The rest of the weekend was fairly boring. Not much happened at Dalton. Blaine had to spent more time rehearsing songs than ever, but then again, this was Sectionals, and he was the lead singer. He tried concentrating on his schoolwork, but that didn't always go according to plan. Luckily, now he could use the upcoming competition as an excuse, even though Sectionals was still a few weeks away.

On Tuesday, after Warblers practice, Blaine got a slightly worrying text from Kurt.

They found out.

Blaine frowned at the message. There was no explanation, no elaboration, nothing. Still, it was evident what 'they' had found out. He then tried calling Kurt, but he didn't pick up the phone. Blaine tried to reason with himself – if Kurt had texted him right after rehearsal, he was probably on his way home now. Of course he didn't answer his phone.

Instead, Blaine send him a text back.

If you want to talk about it, just call me.

From what he'd heard, Kurt's Glee club was much more dysfunctional than the Warblers, so there was a bigger chance at someone lashing out at Kurt for being friends with Blaine than the other way around. The Warblers seemed more rational; they talked about stuff. New Directions sounded like a club in which everybody just yelled and screamed and shouted without really listening to each other. Well, to each his own, Blaine supposed.

I'll tell you this Saturday, okay?

We could meet up for coffee now?

Now? By the time we're both there, it's dinner time

Blaine's mind reeled. That was true, and honestly, that was exactly what he'd hoped Kurt would point out. It was just too bad that he hadn't thought of something clever to say to that.

It'll be my treat.

Blaine had to physically restrain himself from not reading 'my treat' as 'like a date'. He wanted it to be a date, but he knew that that wasn't possible with Sectionals getting closer and closer. Besides, Kurt's friends had just found out about them knowing each other, and apparently, Kurt didn't want to tell him about their reactions over the phone. That meant they must be bad, right? So if Kurt were to announce that he was now dating Blaine, they would possibly come to Dalton and kill him.

Kurt didn't reply immediately, so Blaine assumed that he was either blocking Blaine from ever contacting him again, or (which was the much more preferred option) asking his father for permission to go out. When he did text back, Blaine was reading the message less than half a second after receiving it.

Why don't we eat first and then meet up at the Lima Bean? I'll be there as soon as possible.

Blaine tried to ignore the nagging voice in his heard that told him that see, Kurt didn't want to do couple-y things like that with him. Instead, he put up his happiest face (even though Kurt couldn't see him) as he texted back, and made to head down to dinner himself. He hoped that there was something eatable there already.

I'll meet you there :)

He was well aware that that seemed to be becoming his stock phrase for this type of situation lately, but Kurt wouldn't mind too much, or so Blaine hoped.

o-o-o-o-o

When Blaine arrived, Kurt wasn't there yet. As it was still around dinner time, the Lima Bean was practically deserted, so at least they'd have some sort of privacy. Deciding that, even though Kurt obviously didn't want him to buy dinner, he could still buy Kurt's coffee for him, Blaine went to stand in line. Right after he'd ordered, Kurt walked into the shop. As he made to queue up as well, Blaine waved him over.

"You already ordered?" Kurt sounded surprised.

Blaine shrugged. "Just because you didn't want to accept dinner from me, doesn't mean I won't keep trying to buy you stuff." Okay, that may have come out completely wrong.

Before he could attempt to save himself from more embarrassment, their coffees were ready. Blinking in surprise, Kurt took his cup and followed Blaine to a table away from other customers. "You know my coffee order?" he asked as they sat down.

Blaine smiled, feeling slightly uncomfortable. Had he blown his cover? "Of course I do," he simply said. It was true – why wouldn't he know Kurt's coffee order? In fact, he'd be shocked if Kurt didn't know his coffee order. They'd had coffee numerous times now, always ordering exactly the same things. That wasn't hard to remember, was it?

Taking a sip of his coffee, Kurt relaxed instantly. He smiled back at Blaine after that, so Blaine carefully assumed that Kurt was either still clueless or not minding Blaine's eagerness to learn everything about Kurt too much.

"So, how did they react?" Blaine asked after a minute of silence, during which they'd both just drunk their coffee.

Pulling a face, Kurt set his coffee back on the table and glanced down at his hands. He took a deep breath and said, "I'll just tell you from the beginning, alright?" Blaine nodded, and Kurt started narrating the story to him.

o-o-o-o-o

When Kurt heard that there was, in fact, a Glee rehearsal that day, he was surprised. After all, they'd all seen Mr Schuester leave rehearsal sick the day before.

Then again, maybe he'd only been sick for a day. Or perhaps some other teacher had agreed to sub for the time being. It was neither of those options, as it turned out – instead, Rachel had taken over the club and she was unbearable. When she realised that no one was giving her any solo ideas, she addressed a different matter – their competition at Sectionals.

"Kurt," she started, "Noah tells me the boys had you spy on the Warblers last week." Something flashed in her eyes that told Kurt to be careful – she wasn't saying some things. In the meantime, some of the other girls were staring at the boys as if they'd gone crazy.

"What were you thinking, sending Kurt there?" Mercedes demanded to know.

"Maybe he finally got some action there," Santana said, glancing at Kurt suggestively.

"It's not safe, going spying on your own," Tina backed up Mercedes.

"Dalton's much safer than McKinley," Kurt told the group. "Nothing happened to me there." None of them seemed to catch the hint. Sighing, he added, "I didn't spy on them."

Rachel nodded curtly and apparently, the rest of the Glee club had already expected that as well. "But you do have access to information about the Warblers, don't you?"

Kurt narrowed his eyes at her. "What are you talking about, Rachel?"

"Oh, don't play dumb," she snapped. "I have procured a list of names of current Warblers and with that, I searched the internet for any useful information. I never would've thought, but Facebook proved to be a very informative source. So would you care to explain why I found your name on the list of friends of a Warbler by the name of Blaine Anderson?"

For now, Kurt figured the best way to go was to continue acting oblivious. "Because we're friends, and I added him on Facebook," he replied as innocently as possible.

"You're friends with a Warbler?" Mercedes asked. "How did I not know about this?"

"He's obviously just friends with you because he wants information about our club," Rachel said confidently.

"Dude, you can't trust him!" Finn added.

"Wait," Quinn said suddenly, before anyone else could add their two cents and before the room would explode. Turning towards Kurt, she sent him the smallest of smiles. Kurt didn't know why she might be defending him, but he was grateful nonetheless. One ally, no matter who, was much better than none. "When and how did you meet him?"

Kurt allowed himself to relax a little – after all, he'd met Blaine a few weeks before their Sectionals competition had been announced. "Around the time we were doing Rocky Horror," he responded. "His car broke down right in front of my dad's shop. We fixed it, and afterwards, he asked if I wanted to go for coffee some time."

Santana's smile grew. "So you've been getting it on ever since?"

Kurt looked scandalised. "No, Santana. We haven't. We're just friends – I know how what happened the last time one of us tried dating a member of the competition."

"So he's gay too?" Rachel asked, ignoring the pointed look Kurt sent her. When Kurt nodded, she added, "Don't you think it's a little suspect that he, of all people, brought his car to your dad's garage?"

"What are you talking about, Rachel?" Kurt asked, now slowly growing suspect of her.

Rachel waved her hands exasperatedly. "It's obviously a ploy, Kurt, to get to you. It could've been anyone that day, but it was the gay Warbler. They've clearly done their research," she muttered in afterthought.

"His car was in desperate need of repair, though," Kurt countered. "And it certainly didn't look like he or his friends had just attempted to damage the car on purpose."

"Nobody knew that we were going to compete against the Warblers when we were doing Rocky Horror," Quinn reminded Rachel. "They had no reason at all to target Kurt at that point."

"It's still suspicious," Rachel muttered, crossing her arms. "Are you two still hanging out now?" she asked Kurt, sounding rather unhappy.

"Yes, we are," he replied somewhat forcefully. "Hardly anything about Glee club ever comes up."

"So you don't know anything about the Warblers?" Rachel asked with a slight pout.

Kurt shook his head. "No, I don't – just that they are very busy preparing for Sectionals, which is something we could learn from. We mainly talk about other stuff."

"Like?" Tina prodded.

Kurt huffed. "That is none of your business. All you need to know is that we're not dating, we met before we knew we'd be competing against each other, and we don't talk about our respective Glee clubs."

Some of his teammates shifted in their seats, clearly not completely down with that. Rachel's demeanour, however, appeared to have changed radically. "We just don't want to see you get hurt," she told him. "After what happened with Jesse – I don't want that to happen to you, Kurt. You don't seem as lonely anymore as you were a couple of weeks ago, but you need to be careful, you know?"

For the first time that day, she seemed to have said something the entire team agreed with. It was a little freaky but, Kurt found, very touching as well.

"Of course I'm careful," he assured them. "But Blaine wouldn't hurt a fly."

"Does Burt know about him?" Finn asked, seemingly in overprotective not-quite-stepbrother-yet mode all of a sudden.

"I just told you that I met Blaine when he brought his car to the shop," he reminded Finn. "Of course my dad knows." He was not going to tell his friends about last week's incident in the basement.

"We want to meet him, though," Quinn warned him.

The other Glee club members nodded in agreement. "You may be safe, but we'll be the judge if he's good for you," Mercedes added.

Even Puck nodded, though he was cracking his knuckles at the same time. "We'll have to have a little… talk with him at Sectionals."

Kurt groaned. Yes, his friends had actually reacted quite well (mainly because of Quinn's intervention, but still) to the news of him hanging out with Blaine, but now he had to find a way to keep them from completely intimidating his friend at the upcoming competition.

o-o-o-o-o

"You know, when you told me about your friends, I expected them to react worse than that," Blaine commented. Not that he wasn't relieved that Kurt's friends didn't immediately hate him, of course. But he'd still have to watch his back at Sectionals.

"So did I, which is why I wanted to tell you I person anyway," Kurt admitted. "I think it helped that we met before the real competition season started."

"And everyone seems to like you, as opposed to Rachel," Blaine added with a slight smile.

Kurt nodded earnestly. "That's so very true. Quinn never would've stuck up for Rachel like that. Of course, I'm shocked that she helped me, but…"

"You never really got along?" Blaine asked, wrecking his brain in an attempt to remember everything Kurt had told him about the head cheerleader who'd been pregnant the year before. Oh right, those were the most memorable facts about the girl.

Kurt shrugged. "She's the head cheerleader. Before Glee, she never really had a reason to interact with me, and she preferred not to even during her first few months in the club. At the end of last school year, she moved in with Mercedes' family for a while, so that was a time we hung out more. She's nice, but she's just a little too concerned about her popularity."

Blaine nodded, taking it all in. Quinn sounded a lot like Nick's girlfriend Amanda, but even more extreme.

"Sorry I couldn't make it to dinner, by the way," Kurt apologised. "My dad insisted that I taught him how to properly prepare chicken."

"And?" Blaine urged him on, knowing from earlier stories that Kurt's dad couldn't cook to save his life.

Rolling his eyes good-naturedly, Kurt continued. "I made him watch while I did everything. Do you really think I'd let him do all that damage to the kitchen? It was much safer this way. Maybe I'll let him help next time."

Blaine chuckled. "Reminds me of the first time I tried to make an omelette." Seeing Kurt's judging look, he added, "Don't ask. I don't know what I was thinking anyway, using the largest pan my mum had and adding rainbow coloured sprinkles."

"I bet that was when your parents first had a feeling you might be gay," Kurt deadpanned.

"Who knows," Blaine muttered. "Either way, there are still black spots on the ceiling from that particular incident."

"I don't even want to know," Kurt told him, shaking his head.

"Do you want some more coffee?" Blaine asked, trying to steer the conversation away from his own embarrassing childhood memories.

Kurt shook his head. "No, thanks. I think I should get going soon. My dad told me not to stay out too late. Apparently, it's going to pour later."

Blaine frowned. He hated driving in the rain. "Are you still staying safe, by the way?" he asked before thinking it through. When Kurt just looked confused, he added, "I mean, with the bullying. It's not getting out of hand? Is he laying off of you already?"

"I wish," Kurt muttered. "But no. It's getting worse – he shoves me into lockers every time he sees me in a corridor, and he just… threatens me whenever I talk back."

"He threatens you?" Blaine asked, alarmed. "How? Kurt – it's not safe there for you, one of these days, he's – "

"I know," Kurt said softly. "I know it's not. But I'm fine, alright? I get by. I have friends at McKinley, and I have you – I'm not completely alone. And his threats – well, they're mostly about punching me."

Though Kurt tried to act indifferently, Blaine knew it was getting to him. But he also knew that Kurt didn't want him to feel sorry for him. "Just be safe," he therefore told him urgently. "And if there's anything at all, no matter what the time, call me."

Kurt nodded dutifully. "And what about your dad, Blaine?"

Knowing fully well that Kurt was mainly doing this in an attempt to not seem like the weak and helpless one in their friendship (which was definitely not how Blaine perceived him), Blaine shrugged. "I haven't been home for some weeks now. I spoke to my mum on the phone last week, but that's always rather superficial. I think they're at the other side of the country now. I can't bring myself to care a whole lot, to be honest."

"You know you're always welcome at our house, right?" Kurt asked. "So don't hesitate to stop by every now and then. I think my dad's taken a liking in you. He won't mind."

Filing that information away for later, Blaine smiled. "Thanks. I'll keep it in mind." He glanced out of the window. "It's getting dark. Do you want to go?"

"Yeah," Kurt responded, looking outside as well. "Let's go."