In the last few sessions since Nightbird had joined all the other captive characters in JetCat's lair, White Wings had finally come to liberate everyone, Dovetail and Hawkbeak had made their relationship public knowledge, and Nightbird had finally flown Darcy home at the end of a date.

Kurt was sitting with Unique and Hadley as their characters grilled Darcy about his relationship with Nightbird. "Speaking of the boyfriend..." Unique said, tilting her head slightly forward to gesture behind Kurt. Before he could even turn around, Blaine's arms closed around him.

"Hey babe," Blaine said, "ready to go?" Kurt nodded.

"Of course. Bye, ladies!" Kurt said as he stood up, falling into a rhythm with Blaine as they walked away. "I've never noticed how much walking we do on these dates," Kurt told him, letting Blaine take his hand.

"I like walking with you. It means we don't have to do anything but talk," Blaine said, "and talking means that I get to know everything about you. And there's a lot more to you than you let on at first Darcy, I know it." Kurt suppressed a laugh. He was finding more out about Darcy all the time too. "Are you cold?"

"Well, I'm not warm." Honestly Kurt felt bad for those of them who were in hero costumes, since they didn't really allow for much warmth. They couldn't easily put on more layers, either. Kurt had layered up and still wasn't feeling dressed for the slowly worsening weather. Blaine wrapped an arm around him, pulling him close to his side.

"Better?" Kurt smiled at him.

"Always."

"We'll have to cuddle later," Blaine said. They walked in silence for a moment before he asked, "Would it annoy you if there was some kind of disaster like, right now, which meant I had to go off with White Wings and save the day?"

"I'd be annoyed, yeah. But I totally understand it. You just have to expect to deal with it when your boyfriend is a superhero." As if on cue, Nick jogged over to them, stopping them in their tracks.

"Nightbird, you've gotta come. It's Braxton, he... just come and see for yourself, okay?" Blaine looked at Kurt apologetically.

"I have to go," he said, "rain check on that cuddling?" Kurt nodded, and Blaine pecked him on the cheek quickly as if it was second nature. Kurt watched them run away, and as Leo approached him he was too phased out by the lingering feeling of Blaine's lips on his cheek to respond right away.

"...sucks, huh?" Leo said. Kurt blinked at him, trying to remember what had come first in that sentence.

"What?" Leo laughed.

"You're so in love with him." Kurt wanted to be flattered by the compliment to his acting skills, but he was fairly certain that everyone in the group knew that he had a crush on Blaine, even without their characters dating.

"It's a bit soon to call it love," Kurt said, trying to pull it back to the scene.

"If you love him, then why wait?"

"Because he might not love me back."

"Darcy, let me get real with you here for a moment," Leo said, and Kurt waited patiently for his elaboration, "Nightbird has never dated anyone before you. He's had offers. A lot of offers. And every single time he's turned them down because of his job. He hasn't wanted to go through any hassle of dating civilians because they can't handle it when he has to bail on them. For some reason though, he's choosing to deal with that for you. Whether or not it's too early to call it love, there's something more than mutual attraction there."

Kurt froze, and it was in no way related to what Leo had been saying to him.

"Um, Darcy?" Leo said gently, prodding Kurt in the arm softly. He shifted himself to follow Kurt's line of sight, and began to look between the figure walking towards them and Kurt's expression. Kurt knew he wasn't being even slightly subtle in his reaction, completely breaking character. "Oh, shit," Leo said, "I'll be right back, K-" he stopped before he broke character any further and ran towards the bench tapping it twice even though the session wasn't due to end for quite a lot longer, and then tried to alert the others of what was going on.

Kurt couldn't move. Karofsky had come into the park, infiltrating one of his few safe spaces left. Leo had left him alone, and he couldn't leave where he was without making it easier for Karofsky to intercept him. Why were all of his friends behind his bully?

"Hey, fairy," Karofsky said by way of greeting, "who was that guy you were with, your little bum buddy? Is he a faggot too, huh? It's a nice costume he has, really shows off the gay," he continued. Kurt wasn't even sure he knew what he was saying, just pouring out a torrent of insults as they came to him.

"Go away, Karofsky," Kurt said calmly. He knew he was well and truly out of character, but he doubted the others minded at that moment. "There aren't any lockers for you to slam me into here, so you can just leave me alone, okay? Please. You don't have to prove yourself to anyone."

"You don't get the right to talk, homo!" Karofsky loomed over Kurt, getting closer yet. He tried not to flinch away too much. Courage.

"Your idiot homophobe friends aren't here right now! You don't have to swear by your heterosexuality!"

"I thought you weren't ever going to fucking mention that. I'll fucking kill you if you tell anyone." Kurt squeezed his eyes shut, clenching and unclenching his hands at his side. He could tell that Karofsky was doing the same, but rather in preparation to hit him.

He had never been punched by him before, always just shoved against a wall or locker or pushed to the ground. This was different, and he had no clue why. The collision of Karofsky's fist with his ribcage startled him- he had never expected him to aim that low. He wasn't just going to stand there passively as he acted as a human punching bag for the other boy, and pushed Karofsky away. His hands had barely touched Karofsky's chest before he was pulled far away from him, a wall of superheroes coming between them.

Luke and Nick were holding Karofsky back as he hurled insults at them, while Jeff, Blaine, Leo and Ethan stood in his immediate line of fire, willing to take the hits for Kurt. As if he snapped back to reality, Kurt began to cry. He could hear the others saying things to Karofsky and the occasional shout, but he wasn't able to process any of it. Erica was at his side, rubbing circles on his back soothingly and whispering support to him. The other girls seemed to be equally terrified of the bully and were clustered behind the wall of boys, but quietly supporting one another more than they were Kurt.

"Kurt?" Luke said, his strong voice being an odd sort of comfort to Kurt, "he's gone now. You're okay." He could almost believe it; Luke said it with such conviction.

"We're going to take a vote now. Put your hand up if you're in favour of ending the session early," Erica said. Kurt was too busy wiping his eyes to even consider raising his hand, but Erica didn't seem to mind that. "It's unanimous, we'll end now. You can all go home; I'm not going to keep you with notices." There was some shuffling about, but no one seemed to actually leave.

"Kurt," Blaine said, appearing in front of him. The position would have startled him if it had been anyone else, but Blaine's shortness managed to make him infinitely less scary than Karofsky. He figured it was probably best not to mention that to anyone. "I would ask if you were okay, but I think we all know the answer to that."

"I think I just need a hug," Kurt said, and Blaine immediately folded him into his arms, not letting go even as he talked to other people. Kurt realised that Blaine was going to wait until he pulled away first, and finally let go.

"I'm going to take you home."

"Okay."

"Nick, would you mind following us to Kurt's house to drop my car off?" They were back at Kurt's house in a matter of minutes, three cars pulling up. Nick hopped out of Blaine's car, passed him the keys and got into Ethan's car behind them, not asking any questions. Kurt's hands were shaking too much for him to unlock the front door of the house, so Blaine took the key from him and opened the door. Kurt wasn't sure why he was so traumatised by the encounter. It was really no worse than anything he had faced at school. His emotions were too overwhelming to really work through at that point.

Blaine looked at him with wide, concerned eyes, full of care and worry for Kurt, wordlessly asking him what he needed. Darcy and Nightbird had always been good at communicating nonverbally, but this was different. Kurt sat down in the living room, Blaine immediately sitting at his side. "Can you stay?" Kurt asked quietly, and Blaine nodded. They sat quietly for a moment as Kurt focussed on breathing properly, stopping his shaking.

"He hit you," Blaine eventually said quietly. Kurt nodded. "Can I see?" Kurt was nervous about taking his top off in front of Blaine, naturally, but he also knew it was something he needed to do. He hadn't shown the bruises to anyone, but for some reason beyond his understanding he trusted Blaine completely. He peeled off his last layer, thankful for his warm house, leaving all the evidence of the bullying on display. "Kurt..." Blaine said, wordless at the sight. His torso was covered in bruises of various sizes and colours, with a red, darkening patch where Karofsky's fist had hit his ribs. He turned around to show Blaine his back, which he knew was far worse. His shoulders tended to take most of the impact from the locker shoves, and it was visible.

"Why haven't you ever taken this to the principal?" Blaine asked, "Don't you think this much damage is enough to show that you're being physically injured by him?"

"Because then they ask questions, and he told me that if I ever tell anyone that he's gay then he will kill me."

"You really think he would do that, Kurt?" Kurt put his shirt back on and sat back down on the couch beside Blaine.

"I don't know," Kurt said quietly, worriedly. Blaine put his arm around Kurt's shoulders loosely, pulling him into his side. It felt completely ordinary between them and it was nothing they hadn't done already while roleplaying, but Kurt knew this was entirely different. The physical side of the action wasn't new, but coming from Blaine it was. Kurt wriggled his arms around him as they got comfortable, and then it dawned on him that they were cuddling.

"Are you feeling better now?" Blaine asked.

"I think I'll be okay in the long term. This really wasn't worse than anything I get at school, and I had a whole team of heroes there to defend me."

"Well, a group of nerds in spandex, anyway."

"Do you want to go and change?" Kurt said, realising that Blaine was still in his Nightbird costume. He hadn't even thought anything of it sooner.

"No, I'm okay. We just got comfy. So if this was as bad as it is at school, is this how you always react?"

"Not at all. I think... I wasn't worried about myself. The day he chose to bother me by tormenting Marley it was bad enough and I could hardly forgive myself for letting it happen. I was terrified for you all. I'm by no means the only gay guy in the group, to start with," Kurt said, "I think I was also upset or angry or something that he had come into my last free space. Dreamweaver is the furthest I can usually get from it all, and he came in anyway, and that makes me mad."

"I understand that, I think," Blaine said. He shifted slightly, tightening his arms around Kurt almost possessively.

"I'm sorry that you all had to get involved and end early," Kurt said quietly. They were so close that it didn't seem at all necessary to talk very loud. Blaine would have jumped to reassure him if they hadn't been sitting the way they were.

"Kurt, no. We're your friends. If we had wanted to keep out of it we could have, but you know why Leo ran off? Because he knew that he couldn't fight off Karofsky on his own."

Kurt paused for a moment in thought. "How did Leo know that it was Karofsky? How did he know anything?" he asked. Blaine sighed.

"Will you get catastrophically angry if I tell you that I've told a few people that you're being bullied?" He looked at Kurt with those big, hopeful eyes, and Kurt couldn't be mad at him for him.

"No, it's okay. It's not exactly a secret."

"Well, it isn't exactly hard to pick a large jock looking type in a McKinley letterman jacket anyway, so even though none of us have actually seen Karofsky other than Marley; it wasn't exactly hard to guess." Kurt hummed in agreement. "You didn't want any of them to know that you didn't fall."

"Because that's different. It just... leads to more questions."

"It wasn't just me, you know. Marley told Unique, because they tell each other everything, and they both told Erica and Luke. They told me, even though I already knew, and then it kind of spread."

"They told you?" Kurt asked, having never heard that part of it all himself.

"They noticed that we were getting close, I guess, thought I should know," Blaine said.

"It's funny, because I think it happened the other way around. You knew and then we became better friends." Kurt remembered then that they were, for lack of a better term, cuddling. If that wasn't an indicator of how much better friends they had gotten, he wasn't sure what was. Finn walked into the living room and looked shocked at the pair, and Blaine just gave him a little not now gesture that Finn seemed to accept as he continued walking through, not even lapsing their conversation at all.

"I don't think you could have trusted me enough for any of this other stuff if we hadn't talked about my bullying first, Kurt."

"Probably. Does it matter?" Blaine went to say something, but then his phone rang, breaking the flow between them. Kurt wriggled away from him, making space for Blaine to take his phone out of... Kurt wasn't sure where exactly he had pulled it from, but it appeared as though he had a secret pocket somewhere in his suit.

"It's my dad," Blaine explained, looking apologetically at Kurt, "I've really got to take this, sorry."

"No, it's fine. Go ahead." Kurt decided it was time to wash his face after all the tears, simultaneously giving Blaine some privacy in the living room as he left to the bathroom. He couldn't help but overhear Blaine's conversation with his father while he wiped his face.

"Yeah, I was at my improv group, but I finished early so I'm at my friend's house... yes, dad, I have known him long enough to know that he isn't going to kill me... he won't injure my vocal chords either, honestly. We're not shouting." Kurt couldn't help but giggle slightly at the conversation that Blaine was having. Calling the roleplay an 'improv group' was interesting, but it wasn't totally incorrect, and it seemed to keep Blaine's dad happy. "Yeah, tomorrow I have piano and vocal lessons... No, show choir practice was today... yes, I'm still the lead soloist... Look, I'll be home by seven, okay? We can talk about all this during dinner... dad, Dalton doesn't have a school musical. Yeah. Okay. Bye." Kurt took that as his cue to walk naturally from the bathroom, pretending that he hadn't been listening to most of the conversation.

"Sorry, my dad was just pestering me about how my acting class was going," Blaine said. He made his way back to the couch and sat down, Kurt joining him. "Do you want to cuddle again?" Kurt nodded and shuffled closer so Blaine could wrap his arms around him, glad that it wasn't just some kind of one off thing that had happened between them. That just about counted as a conversation, and that was fine with Kurt.

"And your acting class is a cover for nerds in spandex," Kurt prompted.

"Exactly, but to tell my dad that it's an improvisational workshop seems to be better. Nick and Jeff play along with it when they talk to him, so that helps."

"Does your dad always just call you to check how your classes are going?"

Blaine sighed. "A lot of the time, yeah. But if I was at home he would be asking why I wasn't practicing some instrument or another. Last week he asked if I had done my violin practice."

"And?"

"I've never played violin in my life."

"Um, okay. Why do you take so many instrumental lessons?" Kurt asked. "Sorry, I'm asking a lot of questions. I don't mean to be nosey." He absolutely did mean to be nosey. He still knew hardly anything about the boy who was rapidly becoming one of his best friends, and if Blaine was about to start talking, Kurt was going to prompt it accordingly.

"No, it's fine. You would find all this out within a minute of stepping into my house, to be honest, so it's probably best you get some advance warning. Do you want the short answer or the long answer?"

"I have time."

"By learning multiple instruments I'm increasing my repertoire which is a marketable skill when applying for colleges, as my mom and dad tell me. I'm also involved in about as many extracurricular performance groups as I can manage to keep them happy, because that will look good, too. So, for college."

"'For college' being the short answer?"

"No," Blaine said, "the short answer is that I have stage parents."

"So they want you to..." Kurt started.

"Be a musical theatre major. They don't mind too much where I go to college, so long as I have an acting degree. I'm thinking New York."

"Blaine, you're a sophomore. You have years yet before you even have to start worrying."

"Not to them, I don't. Best to get started early, you see."

"...The other week you told me that you don't really want all the solos. Is that parental pressure too? Because you really are very good."

"Thanks, Kurt," Blaine said, naturally and politely accepting the compliment first, "No, well, not really. I love performing, I really do. They just push that I'm constantly practicing and improving and that kind of sucks the fun out of it. My brother Cooper is an actor, and he's not exactly great at it- but he's living in LA, he gets the odd commercial here and there, and it keeps them happy."

"Ah, so you got all the talent?" Kurt teased.

"Well, not all the talent," Blaine said, blushing slightly, "they just started an awful lot earlier with me. Coop's almost ten years older than me, you see, so by then they knew that I needed to be stuck in my first classes as a preschooler."

"So singing?" Kurt asked. Of all the things he knew about Blaine, singing certainly seemed to be the most logical of the lessons for him as a preschooler.

"Um, no, I actually did ballet when I was little. Only for a couple of years, and then when I was six I started piano and singing lessons. I picked up guitar the summer before I started high school."

"And that one was your choice?" Blaine nodded. "I did ballet, too. But it was at my request, not because my mom thought that I needed to perfect my young dance skills."

"When did you stop?"

"Right about the first time someone called me gay." To make it worse, it had been one of the parents of a girl in his class. Nowadays Kurt could only imagine he would say "Can't you just grow up?" but the young Kurt Hummel was powerless against adults, no matter how immature.

"Oh. Ouch."

"Yeah."

"I'm glad your parents let you take the lessons in the first place. There are a lot of parents out there who would worry that encouraging their son to dance would just set him up for being gay," Blaine said. Kurt stifled a laugh when he realised that both of the boys he knew who had done ballet- him and Blaine- were both indeed gay.

"I'm eternally grateful for how supportive my parents are. Or was, I suppose is the case of my mother." There was nothing sad in his correction; he just felt that it was one that needed to be made sometimes. He missed his mom all the time, but he wasn't lacking without her around. "Your parents didn't worry?"

"Cooper is one of the most heterosexual men I know, and they were a little surprised when I came out initially but they got over themselves pretty quickly. They both come from backgrounds where they can't afford to be startled by gay men," Blaine explained with a little shrug. Kurt was glad his experience had been so painless.

"Oh, what do your parents do?" Kurt asked.

"My dad was- and still is- an actor. His company isn't hugely exciting these days, really more of a community theatre kind of thing. I try not to get involved past seeing the shows on opening night, but they tour around a bit and I think my dad directs or something, I don't know. My mum was a ballerina, but she retired before she hit thirty, as most of them do. Now she's living off of a quiet fortune that she inherited."

"Well, no wonder they're stage parents then. You would think they would be the standard living vicariously through you parents."

"I wish. That would be better than this whole never meeting their standard thing. Like, I can perform at theme parks, that's a thing I've done, but I'll never be as good an actor as he is." Kurt knew that Blaine didn't mean Cooper. He meant his father, whose perception of his own skills was so high that his son could never match it. He wasn't sure he ever wanted to meet the man who made Blaine feel so small. He snuggled just a tiny bit closer to Blaine, telling him that he would always be good enough, knowing that between them enough tears had already been shed that day.

A/N: snaps for my friend Fraser who is basically the reason this chapter got finished on time!