Chapter 1

�

2018

�

“Have you ever been in love?”

�

Blaine looks across the room. Patrick has emerged from the bathroom with a towel around his waist and another in his hands. He watches Blaine with the same sharp eyes he always watches Blaine with and begins to dry his hair.

�

“Yeah.” Blaine swings his legs over the side of the bed and slips his underwear up his legs. “Once.” This isn’t something they talk about.

�

“What happened?” He is casual in the way he asks, but Blaine knows better than to think this isn’t calculated.

�

“I fucked it up.”

�

~~*~~

�

Patrick is easy. Patrick is perfect. Patrick is completely against the rules.

�

Patrick is one of Blaine’s professor’s TAs. He is tall, lithe and too smart for his own good. He’s quick witted and sarcastic and a lawyer. He’s not like anyone Blaine met during his undergrad. He’s also not like any of the snooty law students he now finds himself surrounded by.

�

Somehow, Blaine ended up in bed with him.

�

“I’m not looking for anything serious. I don’t want that.”

�

Patrick hadn’t told Blaine that until after they’d fucked twice and it should have been upsetting because Blaine always wanted something serious. Before Patrick, during undergrad, there was Bradley and then James. They had been serious, they’d maybe even been headed for love and all the rest, but they hadn’t been quite right. Patrick could have been right, he didn’t want anything serious.

�

In the end Blaine had snapped at him, called him a slut, and left. They’d avoided each other until they couldn’t and Blaine needed to get lost in someone. Patrick was convenient and there.

�

It took months before Patrick would admit that sometimes he needed to get lost as well. He didn’t have time for a relationship, though, and Blaine told him that was the saddest thing he’d ever heard.

�

~~*~~

�

Patrick gets Blaine incredibly drunk one night. Blaine suspects it’s because Patrick wants to tie him to the bed and make him come twice. Blaine asks him if that’s what he’s after and Patrick chuckles and says, “Maybe, maybe not.”

�

“Tell me about the guy who broke your heart?” Patrick asks between mouthfuls of vodka, straight from the bottle.

�

Blaine tenses all over and feels sick. “He didn’t break my heart,” is all he says.

�

Patrick rolls his eyes, snarks back, “Fine. ” Then he ties Blaine to the bed and only manages to get him off once.

�

~~*~~

�

“What was his name?”

�

Blaine stares across the bar at the lined up technicoloured bottles of liquor and avoids Patrick’s gaze. He tries to remember what they’re talking about. He can’t and his head is starting to ache. “Who?”

�

“The boy in Ohio.”

�

Blaine sighs and signals the barman for another of his usual. “He’s in New York.”

�

Patrick makes a noise in his throat that sounds like a surprised laugh because he knows New York is where Blaine wants to be. It’s where Blaine did his internship the summer before. He shouldn’t really be that surprised. He waits until Blaine has thrown his head back and swallowed the shot and is sucking on the straw of his coke before he asks: “You ready to tell me about him?”

�

Blaine sighs and grumbles something incomprehensible. He’s got his jacket off the back of the chair and is halfway to the door before Patrick realizes he’s invited, too. They don’t talk about anything else that night and in the morning, just like usual, Blaine disappears.

�

~~*~~

�

At some point, they become improbable friends. At some point, Blaine cracks himself open and learns to enjoy sex again. He becomes friends with Patrick’s friends and spends too many hours picking Patrick’s brain on cases he has to learn.

�

He goes home with a dark-haired stranger one night. The next morning, he is drinking coffee at Patrick’s kitchen table, giggling his way through the sexual misadventures of the night before. Patrick just smiles at him and pours more coffee.

�

~~*~~

�

2018 ~ Kurt

�

New York is home. New York is easy and comfortable. Kurt loves his work, he loves his colleagues and his friends. He loves the little parks full of dogs and kids, he loves the cafes and the restaurants. He loves the jazz clubs and the bars and all the places he goes to dance. He loves the ease with which he falls in and out of relationships and all the casual sex in between.

�

Jacques had been fun. Jacques was three months of listening to classical piano played live for him and breakfasts in bed and really, truly remarkable deep-throating. And then there was a reasonable sized fight and Kurt broke it off, quickly, painlessly.�

�

Kurt obviously doesn’t know but next will be Phil. Phil will be the tallest man Kurt ever dates and nothing else about their four-month association will be worth remembering.

�

Right now, though, Kurt is as single as he has ever been and work had drained him to the point of spending Friday night on his sofa alone and Saturday lazily cleaning his apartment. And now he is rejuvenated, laughing and dancing in between two very able-bodied men and debating which (if not both) to take home with him.

�

He doesn’t need love or a relationship when he has all this. Or so he tells himself every single morning when he looks in the mirror and tries to catch himself getting older.

�

~~*~~

�

Kurt goes home for a week over Thanksgiving. He can’t actually spare the time, but he packs up more sketchbooks than clothes and makes the trip anyway. Surely New York can survive one week without him.

�

When he lands, there are a dozen missed calls on his phone and it turns out New York is a lot more needy than he had thought. His dad gets it. Actually, his dad seems all too proud to be driving Kurt home from the airport with Kurt in the passenger seat talking quickly into his phone and casting apologetic looks towards him. �

�

When Kurt finally remembers to breathe and clicks his phone to silent Burt is pulling into the drive and grinning. “You’re doing pretty good, aren’t you kid?” he asks as he pulls Kurt’s bag from the trunk.

�

Kurt flushes hot at the praise and then throws himself into a tight hug. “Yeah, I think I am.”

�

~~*~~

�

Thanksgiving lunch is amazing. Carole can cook and Burt is doing a hell of a lot better than he was two years ago and the whole family are genuinely thankful for it. Finn made the announcement the night before that his wife is pregnant, so they’re all in good spirits.

�

Then they’re all a little drunk.

�

It’s Finn that asks, “So when are you gonna bring a boyfriend home?”

�

It takes Kurt a moment to realize he is talking to him. Kurt feels his cheeks grow hot as his mind automatically ticks back over the half dozen “boyfriends” he has had in the last six months. He thinks maybe Michael would have been up for being brought home but it would have been a favour and it would have been so painful.

�

Plus, it would have been a once off because Michael only lasted six weeks.

�

It takes him an extra moment to find an adequate answer to Finn’s question. “Oh god, probably never! Work is so busy, I just don’t have time for any of that.”

�

It’s a cop out and even Finn doesn’t think it’s a good enough response. “There must be something,” Finn presses, drinking more beer. “Someone?” he teases.

�

“There honestly, really isn’t.” He stares Finn down, not particularly caring whether Finn comes to the conclusion that he’s not having any sex at all or that he’s having lots of it with lots of different men.

�

Eventually, Burt sighs and interjects, “Kurt doesn’t need a man to be happy. He has his work.”

�

It sounds a little hollow even to Kurt’s ears, but when he looks up his dad is smiling at him and that’s good enough.

�

�

~~*~~

�

2019 ~ Blaine

�

When Blaine gets back from his second summer interning in New York, this time at the DA’s office, Patrick asks him about the boy that broke his heart again.

�

“Kurt.” Blaine has no idea how long it has been since he said that name, but it still sounds exactly the same off his lips, still feels exactly the same in the way it wraps around his heart and squeezes a little. “His name was Kurt.” �

�

~~*~~

�

Blaine tells Patrick everything there is to tell and Patrick just nods along to the story as though he already knew. They talk about Blaine back then and Blaine now, and when Blaine realizes how much he’s changed it feels like a bucket of cold water has been thrown over his head. How miserable and lost and dependent on everyone around him he had been, even before Kurt broke up with him. How he’s none of those things now. He wonders how it happened and then he catches Patrick smirking at him and he thinks maybe he already knows.

�

Blaine kisses him hard across the mouth and tugs on his hair and bites his lip when he pulls back. He barely had time to get laid while he was in New York and never was as well fucked as he knows he can get here, so it isn’t really a surprise that he is he’s already turned on. “You got plans tonight?”

�

Kissing him and already working quickly to get Blaine’s pants undone, Patrick grins again and says, “Nope.”

�

They fuck right there in the kitchen and it’s hot and fast: bone-deep satisfaction interlaced with grins and teases and altercations with furniture. Blaine pulls the blanket off the back of the sofa and then they end up lying on the cold hardwood floors and laughing together afterwards.

�

~~*~~

�

“Would you have stayed with him if you could?”

�

Blaine turns his head sideways and wonders how long Patrick has been mulling over that question. Blaine still doesn’t understand why he wants to know but he has a sneaking suspicion it’s because he cares. Sighing, Blaine says, “Yeah. Probably forever.”

�

Patrick chuckles and Blaine attempts to glare at him. Catching his wrist, Patrick makes him look him in the eye and asks, “But not now?”

�

“I’m here and he’s there.”

�

And now Patrick laughs outright and resists the urge to tease because he knows it is so much more complicated than that. “Oh my god, Blaine,” he says exasperated.

�

“He’s happy,” Blaine says, hoping it’s true.

�

Patrick stills again, sliding back towards serious. “Are you?”

�

For the first time in years Blaine realizes: “I think I will be.”

�

~~*~~

�

“I think I have some news,” is how Patrick begins. He waits until Blaine is up on an elbow facing him.� “I’ve been offered a job in London.”

�

“You’re kidding?” Blaine sounds happy, he feels happy. He didn’t even know Patrick was applying overseas.

�

“Nope. They flew me over three weeks ago and gave me the job on the spot.” He shrugs, self-effacing because Blaine knows he graduated top of his class and was just waiting for the right job offer to come along.

�

�“When do you leave?” It’s the obvious question.

�

“Next week.”

�

Blaine wonders if he should feel upset, betrayed, or lost, and he slides down onto his back to stare at the ceiling and think about it. He will miss Patrick and he thinks he might try to stay in touch.

�

“You gonna miss me?”

�

Without thinking, Blaine responds: “I’ll miss the sex.”

�

And then Patrick is laughing and straddling him, wrestling him back and holding him still because they both know that’s not the whole truth.

�

~~*~~

�

Blaine doesn’t drive Patrick to the airport. There’s a party he doesn’t want to miss and it seems inappropriate to play taxi to a fuckbuddy when a transatlantic flight looms. He still doesn’t feel sad. They send the occasional text, leave each other drunk voice mails detailing particularly disastrous hook-ups, and then mostly they stop talking altogether.

�

~~*~~

�

Three months after Patrick leaves, Blaine gets stuck across campus during a downpour that doesn’t want to stop. It’s freezing cold and he can see the fog starting to edge in on the night and he’s soaked through by the time he runs back into the library he’d just left. He swears, drops his books, and his whole body shivers.

�

And then he meets Ben.

�