It was a bright, sunny morning in May 1922.
A young heart just started to beat, at first a bit clumsily but then it got into the rhythm, steady and prepared for the unknown.
A year before that, at a rainy night in early July, another heart started to beat, hesitantly but in kind of a musical way, ready to discover the world.
Eight years after that, the young heart felt its first damage. After some time passed, the injury healed, but the scars never vanished. It never wanted them to vanish anyway, though.
Nine years passed since that rainy night on July and the hesitant yet impulsive heart fell for the first time. It fell hard but it got back up instantly, on reflex, like it was a memorized action. However, we don't know much about what controls the heart.
And eighteen years after that sunny morning, the young heart felt for the first time what is it like to fall in love.
And so did the other one.
And this is where our story begins.
Actually, it does not. It starts a bit before that.
"And I think we'll need one more pack of nails and that will be all, thank you," the young boy said politely, looking the salesman right in the eye.
The man behind the till nodded slightly and disappeared behind the corner, only to reappear with a small bag made of dark brown leather in his hand later.
"That will be $2,50 please."
The boy put the money on the cashier desk and then he turned on his heel to look around the store with sure and controlled eyes. In his opinion it wasn't a nice place, it was too dark and filled with dust, but they needed the parts and Richard's shop had the best ones in the whole town. Kurt did not enjoy going there, but he knew his father was already doing much more work than he could bear, so he often volunteered to go and buy the parts himself.
To be completely honest, Kurt didn't enjoy going anywhere around the town. In fact, if things would be as he wanted them to be (which they never were anyways), he wouldn't be in this place at all. It was just a numb, flat town. Nothing extraordinary, nothing to impress with. And that bored Kurt to death.
But he was just a mechanic's son and even though Burt was the best one around, there was nothing impressive about being able to fix various parts of carriages or fancy cars, at least in Kurt's opinion. But, never the less, he was trying to learn everything he could from his father so he could help him out with the business and later take the shop after him, just like he was always supposed to do.
The fact that he was supposed to didn't mean that he wanted to, though.
A voice cut Kurt's thinking, saying: "So, will that be all?"
"Yeah."
And so Kurt picked up all the parts he bought and he left the shop with stiff yet polite "goodbye" and headed down the street back to help with fixing some broken chaise.
Long, tanned fingers traced along the ivory keys so softly that they weren't even touching them, they were more like ghosting above them. The touch was delicate, like if the fingers were trying to feel everything through those keys. And then, then they gently pressed down and started to play.
It wasn't a fast or a rhythmic song, no, not really. But somehow, it was still a beautiful melody. It had a feeling; it had this wonderful aura around itself. And the boy knew it and the boy felt it. So he played it like that.
Blaine was always a bit lost. It doesn't matter how you will understand that statement, he was lost in all kinds of ways. Most of his life, he was lost in music. And most of his free time, he was lost in this town. He had this habit of wandering around until the muse struck him coming from the most ordinary things. But lately, he was just running out of inspiration, everything around him became a blur of hazy things in various shades of grey. Simply put, he was lost again.
His parents, especially his father, did not support his wandering. Their opinion was that he needs to focus on his career as a doctor or whatever they chose for him. To be honest, Blaine didn't even know what they did choose, actually. The only thing he knew was that he didn't want to do it. He wanted to play because only when he was playing he felt like he finally found himself, like he's not just a lost soul with a useless body (which, in his opinion, wasn't anything special). But lately, lately even playing was making him feel lost again, like his fingers did no longer fit onto the ivory and ebony keys, like his only escape was trying to escape away from him.
So naturally, he went back to wandering.
It was snowing when it happened.
Hazel eyes were watching the snowflakes fall outside from the blue, well-decorated room on the second floor of Mr and Mrs Anderson's house. He was sitting by the piano when he looked up and saw the snow is falling. The melody was still hanging in the air and his fingers were still placed on the keys, controlled and steady. And then he started to play again.
However, he didn't go back to where he stopped, he started to play another song. It was slower yet pleasant; people would say it was almost romantic. It was a song made for a slow dance.
Blaine chose this one because someone was dancing. The snowflakes were. They were spinning and making pirouettes, all at once, dancing like it was their first dance. And actually, it was. The first and the last. The one that Blaine was watching in particular did a double step and spun no more as it hit the window.
The boy stood up abruptly, fleeting out of the room and the music has stopped just as quickly as it started.
He still held his coat in his hands when he closed the front door behind himself, knuckles white. Blaine quickly slipped into it and started to walk, leaving his scarf, gloves and a hat at home. He didn't care, really.
The snow was making crunchy noises beneath his feet. He didn't even know where he was going; he just knew he has to walk.
God, he was lost again.
He could even compose; he was just playing songs of other people, songs of the strangers. Once more he felt so useless, like a worn out suit that was just hanging in a closet ready to be thrown out as a garbage that it, let's face it, was.
After what felt like few minutes but it wasn't, he looked up to see where he was. From the architecture and the people going around he took a guess that he's somewhere in the middle-class part of the town. This block was a bit dirty but he knew there're much dirtier places that this and the people seemed happy, kids were running around playing snowball wars, yelling and some citizens were hurrying down the street, covering their heads with their sleeves.
And there he was.
Blaine couldn't miss him even if he would want to. His walk was slow, like he didn't care about falling snowflakes, and he was carrying himself with this special indescribable charm, head held high and pale, smooth skin blending in with the thin layer of snow. He was walking on the other side of the street but the road wasn't wide, so Blaine could take a proper look at him easily. He saw the way his chocolate brown hair was poking out of his hat; he noticed his clothes that were hugging his slender, slim body tightly.
Blaine could not take his eyes of him.
Suddenly, Blaine felt like he needs to approach this boy – judging by his appearance he was not much older than Blaine himself – and talk to him, at least know his freaking name. He wanted to know his name so desperately; he needed to taste his name on his tongue, to know how it sounds. He wanted to know this boy's eye colour, the sound of is voice – oh my god what if he can sing – he wanted to know everything.
But the boy turned around the corner, disappeared from Blaine's sight and to Blaine's own surprise, he did not followed him. He turned on this heel instead and headed back to the centre.
Later, back in his room, Blaine couldn't stop thinking about that boy.
Also he, out of the blue, composed something for the first time in months.
Oh god no, snow, the boy thought when he opened the shop's door. He snuggled a bit deeper into his coat, clutching the bag with purchased items to his chest and headed off home, though refusing to hurry (his hair looked stupid after a run, his cheeks were always red and it was hard to run with heavy parts of mechanics in his hands anyway), so he walked down the street as quickly as possible without looking terrible.
Pierce's children were trying to hit each other with snowballs and he tried to avoid being hit as he walked pass them, half-smiling when he wasn't shot.
And suddenly, he could feel someone's eyes watching them.
He looked into the corner of his eye, carefully, so he wouldn't be spotted. There was a boy on the other side of the street, watching him with wide, hazel eyes. Kurt slowed down a bit so he could take a proper side-look at him. He was only in his coat, without gloves, scarf or a hat, snowflakes nestling themselves softly into his black, curly hair. His face looked young (and nice, Kurt musts admit), but his eyes looked tired, melancholy and old, like eyes of the soldiers that were coming back from the Great War few years ago. His eyes wore the same expression as his father's eyes after his mother died.
Kurt wanted to do nothing else than just come to this boy, ask him about his name and wrap his arms around him, ask him what's wrong, to hold him and to fix him.
But instead of that, he turned around the corner and headed back to the shop. His dad and work were much important than some handsome and sad strangers on the street, weren't they?
Later, when he was trying to fix some broken hood of a car, he couldn't stop thinking about the boy.
Also he, out of the blue, couldn't fix a one damn thing on this car for the first time in months.