'Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on...'

For a moment they just stood there, toe to toe, water trickling steadily down Kurt's thighs, behind his knees and onto his feet. Kurt couldn't keep his eyes off Blaine's, and Blaine seemed to be caught in a conflict between staring back, and watching Kurt's slightly parted lips. His dark gold eyes would scan down for an instant, then flick back up, eventually resulting in him letting out a short breathless laugh and shutting his eyes completely, hanging his head.

Kurt giggled in return, moving one of his hands from where it rested on Blaine's back, and bringing it to tentatively twist in Blaine's chest hair. Blaine opened his eyes again as Kurt's hand continued up to his chin, gently urging his face back up. He still hadn't allowed himself to consider the situation, his spontaneity lending him bravery. He brushed his thumb across his jaw, tangling his fingers in the damp curls at the base of Blaine's neck before impulsively leaning in again and kissing him on the corner of his mouth.

Blaine slung his arms around Kurt's neck. Kurt felt him smile against his lips, and he inhaled and shivered faintly, causing Blaine to pull back a little and cock his head.

"Was that cold or nerves?"

Kurt blinked, "I'm not sure."

"Let's narrow it down." Blaine said tenderly, kneeling and retrieving Kurt's forgotten towel.

Blaine eyed Kurt's hair, but before he could act, Kurt pulled the wet bundle from his hands, patting at the crown of own his head and down his neck. As keen as Blaine appeared to be to dry Kurt off, Kurt was unsure just how much sudden over stimulation he could handle. While the mere intent filled him with a profound mix of excitement and pleasure, he wanted to try his best to remain coherent for as long as possible in Blaine's presence.

Blaine's casually altered presence.

The presence of Blaine now that Kurt had had his lips against his. Now that he'd purposefully felt his bare skin with his hands. Now that he'd heard Blaine sigh from the contentment of kissing him. Of being close to him.

For days they'd been toeing the line of obvious attraction and polite detachment. Fists clenched at sides, bottom lips clamped between teeth, breaths deep and calm. Kurt knew where they stood while they were both repressing their attractions. Now they'd lunged over that line into some form of intimacy that left Kurt dizzy and disoriented.

He completely covered his head with the towel for a moment, just to give himself time to regroup. Once his mind had stopped buzzing with thoughts of pace, and present, and future, and all the other significant yet ill-timed uncertainties that were elbowing for his attention, he smiled involuntarily and re-emerged.

Blaine was gazing at him, also smiling distractedly, "Do you want to go home and change, or do you want to stay?"

"I want to stay." Kurt said, quickly.

"Okay." Blaine chuckled, taking the towel in one hand, and Kurt's own hand in the other, "I'll find you something else to change into."

Blaine dug out another dry towel, and a soft, grey, shawl collar sweater for Kurt. They changed in the cabin on either side of the curtain, and when Kurt re-emerged it was to Blaine wrapped in an oversized, multi-coloured cardigan, hair swiftly reverting to wild ringlets as he placed a kettle on the stove. The hem of the cardigan extended to below the pockets of Blaine's jeans, stretched and well-worn. Every few seconds Blaine would push the sleeves up over his elbows, only for them to slide back down a moment later, engulfing his hands. Kurt's stomach contracted fondly at the sight.

Kurt walked up to Blaine and pinched the loose elbow of his sleeve, taking in the rainbow cacophony of uneven stripes, "That's, um… a bold choice of colours."

Blaine turned and pulled at his lapel, "It's not so much a choice as an obvious inability to make one."

"Where did you get it?"

"Britt gave it to me." He smiled, "It's my favourite."

"I'm not going to ask why."

Blaine snorted, "If you're through insulting my cardigan, can you take a couple of those cushions onto the deck?"

Kurt smirked, "Well, I wasn't, but – "

"No!" Blaine shouted over him, "Outside. I'll join you in a minute."

Kurt laughed, loading his arms with cushions from the boats 'living room,' heading outside and back to the prow. He hesitated, then dumped them onto the deck and perched himself on a small bench that protruded from the end of the cabin.

He looked at the two pots of lavender that sat on either side of the boat, and inhaled. It was possible that in his delight he was simply imagining that he could smell them, but a sweet fragrance filled his nostrils. Behind him a string of prayer flags fluttered softly, and his eyes kept scanning, landing on the slowly drying wet patch where the two of them had stood and kissed just ten minutes before. His stomach gave another jarring swoop.

Blaine came around the deck with two mismatched mugs in his hands, kicking feebly at the cushions until they were spread out a little, and lowering himself onto them less than a foot in front of Kurt. He crossed his legs, and put one of the mugs between Kurt's bare feet. Instead of drawing his free hand away, he circled it around the denim of Kurt's ankle, and kept a gentle hold of it, gazing up at him.

Kurt would never have thought that intimacy could be found somewhere between his knee and his toes, but the act felt undeniably intimate.

"You're getting your tea and chit chat now." Blaine grinned, "Happy?"

"Actually, I wanted coffee and chit chat." Kurt said slowly, trying not to smirk.

Blaine's mouth fell open, "Well, there's a jar of instant inside, but you can make it yourself."

"I'm kidding." Kurt said warmly, almost reaching out to stroke Blaine's cheek as his mock-indignant pout dissolved.

"I know."

"And I am."

Blaine's lips were on the edge of his mug, "Hm?"

"Happy." Kurt said quietly.

Blaine's face lit up, and he gently squeezed Kurt's ankle in response. Kurt leant down and brushed his fingers lightly over Blaine's before picking up his mug and blowing at the steaming surface.

For a moment they were silent, Blaine gazing down at Kurt's feet and smiling, Kurt content to just watch. To just take him in. To just be with Blaine.

He took a couple of small sips of tea, and broke their comfortable silence, "Is this your boat?"

Blaine raised his head slowly, looking vaguely dazed and dream addled, mirroring Kurt's own state of mind, "No, it's Puck's."

"How does someone his age end up with a boat?"

"He was born into it." Blaine shrugged.

"Born… into a boat..." Kurt raised an eyebrow.

Blaine laughed, "Literally. His parents used to live on the river with another couple. His mum got pregnant, and Puck was delivered here."

"Right here?" Kurt asked in amazement.

Blaine chuckled again, "In the cabin, I think."

Kurt's mouth had fallen open slightly, and his mind rushed and conjured up ideas of the boats history. Two couples, two relationships, at least one life started, birthed within ten metres of where he sat. The same baby still living on the same boat, at least twenty years on. A boat now occupied by an additional three individuals, and almost certainly more before that he was unaware of.

Just how much had a simple canal boat seen? How many lives had been housed in its embrace, coming and going? How many years?

All that. All that time, and a spur-of-the-moment kiss he'd shared on the prow with one of those inhabitants. Charged and impulsive, as water from the river below trickled from their hair over their closed eyes and between their merged lips.

Possibly… just possibly, a brand new relationship. So important and so insignificant.

Exciting and terrifying and tenuous.

Kurt blinked a few times in quick succession, "Wow…"

"Mm, it's pretty incredible." Blaine nodded.

Special, Kurt thought.

"Where are his parents now?"

"A few years ago they moved to live in a house with some friends. They'd been nomadic for…" Blaine's eyes squinted a little as he thought, "… a little over thirty years, I think? Puck told me that his parents used to have a van that they lived out of, and after ten years or so they bought this boat. They made so many connections and met so many people living the same way over the years, that when they decided they'd had enough of it some of their friends were happy to take them in."

Kurt made a small disbelieving noise at the idea that anyone could be so hospitable.

"I know." Blaine said, "I think… I mean, I get sick of living in such close quarters sometimes, but I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people who live like me who are just so used to it that it's a little odd to cut themselves off entirely. Even if they 'retire,' they still love the company and the community, despite the fact that it's becomes a sedentary one."

"That's nice." Kurt said slowly, "I don't think you could pay me to do it, but… it's a nice thought."

"It is." Blaine smiled, "It's part of the reason I love it so much."

"So, did they just give Puck the boat?"

"Yep." Blaine nodded, "I suppose for them getting rid of it would've been like selling the family home. They raised Puck on it and taught him on it. I guess they pretty much built their whole family on it. Whenever it was that Puck decided he wanted to keep living this way, it must have just seemed perfectly logical to let him keep it."

Kurt felt a small tug in his chest. Though the life of a gypsy was entirely foreign to him, he was touched by the comparable domesticity of it to that of his own upbringing. Had Blaine not corrected him Kurt would have automatically assumed, for no particular reason, that an itinerant existence would also be a somewhat lonely one. That the absence of a conventional community would result in essentially no community outside of the other inhabitants of the boat. It seemed instead, that Blaine's community was simply a sprawling one, broad and vast and paradoxically tight knit.

After all, Kurt may have been living in a small town for three years, but it wasn't often that he felt a part of it. No more than the service he offered in the bakery anyway, and that was a detached and clinical involvement at best.

"What about Tina and Britt?" He asked.

"Tina's been with Puck since the start."

"How long?"

"Five years. His parents knew her parents from their time on the road, but unlike Puck's they only kept at it for a couple of years after she was born. I think Puck and Tina met a whole bunch of times at get-togethers and stuff over the years, and at the last one before Puck took off without his parents they got talking and she decided she wanted to give it a try. I mean, she's been exposed to the gypsy existence her whole life, but always on the edges, so it was pretty tantalising to her. Obviously she really took to it."

"It suits her." Kurt smiled, "And Britt?"

Blaine laughed affectionately, "She's our funny little stray."

Kurt choked on a mouthful of tea, "Pardon?"

"She's only been with us for a little over a year." Blaine's hand had begun moving on Kurt's ankle, stroking it inattentively, his thumb slipping under the hem of his jeans and contacting with his skin from time to time, "We were passing through a town where they were having a weeklong festival, and busking , making as much money as we could while we were there. Tina and I were having a break, just wandering around one evening, and we caught the end of her fire twirling. I mean, you've seen it, it's breathtaking. We left her a little bit of change and were standing around deciding where to go next when she just came up to us and started chatting. I had no idea what to make of her. She kept pulling at my curls and saying that we looked magical. Tina told me that Britt saw her henna tattoos and asked if one of her parents was a butterfly. I honestly couldn't tell if she was on something or fucking with us, but she followed us back to the boat, and we let her sleep in the spare bunk for a night and she just… didn't leave."

Kurt giggled, "Is she always like that?"

"Absurdly spaced out?" Blaine asked, "Yeah, pretty much."

"And you just let her stay?"

"Yeah. It took all of about a day for us to figure out that she's almost impossible to dislike, and once we'd realised that she was just… eccentric, she was a joy to have around. This'll probably sound more crass than it's supposed to, but there's nothing like fresh blood either. Even though we're constantly on the move, our lives run the risk of getting stale as much as any other."

"Do you know where she came from?" Kurt asked.

"Would you believe me if I said no?" Blaine sighed.

"She's never told you?"

"Not really." Blaine shrugged, "We've asked, but I don't think any of us have ever got a straight answer. She told me that she'd been living in the trees, which coming from her could mean just about anything. Maybe she'd been camping and living in the woods or something, but I have no idea."

"Why won't she tell you?" Kurt said quietly, rapt.

"Another mystery. Maybe she was escaping from something and didn't want us to know, or maybe she's completely oblivious to how cryptic her answers are. It doesn't matter to me either way, but if she's trying to forget about her old life and came with us because she wanted to move on from something, then I guess she's totally entitled to her secrets. Every now and then I wonder if she'll just leave us one day without a word, but she seems pretty happy to be a part of our weird little family, and I adore having her around."

For a while they were silent, Kurt seeing parallels between his own situation and what may have been Britt's. He left Lima to start anew, and Brittany's choices, though unclear were possibly just a more severe reaction to the same need to get away.

"You know," Kurt grinned shyly, "I think you're all kind of strays."

Blaine snorted, "Maybe, yeah. And what about you?"

"No, I'm housebroken." Kurt said imperiously.

"Bourgeois." Blaine teased.

Kurt laughed, "That's me."

He bent down and placed his empty mug under the bench, gnawing nervously at his lip. He took a breath and asked the most harmless version of the many questions he was dying to know the answers to.

"How long have you been travelling?"

Blaine looked up at Kurt. His expression wasn't guarded as Kurt had expected it to be, but it was wary. For a second Blaine held Kurt's gaze as if studying him, and Kurt tried to keep his air open and undemanding as he stared back. Eventually Blaine swallowed, exhaling almost imperceptibly.

"About three and a half years."

"How did you meet Puck and Tina?" Kurt ventured.

Blaine fidgeted slightly, "I wasn't just Puck and Tina then." He said evasively, "They were with another girl called Quinn back then, too."

Kurt waited for him to continue, when he didn't, gently adding, "And?"

"And… I'd been traveling around on foot by myself for a few months." Blaine said carefully, "Just hitchhiking with a backpack. I'd been walking along the river for a couple of days, and they just happened to have stopped on my path. I got talking to them, and Puck and I got really drunk. Like, wasted. I think we even smoked at least a pack of cigarettes that night, which trust me, you'll never ever catch me doing again, but my health was probably the last thing on my mind."

Kurt furrowed his eyebrows, trying and failing to decipher that throwaway statement.

Blaine continued, "Anyway, it had seemed like the best idea at the time, just sitting and chatting and smoking and drinking and relaxing and not really focussing on anything important. Hoofing it around America isn't nearly as comfortable as the alternatives, and I remember how good it was to let loose for a night. I think Puck was glad to have some male company too."

Kurt laughed, "Really? From what you've told me it sounds like he has an unhealthy appreciation of the fairer sex."

Blaine's eyes remained cautious, but he allowed the corners of his mouth to twitch upward, "Between the sheets, definitely. As much as he cares about Tina and Britt and probably still cares about Quinn, I think the femininity was getting to be a bit much for him."

"I'm guessing the lavender wasn't his idea, then?" Kurt gestured to the pots.

"No, they were mine." Blaine beamed in spite of himself, "Do you like them?"

"Mm." Kurt hummed, "So, you tricked Puck into thinking you'd butch the boat up a bit, and he let you stay with them?"

"Hey!" Blaine cried, "I'm plenty butch, I just… like flowers. But otherwise, yeah. That's pretty much how it went."

"What happened to Quinn?"

"She fell in love." Blaine said simply, shrugging one shoulder.

"I… what?" Kurt asked, lost.

"She fell in love with a guy in one of the towns we spent a little time in, and she decided to stay behind with him."

"Oh." Kurt said softly, a thrill running up his spine that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

"Yep." Blaine grinned, "Stuff of fairy tales."

"Why…" Kurt hesitated, before completely ignoring the part of his brain that was urging him not to push, "What made you start travelling?"

Blaine's face fell again, his lips pursing together. Kurt thought he looked like he was rapidly trying to come up with a way to talk himself out of answering.

"Why don't you want to tell me?" Kurt asked gently.

"I…" Blaine exhaled a burst of air through his nose, avoiding Kurt's gaze, "It's just…"

Blaine groaned in frustration, finally looking imploringly up at Kurt with troubled eyes.

"Do you trust me?" Kurt almost whispered.

"Don't – " Blaine began sharply, his shoulders slumping as he scrubbed the back of his hand over his eyes, sighing, "Of course I do Kurt."

"We haven't known each other very long." Kurt offered, "I'd understand if you don't."

Blaine reached up quickly and grabbed Kurt's right hand in both of his, "I do. Okay? I do, and I'm pretty sure you trust me, too."

He hadn't phrased it as a question, but Kurt nodded anyway.

On the day he met Blaine, suave, needling Blaine who at first appeared to want nothing more from Kurt than to make a profit from him, he couldn't have trusted him less. Kurt was stunned by how fast that initial impression and suspicion had melted away, leaving him with an inexplicable blind faith in him. A conviction that made him want to open up to Blaine. Want to tell him everything about himself, from the pink cat shaped night light his dad had got for him when his was six years old and scared of the dark, to the way he felt like his very heart had been wrenched from his body when his mum had died, only to be slowly hauled out a second time as he helplessly watched his father weaken and waste. He wanted him to know that in his life he'd loved so much, so deeply, friends, family, pets, places, without ever actually being in love. He wanted to tell Blaine that until he came along, he hadn't kissed another man in over three years, and in all that time he hadn't wanted to.

He wanted to hold him, look in his eyes and confide in Blaine every last thing that he wouldn't dream of telling anyone else. Wouldn't dare. He wanted to make himself completely vulnerable in Blaine's presence, come to the heavenly realisation that with him it didn't feel like vulnerability, and sigh.

Kurt trusted Blaine to such an extent that the mere word didn't feel nearly substantial enough to cover it.

He wrapped his own hand and Blaine's with his left one, and squeezed firmly to emphasize the unquestionable sentiment that he didn't fully understand, let alone know how to vocalise.

Blaine squeezed back just as hard, his hazel eyes seeming to flash for an instant.

"I will tell you Kurt." He said with what looked like painful certainty, "I will. I don't… I just don't want you to think that it's that important." He stuttered, eye's locked with Kurt's, "I mean, it is important, but right now it doesn't matter and I don't want it to. I want… I want you to get to know me before I tell you."

Kurt blinked, "Can I? Is it even possible for me to get close to you when I have no idea which parts of your life are off-limits? I… I don't think I know how to do that, and handle you with kids gloves at the same time."

"You won't have to." Blaine murmured, surveying their tangled hands, "You can just treat me the same way you have been, and then… and then I'll tell you how I got here."

Kurt struggled vainly against his stubborn streak, weakly asking, "But… why?"

Blaine looked up at him again, eyes dark, voice steady, "I don't know if you'd want to get to know me if I told you now."

Kurt felt like the contents of his chest had dissolved, raining on his bare hands and feet and making them prickle and itch. His fingers flexed around Blaine's, almost certainly painfully tight.

"Blaine…" His voice was virtually inaudible.

"I really want to see where this goes." Blaine said rapidly, "I want to keep seeing you, and I don't want that to end because of – "

Kurt interrupted, "Blaine, I wouldn't ever – "

"Please, Kurt." Blaine said, eyes unimaginably wide.

Kurt gazed down at him and swallowed. He honestly believed that there was nothing that the Blaine he'd been getting to know could tell him about himself that would cause Kurt to discard him, but if Blaine wanted him to wait for a while, then he would.

For a while.

"Okay." Kurt breathed, and Blaine relaxed before his eyes.

"Thank you." He said, "I know it's kind of a lot to ask."

"It's nothing." Kurt smiled feebly.

"Not to me."

Blaine extricated one of Kurt's hands from where all four of them were resting on Kurt's knee, bringing it to his lips and kissing his knuckles, gently, his lips remaining on Kurt's skin for at least five seconds before he pulled away, leaving his skin both hot and cold and burning.

Kurt's frail smile grew at the contact and he reached out, ghosting his free fingers lightly over a few of the curls at Blaine's hairline.

"There's room for you up here, you know." Kurt patted the small expanse of bench to his right.

A broad grin began to form on Blaine's face, "Yeah?"

"Well, you can stay on the ground if you want, but the offer's there." Kurt said loftily.

"Yep!" Blaine cried loudly, springing to his feet, and crashing onto the seat next to Kurt.

They were close, arm to arm, and Blaine immediately laid his palm over Kurt's knee, keeping his eyes fixed on Kurt's. Kurt felt like they were sharing some silent communication, the two of them carefully monitoring for any sign of hesitancy or stop or moremoremore.

Kurt reached out and coiled his left arm around Blaine's waist, and Blaine reacted by angling his body sideways on the seat and further into the embrace. Kurt's hand came to rest on the small of Blaine's back, enjoying the feeling of Blaine's body beneath the thick, gaudy excess of his cardigan. He loved the sensation of hard muscle under the thin layer of soft cushioning, and gently dug his fingers in.

Blaine inhaled a tiny breath, moving his own left arm around Kurt while bringing his fingers up to brush over Kurt's cheek. His eye's left Kurt's for an imperceptible second to glance down at his lips.

Blaine leant in a little, voice husky, "I want to kiss you again."

"Do it." Kurt murmured.

He braced himself as Blaine leant in, pressing his lips warm and firm against Kurt's, before responding with equal pressure. His other arm found its way to Blaine's waist too, holding him tighter as Blaine cradled his face.

After a moment he felt Blaine's tongue on his bottom lip, and parted his lips willingly, the warm sensation of it against his own making his breath catch, and the faint scrape of Blaine's stubble sending a thrill through his body.

When Blaine pulled away Kurt kept his eyes shut, waiting for his breathing to slow down before opening them to wide amber pupils and an obvious blush on Blaine's face that he was no doubt mirroring.

Kurt dragged his hands around to Blaine's front, grasping handfuls of his cardigan where it hung open on either side.

"I can't – " Kurt began, pausing to gather his blurred thoughts, "I don't think I can remember the last time I had a day that was this good."

"Me either." Blaine blurted, throwing his arms around Kurt's shoulders and pulling him to his chest in a slightly frantic hug.

Kurt buried his face in Blaine's shoulder, closing his eyes again. Blaine's cardigan had a vaguely mothball-y smell about it that evoked age and history and preservation, like everything on the boat seemed to do. It was comforting and solid. Immobile facets of a mobile life.

"You know," Kurt mumbled into Blaine's shoulder, "It looks like a unicorn was sick all over it, but I might just grow to like this cardigan."

Blaine laughed, the sound rumbling loud in Kurt's ear where it was pressed against him, "If you ask nicely, I'll let you borrow it."

"Okay." He breathed.

Kurt couldn't stop himself from being put at ease by the notion that he and Blaine would have the time to grow together in any way.