And his friends said he couldn't lie his way out of a paper bag, Matt scoffed from the safety of his hotel room in Chicago. Years of constant bragging how Matt could keep no secrets from anyone who really knew him were just proven totally wrong. He could lie, when he put his mind to it and really wanted to do it. Weird hand thing his ass.

Alright it probably helped a little that he lied over the phone, so if that alleged hand thing existed (which it so didn't. Not a single person had yet to produce any sort of evidence that he actually did something weird with his hand. It was clearly some urban legend Mike had made up while he was bored.) no one could see him doing it and call him on it . And it wasn't a total lie. He had been invited to check out Chicago with some of the people in his interview group. And he had intended to go along with them. He had just got distracted.

So maybe it was more accurate to say he could lie so long as no one he knew could see him and it wasn't a total lie, just a partial one. But still, he could lie and he fully intended to point that to Mike the first time the opportunity presented itself. So long as he was reasonably sure Mike wasn't going to press him about why he felt the need to lie, because that he would never live down.

He hadn't wanted to go exploring Chicago because he wasn't at all positive he had done a good job in his interviews at all. In fact, he was pretty positive he had completely dragged all the energy out of the room. The group interview wasn't that bad. He could blend in. It was easier to voice his opinion knowing the chick on his left that reminded him a little too much of Rachel to be comfortable (he had been tempted to call Rachel just to make sure she was positive she was an only child) would jump on in and take over if she liked the point he made. Compared to her, Matt knew he looked like the model of restraint and patience for not leaning over and clocking her one.

No it was the individual interview that had been torture. Somewhere in the back of his mind Matt remembered reading about interview portions for all the programs he applied to. It just made sense given the small number of accepted applicants and the huge pool of potentials. What he couldn't remember was what the hell he had been thinking when obviously his subconscious had written this part off as no big deal. His nickname in high school was "Mute Matt" for the love of all, and that was from his friends, the ones who knew he actually could talk. He really didn't want to think about what the people who didn't like him called him. Yes he preferred a one on one situation over groups but that wasn't a one on one conversation with a professor who literally could crush a person's academic pursuits with a single bad exchange. Now that he was thinking about it, even though Matt was fairly certain he had made a few good points and tried to put himself in the best light; all he could remember was every awkward verbal pause and the fact his body language was probably reeking of discomfort.

Why go explore Chicago, and potentially fall in love with the city, when it was already a long shot he would be accepted into this program and he so most spectacularly failed at selling himself today. That just seemed like a bad idea all around. So Matt had begged off, citing an early flight back home, which was a total lie. But these people were total strangers to him and wouldn't even know to look for the weird hand thing to call him out about it.

Of course now he was kind of screwed into spending an entire night alone with his thoughts. He really didn't want to hear from his sister if she ever found out he went walking around a strange city by himself at night. There was nothing all that exciting to watch on TV. None of his friends from home were nearby. All the good Saturday night shows didn't start airing till after midnight. (All night viewings of Murder By the Book? Yes please!) And if he went online right now, with his luck Kurt would be online and totally call him out for not being out like he had said.

Matt groaned, throwing himself back on the bed as whatever unnecessary sequel to a vastly superior movie played on ABC Family. Why the hell had he thought about Kurt? He was trying to not think about him for weeks now. And failing pretty epically at it, if he was going to be honest but he was trying. Hell the fact visiting the Miracle Mile and window shopping had been on the agenda for that night's excursion was reason enough to turn it down. He had made it almost five entire hours since the phone call before he thought about what Kurt might think or say. That had to be a new record. Or at least a post wedding record.

The next time he saw Finn, he was going to murder his former teammate. It would suck for his kid and Courtney but at least it would give Matt some peace. Ever since the wedding and that stupid dance, he had been unable to keep Kurt out of his mind. Leah's constant comments about eye sex would definitely not have happened if Finn hadn't gotten married. And when he and Kurt talked, it would just be talking without this flirting undercurrent that was currently lacing their every interaction. Because while being friends with an ex was a tricky situation to explain, Matt was pretty sure being friend with an ex you flirted with was a one way ticket to never having another relationship again.

Unless of course he was actually hoping for a relationship with Kurt again. Which was ridiculous because the very valid reasons they broke up after high school still stood. He was going to be even a worse boyfriend if he got into grad school. And if he didn't get in, he would be the most miserable, depressed bastard in the entire state. And while Kurt liked to say fashion came from everywhere, Matt knew if Kurt really wanted to pursue it as a career, Los Angeles or New York were the places to be. So thinking about rekindling a relationship with an ex when in a few short months they were likely to be on opposite sides of the country? A sure-fire recipe for heartbreak.

And because it was his luck, that was exactly the idea that he kept coming back to. After every conversation with Kurt. Every email. Every Skype session. Every single time he realized Kurt was flirting right back with him. What if they tried again? It was a stupid idea, born out of being alone too long and Kurt being single at the same time for the first time since freshman year. The flirting? It was just the way they communicated. Plenty of people did that. So what if the only person he could think of right now who did that was Puck. There had to be other people who did it. He wasn't doing it because he still had feelings for Kurt and maybe in the back of his mind thought about what it would be like to be together again.

Except when he was alone with his thoughts when that was the only thing he was thinking about.

He needed to get a grip and face reality. For once and for all. He may still have feelings for Kurt. He may entertain the idea of getting back together. But it wasn't going to happen. He was the one who decided breaking up was for the best and he was just going to have to deal with that. It was for the best. Because there was no way Kurt was having the same thoughts he was.


Stephen Coco was many things. He was a loyal friend. A stellar gossip hound. A good roommate. And even a decent study partner when he put his mind to it. But above all these things, Stephen was an insufferable ass when he was right. And when it came to his feelings for Matt, Kurt was getting the uncomfortable feeling Stephen was actually right.

Kurt sat at his laptop, tapping his fingers against the desk. His email inbox said it all. It had taken him a few months but he had finally managed to clear out most of the message Austin had sent him, save a few he had printed out. Emails from the parade of blind dates were deleted almost as soon as the date ended. And yet he still had nearly every email Matt had ever sent him. Emails from Spain. Emails from Columbus. Random forwards. Even the one Matt had accidentally sent to him instead of Leah about how Leah needed to actually meet people in Lima and her dating might not be a bad idea. Of all the emails about potential matches he had received from that site, there were only two he had held on to. Karofsky's for his future therapist's education and Matt's.

Now that he thought about it, he could almost pinpoint the exact moment his most recent blind dates started to go downhill and when he started to think about calling Matt to recap the entire sordid mess. The worse the date, the more he perversely enjoyed them just for the chance of making Matt laugh. It was his senior year in college and those nightly phone calls were becoming the most important part of his day. It absolutely floored him to realize he didn't want to go out with any of Stephen and Raph's choices not because his friends were terrible at picking out people to set him up with (even though they so were), it was because they couldn't set him up with Matt.

When had this happened? Had it always been there, as Mercedes and everyone else in his life claimed? Did he fall back in love with Matt? Did he ever fall out of love with Matt? Was he even falling back in love with Matt at all or was this just the end result of not having a boyfriend and sharing a house with two friends who really needed to just go at it like wild monkeys and kill the tension already? Kurt wasn't even sure at this point what the actual answers to his questions were but he supposed it was a good thing he was asking the questions. At least to himself because he was for damn sure not going to tell anyone else he was thinking about these matters. For one thing they would all never let him live it down and take it as free reign to run the rest of his life for him. And for another thing, just because he was thinking about this, didn't mean Matt was.

Kurt knew better than most people Matt tended to follow the conversation in whatever direction it went. If Kurt started flirting (and it was likely him who started it), Matt would just follow along as a habit. It wasn't exactly a good habit to have, but this was the same Matt who only got in trouble during high school because he was playing look out for Puck. And Matt was incredibly stubborn. Kurt knew what all their friends had been saying to him for the past four years. He could only imagine what they said to Matt and then add in Leah? Gaga knew he loved Leah but subtle she wasn't. If there were any feelings there, Matt was more than capable of ignoring them just to prove their friends and Leah wrong.

The simple solution was to just stop calling Matt every night. At least, Kurt considered, until he had a better handle on what he was feeling and why. If it was just a combination of nostalgia, freaking out over finishing school and loneliness, it wasn't fair to Matt to drag him into Kurt's fashionably early quarter life crisis. Matt deserved better than that. If these feelings were based on something more substantial? Then Kurt needed to figure out what he wanted to do about it. He knew what schools Matt was looking at. Kurt knew where he thought he would be after graduation. There wasn't a single common city on both lists. Did he want to be that guy? Did he want to pull a Felicity? Cause while that worked out alright in the end for her, there were some unfortunate hair choices that he would rather avoid at all costs. Did Matt even want him to pull a Felicity? Or would he, if Matt knew what that meant?

It was all too confusing right now and if Kurt didn't know what he wanted, then he wasn't about to talk to Matt about it. There was no need to drag Matt into his drama for potentially no reason. Especially when Matt had enough to worry about with grad school interviews and the whole funding process. No. Kurt was not going to do that to him. He could push this back and just be Matt's friend. Once they got through all this insanity, if he still felt that way, then he would talk to Matt about it. But not before. Not a single day before.