A/n: This is inspired by the song Teenage Dream and deviates from canon after Shooting Star, and was supposed to be put up sometime that week, but I am too good at procrastination. Sorry about that, but I do hope you enjoy! For Cristel. I do not own anything (EXCEPT THE HIGH AMOUNTS OF CHEESINESS WHICH WOULD MAKE THIS FIC A GOOD PIZZA) or know anything about American geography.
Forts crumble, and souls crumble with them too- ghosts of love that once was, ghosts that haunt their dreams, and thoughts, and bodies. The colour that permeated their lives slowly slip away (but never really gone), until they're no longer Kurt and Blaine, but Kurt, and Blaine.
But cut the ending. Revise the script. The man of his dreams isn't the charming British stranger who sweeps into his life and sweeps him off his feet with Downton Abbey impressions and puppy-eyed expressions.
Nor is it Kurt himself, dwelling in a desolate reverie for the remainder of his days.
Somehow, it is his teenage dream.
It takes just a shot to bring them together. For Kurt, it's constant shots at his counter, waiting, for if the snow can't numb him, then at least his brandy can. The days swirl by in a blizzard, and he convinces himself he's happy- he has friends, he has Burt, he has a wonderful life in New York complete with an adoring boyfriend- yet there's something vaguely out of place. It unsettles him, so when his roommates are asleep he creeps out into the kitchen, pours out brandy, and just broods.
For Blaine, it's a gunshot. It shoots through the normalcy that has become his life (the smooth cover, complete with extra helpings of charisma, but there's already a gunshot wound on his heart) and shocks him to his core because the frail tangent string of life might snap just any moment. He finally realises, that what he's been looking for isn't more solos, but a syncopated duet, a second half of his soul that he knows, he just knows, in that moment filled with white noise and blackouts, that only Kurt can fill.
And so it happens.
It's just a simple text message during the summer holidays when he knows Kurt would be back in Lima.
"You did say you wanted to go on a road trip with me someday, right?"
"Okay," came Kurt's reply, "but we're still not dating."
They settle a date over the phone and meet at Blaine's house. Kurt is surprised at how he seems to remember exactly the way to it, and how going there feels just a bit like homecoming.
He pulls over, and Blaine puts his things into the back of the Ford along with Kurt's, politely declining Kurt's offers of help. Kurt thinks he hears the distinctive thud of a guitar. He watches as Blaine walks up to the front seat, still his usual smiley adorable puppy self, complete with bowtie and carefully gelled hair.
"Hi," Blaine says.
"Hi," Kurt replies. "Where are we going?"
"I don't know. Anywhere, I guess. California. Yeah, most likely California. I always wanted to go there."
Kurt carefully measures in his head the amount of petrol needed to get to California and its corresponding price, and decides that maybe, it would be okay to stop caring so much about everything for once.
"Cali, then."
The first time Kurt Hummel built a fort, it was with Blaine at the Dalton dorms. They had camped over at Blaine's room, discussing Evita, while consuming obscene amounts of lemonade, which unsurprisingly made them feel all fizzy and fuzzy inside. It sure didn't help that Kurt couldn't look at Blaine without blushing terribly and Blaine couldn't look at Kurt without grinning like the lovesick fool he knew he was (but really- they were just like that all the time.) They had ended up dancing across the room together to Teenage Dream, Blaine's arms tightly wound around Kurt's waist, and around his faltering heart, both singing along at the top of their lungs, their surroundings disappearing into a faint slur of colors, because all they could see was Kurt, and Blaine. When Katy Perry sang the word "forts", Blaine had gasped suddenly, inhaled more lemonade, and declared it was an excellent idea. He taught Kurt how to build forts, and they had made such a mess of the room that Wes had a hard time finding them under all the sheets the next day. When he finally did, though, they were lying together with their hands clasped and smiling so peacefully that he didn't dare to wake them. That was when they were still a budding romance.
They cruise on slowly along the highway. Lady Gaga dominates their radio, but they don't speak. Somehow, there is an invisible thread connecting each of them that makes them feel like, just by being in each other's presence, they are already sharing some form of communication. Soulmates are like that.
Blaine attempts to start a conversation, "I missed you."
"I know. Me too."
Across the driver's gear, Kurt reaches tentatively for Blaine's fingers, and he meets them halfway. It's a fleet connection, because Kurt still needs to move the gear at some point of time, but it's a connection nonetheless.
"I still love you," they both say at the same time, then dissolve into giggles.
After that the conversation flows naturally. As they talk languidly, they realize that they have nothing much to catch up on, because they've both subconsciously been looking out for the other and knowing everything about the other after the breakup as an effect.
They find a motel, which somehow miraculously is just a stone's throw away from an IHOP. Blaine declares he wants a tower of pancakes for dinner, and Kurt rolls his eyes and pays for him in a move so subtle Blaine nearly misses it. They have a tiny squabble over who should pay, and neither boy is willing to admit, it reminds them slightly of Sundays spent in the Lima Bean talking about nothing and everything at once, just lazy kisses and gazing shyly at each other-
"Are you two dating?"
They look up, and the cashier is giving them strange glances which somehow don't seem to have undertones of disgust or homophobia, but just real curiosity, so Kurt hurriedly quips a curt "No", ignoring the almost-wistful looks Blaine is giving him.
The cashier shrugs, then sets down an extra plate of pancakes and bacon on their tray.
"On the house. Good luck with your relationship," she says, winking, then shooing them on.
"Did she just wink suggestively at us?" Kurt whispers, mortified.
"I think she did," Blaine replies, snorting, and carrying the tray because he wasn't allowed to pay.
Kurt tries to deny to himself that being with Blaine comforts him the most, and makes him actually feel whole again, and that being with Blaine is the whole reason he has come anyway.
The second time Kurt Hummel built a fort, it was the night Blaine had told him that he had cheated and that they were going to break up. He cried and cried until his eyes were so dry that all he could do was just moan around, and somehow Blaine singing Teenage Dream had reminded him of forts that he subconsciously built one. He built one with his sheets, like that time in Dalton when Bla- It hurt just thinking of his name, and he built a fort out of crushed hopes and lingering despair, and with the remaining pieces of his own heart, and Blaine's. Forts were supposed to protect, anyway, and Kurt needed all the mending he could get, because no matter how hard he tried, he was still in love with Blaine.
Blaine somehow manages to finish his pancake tower, and he thinks it's the best achievement of his life. Kurt has let his guard down because honestly who can maintain a composure around bacon that good and is tangling his beautiful long legs around his and looking incredibly good. Blaine thinks that he might have never been happier in all the years of his existence. Well, maybe for that time he first kissed Kurt. Or their first Valentine's together. Or that time when they danced at prom, the one where Blaine wasn't allowed hair gel. Or the other proms they attended together. Or- every moment with Kurt just filled him with a certain light sort of happiness that completed him.
Kurt looks up at him, and giggles.
"What?" He says, acting affronted.
"You've got a bit of whipped cream on the left side of your mouth."
Blaine reaches for a napkin, and dabs aimlessly at his mouth. "Uh, is it okay now?
"A little to your right."
Blaine complies.
"Slightly higher."
Blaine dabs dubiously.
"Ugh, just let me do it."
Kurt leans in, and softly kisses him, licking the whipped cream off.
For a while, they hover like that, faces incredibly close, noses blushing, and Blaine is pretty sure Kurt can hear his heartbeat. Kurt's face is flushed a delicate pink, and he looks so embarrassed and adorable that Blaine really wants to kiss him too.
"I'm sorry, I think it was the additives in the bacon, I don't normally, uh," Kurt says, still not budging. "Lose my resolve."
"I know." Blaine smiles indulgently at him. "Does that mean we're dating now?"
"I guess we are," Kurt grins shyly back, and this time Blaine really does kiss him.
The third time Kurt builds a fort, it's in the motel with Blaine, under the lights that sway like the drunkard flitting through bottle after bottle, flickering dangerously and sending sparks flying.
They beam at each other, in the way that people do when they know that they've found the thread which connects their very spirit together. Blaine trails soft kisses along Kurt's neck, and Kurt's stomach flutters in a way it hasn't since- well, since Blaine last did that. Blaine goes higher, higher, higher still, tracing kisses on Kurt's jawline, until he meets Kurt's lips, and Kurt giggles because it's the only thing he knows how to do when he's this intoxicated. His lips fit against his perfectly, with all the nooks and crevices pressing against his own lips' nooks and crevices in a way familiar, and if Kurt would admit it, one that he had sorely missed. Blaine's nose rubs affectionately against Kurt's. Kurt knows that they would probably spend the rest of the night just smiling and kissing and overcome with fervid delirium because they had spent all their lives lost, wandering, looking for the other halves of their one soul, and now that they had finally found that, it seems everything else is nary.
And they do spend the rest of their night that way.
But what forts do are hold, because they were built to withstand- and when a fort crumbles, it only takes a little to build it back up again, into the stronghold, into the little sphere of comfort that once was; and souls are like that too.