“Quick! Kiss me!”

Standing in the young men's department of Bloomingdale's and sifting through pairs of indigo skinny jeans in an attempt to find his size, Kurt spins around in a circle when he hears those words. He's pretty sure they aren't being spoken to him, but he still needs to check.

“Excuse me?” he says to the man suddenly standing too-close-for-comfort behind him - a man reeking of Atlas cologne and wearing way too much product in his raven hair, but with the most startling hazel-gold eyes Kurt has ever seen.

“I need you to kiss me,” the man repeats, making a hurry up gesture with his hands. A strange half-smirk crosses his lips, and his eyes shift nervously left to right. The man's skittish behavior is contagious; it makes Kurt anxious, setting off alarm bells in his head.

“I'm sorry,” Kurt says, taking a step back but blocked by the rack behind him, “but I don't make it a point of kissing men that I don't know.”

“My name's Blaine,” the man says, sticking out his hand for Kurt to shake. “Blaine Anderson.” Kurt looks down at the hand being offered to him, calculating the odds that the man standing before him isn't a deranged serial killer. Since Kurt can't remember anyone ever dying from a hand shake, he slowly snakes a hand up and takes it, letting Blaine shake it once.

“Kurt Hummel,” he says, quickly introducing himself.

“There,” Blaine says with a wider smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth, “we're not strangers anymore. Now, kiss me.”                                                                                                                                                                         

Blaine wraps an arm around Kurt's waist and pulls him close, but a mortified Kurt pushes him away.

“What the…?” Kurt exclaims. “Get off me!”

“Please?” the man pleads, bouncing on the balls of his feet, dialing up the wattage on his insanely adorable puppy dog eyes.

“No!” Kurt says, sticking to his guns regardless of what those eyes are doing to his insides.

“Listen…” Blaine leans in close, “my ex just walked in with his fabulous new girlfriend…”

“Ouch,” Kurt says sympathetically. He knows what it's like to be dumped, but dumped for a girl must sting on an entirely different level.

“Yeah,” Blaine says with an honest look of embarrassment, “and I thought that maybe if he could see me locking lips with someone ten times hotter than either of them, it would really burn him back.”

Kurt bites his lip and blushes.

Ten times? Kurt thinks. This guy is good.

Kurt toys with the pros and cons, debating how bad would it actually be to kiss this man. It's only one kiss, and it's for a good cause.

Kurt mentally shakes himself. Maybe that's a weak excuse for kissing someone, but he just can't admit that he wants to kiss this man – this bizarrely enticing, enigmatic, and handsome man, who dropped in from out of nowhere.

Kurt Hummel isn't the kind of guy who goes around kissing strange men.

Of course, that could always change…

“Look,” Kurt says, dropping his head back on his neck with a heavy sigh as rationale wins out over impulsivity, “I wish I could help you. I really wish I could…”

“Then help me,” Blaine says, boldly wrapping his arm back around Kurt's waist, closing in on Kurt's lips, his eyes bouncing from Kurt's eyes to his mouth. “One little kiss…that's all I'm asking for.”

Kurt breathes in deep at Blaine's touch, the cedar scent of his cologne more distracting now than overwhelming. From this distance, Blaine's golden eyes are hypnotic, and every time he breathes, soft and shallow, a sensual heat washes over Kurt's chin.

“Please?” Blaine pleads again, lips hovering close to Kurt's mouth, waiting for him to give in and say yes.

Kurt's head dips in a barely there nod before Blaine's lips connect with his. Blaine's mouth fits against Kurt's nearly perfectly, the warmth of his tongue sweeping across the seam of Kurt's lips, and Kurt knows he's made the right decision. Maybe it's the excitement of doing something taboo, or the strong arms folding securely around his body, or the idea that somewhere nearby Blaine's ex is seething as he watches the two of them consume one another - Kurt doesn't know, but Kurt finds it hard to believe that anyone would willingly break up with a man who kisses like this, each swipe of his satiny tongue making Kurt tingle in his head and in his toes, as well as other areas in between that are quickly taking interest.

Blaine comes to his senses long before Kurt does, pulling away from Kurt's lips, a satisfied smile on his face.

“Thanks for that, gorgeous,” Blaine says, pinching Kurt's chin gently. Kurt's eyelids flutter open, watching the man he can still feel on his lips back away. Step by step, Blaine smiles brighter. “I'll see you around,” he says with a wink, then turns and walks away.

Kurt, stuck on stupid and wondering what the hell just happened, doesn't hear Mercedes or Marley when they rush up on him.

“Kurt!?” Marley says, that one word an exclamation, a question, and a scolding all at once.

“So, you're kissing randos in the young men's department now?” Mercedes asks, crossing her arms over her chest, tilting her head, and staring Kurt down for an explanation.

“Wh-what?” Kurt stutters, his cheeks cherry red. “No, I'm not…” He turns to look back in the direction Blaine had gone, but the man has completely vanished. “I mean, it wasn't a kiss…”

Marley gasps, throwing her hands over her mouth in a way that would be comical if Kurt didn't feel like he was about to get the third degree, sporting the burning cheeks to prove it.

“Well, then it's been a long time since I've been kissed because that sure looked like a kiss to me,” Mercedes says.

“Yeah,” Marley agrees from behind her hands pressed to her mouth, “and a good one.”

“Okay, so maybe it was a kiss, but it didn't mean anything,” Kurt says, hating the lame way he tries to explain that incredible kiss away to save face in front of his friends. “He was just trying to show up his ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend.”

“Ouch,” Marley says, repressing her leap to judgment and reprising Kurt's earlier sentiment.

“Ditto,” Mercedes says, grinning as she gets swept up in the intrigue. “Okay, well, where are they? Did you get to see the jealousy you unleashed?” Mercedes turns her head, looking up and down the aisle and through the racks, trying to catch sight of the scorned couple, but except for the three of them, the department appears to be empty.

“I don't know. I didn't see them,” Kurt admits, joining the search with Mercedes and Marley, eyes sweeping along the t-stands and the baker's racks over and over. “He said they walked in right when he came up to me.”

Mercedes stops searching and looks at Marley; Marley looks back, sharing a similar confused but conspiratorial grin.

“Uh…I hate to break it to you, Kurt, but I think you've been played,” Mercedes says.

The alarm Kurt heard in his head earlier goes off like a klaxon in his brain.

“What do you mean?” he asks, his voice flat, his stomach flipping somersaults.

“I was looking for that shirt you wanted by the exit the whole time you were sucking face with your mysterious paramour, and no one walked in.”

“It's true,” Marley interjects. “I was across the aisle looking at belts and I didn't see anybody but… you know…you and…”

“Blaine,” Kurt says like a curse when he realizes they're right. He had been played. “Fuck!”