A/N: This is my first attempt at a Glee related story. I apologize in advance for the blatant disregard of anything resembling dialogue, over use of parentheses, and an ambiguous ending. Thank you for taking your time to read my small contribution to this fandom. I really appreciate it.
He has a dream that is permanently set on repeat. Actually it is a moment, really, captured in the lens of his mind and slowed down so that all of the details can be remembered and recalled every time he closes his eyes. It's funny, he decides in the not so distant future, that it is this inconsequential moment (it was neither overtly romantic nor was it sexy, really) that he has kept hidden, made sacred.
The day was unseasonably warm for late April (it was a Sunday but that is neither here nor there) that found the two boys dressed simply in jeans and t-shirts stretched out on a sky blue blanket beneath a willow tree forgetting that they were navigating the uncertainties of being almost eighteen. The dark haired boy is lying on his back, head pillowed on one arm, with the other hand buried in the silky locks of the slight boy partially draped over his chest. The younger of the two boys (all angles and pale skin, still awkward and new in his body) clung to his boyfriend not out of desperation but simply because he could. Words became unimportant. Terms of endearment, of desire, of love, of forever died on parted lips (those had already been gasped into feverish skin) as silence became them. They breathed in sync as invisible mazes are traced into soft cotton and silken locks slip slowly through fingertips. Bodies vibrate to the rhythm of the breeze blowing through the leaves; the birds create the melody that their hearts followed. And in this moment they lived without fear, without the lingering doubt that was permanently hidden in the recesses of their mind (they were not perfect after all). Soon, though, the sparkling spring light will fade to an eerie twilight and they would gather themselves, fold the blanket, and head back into reality still entwined (arms twisted around waists, lips grazing temples).
They would cling desperately to that frozen moment as the world continues to spin viciously and distance pries its way in between them (one heads to Boston on scholarship to the Berklee College of Music and the other accepts a position at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York). And they try desperately to make it work (they do for awhile) with alternating weekend bus trips and nightly phone dates. But real life is hard, so very hard, and arguments quickly encroach upon their phone dates (which become shorter and shorter) and the less than five hour bus trip becomes an inconvenience (feelings are hurt when their weekends are skipped or rescheduled). Soon their nightly calls become weekly and their weekends become a monthly occurrence. The inherent throbbing sensation of belonging to someone fades into a dull ache in the pit of their stomachs.
It is a non-descript mid-weekend in January that he finds himself in a small coffee shop in Boston staring silently at the man (to long black hair curling over his eyes, perpetual stubble lining his cheekbones) he had once known so well. This silence is stifling, he thinks, as he recalls that soul expanding moment under the willow tree (almost two years have passed since then). So he talks, they talk, about anything and everything yet nothing at all. They venture (slowly, hesitantly) upon the future and how separate they have grown as the memories hang suspended in the air between them. Endearments are unconsciously avoided because (maybe) they do not apply anymore. He knows (the fair boy that is now assertive and confident in his own skin) that he will leave the next day unable to comprehend that pure, unadulterated love was not enough to make them last. But for now he will entangle their fingers and follow the caramel-eyed man back to his apartment. Even as tears slip slowly down the plains and ridges of their faces, they are able to find that rhythm (which always reminds him of fluttering leaves and the melodies of birds) that is unique only to them. Later they will lay, boneless and pliant, bodies entwined once more, and their breaths will mingle, slowing, stabilizing, before falling in sync. The next day he will return to the world that does not contain the boy that once was his world.
Maybe one day, in the not so distant future (after realizing that it wasn't that they didn't love enough but they fell victim to circumstance), both having known other lovers and, perhaps, even love, they will meet again. The dark haired man will sign to a record company in New York or the fair man will meet him in LA after accepting a role and they will meet for coffee once more (or perhaps a walk in a park). They will talk (fumbling their way through pleasantries and initial awkwardness) about life, love, and the future once more. Maybe they will leave that coffee shop, that park, and head back to their separate lives. Back to the people that now know each of the boys better than they ever knew each other. Or, perhaps, their worlds will realign and they will find themselves back in the warm spring day where the only thing that mattered was that they could not tell where one ended and the other began. And they will leave the coffee shop, the park, not touching (for they are too uncertain at this time) but they would share a shy smile and the first piece of their new story will fall into place.