That Saturday was torture. Blaine didn't try to contact me in any way, not even once, and I felt too guilty and too nervous to attempt to reach out to him. I started to call his home phone once, but I chickened out after the first two rings and hung up. I was convinced that I had permanently wrecked my budding relationship with Blaine. I spent Saturday night curled up on the couch with a very angry Finn, watching action movies and trying not to have some sort of stereotypical break-up meltdown. I ended up falling asleep on your boyfriend, my apologies, after about the third movie, and apparently Finnegan sensed that there was something wrong, because I woke up cuddled almost on top of my former crush, wrapped in his arms, both of us covered in a blanket. He makes an excellent brother.

I was making eggs for Finn and I when Blaine called. I, pathetic as I am, immediately dropped everything, despite Finnegan's protests, to answer the call, and I had plenty of rubbery eggs later because of it.

"Hi, Kurt," was all Blaine said, but I began apologizing profusely anyway, for upsetting him and bringing up his past, but he stopped me. "Kurt! Kurt! Stop apologizing, you didn't do anything wrong. If anyone should be apologizing, it should be me. I acted... inexcusably last night. I know you don't mean harm when you say things like that, and I shouldn't be so emotional, but unfortunately I have this terrible habit of pushing all of my emotions deep down and essentially turning myself into a human minefield."

"Blaine, you shouldn't apologize for having been through a lot in your life, and you're also right," I said as Blaine began to argue. "I shouldn't apologize for not knowing you well enough to know what are potential triggers. How about we just agree to put this incident, and all future incidents like this one that I'm sure we'll have, behind us?"

"That sounds excellent, and perfectly rational, and I'm kind of in awe of you for your solution," Blaine said, but the dynamic of our conversation had returned to teasing and flirting. "Spend the day with me."

"Is that a request or a demand?"

"More like a plea. I know it's early, and I know you probably haven't eaten yet, so why don't you eat some breakfast, and we'll meet in McKinley Memorial Park at about nine?" When I looked to the clock it was about seven thirty, so that gave me plenty of time to feed Finn, dress, and drive over to the park.

"Sounds excellent."

"I just have one question."

"Shoot," I replied, trying to mask my slight nerves.

"Why is this town so obsessed with William McKinley?" Blaine asked, and I laughed, having no answer. "Seriously! He wasn't a bad president, but he didn't do terribly much."

"Not much about this town has ever made sense to me. I'll see you in a bit."

"Definitely."

It was a statement to how comatose Finn is in the mornings that he didn't even ask who I had been on the phone with. I threw out the batch of eggs I had been making (since they had deteriorated severely in quality while I was on the phone), put on a new batch, and began mentally planning my outfit for my Sunday in the park with Blaine.

The most exciting part about this date was that it was the community park in Lima. True, many of the people we know were probably in church at that hour of the morning, but there was still a large possibility that we would run into someone we knew. The fact that Blaine was even a little willing to be seen in public with me was thrilling... so you can't imagine how angry and upset I felt when I arrived at the park and barely recognized my boyfriend.

Blaine wasn't in uniform, which wasn't surprising since it was a weekend, he was wearing jeans, a black leather bomber, and a bright blue toque. He was a little stubbly, and the hair I could see peeking out from under the toque was un-gelled, mussed and curly. Objectively, he looked amazing, gorgeous, and completely drool-worthy, but my issue was that he didn't look like himself, and it was just another way he was hiding us in the closet.

"So this is your solution?" I demanded of him before he could even greet me.

"Pardon?" he asked, and I got even angrier, thinking he was playing innocent.

"Dressing like this, this is your solution to not wanting people to see us in public together? I barely even recognized you, Blaine, so it's definitely working." Blaine looked completely thrown and a little upset, but I didn't even register this. "Why didn't you just ask me to meet you at a park in Dayton? That would have been a lot less effort!"

"Kurt, this isn't about not being recognized," Blaine said, still sounding a little confused. "I don't care who sees us here, not after Friday. I really don't, and the likelihood that anyone will anyway is slim. This is prime church-going time."

"Then why are you dressed like that?" I asked, and Blaine still looked a little hurt. "I mean, it's not that you don't look..." my cheeks heated up, as there are a variety of adjectives I could use to describe Blaine at that moment, "good," I settled on, "really good, it's just that you look really different than I'm used to."

"This is me," Blaine said with a shrug. "This is what I dressed like, what I looked like, before I started worrying about my image and what people thought of me. This is who I am behind the Cheerios uniform, and this is the person I want to be around you." Now I felt like a complete and total asshole.

"Blaine, I'm so sorry, I just..." Blaine shook his head.

"No, it's fine. I can understand why you would jump to that conclusion. I barely recognized myself in the mirror this morning, that's how long it's been since I was myself. But I want to be myself around you," he admitted, his hazel eyes earnest, and I completely melted.

"I want that too," I said softly, kissing him on the cheek. "Shall we walk?"

"Sure," Blaine said as we headed up the path around the relatively small park. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," I replied, because it was so rare that Blaine was curious.

"Why didn't you just kiss me?" he asked, and I stopped walking, I was that thrown.

"Well, I... We..." Usually, this was the point in my stuttering at which Blaine interrupted me, but he seemed perfectly content to wait for me to form a sentence. "We've never..."

"I know," Blaine said, thankfully saving me from myself once he had gotten the gist of what I was trying to say, "but I have to admit, that was kind of a movie-perfect, first kiss moment we just had." He chuckled, and I tried my best not to blush... which means I completely failed.

"I..." I cleared my throat and tried my confession again. "I've never kissed anyone... at least, not someone that I wanted to kiss." Blaine knew what I meant by that, but he surprisingly didn't say anything. Instead, he just smiled and took my hand as we walked.

We must have circled that park a dozen times talking. Blaine told me stories about his old friends from Columbus, just the positive stories, and I entertained him with tales of the New Directions, during many of which we had to stop because he was laughing too hard to walk. He found your boyfriend walking down the hallway in underwear particularly amusing. We debated about music and ranted about unfair LGBT politics, and it was the best of our three dates thus far. It was during a conversation about a Chick-fil-A kiss-in that the topic of kissing came up again.

"How many people have you kissed?" I asked him once Blaine had finished regaling me with a story of how his brother had gone to one of those kiss-ins, even though he wasn't gay. I figured by asking him that question I could figure out how many boyfriends, or at least, how many romantic entanglements he'd had.

"Oh, I don't know," Blaine answered with a shrug. "I lost count. Boys, girls, people that I couldn't categorize as either."

"What?" I... okay, I may have shrieked a little bit, letting go of his hand and stopping in the middle of the path. I was surprised! Blaine didn't seem like the kind of guy who would be... spreading it around, if you know what I mean.

"No, Kurt, I'm just kidding. Well, kind of," he corrected. "What I meant is that I ran a kissing booth for about four hours at a fundraiser for my old school. It was supposed to be funny," he said weakly in reply to my facial expression, which must have been very judgmental.

"It wasn't."

"I'm guessing that what you really meant by that questions was how many boyfriends I've had, and I just freaked you out completely." I nodded, and Blaine chuckled, reaching up to run a hand through his hair and stopping himself at the last second. "Sorry. I've had two boyfriends." Blaine didn't say anything more, and I, having developed a sense of self-preservation at this point when it came to Blaine's raw nerves, didn't ask. "Three, including you," he corrected with a smile.

We walked around the park until lunch time, then we took a quick walk over to Panera, grabbed salads and smoothies (actually, Blaine got some sort of monster, meat-filled sandwich), and returned to the park for an impromptu picnic. We eventually decided to part at about four in the afternoon, having talked about everything we could think of by three, and simply enjoying each others' presence for the last hour. Okay, I'm being a little dramatic, but still. It was an amazing date. It's a testament to how laid-back my dad is that no one texted me once to ask where I was, and even when I got home, humming and generally floating on air, no one asked, which kind of hurt a little bit, but more on that later.

Blaine followed me home in his car, deciding to drop me off as a proper gentleman would, which I wasn't aware of. He hopped out of his car when I was about halfway up the walk to my house. "Kurt, wait up!" he called out, half-running over and generally being the most adorable thing I have ever seen in my life.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, but I did wait for him. I wasn't too concerned about my father or Finn suddenly appearing (Carole was a non-issue, she was working).

"I figured I should drop you off. It's proper. It may be a little out-dated, but..." Blaine shrugged.

"It's sweet," I promised him as we approached my doorstep.

"I may have an ulterior motive though," he admitted a little bashfully as he put a hand on the door to prevent me from going inside.

"Oh?" I asked, not at all surprised. I had kind of expected it.

"You see, there's this really amazing guy that I'm lucky enough to be dating. There's just one little thing." I let Blaine continue with his bizarre hypothetical. "He's never kissed anyone in a way that counts, whatever that means, and I'm not sure if he'll let me kiss him."

"I think..." I said as if I was seriously considering it, "that he'll do you one better." Before Blaine could ask what I meant, and before I could lose my nerve, I leaned forward and kissed him, cupping one hand around the back of his neck. I had no idea what to do with the other one, so I let it rest on his arm as he cupped my jaw with one hand and placed the other on my waist, pulling me closer.

I shouldn't get... too involved with the description of this, but it was... amazing. Breath-taking. Absolutely everything I'd imagined from my first kiss and more. Blaine's lips were coarse, but gentle, and I don't have much experience, but even I know that he is an awesome kisser, to use one of Finn's favorite words. I'll admit to... deepening the kiss a little bit, and I think the only reason that we stopped is because we both heard a door slam from somewhere inside the house, breaking... well, I don't know how Blaine was feeling, but it definitely broke me out of my trance.

"Wow," Blaine said when he pulled away, smiling.

"Oh, good, so it wasn't just me," I said, and he chuckled.

"Not at all." He cleared his throat, pulling out of our embrace. "I... I should go, but I'll see you tomorrow?" Sadly, we weren't at the point where we would do anything except see each other tomorrow, but I was so happy at that point I didn't really care.

"Definitely," I said, feeling (ridiculously) a little shy. Blaine grinned at me and gave me another quick, electric peck before he headed for his car, whistling as he did so. I walked into my house with the biggest grin on my face, and then I sighed taking in Finn's expression. What had Santana done now?

Blaine and I spent a grand total of two days being completely, blissfully enamored with each other. Looking back on all of this, our love story is so much more dramatic than yours with Finn, I should really stop mocking you. Anyway, we were texting late on Tuesday night. What we were talking about isn't actually important this time (I think I was bitching about Santana and he was being a very good boyfriend, doing his best to smile and nod through texts), it was what was going on around me that time.

"What are you doing over there that has you so happy?" my dad asked me suspiciously. It wasn't that he didn't want me to be happy, he was just wary whenever I smiled at the screen of my iPhone. It usually meant that I had found something I would beg him to buy for me.

"Nothing," I lied, because I had a feeling the truth wouldn't go over too well.

"Don't try to pull the wool over my eyes, kiddo." One of the things I didn't like about being the Hudson-Hummels was this. The new parental authority. Before Carole and Finn, my dad had always trusted me to look out for myself and be responsible on my own, but with the addition of the Hudsons, he had started to take an interest in my life, and it often wasn't very appreciated.

"Who are you texting, sweetie?" Carole asked from the kitchen, but our floor plan is open enough that she could be a part of the conversation.

"I... I can't tell you," I admitted, and my dad immediately looked super suspicious.

"Is it a boy?" I nodded. "I want to meet him."

"You can't," I emphasized. "We're not..." I didn't want to say 'dating', because that flat-out wasn't true, and saying 'exclusive' would have given my dad a second heart attack, "out," I decided on. "We're not out. At least, not as a couple."

"What do you mean, 'not as a couple'?" Dad asked.

"I mean, he's out, and I'm out, but we're not out together." As I said the words, they sounded like the stupidest thing I had ever heard, and my dad agreed with my assessment, judging by his expression.

"That doesn't make any sense," Dad said. "What, is he one of those guys who doesn't want the commitment involved in being 'dating'?" My dad wasn't immature, he simply put air quotes around the word because he was mocking those who were. Blaine didn't have issues with commitment... or did he? I began wondering.

"No, it's not like that," was what I said out loud. "We are dating, we're just... a secret."

"That doesn't sound good to me, buddy," my dad said, but I heard the words he didn't say. It sounded like Blaine was ashamed to be with me, but I knew he really wasn't. At least, I certainly know that now, but I was beginning to doubt everything at that point.

These thoughts festered until Thursday. "Hey," Blaine said, approaching me kind of casually in the school hallway. Glee practice and Cheerios practice had gotten out at the same time, and Blaine looked kind of nervous at talking to me in the mildly-populated hallway. The logical thought would be to admire him for trying, but I had been so pent up and full of worries for the past two days that I wasn't exactly thinking logically. "How was Glee?"

"Well, we just performed a ridiculous Hall and Oates number that is going to get our butts kicked by the Troubletones, but other than that it was all right," I replied calmly, repeating to myself that Blaine wasn't embarrassed to be with me.

"So, I was thinking that we should celebrate our mensiversary," Blaine said casually, and I tried to ignore how his voice had quieted a little bit.

"Pardon?" I asked.

"It's been exactly four weeks since Charlie set us up on a date, and even though we've only been actually dating for about half of that time," Blaine shrugged, "I just think it's an important milestone."

"I... sure," I said casually, wondering where Blaine had come up with this idea. "What did you have in mind?"

"I'm not sure," Blaine admitted. "I was thinking..." As Blaine went over all of the special things he was considering planning for an incredibly sweet, completely made-up holiday, I reached over to fix the strap of his messenger bag, and he batted my hand away.

"What, I'm not allowed to fix your strap?" I asked when Blaine did it himself, and Blaine looked confused.

"It's not a big deal, Kurt-"

"What if it's a big deal to me?" I demanded, and I'll admit that I had completely lost it at this point. "Why is it so hard for you to be with me in public, even a little bit? You won't even let me fix your damn strap!" About half of the cheerleaders were staring (and so were you, don't deny it), so Blaine took a quick look around and dragged me out of the hallway, through the doors he had just come through and out into the pouring rain the Cheerios had just practiced in. Blaine pulled me under the bleachers, scattering some people who had been making out with a glare, and huddling under the protection the metal seats granted with me.

"What is this about?" Blaine demanded, wrapping his arms around himself as the wind whipped at the thin material of his Cheerios uniform.

"Why don't you want to be with me in public?" I demanded. "Is it about commitment? Are you... are you ashamed of me?" I finally asked the question that had been haunting me since the day Blaine made it clear he didn't want to be public with me, and Blaine looked shell-shocked.

"What? No! Are you crazy? What- No, just no. Of course I'm not ashamed of you, Kurt. You're amazing, and beautiful, and sassy, and talented, and I'm lucky to be with you. And it has nothing to do with commitment either. I will happily commit to you, if that's what you want."

"Then what is it?" I demanded, and Blaine sighed.

"Kurt, you know that I can't explain this to you, especially not now. Please, can you just let it go?" he asked. In hindsight, it was a perfectly reasonable request, made by an incredibly sweet, romantic man who had been going out of his way to prove to me how special he found me just a few minutes ago, and was now freezing his butt off to calm me down in the midst of what must have seemed like a completely irrational freak-out. I had really lost it.

"No," I said coldly. "Either you tell me right now what the big issue is, or we're over." Blaine looked completely thrown, hurt and upset. I'm not proud of what I did that day, Rachel, but it was quite honestly the kick in the pants that our relationship needed... but I'll get to that later.

"Then we're over," Blaine said decisively, and I was shocked that he had chosen his image over me. Blaine walked away, rubbing his freezing arms as he did so, before I could get another word in. That word probably would have been an expletive.

For someone who had just ended their first relationship at seventeen years old, the following week was the loneliest of my life. I knew we were broken up, but I couldn't ignore the connection we still had, how I noticed every emotion that flitted across Blaine's face even when he was trying to act cold to the rest of the world. I was surprised that he didn't express his anger through his usual vitriol. Instead, he kind of just ignored me, looking down as I walked past and not acknowledging my existence. For some reason, that was so much worse than him just being cruel to me.

As you know, we got our butts kicked by the Troubletones at that mash-up competition, and I had no one to talk with after Finn got bitch-slapped by Santana. I'm still on the fence about whether he deserved it or not. Lady Music Week had already started when Brittany asked me to meet her after Cheerios practice. Considering Brittany often got a little confused about Cheerios' choreography (she's an amazing dancer, but sometimes the fact that Coach Sylvester gives them the choreography verbally rather than visually messes her up), I didn't think anything of it. At least, not until I sludged across the football field through the rain (it had to be raining again, didn't it?) and I saw Blaine waiting for me.

"Hi," he greeted me as if nothing were out of the ordinary, but his voice sounded scratchy. He looked tired, and I wondered if he had been getting as little sleep as I had that week. "Can we talk?"

"I thought we were over," I said a little bitterly, because as upset as I was about Blaine and I being over, the reality of it hadn't really hit yet, and I was more angry than anything that Blaine had picked his image over me.

"I don't want us to be over," Blaine replied, reaching out to take my hand. I allowed it, though for a moment I pettily considered batting his hand away as he had done to me last week. "Especially not because of this."

"That's the problem exactly," I said with a sigh, not really able to stay angry at Blaine. "This. The only way you ever refer to your past is vaguely, and whenever I try to find out more, you shut me out and become defensive. Relationships are a two-way street, Blaine, you need to trust me."

Blaine was the one who sighed at that point, rubbing his free hand through his soaked-wet hair. "I do trust you. If I didn't trust you, I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't have asked you to come here, I wouldn't be trying." The rain provided an excellent cover for the fact that my eyes were getting a little wet, and I had a feeling that Blaine was having the same problem. "I trust you enough to be myself around you. This isn't about trust."

"Than what is it about?" I asked, bold. I knew that whatever it was Blaine was hiding would be the defining point in our relationship, but I was hoping that we were strong enough that his past wouldn't break us.

"Fear," Blaine admitted, sounding a little choked up. "I'm afraid that if you know how screwed up I really am, you won't want to be with me anymore." I was stunned. Not only could I not imagine anything bad enough that I wouldn't want to be with Blaine anymore (at that point, he could have been a serial killer and I still would have been happy with him), but this also brought up the possibility that my pushing for details was the reason he kept withdrawing.

"Blaine, I..." I took a deep breath, and subsequently choked on rain, which made Blaine chuckle and broke the tense air. "I'm not sure what to say to that, but I can't think of anything that could have possibly happened to you that would make me not like you," I promised him. It wasn't the most articulate thing I could have said, but I think it got my point across.

"You might not have a very good imagination," Blaine said with a sigh, but he was smiling a little bit. "I know this is difficult for someone as nosy as you are, and don't even deny it, " he cut me off before I could protest, "but please, just give me a little more time."

"I think I can do that," I said with a smile, and I wasn't entirely caught off guard when Blaine pulled me close and kissed me. Okay, that's a lie. I was totally surprised.

"Curiosity killed the cat, you know," Blaine said casually once we parted because of oxygen deprivation. "You might want to be more careful."

"And satisfaction brought it back," I corrected. "Why do people always forget that part?"

"Sorry, stereotypical movie-type kissing in the rain got me a little distracted," Blaine said with a smile, giving me another quick peck.

Needless to say, we didn't go inside for quite a while.

A/N: Some sweetness, some drama, and then some more sweetness :) I hope you guys are enjoying and... I don't really have anything else to say here. More next week!

Songs mentioned: ...None. Weird.

Reviews are Love.