'Okay, now be honest, can you see anything?'

'No. Blaine, why do I have to tie a scarf around my eyes? I think I'm old enough to be trusted to keep my eyes shut.'

'Because I've always played it this way. Now, hush.' Blaine finished tying his scarf tightly around Kurt's eyes, leaving a grey, woollen bow nestled in the silky brown hair. He tweaked the bow, smirking.

'This scarf smells so much like you, I'm literally getting weak at the knees. I won't make it to two hundred without collapsing onto the floor,' Kurt mumbled, flushing slightly.

Blaine chuckled and tucked his head into the crook of Kurt's neck from behind, kissing the blissfully warm skin. 'Just try,' he replied. 'Now, remember, no peeking. And count slowly. It's a big school.'

Kurt wriggled his shoulders, abruptly displacing his boyfriend's head. 'Hurry up, then! One, two, three, four...'

Blaine immediately started running, dashing out of Dalton's main foyer with a grin on his face. 'Count slower than that!' he tossed over his shoulder, before disappearing through a doorway.

Kurt was up to one hundred and twelve, shifting and swaying on his feet, when a familiar voice interrupted him. 'Uh, Kurt... why are you standing alone in the middle of the foyer, with a scarf over your eyes, counting?'

Kurt hastily pulled the scarf up from over his head, and then even more hastily attempted to fix his ruined hair. As his fingers swiftly stroked through his fringe, he said with a roll of his eyes, 'Blaine still thinks that we're five years old, despite all my best efforts to convince him otherwise.'

Patrick snickered slightly. 'I could make all sorts of jokes about neither of you being anywhere close to five years old, judging by the noises coming out of Blaine's room every Friday and Saturday night - but I'm a classy kind of guy, so I won't.'

Kurt was bright red as he muttered, 'I have no idea what you're talking about.'

Patrick laughed, the sound ringing through the hall. 'You keep telling yourselves that. Just remember - I'm making this comment, and I live three doors down. Spare a thought for the boys between us.'

Even around his embarrassment, Kurt couldn't help but contrast the Patrick before him with the one from six months ago, at the beginning of summer. Not only was the boy taller - he was swiftly heading for an almost freakish Finn-height - but he treated Kurt with an openness and ease that Kurt couldn't help but like. This was the Patrick that the rest of Dalton had always known, free from a drama that wasn't really his. 'How's junior year treating you so far?' Kurt asked. 'I heard you re-joined the Warblers.'

'I was never really gone. I just... took a hiatus,' Patrick said. He hesitated, before continuing, 'I've wanted to thank you for that, but I usually only ever see the back of you when you sneak out the dorm house after curfew. But, yeah. Thanks.'

'Thanks for causing what is now famously known as The Awkward Moment When Kurt Made Blaine Talk To Patrick?'

Patrick laughed again. 'It wouldn't have been so famously awkward if Blaine hadn't tried to start the conversation in the middle of a busy corridor when I was about to drop twelve physics text books.'

'Yes, I did hear about that. Somewhere in the middle of a rant that both started and finished with, "I am never doing anything that you tell me to do ever again, Kurt Hummel".'

'Well, either way, I'm really glad you forced the conversation. It's nice being back in the Warblers,' Patrick said. 'I never joined before Blaine, because I didn't think the kind of strict step-by-step regulation would suit, but...' he trailed off, looking for the right words. His forehead crinkled in slight frustration; and with a flash of insight, Kurt knew that one day, someone would find that expression irresistibly adorable. It might even be one of the hundreds of tiny reasons someone fell in love with Patrick, just as Kurt had fallen for Blaine.

'The camaraderie more than makes up for it, doesn't it?' Kurt asked finally. He knew exactly where Patrick was coming from. 'The strict rules take a while to get used to, but the guys are worth it. They're always there.'

Patrick nodded. 'Speaking of, how's David? I noticed that you guys spam each other's Facebook walls a lot.'

'David's having far too good a time for pre-law. He should be ashamed of himself.'

Patrick shifted slightly closer, his face taking on a more serious cast. 'And how are you, Kurt? I mean, I heard a little bit about you when I talked to Blaine, but... at the start of the summer, you said you were running away. And then in September you guys were together, and I never got the story.'

Kurt tilted his head thoughtfully for a moment. He wanted to give Patrick an honest answer - after all, Patrick had had the decency to do the same, that horrible morning when everything had looked so hopeless. 'I'm doing pretty well, all things considered. I mean, we definitely have our fights, but I know he loves me back now, so you end up just letting a surprising amount go.'

'You still fight?' For all that he'd witnessed, Patrick still seemed surprised. 'I would've thought that once you worked it out and got together, everything would be, I don't know, easy.'

'It took you and Blaine, what, six hours of solid talking just to come to an understanding?' Kurt asked. 'We had a lot more to work through. It's taken us six months, and we still have a few pages left.'

'Pages?'

'Long story,' Kurt said, before jumping slightly. 'I'd better go - I just realised I probably would have been done counting to two hundred quite a while ago. And I can't let Blaine think he's actually won for once.'

A comical realisation dawned on Patrick's face. 'Hide and seek?' he asked.

'Five year old,' Kurt confirmed.

'Well, good luck. All awkwardness aside, it was good to see you, Kurt,' Patrick said, clapping Kurt on the shoulder. 'And happy holidays!'

'You too,' Kurt said, smiling up at the younger boy, before darting in the same direction he'd heard Blaine's footsteps go.

x

Blaine slipped quietly through Dalton's gardens, relishing the slight crunch of the frozen grass under his feet and the cold air filling his lungs. Even though he knew back at the school Kurt was counting down the seconds until he started searching, Blaine took the time to properly drink in the way the snow curled around bushes, dusted the fountains and piled against the old, beautiful walls of his school. The grounds were inarguably stunning in spring, a well coordinated swirl of colour that even the teenage boys it surrounded had to stop and marvel at; but for some reason, Blaine had always loved the gardens best when they were filled with the peaceful hush of winter. And so, in his last winter at Dalton, it was unsurprising that Blaine lingered longer than he ever had before.

He finally reached his destination, a river sluggish and muffled by ice, and settled himself on a stone bench hidden by the trees that lined the bank. The bench, while almost as cold to sit on as the ice would have been, was beautifully carved and just big enough for two. Blaine reached into the pocket on the inside of his jacket, his gloved fingers slipping slightly over something, and cursed quietly. No matter how much he liked to pretend Kurt's innate grace was gradually rubbing off on him, he would never be anything but clumsy with gloves on. Stripping the woollen covers off his fingers, and grimacing at the thought of how they'd be red and swollen with cold in mere minutes, he quickly reached back into his pocket and grabbed hold of two books.

He pulled them into his lap and stared at their leather covers for a moment - one black and getting very battered, one much newer and blue with a silver trim. The two volumes were his testament of the past year, starting from when they had sung together last Christmas, his year of and falling for and dancing with and loving Kurt Hummel. Flipping one open, Blaine read random passages and relived the memories that came with them, both the wonderful and the painful.

While it had only taken fourteen days to fill the original journal, it had taken six months to understand everything that it contained. Blaine had known, as he'd held Kurt's hands in the dark garden and kissed each of the boy's fingers, that he had only taken the very first step to making everything right, and then better than it had ever been. So true to his word, Blaine had gone through each and every page with Kurt, trying to understand how everything had happened so he could fix it properly. A single page, a single paragraph - hell, even sometimes a single sentence - had prompted hours of discussion at times.

And while some of it had been easy, full of fond reminiscence or childhood memories that made a startling link to the present that Blaine would have never drawn on his own, many of the conversations had been difficult. There had been times where they fought, and Kurt's ten seconds that day had consisted of a text message saying, 'I love you, but I just can't deal with your right now. Don't use your ten seconds today, please.' And Blaine had only escalated Kurt's anger by replying with, 'Sorry, Kurt, but I promised. Every day. I love you, even when you don't seem to understand me.' Running his fingers over the tears and scratches in the black journal's cover, Blaine smiled ruefully; some of those came from the book having been thrown at a wall or a tree in a fit of inexpressible irritation, he knew.

His smile softened, though, as he remembered how else the wear and tear had been obtained - be it from the times where the book had been heedlessly crushed between their two bodies in the urgency to be close together, or had fallen to the floor from a chair or bed, completely forgotten in the heat of the moment. Over the last, blissful six months, there had been far more moments like that than there had been tears.

And now there was about to be one more. Hearing rapid footsteps approach, Blaine tucked the blue journal back into his coat just in time for a blur of alabaster skin and highly fashionable winter wear to crash into him with a high-pitched giggle. Blaine slid along the bench slightly and wrapped his arms around his boyfriend to steady them both, holding the other boy closely to him.

'Found you!' Kurt chirped smugly, rubbing his icy nose into Blaine's neck and laughing softly as the shorter boy squirmed. 'I win again.'

Blaine raised Kurt's face with tender fingers and kissed him soundly, not breaking away until he was certain he was about to pass out. 'Are you sure you won?' he asked, panting slightly. 'Because that doesn't feel like losing to me.'

Kurt smirked, and Blaine was so tempted to lean back in and claim what had to be the most beautiful creature in the world, with his delicate features and pink-tinted cheeks and clear, glowing eyes. But, no. Kurt had won and deserved his prize. Leaning down to pick up the black journal from the ground, and dusting it off with a smirk of his own - more of the best kind of wear and tear - Blaine asked, 'Are you ready for the last two pages?'

Kurt snuggled in next to Blaine, their arms and thighs pressed fully together, his head tilted down onto the curls next to him. It was the way they had read almost every new page, facing it side by side. Blaine flicked through a few sections, but it wasn't long before the book fell naturally open to where they were up to - it was a page Blaine had visited too many times to count, since he'd first spoken the words aloud. Because, spread across two adjoining pages, were the ten reasons Blaine had gone back to Kurt, that he had recited almost verbatim to the boy. And then, at the very bottom of the second page, Blaine had carefully taped a ticket stub for the last plane of the day from New York to Ohio.

Kurt sighed, running a gentle finger over the words with the softest smile playing around his mouth. 'And here we are,' he said. 'We've come full circle, haven't we? All that drama and pain, we've fixed it all. We don't even need to talk about these pages. This is where all the good things started.' Unable to resist, Blaine pulled one of Kurt's hands up to his mouth and kissed the skin on the inside of his wrist. 'I almost want to frame these pages,' Kurt continued, voice quiet. 'But I couldn't possibly separate them from the rest. The book is complete like this.'

Blaine hummed his agreement, regarding the pages with his own fond stare. In front of him were the first ten things he'd done right in this relationship. 'This journal is yours now,' he said. 'I know I kept it while we were working through it, but it feels like it's holding a piece of me in its pages that belongs to you.'

Kurt didn't say anything for a moment, turning his head slightly until his face was buried in Blaine's wild, gel-free locks. 'Thank you,' he whispered into them eventually, and pulled Blaine so close that he was almost in Kurt's lap.

They clung to each other for a moment, soaking up the combined body heat and a joy that they couldn't debase by vocalising. Eventually, Kurt picked up the journal and gently closed it, tucking it into his bag. 'Blaine?' he asked tentatively, grabbing his boyfriend's hands. He raised an eyebrow when he realised that the tanned fingers in his grasp were gloveless and freezing.

'Yes?'

'Do you think that you could try something for me?'

'Kurt, I think I've proven I'm up for just about anything you want to try,' Blaine said, lifting his own teasing eyebrow.

Kurt flushed and kicked Blaine slightly. 'Be serious, please.' His own face sobered. 'I wanted to ask you if you'd thought about keeping another journal. I know we've gotten good at communicating, but... well, we're both boys, so we still avoid talking about stuff. And the journal is good at starting conversations.'

Blaine nodded, trying to suppress a grin. 'And helping us catch those little things we didn't even know were bothering us.' As Kurt agreed, Blaine drew the other journal out of his coat again, the blue one. 'I'm way ahead of you. I know it's not Christmas yet, and this isn't your real present, but I have something for you anyway. A journal of the last six months - and unlike the first one, which I just wrote in my need to get it all out, all of these entries start with Dear Kurt.'

Kurt's eyes widened slightly as he accepted the journal, taking in the glossy blue leather. He then leaned forward, capturing Blaine's mouth in a heated kiss - and the new journal slipped off his lap and onto the ground. Blaine couldn't help but chuckle slightly.

'I love you,' Kurt said firmly. 'I don't care if I say it far too often - we're perfect together, and I love you.'

'I love you, too.' Blaine's response was equally firm and unhesitating. 'And I promise, I will work to keep us perfect until the day you tell me to stop.'

'Well, you're going to be working for a very, very long time,' Kurt said, his tone teasing, but Blaine thought he could see something very raw in those blue eyes. 'Because I know you'll never break a promise.'

Blaine grinned and pulled Kurt to him, mouths and tongues meeting, and it was so easy now. What once had been a desperate search for home was now as effortless as stepping through an open door; the embers of a long-burning fire lifted their hearts out of their chests and brought them together in the warm, dark space where they were one person and the world was theirs alone.