sing," he told Santana in a low voice – she just smirked back at him.

Quinn didn't seem very impressed by the performance. "I never thought that those Dalton boys would sing a song like this," she muttered, and Kurt had to agree. True, they had only heard them sing Hey Soul Sister at Sectionals, so they didn't know much about their usual song selection, but fancy private school boys and innuendo filled songs like this didn't add up in Kurt's head.

"At least the rest of the Warblers are making a bit of a show out of it," he muttered back. They were appearing from behind racks of clothing, playing with sunglasses, doing some gymnastics here and there – it was nothing like the stiff Sectionals performance.

"He looks completely obsessed," Santana remarked, smirking again. "Come on – that guy's not that hot!"

"Is he even gay?" Quinn wondered out loud.

Kurt scoffed. "Of course he is. Look at the hair!"

Santana and Quinn gave him some weird looks. "You can see if a guy is gay by his hair?" Quinn asked, frowning slightly.

"Not always," Kurt replied, nodding at the lead singer, who was, by now, jumping on some (or should he say all?) of the displays. "I didn't realise that he might be gay, but… alright, it looks like he spends a little too much time doing his hair in the morning to be straight."

The girls looked impressed, and Kurt felt immensely pleased with himself for a moment.

Glancing at Mercedes and Tina, he noticed that they must've decided to split things up – Mercedes was filming the lead singer, while Tina kept her phone glued to the rest of the Warblers as well as she could. Good – the more footage they had, the better.

"Why does he keep jumping on everything?" Mercedes groaned quietly. Since she was also standing a couple of feet away, Kurt barely heard her. "He's crazy!"

"You do realise we're really in the front row now, right?" Quinn asked, glancing around a bit worriedly. "What if they recognise us?"

"You really think that guy is going to let us stand in his way when serenading blondie?" Santana asked with a snort. "I'm doing great here, I'll have you know – these guys are fit."

There was no way Quinn (or Kurt, for that matter) could argue with Santana on that.

When the song ended, the lead singer slid forward on his knees towards the cash register, and the guy he'd just serenaded – who still didn't look very happy.

"Let's get out of here," Kurt instructed the girls. "I doubt they're going to sing another song, I'm getting all itchy just from being in the Gap, and it's almost lunch time."

It looked like a lot of people were sticking around to see what would unfold between the lead Warbler and the employee, but Kurt couldn't wait to leave the store. If anything, this proved to him that even though apparently, there were other gay guys his age in Ohio, his Valentine's Day wouldn't be anything special. Again.

They entered the first Kurt-approved cafeteria they came across (he had to make sure they didn't just serve fast food) and found themselves a table. "Do we have to go up there and order, or is somebody going to come here?" Tina asked, looking around at what the other people were doing.

"Let's first look at what we even want to eat," Kurt suggested. As it turned out, they really had to go and order their own food, but once they were all served, they started discussing the performance they'd just witnessed. Mercedes and Tina had already e-mailed the videos to themselves (you never knew what suddenly happened to your phone) and they were now talking about the Gap employee (that would've been a major turn-off for Kurt in the first place, but obviously, not everyone thought about it that way).

"Good thing that at least the guy was gay," Kurt commented, grinning. "I mean, what if he'd been straight? That would've been awkward!"

"Like when you had a crush on Finn, or what?" Mercedes joked, and he glared at her half-heartedly.

"I would never sing such a song to Finn. And please, don't mention that ever again. It's weird enough that he's my stepbrother now without you lot reminding me of… well, that." The girls snorted, and Kurt crossed his arms defiantly. "Besides – I don't think I was ever as obsessed with Finn as that guy with the Gap employee. Did you see him?"

"Thank you," someone from behind him said coldly. When Kurt turned around in his seat, he found a handful of Warblers standing there, and the lead singer was glaring at him. "I hope you're happy to hear that he was not interested."

"Oh yeah, that's me," Kurt said sarcastically. "Always taking pleasure in the misfortunes of people I don't even know."

Brittany looked at him concernedly (whether that was because she simply didn't understand what he was saying or because she thought he was serious, Kurt didn't know), but Santana interjected, "I think that would be me, actually."

The other Warblers started to look for a table, but the lead singer was still standing there. At the moment, he was staring at Kurt as if he was the biggest mystery he had ever come across. "I'm Blaine," he suddenly said, and Kurt eyed his now outstretched hand for a second before taking it.

"Kurt," he introduced himself. Before he had properly let go, Brittany leaned across him and greeted Blaine with a wide smile.

"I'm Brittany," she told him, and after her, the other girls introduced themselves as well, laughing as they did.

"It was a good performance, though," Tina said, and this seemed to cheer up Blaine a bit.

"You liked it?" he asked with hopeful eyes. Kurt was reminded vaguely of a puppy that needed to be constantly kept happy, but he forced the thought out of his head. Poor puppies.

Santana's eyes were gleaming as she replied. "Of course we did. And," she continued, looking around the table, "I'm sure that our fellow New Directions members will like it as well."

Blaine's facial expression went from proud to alarmed in a split second, and Kurt felt the need to laugh out loud – so he did. "Did you just say New Directions?" Blaine asked, glancing at Kurt momentarily, obviously hoping that someone, anyone, would tell him that no, there were no New Directions members here.

Well, that was not going to happen.

"I think I did," Santana said pensively. "Britt, we're in New Directions, right?"

Brittany nodded earnestly, and Santana smirked at Blaine. He was no longer alone, though – the team mates that had forsaken him in order to find a table were back.

"Did someone say New Directions?" an Asian boy asked, looking from Blaine to Kurt and the girls.

Mercedes rolled her eyes. "How often do we have to repeat ourselves? Yes, we're in New Directions, and yes, we just saw your performance."

Now, Blaine wasn't the only one who looked alarmed anymore. "You spied on us?" the same Asian boy asked, looking on the verge of a panic attack.

"That's what you get for singing in public places," Quinn told him. "You never know who witnesses the performance."

All the Warblers were currently staring Blaine down (which wasn't all that hard, since he was the shortest of the group), and Santana added, "We'll be sure to discuss it at great length during our next rehearsal."

"Hey, what does it matter anyway?" a blond guy asked. He reminded Kurt of Sam – blond hair like that just wasn't natural. "They saw us at Sectionals, and we saw them."

"Hey, if we hadn't seen this, we would've been very surprised if you'd suddenly add choreography to your Regionals performance," Kurt reminded them.

"And you can never see too much of your rivals," Tina said.

Mercedes laughed. "Yeah, remember all those times we spied on Vocal Adrenaline last year?"

"They still beat us in the end," Tina muttered.

"So it's actually a good thing that you saw us now and we didn't see you?" another Warbler asked somewhat excitedly.

"Vocal Adrenaline saw us too, before Regionals," Kurt said, attempting to shoot their hope down as quickly as it arose.

"Yeah, because we practically forced them to come," Quinn muttered.

"You really think so?" Mercedes asked. "Trust me, they knew everything we did from the moment Jesse joined…"

Deciding that they had sufficiently confused (and scared, hopefully) the Warblers now, Kurt asked, "Could you leave, please? We're trying to have lunch here, you know."

Muttering amongst themselves, the Warblers took off. Before long, though, Blaine was back at their table, and Kurt raised a questioning eyebrow at him, while the girls just giggled. Fidgeting a bit, the other boy opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before asking, "Are you – free, Monday night?"

Kurt attempted to raise his eyebrow even higher, because seriously? This guy had just serenaded someone, obviously smitten with that person, and now he was trying to ask him out? "Yes," he replied cautiously, "and so are you."

He turned back to his salad before he could see Blaine's face fall – fine, the guy was actually attractive enough and if Kurt would get a chance to think things over a little more, he might cave after all.

Santana let out a low whistle once Blaine was gone. "Harsh," she commented, but she was smirking all the same. Good – if Santana Lopez actually thought something was harsh, Kurt might have to rethink his decision to voluntarily spend Valentine's Day alone.

"You do realise that you're the second person to turn him down today, right?" Mercedes asked.

"Of course," Kurt scoffed. "That's exactly my point – not even an hour ago, he was head over heels for some guy at the Gap and even serenaded him. He's probably not even over him yet – heck, I'm sure he isn't. I'm not going to be some consolation prize because he doesn't want to spend Valentine's Day alone. And even if he already is over that guy – that doesn't bode well, don't you think?"

"True," Quinn admitted. She glanced at the Warblers' table. "He keeps staring at you, though."

"Let him stare," Kurt muttered, trying to pretend he didn't care. He was well aware that he was failing miserably, though – he actually felt fairly honoured that someone was staring at him for a change, and not because they were trying to decide how to torture him next, but because, for whatever it was worth, they thought he was someone to spend Valentine's Day with – even if he had just turned him down.

"I bet," Mercedes started slowly, a grin forming on her face, "that he's going to come to McKinley to serenade you soon. And maybe to spy on us."

"Not in that order, I hope," Tina said, grinning as well.

"Or – " Mercedes continued, ignoring Tina's comment for now, "he's going to dedicate their Regionals performance to you."

"Don't be so ridiculous," Kurt muttered, aware that he must be blushing profusely by now. What a crazy thought that was.

"He does seem like the type of guy who obsesses over stuff like this, though," Quinn observed – naturally, she was grinning as well, and so was Brittany. Kurt was sure Santana would've grinned too if she wasn't too busy smirking at him.

"Let's get out of here," Kurt suggested loudly. "Let's go. Out. Come on. There are so many shops here, and so little time – " He all but sprinted out of the restaurant, sincerely hoping that the girls would follow his lead sooner rather than later, and he tried not to think too much of the fact that it did take the girls longer than strictly necessary, and that when they did, they seemed a little too happy for some reason.

That was, until he got a text that evening from a number he didn't know.

Sure you don't want to give it a try? x Blaine

Kurt stared at the message for a moment, his mind reeling. Cursing his friends inwardly, he knew that this was just all the more proof that those girls were all crazy and he wasn't weird or anything for being gay.

Still… that didn't mean that he was going to go out with Blaine just like that.

Not now, anyway.

Pretty sure. I'm sure you'll get over it. Kurt.

Unsurprisingly, he didn't have to wait long for a response.

Ugh, fine. Alright. Maybe some coffee, next weekend? Get to know each other first? x Blaine

Kurt sighed. This guy really didn't take 'no' for an answer, did he? But if he could be stubborn, so could Kurt.

I honestly don't think that's a good idea.

He never would've thought that he would shoot down someone like Blaine, but here he was. Life was strange sometimes.

Aw, why not? :( I'd be looking forward to it all week! x Blaine

Yes, this boy certainly did fall quickly, Kurt decided. Still, he didn't feel like playing this game all night long, so he sent one final text back.

I'm going to ignore you now.

Maybe the girls were right and he was being harsh, but he didn't feel like going out with someone who'd just asked out somebody else too.

When he woke up the next morning, he looked at his phone. That turned out to be a bad idea – there were about fifteen new messages, and they were all from Blaine. He received at least twelve more of them that day, and while he couldn't resist reading them (with all the bullying going on, he reasoned with himself that he could do with some ego-boosting, even if the majority of his friends wouldn't agree with that), he never replied.

It looked like Kurt had acquired himself a stalker. He didn't know if he should be happy about that. But – okay, even though he was going to be alone for Valentine's Day, at least he knew that there was someone out there who had wanted to spend that day with him. That was almost as good (or in this case perhaps even better) as having an actual date.

That didn't change the fact that Kurt was still going to ignore Blaine and his annoying text messages, even though he sent at least ten of them every single day.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

(A little over a month later)

"You've got to be kidding me." Kurt gaped at the stage as Mercedes, sitting next to him, tried to control her giggles.

"I told you so," she sang under her breath, and when he turned to stare at her, he noticed Quinn and Tina smirking triumphantly at him.

On his other side, Rachel was narrowing her eyes at the stage, probably wondering what on earth the Warblers were doing. Well – not the Warblers, just Blaine, for he was belting out Misery by Maroon 5 while keeping his eyes trained on Kurt the whole performance.

"I feel so embarrassed," Kurt muttered, trying to sink to the floor, but Mercedes wouldn't let him. She hoisted him back up and forced him to look forward, all the while grinning gleefully.

At the end of the song, right before the next one, Quinn (who was sitting at Mercedes' other side) said, "I'm starting to think that the Warblers are just an instrument for him to use whenever he feels like serenading someone…"

It certainly seemed that way now. At least the next song could, under no circumstances, be interpreted as if Blaine was serenading him, making Kurt relax a little – even though the other boy was still looking at him throughout the song.

He'd worry about what to do next when Blaine would undoubtedly corner him later. Not now.