A/N: Hi. I'm posting this as I write which is new for me. Usually, I wait till I finish a story before I put it out there. But I needed to try something new.

I'll try to update regularly, but with a full time job and the weather being so nice, I might need a few days here and there to write a new chapter.

Hope you like what you read. Comments are welcome. 3

Part 4/?

Kurt told himself for the umpteenth time to breathe - in and out, in and out. And repeat.

He'd never fallen in love at first sight before. He'd never fallen in love, period. But he'd also never met anyone like Blaine whose eyes seemed to say so much and whose mouth looked so sensual and who was just the perfect height to wrap his arms around and rest his lips on the oh so soft looking hair. Kurt sighed, willing his pulse to calm. He was almost 30 for Christ's sake and he knew full well that he was acting like a hormonal teenager. He simply couldn't help himself. Blaine was just... Like nobody Kurt had ever met. He seemed to have a penchant to blurt out his thoughts with no filter, if the past 60 seconds were anything to go by - something that Kurt found endearing to no end. A man in Kurt's position and line of work didn't always get to hear the unfiltered truth about himself anymore. Except maybe from Santana's lips, but Santana's truth was a very special brand and not necessarily always helpful. Or true, for that matter.

The rest of the meeting scene went by in a blur. Kurt tried to concentrate, but found his thoughts regularly drifting and in the short pauses in between, he tried to inconspicuously steal glances behind himself until the production director told him to stop fidgeting because he was giving the lighting guys a hard time.

Kurt stopped. There'd be a party afterwards, a chance to mix and mingle and converse. He'd make sure to catch Blaine alone to speak a few words with him since they didn't even know anything about each other so far.

But Kurt hadn't considered the cameras. They were everywhere. Finding one particular man among the 25 candidates was not an easy feat, especially if said man was somewhat on the shorter side. The enterprise wasn't helped any by various members of the staff and crew, milling around, waving clipboards, and speaking into headsets. Kurt was frustrated.

He slowly moved through the throng of men, busy trying to match names to faces and vice versa and getting annoyed and frustrated whenever he had to redo a shot. He had to remember where to stand, how far to move into a set, where to come to a halt, how far he could turn his head to still be in the picture. It was giving him a headache. In addition, in his head he continued to go over the list of names he managed to memorize. There was Riley, Joshua, Peter, Andrew-call-me-Andy, Kevin, David, Eric, Sean, Christian, Sebastian, Bradley, Alex, Jesse. And of course Blaine. Blaine he had no trouble remembering.

He had, however, trouble finding him.

As he walked from one man to the next, he stopped for small talk, trying to ignore the men and women who were following his every step with a camera. He was expected to send 5 of the men home after the party was over. Right now, he barely knew the names of half of them. It was beginning to dawn on Kurt what an arbitrary thing the search for his soulmate on national TV was.

Exhausted from being under constant watch, he fell a bit silent and pretended to listen to a small group of men (Joshua, Brian, and Dominic-Nick-is-fine-too) discuss and fight over some movie Kurt hadn't seen. His plastered on smile was beginning to slip when another man approached him, offering a drink. Kurt smiled gratefully and took it, catching a few jealous eyes and some facial expressions that clearly read, 'Why didn't I think of that?'.

"There's a nice place over there by the water," the guy suggested, pointing towards a row of deck chairs under a lonesome palm tree.

Kurt excused himself from the group of movie-loving candidates and followed his rescuer.

"Thank you," Kurt paused, not remembering the man's name.

"Malik," the guy helped out.

Kurt smiled apologetically. "Sorry."

"Not a problem." He had an open, warm smile and very intense, searching eyes. He looked... smart, Kurt finally settled on. Also, hot.

He was tall, black, bald, carefully dressed in an off-white linen suit and looked very comfortable in his skin. Kurt barely even remembered meeting him earlier.

"I imagine it would be difficult for anyone to remember 25 names of perfect strangers after seeing them for one minute," Malik offered Kurt an excuse for the faux-pas of not remembering his name.

"Yeah. Though I'm usually really good with names," Kurt admitted.

"Well," Malik said, hesitated for a short moment, as if deciding whether to speak his mind or not. "To be honest, you did seem kind of distracted when I had my 60 seconds," he finally said, apparently having decided on being honest. "Number 7 must have made quite the impression," he joked.

Kurt didn't understand. It must have showed on his face, because Malik launched into an explanation. "I was number 8. So I assumed you were still preoccupied with number 7?"

"They gave you numbers?" Kurt exclaimed in disbelief, feeling slightly sick. "This is not some... meat market. So sorry," he apologized, but for whom exactly, he wasn't sure.

"Don't worry," Malik reassured him. "Not your fault."

"So, Malik," Kurt began, wanting to make up for everything, "may I ask what you're doing here? I mean, you don't look like you need help meeting people. Men." Kurt blushed a little.

"Neither do you," Malik returned which made Kurt blush a little more. "Actually, none of us do, if I take look around. So I assume our reasons must be similar."

"Work," Kurt confirmed and nodded once.

"Yep."

"What is it that you do?"

"I'm a lawyer. I've been working my ass off these past years, first in law school and then for my doctorate. I'm working for a prestigious law firm in New York now and, man, if I thought my college workload was crazy, it's now way beyond what's humanely possible."

"But you like it," Kurt concluded, not phrasing it as a question.

"I like knowing I'm doing something good. With my time. With my life."

"Well, I make pretty clothes, put a ridiculously high price tag on them, then sell them." Kurt shrugged.

"Don't. That's not how I meant it. If you found something that you love doing, something you're passionate about, something that makes you happy - that's worth a lot. More than a lot, actually."

Kurt nodded. He and Malik shared a long glance, both realizing that they found a common ground despite coming from such different professional backgrounds.

And even though Malik was beautiful, Kurt wasn't sure there was enough spark inbetween them to take this further. His thoughts were interrupted by the object of his contemplations.

"I've taken up enough of your time," Malik said. "I'll let you go now."

"Okay," Kurt answered. "I did enjoy the talk," he said.

"Me too." He turned to walk away.

Kurt let his eyes sweep over the assembled men, but before he could make up his mind which man or group to approach next, Malik stopped and came back.

"Number 7 is over there, by the way," he said with an unreadable smirk and pointed towards a cluster of old weathered logs that the ocean must have swallowed and then spit out again. And sure enough, on one of the logs there sat two men, one strumming a guitar and the other... Blaine.

Blaine was tapping a rhythm on his knee with an open palm and Kurt saw his lips were moving. Was he singing?

Smiling a thank you at Malik, he quietly approached the pair.

Part 5 is almost done and will be up shortly. Thanks for reading, everyone.