#kbl2015

***

The patter of bare feet on smooth, stone floors.

Giggles in the dark.

A rustle of cloth.

A kiss on the cheek - a moan as kisses travel.

The sounds of infatuation and excitement filled the air in the resplendent palace of the virgin King, recently crowned and newly married.

But not virgin for too much longer.

The wedding of Blaine Anderson, King beyond the Sea of White Sand, had all the makings of an epic love story – a noble King, his beautiful Queen, and a first night filled with passion and the blossoming fruit of love.

Ever since his thirteenth birthday, when boys of every status were proclaimed men, Blaine had had concubines made available to him, as was his right, but he never availed himself to them. He refused to lie where he did not love. As Prince and sole heir to the throne, that decision was seen by many as childish and immature, though none would ever give voice to such traitorous words. But it was still troubling. How could Blaine keep a clear mind to his duties with the poison of lust building up inside him, bringing him beneath its sway? Many felt that want of carnal pleasure would make him weak. But Blaine held strong, and over time, those with nagging minds saw him as that – strong. And since he had the strength of mind and purpose to remain unsullied, he came to be considered wise, trustworthy, and above all things, just - a perfect ruler.

He had the sex slaves of the palace sent away, compensated and re-distributed to areas in need of their services. He did not want their presence to offend any who may be propositioned to become his bride. His father might have seen that as a failure, not providing the kingdom with a successor should Blaine fail to find a match, but Blaine would not spread his seed out of obligation.

He wanted to make a gift of his virtue, to one he felt he could respect, trust, and love, and receive that same gift in return.

Several months after his twentieth birthday, Blaine believed that the Vizier had finally found such a person.

A princess of fierce wit and intelligence, crowned by a singular beauty – skin pale as the fair desert sand, hair a cascade of gold over slender but strong shoulders, and eyes that shone like emeralds, twin gems worth more than all the riches on Earth, above and below.

A rare and exotic treasure for Blaine to pledge himself to, to bequeath his loyalty…and his desire.

She would come only second in his life to his kingdom, and forever be true and precious in his heart.

Her name was Quinn.

Quinn, given to him as a gift from a far-off land. Quinn, whose name meant ‘counsel’, in whom Blaine would always confide. Quinn, who would be his sustenance, the blood in his veins, the air that he breathed, whose well-being he’d put above his own.

Quinn, whom Blaine would defend and protect above all others.

Quinn, who would always have Blaine’s devotion and affection.

She belonged to him the moment a dowry exchanged hands, but he courted her anyway. He gave her gifts and sang her songs. He filled her room with flowers, and with fragrant pots of rare oils and spices. He bought her fine clothes and jewels. He indulged her unquenchable thirst for reading, and filled a corner of her room from floor to ceiling with whatever books he could find. He put ego aside, and served her in a manner befitting a Queen.  

Quinn was receptive to his attentions, and took pride of place at his side, till it became unusual to see one without the other.

Their wedding, weeks later, was like none before it. Even the nuptials of Blaine’s parents, the late King and Queen, were not as glorious. Ambassadors from other countries and affluent families from miles around came to congratulate the couple, whom most saw as divinely favored – two kindred souls finding one another from the distant reaches of the world. It was like a fairy tale, and the storytellers recited it over and over in the streets so that the people of the kingdom might revel along with their beloved King. Casks of the King’s best Shiraz were opened, squares of wedding cake handed out, and everyone from businessman to beggar made merry.

Gifts of tremendous wealth were bestowed upon Blaine and Quinn, and a magnificent feast served in their honor. Performers of all disciplines filled the palace. Nearly every floor was bursting with musicians, acrobats, jugglers, sword swallowers, and fire breathers.

But Blaine saw none of it. Nothing that was brought before him tickled his fancy. A sitar player, one of the finest in the kingdom, paused before the throne to play for the royal couple, only to continue on his way with his song unfinished. Blaine had eyes only for his young bride, and she, it seemed, only for him.

It could be called fate, kismet, destiny, luck, but no matter. It did not need a name. No greater blessing shone down upon him, and in that moment when the two left the festivities early to consummate their marriage, Blaine couldn’t imagine himself any more content.

It seemed like a dream, one he hoped to never wake from.

They could not wait until they were in the solitude of the King’s chambers to touch and kiss and hold one another, but they had no fear of being seen. There was no one about, every person kept away from this part of the palace to ensure their privacy. Blaine’s hands fumbled, pulling gently at delicate veils and casting them aside until he could look fully upon the face of his bride. She was grace and dignity, and he knew that she would fill his palace with lusty sons and fine daughters, but Quinn was so much more to him than that. She made him feel human; she made him feel equal and whole. As her kisses fell upon his lips, Blaine thanked God and those in his service that he could wed one so clever, so radiant, so exquisite – one whom he could talk to openly, one who made him laugh.

One whom he could grow to love.

He wasn’t entirely certain that he wasn’t completely in love already.

After tonight, they would be one, King and Queen together. They would be adored and praised more than any other rulers before them. They would be the shining example that love conquers everything, bears everything, means everything.

A King without love was like a day without sun, a night without the moon and stars.

It meant everything to Blaine.

Blaine led Quinn with a hand to the small of her back and kisses along her shoulders. He held her in his arms and laid her down gently on his bed, which he had prepared special, covering it from end to end with the softest pillows he could find. As he undressed her, revealing her inch by inch – her ample bosom, her flawless skin, her flat stomach - a modest blush colored her flesh, and Blaine prayed for courage. He prayed for fortitude. He prayed that he should make of himself a pleasing offering to his lady bride. He prayed that years of inexperience would not deprive his beloved of a magical first time in his arms.

Naked as she was before him, the pink of awareness on her skin darkened to an enticing scarlet, but she did not turn away, and Blaine smiled. She might have strength enough for both of them then. He could learn a thing or two from her bravery.

He took too long in his admiration of her, and her smile faded.

“What is it, my King?” she asked, reaching out a hand to touch his cheek. “Why do you seem so…dismayed?”

Blaine swallowed, turning into her hand to kiss her palm. Her skin was soft against his lips, and warm – a warmth he longed to feel all over his body. He was not as prepared for this as he thought he should be, but he regretted not a single one of his decisions. He did what was right for him; he had nothing to apologize for. But he was still nervous, and in that nervousness, he felt afraid. She frowned, waiting patiently for an answer, but Blaine was hesitant to give it. It was not the habit of a King to express weakness to anyone, especially his wife. But if Blaine could not admit his fears to her, then whom should he admit them to?

“I…I’ve never done this before,” Blaine said with a shy laugh, gazing at the goddess that lay before him. “I…I don’t want to mess this up.”

Quinn gave him an understanding smile, the light from the lanterns twinkling in her eyes like the sun on a new spring day. Her hand moved from Blaine’s cheek to the collar of his tunic, tracing the weave of the fabric down his chest till her fingertips reached the hem.

“Well, my King,” she said softly, “then we shall learn together, yes?”

Blaine nodded, mesmerized by the way she could calm his fears so quickly. She tugged up on his garment and he obeyed, moving to take it off. Few had seen the King unclothed, none who mattered as far as he was concerned, but he’d never felt this vulnerable, this exposed. He worried what she would think of him, but that lasted only a second. Quinn’s eyes went wide at the sight of him, filled with wonder, sweeping over his skin as if she couldn’t look enough upon him. He reached for her and her breath quickened. Her body rose to meet his hand, pleading to be touched, but he pulled back.

“I don’t know how this works,” he confessed. She gasped in surprise, then tittered lightly, the sound of her carefree, unsuppressed laughter flooding his body, making him feel carefree, too. “I mean…I know how it works, I just…am I going to…hurt you?”

Quinn raised her hand to his face and stroked his cheek with gentle fingertips.

“My mother told me that my body will accommodate yours,” Quinn said, voice trembling. “You just have to trust it. You have to trust me.” Quinn’s other hand hovered where the proof of Blaine’s need pushed against the front of his pants. “Do you trust me?” she asked in a whisper.

“I do,” Blaine said. “I do trust you.”

“Good,” she said, smiling encouragingly. “That’s all you need.”

Blaine stole a glance down the length of her gorgeous body, a bit more confident but unsure where to start, but his Quinn, the other half of his heart and soul, seemed to know.

“Will you touch me, my King?” she begged, her dainty fingers wrapping around his wrist, her eyes locked boldly on his. He let her lead his hand to the nest of curls at the juncture of her thighs. He took over then, slipping his fingers inside her, massaging this sacred hollow of her body, which moistened at his touch. It felt sinful touching her there and watching her react. Her eyelids fluttered shut. Her hands grabbed at the pillows beneath her. Her moans filled the air around them, a distinctive music mixed with the sound of the celebration taking place levels below them and his heart beat pounding in his ears. But there could be no sin in this, nothing wrong.

Not about his beloved Quinn.

“Kiss me?” she whispered, their lips already a breath apart, not much more needed to bring them together than that one question. He let himself go when his lips pressed against hers, but it was her fervor that overwhelmed him. She chased his mouth, her tongue slipping between his lips, mirroring the movement of his fingers between her legs. Her mouth tasted sweet, like sugared dates and honey, along with the sip of wine she drank when they exchanged their vows. Blaine wasn’t particularly fond of sweets, but he couldn’t get enough of the flavors here, where only he would be able to sample them.

Quinn helped the King off with his pants, her hands shaking as they slid down over his ass and his legs, his desire for her springing free.

“Are you…?” he asked, not finishing the question lest he be vulgar. “Can I…?”

“Yes, my King,” she said, restless hands clawing lightly at his chest, at his shoulders, urging him to move. “Please.”

Blaine guided her legs open with careful hands, watching her breathing stop as he lined his sex up with hers. His body quaked as he entered his bride, the first brush of his engorged cock against her heat nearly doing him in. After that, there was no hesitation, on his part or hers. They were connected, body and mind. He kissed her, she touched him. He whispered her name, she opened up for him, wordlessly begging him to take her. And he did, accepting that which she offered and giving her everything he was, everything he had, telling her in unspoken words about the life he dreamt of sharing with her, his promise to always be faithful, that nothing in the world could tempt him to stray from the rapture that was her and him as husband and wife for the rest of their lives. His body surrendered to hers, filling her with life – life from within him. Ecstasy washed over them both, and a tear slipped down his cheek as he pictured the children that life would bring. The future of not only them, but of his kingdom.

Their claim to immortality.

Elsewhere in the palace, the night had continued on without them. They could hear it in the form of music and laughter wafting through the windows, but for Blaine, time had stopped, and he was glad. How much longer would their life be if every time they made love time paused and waited for them to catch up?

If that was the case, Blaine would be sure to worship his wife’s body at least three times a day.

Weary but blissfully spent, and with joyful laughter simmering in his throat, Blaine looked at his Queen, hoping the experience was as remarkable for her as it had been for him. She gazed up at him, breathless, but she seemed to have no words for him, and his heart began to sink. In his doubts, he thought that perhaps she meant to spare his feelings by not giving him an opinion, but for the sake of securing her happiness, he needed to know.

“How was…how was that, my love?” he panted, brushing the hair from her face so he could better see her vibrant eyes.

Her lips parted and she shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks, and he feared he had failed her.

“Perfect, my King.” She ran her fingers through his hair, then brought his forehead down to her lips and kissed his sweaty brow. “I couldn’t have wished for anything better.”

Blaine sighed with relief and kissed his wife deeply, taking a last taste of her before they yielded to sleep. He took comfort from her words. His heart settled, finding an easy rhythm with hers that it could keep. He laid his head upon her breast, and with a touch of his cheek against her skin, he fell into a satisfied slumber.

***

Blaine felt a wisp of cool air dance across his skin. It fled quickly, and he became warm again, but that single chill kept him on the brink of waking, even when he thought he’d fallen swiftly back to sleep. Soon after, he felt the pillows around him move, felt a body draw up close to his and curl into his arms. He smiled sleepily and opened his eyes, expecting to see his wife wrapped in his embrace, her flaxen hair draped over his pillow, the silken strands tickling his nose, snuggling against him to evade the cold.

He snuffled and blinked, shooing the sleep from his brain, but he could tell before his vision cleared completely that it wasn’t Quinn who roused him from sleep, but the striped tawny and white cat his mother had kept. Blaine had rescued it from entombment after his mother’s passing. From that day forward, it seemed to prefer Blaine’s chambers over his mother’s old room.

“Mau,” he murmured, scratching the purring beast behind her ear. “Where has my beloved gone, hmm? Have you seen my Quinn? Do you know where she is?”

Mau meowed, turning its head toward the doorway as strange noises echoed down the corridor outside Blaine’s room. They were muffled, indistinct but alarming, making Blaine sit up and take notice. There should be no one outside his room, none but the guards at this hour, and Blaine was immune to their footsteps pacing the halls as he slept. If there were any revelers left in the palace, they would have been ushered off to the guest wing by now. But these footfalls, fading into the labyrinth of walkways, were lighter than would be those of a tired, drunken partygoer, and seemed urgent, running away from something, eager to leave it behind.

Blaine was not bothered by whatever or whomever might be lurking about. It was not his place to worry. He did want to know where his wife had gone, however, and threw on his clothes to set out in search of her. It could be that she retreated to her own room. Though he had hoped she would stay with him, his mother had warned him long ago that women were mysterious creatures, in their ways and in their thoughts, and sometimes, as men did, needed time to themselves. Blaine could respect that – it would be difficult, but he could. Still, he had an uneasy feeling as he turned the corner leading to the chambers set aside for the King’s concubines and his spouses. Blaine decided that this once he would call on her. He would not linger long if she did not wish it. Once he saw that she was okay, he would leave her alone.

“Quinn?” he called softly, not wanting to alarm her by showing up unannounced. “Quinn, are you here?” He heard a scuffle followed by a yelp that caused his feet to speed their pace. “Are you alright, my love?”

He turned down the final corridor and laughter struck his ears – a hushed chuckle, wicked and sultry.

Unmistakably feminine.

Suddenly, he did not rush toward the sound so swiftly.

Still he walked, moans and whimpers luring him further on, drawing him forward, with Blaine powerless to stop, even as every step siphoned his soul away drop by excruciating drop. Those feverish moans turned his insides cold as death, filling his veins with ice till he became numb to everything – numb to love, numb to compassion, numb to forgiveness.

Blaine knew that voice. He’d heard it sing for him hours before – a breathy alto, gasping for pleasure, begging for completion.

“Yes, yes, yes!” it cried. “Please, God, harder! Fuck me harder! Please, make me cum…”

No, Blaine realized. Not the same. This time it sang with a greater pleasure, a more honest enjoyment of the act. Blaine might be inexperienced, but he was far from stupid. He could tell the difference.

It took only a second for everything inside Blaine to change, for his heart to harden, for his brain to sharpen its focus, for him to banish the hopeless romantic within him to a place deep within his psyche, where he would never have to bother with it again. Where it could rot and die the death befitting of a naïve, addlepated fool.

Blaine squared his shoulders, pulled himself straight, and stormed into his wife’s chamber. He should have been shocked by what he saw, and perhaps a part of him was, but he was too livid to feel anything but anger. He found his wife the way he knew he’d find her the moment her gasps hit his ears – lying on her back and mounted like a whore. Their eyes met, but there was no more love in Blaine’s gaze, no more affection, and no mercy.

Quinn didn’t look ashamed, she didn’t look repentant, but she had the good sense to be afraid.

She opened her mouth to speak, but Blaine wasn’t about to let her. He never wanted to hear her speak again. He needed his last memory of her voice to be those moans of pleasure that did not belong to him so that she could not persuade him to forgive her.

Had he a knife on his person, he would have lurched forward and cut out her tongue.

“Guards!” Blaine screamed, his golden eyes burning into those of the woman with the dark-skinned servant between her thighs. She stared back at him, pleading silently, her green eyes no more the precious jewels he had believed them, but the calculating eyes of a treacherous snake. “Guards! Come to me! I need you immediately!”

“Yes, Great King!”

Blaine woke to the sound of four spear ends hitting the floor in unison, his body shaking, his palms sweating, the perfumed air around him a festering reminder of his first wife’s betrayal. It had been several long years since that night, since that viper claimed his innocence and crushed it underfoot like a ripe fig. He had been plagued by these nightmares too many times. They needed to end. He needed to drive that memory from his brain.

“No, I’m not nervous about that. Well, not that much, anyway.”

“Then what is it?”

He took a deep breath and let it out through his mouth, seeing the puff of air leave his lips. “What if they don’t like my routine?”

Cooper glanced down at the ground, and it only made Blaine feel more anxious. He had been practicing part of his routine with Kurt, and even though he’d had some trouble with the butterfly spin, he’d managed to do it without slipping after he fell back on the ice. Kurt had kissed him the first time he was able to do it, and he’d gotten a lot better at it. But what if that was the only thing the judges liked about his performance? What if it was the one thing they didn’t like? What if he got too nervous under the judges’ gazes and he slipped after the jump? He wished Coach Stevens were with him right now, to calm him down. She’d had some family issue and she would be a little late, so Blaine had to reply on his older brother for support at the moment.

“Squirt,” Cooper said as he looked up, and Blaine rolled his eyes at the nickname. He wasn’t in the mood to be reminded of his childhood, much less this particular moment. All he could think about when he heard that word was his hockey exercises, and he held back the urge to groan in disgust. Cooper smiled, and he pat Blaine on the back. “They’re gonna love your program. And if they don’t, there’s always next year!”

Blaine couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of him. “You make it sound so easy,” he said.  

“That’s because I’m in the hockey business,” said his brother with a wink. “If we don’t win one season, we always have the next one to make it.”

“Lucky you,” said Blaine, but he was smiling now. He didn’t expect Cooper to understand that when he skated, Blaine had to put his heart on his sleeve, he had to make his routine a personal thing. He had to know his own limits and know how far he could push himself without cracking or breaking apart. Hell, he had to know how far to go without hurting himself before a competence. Still, he appreciated his brother’s support and attempts at boosting his confidence.

Blaine looked around the rink, his eyes searching for a familiar body that must have arrived way before he did. The rink started filling with skaters as the warm-up rounds began.

“Well, I’ll leave you to your warming-up.” Cooper patted his back and turned around, perhaps to look for their parents and show them to their seats so that they could see Blaine when he skated. Blaine didn’t find who he was looking for, so he decided to start his warm-up round along with the rest of the skaters. If anything, he could review his routine in his head and maybe try some jumps as practice, just in case. He thought about practicing some of his jumps, especially the butterfly spin.

So he stepped inside the rink and began to skate.

-

All right. Borrowing Cooper’s hockey skates to practice with them wasn’t one of Blaine’s best ideas.

Well, it wasn’t his fault that his brother’s skates were the only skates in his house! Cooper was a hockey player—and one of the greatest in his team—and even though their parents were always busy, they always found the time to go to Cooper’s games. Besides, Blaine couldn’t help but admire him every time his skates touched the ice rink and he began to move from one side to the other. He looked like he was flying, skating so fast that Blaine sometimes lost sight of him and had to search the players for a while before he found his brother again. He wanted to be as amazing as Cooper.

Except that Blaine didn’t want to play hockey.

And he didn’t have any skates of his own.

And he didn’t even know how to skate.

So when he put on Cooper’s hockey skates and stepped onto the frozen pond, not only did he have no balance whatsoever: the second he stepped onto the ice, he slipped, the blade of the skate sliding forward while he went down on his back, barely able to hold his arms out at his sides so that his head didn’t hit the surface of the pond. At least, not hard enough to crack his skull open.

“Man!” Blaine cried, rubbing the back of his head. He took his time to sit up—everything was a little fuzzy around him—and lean back on his palms, which stung him as soon as he touched the ice. When he looked at them, he realized he had burn marks on them. Oh, his mom was going to kill him now… how was he going to explain this? He’d told her he was going to go out to build a snowman, not to skate!

“Are you okay?”

Blaine glanced over at the side of the pond. There was a little boy standing on the snow that had fallen last night, right in the middle of the footprints Blaine had just left upon it, next to his snow boots. He had a pair of skates hanging from his shoulder, and he was holding them with glove-covered hands. He had climbed over the small wooden fence surrounding the pond and Blaine hadn’t even noticed. Oh, man, had he seen Blaine fall?

“Yeah,” Blaine said. “Yeah, I’m okay. I think.”

The boy laughed, though it wasn’t unkindly. Still holding his skates, he stepped onto the ice and somehow walked over to Blaine. Then he bent down and held out his hand towards him. “Here,” he said, “let me help you up.”

Blaine took the boy’s hand with his own, and the boy dropped his skates so that he could hold both of Blaine’s arms and help him stay on his feet.

“Thanks,” Blaine said as the boy let go of him. Then he lost his balance, and he would’ve fallen again if the boy hadn’t reached out to grab hold of him once more.

“You sure you’re okay?” the boy asked him with a smile and furrowed eyebrows. He glanced down and chuckled a little. “Those skates don’t seem to fit you that well…”

Blaine looked down at his feet, at the giant skates he was wearing, and he couldn’t help the blush spreading across his cheeks. “They’re not really my skates,” he explained, his arms still being held by the boy in front of him.

“They’re also hockey skates,” the boy pointed out. “Not exactly the best kind to skate with unless you’re wearing some equipment.”

“Yeah,” Blaine laughed. “I kinda figured that. Maybe it’s best if I just get out of here—”

“I’ll help you!” the boy cried hurriedly, even before Blaine asked for his aid. He began to pull Blaine towards the edge of the pond until he was standing on the snow, and then the boy helped him sit down so that he could take his skates off and put his boots back on.

“Thank you,” Blaine said again.

“No problem.”

“My name’s Blaine, by the way!”

“I’m Kurt!” the boy—Kurt—said. He sat down next to Blaine and took his own boots off. The skates he had, which now lay between him and Blaine, were a lot smaller than Cooper’s, and they seemed to be much less heavy than Cooper’s, too. “I had never seen you around here, Blaine,” Kurt said as he tied the laces on his skates.

“Oh, um…” Blaine pulled his knees to himself, his brother’s hockey skates resting in front of him. “It’s… well, it’s kinda the first time I come here.”

“Really?” Kurt asked him as he tried to stand up. “Are you new in town?”

“No, not… exactly,” Blaine said, leaning his chin down on his knees. He didn’t know how to explain to Kurt that he’d never come here because he didn’t know how to skate, even though he really wanted to do it. This was the first time he’d had enough courage to try it, and look at how it had turned out so far.

After a few seconds of silence, Kurt was kneeling in front of him.

“Blaine?” he asked, his hands on his own knees.

“Do you know how to skate?” Blaine asked, and then he felt stupid for it. Of course Kurt knew how to skate… or at least, it seemed like he did.

But Kurt didn’t call him stupid. He just smiled and nodded his head. “Yeah,” he said. “I like coming here as soon as the pond’s frozen and skate for a while. My mom used to teach me, but she’s a little sick now, so it’s just me until she gets better!”

“Can you teach me?” Before Blaine could really think about the question he had just asked, Kurt’s entire face lit up.

“Yeah, sure!” Kurt stepped into the pond (and really, Blaine had to admire the fact that he didn’t fall flat on his back), and he held out his hands.

“Wait,” Blaine said, getting up to his feet. “Now?”

“Why not?”

“Well…” He looked down at the ground, and he kicked off a little snow with the tip of his boot. “I don’t have any skates of my own.”

“That’s okay,” Kurt assured him. “You can practice without them for now. When you get a pair of your own, then you can use them!” He beckoned Blaine over with a wave of his hand, and all Blaine needed was to look at the smile on Kurt’s face to know that his new friend wouldn’t let any harm come to him. He slowly, carefully, stepped onto the ice again, and as soon as he did, Kurt reached out to take his hands and interlace their fingers together. “So, the first thing my mom taught me was how to stand by myself without falling…”

-

It was after one Cooper’s game, when the Andersons were in their car on their way to get ice cream to celebrate (Cooper had scored the winning point, after all), that Blaine took a deep breath and told his parents, “I wanna skate like Cooper, too!”

He bought that they would be angry. They were always saying that Blaine could tell them everything, and he had so far, but for some reason, this was something he had always been scared of confessing. What if they thought that having one skater in the family was more than enough?

But his parents weren’t angry. In fact, he jumped a little when his dad laughed out loud, slapping the steering wheel.

“Will you look at that!” he said. “Our family’s full of athletes!”

“Honey, that’s wonderful!” said his mom, and she turned around in her seat so that she could see Blaine. “We’ll have to buy you some skates first, so that you start getting used to them as soon as you can.” Then she turned to Cooper, who was the only one that didn’t seem surprised at this turn of events. “Cooper, sweetie, you can teach him some basics, right?”

“Sure!” Cooper said, and Blaine had to grin when his brother winked at him. Oh, this was so exciting! He was going to learn how to skate, and he was going to be able to skate with Kurt at the pond, and he was going to be as amazing as his brother! He couldn’t help bouncing on his feet a little, he wanted to start skating already!

“I’ve been learning some things from Kurt, too,” Blaine said, grinning from ear to ear. “When we play in the snow, sometimes we go to the pond and he teaches me stuff!”

“Really?” asked his father. He didn’t know why he was so surprised, he’d told them about how amazing Kurt was whenever he was on ice. He was almost as good as Cooper. “You didn’t tell us Kurt played hockey.”

Blaine frowned a little. Of course he hadn’t mentioned it; Kurt didn’t play hockey. He had just taught him how to stay on his feet without falling, and Blaine was pretty sure he could do it with skates if he tried now.

“Maybe we should call your friend?” his mom asked his dad. “What was his name? He trained Cooper before he tried out for the team—”

“Ah, Stevens! I think he’s out of town, but I can leave him a message when we get home.”

Blaine’s dad smiled at him through the rear view mirror. “Just you wait, Blaine. Soon we’ll all be cheering at your games.”

Blaine’s frown deepened. His… games? But… but he wasn’t going to play hockey, he was just going to skate… That was what he’d said, right? That he wanted to… skate like… Cooper…

Oh, no.

“Wait, Dad,” he said, leaning forward in his seat. Blaine had to tell them that they were wrong, they hadn’t understood him. “Wait, I didn’t mean—”

“Oh, no need to get nervous all of a sudden, champ,” said his dad.

“Don’t you worry, Blaine,” his mom added. “Coach Stevens will help you be ready to try out for the hockey team when you grow up!”

Blaine tried not to stutter out his reply. “But I don’t want—”

“I can teach him just fine!” Cooper cried. “Just put a pair of skates on him and hand him over to me. He’ll be a pro in no time.”

Blaine glanced at Cooper, who was smiling like he knew he was better than any coach in the world, but what Blaine wanted was to tell him that he had to stop their parents! He had to help Blaine tell them that he didn’t want to play hockey, he just wanted to skate! Why had they misunderstood him like this?

“Cooper, I know you want to help your brother,” his dad said. “But he’s going to need some professional help, just like you did. Especially because he’s still young.”

“I started skating when I was thirteen and I’m incredible!”

“Yes, but you struggled throughout your first lessons, remember? Blaine isn’t even twelve yet. The sooner he starts training, the better.”

Cooper simply scoffed, and he leaned his head back against his seat.

No! No, this was all wrong! Blaine didn’t know how to tell his parents that they were wrong, he hadn’t meant that he wanted to play like Cooper, he just wanted to skate like him! Why hadn’t they listened to him when he tried to talk?

“I say we buy a pint of ice cream to celebrate,” his mom said, clapping her hands together. “What do you say, boys?”

Both his dad and Cooper voiced out their support, and his brother said, “Now that’s a plan I can actually get behind of.”

“Cooper,” his mom scolded.

Blaine simply sat there in his seat, looking down at his feet and picturing himself wearing hockey skates that were actually his size.

Oh, what was he going to do now?

-

“You know,” Kurt said, “I don’t know if those skates are better…”

Blaine sighed deeply. He was swinging his legs while both he and Kurt sat on top of the wooden fence surrounding the pond, and they were both staring at Blaine’s new hockey skates, which lay in front of them on the snow, as if they were a small lava pit that the children wanted to get as far away from as possible.

“They’re not,” Blaine agreed. He and Cooper had been practicing with the hockey skates since his dad had taken them to buy them a week ago, and while Blaine could remain on his feet without falling, he hated every second he spent on the ice. He hated the pads he had to wear while playing hockey, he hated the puck, he hated the net, he hated his helmet, he hated every single part of being a hockey player. The worst part was that he was starting to hate the ice, too, which was the opposite of what was supposed to happen.

“Why don’t you just tell your dad that you don’t want to play hockey?” Kurt asked him, and it was a really good question that Blaine, unfortunately, didn’t have an answer for.

“He’s so happy when he sees me practicing with Cooper,” Blaine said. “I don’t want him to get angry. What if he doesn’t let me just skate?”

Kurt didn’t say anything. Then he jumped down the fence and held out his hand for Blaine. “I have an idea,” he said. Blaine didn’t wait to hear what Kurt’s idea was before he grabbed his friend’s hand. Whatever his idea was, Blaine trusted Kurt. He was the only one that actually listened to him. Once they were both on the snow, Kurt dragged Blaine to the edge of the pond and took up his own skates by the laces. “Why don’t you practice with my skates? I’m sure they can fit you!”

“What?” Blaine’s eyes widened. “But… but if I use your skates, then you can’t practice!”

Instead of that discouraging Kurt, his friend only shrugged and handed his skates over to Blaine. “I can practice another day.”

Blaine was about to argue that he couldn’t possibly let Kurt lend him his skates—what kind of friend would he be if he took advantage of Kurt like that?—but Kurt arched an eyebrow, and Blaine had hung out with him long enough to know that he wasn’t going to change his friend’s mind. So he took the skates from Kurt’s hand, sat down on the snow, and took off his boots to put the skates on.

“Okay,” Blaine said when he had tied the laces of the skates. He took a second to admire how they looked on him: they felt so… unlike the hockey skates his dad had gotten him that they seemed like different footwear all together. Kurt helped him get up on his feet, and he held out his hands to steady himself.

“Are you okay?” Kurt asked him.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Blaine said, though he wasn’t entirely sure about that. He had the uneasy feeling that something bad was going to happen, but maybe that was because of how much he had come to hate using skates. Kurt offered him a shoulder so that Blaine could move towards the ice, and when he finally stepped onto the pond, he… he didn’t really know what to do. He felt like he was too… free; like he should have something wearing him down. He’d gotten way too used to the pads, and the stick, and the helmet slightly blocking his vision. He kind of felt like he needed to put on more clothes, in any case.

Kurt smiled a little. “You don’t look okay.”

“I feel weird,” Blaine replied, looking down at himself. “Like I’m missing something.”

“Yeah,” Kurt said. “You’re missing the part where you skate.”

Blaine thought that he might as well try. He started by moving his right foot, then his left, and then he started speeding up a little, circling the pond. For a moment, he felt like he was going too fast, and he was about to slow down a little until he realized that he wasn’t going that fast; he simply wasn’t used to this kind of speed—this kind of freedom. Soon, he had gone around the pond once, then twice, then three times, and his only point of reference was Kurt, who started to look like a blur when Blaine picked up speed again.

“Oh, my gosh!” Blaine cried out, his arms at his sides as he skated in circles, as if he had been born to do absolutely nothing else but skate. He screamed and hollered as much as his lungs would allow him, and he could’ve sworn he felt the winter breeze on his face, on his hair, flushing his cheeks, pushing him across the ice so that Blaine flew, like he always thought Cooper did.

He must have been too absorbed in his fantasy, because suddenly he heard Kurt shouting, but not gleefully like him. It almost sounded like he was trying to warn Blaine of something… Then Blaine started losing control of the skates, gliding across the ice as if someone else were controlling him. He tried to turn around the curve of the pond, but the speed he’d gotten made him continue his way forward, and Blaine started panicking, flapping his arms around himself like a duck while he screamed his throat raw. Soon enough he ran out of ice to skate on, and he landed face-first onto the bank of snow between the pond and the wooden fence surrounding it.

The snow was fresh, so the fall hadn’t exactly hurt Blaine. He still felt a little dizzy (and kind of like he was going to faint) when he got up on his hands and knees, though, shaking the snow off his hair.  

“Blaine!” Kurt ran around the pond and headed directly towards Blaine, grabbing Blaine’s arm as soon as he was standing next to him to try to help him get up on his feet. “Are you okay?!”

“I think so,” Blaine said, and his legs were so wobbly that he nearly slipped when Kurt pulled him up. He had felt… wonderful as he was skating, and that awe seemed to have vanished the moment he realized he wasn’t in control anymore, and all he could think about were his hockey practices with Cooper while their dad watched them and how much he hated them. He thought that using Kurt’s skates had somehow freed him from the expectations his family had put on him, at least for a little while, but as it had turned out, his freedom was short-lived.

“Does anything hurt you?”

“N-not really,” Blaine answered. “I just got… really scared for a second.” Without waiting for Kurt to try to comfort him—as Kurt usually did—Blaine sat back down on the snow and began to untie the laces of Kurt’s skates.

“You should get your boots first,” Kurt said, but Blaine didn’t care about his boots. He just wanted to get out of here. When he didn’t say anything, Kurt talked again. “Blaine? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Blaine lied. “I just wanna go home.”

Kurt sat down beside him, and Blaine could barely hold himself back from throwing Kurt’s skates as far away as he could. He simply left them in front of him and hugged his knees to his chest. Kurt put a hand to his back and offered him a smile.

“That was a really good first try,” he said.

If Blaine had been calmer, he would’ve been angry. But he was still shaking a little, and he laughed out loud purely out of nerves. “I thought I sucked,” he said. “I thought I could do it because I’ve already skated in hockey skates, but…” He shook his head to himself. “I don’t think I can skate at all.”

“But that was only your first try! And you were so good! One fall doesn’t mean you can’t do it, Blaine.” Kurt took his skates by the laces, just like the first time Blaine had seen him. Somehow, the fear and doubt that had started growing inside of Blaine began to dissipate with Kurt’s words. “I mean, you should’ve seen me the first time I tried to do it.” Blaine wiped his hands across his face, and he cocked his head to the side so that Kurt would continue talking. His friend chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. “It was kind of embarrassing…”

“More embarrassing than what I just did?”

“A lot more embarrassing.”

Blaine’s eyes widened. “I find that a little hard to believe.”

“That’s because you weren’t there to see it.” Kurt bumped Blaine’s shoulder with his own, and suddenly, Blaine didn’t feel like such a failure anymore. Maybe he could skate, after all. He’d tripped a few times when he first tried his hockey skates, too, and that hadn’t meant that he couldn’t do it with a couple more tries. “C’mon,” Kurt said, standing up from the snow. “Let’s go get your boots.”

When he offered his hand to his friend, Blaine took it without an ounce of hesitation.

-

Blaine nearly jumped when someone ran one finger up his spine. He turned his head around, but when he saw who it was, he chuckled instead.

“For a minute there, I thought you weren’t going to show up.”

Kurt smirked at him. “Really?” he asked. “After all our practicing, you thought I would stand you up?”

“I never know what you’re going to do anymore,” Blaine said.

“You should have a little more faith in me, honey,” Kurt said, and then he did a small hop before jumping into a Salchow. “I was just a little late. Are you ready to do this?”

“Why don’t we find out?” Kurt scoffed, and all Blaine wanted to do was lean in and kiss him. But that would be after the competition, when they weren’t in the middle of many other skaters and probably being filmed by cameras.

“All right, then.” Kurt bumped his shoulder against Blaine’s. “I’ll see you later.” And he sped up along the rink, leaving Blaine behind.

-

I’m gonna do it, Blaine thought. I’m gonna do it. I need to tell them. I need to do it. I’m gonna. I’m gonna. I’m—

“SQUIRT!” Blaine only had a few seconds to duck before the puck Cooper had thrown at him hit him right on the face. He sighed in relief as the puck slid inside the net on his side of the “field” his dad had marked for them (a patch of ice smaller than the pond, some yards away from the Anderson household; his dad had drawn a red circle around it and declared it to be their practicing field). Then he remembered that the purpose of this exercise was for him to be the goalie and stop Cooper from scoring any points, and his shoulders slumped a little.

“Blaine!” Cooper yelled, coming to a halt in front of his brother. “You weren’t supposed to step away from the net, you were supposed to stop the puck!”

“I know,” Blaine said, glancing down at his feet. “I know, I’m sorry.”

“Squirt, is something the matter?” He couldn’t help glancing up at his brother’s words. Cooper put his hockey stick behind his neck and rested both of his arms on top of it.

“Why do you ask?” Blaine asked, trying not to stutter under Cooper’s stare.

“You’ve been distracted lately,” Cooper said, circling around Blaine. “It’s not the first exercise where you avoid the puck instead of stopping it or hitting it.” Blaine shrugged his shoulders. He wasn’t exactly doing it on purpose; he just didn’t want to keep doing this. He didn’t want to keep doing these exercises and pretending he liked something he actually hated. Cooper stopped in front of him and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Go take off your shoulder pads,” he said. “And your knee pads and the elbow pads and the gloves and the rest of the equipment. Except the skates. And put some comfortable clothes on.”

Blaine frowned. “But Dad said we had to—”

“Go,” Cooper said in that serious tone he rarely used on Blaine, so his brother decided to listen to him and go back inside the house. Once he was in his room, Blaine took off his skates to make the rest easier, but as he removed the pads on almost every part of his body, the question still lingered in his mind. Why had Cooper told him to go change when Dad had specifically asked him to practice with Blaine until he came home from work? Not that Blaine was complaining about the sudden change in events or anything, he just wanted to know why it had happened.

He put on a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater, a scarf, the warmest sweatpants he had, and his hockey skates before he walked out of the house and skated back onto the frozen field. Cooper was playing around with the puck, turning in a circle, and he only glanced up from the ice when he heard Blaine skating towards him.

“Okay,” Cooper said. “We’re gonna do a couple of different exercises. Can you skate around the field?”

“Yes,” Blaine answered. Cooper nodded his head towards the other side of their patch of ice, as if he were saying, Go on, then. Blaine, still not really knowing why his brother was making him do this, began to skate around the field, like he had done around the pond with Kurt. He went slowly, barely moving, and he only picked up a little more speed once he knew for sure that it wouldn’t cause him to fall.

“All right, that’s good enough,” Cooper said, and beckoned Blaine over with a wave of his hand. “You’ve been skating with Kurt too, right?”

“Kinda,” Blaine replied. It was more like Kurt skated for a while, then he lent Blaine his skates so that he could practice for a few minutes, and they spent their time together taking turns.

“Has he taught you anything?” Blaine stared down at his feet. Kurt had tried teaching him how to jump and land back down onto the ice without slipping (he’d called it a “waltz jump”), and he had nearly managed it, but he kept stumbling on his feet after the jump. And that wasn’t everything; he had also been practicing how to pick up speed without losing control, but he had ended up headfirst into the bank of snow more times than he wanted to admit.

Still, nothing of what Kurt and him had been practicing was related to hockey, so Blaine softly shook his head and didn’t say a word.

“Hm.” Cooper bent down so that he was eye-level with Blaine, and suddenly he felt uncomfortable under his brother’s scrutinizing gaze.

“What?” he asked, never making eye contact.

“Whatever Kurt has taught you that you’re not telling me,” Cooper said, standing up straight again, “go do it.”

“But I—” Cooper raised an eyebrow at him. Why didn’t he believe Blaine? Sure, he was lying, but why would his brother not believe him? He had never lied to anyone before. When Cooper kept looking at him, expecting him to do as he’d been told, Blaine rolled his eyes and turned around. He skated around the field once, then twice, to prepare himself, and then he finally jumped, spreading his arms at his sides on the landing so that he wouldn’t fall. He stood there for a moment, catching his breath, before he made his way back to Cooper. On the one hand, he wished that Kurt had been here to see him jump without stumbling, for once! On the other hand, he was afraid of what Cooper would say now. Would he scold Blaine because he hadn’t been practicing hockey with his best friend? Would he tell their parents? Just as Blaine felt the prickle of tears behind his eyes, Cooper grabbed him by the arm and gently dragged him back to the house.

“Cooper?” His brother didn’t say a word; when they were inside, he simply pulled out a chair from the kitchen table, picked up Blaine, and sat him down on it. He put his hockey stick on the table and knelt down to untie Blaine’s skates.

“Have you been skating with these?” he asked, pulling off one of them.

“Um, no,” Blaine said, and his voice was so small that he had to repeat himself. “No, I… Kurt lets me use his.”

“Good,” Cooper muttered under his breath. “God knows these are no good for figure skating.” Was that what it was called, what he and Kurt did? Figure skating? His brother pulled off both of his hockey skates, then he sat down on another chair to take off his own. Neither of the, said anything for a while, and Blaine wanted to talk, to say something, to maybe ask if Cooper was mad at him, or if he had expected something like this since that night after his game, that moment in the car when Blaine had bursted out, I wanna skate like Cooper, too!

“Squirt,” his brother said. “You don’t like hockey, do you?”

Blaine didn’t ask how Cooper knew this. It was no wonder, really, when he had done so horribly in all the exercises and when his greatest joy came from practicing with his best friend instead of with his brother and father. He took a deep breath and spoke.

“I hate it,” Blaine confessed, and suddenly he felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He felt the same freedom he had felt when he had skated with Kurt’s skates for the first time. “I hate it,” he repeated, as if he needed to in order to convince Cooper of it.

“I figured,” Cooper said. He put his hockey skates underneath the table and sighed to himself. “So,” he began, leaning his arms on the table, and Blaine instinctively leaned forward to hear him. “We have a problem. Both Dad and Mom are convinced that you wanna be some sort of hockey star like me.”

Blaine nodded his head.

“But that’s not the case.”

Blaine shook his head.

“And I imagine that Kurt doesn’t play hockey, either.”

He repeated the motion. In his defense, he had never said Kurt played hockey; he just hadn’t corrected his parents about it.

“Why didn’t you say so from the beginning?”

He looked down at his hands, which were tightly holding on to his sweatpants. Kurt had asked him that exact same question, and Blaine had been asking it of himself, too. “I tried,” he said, “but everyone was so excited and they kept talking over me and I just… didn’t know how.”

Cooper ran his hands down his face. “So you let yourself be carried away into doing something you hate. Jesus Christ, Blaine…” He ruffled his own hair, the dark locks he’d gotten from their mother, and he sighed, more loudly this time. “Do you wanna figure skate? Is that what you and Kurt practice?”

“Uh-huh,” Blaine answered. “Kurt says I’m getting better! I’m not as good as he is, but I’ve been trying really hard.”

“I can tell,” Cooper said, resting his head on one of his palms. Then he smiled, but it was the kind of smile Blaine had seen on him after every lost game. His brother had told him it was a smile that meant, I know we didn’t win, but I don’t really mind this time. “What was the jump you did back on the field?”

Blaine couldn’t help smiling a little, and his cheeks colored with a faint blush. “Kurt said it’s a waltz jump. His mom teaches him a lot of stuff, but she’s been kinda sick lately, so he’s teaching me what he knows.”

“Awesome,” Cooper mumbled. “You gotta tell me everything you can do now, all right?” Then he stood up from the kitchen table, he ruffled Blaine’s hair, and made his way to his room.

Blaine wasn’t entirely sure of what had happened. Was… was Cooper… happy for him? He didn’t seem to be angry or disappointed, even. But sometimes he got like this, and it was hard for anyone in the family—including Dad, who always seemed to know everything—to know what he was thinking, or to understand what was wrong with him. Blaine got down from his chair. He grabbed his hockey skates and left them in his room, replacing them with his snow boots. Then he headed to Cooper’s room, and he knocked on the closed door.

“Coop?” he called out, a little shyly. “Can I go skate with Kurt now?”

For a few seconds, he had no answer, and he was about to knock again when his brother’s voice reached him. “Go ahead.”

Blaine nearly ran out of his house.

-

“Kurt! Kurt, did you see what I did?” Blaine cried, his arms held at his sides as he skated towards the edge of the pond. He was getting so much better! Not only could he do the waltz jump practically with his eyes closed now; he could also do most of the basic jumps Kurt had taught him! He was having a little trouble with the flip, the lutz and the Axel, but Cooper had told him that he’d be able to do it with some professional help.

After both Cooper and Blaine had explained to their parents that hockey wasn’t going to be the family sport, Dad had talked with his friend, Coach Stevens, and he said his wife could help Blaine with his figure skating.

“Well,” Mom had said with a smile, “he’s still our little athlete.” And then she had kissed Blaine’s forehead, and all he’d wondered was why he had ever been scared of telling her and Dad the truth.  

“Kurt!” he called out. “Kurt, did you see it?”

But when he halted in front of Kurt, his best friend wasn’t looking at him. His knees were pulled towards his chest, and his eyes were downcast, but even then he didn’t look like he was staring at anything in particular. He had taken off his skates, choosing to put his snow boots back on. He looked like Blaine had done when they had first met, except that now their positions were reversed.  “Kurt?” Blaine asked him, carefully kneeling down in front of Kurt. “Are you okay?”

Kurt had been kind of weird lately. He wasn’t as happy or as confident on the ice anymore. He would almost crash into the snow if Blaine didn’t yell out a warning. He was even more distracted than Blaine had been on his hockey exercises. And it wasn’t something recent, no, Kurt had been acting… not like himself for a few days now.

“No,” Kurt answered to Blaine’s question. He raised his head, and when their eyes met, Blaine realized Kurt was crying. He gasped out loud, immediately pulling Kurt into his arms.

“Kurt! What’s wrong?”  

“My dad said we’re moving,” Kurt said, and Blaine gasped again. “Mom isn’t getting any better, and Dad thinks she will if we move with my Aunt Helen for a while.”

Kurt was moving? Kurt, his best friend in the entire world, was moving? Who was Blaine going to skate with now? Who was going to practice with him? Who was going to meet him at the pond almost every day for almost two hours, holding him so he wouldn’t trip when he lost his balance, reaching out to him for help when he almost fell down himself, building snowmen outside the wooden fence when their feet ached and it was nearly time to go back home?

“You’re leaving?” Blaine asked, unable to believe it. Kurt nodded against him, his tiny arms wrapped around Blaine’s back.

“I don’t want to go,” he sobbed with a hiccup. “But I want Mom to get better, too.”

Blaine didn’t know how to comfort his friend. His mom had never been sick for so long, and he couldn’t imagine how Kurt must feel. If Mom were sick and moving was the only way for her to get better, Blaine would also think about it. So he simply held Kurt until the sun began to set and they each had to go back home.  

-

The Hummels visited the Anderson household the day they moved out of town. The parents hadn’t met each other before, but it was through their children that they first made contact. Kurt had given Blaine his house phone number, and Blaine had, in exchange, given it to his mother so that she could call Kurt’s dad and ask him if they would be so kind to drop by before they left, to allow the boys to say goodbye.

While their parents chitchatted in the kitchen, Kurt and Blaine skated on the field outside his home, going around the red circle Blaine’s dad had drawn to mark it. Blaine felt like he’d started using that patch of ice to practice his hockey exercises such a long time ago, even though it had only been a few months.  

“I’m really gonna miss you,” Kurt said. He smiled, and Blaine smiled back almost immediately. He hadn’t seen that expression on his best friend for a while.  

“My dad says we can write to each other!” he said. “We can be like pen pals!”

“Yeah!” Kurt did a waltz jump, and Blaine grinned to himself before following suit. Kurt let out a laugh as they both kept jumping and flipping in the air until Blaine’s dad came out of the house and called out to them.

“Blaine! The Hummels are leaving now!”

Kurt’s shoulders slumped, and Blaine came to a halt next to him and held his hand. He wanted to tell Kurt that everything would be okay. His mom would get better soon, and maybe he could come back to town before he knew it! He wanted to tell Kurt that they would still be friends, and that Blaine would write to him as often as he could, as soon as he had more things to say. Kurt seemed to understand him through the grip on their hands, and he smiled thankfully.

Blaine only got to meet Kurt’s dad—his mom was back in the car when the children stepped inside the house again—who patted Blaine’s shoulder and smiled at him. “So you’re the kid who’s been skating with Kurt.”

“Uh-huh,” Blaine said. “I really like skating with him.”

“Me too!” Kurt said. When his dad and Blaine’s went to the door and apparently started talking between them, Kurt pulled Blaine into a hug so tight that Blaine thought his bones would snap, but he still returned the embrace.

“I’m sure we’ll see each other again,” he mumbled. Blaine simply nodded.

Blaine and his family stood on the doorway as Kurt and his dad climbed back into their car. Kurt waved at Blaine through the window, and Blaine waved back, and he continued to wave until he couldn’t see the car any longer.

-

As it turned out, Kurt was the first of them to skate in the short program. Blaine tried to subtly blow him a kiss when it was finally his turn. Kurt caught sight of him and smiled, then he took a deep breath and raised his arms over his head.

The music started, and as Blaine should’ve guessed it, Kurt was starting with Being Alive.

All Blaine noticed about the routine was that Kurt started with an Axel jump. As the song played throughout the ice rink, Blaine could only observe Kurt, and he was reminded of his first impression of seeing Cooper skate, when every single thought on his mind was always that his brother seemed to fly on the ice. It wasn’t the first time Blaine saw Kurt skate, but he was still awestruck by his gracefulness on the ice, by the way he seemed to focus on nothing else but the music and the movements of his own body. The crowd started cheering at some point, but Blaine didn’t notice until Kurt did a final backspin and ended up as he had begun: his arms over his head and his chin raised high.

Blaine repressed the urge to scream out the loudest cheer his lungs would allow him, choosing instead to clap and try to convey his feelings through it.

-

Most of the letters Kurt wrote mentioned his mother in some way, even after she passed away. Most of the letters Blaine wrote back had the most comforting words he could think of, even if he knew there was nothing he could say to make Kurt feel better. Whenever Kurt skated now, he did it to stop thinking, to get out of the house that seemed to trap him with memories he couldn’t escape from. Sometimes Blaine was tempted to ask him for his address so that he could take a bus and embrace Kurt, if only to do something instead of sit at his desk to write a response.

Whenever he suggested the idea of visiting Kurt to his parents, though, they always found an excuse to say no. Blaine had to practice, or he was getting ready for a competition, or one of Cooper’s games was approaching, or his parents simply couldn’t drive him out of town because of one reason or another.

For a few weeks, Blaine didn’t receive any letters, no matter how many he sent wondering if his best friend was okay, if he could do anything else to help him. He didn’t want to give up on the best friendship he’d ever had, much less when Kurt had promised him that they would see each other again someday, but there were times when Blaine thought it was the only thing left to do. Besides, his parents were right about something: Blaine was getting close to the age where he was eligible for bigger competitions, and while he had made some great progress with Coach Stevens, he had to be even better.

Just as he was about to entirely give up on hearing from Kurt again, he received a letter from him. It didn’t say much; just that he had decided to start training with a friend of his aunt’s as his coach, and he couldn’t wait until the day he and Blaine skated together again, even more now that they were both heading to the top.

Well, Blaine thought as he wrote his next letter, now we have one more thing in common.

-

“—and Kurt came out sixth on his competition, and he actually sent me a video his dad filmed of him! He said that at first he didn’t think skating to a Broadway song was a good idea for his free skating program, but his dad convinced him that he had to take a risk if that was what he wanted. And I’m so happy he did it! It looked like he was one with the ice, even one with the music, you know, like when Cooper plays and suddenly he’s on the other side of the field without you even noticing it?”

Cooper made a sound at the back of his throat, even though he was chewing a mouthful of peas. “He must be pretty good if you’re comparing him to me,” he said.

“Oh, he’s better than good,” Blaine said, only for his mother to scold him, Blaine, don’t talk with your mouth full. “Sorry, Mom. Anyway, he’s amazing! I wish I could’ve been there to see him, he was incredible! I mean, sure, he was kind of disappointed that he didn’t make it to Sectionals, but he knows he can try next year.”

His mother and his father exchanged a glance between them. They did that every single time Blaine talked about Kurt, and he was having a hard time understanding why. He just wanted to share with his parents how wonderful he thought Kurt was. They’d only changed from writing letters to writing e-mails to each other a few weeks ago. Luckily for them, e-mails allowed Blaine to watch his videos and send Kurt his own when his friend asked for them.

Okay, Blaine had come out seventh in his own competition and he might be a little jealous, but he knew Kurt had earned his place, just like Blaine had earned his. It’d been his first competition, he hadn’t done that bad of a job. And his coach had been right, his lutz had been sloppy. Kurt’s program had been unbelievable in the best way possible.

“Speaking of competitions,” said his mother, “your birthday’s coming up in a week, honey.” Blaine didn’t really find the relation between both events, but he supposed his mom did.

“Almost fifteen,” said Cooper. “How does it feel to be so old, Blaine?”

If Blaine hadn’t been almost three feet away from his brother, he would’ve elbowed him. “Shut up,” he mumbled. “What does that have to do with skating, Mom?”

“Well, it means you’ll be eligible for next year’s Sectionals!”

Blaine almost choked on his food. He hadn’t even stopped to think about it, but his mother was right. Since his birthday was late in July, he wouldn’t have been eligible for Sectionals, even if he had made it to the top four places. But now… now he just needed to try hard enough, to keep practicing with Coach Stevens, to polish his jumps and his spins, and he could do it. He could go to Sectionals next year.

After some more chitchat from his parents and Cooper—who wanted to gloat that the Andersons were like kings of the ice or something, Blaine wasn’t really paying him much attention—he finished dinner and excused himself from the table. When he went up to get his skates for a last hour of practice out on the pond, he had a skip on his step.

He opened the door and held back a gasp of surprise when he saw a familiar face with his arm raised and his hand clenched in a fist, as if the person had wanted to knock on the door and Blaine had beaten him to it. Blaine tried to speak, but his mind wouldn’t form any words.

“Hi?” Kurt said with a shy smile, his voice so different than the last time Blaine had heard him. He didn’t speak in his skating videos, and nothing could have prepared Blaine to hear it after more than three years. Blaine still couldn’t say anything, and Kurt seemed to misunderstand him. His smile fell, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Um, is this a bad time or—”

Before he could continue, Blaine had dropped his skates and pulled Kurt into his arms.

“Oh, my god,” he said as Kurt wrapped his arms around him. “Oh, my god, it’s you!”

“Yeah,” Kurt said with a chuckle. “It’s me.”

Blaine pulled apart from him, only to check that he was not dreaming. He was grinning now, and it only took Kurt a second to return the expression. “W-what are you doing here?” he asked.

“My dad thinks this place is better for me,” Kurt said. “In terms of practicing. He says I have a better chance of going to Sectionals next year if I’m here. He didn’t want me to come before the moving was done, at first, but my Aunt Helen told him I’d be fine if I stayed with her for a while. So…” He held out his arms at his sides, and Blaine almost hugged him again; it seemed like Kurt was inviting him to do it, really. “Here I am!”

“Blaine, who is that?” Blaine’s mother came out of the kitchen, and she smiled as soon as Blaine stepped aside to let her see Kurt standing on their doorway. “Oh, my, is that Kurt?”

“Hello, Mrs. Anderson,” Kurt said, politely waving a hand at her.

“Hello, sweetie! It’s nice to see you again!”

“Likewise,” he said.

“Blaine, don’t be rude! Why don’t you invite him in?” Blaine blushed as he realized that he had done nothing but pretty much gawk at the fact that Kurt was back in town, so he quickly turned back to his friend and cleared his throat.

“Um, do you wanna come in?”

Kurt, to his surprise, blushed as well, like he hadn’t planned on being invited. “Yeah, I’d love to.” He walked inside the Anderson household, and Blaine closed the door behind him.  

-

“Blaine, it’s okay,” Kurt kept saying, but no matter how many times he repeated the words to Blaine, Blaine wasn’t feeling it. Maybe if he’d tried harder, if he’d practiced more, if he had done the butterfly spin that he was so afraid to do, he would’ve gotten fourth, at least.

“I still can’t believe it,” he sulked. Sitting on the wooden fence around the pond with Kurt like they had done when they were children brought him back so many memories of their first days skating together, but those memories didn’t make him feel much better. “Fifth place, Kurt. Fifth. I was this close and I couldn’t do it.”

He leaned his head on his hands, and soon enough, he felt Kurt’s hand rubbing his back.

“You’ve gotten so much better, Blaine,” Kurt said. “If you keep practicing, you’ll be better than me next year.”

“That’s impossible,” Blaine said as he sat up straight again. “Who’s the one going to Sectionals here?” Kurt turned his head away, but Blaine could still see the blush on his cheeks and the way he was biting his lip to stop himself from smiling. “I’m really proud of you, Kurt,” he said, realizing how selfish he was, sulking about his loss when he should be celebrating Kurt on his victory. He had skated impressively, and it was really no surprise that he had gotten fourth place “You deserve it.”

“What if we stop talking about Sectionals for a while?” Kurt jumped down from the fence, and he held out his hand for Blaine. “Let’s just skate.”

“What,” Blaine asked, “are we having an exhibition?”

“You could call it that, if you want.” He waved his fingers, as if he were calling out to Blaine with them. “Now, come on. Let’s go.” Blaine was unable to be upset any longer, so he took Kurt’s hand with his own and let himself be dragged onto the frozen pond.

When they stepped on the ice, Blaine expected Kurt to let go of his hand, but he didn’t, and Blaine felt shivers running up and down his spine that had nothing to do with the temperature around them. Sure, they’d been a little touchier with each other lately, whether it was holding hands on their way home or keeping their shoulders almost pasted to each other’s, but they had always skated on their own, even when they were together.

“Any reason why we’re suddenly pair-skating?” Blaine asked.

Kurt shrugged. He’d suddenly grown quiet, and it was starting to worry Blaine. Was he not happy that he’d gotten to Sectionals? Did he feel guilty because Blaine hadn’t?

“You know,” Blaine went on. “I’m not mad that I got fifth place. I mean, we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. Or we can talk all about it, I don’t mind! You deserved your place, Kurt, you—”

“I really don’t care about Sectionals right now,” Kurt interrupted him. Blaine had to stop skating, forcing Kurt to stop alongside him. It was… weird to see Kurt like this. He was the one who had been pushing himself to do this, the one who had begun skating before Blaine so that he could get this far, even though he’d started training after Blaine had, he was the one who had taught Blaine most of what he knew. If it hadn’t been for Kurt, Blaine wouldn’t be in any competitions yet. He loved skating even more than Blaine did.

“Kurt.” Blaine was almost afraid of speaking his next words—afraid of hearing the answer to them. “Is something wrong?”

Kurt looked down at their feet, their skates nearly touching. “I just…” He kicked at the ice with the tip of his skate. “I just miss skating with you… without the pressure of keeping a score, or polishing a jump, or wanting to get better for the sake of a competition. The last time we did was before I moved. We were eleven, Blaine, and now we’re sixteen. Excuse me if I want to skate with you for a while.”

Then he almost let go of Blaine’s hand, and Blaine gripped their fingers and reached out to take Kurt’s other hand so that they were holding on to each other, just like when Kurt had first taught him how to stay on his feet while wearing blades.

“Okay,” Blaine said. “Let’s just skate, then.” He started pulling Kurt with him, and from then on, they took turns leading the other one, with Blaine going backwards and Kurt following him, their fingers still entwined, or vice versa.

If he had known that Kurt missed this, that while he loved skating, sometimes he wanted to go back to not worrying too much about it, they would’ve done this a lot sooner. Kurt was right; it’d been such a long time since they had simply skated for the sake of it, without looking for anything but the pleasure of dancing on the ice. If Blaine had made it to Sectionals, his dad would’ve been all up in his case, telling him to stop wasting his time and keep practicing, but he hadn’t made it to Sectionals, and Kurt didn’t want to practice right now. If anything, the wild grin on his face and the laughter that would overcome him all of a sudden were indicators of that.

At one point, Kurt tried to do a spin, but he forgot that he was holding Blaine’s hands. Both of them stumbled and tried to regain their balance, but in the end, Blaine went down on his back with Kurt landing on top of him.

“Oh, my god!” Kurt cried out. “Are you okay?!”

For some reason, Blaine began to laugh. He didn’t know where it came from. All he knew was that never, in his entire skater life, had this happened. He had fallen and slipped, of course, but never with his best friend on top of him. And, as far as he knew, Kurt had never fallen while skating—at least not since Blaine had known him.

At first, Kurt didn’t seem to get Blaine’s laughter, but then he did, or maybe it was contagious, because he began to laugh, too, and their voices seemed to echo around them. Blaine leaned his head back on the frozen pond and looked up at Kurt. His best friend was gasping for air, grinning from ear to ear, and his cheeks were flushed.

Without any kind of warning whatsoever, Kurt leaned in and pressed his lips to Blaine’s.

Blaine had never been kissed, and he wasn’t sure of what he had to do. Not like he had never thought about it or anything, but actually being kissed was way too different from simply imagining it. Kurt didn’t even give him much of a chance to find out what he should do, because it was only a few seconds before he pulled away, his entire face redder than Blaine had ever seen it, and his eyes were wide with shock and surprise.

“I’m sorry,” he said, kind of in a whisper. “I’m sorry, I—I don’t know what came over me, I didn’t—I didn’t mean—”

He broke away from Blaine and sat down on his knees while Blaine used his hands to sit up on the ice. Kurt was glancing down, never making eye contact, and Blaine didn’t know what to do. He had always loved being with Kurt, whether they were skating or not, and he had always liked him, ever since they had first met… but this was bigger than that. He didn’t… didn’t really mind that Kurt had kissed him; he just wished he’d given Blaine some time to find the guts to kiss him back, at least. He thought back to all the glances his parents had exchanged at dinnertime whenever Blaine started babbling about Kurt, and he finally understood what they meant.

Blaine sat on his knees as well. He put one of his hands on top of Kurt’s, and when his best friend looked up at him, Blaine leaned forward to kiss him.

-

Blaine took a deep breath. He tried not to see the banners that read MIDWESTERN SECTIONAL FIGURE SKATING CHAMPIONSHIP all around him. This was his first time at Sectionals, and being reminded of it was only making him more nervous. He looked at the crowd, looking for his parents, yearning to see his mother giving him a thumbs up while Cooper waved at him and his father gave him an encouraging smile, or even Coach Stevens nodding her head at him, assuring him he could do this, but he found Kurt instead. Kurt was hugging himself, probably shielding himself from the coldness of the ice rink. He blew a kiss at Blaine, just like Blaine had done before, and that was enough.

Nothing else mattered. Whatever happened right now, whether he did a good job or not, wouldn’t be the end of the world. He was going to give it his best, because Kurt had taught him that much.

He crossed his arms over his chest and took a last deep breath before the music began. When the sound of stomping and clapping started echoing throughout the ice rink, Blaine initiated his routine with the first jump Kurt had ever taught him.

Buddy, you’re a boy, make a big noise Playin’ in the street, gonna be a big man someday…

A waltz jump.

He didn’t hear the crowd. He didn’t even see anyone else anymore: everything was just him and the ice, the movements of his body as he connected with the music and skated like he never had before. He jumped and spun, losing track of everything around him as his feet left the ground, and all he could think in that precious moment before he landed again was that he was flying, like he had wanted to ever since he was a child. He didn’t even realize that he’d already done his butterfly spin, too carried away to think much about what he was doing. It was like hi body was moving all on its own, without needing his brain to be functional.

When the music came to an end and Blaine stopped in the same spot where he had begun, his arms held out at his sides as he gasped for air, he could finally hear the crowd again, screaming and cheering for him. And in the middle of them all, Kurt, jumping up and down in place as he clapped wildly.

It was only the short program, but Blaine felt invincible.

-

“My baby’s a star!” Blaine’s mother screamed when she got to him. She didn’t give him a chance to say anything before she pulled him into her arms, nearly crushing him. His father, brother, and coach were standing next to her, and Blaine could only wave at his family from the position he was being held in. His mom broke away from him with a smile so proud, Blaine almost blushed from looking at it. “You were amazing, honey!”

Coach Stevens opened her mouth to say something—probably along the lines of Yes, perhaps, but he still got fourth place—but then seemed to decide against it. Blaine nodded thankfully in her direction. Yes, he had barely gotten to fourth, but it was his first Sectionals and… and he was going to Nationals. Oh, god, he was going to Nationals. It had taken him so many years to get to Sectionals and now he was going to freaking Nationals.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said, unable to process the fact. He hadn’t quite believed it when the results were shown, and he couldn’t quite believe it yet.

“To be honest,” said Cooper, “I didn’t think you’d win over the judges with We Will Rock you and Don’t Stop Me Now, but apparently you did. Way to go, squirt.” He lifted one of his hands for Blaine to high-five him.  

“You do realize you’ll need to practice even more after this, right?” said his father, and Blaine had to roll his eyes.

“C’mon, Dad,” he said. “Not even a ‘congratulations’? Or a ‘good job’?”

“He’s right, though,” said Coach Stevens, her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “You might have made it to Nationals, but things are only gotta get harder from this point on.” Blaine was about to reply to her when she held up a hand and smiled. “But you’re right, too. Well done, Blaine.”

“And to believe I almost forced you to play hockey,” his father said, shaking his head. Then it was his turn to hug Blaine, who returned his dad’s embrace. “Congratulations, son.”

A few feet away from them, Blaine saw Kurt talking to his father and to his coach, the bronze medal hanging around his neck. In Blaine’s opinion, he should’ve gotten the silver medal after he had free skated to Defying Gravity on the second part of his program, but there was nothing he could do about it. Kurt turned around and caught sight of him, smiling and waving at him. Blaine excused himself from his family to head over in his direction, and he had to keep himself from running towards Kurt. Once the distance between them was short enough, Blaine threw his arms around Kurt.

“I’m so proud of you!” he said, their cheeks pressed together. He took the chance to quickly kiss Kurt’s cheek, and Kurt laughed against his neck before they pulled away from each other. His eyes were red around the edges, and all Blaine wanted to do was pepper his face with kisses. Maybe he would when they were alone… if they got the chance today.

“I’m proud of you,” said Kurt, and then he gripped Blaine’s arms as if his life depended on it. “We’re going to Nationals! Blaine, we’re going to Nationals!”

“Congratulations to you both,” said Kurt’s father, wrapping an arm around the two of them. “Good job out there, Blaine.”

“Thank you, sir.” Blaine’s family approached them, and there were some hugs and greetings between their parents. Mrs. Anderson congratulated Kurt, pulling him into a hug as crushing as the one she’d given to her own son, causing Kurt to awkwardly pat her back and thank her.

“I say we go out to celebrate,” Kurt’s dad said, “before neither of you has the time to do anything but skate.”

“There’s a wonderful frozen yogurt place a few blocks from here where we can go,” added Blaine’s mother.

“I second that,” Cooper said, and Blaine was suddenly brought back to the backseat of his car, when he was an eleven-year-old boy declaring that he wanted to skate like Cooper after one of his hockey games, as his father drove them to go get ice cream to celebrate his brother’s victory. He wondered what would’ve happened if Cooper had never realized that Blaine hated the sport. Would he have eventually gained the courage to tell his father himself? Would he have continued to play for the sake of making his family proud? Would he and Kurt have continued skating together after Kurt moved back to town? Would Kurt have kissed him on the frozen pond, too?

Blaine shook his head. None of that was important; what was important was that he had been able to skate just like he had always wanted, with Kurt at his side whenever it was possible.

“We’ll catch up with you,” Kurt told his father as they all headed to exit the ice rink. “We need to get changed before we go anywhere, after all.” His dad told him not to take too long, and Cooper whistled and said something like, Get it on, little bro! before his father scolded him.

“We’ll see you there,” he said. They left Kurt and Blaine on the entrance to the locker room, and they made their way inside as close to each other as they could get. The cameras only looked for the gold and silver winners, and even if they wanted to talk to Kurt, they had a little more time before they went looking for him.

Once inside the locker room, Kurt pulled Blaine towards him and kissed him, cupping his face between his hands. Blaine sighed into the kiss, his hands holding Kurt’s hips. Everything seemed to melt away: the room they were in, the skates still on their feet, the sounds from outside… everything but them, holding each other the way they had done even when they’d been miles and miles apart.

“You were wonderful,” Kurt whispered against his lips. Then he leaned their foreheads together, his thumbs caressing Blaine’s cheeks. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Not as much as I am,” Blaine mumbled, tapping Kurt’s medal. “Mister Bronze-winning-skater.”

Kurt chuckled, and he nuzzled Blaine’s nose with his own. “We’re going to Nationals. I still can’t believe it.”

“Tell me about it.” They remained there for what seemed to be hours, even though it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, until Kurt kissed Blaine one last time before breaking their embrace.

“C’mon,” he said, interlacing his fingers with Blaine’s. “I did tell our parents we’d catch up to them at one point or another.”