__________________________

They’re sitting together in Blaine’s tiny living room, wearing the neon purple party hats that Rachel had insisted they buy to add to the ‘birthday experience’. Blaine had spent a good half hour trying to convince her that blue or green or even pink hats would give the same effect, but Rachel would have none of it, insisting that this particular shade of pink had a festive quality that no other colors could compete with. Blaine did manage to talk her out of the matching streamers and balloons though, so overall, he’s counting it as a win.

It’s a quarter past two in the morning and the rest of Blaine’s friends have already left; Blaine is starting to wish that Rachel will follow their example. Granted, Rachel is his sister, and she had been the one to pick up the phone and actually invite everyone so maybe she’s earned the right to be lazy, but Blaine just wants to curl up in bed with his cat and get some rest before he has to get up and let school kick his ass for five hours straight.

Of course, it’s not that many people had come to the party anyway. Sure, Blaine has friends. It could be argued that he has lots of friends, actually, but most of them have girlfriends or boyfriends or work. Most of them have other, more important things to occupy their time than a silly birthday party for that overly-polite dude they hang out with from time to time when everyone else is busy. Blaine gets that, he does. He’s not envious or anything. And, you know, he has Rachel.

Between his job, school and visits from Rachel and occasionally their dads, Blaine considers his life to be pretty full of things that make him happy and people who love him. He developed a bad habit of keeping most people at a safe distance over the course of his teenage years, having grown up in a household where his only sibling existed solely underneath her own personal spotlight and his fathers often worked late hours, staying out of town on weekends (being partners in life and a law firm was an interesting arrangement, to say the least). He got used to being alone most of time and spending long afternoons either rehearsing with New Directions or studying in the library. Looking back, Blaine supposes that the reason he still has problems dealing with other people and keeping functioning relationships is directly related to those facts.

But now that the excitement of his big party is filtering away and Blaine is still reeling from the sheer volume of people he just had milling about his apartment; for while there weren’t a lot of them, Blaine’s apartment is barely big enough for him most days. Rachel had invited their usual group (Santana, Brittany, Finn, Sam, Artie and Quinn) and she had also dragged around a curvy, dark-skinned woman that Blaine didn’t recognize, introducing her to various people throughout the night with an over-exaggerated flourish, as if trying to sell a car. It was mostly a blur for Blaine, who spent a good chunk of his party making sure nothing caught on fire like his drapes had when Rachel decided to buy him a set of fire-batons for his 19th birthday.

Blaine sighs and collects an armful of empty cups from the table in front of them. He glances at Rachel and raises an eyebrow, a silent question for help. She looks up at him with big eyes and yawns, exaggerating her expressions in the hope of gaining pity.

“That face hasn’t worked on me since I started middle school, Rachel.”

He ignores any responding shock that might show on her face and heads for the kitchen, arms full with sloshing beverages, and sets them on the counter. It’s not until after Blaine gets settled back on the couch that Rachel glances in his direction again, this time with a mischievous glint in her eye.

“Blaine, my darling brother, you might have noticed that I have yet to give you my present. As you know, it’s a custom in our family to save the best for last,” Rachel states with a huge grin, fishing around in the pocket of her garish plaid cardigan and pulling out a neat, cream-colored envelope.

At the sound of rustling paper Blaine’s cat, Puzzle, wanders lazily from behind the couch to circle around Rachel’s left foot and rest his head against the cool leather of her Mary Jane. The armchair creaks in protest as she leans forward to hand the envelope to Blaine and Puzzle jumps a little, surprised at the noise and movement.

Blaine tears into the envelope with a large grin, hoping that it holds a check to help him with his rent or maybe a gift card for that new book store downtown, but as he gets the envelope open and peers inside, he can’t do much but stare blankly at what he finds.

“So, how much do you love it?” Rachel asks, leaning forward eagerly and clapping her hands together.

Blaine doesn’t answer. Instead, he pulls a dark purple card out of the remnants of paper and reads the words printed neatly across it.

‘D.A.N.C.E Studios would like to present you with half a season of free lessons in the dance style of your choice with one of our professional dance instructors.’

Underneath the printed text is a dotted line on which someone has already written ‘swing’ in large, neat script. In Sharpie.

“Rachel. Rachel, these are dance lessons,” Blaine says, looking up from the card in his hands and frowning at Rachel’s excited expression.

“I know, aren’t they perfect?” she exclaims. Blaine doesn’t answer, just stares, so Rachel continues to talk.

“You haven’t gotten out of the house for anything other than work or class in forever Blaine, and with these lessons you can make new friends, meet cute boys and learn how to make your hips do something besides look awkward in normal-length jeans!” Rachel’s explanation comes out in one breath, obviously too excited to bother pausing between thoughts.

“Rachel, I don’t leave my apartment because I don’t want to make new friends or meet cute boys,” Blaine protests, glaring at Rachel from across the room and ignoring her thinly-veiled insults.

“Listen, I know you had it sort of rough as a kid with me always around to steal your thunder, and your people skills are pretty much non-existent,” Rachel says, flopping back against his chair once more, “but that’s not an excuse to miss out on really living, now that you have the chance. It’ll be worth it, I promise.”

Blaine doesn’t trust himself to respond to that so he just nods, reading the name of the recommended instructor at the bottom. ‘Kurt Hummel: swing, ballroom, hip-hop. Blaine glances up at Rachel, who is attempting to coax Puzzle away from nuzzling the straps of her shoe and up onto her lap. Blaine sighs. Kurt Hummel. Sounds harmless enough.

������_________________________������

Blaine soon learns that scheduling his classes at the West Lima Community College and his shifts set-designing at the theater around his new dance classes is easier than he had been expecting. His professors seem almost as delighted as Rachel to hear that he’s branching out a little, and his director launched into a story about how she’s started taking ballroom dance lessons at the same studio with her fianc� (a tale that ended taking up half of rehearsal, much to Blaine’s amusement). Rachel and her (sometimes) boyfriend Finn even volunteer to take Blaine shopping for work-out clothes (well, Rachel volunteers with the clear intent of dragging Finn along). Blaine kindly declines.

Throughout the week, various friends call to wish him luck with the lessons and Blaine starts to wonder how other people see him. Do they really see him as someone so shy that he can’t leave his apartment to take stupid lessons for a few weeks? It’s not like Blaine is some sort of hermit who sits in his apartment alone, does his school work and lets the days pass without much notice (although Blaine has to admit that maybe he would be if it weren’t for Rachel coming by to make sure he’s still breathing). He has Friday’s at Tina’s apartment with Quinn and Artie, movie nights with Rachel and even nights out at the clubs with Santana and Brittany from time to time, nursing a Coke while they heat up the dance floor. He has every opportunity for a healthy social life. He’s just. Careful. He’s a little introverted, a little quiet. A little emotionally stunted. Honestly, sometimes he’s still amazed that anyone has stuck with him for this long. Asking for more just feels selfish.

As far as relationships go, Blaine had one actual boyfriend his senior year of high school, a quiet boy named James who had clear green eyes and a winning smile. Blaine cared about him, of course, but he also knew from the start that it was a relationship of convenience, born from being each other’s only option. Now Blaine thinks his lack of experience in the romance department only makes himself make less sense. He’s never had a terrible, awful failed relationship. He’s never had a guy cheat on him or leave him for another man or treat him badly. Blaine’s talked to a few guys since he and James broke up towards the end of their senior year, but Blaine has always been the one to duck out when things start getting too serious or too rough.

Somehow, he has a feeling that swing dancing won’t be any different.

���_______________________�__
��

The night before his first lesson, which happens to fall on a Tuesday, Blaine is curled comfortably on his couch with Puzzle dozing on his lap, TV humming quietly in the background.

It was an exhausting morning of class (two tests: one in History from 1877 and one in Trig) and a long night at work trying to push down the longing he’s been harboring to be back on stage. He’s more of a singer than an actor, Rachel’s triple-threat genes wonderfully missing from his own. Right now he’s trying to work on his research paper for Honor’s Composition II (something about Margaret Atwood and maybe feminism; he’s not really sure), but he keeps getting distracted by texts from Sebastian.

From: Sebastian
Dance lessons? Really?

Blaine chuckles a little, smiling at the text and typing a quick reply.

To: Sebastian
Yeah, well you know how Rachel is.

Sebastian sends a sad face in return and the sentiment makes his heart do a lackluster flip, but Blaine doesn’t bother replying, just turns his phone off and settles back against the couch. Admittedly, he’s a little nervous about the next morning. The people he’s going to be taking this class with probably go to the gym a few times a week, jog in the afternoons and take all their vitamins. And while Blaine is quite thin and relatively fit, he also sits on his ass and eats potato chips. Besides the boxing from high school, his trim figure is really nothing but a stroke of metabolic luck and while he wouldn’t usually consider dancing to be a tough work-out, he checked out the studio’s website earlier and knows that the first twenty minutes of each lesson consist of a fair amount of stretching and light cardio. Blaine also decided to look up videos of swing dancing on YouTube and the ones he found scared the shit out of him. He’s heard of swing dancing, but he wasn’t prepared for the clips of well-toned men tossing dance partners every which way, lifting them in the air and twirling them around.

After a year without using them for anything more than grabbing boxes of cereal from the top shelf in his pantry, Blaine can barely carry around his five pound cat without the muscles in his arms burning in protest.

Blaine digs between couch cushions for the remote and turns the TV off. It’s late and he’s thinking too hard to get anything done, so he saves his paper and shuts his laptop, setting it carefully on his coffee table and snuggling back into the blanket wrapped haphazardly around him. Puzzle mewls at this and nudges his nose against Blaine’s fingers, slipping a warm paw underneath his hand. Blaine smiles and closes his eyes, yawning quietly and letting the fuzzy edges of sleep take over.

_________________________

Even with the alarm on his Blackberry set to go off every ten minute, Blaine still manages to wake up half an hour late the next morning. He stumbles into the shower and gets shampoo in his eyes, stubs the big toe on his right foot on his fridge and steps on Puzzle’s tail while trying to plug in the toaster. Giving up, he scrambles around his small apartment with a cold bagel in one hand and a sneaker in the other, clumsily getting dressed and making his way out the door. It isn’t until he’s five blocks down the road that he realizes he left his jacket at home, but Lima is pretty warm in early autumn and the breeze is doing wonders for his still sleep-muddled brain.

The decision to stay in Ohio had been an easy one for Blaine. His fathers were quick to offer him a home with them for as long as he wanted and Rachel was all set to take New York by storm, so Blaine declined his fathers’ offer and wished Rachel good luck. When her plans for the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts fell through, she ended up working for a theater in Columbus. “I’m still acting and gracing the lives of others with my voice,” she often tells Blaine, and he wonders if she’s trying to reassure herself more than him. Blaine moved out of his father’s home and found a small apartment in West Lima, a few minutes walk away from both work and school (and, conveniently, the dance studio).

The streets are calm at nine o’clock in the morning in the Eastern downtown area that Blaine lives in. All around his apartment building are tiny coffee shops and restaurants, tattoo parlors and record stores, all of which contain bleary workers who mill about the shops, setting things up for the day. Even this early, everyone that Blaine passes by sends him a smile and, occasionally, a wave. It’s comforting. West Lima is so wildly different from the other side of town that it sometimes throws him for a loop, even now that he’s lived there for just over a year. No matter where he goes there’s music playing from some window or winding lazily from a pair of headphones and he feels safe here, home.

Despite his rushed morning and anxiety over actually going to class, Blaine focuses on the breeze and lets his shoulders relax. He can do this.
_________________________

D.A.N.C.E Studios is located off Main Street, right next to Mid City Grill, a tiny music bar that already has people signing up on the clipboard duct-taped to the door for the upcoming Open Mic Night. Blaine catches sight of the tiny studio building that houses his dance class and tenses up again, hesitating briefly before working up the nerve to actually go inside.

He ends up loitering around the front of the building for a few minutes, reading handfuls of old fliers advertising specials on lessons and shows by local bands at Mid City before actually getting the guts to push the door open. With all the procrastinating, Blaine walks through the double doors of the small studio at just after 9:30, miraculously on time for his 9:45 lesson. Frazzled and tightly would with nerves, he walks hastily to the front desk, hoping that he doesn't look as sweaty and rushed as he feels. The short, dark woman behind said desk looks up at him with a familiar sort of amusement in her eyes.

"Can I help you?" she asks.

"Um, yes. I'm, uh. I'm looking for Kurt Hummel's classroom?" Blaine states, but the slight lift on the last word makes it sound more like a question and he takes a moment to hate himself a little.

The amused glint in the secretary's eyes turns into something more mischievous, a little darker at the mention of Blaine's instructor. Blaine rolls his eyes, and whatever wheels were turning in the secretary’s mind pause for a moment so she can say, "Yeah, it's down the hallway to your left. Second door on the right."

Blaine nods, says, "Huh, like in Peter Pan," and smiles at her before heading toward the left hallway.

The woman behind the counter, also known as Mercedes Jones, watches him go with an excited smile and pulls out her cell phone to send a quick message.

To: Kurt Hummel
Your class is gonna be a good one today. try not to get distracted ;D

_________________________
Kurt Hummel's phone vibrates in his hand and he jumps, startled. He had been watching the days' students as they walked through the door and had, for a moment, forgotten that he was actually holding it. He slides a finger across the screen of his phone to unlock it and reads the awaiting text with a small frown.

To: Mercedes Jones
I’m sorry, distracted by what?

He’s about to toss the phone into his dance bag but it vibrates again before the device leaves his hand.

From: Mercedes Jones
haha, you'll see =]

Kurt raises his eyebrow but turns the phone off instead of bothering to reply. Mercedes has always had a way of being alarmingly creepy and vague when she wants to be. He drops the phone into his gym bag by his feet and focuses once more on the half-full classroom. It's a bigger class than he’s used to, with at least ten new people, and though he’s sure at least half of them will leave class today and not bother to come back, he needs to pay attention to them instead of his best friend's cryptic text messages.

��_________________________��

Blaine speed-walks down the hallway, glancing into each door that’s been left open a crack to see room after room of lithe, graceful dancers. Somehow his already shot nerves have multiplied and he pauses in front of the sturdy-looking door that is, according to the small sign with his name on it (that may or may not actually be bedazzled), Kurt Hummel’s. He takes a deep breath to try and calm himself and pushes the door open. Though he knows from the studio’s website that Kurt is one of the more popular instructors, he isn't expecting it to be so crowded.

There are a good fifteen or twenty people standing in small groups spread out across the entire room, making small talk and doing stretches. All around him, the mirrored walls reflect the bodies of these strangers, and Blaine suddenly feels small and a little out of place. He notices that most people are either barefoot or wearing thin jazz shoes and Blaine slips is own sneakers and socks off, hoping no one notices. As he makes his way to the back of the room, his nerves hit an all-time high, making him want to turn around and go back home to cuddle with his cat and maybe get a few more hours of sleep. But before he can work up the nerve to turn around and walk back out the door, a loud, clear voice stops him in his tracks.

"Alright ladies and gentlemen, it is now 9:55, and we are officially ten minutes late getting started,” the voice says. It's sharp and happy, bouncing around the room and tackling Blaine's ears, grabbing his attention.

Blaine drops his duffel bag and looks toward the front of the room. From the corner of his eye, he sees that most of the other students have moved to either side of the room but his focus is on the man at the very front end of it, standing in front of a small table.

Blinking slowly, Blaine takes in the man's tight jazz pants and matching t-shirt, his smooth brown hair and knowing smile. Blaine wasn’t sure what kind of guy he had been expecting (maybe some strange cross between Tony Little and Richard Simmons), but the man standing before him definitely isn’t it. Blaine gulps and drops his gaze to his own bare feet.

"To make up for that, we're going to skip introductions, just this once, and move straight into warming up," Kurt says, continuing his small speech as he smiles brightly at the room, bouncing a little on his heels.

"Let's get into rows of five or so, okay?" he instructs, clapping his hands together and nodding in approval as his class does so, moving seamlessly into a handful of uneven rows.

Blaine glances at Kurt, smiling a little at how excited he seems to be. Then he looks around the room to try and take in the people he'll be stuck dancing with for the next six weeks and he frowns. He isn't exactly feeling awkward. Blaine does know how to handle himself around strangers without making a fool of himself, a skill honed across years of Glee club performances and school plays. It's just that these strangers are physically fit and wearing tight clothing that accentuates their toned bodies. Blaine glances down at his own baggy sweatpants and the over-sized t-shirt Finn left at his apartment months ago. He frowns, feeling inadequate and misplaced.

His cellphone buzzes in his pocket, and he fishes it out, opening the waiting text.

From: Rachel
Shake it, baby bro!

Blaine rolls his eyes.

Worst sister ever.

_________________________

Kurt takes a quick inventory of his students, glancing at each of them in turn. There are the regulars: Mike and Puck with their partners. But there are also a bunch of very well-toned men and women that Kurt doesn’t recognize at all. He’s on the second year of his internship, and was told when he got accepted to never expect more than five or so dancers in his swing classes; it’s not one of the more popular styles they offer lessons in. He suspects that most of these people have this confused with his 11:45am class, which has always been wildly popular. Still, Kurt welcomes the chance to lead a group this large and he talks everyone through the normal stretches and warm-ups before making an announcement.

“Hey, everyone, just to clear things up, this is the swing dancing class. My hip-hop class starts in an hour and a half,” he says, smiling at everyone and chuckling a little at the confusion that’s written across quite a few faces.

No less than ten people grab their bags and exit the room, leaving Kurt with his usual boys and their female partners that he doesn’t really keep track of and one new boy that he sees standing towards the back of the room, staring at the ground. Dark hair, loosely gelled and lean, strong arms.

Suddenly, Mercedes’ text makes a lot more sense.

��_________________________��

Once the majority of the people have left, Blaine only feels even more self-conscious, which he honestly didn’t think was possible. Sure, there are less people to be compared to, which is a relief, but these people must do this kind of dancing or whatever all the time. They must actually be good. The two other boys in the room are talking and laughing while two girls, who he assumes are their partners, put their hair up and stretch a little, making small talk between themselves.

They all seem to have such obvious and comfortable friendships with each other that envy flares hot in Blaine’s stomach for a moment. His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he grabs at it, smiling when he sees a single heart from Rachel. As frustrating as she can be, Blaine has to admit that she isn’t always the worst sibling he could have.

The small bit of encouragement makes Blaine feel a little bolder, and he grabs his bag, walking forward to join the other boys in the class.

“Um, hi guys,” he says, raising his hand slowly and giving a staccato wave.

Whatever conversation was going on between the boys stops dead, and they turn to look at him. Blaine blushes a little and looks down.

“Huh, I didn’t think they were allowed to let Hobbits out of the Shire,” one of them says. Blaine looks up and is startled slightly by a guy that’s wearing baggy sweatpants and a t-shirt, his hair styled in a messy mohawk. Blaine furrows his eyebrows and blinks.

He looks Blaine up and down appraisingly and Blaine is starting to get offended. This must be obvious because a thin, Asian man steps forward and puts a hand on the Tough Guy’s arm.

“Puck, chill out, you’re scaring him away already,” he says in a smooth, deep voice, “Twenty seconds is pretty quick to creep someone out that much, even for you.”

‘Puck’ rolls his eyes and huffs a little but he tells Blaine that he’s sorry anyway.

“Anyway I’m Mike,” the other guy says “and that jerk, as you know, is Puck.”

Blaine tries waving again, smiling shyly at them both. The girls turn to watch Blaine, eyeing him up and down. Blaine blushes a little, and the girls roll their eyes, unimpressed. They turn back around without saying a word and continue to talk amongst themselves. For a moment, Blaine feels a little offended, but when he frowns, Mike just laughs.

“Don’t worry about them, they can’t stand us. They’re just uninterested sorority girls from Ohio State, and they need these lessons for some class or whatever,” he explains.

Blaine nods like he understands, even though he’s actually pretty damn confused. Puck sees his puzzled expression and laughs heartily, gaining a small, hopeful smile from Blaine.

___

Kurt watches with interest as the new boy walks across the room, eyes on his strong arms and small waist. Withing the span of a few short blinks, this boy is suddenly talking to his other students, the tiniest of smiles on his face. Kurt isn’t sure what they’re talking about, but when the new guy turns around to look at him and smiles, just a little, Kurt’s breath catches.

___

Blaine is listening to Puck with wide eyes as he rambles about an ATM and his last run-in with the police when the instructor claps his hands suddenly, and all the boys jump a little, startled.

“Okay, guys, let’s all get started,” he says. “I’m Kurt Huemmel, I am twenty years old, and I am going to teach all of you how to swing-dance.”

The two other boys laugh a little at this, and Puck snorts.

“Kurt, we’ve taken your classes for months. This is just a refresher course for us,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest.

Kurt smiles at him but glances at Blaine before replying, “That’s true, Puckerman. Except this guy here is obviously new to my classes and, I assume, dancing in general,” and nodding his head towards Blaine.

Blaine would be offended at this if it wasn’t obviously true.

“So, new guy, tell us a little about yourself,” Kurt asks, looking at him with a warm smile.

Blaine’s mouth goes a little dry, and he almost points out that Kurt said earlier that they were going to skip introductions, but instead, he just swallows and ducks his head again, tucking a stray curl of hair behind his ear.

“Um, my name is Blaine Anderson. I’m twenty-one, and I’m in college. I’m a theater major, and you’re right, I’m new to dancing in general,” he states.

Kurt clicks his tongue once and claps his hands again, rocking back on his heels.

“Alright then. Now that everyone knows each other, let’s do some warm-ups.”

Again, Blaine wants to point out that none of the other boys had to introduce themselves so they don’t actually know each other, but Kurt is smiling at him from across the room, so he just cracks his knuckles and joins the other students in a line.

_________________________

Blaine was expecting the class to be difficult, but he wasn’t expecting it to hurt this much when he was only halfway through his first lesson. The stretching and basic warm-up exercises went fine at first, but now that Blaine has stopped moving the ache is settling in. Kurt is sitting cross-legged on the table in the front of the room with his boom box, smiling at them all. The girls are off in the corner, not really paying attention. Blaine has the feeling that they’re a little stuck-up and ridiculous, but the guys are funny and nice. They don’t laugh too hard when he messes up, and Blaine is pretty sure they’re laughing with him anyway.

Kurt presses play on a red boom box sitting on the table behind him, and the song that comes out of the speakers isn’t really what any of them were expecting to hear.

“Um, Kurt?” Puck asks, “Dude, this isn’t swing music. This is Lady Gaga.”

Kurt shrugs.

“All of you need to loosen up before we can really get into the swing of things, if you’ll excuse my pun,” Kurt states, cutting the song short and standing up.

Blaine snorts, and Kurt flashes him a wide smile. Temporarily blinded and stunned into silence, Blaine misses Kurt’s next sentence completely.

“I’m sorry, what?” Blaine asks.

“I said that all of you need to learn how to move. So for the first two weeks, we’re going to work on the basics of hip-hop dancing,” Kurt repeats, smirking a little. Blaine nods and tries to swallow, but his mouth is a little too dry and he ends up choking loudly instead.

Mike pats him gently on the back and Puck winces in sympathy.

_________________________

Blaine isn’t really surprised when he sucks epically at ‘loosening up’. He’s pretty damn uptight.

While Puck and Mike are swiveling their hips in tight circles, moving easily with the beat and their partners, Blaine mostly just stares at them in amazement and jerks his hips around, looking more like he’s having a slight epileptic fit than trying to dance. Kurt eyes his earnest but failing attempts and laughs, walking over to stand next to him.

“Blaine, what exactly are you doing?” he asks, putting his hands on his hips and looking Blaine up and down with amused but critical eyes.

Blaine pales and halts in his movements, shuffling his feet a little and looking resolutely away from Kurt’s eyes or his smile or any part of him at all.

“I, uh. I’m dancing?” he tries, lifting his shoulders slightly in a timid shrug.

Kurt can’t really help himself, and he laughs heartily at this, eyes scrunching up at the corners, whole body shaking. Blaine is only a little offended because, if he were Kurt, he would probably be laughing at himself too. Also, Kurt is pretty cute when he’s just standing around, but he’s downright attractive when he laughs. Happiness is a good look for him.

“Gold star for trying, Blaine, but you’re just. You’re too choppy,” he says.

Blaine just blinks.

“Yo, Hummel, it’s eleven. We’re out, okay?” Mike says, grabbing his gym bag off the floor. Kurt just nods at them, waving goodbye, and the girls hurry out as the boys walk leisurely behind them.

Kurt turns back to Blaine and smiles.

“Now, I’m going to turn the music back on and you are going to follow my lead, okay?” Kurt asks, not waiting for an answer before running to the boom box and pressing play once more.

The music is loud this time, and Blaine can feel the bass as if it were beating against his ribs, crawling up his spine and settling into his shoulders. Kurt starts walking towards him but this time there’s a deliberate sway to his hips, a dark look in his eyes.

Blaine swallows. Boys don’t approach him often. He guesses that this is partly because he has the body fashion sense of a Brook’s Brothers model, but mostly due to the fact that he gives off a quiet and antisocial vibe, the fact that he actually is quiet and antisocial notwithstanding. He tries to tell himself that this is different, that Kurt is a dance instructor and is only doing his job but still, he can’t ignore the fact that it feels nice to have someone look at him like that for once.

He smiles, a sly quirk of his lips as he rolls his shoulders back with the music and steps forward.

Kurt raises his eyebrows at this. It’s a bold move for anyone, let alone the boy who’s been quiet and shy since Kurt introduced himself. He isn’t really sure what changed to make Blaine loosen up a bit, but he doesn’t question it, just continues to walk until he’s close enough to Blaine that he can see his hazel eyes, the tiny curls of damp hair around his ears. Blaine is attractive, and Kurt isn’t stupid. Mercedes knows his type. She knows that Kurt was bound to see this new guy and lose the character he puts on for lessons and slip back into his usual blushing and easily smitten self. Something about Blaine feels different, and Kurt wants to prove Mercedes wrong. He doesn’t want Blaine to figure out that he isn’t always as collected and confident as he seems.

Blaine tilts his face up a little in invitation, and Kurt takes it. Slowly, Kurt reaches out and rests just the palms of his hands on Blaine’s sides, near the top of his rib cage, smoothing them down his body. He can feel Blaine shiver, and Kurt smiles, stepping a little closer. Blaine’s eyelids flutter closed and he starts letting his hips move just slightly from side to side. Kurt’s hands come to rest just above Blaine's waist, fingertips brushing against his hipbones and gripping tight, stilling Blaine and keeping him in place. Blaine’s eyes snap open.

"No, not like. No, your hips are stuttering back and forth, it needs to be smooth. Like this," he says, shaking his head and looking up into Blaine's nervous, embarrassed eyes.

Slowly, carefully, Kurt starts to rock his hips to the left and then back, watching Blaine closely with each small movement. They're tiny, barely present ticks, but Blaine can feel them all over. It's almost as if he can feel Kurt's fingerprints burning into his skin, even through the material of his shirt. Kurt's hips start to move faster with the steady beat of the song, more deliberate and Blaine stops thinking and just starts moving, letting his hands reach out to rest against Kurt's warm chest as the music picks up.

Blaine has no idea what he’s doing; at this point he’s running on instincts that he didn’t know he possessed. He closes his eyes again and tries to take a deep breath, but everything smells like sweat and some sort of sweet cologne and he's getting dizzy. He tries, instead, to focus on Kurt and the push of his hips, the weight of his arms, the feeling of his own sweat, warm and slightly damp on Blaine's hands where they're pressed firmly against his t-shirt.

The song fades to silence, but Kurt doesn't drop his eyes from Blaine’s face, doesn't still his hips. Blaine sways his body to the right and Kurt follows, swooping around him in a tight circle, pressing himself flush against Blaine's body and suddenly his hands are sliding under Blaine's shirt, resting on his stomach. Kurt’s fingernails catch on the dark hair beneath his navel and Blaine only has a moment to appreciate the smooth skin of Kurt’s fingertips as they graze over his ribs before he’s gasping out loud, eyes flying open and body pressing in tight without his consent.

Kurt goes rigid at the movement, closes his eyes and takes a sudden step back, shaking his head as if to clear the fog and Blaine is suddenly freezing without Kurt’s body warm against his own.

"I. That's, um. That's better, you're getting better. I, um. I'll see you next week, Blaine," Kurt rushes out, words crashing into each other and tumbling out of his mouth in a nervous stream that Blaine barely catches. Before Blaine can tell him no, to stop, to wait, he's out the door without a backward glance.

He sighs a little and picks up his bag, heading out the door before he mopes for too long and wonders where exactly he went wrong this time.

_________________________

Kurt goes through his hip-hop lesson feeling as though he’s walking through fog. It was wrong of him to get that close to Blaine, to touch him like that. Regardless of the fact that Blaine is, for all intents and purposes, his student, Kurt barely knows him. Kurt is not that kind of guy; he doesn’t just make moves on people and then toss them. He gets attached.

High school wasn’t a pleasant time for Kurt, to say the least, and while he had his fair share of casual relationships throughout those four years, they all ended for the same reason: Kurt wanted a steady, serious relationship, something no other boys his age seemed to be interested in.

Blaine is gorgeous, there’s no getting around that. And he has a smile that makes Kurt’s chest feel light with how blinding it is but that’s all Kurt really knows about him. That and the fact that he’s pretty much the worst dancer ever. It’s not much to base a relationship on and Kurt wants to keep it that way. He falls quickly, deeply, and he can’t give himself any reason or encouragement to get to know Blaine beyond a simple, professional relationship. Besides, Kurt has been instructing under Ohio State’s name and he can’t risk getting fired over a boy. Kurt is only two years away from his degree; he’s come too far to lose it all so quickly.

The hip-hop lesson flies by quickly, lost as Kurt is in his own thoughts, and he hurries the class out when it’s over. Some of his students look offended at this, and Kurt feels a little guilty. He’s usually in the studio for a good hour after this lesson is over, talking to and goofing off with his students. Today, his head’s a little too full to deal with any extra conversation.

So of course, as soon as he has the room to himself so he can think, Mercedes walks in.

Kurt loves Mercedes, a ballroom dancer he met during his second semester at OSU, but it’s been a long enough day already and he isn’t sure if he can handle the lecture that he’s sure she has prepared for him.

“Look Cedes, I really ju-,” he starts, running a hand through his hair.

“Your new boy seems nice enough, is all I’m saying,” Mercedes offers, striding across the room and sitting next to Kurt on the table. “It’s just that you can’t trust people with hair shellacked down; they have nowhere to keep their secrets,” Mercedes confides, shaking her head sadly.

“It’s not like that, Mercedes. He’s not my new anything, He’s a student and I’m not appreciating the sarcasm right now,” Kurt says.

“Right, sorry. But he’s not anything? Is that why the poor boy looked terrified when he left today?” Mercedes asks raising an eyebrow. “What did you do to him, anyway?”

Kurt crosses his arms and doesn’t look at her.

“He, uh. Well. Blaine is a probably the worst dancer that has ever existed and he just. He needed help loosening up and finding his rhythm so I uh, I helped him.”

Both of Mercedes’ eyebrows fly up at this, and Kurt’s shrinking into himself a little under her scrutinizing gaze.

“Kurt, I’m not going to ask how you uh, ‘helped him’, because honestly I know too much about your sex life as it is, ” Mercedes says. “Just know that you need to be careful. This isn’t just some guy you met in a class, okay, this is some guy that you’re going to have to see for the next six weeks in a professional setting and it has the potential to be extremely awkward.”

Kurt nods, and Mercedes pats him gently on the back.

“I love you, Kurt. Watch out for yourself, okay?”

But Kurt isn’t really listening anymore. Mercedes leaves the room, and her words of advice drift from his mind as it wanders to Blaine and his warm eyes and tan skin.