A brand new message was waiting on him in the morning (No, it’s not weird. It just means that we don’t have to talk about me – we can talk about you. Your Twitter profile tells me your 17. Are you still in high school?)

Kurt gaped at his computer.

Was Blaine for real?

He didn’t know what to say, so responding to Blaine waited while he got dressed, ate breakfast, and grabbed his school bag. Kurt sat back down and stared at the screen. “Kurt, we’re gonna be late!” Finn shouted from downstairs.

Their parents recent marriage and subsequent move to a new house, had made things a little weird between them, but he and Finn were slowly adjusting to being step-brothers as well as classmates and members of the glee club.

“Be right there!” Kurt called back, and then started typing (Yes, I really am 17, just like you. No offense or anything, but why do you want to know about me? Surely there are far more fascinating people in LA.)

He hit send, powered off his computer, and headed downstairs.

*

Kurt could feel eyes on him as he walked down the hallway – it had been that way all day, and he had no idea why. No one had even bothered him today, even though he was wearing a kilt and a girl’s shirt.

When he went into the choir room for glee practice, Kurt breathed a sigh of relief. At least here, Kurt wouldn’t have to worry about stares from other people.

“Okay, spill,” Mercedes said as she walked in after him, sitting down in the chair beside him.

“What?” Kurt asked her.

“Have you seen your Twitter account today?” Kurt’s heart pounded at her words. Had Blaine tweeted him again? Had someone from school hacked it and posted something horrible?

“No?” Kurt replied in the form of a question. Technically, he had, for about five minutes that morning when replying to Blaine.

“You jumped from about twenty or so followers to almost two hundred.” Mercedes told him, holding out her phone.

“What?” Kurt hissed in reply. Oh no. He never should have replied to Blaine publicly. The rest of the glee club was filing in, looking at him curiously.

“And you should see the tweets you’ve gotten.” Mercedes continued. Kurt groaned.

“What do they say?” He almost didn’t want to know.

“Most of them are harmless, a couple of crazy ones, but mainly they all want to know if you know Blaine Anderson.”

“Wait a second,” Quinn piped up from her seat next to Sam behind them. “Blaine Anderson, the actor from Dalton?”

“Do you know any other Blaine Andersons?” Santana nearly snapped.

“Why do they think you know this Blaine guy?” Finn asked, leaning around Rachel to look at Kurt. Oh, God, this is exactly what he didn’t want. People asking him about this – because no one would believe him.

“Ladylips talked to Blaine on the phone the other day,” Santana answered for him. He turned around and shot her a glare. She glared back. “And it was all because of me.”

“What?” Rachel nearly shrieked. “You talked to an actor?!”

“This is exactly why I didn’t want anyone to know, Santana!” he snarled. “You just couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”

“I likes to get my credit when it’s due,” she preened. “Plus, you owe me, Hummel. You never would have spoken to the star of all you masturbatory fantasies if it wasn’t for me.”

“It’s true,” Brittany chimed in. “I was there.”

Now everyone was back to looking at Kurt, even Mr. Schue, their director.

“Fine,” Kurt sighed. “Blaine tweeted his phone number the other day, Santana thought it would be funny to actually call him, and when he answered the phone, I talked to him.”

Murmurs spread around the room.

“The end, case closed; can we please stop talking about this and plan something for Sectionals?”

~**~

This was it, Blaine’s big scene for the day. He (as James) had slipped through the halls of a rival public school (Jefferson High), and made his way into the back of the auditorium. He watched with wide eyes as the glee club performed an amazing number.

One boy was supposed to get his attention, and then catch him spying.

Blaine had been anticipating these scenes ever since the show creators had come to him with the script. Dalton had been on the air for over a season, Blaine’s character James was the lead character, and he had yet to have any kind of viable love interest (last season’s unrequited crush on the captain of the football team notwithstanding).

And yet all Blaine could think about was Kurt.

It was funny, really. Kurt’s last message was haunting him – why didn’t Kurt think he was worth knowing? Of course, it only fueled what Blaine was sure was an unhealthy fascination with him.

After all, how many boys with voices like that existed?

Blaine wondered, for the millionth time, what Kurt looked like. It was just one of many ways that Kurt had Blaine at a disadvantage. Kurt probably knew all kinds of things about Blaine (and considering the resourcefulness of his fanbase, probably more than Blaine ever wanted to know they knew), but Blaine knew nothing about Kurt beyond his age and location.

Maybe that was why he couldn’t stop thinking about Kurt. Kurt was a mystery.

He managed to get through filming, hoping he was able to make the suitable faces required, and contribute to the flirty banter in the scene where he got caught spying.

Blaine hopped in the van provided to the cast and crew when filming on location and during the drive back to the sound stage, he wrote a message to Kurt and sent it (Well, you’d be wrong.  Tell me about yourself - whatever you want. Let me be the judge on what I find interesting.)

~**~

Feeling drained, Kurt followed Finn into the house and dropped his bag onto the couch. He took his coat off, and unwrapped his scarf, before heading to the coat closet and hanging them up. Finn whipped his coat off as well, balling it up and tossing it on the sofa. “Finn, coat,” Kurt scolded, looking at his step-brother with a narrowed gaze. Finn sighed.

“Fine,” he said, picking up the coat and putting it on the hangar Kurt handed him. “Listen, bro,” Finn started to say. Kurt raised his eyebrows in reply. “Did you really talk to that actor?”

“It was just the one time, Finn,” Kurt answered. Well, it was supposed to be, but he won’t stop messaging me, and I don’t know what to do about it. “I helped him out. I’ll probably never hear from him again, okay?”

“Yeah.” Finn still looked concerned. “But you’ll be careful, right?”

“Sure,” Kurt promised, feeling oddly touched. “Do me a favor, though? Don’t tell Dad or Carole.”

“Why?”

“It’s not a big deal, nothing will ever come from it, and they just don’t need to know, okay?”

“Whatever you want, dude,” Finn agreed. “Want a snack?”

“I think I’ll pass,” Kurt wrinkled his nose. “Thanks, Finn.”

“That’s what brothers are for.” Finn grinned at him, and Kurt found himself smiling back, before grabbing his bag and heading upstairs.

Once upstairs, he stared at his computer. He knew he should do his homework. He knew that he shouldn’t turn his computer on, sit down in front of it or sign into his Twitter account.

So, of course, that’s exactly what he did. His leg bounced with nervous energy as the page loaded, and he looked at his inbox.

One new message.

He clicked it open and saw it was from Blaine.

Part of him was relieved. Blaine wanted to keep talking to hm. The rest of Kurt was just confused by the whole thing. After all, Kurt was no one special – he was just a boy with a killer singing voice and an impeccable fashion sense in the middle of the most dreadful mid-western town in the United States.

Why would someone amazing as Blaine want to get to know him?

Biting his lip, he debated how much he should tell Blaine. After all, he really didn’t know the guy. With a sigh, he wrote (You asked for it then. I’m 17. My father recently remarried, so I have a new step-mother and step-brother. I’m a junior in high school, and am very active in my school’s glee club as well as the cheerleading squad.)

Kurt read it over, and then decided it looked incomplete. So he added one more thing (Tell me something about you. Something no one else knows).

And that’s how it went for the next several weeks. He and Blaine messaged back and forth, exchanging little pieces of information. It took four messages for Blaine to finally reveal something Kurt hadn’t already known (it wasn’t Kurt’s fault if Blaine overshared in interviews, and he took great delight learning that Blaine had owned a teddy bear named ‘Prince Charles’ as a child), and two weeks before Kurt finally told Blaine where he went to school.

Blaine finally talked Kurt into a sending him a picture after nearly a month of messages (I want to see who I’m talking to!), which might have been the most nerve wracking experience of Kurt’s life.

Kurt’s Twitter following fell off as Blaine never tweeted him publicly again (and Kurt was fine with that. He liked that he and Blaine had a secret friendship). Things went back to normal at school, fighting over solos, and who was dating who.

Kurt should have known something would change that.