There was no reason to be upset, Kurt told himself. He was rocking lightly back and forth on the bathroom floor, somewhat uncurled from the fetal position he'd collapsed into but still with his arms around his knees. He wiped his face with the back of one hand and tried to slow his breathing down.

No reason to be upset at all. Nothing bad had happened to him. He hadn't been forced into anything. He'd consented every single step of the way. Asked for it, even. He'd gotten really into it, more than he'd expected. And he hadn't been physically hurt. In fact, quite the opposite. It had felt fantastically pleasurable. Blaine had been sweet and lovely and hot. Everything was good.

So why was he crying on the floor of the bathroom?

This was ridiculous, he told himself. He forced himself to stand up, walked over to the sink, splashed some water on his face. Another deep breath, and he looked at himself in the mirror. Red and splotchy from crying, tear streaks down his face, his hair mussed ... pretty much what he expected to see. Nothing horrible. A somewhat messy version of himself.

Kurt stared into his eyes in the mirror. He looked the same on the outside, but who was he on the inside? Someone who has sex with strangers? Someone who lets his instincts control him? Someone who gave up on the whole idea of waiting for love?

He looked the same, but he didn't even recognize himself anymore.

He cleaned himself up the best he could, washing his face until his skin tone was even again, running his fingers through his hair over and over again. He wanted a shower, but that was impossible until he got home. He sighed, then took one last look at himself in the mirror and left the bathroom.

All conversation stopped when Kurt walked back into the New Directions green room. Brittany smiled at him happily. "That must have been a really interesting conversation! You were out in the hallway for a long time!"

Kurt ignored her and walked to a chair. Puck held up his fist to bump, a sly grin on his face, but Kurt walked straight past without acknowledging him. He lowered himself carefully to the chair, trying to maintain whatever shreds of dignity he might have left.

Santana smirked at him. "Pretty sure you did it wrong. It's the other guy who's supposed to not be able to sit down."

"You do not want to be on my shit list, Santana," Kurt shot back. He really was not in the mood for any of this teasing. He knew they were just trying to be friendly, but he didn't want to talk to anybody right now.

"You're on my shit list, Kurt," Rachel said angrily. "Do you know the judges are letting the Warblers go back on stage and finish their set list? But we don't get another chance to perform. If they win and I don't get into the performing arts college of my choice, I will never forgive you."

"Not everything is about you, Rachel," he spat at her. Good god, why wouldn't everyone just leave him alone?

The lights flashed off and back on. "Okay, everyone, back to the auditorium," Mr. Schue said. "We will be polite and we will support all the other groups. If we win this thing, it will be because we were the best, fair and square."

Kurt sat on the aisle, next to Brittany. She was the only one who seemed not to know what had happened, and Kurt didn't feel like he could deal with sitting next to anyone else.

The curtain went up, and he was stunned to see Blaine standing with the Warblers on stage. How could he possibly be up there singing after everything that had happened?

He was even more stunned when Blaine stepped forward for another solo. How had Blaine recovered so quickly? How did he have the strength to stand on that stage in front of this huge crowd of people, who must know what he'd been doing after he'd collapsed earlier, and backed up by his friends who certainly knew what he'd been doing? How was he not as wrecked as Kurt was, or even more so?

He sounded beautiful.

Lost sight,
Couldn't see
When it was you and me.

The emotion flowing through Blaine's voice was palpable. The words pierced straight through Kurt's heart, and he felt even weaker than before.

One day
You will wake up
With nothing but 'you're sorrys.'
And someday,
You will get back
Everything you gave me.

Most of the crowd was on its feet, swaying from side to side together, but Kurt felt like he was glued to his chair.

Blow the candles out
Looks like a solo tonight
But I think I'll be all right.

When the roar of applause died down, Kurt heard Rachel hissing to Finn, "They're going to win on the sympathy vote alone."

------------------------------------------

Blaine had sung his heart out. When the council had chosen that song and given the solo to him, he'd had no idea it would seem so topical when it actually came down to performing it. Surrounded by all his friends, he'd never felt so alone. He was physically healed, but emotionally, he was a wreck.

This was not how he'd imagined his first time. A stranger. An emergency. All his friends waiting outside the room, knowing exactly what was going on. Not to mention the packed auditorium full of people watching him before and after. It was mortifying. But even without the embarrassment, without the performance fiasco, Blaine's mind kept circling back around to that other part. A stranger.

He was a hopeless romantic, he knew that. Hardly any submissives were in love their first time. Still, he never thought he had it in him to have sex with a complete stranger. But it was over now. It was done. So Blaine put on his performance face and stood up in front of the audience and sang the solo he'd practiced a hundred times but had never really felt until today.

The Warblers made the top three, as they had every single year at Sectionals since the disastrous decision in 1969 to perform "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" wearing nothing but their Dalton blazers.

Blaine let Wes direct him to the front row of their group on stage and stood quietly, hands folded in front of him, wishing he were anywhere else. He looked over to the New Directions standing to his right. Kurt was there, in the second row on the side farthest from him. He was staring straight ahead. Blaine couldn't catch his eye. Kurt didn't move an inch, not even when New Directions was announced as the winner and the rest of the group jumped up and down and hugged each other in excitement.

The groups began to mill around after the announcements were done. Kurt darted for the wings and Blaine, without really thinking it through, ran after him.

"Kurt?" he called out.

Kurt stopped and turned around. He looked smaller than he'd seemed before, Blaine thought. Less confident. His eyes no longer had the mesmerizing focus that had almost compelled Blaine to obey him. They seemed ... sad.

Blaine took the last few steps to catch up with him. "You left," he said.

Kurt looked down for a moment, then met Blaine's eyes again. "Your friends were there ... I didn't want to intrude."

"You didn't ... you weren't ... I ..." Blaine stopped. He had no idea what he was supposed to say. He didn't even have much idea what he wanted to say.

"I'm glad to see you're feeling better," Kurt said. "Your solo was amazing. Both of them, actually. You're very talented." Kurt's eyes widened and his face turned red all of a sudden, and Blaine wondered why before the idea of a double meaning for 'talented' hit him.

Blaine felt his cheeks heating up, too. "Thank you," he stammered. "And congratulations. I mean, on winning. The competition." Could this possibly get any more embarrassing?

Kurt's tongue darted out to lick his lips. It looked like a nervous tic, Blaine thought. "I hardly did anything," Kurt said.

"You did everything," Blaine said.

Kurt looked up at him, almost smiling. He opened his mouth to say something.

"Kurt?" a girl called out. "We're heading down to the bus. Are you ready to go?"

"Yeah," Kurt said, turning to look at her. "Yeah, I'm coming." He seemed unsure, looking back over his shoulder as he walked away, but Blaine couldn't narrow his thoughts into a coherent thing to say.

------------------------------------------

"Hi Mom! I'll help you get dinner ready!" Finn said much too brightly when he and Kurt entered the house.

"That's very nice of you, Finn, but everything is already finished," Carole said from the kitchen.

Finn strode purposefully to join her there. "Surely there is something very time-consuming that we could still do!"

Kurt groaned inwardly. His stepbrother was the most unsubtle person in the universe. As much as he needed his father's advice, this was going to be the most awkward conversation ever.

"Kurt? Something wrong?" Burt asked from the couch. He turned to look at Kurt, then grabbed the remote control and turned off the TV. "What happened? Are you hurt? Did someone call you names or ... or hit you or something?"

"No, Dad, nothing like that. Let's just say, I found out I'm definitely a dom." Kurt sat down across the couch from him.

Burt raised an eyebrow. "You found that out at a show choir competition? What did you do, try to order the judges to hand you the win?"

Kurt must have looked as miserable as he felt, because after a few seconds, Burt said, "Oh god, you didn't ... at a show choir competition?"

"Please, don't be mad at me. The whole thing is just so ... overwhelming. I couldn't deal with you being mad at me on top of everything. You'll probably be disappointed in me, but just don't be mad."

"Why don't you tell me what happened, and I'll do the best I can to be understanding. How's that?"

Kurt supposed that promising not to be angry was generally futile anyway. "There was a boy in one of the other groups. He collapsed on stage during their performance. He was ... he was sick. You know. A sub. He'd been hiding it for days. His friends ... they came and found me because they figured I was gay. Because he was, too, and there was nobody else they knew of. They wanted me to ... they wanted me to dom him. I could have said no. I should have, I guess. But I ... I went. I did it. I just wanted so badly to help him, it seemed like ... it seemed so important at the time. I'm sorry, Dad, I know we talked about not throwing myself around and how it means something and everything, and I believed you, I agreed with you, and then I just ... with a stranger. With someone I'd never met before and probably won't ever see again. I never thought I'd do something like that, but ... somehow I did."

His father looked stunned.

"Please say something," Kurt said, fiddling with the seam on a couch pillow.

"Kurt, I'm ... I'm not mad. I'm not disappointed, either. There's no reason you need to apologize to me about this. I'm concerned about you, because you sound really upset. But Kurt, I'm proud of you."

Kurt looked up, startled. "You ... what?"

"I'm proud of you, son. You stepped up when there was nobody else to help out, and you saved that boy. That was really brave of you. I don't think I could have done something like that, for my first time. With no warning, no preparation, no time to even think about it. That's not an easy thing to do."

Kurt was blushing. What kind of insane world was this where his father was essentially praising him for having sex? "Dad, I ... thank you, but I ... it was very ... unsettling. Afterwards. And during. I had all these feelings, urges, and ... I kept saying things, I didn't know where they came from, these words just came out of my mouth and ... it was like it wasn't even me."

"That's your dom instincts, Kurt. That's kind of how it works. You get used to it over time, learn to control it better. But at first, yes, it does seem to come out of nowhere."

"I guess, but ... I don't know. I just never thought it would be like this. I wanted it to be romantic and special and loving, not ... this."

Burt sighed. "I know, Kurt. The whole situation is pretty crappy. But you know, just because you did this once doesn't mean you have to do it again. I mean, someday ... when you're ready, when you're in love with someone. But you can wait until then. You don't have to go sleeping around just because you did it once. You can wait as long as you like."

Kurt nodded. "That's true. I hadn't really thought about ... but you're right. This doesn't have to count, if I don't want it to, does it?"

"Course not." His father looked at him intently. "You gonna be okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I'm going upstairs for a bit, shower and rest and think through some stuff. Don't wait dinner on me, I'll come eat something later."

Burt nodded and clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm here, if you need to talk."

Kurt took a deep breath and stood up.

"The other boy, Kurt?" his father asked hesitantly. "He's okay?"

Kurt nodded. "Yeah, I talked to him after the competition was over, for a minute. He seemed ... yeah."

"I really am proud of you, Kurt. You're a good man."

"Thanks, Dad."

------------------------------------------

Blaine was lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He felt so empty. There should be feelings, shouldn't there? He should feel ... well, if he'd had sex with someone who was actually his boyfriend, he'd feel loved and protected and cherished, wouldn't he? He hoped so. How was he supposed to feel after having sex with someone he didn't even know? Should he feel violated? Used? Normal?

He didn't feel any of those things. He didn't feel anything at all. Maybe he was in shock. Maybe he'd feel something later, after he'd had time to think about it.

Someone knocked on his door. "Come in," he called out without moving.

Trent entered, balancing a tray of food precariously in one hand as he held the door with the other. "You didn't come down to dinner. I brought you some food. Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah. Thank you. I'm just ... I don't know." Blaine sat up. "Come on in, you can set that down on the desk. I'm not really hungry, but I might be later."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Trent asked. "We've always been friends. It doesn't make any difference to me that you're gay. If you want to talk about it, or anything, I'm here."

Blaine laughed a little, bitterly. "It's not that. I'm not conflicted about being gay or anything like that. Thanks, though. I appreciate your ... um ... support?"

"What's upsetting you, then?" Trent perched on the desk chair, facing toward the bed.

"It's stupid," Blaine said. "I'm being stupid. I always hoped that I'd fall in love first. That my first time would be something special. I know that's not how the world works, most of the time. I had this romantic ideal in my head, and I let it blind me to reality. I let it make everything worse than it had to be."

"Stupid Disney movies giving us unrealistic expectations," Trent said, laughing a little. "Shy little sub gets swept off his feet by courageous, beautiful dom, and they live happily ever after. They tend to skip over the sex part, though."

"Real life is not like a Disney movie. Imagine that." Blaine laughed with Trent. He was glad someone understood.

"It is what it is," Trent said with a shrug. "Sex is necessary, when you're a sub. You just do it. Love is optional. It comes later. It's not like I'm in love with Angela. We have an arrangement. She doms a couple of other guys, too. Someday, hopefully, we'll each fall in love with someone and move on. But for now, it works."

"Yeah," Blaine said. He sighed. It was so unromantic, but Trent was right, that's the way real life was. "I guess I need to find someone like that. He made me promise. Kurt did. That I'd find someone for next time, before I get sick like that again."

"He seems like a really nice guy."

"Yeah," Blaine said. "He does."

After Blaine managed to convince Trent that he just needed some time to rest, he got up and turned on his computer. He opened up Facebook and typed in Kurt Hummel. It was easy to find him. He knew the name of his high school, and the profile picture of him was unmistakable. He could see a lot more of Kurt's profile than he expected. Maybe they had a friend in common, one of the neighborhood kids from his parents' house in Lima or something. Probably most of the kids he'd played with as a child went to McKinley, now that he thought of it.

Noah Puckerman posted on Kurt Hummel's Timeline 25 minutes ago: You need to change your orientation in the info box. 'Unknown' is not fooling anyone.

Santana Lopez likes this.

Kurt Hummel: Go fuck yourself, Puckerman.

Noah Puckerman likes this.

Blaine grinned to himself and clicked on Kurt's photos. There were a lot of pictures of him with his show choir friends. One eye-popping picture of Kurt in a unitard, doing some kind of dance backed up by two girls in leotards. Blaine surreptitiously saved it on his hard drive, then kept scrolling. Something that looked like a family event. Tickets to Wicked from when the tour had been through Columbus.

He clicked over to see Kurt's liked pages. A lot of Broadway things. Fashion stuff. Jersey Shore. Blaine giggled. It was one of his guilty pleasures, too.

He considered adding Kurt as a friend, but it seemed too presumptuous and stalkerish. Not that looking through his profile in detail without saying anything wasn't stalkerish, too. He clicked back on the Timeline. There was a new update.

Kurt Hummel changed his Orientation to Dominant.

Noah Puckerman, Santana Lopez, and 12 others like this.

Before Blaine could talk himself out of it, he clicked the Like button. Within seconds, a new notification popped up on his screen.

Kurt Hummel added you as a friend. Confirm or ignore?

With a huge smile on his face, Blaine clicked Confirm.