A/N: This sprung from a chat nubianamy and I were having about Kurt and Rachel and some spoilery bits for the upcoming 5th episode of the season. She put an image in my head and I couldn't get rid of it. This is what happened. I apparently have no control over my muse these days. Enjoy, y'all.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Rachel just looked so miserable when she'd cornered him in the girl's room. It wasn't like he'd been in any position to argue, because there was nothing dignified about needing help rinsing electric blue slushie off the back of one's neck. And, if he were being honest, he wasn't spectacularly happy himself. What was supposed to be their crowning glory, the absolute perfection of their senior year, was crumbling under both of their feet.

And it hurt.

Rachel's hand was small, and soft, and it felt odd because Blaine had taken over slushie-cleaning duty from the girls back in September. "I think," she mused, "that we need to go out tonight. Do something fun. Just the two of us."

Kurt shook his head and startled when he whacked the back of his skull on the faucet of the sink. His voice was garbled under the running water. "Fine. But no talking about the play, or Glee. Or NYADA. Pleaseno NYADA."

"Oh. Don't worry. None of those things." There was something playful in her tone, and if Kurt hadn't been a slave to her hand and the damn chunks of icy corn syrup, he would have fixed her with his best Judgmental Queen look and demanded that she spill the beans. Instead he just waited until she had dried him the best she could with paper towels and they were packing up his wet clothes into a plastic bag.

"You have a plan, don't you?"

"Pick me up at 7." She patted him on the shoulder before turning and flouncing to the door. Before the hall swallowed her, she looked back at him and grinned devilishly. "Be prepared to miss curfew, and wear something hot!"

Kurt wasn't sure what exactly what Rachel meant by wear something hot, but he figured the tighter the better. He could barely slide his license and two folded twenties into his pocket, and he hoped that Rachel would at least have a purse for his keys. He stalked through the kitchen at 6:45, past his dad with the sports section and Carole with the crossword, and he didn't correct Carole when she told him to have fun and say hi to Blaine. He pulled up in front of Rachel's house at 6:58, and she was through the door and down the walk before he even honked the horn.

Wearing a skin-tight black dress that was shorter than Santana's Cheerio skirt.

She climbed up into the passenger seat, and Kurt couldn't help but let out a low whistle. "You look hot," he said, with no teasing in his voice.
He felt her eyes on him, taking in his tight black t-shirt and the jeans he'd bought in New York that he hadn't worn out of the house yet. Or for anyone. Not even Blaine.

"Wow." Her voice was hushed with something Kurt didn't want to think about. He knew it was the way Blaine should talk to him, but didn't. And the way he should talk to and about Blaine, but couldn't.

It sent a little shiver across the back of his neck.

He flipped his iPod over to Rachel and told her to take care of music, but only after she told him where they were going.

She talked as she scrolled through his playlists. "We are going to Dayton. We are going to dinner and then dancing at an all-ages club, and we," she paused for dramatic effect, "are going to stay out all night!"

Kurt felt his foot stutter unconsciously on the brake pedal before his instinct to drivekicked in. He managed the merge onto the highway south with shaking hands. "But tomorrow is a school day."

"I don't care, Kurt. I don't care about school, or college, or the play. Or even Glee, right now. I just want to have fun." She was near pleading with him, and he understood, he really did.

He reached over and took her hand in his. "I want to have fun, too."

She leaned back against her seat, and didn't let go of his hand even as she asked him about Blaine, and he asked her about Finn. They made a lot of small talk around both subjects, until her voice went small and scared. "He wants more."

"Finn?"

"Yeah. More than I can give, or want to. He wants more of my heart, and I don't even know if Ihave enough of myself to give anything away."

It was maybe the most honest Rachel had ever been with him. He squeezed her hand and sighed. "I know. Blaine is just so eager all the time." He shook his head. "I don't think he understands how bigeverything feels right now, how important it all seems even though it's really nothing."

"Is he . . . pressuring you?"

Kurt let more anger than he had intended creep into his voice. "Is Finn?"

"I think Finn would say no."

"So would Blaine. But."

"But? Yes. I think Finn is pressuring me."

Kurt went silent for a moment, gazed at the lights of the passing cars. Everything about being Kurt-and-Blainewas complicated; the rocky nature of their physical relationship was only a part of that. Kurt felt constantly like he was playing a game of push me-pull you, and there was never going to be a clear winner. The more he resisted (for reasons that were really just habit now, more than anything) the harder Blaine pushed. And the harder Blaine pushed, the more Kurt resisted. Which was how they had ended up in the fight that resulted in Kurt storming out of the empty dance studio and getting the slushie to his face that had led to meeting Rachel in the girls' room. Which was, in a roundabout way, why he was going dancing in Dayton with Rachel instead of chastely holding hands with Blaine over their eleventy-millionth medium drip and nonfat mocha at the fucking Lima Bean.

"I think," he began after his brain had finished its merry-go-round, "that Blaine is pressuring me, too."

Rachel scooted closer to him, kept hold of his hand, and rested her head on his shoulder over the console. "I'm sorry."

He breathed in the scent of her shampoo as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Me, too."

She stayed there, warm against him, and didn't even bother with music.

Kurt had been too nervous to eat much dinner, so by the time they arrived at the club he was hungry and jittery and entirely too uncomfortable in his skin. Rachel just held his hand, like they were a perfectly normal straight couple instead of a gay boy and his frienemy, and he bought them Cokes with wedges of lime and didn't move away when she perched herself next to him on the same bar stool. After their sodas were gone, he let her drag him to the dance floor.

He had thought about times like this, had fully expected that he'd go dancing for the first time with Blaine. But it didn't seem wrong, now, to share this with Rachel. Performing together had given them an easy physicality, and Rachel was a good dance partner. Kurt liked leading. It secretly pissed him off that everyone assumed that just because he was gay, he was like the girl in everything. The music was pulsing, and Rachel didn't resist when he pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her waist. She didn't resist when he added a little twist to his hips. Instead, she flung her arms around his neck and moved right back against him.

It felt slightly wrong, but also a little bit dirty in all kinds of right ways, and Kurt leaned down and laughed in Rachel's ear. "Thank you."

Her voice rose over the music like bells. "You're welcome, baby."

Kurt's heart stopped for a moment. Blaine didn't even call him that. Blaine didn't call him anything except for Kurt, like his name was the only prayer in the world. It was fine. It was what it was, but Kurt secretly yearned for more.

Kurt was feeling decidedly flushed and more than a little lightheaded, and when the lights flickered signaling the last song, he understood why. It was after midnight, and he was tired.

"Rach," he murmured, low, over the thumping of a bad 80's remix, "I think I'm too tired to drive home."

She nodded her head against his chest. "S' okay," she said, tightening her arms around his waist. "We're both 18, we can get a room for the night."

"Oh. Right." Kurt hadn't thought about that, but it made a kind of sense that his brain couldn't quite keep up with right then. He just held on, let Rachel hold him up, until the song was over.

The hotel room was small and dimly lit, but clean. The clerk hadn't blinked at them, had just eyed Rachel's id and swiped her emergency credit card and handed them a key (an actual key on a plastic ring!) before pointing them around the corner and down the hall. Kurt fumbled with the key in the lock, and when he finally got it open they both tumbled through in a jumble of tired, adrenaline-fueled limbs.

Kurt kicked his shoes off and joined Rachel where she had flopped onto the bed. "Thank you," he told her again. "I needed this."

She smiled at him giddily. "I did, too. This was so much fun. And," she shook her head, "we are going to be in so much trouble."

"I don't care right now," he replied, seeking her hand out across the small expanse of comforter between them. "This was so much better than coffee at the Lima Bean and another fight about why I won't give it up."

"Same here. Well, if you replace coffee with puzzle night with my dads." Rachel turned her head to him and looked at him with honest eyes. "The fight, that part sounds the same."

"I wish it didn't have to be that way. I mean, it started small, me not being ready for all of that yet, and now it's this thing between us."

Rachel's thumb rubbed small circles against his palm, and the motion made him shiver slightly. She rolled up onto her side and peered at him, her eyes tired but dancing.

"Why does it have to be a thing for eitherof us?"

Kurt held his breath. "What do you mean?"

She sat completely up, tucking her legs under her as best she could in her miniscule dress. "What if we were each other's first time? It would take some of the pressure off, that way, and then we wouldn't be so nervous with our boyfriends."

Kurt sat up too, and shook his head vehemently. "No. No, absolutely not."

But Rachel's hand was warm on the goose-bumped flesh of his arm, and it felt so nice to be a little less apart from things. So when Rachel closed the space between them and kissed him gently, he didn't pull away. Kissing her was different from kissing Blaine, but it didn't feel wrong.

They were cautious with each other, hands tentative under clothes and gentle along cheeks and jaws and in hair. Kurt liked the way it felt, no pressure or expectations, and it was surprisingly easy to lose himself in the smoothness of Rachel's skin and the way her breath came in hot puffs against his neck when he slid the zipper of her dress down her back. And when he felt her hand drift, tugging at the button on his jeans, he knew it was too late.

He didn't have the energy to fight, didn't have the desire to fight, because Blaine was allfight and Rachel was offering him something so uncomplicated that it seemed impossible.

But it wasn't impossible. It was them, together, trembling and breathless, and it was heartbreakingly, terrifyingly real.

After, Kurt pulled the blankets up around them and held Rachel to him, and the nonsense nothings he whispered at her were as much for her as they were for him.

Neither of them slept; instead, they lay awake, wide-eyed and reeling, until Kurt couldn't stand it anymore. He slipped out of the bed and started pulling on his clothes, not ashamed but not sure whathe should be feeling. When he had pulled his t-shirt over his head, he looked back at where Rachel was slipping back into her dress. He didn't know what to say, so he just asked millions of questions with his eyes. Rachel nodded at him, and simply turned so he could zip her dress back up. She held her hair out of the way, and Kurt couldn't help it. Even after what they had done, the gentle intimacy of zipping her dress nearly undid him and he pressed his lips against the warm skin on the back of her neck. He dropped tears there, too, and then Rachel was clinging to him, her own tears dampening the front of his t-shirt.

"I'm not sorry," she sniffled. "I just-"

"I know," Kurt nodded. "I think this is complicated, too. And I think it's okay."