“Pierce me?” Blaine requests excitedly, bouncing up to Kurt where he sits on the sofa, reading, with a smile on his face and a sewing needle in his hand.

Kurt looks at the needle that Blaine offers him and blinks. The thing is huge!

“Uh…excuse me?” Kurt asks, looking up from his issue of Vogue. He reaches out a hand and carefully plucks the needle from fiancé's fingers.

“Pierce me,” Blaine repeats, his smile growing wider, signifying that this is the greatest idea of all ideas in known history.

“I…uh…where?” Kurt puts his magazine down and turns the frighteningly thick needle over in his fingers. “And where on earth did you get this thing? It's mammoth!”

“I borrowed it from the costume department at NYADA,” Blaine says, taking the seat beside Kurt and leaning in to offer up his ear. “I want you to pierce my ear with it.”

“Are you crazy?” Kurt exclaims, feeling his body shudder at the thought of shoving this metal spike through Blaine's delicate ear. “This thing will take half your ear off! And why do you want to do such a foolish thing anyway? You're an actor. You need to keep your body unsullied – a blank slate - to accommodate whatever roles you get.” Kurt watches the smile slip from Blaine's face. It's no fun putting his foot down, but he has to stand firm. “Nu-uh. I'm not filling you full of holes.”

“But, you got your tongue pierced,” Blaine says with a smidgen of a whine, “and you got a tattoo. You hang out with Elliot, and he has piercings and tattoos. I want to do something…you know…edgy.”

Kurt looks down at the humongous needle in between his fingers and sighs. Everyone who's moved to New York from Lima has gone through some sort of transformation – Rachel got her Chloe-Sevigny-chic makeover in the Vogue vault and discovered the magic of thigh-highs and smoky eyeliner, Sam was able to remake his Southern-boy-next-door charm and athletic physique into an image that he could turn into a semi-marketable modelling career, and Kurt – he had managed the biggest metamorphosis of them all. He discovered muscles he didn't even know existed, and through determination and exercise, his baby fat had finally melted away. Add to that a plethora of well-placed highlights and a serious tweak to his wardrobe, and the duckling Kurt Hummel had finally found his inner swan. The pierced tongue and the tattoo had been the tip of the iceberg.

But Blaine had managed to hold strong to his adorable – yet admittedly dated – sense of style, and at a place like NYADA where image is uber important, it's been noticed…and talked about…and sometimes laughed at. Kurt doesn't know if Blaine is reluctant to change or if he just doesn't know where to start, but Kurt didn't worry about it too much since Blaine hasn't mentioned it before now.

Something at school today must have tipped things over the edge.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Kurt asks, putting the needle on the coffee table and pulling his fiancé into his arms. Blaine's head bows as he stares at his hands, fingers idly pulling at invisible lint on his jeans.

“I…it's nothing, really,” Blaine says, relaxing beneath the fingers that have started to comb through his tangled curls.

“Well, nothing really wouldn't have you asking me to poke holes in your head,” Kurt comments, dropping a kiss into Blaine's hair.

“There are these guys…” Blaine starts after a pained sigh, “in our stage fighting class, who were talking about how hot you are…”

“Now, we talked about that, right?” Kurt intervenes, trying to salvage Blaine's self-esteem. “They can look all they want, but I'm not about to leave you for any of them. You know that.”

“I know, I know,” Blaine says, albeit unconvincingly. “And I don't let it bother me, even though I would rather they not look…”

“Fair enough,” Kurt agrees with another kiss to Blaine's scalp. Kurt waits for Blaine to continue, but his fiancé stays silent, holding on to something that he doesn't want to admit. “But, I have a feeling this is about more than just looking, huh?”

Blaine nods before he speaks.

“One of them said…” Blaine continues, “that he was going to ask you out. That…” Kurt can feel Blaine skipping ahead in his mind. He wishes that Blaine would just tell him everything. He can't stand these censored truths, especially if they have something to do with their relationship, “he was going to find a way to split us up. He said that it wouldn't be hard considering…”

“Aah,” Kurt says, fitting the pieces together. “So you wanted to show that you have a dark side, huh?”

“Maybe…a little.” Blaine leans over and picks up the needle from where Kurt left it on the coffee table. “I know that they can't touch us…or what we have. I just want some of the comments to stop.”

Kurt's heart hurts for Blaine, and of course he's willing to do anything to help, but that needle in Blaine's hands gives Kurt the creeps.

“Okay,” Kurt says in minor agreement. “Who knows? You might look dashing with a single stud in your ear.” Blaine turns his head up to look his fiancé in the eyes. “But don't you think we should go to a professional to have your ear pierced?”

“I trust you,” Blaine says sweetly, turning the needle over to Kurt with full confidence in his fiancé's abilities, though why, Kurt can't even begin to fathom. Actually having a piercing doesn't exactly qualify Kurt to pierce somebody else any more than Blaine's obsession with the game Operation qualifies him to remove an appendix. But if this is what Blaine wants – if this will make him feel better walking down the hallways of NYADA with a potentially infected hole in his ear – then Kurt will do it, even if the sight of blood makes Kurt want to hurl.

“Are you sure you don't want to opt for a few highlights and a wardrobe redo?” Kurt asks, making a last ditch appeal to Blaine's sense of reason.

“Kuuurt,” Blaine pleads, amp-ing up the puppy dog eyes.

“Alright, alright,” Kurt says, kissing Blaine again and rising from the couch. “Let's get this over with.” Kurt offers Blaine a hand up off the sofa and pulls him in the direction of the kitchen. “Now, if my memory of Santana's Far-From-Sweet-Sixteen party serves, we have to wipe this thing down with alcohol, then we need to heat it over the stove.”

“H-heat…it…?” Blaine stammers, falling behind as Kurt heads for the stove.

“Yeah,” Kurt says, turning the knob to ignite the front burner. “To kill off the bacteria. You don't want your ear to get infected. A girl on the Cheerios had to have part of her earlobe removed when the team pierced their ears.”

“Re…removed?” Blaine repeats in a wavering tone, gulping loudly.

“And we're going to need a potato.”

“A potato? Blaine asks, his good humor returning a bit.

“Yup,” Kurt says with a chuckle, “to catch the needle on the other side…and to soak up the blood.”

Blaine sways to the left, grabbing a hold of one of Kurt's flea market chairs for support.

“Will there be a lot of blood?” Blaine asks, his voice becoming weaker as he watches Kurt place a potato on the cutting board and slice it in half.

“Oh, yeah,” Kurt answers nonchalantly, waving the knife dismissively in the air. “When Santana did Brittany's ears, there was blood on everything.” Kurt pauses for a dry, morbid laugh. “You have no idea how many blood vessels…”

Kurt's words are cut short by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

“Blaine?” Kurt turns his head and sees Blaine lying on the wood floor where he stood, his eyes partially open but rolled up into his skull. “Blaine!” Kurt puts down his knife and races over to where his fiancé's limp body lay. “Blaine? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,I'm fine,” Blaine moans through unmoving lips, and Kurt has to bite down hard on his own to keep from laughing.

“Was it the blood?” Kurt asks in soft, sympathetic tones, trying not to sound condescending.

“Maybe…maybe a little,” Blaine replies, still not moving his lips.

“Do you want to go to a professional?” Kurt offers, running a soothing hand down Blaine's back.

“No,” he answers with a shake of his head. “No, I was hoping…can we revisit the highlighting idea again? I think that might be a bit more my speed.”