"—he has an amazing voice, and he's already gotten three solos in Glee club! And he's kind of shy, but he's super sweet and he laughs at everything I say, I mean, he actually laughs, like he really thinks I'm funny—"

"I think you're funny," Will muttered.

"Well, yes, but Blaine's funny, too, and I can actually laugh at what he says without looking like I'm talking to myself," Kurt whispered, using his locker as a shield to talk behind without being seen by passing students.

"I'm so happy for you," Will retorted, his lips turned into a sour scowl. "I suppose you don't need me anymore, then."

Kurt turned to face him fully, not even caring if people thought he was talking to thin air. "What are you talking about? I'll always need you. You're my best friend." He turned back to his locker once he realized that a girl was staring at him, thinking he was talking to her.

Will looked mollified at his words. "I need you, too, Kurt. You're my only friend."

"Haven't there been others who could see you like I can?" Kurt asked, careful to keep his voice quiet as he pretended to shuffle around the books in his locker.

"Yes. Quite a few, actually. But I chose you, and you chose me."

"So, what, you just don't show yourself to them?" Kurt pursed his lips. "How are you supposed to make friends when you're so picky?"

"Speak for yourself," Will replied drily. "You're not exactly Little Miss Sunshine, either, you know."

"I am with you," Kurt said simply. He closed his locker door, leaning against it thoughtfully. "And with Blaine, I guess," he added as an afterthought.

Will's pleased look at his first words disappeared, and he was silent as Kurt looked at him.

"What?" Kurt challenged, his irritation forgoing his usual reticence when it came to talking to Will in public. "Are you jealous? Will, I'm not going to just abandon you, okay?"

"You like him," Will shot back. "Don't you?"

"So what if I do?" Kurt hissed.

"You hardly even know him!"

"Yes, well, I seem to make a habit of liking people I hardly know," he snapped, looking at Will pointedly.

"I just don't want you to get hurt over some guy who isn't even gay!" Will glared at him.

Kurt opened his mouth, then closed it, feeling a bit like a fish out of water. "Wait, what?"

The bell for class rang, and, slowly, the halls emptied of students. Kurt stood there staring at Will, who was flickering in his agitation.

"He's not gay," Will said slowly, as if Kurt were some wild animal he was trying to placate.

"What are you talking about?" Kurt scoffed. "He wears bow ties and skinny jeans on a regular basis. Yesterday he told me he reads Vogue. Last week, I caught him humming the theme to Beauty and the Beast. So gay."

"But did he tell you he was gay?" Will persisted, drifting to Kurt's other side when he turned away in irritation.

"No." Kurt rolled his eyes. "Did he tell you he wasn't? He would have told me if he were straight, I'm his best friend!"

"Kurt, correct me if I'm wrong, but people don't usually find the need to come out as straight."

"Well, maybe the world would be a lot simpler if they did!" Kurt responded, feeling slightly hysterical.

"I'm really sorry, Kurt." Will hesitated, staring at Kurt with pity in his eyes. "I saw him kissing someone yesterday. A girl," he clarified.

"Who?" Kurt demanded.

Will shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "I don't know. Not anyone I know. None of those girls from your club who throw themselves around all the time. Just some girl."

Kurt blinked, trying to wrap his head around it. Blaine, who had willingly held hands with Kurt as they walked through the hallways. Blaine, who didn't make fun of him for having a Disney lunch box. Blaine, who came over to Kurt's house to watch musicals and sang his favorite songs at the top of his lungs. Blaine, who he had only known for a little over two months.

"Oh my god," Kurt said, horrified as the realization dawned on him. "I made the whole thing up in my head, didn't I?"

"Try not to be too hard on yourself." Will lifted his hand as if to pat Kurt's back, then seemed to think twice and lowered it.

"I just assumed—and he let me—oh god, he probably thinks I'm some kind of—some kind of gay predator," Kurt groaned, hiding his face in his hands.

"Probably," Will agreed.

Kurt lowered his hands to glare at the ghost. "You're looking far too happy about my humiliation."

"I'm not happy," Will said indignantly, his lips twitching.

"Liar." Kurt stuck his tongue out. "You're glowing with happiness."

"I am not."

"No, you literally are." Kurt pointed to Will, whose entire form shimmered with an incandescent light.

"I'm not—I'm just—"

"Can ghosts blush?" Kurt wondered aloud. "Because I'm pretty sure you are."

"I just want you to be happy," Will said, gazing at Kurt with a quiet intensity. "I don't like it when you're sad."

"I'm not sad," Kurt replied, a bit startled at Will's sudden shift in demeanor. "I guess I didn't know Blaine as well as I thought I did. It's just a crush. I'll get over it." He sighed. "Eventually."

"You don't need him, anyway," Will said confidently. "You're better off without him."

"You think so?"

"Definitely. You're perfect."

Kurt shook his head. "Now I'm blushing. But thank you."

"Any time." Will smiled.

"Thank you for what?"

Kurt turned around, wide-eyed, only to see Blaine standing at his shoulder and looking at him quizzically. "Blaine! Hi. I, um, didn't see you there."

"Then who were you talking to?" Blaine looked around, as if Kurt was hiding someone behind him. Which, technically, he kind of was. He heard a quiet sigh from Will, but he didn't dare turn around to see what he was doing. Blaine probably already thought he was insane.

"I was talking to… myself. I was thanking myself for… remembering… my hair spray," Kurt invented wildly. "Yes. Thank you, me!" He patted himself on his head, trying to ignore the quiet laughter from Will.

"Right." Blaine dragged out the word, then laughed. "You're a strange one, Mr. Hummel." He grabbed Kurt's hand. "Come on, the tardy bell is going to ring any second."

Kurt allowed Blaine to pull him for a few steps, then abruptly jerked his hand out of Blaine's grasp. That's what they were, a hand in the hallway, reaching out to help. But that couldn't define them. Not anymore.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, trying to play off his movement, but he didn't miss the hurt expression that flashed across Blaine's face before he reverted to the mild visage he usually wore. He tried not to let himself feel guilty. This was for the better. He would be happy about this in the end, when he and Blaine had maintained their friendship without Kurt's own messy feelings getting in the way. They would both be happy in the end, Blaine with his girlfriend and Kurt with his… friend. It would all work out in the end.

He chanced a glance behind him as he and Blaine walked to class. Will was still standing at Kurt's locker. He smiled at Kurt and lifted a hand in a motionless goodbye before fading away to nothing.

Kurt did his best to avoid Blaine for the next few weeks. He stopped inviting Blaine over every day after school. He didn't sit next to him in Glee club. He didn't eat lunch with him, choosing instead to eat in the library, where he could talk to Will without being noticed. If Blaine noticed Kurt's efforts to stop being so clingy, Kurt couldn't tell. Of course, he was trying not to be the person who noticed Blaine and cared about what he was feeling. Once he got over his feelings, he and Blaine could be friends again. But until then, he would have to distance himself.

He hadn't realized how much he depended on Blaine for his happiness. He missed him, and it was a constant ache in the pit of his stomach. He and Blaine had quickly become inseparable over the past months; not being around him all the time, not being able to hold his hand as they walked or chat about nothing and everything… it was hard. It felt as if Blaine had filled in a part of him that was missing, and now he was gone again. Kurt wasn't sure if things would ever feel the same.

Will, on the other hand, was uncharacteristically cheerful. While Kurt was moodily picking at his lunch, Will was chattering away about how he was practicing some ghost trick, or conspiratorially telling Kurt that he knew which two teachers were having an affair, and I could tell you if you want.

Kurt appreciated Will's attempts to cheer him up, but all he really wanted was to go back to not knowing that Blaine was straight and not feeling like he had created another Finn situation like he had two years before. Most of all, he just wanted his friend back.

"Are you even listening to me right now?"

Kurt looked up from the loose string on his lunch box that he had been playing with. Will was looking at him, exasperated. "Um, yeah. You were saying something about…something," he mumbled. "Okay, no, sorry. I was just thinking."

"About Blaine?"

"No," Kurt said, refusing to meet the accusatory glare Will was sending at him.

"Kurt—"

"Okay, fine," Kurt admitted. "Fine, yes, I was thinking about Blaine. I miss him, okay? He was the first good thing to happen to me at this school."

Will's form began to flicker, and he drifted through a stack of library books, forcing Kurt to stand up and move to the next aisle to catch him. He thrust out his hand to grab Will's arm, forgetting until he was gripping air halfway through Will's body that the other boy was insubstantial. He winced at the feeling, like dipping his hand in ice-cold water, and quickly pulled away.

"Will, wait," Kurt said, mentally slapping himself for how inconsiderate he was being. "I didn't mean— you're just as important to me as he is, okay?"

Will whirled around to face him, his eyes blazing. Kurt took a step back instinctively, feeling his back press against hard book cover spines. "You've only known him for two months, Kurt. You've known me for seven. Forgive me for not feeling reassured when you say I'm only just as important as him."

Kurt reached out an imploring hand, but quickly dropped it back down to his side when Will began to flicker even more violently, causing the lights in the aisle to dim. "Will—" He hesitated, trying to choose his words carefully, trying to fix this. "I'm—I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that, okay?"

"I don't understand," Will said, his chest heaving as if his body was trying to remember what it felt to breathe, to be alive, "why you can't just forget about him."

"Because he's my friend," Kurt snapped defensively. "I don't understand why you care so much."

"Because I care about you!" Will burst out, his shape solidifying for a moment before continuing to flicker violently.

"I care about you, too, but you're not the only thing in my life anymore, Will. You have to understand that."

"I just want you to need me as much as I need you," Will whispered quietly, fading so quickly that within a second, Kurt could see straight through him to the line of cheesy romance novels behind him.

"I do. I do." Kurt shook his head, frustrated. "I do need you, Will. You helped me. You fixed me. But—but I need Blaine, too. Maybe it sounds weird, because I just met him, but he's helped me, too. I need him, and—and maybe he doesn't need me the same way I need him. Maybe he doesn't need me at all." He took a deep breath. "But it doesn't matter, because I'm going to get over my feelings for him, and then, if it's meant to be, we can just be friends. And everything will be okay."

The only indication that Will was still there was the shimmer in the air where Kurt knew he was standing. He thought about Will's words. I just want you to need me as much as I need you. Wasn't that a sentiment he was familiar with? Wasn't that exactly what he had been longing for, exactly what he'd been delusional enough to believe that he had found in Blaine?

"I need you, Will."

"But never enough," Will said softly, the words disappearing into silence as quickly as he did.

Kurt waited, but Will didn't come back. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, too tired to care that he had messed up his carefully styled locks with one careless gesture. He wasn't used to this. Need was difficult. It was hard to be needed, and it was hard to need.

He was so very tired of being surrounded by hurt.

"Kurt, can I talk to you?"

Kurt froze, in the midst of shoving his textbooks in his locker at the end of the day. He had made sure to linger after Glee, waiting until all the members of New Directions had left before he went to his locker. Except he had missed one. Blaine. He couldn't talk to Blaine, he couldn't even look at Blaine for too long, or the past weeks would be pointless. He couldn't delve back into those gorgeous, melted amber eyes, or he would be lost, in more ways than one.

"Kurt, please."

And really, there was no question about it when Blaine said Kurt's name like that, when his voice broke like he was trying his best to stay composed. There was no question at all. Kurt had been lost from the very beginning.

Kurt turned around slowly. Blaine was bouncing on the balls of his feet, fidgeting like a tiny bird that would launch into flight if he moved too fast. A sudden, strange urge to protect this boy he hardly knew struck Kurt. Kurt knew that Blaine was capable of protecting himself. He had sneaked glimpses of the corded veins running down Blaine's arms, had seen the dark look that flashed into Blaine's eyes when he caught the end of a derogatory remark aimed at him. He knew Blaine could protect himself, but he also knew that there was something Blaine kept deep inside him—his vulnerability, locked up underneath layers of bravado.

Kind of like me, Kurt realized with a start. Who was he to say that he didn't know Blaine? Sometimes it seemed as if there was no difference between understanding himself and understanding Blaine. Sometimes that made things hard.

Like now, when Blaine was just staring at him, his eyes bright, his mouth turned downwards in a tiny frown that Kurt wasn't accustomed to seeing on his face.

"What's wrong?" Kurt asked, reaching out to touch Blaine instinctively, then drawing away just as quickly.

Blaine laughed, a staccato note that didn't have any of the mirth he usually burst with. "That's wrong," he said, gesturing to Kurt's arms, hanging limply at his side. "You—you won't even look at me, and I just—I don't know what I did wrong." Blaine looked as if he wanted to say more, but he bit his lip and looked down, shaking his head.

"Blaine…" How could he explain why he wasn't allowing himself to selfishly have Blaine as a friend? He couldn't. Not if it meant exposing his useless, idiotic feelings. There was nothing he could say.

Blaine looked up, his eyes looking impossibly dark under his lashes. "You know who else doesn't look at me any more?" he asked, his voice quiet, leeched of its previous emotion. "My father."

Kurt stared at him, stricken. Blaine hadn't said much about his family, except that his dad was an accountant and his mother a professor at OU. Kurt had never even been over to his house. Where was this coming from?

"The day I told my dad I was gay, he told me I was wrong. That's it. He hardly even reacted. Just contradicted me and dismissed me. And I went back to my room, and I sat on my bed, and I cried."

"Blaine—" Kurt's mind was whirring with too many thoughts to make sense of them all. He needed Blaine to slow down, to stop, but Blaine was speaking faster now.

"Neither of us spoke about it again. Not once. But ever since then, I noticed that my dad never addressed me personally if he could help it. Never looked me straight in the eye. And it hurt." Blaine blinked harshly, then let out a whoosh of air. "And every day, I thought that maybe one day I could make it up to him, maybe if I pretended to be what he needed me to be, if I pretended to be straight, then he would accept me again." Blaine paused, then looked at Kurt. "Then one day, I met you, and it didn't matter anymore."

"I'm sorry," Kurt murmured. He wasn't even sure what he was apologizing for. Blaine's family. Kurt ignoring him. Or maybe even deeper than that, he was apologizing because he wasn't worth Blaine's hurt.

"But you stopped talking to me," Blaine continued, his voice bitter. "You stopped looking at me, too. If you're mad at me for some reason, I'm sorry. If you never want to talk to my again after this, then—then it'll suck, but I can respect that. All I want to know," he said, his gaze meeting Kurt's once again, "is why."

"I—" Kurt hesitated. He couldn't lie, not when Blaine was looking at him with injured eyes that he had caused. He couldn't cause any more damage. He had to do what he should've done from the beginning. Come clean. "I like you," he said carefully.

Kurt wasn't sure how to proceed; he'd been hoping for some sort of reaction from Blaine, something to work off of. Instead, Blaine said nothing, quietly studying Kurt's face like it was a book he needed to peruse to find answers.

"I thought you were, um… gay," Kurt began.

Blaine blinked, confused. "I am gay."

"No, I know. I mean, I know now. But before—" Kurt took a deep breath, collected his thoughts, then started over. "I-I thought you were gay, when we first met. I'm against stereotyping and everything, but I just… I guess I hoped you were gay. Then when Wi- when somebody told me you weren't—"

"Who told you I wasn't? I haven't told anybody anything one way or the other."

Kurt avoided Blaine's questioning gaze. It was too hard to evade the truth when he was looking into those eyes. "No one in particular. I just heard this rumor that you had kissed some girl, so I assumed—"

"What?" Blaine looked shocked. "I hardly know any girls here well enough to talk to them, let alone kiss them. I didn't—Kurt, I'm gay."

"Well, I realize that now," Kurt said exasperatedly. "Look, it was just a rumor, and I was stupid enough to believe it and take it too far. I just didn't want you to think I was some kind of—of gay predator."

"Gay predator?" Blaine covered his mouth with his hand, stifling laughter.

Kurt pursed his lips, trying not to smile. "It's not funny."

"It's pretty funny." Blaine grinned at him, and Kurt smiled back.

"So…" Blaine started, his smile fading slightly.

"I know," Kurt said quietly. "And I'm sorry that I ruined everything. I understand if you're mad. I just—I get too far inside my head sometimes, and it messes everything up. If you don't want to talk to me anymore—"

"Kurt."

"—I totally understand, and I'm not going to stop you, but I just wanted to let you know that I do care ab—mfph!" Kurt broke off with a squeak, eyes wide as Blaine's lips suddenly connected with his. He slowly closed his eyes, melting into the feeling, his arms lifting and draping around Blaine's neck almost subconsciously. Blaine's hand was on the small of Kurt's back, tugging him forward so he was pressed against Blaine's hips instead of the locker behind him. Blaine's lips were warm and sure against Kurt's, telling him what he didn't allow himself to hear—that Blaine wanted Kurt just as much as he wanted Blaine. This is happening.

Blaine drew away first, his lips separating from Kurt's with a wet smack that Kurt might have found unpleasant if it weren't so adorable. Blaine leaned his forehead against Kurt's, smiling almost giddily. "We just did that."

"Yes, we did," Kurt breathed, his heart pounding delightfully. Then he remembered where they were, and he pulled away from Blaine abruptly. "We can't do that again."

We—but why?" Blaine pouted, and Kurt tried not to look at the way his bottom lip jutted out, tried not to think about how badly he wanted to lean forward and suck that lip into his mouth until he couldn't remember why they shouldn't.

"Because we're two guys, and this is a school hallway in Ohio." Kurt put his hands on Blaine's chest to push him back a step, but Blaine grabbed his hands, lacing their fingers together.

"There's no one here. Even if there were, I don't care who sees us. If some stupid jocks want to throw around some meaningless words, then we're not going to be any worse off for it," Blaine said firmly. "I'm not going to run anymore."

"Are you sure you're from Westerville, and not just some prince from a fairytale or something?" Kurt muttered, letting their entwined hands fall and swing between them as he shut his locker door.

"If I'm the prince, does that make you the damsel in distress?" Blaine asked, his eyes dancing with suppressed mirth.

Kurt snorted. "Keep dreaming."

"Oh, I will be," Blaine murmured, making his voice low and husky.

"How forward of you," Kurt said, feigning shock. "What kind of fairytale do you think we're writing?"

Blaine smiled, so deeply that little dimples appeared in the corners of his cheek. "I'm just glad I get to write it with you."

"Who writes your lines?"

"Disney and John Hughes films."

They left the school, caught up in their laughter and the pleasure of companionship. It wasn't until they were in the parking lot, sharing a very un-Disney kiss goodbye, that Kurt felt something was… off. His neck prickled, and he pulled away from Blaine, who grumbled and nuzzled into Kurt's neck.

"Did you…?" Kurt stared back at the school, puzzled. He felt strange, like they were being watched, but theirs were the only two cars left in the parking lot.

"Hm?" Blaine asked, pressing tiny kissed to Kurt's throat that made it particularly hard for him to concentrate.

Kurt looked at the school for a second longer, then returned his attention to Blaine. "Nothing."

He hoped so.