It had been five years.

Five whole years.

Kurt went back to Neverland, of course, after he brought Blaine home. And he lived like he normally did. He provided for the smaller children. He played with the faeries. He continued his typical routine. But there was always an aching in his chest. It was a strange, uncomfortable sensation. But he got used to it, for the most part. It was really at night, after he tucked his friends in their covers and made his way back to his own tree house, that he felt it. After he slipped between his sheets. It was hard for him to locate and describe the feeling, but it was dull and empty. He didn’t like it, and it never went away. Though he never put a meaning to the sensation, Kurt knew that Blaine was a part of it.

It was a bright and sunny afternoon, and the Lost Boys were playing a large game of tag. Kurt was the ref.

“YOU’RE IT!” “No, you didn’t touch me!” “Yes I did, I so did and you know it.” “Nuh-uh!”

“BOYS!” Kurt shouted over their bickering, “Rewind the game 30 seconds and start from there.”

All of the boys backed up, and then continued.

A small, light blue fairy landed on Kurt’s knee.

“Hello, darling. How are you?” Kurt asked as he reached into his pocket to find his small jar of fairy dust.

The fairy smiled and giggled.

“Could I collect some of your dust?”

She nodded, flying up and levitating just above the opening, wiggling and squirming as the dust fell into the jar.

“Thank you so much, it’s very kind of you.”

Kurt felt that he might need some extra fairy dust soon. He didn’t know why he felt that way, but he’d rather be safe than sorry.

“KURT, WE DON’T WANNA PLAY ANYMORE!” A few of the boys yelled up to where Kurt was perched on a branch.

“It’s lunch time anyway! Go to the house, I’ll be there soon.”

Kurt was feeling particularly achy today. His chest felt heavy and empty at the same time. But he wouldn’t let that distract him. He had a meal to make for a group of boys that needed what only he could provide. So he drifted down from the tree.

When he got to the boys’ house, they were already sitting at the table.

“Lunch will be ready soon. Go wash your hands.”

They filed out, their faces sullen.

“Will you tell us a story today, Kurt?” one boy asked as they marched back in less than a minute later.

“Hmm,” Kurt pondered, “What do you want to hear about?”

“Remember when you brought that boy here? Tell us about him!”

“Yeah him!”

“Oh yeah I remember that!”

“What happened to him?”

The boys were talking over one another.

Kurt smiled fondly at the memory. He hadn’t brought another friend to Neverland after Blaine. He was afraid that if he did, he would then start to forget Blaine. He didn’t want to forget Blaine.

“Well,” Kurt started, setting the last plate down on the table, sitting in a small chair at the head, “My shadow, the nasty thing, took off! And so I followed it all the way out to the city!” All the boys gasped.

“I know. And it slipped into a house, so I followed it into the house, too. But there was a boy in the house. And his name was Blaine. He was small with dark hair and golden eyes.

“I asked him to come to Neverland. He couldn’t come forever, he told me, but he would spend the night. And so we flew all the way here. All the way from the city!” Kurt paused, remembering the things he learned from Blaine. Things he couldn’t tell the boys.

“What happened when you got here?” one boy asked with a mouth full of food.

“We visited my house. And we talked. And then we went to the cave, and we talked some more.”

“Sounds boring,” another boy chimed in.

Kurt smiled again, “It wasn’t boring, though. It wasn’t boring at all.”

“What’d you talk about?”

“I asked him about what it was like where he lives. You guys don’t want to hear about that, though.”

And it was like Kurt had set off a bomb.

“Yeah we do! Why can’t you tell us? C’mon we all wanna know! Please, Kurt! Tell us!”

“Alright! Alright, I’ll tell you!” the boys hushed, readying themselves for the rest of the story, “He told me about kisses. Do you know what kisses are?” they all shook their heads, “It’s when two people that like each other-as more than just friends-press their mouths together. It sounds gross, but it’s like when a mom and a dad make their lips touch.”

The boys looked at each other for some type of explanation.

Kurt sighed, “Blaine wanted to kiss me-Well, I think I wanted to kiss him back. Actually, I did kiss him.”

The boys’ eyes went wide, “REALLY?”

“Yes. It was kind of funny, really. Weird. But it was nice,” the ache became more prominent in his chest, “I’m going to go, now. I’ll see you boys later.”

The boys bid their farewells, hugging Kurt and then waving as he flew out of the forest, up to the second star on the left, and straight on ‘till evening.

Kurt peered into the window. There was no sign of anybody in the room.

He slid the window up, wiggling himself inside.

“Blaine?” he whispered, walking toward the bathroom.

He knocked on the door. It opened a few seconds later.

It was not a boy that opened the door. It was a man. Kurt’s breath was knocked out of his chest. The man had a slick helmet of dark hair, a small shadow apparent across the lower portion of his face, and thick glasses perched on his nose. He wore plaid pajama pants and a tank top.

“Bl-Blaine? Is that you?” Kurt’s face was contorted by his confusion.

The man didn’t respond. His face slowly grew into a smile, and then Kurt was sure it was Blaine.

“Blaine?” Kurt asked again.

“Hi.”

“How are you?”

“You look exactly the same. Even your outfit. Tights and all.”

“Blaine.”

“Would you like something to drink?” Blaine asked, scurrying around his bathroom.

“No, no. I was just…I wanted to come see how you were doing.”

“Come, sit,” Blaine sat down on his bed, Kurt following closely behind him, “I’m in my senior year of college. Majoring in creative writing. I’m home for winter break. How have you been?”

Kurt shrugged, feeling embarrassed by how little he had accomplished in comparison to Blaine, “Same old routine. Taking care of the Lost Boys, really. What do you do for this creative writing?”

Blaine narrowed his eyes in thought, “Well, I make stories up. I like writing about fun places that kids would like to visit. I make characters that people will really like.

“I wrote a book, actually.”

“Wow. That’s nice. Can I see it?” Kurt asked.

“Sure,” Blaine’s cheeks reddened, but he pushed himself up, digging through a pile of journals, until he found a small, leather bound book.

Kurt opened the cover, to find a title written in big, fancy letters.

“The Adventures of The Lost Boy,” it read on the top of the page.

There was a small illustration underneath the words. A boy with a little green outfit wrapped tightly around his body. He was flying over a mess of fluffy, white clouds.

“This is me,” Kurt didn’t have to ask.

Blaine smiled a sad smile, “I waited for you to come back, Kurt. But you didn’t. And I had to keep living, I had to go to college, I had to keep writing. So I did something with the memory that I held on to so tightly. And I called it fiction. I changed some things, to make it more interesting. But it’s us in that book.”

“You didn’t forget?”

“Of course not,” Blaine breathed a laugh, nudging Kurt with his shoulder, “You were my first kiss, you know. A boy never forgets his first kiss.”

Kurt’s body tensed, “You’ve had other kisses?”

“My life keeps moving, Kurt. Life moves always for me. I meet new people and go places at school. I had a boyfriend,” Blaine looked as hurt as Kurt felt, “I couldn’t keep waiting for the boy that didn’t grow up. Because I had to.”

“Had a boyfriend? Not ‘have’?”

“It didn’t work out,” Blaine’s eyes were filling with tears, threatening to escape.

“He makes you sad?” Kurt placed a hand on Blaine’s shoulder.

Blaine nodded, taking a deep, shuddering breath, and composing himself, “But it’s okay. That’s over now. I’m focusing on getting my book published. So people all over can read about you.”

Kurt smiled, “That’s really nice that you’d write about me. Can I ask why you did?”

“It’s my favorite story in the whole world, and I thought it’d only be fair if I shared it with other people. Everyone deserves to hear about this,” Blaine lazily gestured toward Kurt, “It’s actually pretty late here. I was about to go to sleep.”

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“Could I stay here for a while?” Kurt asked, unsure of what else to do, “It’s a long way back and I only just arrived.”

Blaine scooted himself under the covers of his bed, folding back a corner of the blanket and nodding toward it.

Kurt blushed, a faint pink sheen washing over his face as he crawled under the sheets.

Another few seconds went by. Blaine rolled over and switched the lamp off, the two of them suddenly engulfed by darkness.

“I think I missed you,” Kurt said quietly, hoping Blaine was asleep but knowing he wasn’t, “I think I still miss you.”

Suddenly, Kurt felt a weight on his body. Blaine draped his arm across Kurt’s torso, hugging him gently, “I missed you too. I’ve always missed you.”

Kurt flipped onto his side, so his nose was barely an inch from Blaine’s, “I think about our kiss. I liked it. I know you have probably had many other kisses and even kisses in other places, like you said people do. With your boyfriend, I assume. But I like to think that when I kissed you, you liked it too. Am I wrong?”

“No, Kurt. I very much liked that kiss.” Blaine kept his eyes closed.

“But am I also right about having more and different kisses with your boyfriend?”

“Yes. You’re right. I’ve kissed other people. My boyfriend, mostly. But even so, I still think about your kiss. Thinking about it makes me have butterflies in my stomach,” Blaine’s eyes were open now, fixed on Kurt.

“Thinking about our kiss makes my heart ache,” Kurt said sadly.

Blaine reached up and stroked Kurt’s cheek with his thumb, “I don’t want your heart to ache, Kurt. I want that to be a happy memory.”

“But right now, even, Blaine, just being with you makes me feel sad. Being so close to you makes my chest feel empty.”

Tears formed again in Blaine’s eyes, “No, Kurt. This isn’t sad. This is happy. We’re together again.”

Kurt pouted, “Then why do I feel so upset?”

Blaine didn’t answer. He nuzzled his nose into Kurt’s, closing his eyes again, and slid his lips across Kurt’s. A feather-light touch.

Kurt sucked in a sharp breath, pressing his lips hard onto Blaine’s, resting his hand on Blaine’s waist.

It was too much and not enough at the same time, for Kurt. He felt Blaine’s tongue graze over his bottom lip. Blaine must have learned that with his boyfriend. Kurt liked the way it felt, so he did the same thing to Blaine’s lower lip. He felt Blaine smile, so he pulled away, resting his head a few inches away on the pillow.

“Wow,” Blaine sighed, still smiling.

“Was that kiss good?” Kurt asked. It was good for him, but he knew Blaine had more experience.

Blaine licked his lips, his eyes fixed on a spot below Kurt’s eyes, and nodded, “Kurt, I can tell you that I have kissed a lot since I have seen you. It’s been a long time, you know? But wow. You are very, very good at kissing.”

Kurt smiled, the corners of his eyes pinching, “I liked that kiss too.”

They stayed silent for another moment, held under the others’ gaze, when Blaine finally spoke, his voice broken, “Why didn’t you come back?”

It was as if all of the pain Kurt had ever experienced was happening at once, and tears formed in his eyes, rolling onto his cheeks for the first time in five years.

Blaine pulled Kurt in close to his body, tangling their legs together and rubbing his hand up and down the length of Kurt’s back.

“Every day, Blaine, I felt you missing from me. But you had to keep growing up. I couldn’t keep you away from that, but I also couldn’t leave Neverland, and I’m sorry,” Kurt breathed the words while he had enough breath, returning to breathless tears as soon as he finished his apology.

Blaine whispered his forgiveness, over and over, until Kurt’s crying subsided, and there was only the sound of the wind hitting the window.

“What’s going to happen?” Kurt asked, snuggling closer into Blaine’s arms, soaking up the heat that radiated from Blaine’s body.

Blaine shrugged around Kurt, “I don’t know,” he whispered, “But I do know that I don’t want to lose you again.”

“I don’t want to miss you anymore,” Kurt looked up at Blaine, “I like your kissing.”

That made Blaine smile, “There’s so much more, Kurt. I want you to know all of the things we could do together. But I also know that you can’t leave the Lost Boys. You can’t grow up. I want this to work, so bad, but I don’t know how it will.”

Kurt started crying again, only comforted by the slow rocking motion that Blaine set at a steady rhythm, humming quietly and stroking a hand through Kurt’s hair.

“I could come to Neverland on the weekends,” Blaine suggested, “You could visit me on, like, Wednesdays or something, and then I’d come for Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Hm?”

“Yeah, yeah I like that,” Kurt let Blaine wipe the tears off of his face with the bottom of his shirt.

Blaine let out a heavy exhale, like the whole world was just lifted off of his shoulders, and he squeezed Kurt tighter, almost too tight, but it was perfect.

“We can have kisses whenever we want, now,” Kurt’s face was bright, a smile finally reappearing across his mouth.

“I promise you, Kurt,” Blaine closed his eyes, his lips taught in a tight smile, “That I will kiss you whenever and wherever you want.”

Kurt blushed, pressing his lips under Blaine’s chin, and then nestling his nose against the crook of Blaine’s neck, “I promise you the same thing.”

“Good,” Blaine responded, “Because I will request many, many kisses.”