Kurt found himself thinking often of Blaine Anderson during that afternoon's rehearsals of Handel's Serse. The company was on edge as Handel had insisted upon adding comic elements to the serious drama and they were concerned about the potential hostile reception; Rachel Berry, the leading female soprano, and Finn Hudson, Kurt's brother and the lead baritone, were quarreling again; and Susanna Sylvester, whose dancing school girls were performing as well, was berating them and everybody else in the company, including Handel himself. The stage manager, William Schuester, trying to keep everyone appeased, was, to put it gently, failing, which did not go unnoticed by La Sylvester. All this meant that few noticed that Kurt, who usually enjoyed observing and caustically commenting on the intrigues, was unusually silent and unobservant.

The question that kept returning like a persistent fly was whether the young nobleman truly had only sincere intentions. It was far too easy to believe that he, like so many others, saw a castrato only as something to be mocked or put in his place for assuming the airs of a man. It would not be the first time, or even the twentieth, that a nobleman tried to make him the butt of a jest or humiliating rebuke for daring to think himself an equal. As a result, he avoided them as much as he could, preferring, once he had the option, to snub before he could be jeered at or patronized. But though he told himself he had admitted Anderson only out of a moment's boredom, the unease in his heart reminded him that he had admired not just his coat but his looks as he peered through the peephole into the entryway, and that was why he had granted him entrance. More, once they had spoken, he had felt a profound hunger for the friendship that the other man seemed to offer, and that was why he had rejected the attempted gift of money. It had seemed that the aristocrat was deliberately creating a gulf between them, a gulf that forbade friendship. Offering the money, as banknotes no less, seemed to be a clear and deliberate reminder to Kurt that as a performer, he was still a creation to entertain the aristocracy, not that different from a servant. But if the other man's apologies and confusion were sincere, then he had been over-hasty and over-proud.

"Kurt?" His brother hovered at his shoulder. "Where were your thoughts? Herr Handel called for your aria." Finn looked at him with some worry. "You seem upset, has anything happened?"

"It is nothing, a moment's distraction, that's all." It would be wisest and safest to consider Blaine Anderson exactly that, nothing, a moment's distraction, but Kurt knew, even as he began the beautiful "Ombra mai fu," that his heart and pride often forbade wisdom and safety.

On their return to the house, Finn confided his troubles with Rachel to his brother. "She is angered because I did not join her in demanding a new aria for her, not one written already for another soprano."

"But you know that her performances mean everything to her." Kurt rapidly corrected himself. "That, and your love, of course."

"She expects that I will second her in everything."

"Not in everything, dear brother, only in what is most important to her."

"Sometimes I do not know when you mock me or when you are sincere."

"You are my brother, can you expect me not to tease you?"

Finn, after a moment, returned Kurt's grin. "No more than you can expect me to yield to your authority as the elder brother."

"But I spoke mostly in seriousness. Rachel feasts upon fame but her hunger is augmented by feeding rather than satisfied. If you wish to love her and make her your wife, that you must accept."

"Perhaps Quinn?"

"She is also ambitious, but in a different way. Turning your fancy back to her would only change the woman, not the question." Kurt was loath to admit it, but added, "Rachel loves you the more of the two and has also lied to you far less."

Finn shrugged and changed the subject. "This morning you had a caller as I left."

Kurt feared that his expression revealed too much. "Somebody who had attended last night. I thought him a dilettante but instead he understands music more than most. I enjoyed our talk."

"And?"

"And nothing else passed." Finn continued to look at him and Kurt admitted, "Very well, I thought that he might become a friend, but at the end, he offered banknotes. He apologized when I told him to take his leave, which I hardly expected, but..." He sighed and admitted, quietly, "You know that I love you and our parents, and that Mercedes is a dear friend, but at times...I wish for more, I feel lonely."

"You are not alone, Kurt."

"Mercedes will wed, as will you. I know I will always be in your hearts, but...I am so happy that you are my brother and Carole is my mother, yet at times I miss the days when my father and I were all in all to each other. I will not have that again in my life, to be the reason another heart beats, and at times it makes my heart ache a little. To have more friends would ease that." He lowered his eyes. The truth was that he wished not to ameliorate the desire for a lover, even a spouse, with friendships, but to himself love and be loved. But few enough men desired another, and of those, to love a castrato was a shameful secret. He was too proud to be a hidden sin, ignored during the day, renounced, even, during confession, but visited at night for a few moments of lust. He lightened his voice. "I am ungrateful, to complain when I have our family."

His brother seized him forcefully in an embrace and Kurt instinctively swatted his hand away as it tried to ruffle his hair. "You deserve the world, Kurt. If I could give it to you, I would."

"I know," he whispered, and let a few tears seep from his eyes onto the fabric of Finn's waistcoat. "I know." After a moment, he released himself to laugh up at his brother, "You do realize, do you not, that Herr Handel has me singing to a plant for my greatest aria? It will be a triumph, it will make my name more famous still if I am any judge of such things, and yet, I will pour my heart out to a tree, declaring that the shade it casts is the most pleasing of all trees."

"It could be worse, could it not?"

"Yes, perhaps singing to a shoe that it fits me well-"

"Which you might yet, if I know you as I think I do?" Finn grinned at the relatively rare point won against his sharp-tongued brother.

"Touche, Finn, well done. For once." As their laughter ended, Kurt told himself that he would forget entirely about a certain nobleman's eyes and face and voice.