“Damn it!”

Kurt's fingers fumbled at his tie, pulling out his third disastrous attempt. His eyes, reflected in the mirror above the dresser, filled with tears, which might have seemed like an overreaction to anyone else but honestly, he'd been tying his own ties since he was seven years old – the day of Kelly Bruck's birthday party when his dad had flatly refused to even attempt the ascot Kurt had been determined to wear. He could tie a Windsor knot in his sleep, with one hand cuffed behind his back. But tonight it was like his hands weren't his; they started out strong but lost their way halfway through. And if he couldn't manage this, then . . .

He sighed and pulled the strip of mauve silk all the way off, dropping it on the end of Blaine's bed then following it down. He wasn't actually sure it was even still considered Blaine's bed, though, when Blaine hadn't slept there regularly in so many years. The room itself had been thoroughly converted into a standard (if elegant) guest room. He supposed he couldn't blame the Andersons. He certainly didn't expect his own father to keep his room like some sort of shrine once he'd moved out. But it would have been nice, for him, to be able to get a glimpse of the boy Blaine had been in the things he'd owned, the way he'd arranged them.

Ironically, that was the whole point of tonight. To see the boy Blaine had been. But Kurt would have preferred to do it here, in the relative privacy of the Andersons' guest room, rather than in front of the entire Dalton Academy Class of 2002. Not that he had a choice at this point. He was pretty sure “I can't remember how to tie my tie” was not an excuse Blaine would accept for bailing at the last minute. Or even believe, knowing Kurt as well as he did.

No, there was no way out now. Kurt picked up the tie and draped it around his neck yet again. Cross, through, behind, through again – and for the fourth time the end came out backward, twisted the wrong way by some mistake his fingers couldn't remember making. And for the fourth time he pulled out the ugly mess – with a resigned sigh this time instead of a curse.

He wanted to blame the Andersons. That would have been easy. After all, it was always a little awkward and uncomfortable being around Blaine's parents. Oh, they bent over backward to be nice to him – that was the problem. After only moments in their company Kurt always started to feel like he was being wooed. Like there was some kind of prize he could confer on them, or not, and they had to be on their best behavior if they hoped to win his favor. The problem with the Anderson family, Kurt had realized from their very first meeting, was that everyone was so busy worrying about how everyone else saw them that no one was being themselves. Not even Blaine, really, not here. And when Blaine was on edge, Kurt was on edge, which was probably why a simple Windsor knot was suddenly eluding him.

Except that wasn't true. It wasn't Blaine and it wasn't the Andersons either. It was the damned reunion. And it didn't help that the whole thing had been his idea in the first place. Not that Blaine hadn't wanted to go. He'd said he didn't. He'd insisted most vociferously that it had been too long, he'd been out of touch with those people too long. But even as he said it Kurt could see a wistfulness in his eyes. He was afraid, but he wanted to be there. �

Kurt didn't ask him why he was afraid. He didn't want to hear Blaine say that it was because of their very untraditional bond. The thought of just keeping silent and not attending filled Kurt with blessed relief. But that relief had been exactly what spurred him to insist that they should go. He'd never been one to take the easy way out and he sure as hell wasn't going to start by sacrificing Blaine's happiness to his own insecurity. Blaine needed to be there, he'd said, and he, Kurt, was completely fine with it.

He wasn't completely fine though. He was scared to death. He may have spent almost a year now completely owning this domination thing, but that didn't change the fact that he was a seventeen-year-old kid. And he was pretty sure none of Blaine's former classmates were going to miss that fact. He didn't want anyone's judgment getting in the way of Blaine's enjoyment tonight, but he didn't see how they were going to avoid it. And he very much didn't want to spend the night trying to calm and comfort a distraught Blaine with the Andersons only a few rooms away.

Well there was no help for it. They were going. Kurt purposefully grasped the ends of his tie to try again.

“Kurt?”

He looked up, startled, to find Blaine's mother peeking around the door frame.

“Oh,” he said eloquently. He'd been invited to call her Margaret at their first meeting, but that never felt right on his tongue, especially in the stiff Anderson household. Having been invited, though, meant using Mrs. Anderson instead would seem like a statement, and one he wasn't trying to make. “Hi,” he settled for, hoping as he always did that she wouldn't notice he didn't use her name.

“Tie trouble?” she smiled. Her resemblance to Blaine always disconcerted Kurt. She was small, like Blaine, with the same compelling smile and the same open brown eyes. They were images of each other. Except for the hair. Blaine's riotous curls were the one thing he inherited from his father.

She crossed the room and sat on the bed, reaching for the ends of his tie without stopping to ask for permission. Surprise was the only thing that kept Kurt from flinching away from her. People didn't get in his space – not people who weren't Blaine or Burt. And no one would ever presume to touch his clothing like that. But Mrs. Anderson hadn't gotten that memo. Her hands were deftly working the mauve silk before Kurt could think of a word to say.

“It's okay.” She apparently took his surprise for concern. “I have decades of experience tying ties for Anderson men.”

And he had to admit that she looked different than he had ever seen her, doing this thing that was so familiar to her. Because it was completely unfamiliar to him, it took him longer than it should have to put his finger on what that difference was. When he finally did, he found he couldn't bring himself to stop her. She looked motherly.

So he let her go on, even though she was too close and even though she was tying a four-in-hand, which was completely wrong for his shirt collar and would have to be taken out and redone as soon as she was gone.

“Can you keep a secret?” she asked as she pulled the finished knot firmly into place.

“Um . . .” Kurt most definitely did not want to be keeping secrets for Blaine's mother.

“Oh, it's not really a secret.” She smiled, but without something to distract her the usual watchful care was reasserting itself in her face. “I actually snuck up here to try to catch you alone.”

“Okay.”

“I've wanted to speak to you for a while, but Blaine hovers over you like a mother hen whenever you're here. I understand why,” she clarified, when Kurt opened his mouth to defend Blaine. “He knows from painful experience that sometimes things that sound perfectly reasonable in my head don't always make it to my mouth that way. Especially when I'm nervous.”

She must be nervous most of the time, Kurt thought.

She folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them. Following her gaze, Kurt noticed that her feet barely touched the floor from where she sat on the bed. The comparison with Blaine did a lot to improve his feeling for her.

“What I wanted to tell you,” she went on, still talking to her hands, “is that this family has a long history of inappropriate pairings.”

Kurt bit his lip to stifle his reaction to that, but apparently he didn't succeed as well as he'd hoped because her eyes flew to his, wide and alarmed. “Oh God, I did it again, didn't I? I didn't mean that. I meant inappropriate from the outside, from the world.”

Kurt felt he had to give her something so he said, “I understand,” even though he didn't.

“No, you don't,” she said, but her face relaxed a little and she rested a hand tentatively on his. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. He didn't pull away, though. “I'm actually talking about my parents. Blaine's told you that story?”

Kurt nodded.

“My parents had to defy two cultures to be together. They couldn't even read their own marks. They lived in completely different worlds. But somehow they found each other.”

“Blaine tells it like a fairy tale.”

“It was a fairy tale. And then there's you and Blaine. Cooper and Lauren.”

To her credit, her brow only twisted a tiny bit when she said Lauren's name.

“Even my brothers – well, I won't bore you with all that but they all had obstacles to overcome or challenges that being with their soulmates brought.” She took her hand away then, folded it with the other one back in her lap, and Kurt wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed.

“The real secret is,” she told her hands, “that I've always wondered if there was something wrong with me.”

Strangely, listening to her quiet voice, Kurt had an impulse to touch her hand, but before he could move she looked up again and he could see that she wasn't fishing for sympathy at all.

“Don't misunderstand me, I love Bill. He is my soulmate, absolutely, and I wouldn't trade him for anything. But coming from a family like mine . . . sometimes I feel like there's something missing, in me, that I wasn't strong enough maybe, for a more . . . challenging . . . situation. And it may be that I've held on so hard to the idea of normal, and resisted everything else, so that I wouldn't feel that way.”

He stared back at her, pinned by her sincerity, unsure of what she expected from him.

“I'm making you uncomfortable. I'm sorry. Blaine was probably right to keep you away from me.” She smiled.

“No, you're not making me uncomfortable,” he protested. She raised her eyebrows at him (so, so much like Blaine) so he amended, “Okay, maybe a little. But I understand.”

And he found that he did.

She smiled. “Well what I really came up here to say was, we, Bill and I both, we're so happy to have you as part of our family. Sometimes we get too caught up in rights and wrongs and being afraid to say the things we should.” Her hands wrung together in her lap but she held Kurt's gaze. “My son is happier than I've seen him since the day he got his mark. Content. No, that's not quite right.” She closed her eyes briefly, searching. “Complete,” she finally said. “He spent so long searching and now he's complete.”

She rested her hand on his again, squeezed a little this time. “And his friends tonight are all going to see that. I'm sure you'll get some stares and whispers, but the people who care about him are going to see exactly what I see, and they'll be just as happy as I am to see it.”

Kurt felt the tightness in his chest recede just a little, in the light of her smile. He turned his hand enough to squeeze her fingers in return. That made her smile even wider.

“You know, when Blaine was little my mother told me something I'll never forget,” she went on. “I was afraid for him, for when he grew up and found his soulmate, because he seemed to feel things so deeply. He was so easily hurt. But my mother told me that meant that his soulmate would be deep as well. That he'd – well, she said she obviously, she just assumed . . .”

She faltered, as if she was afraid she'd been tactless again.

“Of course,” Kurt reassured her. “Anyone would.”

“She said he'd be just as deep. Just as strong and brave as Blaine needed him to be. And she was right.”

She was so sincere, looking up at Kurt, squeezing his hand, that Kurt could feel tears wanting to start in his eyes again. He pushed them back, though, because he was pretty sure if he started crying she'd think she'd gone wrong, instead of exactly right.

“Mom?”

They heard Blaine before they saw him and Kurt almost pulled his hand away. He felt unexpectedly guilty, as if he was somehow stealing Blaine's mother for himself. But she held on even tighter, and really, it was worth it just to see how high Blaine's eyebrows could go when he came around the door and took in the scene before him.

“It's all right,” Mrs. Anderson said before Blaine could manage to form words, “I didn't say anything wrong, I promise.”

“Well there was that thing about inappropriate pairings,” Kurt said, but he smiled at her so she'd know he was teasing.

"What?! Mom!"

They both laughed out loud at the look on Blaine's face.

Mrs. Anderson loosened her grip and patted Kurt's hand before slipping off the bed. “Come downstairs and have a drink with your father and me,” she said to her visibly confused son, squeezing his shoulder as she passed him in the doorway. “Let Kurt finish getting ready.”

Blaine just stared at Kurt, even after she was gone. He looked a little shell-shocked and Kurt couldn't help laughing again. “Go have your drink. I'm fine,” he said.

“Come down with me,” Blaine said. “You're dressed. You look amazing.”

“I have to redo my tie. She made a good knot, it's just completely wrong.”

“She tied your tie?” Blaine's eyebrows went even higher than before, which Kurt wouldn't have believed possible. “You let her tie your tie?!”

“It's not like she asked for permission. She just did it.” Blaine didn't seem to be leaving, so Kurt went back to the mirror and began to pull apart the not-quite-right knot. “And I guess I have to make some allowances for my future mother-in-law, right?”

Blaine's eyebrows apparently couldn't go any higher, so he dropped his mouth open instead. Kurt smiled at his reflection in the mirror. Nothing was better than taking Blaine by surprise.

Eventually, Blaine recovered enough to say “Come down with me,” again.

Kurt made a little face at him. “I don't think so. I'd rather avoid that awkward moment where your dad pours me a drink before he remembers that I'm not legal. Then makes that face like he just committed the world's worst social faux pas.”

“I don't care. They don't care. Come on. You're as much a part of this family as I am of yours, you know.”

Kurt sighed his acquiescence. “Just let me fix this tie,” he said, and although he still couldn't say he was looking forward to the evening, at least this time his fingers went right.

* * *

Kurt really wished he could take out his phone and snap a few pictures of the Dalton Academy parking lot. His dad would have gone nuts for some of the uber-luxury cars parked there. Blaine's Prius was definitely the lowest of the low in this company. But he was pretty sure that it would be socially unacceptable to even gawk as much as he'd like, much less set off his flash willy-nilly. Instead he just tried to commit some of the best ones to memory so he could report on them later. His dad probably wouldn't need to know what kind of rims were on the yellow Lamborghini, but cataloguing the details helped keep him calm.

Blaine had been quiet on the ride to the school, and he still was, although he held tight to Kurt's hand as they crossed the lot toward the most imposing building Kurt had ever seen in Ohio. Most of the boarding kids had gone home for spring break, but the school was lit up with activity. Thousands of tiny fairy lights adorned the majestic oaks around the building, which were just budding enough that that didn't look ridiculous, and an elegant sign draped across the entryway welcomed the Dalton Class of 2002. Kurt had to appreciate the effort. He approved of anyone who had figured out that girls weren't required for a kick-ass decorations committee.

Music could be heard, coming from somewhere within, and at least it seemed like good music – Kurt had half expected a string quartet playing Mozart. He couldn't quite make out the song, but the bass was throbbing; it was definitely meant for dancing. That Kurt could work with. A few dances and before you knew it an hour had gone by. Might as well get in there and get it over with. He moved more purposely toward the door, pulling at Blaine's hand.

But Blaine's hand pulled back, and when Kurt turned to see what was wrong he was staring up at the welcome sign with the strangest look on his face. As if it was a particularly difficult math question that he didn't know the answer to.

“Are you okay?” Kurt took Blaine's other hand in his and squeezed it.

Blaine didn't answer.

“Is it me?”

That pulled Blaine's attention away from the banner. “What?”

“Is it me?” Kurt waved his hand up and down in front of his chest. “Teenage . . . me.”

“No! Kurt, God, of course not! I wasn't even thinking about that.”

“Then what were you thinking? Because I know you said at first you didn't want to come, but I thought you got over that.”

“I did.” Blaine's eyes went back to the banner over the door. “It's just – Class of 2002. That was the last time I saw any of these guys. They were my friends. Some of them were my best friends. But once I was out of here I was too busy looking ahead to ever look back. I mean, sure, they friended me on Facebook and we leave little comments, but,” he looked at Kurt and shrugged, “I just wonder if they'll be mad at me. Because I completely ditched them. I would be, if I were them.”

Another late-arriving couple appeared at the end of the walk, so Kurt pulled Blaine off to the side out of the way and held his hands tight so that he couldn't look around to see who it was. “Listen,” he said softly, “I can't wait to escape McKinley. You think I'm going to come back here for my reunion and pretend high school was something remotely worth celebrating? No freaking way. Once they hand me that diploma I am never walking through those doors again. Ever. That's not looking back.” He dropped one of Blaine's hands so he could touch Blaine's cheek. “You're here. That will tell them all they need to know. Yes, one or two of them might feel the need to bitch at you for disappearing from their lives, but for the most part they're just going to be happy to see you. And I promise to protect you from any actual physical violence. Deal?”

Blaine nodded. He still looked tense to Kurt, but he turned and led the way toward the arched entry.

Dalton Academy was just as imposing inside as out. Kurt played it cool, of course, but in his head he was gaping at every pane of stained glass and painted ceiling cherub. The place was like a rococo palace set down very improbably in central Ohio. He knew Blaine's parents had money, but this place meant money.

There were a few couples wandering the wide, oak-paneled hallways, but while one or two nodded or waved at Blaine, no one spoke to them. Most of the guests seemed to be wherever the music was coming from. It got louder as they made their way toward it, down an ornate spiral staircase and more long corridors.

Their anonymity ended the minute they appeared in the doorway of what must have at one time been a ballroom, although Kurt was sure Dalton had other uses for it when they weren't hosting reunions. A scream that he wasn't sure even he could have reproduced the pitch of greeted their arrival, so perfectly timed that Kurt suspected whoever it was had been watching for them specifically.

Every pair of eyes in the room, literally, every single one, turned in their direction. Fortunately, most of them then turned back to their dancing, noshing or drinking. So when a mob hurtled in their direction, it was at least relatively small.

“Blaine!”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Anderson! What the fuck, man?”

Voices beat against Kurt's body like actual fists, but the crowd surrounded Blaine, inadvertently pushing Kurt to the side, and Kurt was happy to go. He followed along as Blaine was drawn further into the room. He watch carefully, but Blaine at least seemed to take all this in stride. That made sense. These men had been his friends. Kurt supposed for him this was less the attack it looked like and more a kind of welcome.

“I don't believe my eyes. Literally. My eyes have betrayed me.”

“Where the hell have you been?”

The ringleader seemed to be a slender man with Asian features, a gorgeous smile and a jawline that even in his current state of alarm Kurt had to appreciate. He out-shouted the others like someone who had long experience doing just that.

“Excuse me, everyone. Stop. I think we're failing to notice the most important thing here.” Unceremoniously, he grabbed for Blaine's right hand and lifted it high, so that his suit jacket fell back to reveal his black cuff.

The scream happened again – Kurt could see its originator now, a man who looked like he should be younger than the rest by several years – and it was echoed at a lower decibel by others. Blaine disappeared behind a pile of former Preps, all hugging him, exclaiming, touching his cuff. The suddenness of it, or maybe just the sheer volume, grabbed and pulled at something inside Kurt's chest that made him want to run to Blaine and shove them all away – put himself between them and his, his, submissive. But every time he glimpsed Blaine's face through the throng it was smiling and saying words Kurt couldn't hear but that were clearly not distressed. So he let his fists clench in his pockets instead, exchanged sheepish glances with other dates shunted to the side by the love fest, and took long, deep breaths to help him fight off his instinctive reaction. Blaine was being hugged by friends, not attached by wild dogs, no matter how inappropriately into his personal space they were crowding. If Blaine was okay with it then it was okay.

At least that's what he tried to tell himself.

But it meant he wasn't in a very receptive mood when his name was spoken and the crowd broke a little so that everyone could turn and face him with avid expectation. It was too bad he was so keyed up because it would have been funny, the crazy morphing of expressions on their faces. But instead Kurt could feel that possessive darkness growing inside him. Blaine was happy, so happy there were actual tears in his eyes, and if any of these over-privileged Ken dolls ruined that for him, well, Kurt wasn't going to be responsible for his actions.

Blaine pushed past several people and came to Kurt's side, sliding a hand through Kurt's arm, which was still anchored by the fist in his pocket.

“This is him,” he said, and Kurt listened for nervous in his voice but Blaine spoke with firm assuredness. “Kurt Hummel. My soulmate. Kurt, these are the Warblers. Our Warblers anyway.”

“2002 National Champions,” someone said, and several other voices chimed in to support him.

The crowd began to move, pulling apart somewhat, reforming in a cluster that included some of the other significant others. Most of the dates were women, but there were a few men as well. Kurt found himself more surprised by that than he probably should have been.

Blaine was making introductions, but so were others, bringing spouses forward into the circle. Names flew by Kurt. He caught a few – Wes was the apparent ringleader, and there was a David and a Thad, and the baby-faced screamer was Trent (or maybe the screamer was Thad and dark-but-intense was Trent?) – but most of them never quite made it to Kurt's long-term memory. There were several he didn't even hear, as most of the Warblers didn't seem to think the fact that Blaine was talking to him was any reason they should stop talking to Blaine.

At least the crowd thinned a little, as some of the outliers drifted off to resume conversations with their dates or other alumni. Eventually just a core group still clustered around Kurt and Blaine, all staring frankly at Kurt. But hard as he looked, he didn't find any animosity in their faces. Just open interest.

“Sorry if we're all a little bit too fascinated by you,” Wes said with another charming smile. “It's just that I don't think any of us ever thought we'd get to meet the infamous soulmate.”

“Infamous?” Kurt asked, glancing at Blaine. Blaine's face colored pink.

“Soulmate of Blaine!” A dark-haired man who was not Thad or Trent crowed.

A taller blond smacked him on the arm. “I can't believe you said that! Don't tell him about the SOB!”

“SOB?” Kurt's glance at Blaine became a full-fledged look. And Blaine's pink became red.

“Sorry man,” the blond grimaced. “He shouldn't have said that. It was just a joke. Like, ‘Hey Blaine, that SOB turned up yet?' SOB? Soulmate? Of Blaine? But we didn't actually mean you were a . . . I mean we didn't even know you, obviously, we just . . .”

“I think that hole's gotten deep enough, Jeff,” the one Blaine had introduced as David said. He held out a hand to Kurt, who had to pull his own out of his pocket and Blaine's grasp to take it. “It's nice to meet you Kurt. The point Nick is trying to make is that Blaine's search for his soulmate was a bit of thing among the Warblers back then.”

Wes stretched out his hand next and picked up where David left off. “Exactly. Blaine might have been a tiny bit obsessed with it.” Kurt snorted at that, and he could see Blaine smile ruefully. “So we, in true Warbler tradition,” Wes continued, “had to poke a little gentle fun at him.”

“Gentle?” Blaine said incredulously.

“And now the mystery of why he never found you has been solved.” That was Thad again, Kurt was becoming more sure that baby-face was Trent. “Because you were what? Ten?”

It was an honest question. The directness of it took Kurt aback, but still, even Mr. Intense didn't seem to have any real malice in him.

“Seven,” Kurt said, firmly, head held high. He watched them all do the math. For a while no one spoke; no one seemed to know what to say.

Then someone started to laugh. Trent. A muffled giggle gradually bloomed to a chuckle. “I'm sorry,” Trent said, his voice shaking with it, “but I just got a mental picture of Blaine's face, back then, if he'd known . . .”

Others began to pick up the laughter; even Blaine smiled. Kurt wasn't at all sure how he was supposed to feel about this, but the dark haired man who'd mentioned the SOB thing grinned at him.

“Oh my God, that's awesome,” he said. “I mean, we love Blaine, but he was just a little uptight back then. Especially about you.”

“Uptight?” the blond exclaimed. “If those bow ties had been any tighter he'd have passed out every time he tried to hit a high note.”

Even as they mocked, or at least it sounded like mocking to Kurt's sensitized ears, they were reaching out, touching Blaine again, patting him on the shoulder, and their eyes to the last man reflected only friendship and affection. Kurt felt like he was standing on the deck of a ship at sea; what was under his feet was solid and secure and yet his balance wasn't right and he couldn't find stability. He wondered a little desperately if there was any chance Blaine would sneak him a drink from the bar. He'd never had alcohol, but it sounded like a very good idea at the moment.

“Why are there so many of you?” he asked, almost without thinking, partly because the crowd felt much bigger than he wanted it to be and partly because it really had just occurred to him that that first stampeding group had been big. “We're always begging people to join glee. But this,” he waved a hand around the room, to include the Warblers who'd drifted off, “and at least some of the team must have been in other classes, right?”

“Actually,” Trent drew the word out like a confession, “some of us weren't in the class of 2002 at all. I was the year behind, and Nick and Jeff. Some of the others were even younger.” He threw Kurt a wink. “Don't tell anybody. I don't want to get kicked out of my first reunion.”

“Such a rebel. You always were,” a tall guy who had been silent up until now said. Others nodded in sarcastic solidarity.

“It's actually my fault,” Wes told Blaine. “When I found out you were coming I couldn't resist taking advantage of the opportunity to recreate the National Champion Warblers of 2002. I thought maybe we could grace the commons with one last performance. Celebrate the return of the best lead singer the Warblers have ever had.”

“Lead singer?” Kurt glared accusingly at Blaine. “You told me you were a Warbler but you never said . . .”

“Sorry?” Blaine shrugged apologetically. “It never really came up, I guess.” He was looking more and more uncomfortable with the proceedings, but Kurt was becoming less sympathetic, since the Warblers had taken his age so much in stride. They seemed nice. They just had a bit of a strange way of showing it.

“You have to do it!” Trent said. “It's too awesome not to.”

“We even have blazers,” David confided in a secretive whisper. “We sent Thad to break into the storage room. He grabbed as many extra-larges as he could find.”

“And I got some blazers too,” Thad grinned, and despite the decidedly female date on his arm, he gave Nick's ass a quick squeeze that made the taller man squeal.

Kurt was sure his eyebrows disappeared into his hairline, but everyone else just laughed along. He was definitely starting to like these Dalton boys.

“So what do you say?” Trent prodded.

“I don't know,” he demurred. “I've got Kurt –”

“Hey! Don't use me as an excuse. I want to see you do it.” He really did, too. Kurt was sure the embarrassment potential would be high. And he did like the color Blaine's face turned when he was teased. He'd seen that color far too many times tonight caused by other people. A little material for later would absolutely come in handy.

Plus he could tell Blaine really did want to do it. These were his friends, and he was getting a chance to relive his glory days with them. So he took Blaine by the shoulders and pushed him in David's direction. “Take him,” he said firmly. “Make him sing.”

Trent grinned and grabbed Blaine's hand, not taking any chances on a last-minute escape.

“Wait, guys, there's one problem,” Jeff said.

Everyone stared at him.

“Did anyone bring hair gel?”

A chorus admonitions and playful punches followed his words.

“What?” He cringed, protecting himself from the blows. “I don't know if I can perform with him this way. All those wild, uncontained curls? Tell me that's not distracting.”

They were all laughing as they dragged Jeff toward the far end of the ballroom, where the DJ's station had been set up. Blaine was laughing as hard as any of them. He didn't even look back at Kurt as he went.

Which was a good thing, Kurt told himself firmly. He spotted a waiter passing a tray of champagne glasses and wondered if there was any chance he'd be able to grab one without being challenged.

Fortunately the Warblers, once committed, moved quickly. Kurt hardly had time to smile awkwardly again at the rest of the significant others left behind by their dates' defections before the dance music filling the room came to an abrupt halt and Wes's voice took over through the DJ's microphone.

“Excuse me, excuse me ladies and gentlemen.”

Kurt breathed a sigh of relief as everyone's attention turned in Wes's direction. Already, blazer-clad Warblers were lining up across the rapidly clearing dance area. Excited murmurs from all directions filled the air and began to swell to whistles and cheers as people started to realize what was happening.

“We have a rare treat tonight,” Wes continued, louder, over the noise. “For the first time in almost a decade, I present to you the 2002 National Champion Dalton Academy Warblers!”

The room erupted in cheers and Kurt could only gape. He had no idea what the reaction would be if the New Directions decided to give an impromptu performance at the ten-year reunion he had no intention of attending, but he thought he could safely bet it wouldn't be anything like this.

Blaine was one of the last to slip into place, along with Wes sliding over from the DJ stand. But whereas Wes took a spot in the lineup of navy-jackets, Blaine stood apart, front and center on his own, looking up and out as if he was standing in an imaginary spotlight and waiting with perfect confidence for the room to quiet down.

Watching him, Kurt couldn't help but remember the first time he'd seen Blaine in that blazer. He wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

Blaine, his Blaine, Blaine who never put himself forward or sought attention, held the space like he'd been doing it all his life. Like he expected and deserved the focus of every person in the room. And he got it. But still he waited. He had, Kurt realized, amazing timing. He was building up the anticipation. Waiting until everyone was not just watching, but longing for him to sing.

He always did love the buildup.

And at just the right moment he opened his mouth and sang.

I keep on falling . . . iiiiiiiiiin . . . in love . . .with you . . .

A single “Ow!” came from somewhere behind Kurt, just as one of the tall men behind Blaine started a beat in the DJ's microphone and the others began to fill out Blaine's melody with harmony and counterpoint.

It was a little faster that Ms. Keys' original, but other than that unchanged, and Kurt could only gape as Blaine – his Blaine – moved in a way Kurt had never seen from him before and sang – sang like . . . well, like the best lead singer the Warblers had ever had. He wasn't good. He was brilliant. Soulful. And the thing that made him brilliant, Kurt realized as he watched, wasn't his voice. It was more than that. It was the way he threw himself into the music. He loved it. The man on the dance floor in that blazer, dipping down low with the deep runs and connecting openly and unselfconsciously with his fellow singers, was so obviously passionate about singing and music and this song and these people. He knew he was where he belonged and where he knew he deserved to be.

Around Kurt more people in the crowd began to respond and call back, clapping when all the voices rose together in crescendos. They all knew they were watching something extraordinary and Blaine, somehow without seeming distant or cold, accepted the response as his due. He was a preacher leading his congregation in the love of music itself while still accepting that it was his talent and presence and charisma that brought them to the altar.

Kurt was mesmerized with the rest. Mesmerized, shocked, amazed, and something else, something darker that peeked out from a back corner of his brain.

When the Warblers ended with a syncopated you and froze with hands folded and heads down, there was a full five seconds of complete silence before the room exploded. People screamed, clapped, surged forward to hug and congratulate the singers. And this was no alma-mater jingoism. Every single bit of the praise was more than deserved. If New Directions had to compete with these Warblers, Kurt thought, there would have been no doubt as to the outcome.

Kurt spied Blaine craning over the crowd to find him. Kurt waved, grinned his biggest and most sincere smile, and blew a kiss. Blaine caught it against his cheek, grinning back, then disappeared behind more excited well-wishers.

Kurt slipped out of the room and through the nearest door to the outside.

It was a side door, so he was alone, thank goodness. He gulped in the fresh, cool night air, hoping it would help settle the conflicting emotions Blaine's performance had awoken in him. But the emotions seemed to be happy to keep battling it out on the field between his head and his heart. He dropped to sit on the stone steps that lead down to the lawn and rested his chin in his hands, staring across the expanse of grass and stately, spring-blooming trees. He should go back, he knew, but he just needed a minute and he was sure Blaine would understand that. He hoped so, at least.

When the door opened behind him he didn't have to look to know it would be Blaine.

“Wow, you must be pretty upset if you're sitting on the ground in that suit.”

Blaine's tone was careful but not tense, as least not as far as Kurt could tell.

“This isn't the ground,” he protested, “and I'm not upset.” He turned to smile as Blaine came to sit next to him. “Unless it's upset at you for never telling me you could do that.”

“Was it good?”

“Are you kidding? The crowd's reaction wasn't enough to prove that to you?”

“I don't care about the crowd. I care about you.”

And the thing about it was, Blaine was telling the truth. As much as he'd worked that audience like a manic virtuoso puppeteer, Kurt could see that he really did only care what Kurt himself thought. He wished he had some idea how Blaine managed that. Kurt was always so concerned with how other people reacted to things. He could use some of Blaine's attitude.

“I thought it was the most amazing performance I've ever seen.”

Blaine grinned in genuine relief. “Really?”

“You have a gift,” Kurt said, slowly, because it was just starting to come together in his head. “You should be using that gift Blaine. What the hell are you doing here?”

Blaine laughed. “You,” he said, as if that should have been perfectly obvious.

Kurt was silent for a long time. So long that Blaine finally took his hand. “Tell me what's wrong,” he said.

“You shouldn't be here. In freaking Ohio, Blaine you belong in New York, singing. All this time you've stayed here for me when you should be out there letting people see what you can –”

“No. Stop.” Blaine pulled on Kurt's hand to get his attention. “Kurt, I was in New York for three years. And you know what I did?”

“Looked for me?” Kurt already knew that story.

“I did just as much school work as I had to to keep my grades up. And I looked for you. I didn't sing. I didn't play, except alone in my apartment pretending I was playing for you.”

“You sang at Dalton, before,” Kurt pointed out.

Blaine's eyes were shadowed by the darkness but Kurt could see enough to know that Blaine was about to reveal something important to him.

“I sang at Dalton because I wasn't desperate yet,” Blaine said quietly, still holding Kurt's hand in a warm and gentle grip. “But I was so sure I'd find you at OSU. I told myself, just concentrate on looking for Kurt. And then when you find him, you can get back to the other things you love. But I never found you. And those other things just kept getting father and farther away from me. They stopped being part of how I saw myself.”

He paused for a breath and leaned a little closer, still avid, like everything hinged on this one point. “But you've given that back to me. You've made me remember who I was and the things I loved and wanted to do with my life. In addition to dominating the crap out of me in the best way possible.”

Kurt smiled at that in spite of himself.

“I told you before I wasn't living all those years,” Blaine went on. “I'm living now. Living in Ohio, yes, waiting for you, yes, but living as me again. Happy and excited for the future. I have dreams now, Kurt, and plans to make those dreams come true. I'm closer to that singing kid than I've been in years.”

“Back in the blazer and everything,” Kurt said. He shifted a little, so he could lay his head on Blaine's shoulder, and heard Blaine huff out a little surprised breath. “I just wish I could have been there for you. I wish we'd been the same age, so I could have found you at some show choir competition, beaten your team soundly, of course, and then found out your name and told you mine and . . . I love what we have but I wish it could have been like that. For your sake.”

“I don't.” Blaine's voice was quiet but sincere.

“Why not?” Kurt lifted his head enough to look at Blaine.

“Because seventeen-year-old me would so not have been ready for you.”

Kurt sat up all the way. “What's that supposed to mean?”

Blaine's eyes went wide, surprised. “How many times have I told you what an amazing dominant you are? That's not just because you're my soulmate you know.”

“I don't understand.”

Blaine rubbed his thumb along the back of Kurt's hand in a gentle caress. “Look, you know I was with a lot of guys in New York, and even before.”

Kurt nodded.

“Well when I wasn't looking for you, I was trying to make myself worthy of you.”

“Blaine –”

“No, let me finish. I had this fantasy that of course my dominant would be the most dominant dominant there ever was, and he'd expect me to be the most submissive submissive. That was obviously why it was taking so long to find him. Because I wasn't ready yet. I wasn't perfect.”

To Kurt it sounded like Blaine was blaming himself for something that was nobody's fault, but the intense expression on Blaine's face helped him rein in the instinct to interrupt and reassure him.

“When I picked a guy to play with, I chose the best,” Blaine said. “The doms with the biggest reputations. The ones who really knew how to push a sub. I told you that. Because I knew I needed to be challenged if I was going to be able to fulfill your every desire.” He sniffed a little laugh. “That's why I was so freaked out the first day we met. Well, one of the reasons. How the hell was a teen virgin ever going to even come close to taking advantage of all my years of preparation? But you did.”

“Natural dominant,” Kurt reminded him drolly.

“Which is probably the understatement of the century. And it's also my point. The things we've done – do you think for a minute seventeen-year-old me would have been ready for any of them? My birthday, with the paddling and the ball crushing, or the leash at the club? Never mind the public orgasm. Blowing you at school? And, God, the chastity cage?”

“It is quite a list when you put it all together like that.”

“It's quite a list because you, at seventeen, are ready for all of that and more. If I'd met you back then I'd have been terrified. When I masturbated all I had to do was say ‘please can I come' out loud and I would come, because just saying it was too hot and I had zero control. You probably would have laughed at my pathetic attempts.”

He was smiling as he said that, so Kurt knew that he wasn't really dismissing his past self. But he also had a point. What would he have done with that inexperienced Blaine? Endured, he knew, because Blaine was his soulmate, but that didn't mean that Blaine was wrong.

“So I guess what they say is true then. You meet when it's time.” Kurt shifted again, back around so he could return his head to Blaine's shoulder. Blaine dropped his hand and wrapped an arm around him.

“As for the Warblers,” Blaine said, “I was the one who left them behind without a backward glance. You aren't keeping me from my life. You're the one who brought me back here. I wouldn't have had the courage to come without you. So can we stop the whole ‘he's giving up too much for me' thing? Both of us?”

“Deal.” Kurt said.

“Now can we go back inside before my ass freezes on this stone? I'm sure everyone would still like a chance to get to know you. They certainly heard enough about you when you were only hypothetical. They've got to be curious about the reality.”

Kurt wrapped his own arm around Blaine's waist and tugged him closer. “They seem nice. They were very cool about the age thing.”

“Well I told you about Dalton's policy. Everyone treated the same no matter who you are. Or how old you are. Lessons like that tend to stick.”

Kurt hummed a little affirmative. “Can we stay out here just a little longer? I like having the star Warbler all to myself. You can go back to your adoring public in a minute.”

Blaine laughed, but cuddled close. Kurt rubbed his cheek against the fabric of the blazer and inhaled, breathing in the scent of Blaine's past as fairy lights twinkled around them in the dark.