The morning came all too soon for Kurt. He woke up to a pounding head and a mouth that tasted like he'd licked the bottom of a hamster cage, so he drug himself to the bathroom for an aspirin and a date with his toothbrush and about a gallon of mouthwash. After drinking enough water to fill a swimming pool, he wobbled into the shower and stood beneath the hot water with his head resting against the cool tiles, thankful that for once they were staying at a hotel with excellent water pressure.

He'd just finished washing out the shampoo when his fuzzy brain decided to release some of the memories of the night before that it had been keeping locked away. Kurt groaned and pressed his back to the wall, sliding down until he was sitting crossed legged on the floor, the water flowing unnoticed over this face.

Had he really brought Blaine back to his hotel room and tried to seduce him? And then said those horrible things and kicked him out? He'd never be able to look him in the eye again. He banged his head against the wall a few times until an answering pain reminded him that his skull was a very tender place that morning.

Though he would rather go out and skate an entire routine naked in front of a sold out crowd, he knew that he had to go apologize. He did a quick conditioning job on his hair and regretfully turned the water off. He dried himself with a fluffy white towel and wrapped it around his waist as he stepped over to the counter to get ready. He swiped at the fog on the mirror with another towel and scowled at the haggard reflection that was revealed. It would take longer than he thought to make himself presentable enough to step outside his room. Good thing he'd awoken at the butt-crack of dawn.

Forty minutes later, he was in the elevator on his way to Blaine's floor, practicing his apology in his head. "Sorry that I'm evidently a horny drunk and that I implied you're a promiscuous slut before kicking you out of my room." Boy that sucked. "I apologize for coming on too strong, but I haven't had sex in nine months and God, your jeans were tight last night." Yeah, that was sure to win him over.

Kurt reached Blaine's room and knocked with no hesitation. Better to just get the whole thing over with so that they could move past it.

He heard a rustling from inside and a shadow flickered in the light showing beneath the door. There was a pause of a few seconds and then the door opened slowly. Kurt opened his mouth to begin his apology, but the words stuck in his throat as he realized it wasn't Blaine standing in the open doorway, but Sebastian. Sebastian, who was wearing low slung jeans and socks and nothing else.

"Competition's over, Hummel. No early morning practice today." Sebastian rubbed a hand lazily over his bare chest.

"What…" Kurt was unable to think coherently enough to finish the sentence.

"If you're looking for Blaine, he's in the shower. We had a…late night last night. Poor thing was all tuckered out. I'll tell him you stopped by, though."

Kurt nodded dumbly and Sebastian shot him his usual smirk before shutting the door in his face.

=^..^=

Blaine shook his right leg to dislodge the bottom of his jeans from where they were caught up in his sock and rubbed a towel through his curls one last time before opening the bathroom door. It was almost eight o'clock and he wanted to catch Kurt at breakfast to talk about what had happened the night before.

He turned the corner into the main part of his room and was unpleasantly surprised to find Sebastian lounging on the chair in the corner, his feet up on the coffee table as if he owned the place. He felt a prickle of annoyance, but tried not to let it show on his face. After all, it wasn't Sebastian's fault that Blaine had made the mistake of letting him in the night before. "What are you still doing here? You need to go before anyone sees you."

"Oh, funny story." Sebastian tossed the magazine he'd been reading down on the table and draped an arm casually over the back of the chair. "It's too late. The cat's out of that bag."

Blaine rooted around in his closet for his shoes, not really paying attention. "What cat?" he asked absently.

"Well, Kurt was just here and I think he might have gotten the wrong impression." Blaine's head snapped up, his eyes going right to Sebastian, who was sticking his bottom lip out exaggeratedly. "Sad kitten face."

Blaine advanced towards him, his hands clenched into fists at his side. "What did you say to him?"

"Nothing, not a thing. But I think he kind of drew his own conclusions." He bobbed his head slightly side-to-side, a smile playing on his lips.

"Oh God, he thinks we slept together," Blaine groaned as he dropped down onto the edge of the bed and sunk his head into his hands.

"Well, we did."

Blaine raised his head and pinned Sebastian with his glare. "We got drunk and passed out," he pointed out sternly. "Not the same thing."

"Ah, yes, but who knows where the morning might take us."

"I told you last night that I am never sleeping with you." Blaine slipped his shoes on and ran to the bathroom to run a comb through this hair. "You're not my type and you've been such an ass to Kurt that I wouldn't touch you even if I wanted to. Which I don't. I was just using you for your whisky last night and you know it."

Sebastian's reflection appeared in the mirror beside him as he came to stand in the bathroom doorway. "Hmm…too bad your little partner doesn't know that. Whatever will you do?"

"I've got to find him. I have to explain. He's going to hate me." Blaine flung open the door, ready to spend however long it took to find Kurt, but stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the man in question standing a few feet away, his back against the opposite wall.

Blaine let the door close behind him and there was silence for a few seconds as they contemplated each other. He'd expected to see blazing anger and accusation in Kurt's eyes, but instead all he saw was hesitant caution. Kurt looked tired and Blaine had never seen such dark circles under his eyes. If things had ended up differently the night before, he would be teasing Kurt right now about the hang over that so obviously still clung to him.

"Did you have sex with him?" Kurt asked, a tension in his muscles showing he was prepared for an answer that he wouldn't like.

"No! 1000 percent no. Not even a kiss. Never," Blaine responded immediately, his eyes never leaving Kurt's.

Kurt continued to look at him for a moment then he relaxed, sinking into the wall behind him. "Okay."

Relief coursed through Blaine's veins at the simple statement. "That's it? You believe me?"

"Yes," Kurt nodded and one side of his mouth crooked up into a slight smile, "but mainly because I know you have better taste."

"I do. I really do. I did invite him in last night and that was stupid, but he had whisky and the little bottles from the mini-bar just weren't cutting it. I think this might put me off drinking forever."

"He's good at that. Knowing your weakness and going right for it. He almost had me fooled when he answered the door nearly naked, but I only got to the elevator before I smelled a rat. He looked very self-satisfied, but not satisfied, if you know what I mean."

Blaine chuckled, though deep down he wanted to turn back to this room and toss Sebastian out the window. "Yeah, believe me, there was no satisfaction on either side."

Kurt let out a quick bark of laughter then turned serious again. "I actually came to apologize for last night," he murmured as his gaze dropped to the carpet at his feet.

"No, Kurt, you don't need to —"

"Please, can you just let me get through this?" Kurt wrapped his arms around his middle protectively. "I'm so embarrassed and I'd like to say what I came to say and then never talk about it again, if that's okay with you?" Blaine nodded. "You-you were right. I was drunk and I should never have said those — tried to pressure you into —."

"God, no Kurt," Blaine crossed the hall and grabbed Kurt's hands, grasping them tightly. "I didn't feel pressured. I just didn't want you to do something you might regret."

Kurt's fingers tightened around his. "Well, I regret putting you in that position and I promise never to do it again. We're friends, at least I hope we still are, and I never want to risk that. Can we just pretend like last night never happened?"

Blaine refused to wonder if the sensation in his chest was a sinking heart. "Of course we're still friends. The best of friends. But I don't know why you want to forget last night," he joked, playing along. "We had a great time celebrating, drinking responsibly, and dancing with the gang and then came back and went straight to our respective rooms. It was a perfect night."

Kurt smiled at him gratefully and tentatively suggested meeting downstairs for breakfast in ten minutes. Blaine agreed and watched helplessly as he walked down the hallway.

He desperately wanted for them to talk about what had happened and see where such a discussion might take them, but he could give Kurt what he wanted, what he needed. For now.

=^..^=

"It's official," Isabelle declared as she joined Kurt and Blaine in their little rink-side reading nook before their first practice after the National Championships. "Ryder Lynn and Jake Puckerman from Canada are now the favorites for the gold medal at the Olympics. Their technical skills blew everyone else out of the water at the Canadian Championships."

"How bad is it?" Blaine asked, trying to recall which performances he'd seen from the pair. "How do we stack up?"

"If we take our current programs to Pyeongchang I think the best we can hope for is a fourth place finish," she replied gravely. Blaine let his head fall back onto the chair with a thud. Fourth place. Again. He wanted to wallow in his disappointment for a while, but he forced himself to listen as Isabelle continued. "If we want to seriously compete for a medal we have to make some changes."

Looking a little too nonchalant for Blaine's taste, Kurt pulled on his fingerless gloves and rubbed his hands together to warm them. "Do you have something in mind?"

"Yes, but I need you to keep an open mind. Besides the normal tightening up of your skills and adding difficulty in a few areas, I was thinking we should add a big new element." She bit her lip, her eyes quickly darting back-and-forth between her two skaters. "I think we should add a double twist lift to the end of the long program."

Blaine stared at her blankly as he searched his memory for any information on such a move and came away with nothing.

"A double twist," Kurt said flatly. "Are you insane? We can't do that lift."

"Why not?" Blaine asked. It wasn't often that Kurt declared something to be impossible. He was more of a "tell me I can't and I'll show you I can" sort of guy.

Kurt stood up and paced over to the corner and back, his go-to move when stressed. "You know in Mixed Pairs when the man lifts the lady up and throws her in the air above his head, where she does two full rotations laid out horizontally and then he catches her on the way down?" Blaine nodded slowly, remembering seeing such a lift. "That's the double twist."

Blaine swiveled his head around to look at Isabelle incredulously. "Are you kidding me?"

"No, now hear me out," she entreated. "It's risky, I know, but you'd be the only Similar Pairs teams doing anything like it—"

"Because it's impossible unless one of the partners weighs about fifty pounds less than the other one," Kurt cut in snidely.

"—so, if you succeed you'll be miles beyond the competition," Isabelle continued as if Kurt hadn't spoken. "The Olympics is the place to go big or go home. It's the pinnacle you've been working for. It's-"

"It's in six weeks," Kurt broke in again.

She smiled over at him sweetly. "Then that means we should stop discussing it and get practicing."

"Do you know how long it's been since I've done that lift? I can feel my body protesting from just the thought of doing it again. Santana's going to have a field day with this. She called me a menace to society when we were first learning it. She fell on her head so often I was afraid she was going to start speaking in tongues at one point."

Kurt and Isabelle began to argue about whether it was possible to train for such a move in the short amount of time that they had, while Blaine stayed sitting off to the side, his mind racing. He thought about how horrible it would be to come in fourth at the Olympics again, so close to a medal that it was more painful than finishing tenth. He wanted to do everything he could to give them a fighting chance, but something Kurt had just said was bothering him. In Similar Pairs, just as in Mixed Pairs, one partner was the base of the lifts, while the other was the "flyer." In their partnership, Kurt was the base and Blaine was the flyer.

"Um, guys? I don't think I can do it." He rubbed a hand nervously along his neck. "The jumps and lifts we do right now are one thing, but the double twist? Flying through the air like that? If I fell...I just don't think I can risk it with my history of concussion."

Isabelle deflated and sagged back into her chair. "Oh no. I completely forgot. Of course you're right. We can't risk it. We'll have to think of something else. Unless..." She turned to Kurt with a big smile.

"What now?" Kurt asked, his eyes wide with trepidation.

"You could do it. You could fly for the lift. Blaine has more upper body strength than you do anyways, so he'd probably be even better as the base." Isabelle reached over and squeezed Blaine's bicep, causing him to blush.

"Except he's the flyer," Kurt pointed out, stating the obvious.

"So we break the mold in another way and switch flyers too. It'll be precedent setting." Isabelle really seemed to be getting behind the idea and was on her feet, bouncing around in excitement. Blaine found her enthusiasm contagious and a giant grin spread across his face as he thought of the perfect spot in the program for the move.

"It'll be a disaster," Kurt groaned. "Okay, fine. If you guys want to embarrass us in front of a worldwide audience there's nothing I can do about it. I'll go pull some videos for us to watch, so that Blaine at least knows what it's supposed to look like." He left the nook, grumbling about the fact that, with the roles switched, neither one of them would know what they were doing and disappeared into the office where a computer and television was set up.

Isabelle looked after him, her smile dimming a little, so Blaine rushed to reassure her. "I'll try my best, Isabelle, don't worry."

"Oh, I know you will, sweetie, but it's not all about the physical. You know, lifts like this were never Kurt's forte, even when he was with Santana. You can have all the skill in the world, but in the end, lifts are all about trust, especially for the flyer and while Kurt excels at many things, trusting people isn't one of them. We'll make it work though. Don't worry."

=^..^=

Blaine hadn't been worried, but by the end of the first week of Olympics training, he decided that maybe he should be, if only just a little. There was a tension between him and Kurt that hadn't been there before their drunken night and he didn't know how to make things go back to normal. Kurt had sworn that he'd believed him about Sebastian, but every once and a while he'd catch Kurt looking at him with an unfathomable expression on his face and he just knew that Kurt was thinking about that night and imagining the worst. He was stiff in Blaine's arms in a way that he hadn't been in at least two years and there was a wariness about him all the time that cut Blaine to the core.

That wasn't to say that Blaine was behaving as if everything was normal, either. He knew that he wasn't. Whenever he closed his eyes, all he could see was Kurt, all soft with desire, leaning in towards him. If he let his mind wander, he could almost feel the imprint of Kurt's lips upon his. It was as if the neat little box marked "just a friend" that he'd put Kurt into had burst open and now he didn't know what to do. It was distracting and nerve racking and he was angry at himself for not being able to get past it.

Training for the double twist was taking up at least half of their practice time and it was turning out to be really rough on Kurt. Blaine was strong, but there was a reason why performing the move would be so revolutionary for them. He struggled to throw Kurt high enough for the rotation needed and they spent hour-after-hour in the foam room, Kurt falling more often than not, before they dared take the move out onto the ice.

Little-by-little, the throws got higher, the rotation got tighter, and the catch at the end became more consistent. The need for long soaks in the Jacuzzi and ice packs late at night slowly decreased as Blaine's muscles became used to the new strain being put on them and Kurt spent less time landing on this butt.

As they worked, Blaine forgot to obsess about defining his feelings and his relationship with Kurt. He would go hours without thinking about the stiffness between them and the less he thought about it, the less tension there was. He could tell from the increasingly open expression on Kurt's face that he too was moving past it. Blaine hoped that eventually they would get comfortable enough that they could maybe explore the feelings uncovered that night, but until then he would be happy that their close friendship seemed to have emerged unharmed.

A week before leaving for Pyeongchang they did a run-through of their programs with all the changes included and by the time they'd finished and stood gasping for breath in the center of the ice they knew they'd done it. The redesigned program had come together and their timing was spot on once again.

They were ready.