Blaine sat down on the couch in Kurt's bedroom and watched his boyfriend put away his winter white trench coat. This was something of a production. Kurt placed the coat on a hanger, hung it on the back of the door, brushed it off with a lint brush, and finally restored it to its proper place in his meticulously organized closet. Then he removed his black and white tie, rolled it up, and tucked it away in his necktie drawer.

Although he liked to tease Kurt for being crazy about clothes, Blaine had to admit his wardrobe was truly awe-inspiring. It was even more impressive for having been put together on a budget. Kurt was a veteran bargain shopper and did his own alterations. Blaine liked to go shopping and he liked to dress well, but he didn't share Kurt's dedication to fashion as a form of creative self-expression. Blaine didn't even mind wearing a uniform on school days. He secretly thought he looked rather dapper in it. For Kurt, wearing the same outfit five days a week had been stifling.

Kurt was standing in front of him now. "Do you want me to hang this up for you?" he asked, fingering the collar of Blaine's cardigan.

Blaine grinned up at him. "Trying to get me out of my clothes, Mr. Hummel?"

"You can call me Kurt. Mr. Hummel is my father's name," Kurt said, slipping onto the couch next to him. "Who, I'll remind you, is right downstairs. So be good."

Blaine looked at Kurt, and the only thing he could think to say was "I will be so good."

Not his smoothest line ever, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter at all, because suddenly Kurt's lips were pressed against his, soft but insistent. Blaine's heart was pounding as he slid his arms around Kurt and pulled him closer. This was what he had been looking forward to all day. All day for days, since their last, hurried good-bye kiss the night before Kurt left for New York.

They didn't have to hurry now, and yet Kurt was kissing him with almost frantic urgency, as if afraid they were about to be separated again. Maybe he was worried about being interrupted by his father. As embarrassing as that would be, Blaine found himself unable to devote much thought to the subject. It was difficult to think about much of anything with Kurt digging his fingers into Blaine's shoulder and sucking so hard on Blaine's lower lip that it would have hurt if it didn't feel so good.

Blaine wasn't sure what had gotten into Kurt, but he wasn't complaining. When they finally came up for air, Kurt's eyes were sparkling again. His cheeks were flushed and his pink lips were still slightly parted.

"You're so beautiful," Blaine said softly.

Much to his surprise, this was apparently the wrong thing to say. Kurt turned away with a sigh.

"Baby, what is it?" Blaine knew it couldn't be hot coffee this time.

Kurt was staring down at his own hands. "Weren't you just talking about how important it is for us to be honest with each other and not say things we don't mean to make the other one feel better?"

"You are beautiful. I mean it."

Kurt jumped up and paced over to his bookcase. He drummed his fingers on one of the shelves. Then he stopped and turned back to look at Blaine. "So when you told me I wasn't sexy enough for a show choir competition, did you mean that?"

It took a moment for Blaine to realize what Kurt was talking about. How long had it been since they had sat in front of Kurt's mirror practicing their sexy faces? That was before Regionals. Before their first kiss. Months ago. Ages ago. "I don't think that's exactly what I said."

"It's what you thought though, isn't it?" Kurt folded his arms across his chest. "You thought I was so ridiculously unattractive that I was going to embarrass you."

"That's not true. I thought you were cute." Blaine remembered a pale, lost looking boy standing on the staircase under the skylight. "I always thought you were cute."

"Excuse me! Hi! Can I ask you a question? I'm new here."

Blaine would later wish he could claim that it had been love at first sight. That he'd turned and looked up at Kurt standing on the stairs and had known. But he hadn't.

He had thought the other boy was cute, although he looked a little young for Blaine. Probably a freshman. He was wearing a black blazer with a red tie. Very sharp but obviously not a Dalton uniform, especially not with the knee-high boots, and thus not a Dalton student no matter what he said.

Blaine weighed the possibilities as he politely introduced himself to the other boy. Kurt might be a prospective student who wanted to see Dalton without the formality of an official visit. Blaine could understand wanting to scope the place out sans parents.

His own official visit had not been fun. He'd been worried that people were going to ask about the stitches on his forehead, and wasn't sure if it made things better or worse that most of the guys they encountered were more interested in checking out Blaine's mom. Who looked young, but not that young. Meanwhile, Blaine's dad had been too busy checking his Blackberry to notice much of anything. As usual.

"So what exactly is going on?" Kurt asked, as Dalton students continued to stream past him on the stairs.

"The Warblers!" Blaine was always happy to talk about his choir, yet for some reason he hesitated to reveal that he was a Warbler himself. "Every now and then they throw an impromptu performance in the senior commons. It tends to shut the school down for a while."

Kurt seemed puzzled. "So wait, the glee club here is kind of cool?" A strange question, Blaine thought. Strange that he knew the Warblers were a glee club when Blaine hadn't said that they were, and even stranger to be so interested in their status at Dalton.

"The Warblers are like...rock stars!" It was true that the Warblers were admired by their classmates, but Blaine was also developing a theory as to why Kurt was so curious about them. If he was right, he wanted to make sure Kurt knew the Warblers were serious contenders.

Competition for the 2011 Midwest Regional Show Choir Championship was expected to be fierce. Five-time champions Vocal Adrenaline had been redistricted to the Mid-Atlantic region, where they would almost certainly continue their winning streak. Rumor had it they had brought in a powerhouse mezzo-soprano from the Philippines to serve as their new lead soloist. ("I wonder if she's as hot as Blaine's mom," Nick had said. "Shut up," Blaine had said. "Yeah dude, not cool. There's no way she's as hot as Mrs. Anderson," Jeff had said.) That was something for the show choirs of Pennsylvania and Delaware to worry about, though. West of Akron, the field was open. The Warblers had a real shot at winning Regionals for the first time in years.

They had to win Sectionals first though, and that was just a few weeks away. It would be their first competitive event since Blaine had transferred to Dalton, as the Warblers had been unable to perform in competition at all during the 2009-2010 school year. A particularly virulent flu had swept through the dorms that fall, right before Sectionals. With fewer than twelve members left healthy enough to compete, the Council had no choice but to withdraw. The Warblers had kept busy in the spring by performing at the Crawford County Day School Invitationals, several nursing homes, and the Dalton Academy graduation ceremony, but their absence from Sectionals meant they'd been shut out of the 2010 Regionals.

Things were going to be different this year. Everyone was in good health, and they had even more new members than they'd needed to replace those who had graduated last spring. The Council was confident that the Warblers were going to be better than ever. They were going to make it to Regionals, maybe even to Nationals. The Warblers had been primarily a stool choir in the past, but David had insisted that they work on more complicated choreography. "This year, we're going to have moves!"

"We'll also have a secret weapon," Thad had said. "Warbler Blaine!" All the guys had clapped. That had been the first time Blaine felt certain there were no hard feelings about his position as lead soloist. He'd been chosen over some guys who'd been in the Warblers longer, guys who'd been at Dalton since they were freshmen. Blaine had worried that there might be some resentment. Now he knew that everyone really thought he deserved it.

With all due modesty, Blaine agreed that he was good. Good enough that other show choirs in the area might want to check out what he could do before Sectionals. It did seem like an awfully big coincidence that a boy posing as a transfer student would just so happen to run into the Warblers' promising new soloist right before one of their informal student-only performances.

The timing wasn't the only thing that made Blaine suspect that Kurt was a spy. Blaine's sexual orientation was no secret, not anymore. Kurt's didn't seem to be either. He was definitely pinging Blaine's gaydar. He was probably pinging the gaydar of people several blocks away. And was he perhaps a little too eager to take Blaine's hand? Did he cling a little tighter than necessary as they ran through the halls? By the time they reached the door of the senior commons, Blaine was sure of it. Some other choir had sent this sweet young thing after him. Classic honeypot trap.

In that case, he figured he might as well give Kurt something interesting to put in the reconnaissance report. If the other boy left feeling...conflicted...well, so much the better for the Warblers. Blaine believed in good sportsmanship and didn't fancy himself a homme fatale, but there was no harm in adjusting someone's lapel and giving him a little wink and a big smile, was there?

That particular song was perhaps laying it on a bit thick, but "Teenage Dream" was what the Warblers been rehearsing. And they'd killed it. Blaine felt confident that the Warblers had given the competition something to sweat about.

Yet Kurt didn't seem worried at all. He had looked a little nervous at first, but by the end of the song he was grinning like a kid at Christmas. Unless this boy was good, like Oscar-caliber good, at playing the ing�nue, there was something other than glee club rivalry behind his visit.

Blaine had a pretty good idea what that might be.

Kurt managed to slip away before Blaine could speak to him again, but he was back at Dalton the following afternoon. Blaine found him lurking outside the study lounge. He was, if anything, dressed even more conspicuously than before in an all-gray outfit.

"Hi Kurt, I was wondering if I'd see you today."

"Oh, hi Blaine," said Kurt, looking like a squirrel that was trying to decide which way to run.

"Forgot your uniform again, huh?" Blaine asked. He threw an arm around Kurt's shoulders before he could make a break for it. "Since you were so interested in the Warblers, I thought I'd introduce you to some of our senior members. I told them all about you."

He half led, half dragged Kurt into the lounge. He'd seen Wes and David there a few minutes ago, and found them still drinking their coffee. Blaine quickly fetched two more cups for himself and Kurt from the pot in the corner. He usually avoided the study lounge coffee, which was of notoriously inconsistent quality, but it was convenient.

Kurt apparently realized there was no point in denials. "It's very civilized of you to invite me for coffee before you beat me up for spying."

"We are not going to beat you up," Wes said.

"You were such a terrible spy, we thought it was sort of...endearing," David added.

Blaine took a sip of his thoroughly mediocre coffee. "Which made me think that spying on us wasn't really the reason you came," he said with a smile.

He felt proud of his deductive abilities when Kurt immediately asked if they were all gay. Hearing David explain Dalton's non-harassment policy made Blaine feel proud of his school, too. Plenty of schools claimed that they didn't tolerate bullying. At Dalton it was actually true.

"Everybody gets treated the same, no matter what they are," Wes said. "It's pretty simple."

That was when Kurt started to cry.

Blaine knew, even better than Wes or David, that it wasn't always that simple. Not for people like him and Kurt. He asked the other two Warblers to leave them alone to talk.

As soon as he heard what Kurt was going through at McKinley, Blaine decided to take the other boy under his wing. Kurt reminded him so much of himself two years ago. He hadn't had anyone to look out for him or give him advice, but he could be that kind of friend for Kurt. More than a friend, a mentor.

Even after he found out that Kurt was actually a junior, Blaine still thought of himself as the older, wiser partner in their relationship.

He would later curse himself for being such a smug jackass.

Blaine had failed to fully appreciate many of Kurt's best qualities for a long time. He hadn't realized how talented he was, how compassionate, or how strong. But he could honestly say he'd thought Kurt was cute from the very beginning.