Six months later

Kurt moved into his final scratch spin, the world becoming nothing but a blur as he spun faster and faster. He finished with a flourish that was perfectly timed to the music and held his final pose. Two seconds later, he heard the other skater come to the same finish.

He dropped his arms and skated up to the boards, where he picked up a towel and dabbed it against his forehead. He looked towards his new coach, Isabelle Wright, and raised an eyebrow. "My father has better musicality and he's a fan of Mellencamp, so that's really saying something."

Isabelle shot him a chastising look and walked out onto the ice to offer a few pointers to Gideon, who was on the second day of his try-out to be Kurt's new partner.

After the disaster in Sochi, Kurt had returned home and made a clean sweep of things. Sue had packed up her bags and left, slamming doors and generally wreaking havoc as she went, and Chandler and he had agreed that it would be best if he found another skating partner. Kurt had then set about finding a coach who wouldn't attempt to publically humiliate him at every turn and a partner who could actually land throw jumps consistently. Isabelle Wright had been the third coaching candidate he'd met with and he'd known immediately that he would be offering her the job. He'd heard of her before, of course, as she was a two-time Pairs National Champion and had been coaching a Mixed Pairs team for several years, but they had never officially met.

Her soft, supportive style was in such contrast to Sue's that Kurt had been off-kilter for the first week, unaccustomed to being able to finish a skate without epithets being hurled in his direction. Thankfully, in addition to not being overly harsh in her criticisms, she also had a thick skin, which came in handy, since Kurt was equally unaccustomed to reigning in the more…colorful aspects of his personality. He wasn't known as a diva bitch on skates for nothing.

It was to no one's surprise that he'd burned through three different partners in four months. No, make that four.

"It's no use coaching him on this. Our styles are just too different. In that I have one and he doesn't," Kurt remarked as he skated over to Isabelle, not caring if Gideon heard him or not. He looked at the man in the mustard yellow work-out pants and t-shirt and grimaced; the outfit should have been his first clue. "It was a nice try, though. You can pick up your check at the front desk." He turned his back dismissively and skated to the other end of the ice, where he began to practice some simple double jumps.

Gideon removed his skates and gathered his things. Kurt felt a twinge of regret at how harsh he'd been, but when he saw the look of relief on Gideon's face as he hurried out of the building, it faded away. Isabelle walked slowly over to him and shook her head.

"Kurt, you can't keep this up," she sighed. "Too tall, too short, not musical enough, too musical. You've got an excuse for rejecting everyone. Remember that Similar Pairs is new and that there aren't that many skaters out there to choose from."

"Just find me someone else."

"Sweetie, I don't know if there is anyone else. We may be nearing the end of the line."

=^..^=

Blaine raised his leg up onto the dance bar and leaned into a warm-up stretch. He heard the stifled giggles behind him and knew without looking that the ladies of his Basic Historical Dances class were ogling his butt en mass. It was only his third week teaching at his brother's Columbus, Ohio theatrical school and the young ingénues were already sending him the longing looks and heavy sighs of newborn crushes.

It had taken him five months to recover from his injury at the Olympics and accept the fact that he would never again play professional hockey. The concussion had been bad, especially given that it was his second one, and the team doctor had refused to sign off on his returning to the active roster. He had protested and appealed to the league, but a second doctor had come to the same conclusion. The National Hockey League, which had recently put strict new rules into place regarding how they dealt with concussions, had given him their regrets and sent him on his way. The rest of his contract with the Canucks was paid off and he was let go.

He had the money now to sit back and do nothing, but he wasn't used to being idle and needed something to take his mind off of the end of his career and hockey dreams. He'd returned to Ohio to visit with Cooper and had been talked (nagged) into staying, but no matter what he did, something just seemed off. Then he realized what it was; he didn't know what to do with himself without the attention of everyone around him, without people admiring him and looking up to him. He couldn't remember a time when he hadn't been on the top of the heap. He had excelled as a child in sports, dance, and theater and had only narrowed down his focus to hockey when he'd graduated from high school two years before and been drafted by Vancouver.

In an attempt to get some part of himself back, Blaine had asked Cooper if he could help out at the school, which was experiencing an uptick in new students due to a new round of Cooper's credit rating commercials. Cooper had whooped with excitement and immediately put Blaine in charge of Basic Historical Dances and Introduction to Movement for the Stage, which he'd been covering himself while he looked for a new instructor. Teaching the classes was helping some, but Blaine still felt like he needed more. At night all he could think about was how close he'd been to playing for the gold medal. Instead, the U.S. team had gone on to lose the game to Russia in overtime and had lost the subsequent bronze medal game and the whole team had gone home without a medal of any color at all.

He finished up stretching and began to lead the class through some easy movements and leaps as warm-up continued. He stretched his arm up over his head and his shirt lifted to expose a few inches of taunt stomach. The ladies giggled again and Blaine suppressed a smile, happy that at least someone was still noticing him.

=^..^=

Isabelle Wright stepped from her car and locked it using the button on her keychain. She was running late and hoped that she had the right address, because the large house she was parked in front of didn't exactly look like a theater school. Her little sister had been attending the school for over a year and had invited Isabelle to attend a dance exhibition while she was in town.

Though ice skating did involve a lot of physically demanding jumps, at its heart it was about elegance of movement, balance, and musicality and Isabelle had become very familiar with dance classes over the years. She was excited to finally be able to see Carolyn dance and hoped she hadn't missed anything important by arriving so late, but she'd been caught up in doing research on finding Kurt more potential partners to skate with. The pool of possible skaters was small to begin with, and if you factored out the ones who were happy with their current partners, the ones who couldn't compete for the U.S. at the Olympics, and the ones who flat out refused to skate with Kurt, well, that left a very small number indeed. It was beginning to look like the situation would require some very creative, out-of-the-box thinking.

She hurried up the steps and discovered that the house was indeed the school she was looking for. She checked the board in the front hallway and slipped unobtrusively into the dance studio situated at the rear of the main floor. The students were sitting on the floor, watching as an extremely good looking man talked to them. The guy looked vaguely familiar and Isabelle thought she'd seen him on some TV commercial the night before. He was speaking about the importance of dance in acting and how the ease of movement and understanding of one's body helped immensely whether the role was dramatic (he pointed at someone in the front row and spoke loudly at him with an intense look on his face before diving to the left as if jumping out of the way of a speeding car) or comedic (he whirled around and pretended to slip on a patch of ice).

An equally handsome (though somewhat shorter) man standing next to Isabelle swallowed a laugh and traded an amused look with her.

The teacher at the front — who Isabelle now realized was Cooper Anderson, the owner of the school —finished up his lecture and called the first group of dancers to the floor. He announced that the group would be led by his brother, Blaine, and the shorter handsome guy made his way to the front and led the girls, who looked to be about 15 years old, through a routine that looked like a mix of 1950s dances styles.

Isabelle was captivated by his movements and was impressed by the inherent athleticism he demonstrated. His style reminded her of her old skating partner, who had been mesmerizing to watch on the ice. The dance ended and a new group took the floor, but Isabelle's attention remained on Blaine.

After the exhibition was over, Isabelle and Carolyn were talking with some of the other students in the hallway when Blaine walked by with a pair of hockey skates hanging over his shoulder. Isabelle asked Carolyn about him and learned about his hockey career, injury, and resulting retirement and an idea began to form in her head.

That night, while tucked into bed at her sister's house, she read all about Blaine and watched video after video of him skating. Despite his heavy protective gear, she could still see the elegance in his movements, the grace, and the power. Maybe she wasn't so crazy after all.

The next morning she returned to the school and approached Blaine in one of the classrooms.

"Hi, Mr. Anderson? My names Isabelle Wright and I was hoping I could talk to you about something," she smiled and held her hand out confidently.

Blaine shook her hand and led her to the desk at the front of the room. "Sure. What can I help you with?"

"I have a proposal for you, actually." She set her handbag on her lap and clutched at the strap nervously. "It might be crazy. In fact, it probably is, but I'm still hoping you'll consider it."

"Consider me intrigued," Blaine said with an easy smile.

"I'm an ice skating coach over in Lima. Similar Pairs skating. Have you heard of it?" Blaine nodded and she continued. "I'm the coach to the premier Similar Pairs skater in the country and he's looking for a new partner to take to the Olympics in 2018."

Blaine continued to smile at her until it was obvious that she wasn't going to continue unprompted. "And…?" he asked with a tilt of his head.

"And I was thinking that you might be just what we're looking for."