They went into a couple of bookstores, Kurt garnering stares from the vampires who owned the shops as the human scanned the titles and read the summaries to see if he wanted it or not.

"Do vampires ever teach their slaves to read?" Kurt asked after leaving behind another baffled store owner.

"Sometimes," answered Blaine, "but a lot of humans are bought at an older age and so it's harder for them to learn the written word."

Kurt glanced to his right and did a double take, stopping dead in his tracks as he saw what was on display.

Guitars, saxophones, flutes and multiple other instruments, rows of CDs of every genera of music could be seen through the glass.

"You want to go in?"

Kurt nodded and Blaine pushed the door open for him.

The store clerk looked up as they came in and smiled.

"How may I help you, sir?" He ignored Kurt as he spoke to Blaine, but the human didn't really care as he had already begun walking down a row marked Show Tunes.

"We're just looking," Blaine said before striding after his human.

When he found Kurt, the human was nimbly thumbing through album titles as if searching for someing specific.

"Any reason you chose this section?"

Kurt nodded, "My mom used to...," he trailed off, squinting his eyes as if the subject pained him.

Blaine wasn't sure if he should press the subject or not. He didn't want cause Kurt any discomfort, but he found it odd that the boy had mentioned his mother since it was hard to believe that the woman knew anything about musical theater. Then again, he didn't know much about rebel colonies and Kurt seemed pretty sure of himself at the moment. Prehaps if they knew how to read and write, they also knew about the fine arts.

Presently, Kurt grinned and pulled a CD out, gazing at the cover with barely suppresed glee.

Blaine came to stand next to him and smiled. The CD that the human held was none other then the orginal soundtrack for Gypsy.

"Do you know the show?"

Kurt nodded.

"How?"

The human's glasz colored eyes moved from the cover of the CD to the vampire and back again. Kurt turned the CD over and began scanning the list of songs on the back.

"You guys let us humans have some rights as long as it's for your enjoyment." His voice held no malice or bitterness as he said this, just something of a longing. "Our colony tried using it against your people, trying to make you out to be even more horrible then what we were taught, for making these people perform for you. It backfired on some of us. Only made us want to meet these people, maybe they could help us cause an uprising or something and we'd be able to join them in the limelight one day."

Kurt smiled as if this all seemed incredibly strange to be talking about.

"Anyway, some of us could read music, my mother among them. This used to be one of her favorite compositions. This one in particularly," Kurt tapped his finger on the title Rose's Turn.

"It's one of mine too," said Blaine. "Do you want the CD?"

Kurt looked up at him hopefully, "Really?"

"Of course," he laughed.
////
Half an hour later, they were back in the parking garage and heading back to Blaine's BMW.

He unlocked the doors and they put their shopping in the back before getting in themselves.

"So you'd teach me piano?"

"Yes, Kurt, as well as any other instrument in music room."

"You know how to play all of them?"

Blaine nodded, "Hey, why don't you put in one of your new CDs?"

"Okay."

Kurt reached in the back seat and pulled out his new Gypsy CD. Freeing it from its shrink wrap, he put it in and Blaine turned up the volume as the first track began.

They were on track four before Kurt got up the nerve to ask Blaine something that had been bothering him since the coffeehouse.

"Blaine?"

"Yes, Kurt?"

"Why was Karofsky's slave on a leash?"

Blaine clenched his jaw, "Because Karofsky's a jackass."

"Yeah, I managed to catch that," Kurt chuckled nervously, "but he wasn't the only one I saw who had a collar on. There were actually a lot of human's with collars. I was just wondering if it was a, well, a common thing for vampires to..."

Blaine had been shaking his head the entire time and Kurt trailed off, wanting him to explain.

"It's common for a vampire to...engage in BDSM. It's a control thing. The collar sort of represents that out of the bedroom."

"Oh."

"I don't have a control complex, Kurt, so you don't have to worry about me ever doing that with you. Unless it's something you'd want to do that is."

"I'm sorry, when did I agree to have sex with you?"

"You didn't. Sorry."

"Don't be," Kurt said under his breath, but knew the vampire had been able to hear him.

"What makes you so different?" Kurt asked after awhile.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean why don't you think like the others?"

"Because I never let go of my former life," he explained. "During the turning process you chose to either give up your old memories as a human, or keep them. I chose to keep them."

"So you'd be like all the others if you had given them up?"

"Well I don't like classifying people like that, but it's possible that I would have had a slave before you and hypnotized him into slobbering over me."

"What about everyone else in your coven? Did they give up their memories or keep them?"

"You'd have to ask them. It's sort of a personal question."

"I thought you might know since you're their leader."

"Even if I did, I wouldn't tell you. It's a matter of respect after all."

As the CD changed to the sixteenth track, Blaine nudged him on the arm.

"I want to hear you sing this out loud, not just under your breath like you've been doing."

Kurt giggled at the vampire's enthusiasm and obliged him.

When the song was over, Blaine stared at Kurt in amazement. "Did you take voice lessons in that colony of yours as well?"

Kurt shook his head and Blaine whistled, impressed.

"I want to hear you sing more often."

After that comment, both men belted out the lyrics all the way back home.
////
"Come on, let's drop these things off in our room and then we'll go to the music room."

Kurt agreed readily but it wasn't until they were in the vampire's room that a thought occured to him. "Where am I going to keep all of this?"

Blaine gave him a strang look, "In the wardrobe of course."

"Are you sure everything will fit?" Kurt gave the dresser a doubtful look and Blaine laughed.

"Give it a little more credit then that."

Kurt bit his bottom lip, "If you say so."

Blaine chortled and took his arm, "Come on, we can worry about all that later. Right now I want to share the thing that I value the most in this world with you. Especially now that I know it's important you as well."

Then men smiled at each other, but then, Kurt broke eye contact and Blaine shuffled his feet awkwardly.

"L-let's go then."

Blaine swept an arm towards the door and Kurt walked out into the corridor. They headed to the music room in relative silence, Blaine humming some strange melody softly, but increasing the volume as they neared the door.

Blaine stopped humming and opened the doors, bounding over to the piano at the far side of the room like an excited child.

Kurt couldn't help but smile at the idea, considering the man was somewhere in his hundreds. Kurt began walking over to join him, but Blaine stopped him, telling him to close the doors.

The human hesitated, but then reasoned that if Blaine wanted to hurt him he had had plently of time to do it by now. Kurt shut the doors and went over to join the vampire who was now seated on the piano bench, riffling through a messenger bag at his feet.

Blaine patted the space next to him on the bench, "Sit down."

Kurt sat and placed the fingers of his left hand on the keys the way he had memorized the placement of his mother's so long ago.

"Ah, here it is." Blaine straightened up with a book of sheet music in his hand. He flipped to the song that he wanted and propped it against the music tray.

Kurt looked at the tile, "Defying Gravity?"

"Yeah, have you heard of it, or even the musical for that matter?"

Kurt nodded, "I love it. It sort of resonates with me on a pretty profound level."

"Hm, may I ask why? Or do you really know?"

"It just...I don't know. I guess it's because I can identify with with the main character. Being picked on for something I couldn't control."

"Were you picked on a lot?"

Kurt nodded, "I thought I had made that clear what with the whole gay thing."

"People are picked on for all sorts of reasons, Kurt. I thought maybe the people you grew up with were a little more civilized then others."

"You seemed pretty confident in your assumptions earlier."

"That was only because we were speaking of orientation. Though when you didn't rush to defend them I must adimt that I suspected that was it."

"Not everyone did," Kurt whispered, "I have--had a group of friends who defended me and my dad never turned his back on me."

Blaine cleared his throat nervously, "Do you--do you know what happened to them at all?"

"After the invasion you mean? No. I can only hope they all got away, but...," Kurt shook his head as tears began to form in his eyes.

Blaine instinctively reached out to comfort the boy, but Kurt raised a hand, placing it between them as he guessed at what the vampire was about to do. "I'm fine. Why don't we do what we came here for?"

"Right," Blaine placed his fingers in the appropriate position and began playing. He watched Kurt out of the corner of his eye as the human took a breath and started singing.

After he realized that Kurt wasn't about to break down, Blaine shut his eyes and just concentrated on the countertenor's voice. He had decided that if angles had ever come to earth and mated with humans, then Kurt had some of their blood in him somewhere.

The thought of the human's blood made his stomach clench and he suppressed a moan. He had just fed a couple of nights ago, so what was he doing thinking about feeding now?

Of course Blaine already knew the answer, he had went and done something incredibly stupid and had taken in the aroma of Kurt's blood.

There had been some dried on the coarse clothing that the human had been forced into by the slavers from a wound that hadn't quite stopped leaking yet. Blaine had had no idea that it was there until he picked the damn thing up to dispose of it. The smell had been strong enough to draw his attention and he stood there in the middle of the room and had actually pressed his nose to the fucking liquid and inhaled its scent.

Blood smelled differently to vampires then it did to other creatures and everyones had a distinct scent. Kurt's had been delightful, he dared to say it remminded him of honey, and he couldn't help wondering if his blood tasted the same as it smelled. This was ridiculous of course, but there was obviously something wrong with him if he was memorizing the scent of blood off peoples' clothes.

"Blaine?"

The vampire jumped and opened his eyes to find Kurt staring at him in confusion.

"Were you just going to play this song on a loop then?"

"Oh, um, no of course not," he stammered, "I was just, uh, caught up listening to you. You have such a beautiful voice."

Kurt rolled his eyes, unimpressed, but Blaine saw the flush of color blossom on the human's cheeks as he accepted the complement.

They sat there in the silence before Kurt requested that Blaine sing something.

"Sure, what do you want to hear?"

Kurt shrugged, "I don't care."
////
Kurt lost track of how long they had been in the music room until Blaine announced that he would need to return to his bed.

"Is it sunrise?" Kurt looked out the window in suprise.

"It will be in a few minutes."

Blaine returned the book of sheet music to his messenger bag and stood up.

Kurt rose with him and stretched out the stiffness that had taken over his back from sitting there for so long. He yawned, suddenly feeling very tired.

"Oh, I've kept you up all night. I'm sorry, you should have said something."

"It's okay. Humans can sleep in the morning too, you know?" He grinned and then blinked at his own levity.

He wasn't beginning to develop Stockholm syndrome, was he?"

Kurt shook it off as he followed Blaine out of the room and down the hall to his bedroom.

Neither of them said anything as Kurt retrieved his new pajamas from one of the shopping bags and went into the bathroom to change. When he came back out, Blaine had moved the bags with the clothes in them to the front of the wardrobe and he was placing the bags with miscellaneous items on his desk.

Blaine pulled the covers back so that Kurt could climb in first.

"Or would you like the outside edge?"

"The outside."

Blaine shrugged, "Okay, it doesn't matter much to me."

Kurt waited for the vampires to move to where he had slept not twenty-four hours before.

Kurt got in bed and asked Blaine, "Are you going to lock the door?"

The vampire smiled cockily at him, "I don't think I have to anymore."

Blaine chuckled at the indignation that crossed Kurt's face and the human turned over on his side to face away from the object of his fustration in a huff.

Who did the guy think he was, assuming that he had somehow won Kurt over in a single night?

An annoying voice in the back of his mind deepened Kurt's bad mode as he realized that the just may be the case. No, that was ridiculous, just because the two had a few things in common did not mean that his opinion the creatures had changed at all.

Sighing in fustration, Kurt shut his eyes and tried to settle his mind enough to sleep.
////
Blaine's eyes popped open with the onset of dusk. He smiled as he came to focus on Kurt's form sprawled out next to him, sleeping on his back with his chin tilted back slightly with his head sunk into the pillow.

The pulse point at the human's neck was thumping gently and he tore his gaze away from it, looking instead at Kurt's peaceful face. His hair was slightly rumpled from sleep and one arm was crooked up over his head carelessly.

Kurt made a soft sound as his breathing changed to a pattern of wakefulness and his eyes blinked open. The human's eyes groggily shifted over to look at Blaine and he visibly tensed as he saw the vampire was staring at him.

"May I help you?" Kurt's voice was rough from sleep and he cleared his throat to try and rid it of the phlegm that had built up overnight.

"I don't need help with anything, though if I did I'm sure you'd be more then capable of aiding me."

Kurt cleared his throat again and sat up, rubbing his eyes and yawning as his body slowly woke up.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, just that you seem a very capable individual," Blaine answered his lips quirking up to try and show he meant no malice with simple statement. "Anyway, would like to shower first? Unless you're still tired, that is."

"No, no, I'll take a shower."

Kurt scrambled out of bed and selected an ensemble from the wardrobe before disappering into the bathroom.

Blaine climbed out of bed and rolled the stiffness out of his muscles. He went over to the dresser and selected clothes for himself and laid them out on the bed as he waited for his personal slave to finish up.

He scolded himself mentally at the wording. He was who had first replaced the word 'slave' for 'human' as he found it degrading to the living staff members. He had even went so far as to tell the rest of his coven that they were to refer to the general slaves by their given names or at least use a term that designated them as their equals, so why was he of all people thinking of Kurt as a 'slave'? Was he regressing into a primitive mind set?

"Maybe I like the idea of dominationg someone more then I originally thought," he mumbled.

Kurt came out fully dressed a few moments later, straightening his bow-tie as he addressed Blaine. "You want me to stay in here, or what?"

Blaine fetched his clothes from the bed and smoothed a hand over the neatly folded shirt on the top. "I was hoping you would be willing to talk to me more at length tonight. We'll go downstairs and you can eat, then we'll spend the rest of the night together, sound good?"

Kurt shrugged, "What do you want to talk about?"

"Anything that comes to our minds," he replied, "I want to get to know you better and I'm sure you have questions for me. Am I right?"

Kurt's bob of the head was brief, but Blaine counted it as a yes.

The vampire took a quick shower and the two of them headed downstairs.

"Come on, we'll eat in the dinning room."

"We?" Kurt asked.

"Well okay, you'll be eating in the dinning room. You'll be able to meet more of the coven as well."