Editing and beta-reading on this chapter by neyronrose, gottriplets, and notthatbea. Thank you, ladies!

Blaine pulled up to Fort Macon and parked as close as he could to the entrance. There were only a few other cars in the lot, and half of them probably belonged to the staff. Although it was a popular tourist destination in the summer, on a March weekday he and Kurt should have the place virtually to themselves. Perfect. Grabbing the insulated cooler and blanket on the seat next to him, he slipped out of the car and walked down the brick and stone path leading to the bridge.

When he was a kid he'd made up stories in his head about this fort, how the short bridge was instead a drawbridge that had to be raised to protect the castle inhabitants from the approaching dragon. He'd imagine the moat filled with lava, or look out from the top walls of the fort onto the water and almost see the enemy fleet coming to attack.

He usually went into the fort itself, but today he had a different objective. This historical landmark was only his setting. He couldn't believe he'd run into a very attractive man on the beach, who just happened to work on Broadway in New York. He was like Blaine's dream guy, custom designed in his fantasies and then brought to life. He'd said he was only here for a few days, but Blaine would enjoy the company of a cute and interesting guy for as long as he could.

Meeting Kurt this morning had reenergized him in a way he hadn't felt for a while. He loved his life here in Carteret County, he loved his family and his job and the kids he worked with….but something had been off in his life lately. He felt stagnant, like murky sea water caught in a tidal pool after the water had long since ebbed out. Meeting Kurt was like the tide coming back in, bringing all the oxygen of the sea with it.

He chose a spot on the wide grassy top of the outer wall of the fort, close enough to the path that he could see Kurt come in. From here they could look down into the grassy moat between the double layers of thick walls, or look out over the water. Beaufort Inlet was clear and calm today, and with the blue skies and white clouds, Blaine couldn't have asked for more cooperation from Mother Nature.

He spread out the blanket and was just opening the cooler when a shadow fell over him. He looked up, then up some more past long legs encased in tight jeans and a slim waist broadening out to a very nice chest and shoulders, the throat covered by a neckerchief. Blaine blinked and forced himself to make eye contact, grinning at his new acquaintance. "Hey."

Kurt was studying him like he was a puzzle to be figured out. "You look…different."

"I was going to say the same about you." Blaine glanced down at himself, realizing that although this was his typical style, Kurt would hardly know that after only seeing his sweaty windblown jogger look this morning. "This is my Mr. Anderson persona." He touched his throat self-consciously. "The kids especially like the bow ties," he offered, waiting for Kurt's verdict.

"Well then, your kids have good taste," Kurt smiled as he lowered himself to the other side of the blanket and sat with his legs folded to one side. It didn't look like the most comfortable position and he realized that Kurt probably couldn't sit any other way in jeans that tight. Think about something else, Anderson. "I think the suspenders are probably my favorite of the ensemble," Kurt commented, still openly checking Blaine out.

Blaine shrugged, laughing at little at himself. He knew what he looked like. "It's not the typical look for around here, but I find it works for me, especially when I'm teaching."

Kurt looked out over the stone walls. "What is this place?"

"Fort Macon. It was last used during the Civil War. Site of a major battle and everything." Blaine pulled two water bottles from the cooler and passed one to Kurt. "We can walk down after lunch and read the information boards if you want, and there are some interesting displays set up in the rooms downstairs, showing what it would have been like to live here as a soldier."

"Why'd you want to meet here?" Kurt asked. "I mean, it's unique, but just wondering why you chose it."

"Well, it's a nice day and I thought an outside picnic sounded nice. Besides, I've always felt a connection to this place." Blaine was taking containers out as he talked, taking the lids off, sticking plastic utensils into the food. "One of my ancestors helped to build it."

"Really?"

"Yep. My four-times great-grandfather was head of the stonemason crew. He also worked on Cape Lookout Lighthouse."

"Is that around here?" Kurt asked, looking out over the water.

Blaine laughed. "It's close by, but you won't see it from here. You have to get on a boat. I'll take you there if you want."

"Hmmm. Maybe," Kurt said noncommittally. He looked down at the spread as Blaine handed him a paper plate, and seemed to really look at the food for the first time. "That's…umm, that's a lot of shrimp."

"You're not allergic, are you?" Blaine asked, panicking. "I should have asked you that."

"No, not allergic. It's just….it must've cost you a fortune."

"Didn't cost me a cent," Blaine said smugly.

Kurt stared at him. "Did you rob a seafood market? Because-"

Blaine laughed, unable to hold it in anymore. "Look where we are," and waved an arm at Beaufort Inlet. "The seafood is right there, all you have to do is go out and get it. Or know someone who can get it. Half my local family are fishermen, including my uncle who caught all the shrimp. So dig in."

"That much shrimp in a New York City restaurant would probably cost thirty dollars," Kurt said. "Just the shrimp, not including the rest of the meal or drinks or tip."

"Not here," Blaine shook his head and held out the container.

"Okay then." Kurt took a large spoonful of chilled boiled shrimp and some potato salad, and Blaine relaxed. Then Kurt pointed at one container and asked, "What's that?"

"Oh, you're going to want to try that. It's a shrimp-cheese spread. You put it on crackers usually, I have them right here." Blaine plopped a large dollop of the spread on Kurt's plate, and held out a sleeve of Ritz crackers for him to take a few. "There's fruit salad too. And if you like to dip your boiled shrimp, take some of this." He put another spoonful on his plate, this time of a salmon-colored sauce. "It's a family recipe. I swear, it was only a couple years ago that they let me learn the ingredients. When I first got here, I innocently asked what was in it and thought I'd be tarred and feathered and run back to Ohio on the first train."

"Wait—Ohio?" Kurt looked up, food forgotten. "You're from Ohio?"

"Well, I grew up all over," Blaine said, filling his plate. "Military brat. But Ohio was where I lived for three years prior to moving here, which was the longest I stayed in any one place for my first twelve years. So it felt as much like home as anywhere, before this."

"Where exactly in Ohio? I grew up in Lima." He started to answer, but Kurt was just dipping his shrimp in the sauce and taking a cautious bite. He closed his eyes and popped the rest in his mouth. "Wow, you weren't kidding. This sauce is awesome."

"Told ya so," Blaine laughed. He'd been waiting for Kurt to try it. "I lived in Westerville."

"That was about an hour and a half away," Kurt mused. "So not exactly next door, not like we would have run in to each other at the mall."

"No. But it's still odd that we lived that close to each other, and then met on a beach in NC." Blaine moved, using a leg to hold down one side of the blanket that was flapping up in a slight breeze.

"Mm-hmm," Kurt agreed around another mouthful. They sat and ate quietly for a moment. "So…what was it like, growing up in a military family?"

"It was fun in my early years, I never knew any different than a life of moving around a lot. I was born in the Philippines, that's where my parents met. Mom was born there, Dad was stationed there for a couple years. They got married and I think my mom regarded all the travel from base to base as a big adventure, so she made it into one for me too. She always stayed at home with me full time, gave me all her attention. I was a total mama's boy when I was little." He gave a self-deprecating huff of laughter. "That's probably not the most brag-worthy thing for a grown man to admit to."

"Hey, my mommy was my best friend when I was little." Kurt raised his bottle of water. "A toast, to mommies and mama's boys everywhere."

Blaine chuckled as he tapped his water against Kurt's.

"No siblings?" Kurt asked, reaching for more of the shrimp cheese spread. Blaine offered the crackers again and waited for a large family with several loud kids to pass by into the fort before he answered. So much for the fort being quiet.

"One half-brother. My dad was married before, early in his military career, and he said his first wife just wasn't cut out for the military. They had a son together, Cooper. He's…well." Blaine hesitated, always unsure how to explain that he had a brother but didn't feel like it. "He's ten years older than me, and always lived with his mom, so I only saw him once or twice a year."

"So you were practically an only child."

"Yeah." He felt the small twinge of regret that he associated with his brother, the wish that they could have known each other better. "What about you?"

"I grew up as an only child too." Kurt hesitated and Blaine thought he was about to say something else, but instead he speared another shrimp. "Where does Cooper live?"

"He's in California mostly, unless his work takes him somewhere else. He's an actor, but on screen, not stage. And uh…not a very good one really. He spent a couple years in New York and tried to be a theatre actor, but when he couldn't get his big break there he went back to LA. He does mostly commercials, but you'd think he had ten Oscars on his shelf the way he brags about his career." Blaine stabbed at a pineapple chunk on his plate, leaving fork indentations in the Styrofoam.

"Has he done anything I'd recognize?"

"Uh, yeah," he answered, reluctant. He chewed and swallowed and made himself say it. "His most successful commercial aired nationally, that one for the credit rating company?" Kurt shrugged so Blaine started singing the jingle and had barely gotten the first line out before Kurt gasped.

"That's your brother?" He set his plate down to gesture wildly with his hands, and Blaine recognized the sitting-down, over-enthusiastic version of the choreography from the TV ad. "The Free Credit Rating Today commercial? That guy? Oh my God, he's gorgeous!"

"Yeah, he is. That's my brother, the gorgeous successful actor who lives in glamorous LA and has everything." Blaine looked down at his plate, and picked up a cracker to spread cheese and shrimp on just to give his hands something to do.

"Well, one thing is very clear," Kurt said softly, breaking the tense silence that had settled between them. Blaine glanced over to him. "Good looks run in the family." He stretched out one long leg to tap his shoe playfully against Blaine's, and winked, making it impossible for Blaine to do anything but smile back. "Sore spot?" Blaine see-sawed his hand in a 'sort of' motion. "I'm sorry if I ruined the mood."

"You didn't, it's fine." Blaine smiled, trying to show that he meant it. "My brother and I aren't close, and it's something I regret. But it's a pretty day, and I'm eating a picnic lunch with a cute guy, and I'd rather talk about happy things."

"You think I'm cute?" Kurt batted his lashes.

Blaine grabbed a grape from the fruit salad and threw it at him. "Oh, don't even try to pretend you don't know what you look like!" He laughed as the fruit bounced off Kurt's carefully coiffed hair. He smoothed it and sent a glare Blaine's way.

"Oh, this is Southern hospitality, huh? Getting attacked by food?" He grabbed a cracker from his plate and threw it. Blaine ducked and the cracker flew over him, followed almost immediately by the screech of a gull.

"Oh, you've done it now." Blaine looked over his shoulder as several gulls swooped down from nowhere, fighting over the cracker and creating a din with their high-pitched calls. "Should've thrown further, Kurt," he told him as he turned back, to find that the other side of the blanket was empty. Kurt stood several feet away, staring at the flock of birds. The tension in his stance suggested a field mouse hiding under a leaf, hoping if it stayed still enough the hawk wouldn't see him.

Blaine stayed in his seat on the blanket, grinning now. "You don't have birds in New York City?" he asked.

"Not like those," Kurt answered, wide eyes still on the flock who'd stopped fighting now that one had flown away with the cracker. But several of them were still there, strutting around and poking their beaks into the grass in search of another tasty treat. "We have pigeons in Central Park. They're not that big or noisy."

"We saw the same type of birds on the beach this morning, you know."

"They weren't that close." Kurt was still watching them as if ready to bolt if the flock moved any closer.

"They'll get bored in a minute and fly away, once they realize we're not going to throw any more food their way. Come on, come back and sit down."

"I think I've had enough to eat. How about we see the fort?" Kurt suggested, still watching the gulls.

"Okay. Let me pack up." He put everything back in the insulated cooler with its ice packs and motioned for Kurt to follow him to his truck so he could put it away. "Let's go see the house that Tyler built."

They walked down the bridge into the center courtyard of the pentagon-shaped fort, and Blaine led Kurt inside the stone-walled hallways to show him the rooms that were furnished the way they would have been during the Civil War, with mannequins in period-appropriate military uniforms. He noticed that Kurt asked the volunteer on duty several questions about the costumes. He wanted to know what material the uniforms would have been made of, and what the rank insignia meant on each mannequin and even what the undergarments would have been like for a soldier. After he'd bemused the old lady with his questions about underwear, Blaine led him back out to the courtyard so they could inspect the canon, then they climbed the stone steps up to the top of the inner wall, giving them a view of the water.

"It really goes on forever, doesn't it?" Kurt asked, his eyes scanning the horizon.

Blaine chuckled. "Not quite forever, but pretty far, yeah."

"I'm surprised there aren't more people on the beach, on such a pretty day."

"Well, the water's still pretty cold this early in the year, and classes are still in session for most schools. Come back in July, there'll be hundreds of people out there. Would you like to take advantage of the quiet and go for another walk on the beach? Just us this time, no wild dog getting into stinky dead things?"

Kurt shuddered. "Don't remind me. But sure, we can walk on the beach."

They passed through the courtyard again, and Kurt paused to read an information board that he'd missed the first time through. Blaine stepped away, to the wall of the fort, and placed his hand on one of the many stones that created the structure. He closed his eyes, trying to block out the chatter of the few tourists, focusing on the timelessness of that single stone beneath his palm. He knew, logically, that the fort had been rebuilt and repaired any number of times since its initial completion. The chances of that particular stone being the same one that was laid in the 1830s were slim. All that aside, he did this every time he came to the fort.

"Blaine?"

He blinked his eyes open to see Kurt looking at him quizzically.

"Little tradition of mine," he shrugged, dropping his hand. "I like to touch one particular rock for a moment. I always wonder if my ancestor touched that same exact rock."

Kurt nodded in understanding, though Blaine felt he was just humoring him.

They stopped by Blaine's truck again so he could dig around in the cooler and pull out two bottles of water which he put in a messenger bag, then walked up the steps that led from the parking lot to the loose sand of the dunes.

"Tell me, Blaine…"

"Hmm?"

"Am I going to have beach sand in my shoes for a week after this vacation?"

He looked down at Kurt's admittedly fabulous looking, but not very practical, Doc Martens. "No…you'll have sand in your shoes for a month."

"Wonderful."

Blaine snorted a laugh. "Not much of an outdoorsy person, are you?"

"Let me think….." Kurt stopped in the path and feigned deep thought, staring off into the distance and tapping his chin. "No, I'm not. There's a reason I live in New York City."

"I figured you lived there to be close to Broadway."

"That, too."

The white sand of the dunes that slipped and crunched under their feet gave way to the more solid damp sand closer to the water. They headed down the beach, staying in that narrow strip between loose sand and the continuous motion of the waves.

"So you told me what role you're playing right now," Blaine said. "Tell me another role you've played recently, or a favorite role. I know! Tell me your very first Broadway role!"

Kurt laughed. "Which is it, Blaine?"

"Okay then, dealer's choice." He kicked a shell out of the way and told himself to calm down. He didn't want to scare Kurt off by being an obsessed fanboy.

"Well…it wasn't my very first Broadway role, but it was my first big role where my character actually had a name and I wasn't just a face in the ensemble. I played Jack in Into the Woods." Kurt smiled fondly at the memory.

"I love that show!" Blaine gasped. "And that's a great role, I've played it myself!"

"What?" Kurt stopped to stare at him, the ocean breeze just barely ruffling his hair. He must have a ton of hairspray in it. "You didn't say you were an actor."

"I'm not," Blaine tried to downplay it. He hadn't meant to blurt that out. "Not like you, not professionally. I've done some community theatre, that's all."

"But that's awesome!" Kurt's face split in a wide grin. "We've played the same role, we have to compare notes. Final note on 'Giants in the Sky'…any problems?"

"My range is better than that, thank you," Blaine scoffed. "I never had—nope, hold on, I did have trouble with it one night, but I was coming down with a cold. I still got the note out but it wasn't as strong as I wanted and I cracked a bit at the end. I was mortified but my director said it was okay, it played off as high emotion. Did you have problems with the note?" he challenged.

"Oh please, I'm a countertenor. I can hit that note and keep going up the scale." Kurt affected an arrogant manner, making Blaine laugh, before remembering something else to share.

"The chicken…what kind of chicken did you have? Ours was a remote control one and it was being operated by the stage manager in the wings, and I swear she couldn't drive it. One night I had to dive for it because the S.M. was about to run it off the stage and into the orchestra. I barely caught it…can you imagine the conductor getting bonked in the head with a fake chicken and having to hand it back to me?"

Kurt laughed at the mental image, the first out-loud, uninhibited belly laugh Blaine had heard from him. And it was a beautiful laugh, snatched away too soon by the breeze.

They strolled along the beach for a while longer, still telling stories about their experiences with that role, till Blaine suggested they stop to enjoy their dessert.

"You brought dessert out to the beach?"

"I did," Blaine said smugly. He plopped down on a stretch of sand and opened his bag to pull out not only the water, but a Tupperware container with brownies in it and napkins. He realized Kurt was still standing. "C'mon, Kurt. It's just nice clean beach sand, your jeans will wash."

Kurt sighed but lowered himself to the sand gingerly, then shook his head a little when Blaine took the lid off to reveal the treats.

"What's wrong?" Blaine asked. "You don't like brownies?" He handed Kurt a napkin and was glad when he took it. Why did he look like that, didn't everyone love brownies?

"Oh, it's not that. I love brownies. I was just thinking about my parents trying to fatten me up this week. I'm starting to wonder if you're not in cahoots with them."

"I have a feeling there's more to that story, but only if you want to share it." Blaine was taking the lid off a Tupperware container as he spoke, and offered it to Kurt so he could pick his brownie first. Instead, Kurt took the container from his hand, took out one brownie, and set the box in his lap. "Umm…" Blaine waited for an explanation.

Ignoring him, Kurt took a bite, closing his eyes as if in appreciation. "This is a very good brownie," he said without opening his eyes.

"Thank you. I made them myself."

"Well done. This brownie is so good, in fact, that I think it should be earned. Therefore, whoever can tell the biggest sob story about their life—truthful sob story—gets to have all the brownies to themselves."

Blaine bent over, face almost touching the sand as he chortled. "Oh my God, I can't believe you're pulling that stunt!" He straightened up and tried to compose himself. "Well, assuming I want to go along with this, you've already started eating. You didn't earn that bite, mister!"

He scrutinized the small square in his hand. "You're right. So I'll tell one sad fact about my life to earn the bite. I can tell you that I was bullied in high school for being gay. Tossed into dumpsters on a daily basis." His nose scrunched as he made a face.

"Gross. I never got the dumpster tosses, thank goodness." Blaine shuddered.

"Are you telling me you have no sad facts to tell me, to earn your bite?" Kurt held the brownie—still with only one bite taken out of it—out to him enticingly.

"Oh, hardly. I only said I wasn't dumpster-tossed. Gimme that brownie." Blaine took it before breathing deep and stating as blandly as he could, "Shortly after I came out, I was gay-bashed at a Sadie Hawkins dance, and so was the boy I was with. We both ended up in the hospital."

"Oh, no." Kurt leaned closer, placing a hand on Blaine's knee. "Obviously you got better. Was he okay?"

"Yeah, eventually." Blaine shrugged. "It was a long time ago."

"It's never too late to drown your sorrows in chocolate. Go ahead, you'll feel better after a bite."

Blaine humored him and took a bite before handing it back. "Your turn. One sad fact."

"My dad had a heart attack when I was sixteen and spent several days in a coma before waking up. I thought I was going to lose him and it was probably the scariest, loneliest week of my life." Kurt took a bite, and chewed contemplatively before turning back to Blaine. "This is an awful game. Why are we doing this?"

Blaine stared at him, then cracked up. "You suggested it!" he accused.

"Well, I'm obviously an idiot. Why didn't you stop me?" Blaine didn't answer, too busy trying to stifle his laughter.

"Why did you suggest it, Kurt?" Blaine wiped tears from his eyes, still laughing but he really wanted to know.

Kurt made a face. "I thought it might be a shortcut? To us getting to know each other better?"

"Or you could have just asked?"

"Too obvious. Too easy." Kurt passed the Tupperware to him. "Let's just eat our brownies. They really are too good to ruin with tears. Let's pick a different topic."

"Okay." Blaine took a brownie and napkin and chewed a bite while thinking. "We were having fun talking about theatre. Tell me about being on Broadway, what it's actually like to be a professional stage actor. I only know the amateur side of it."

"Oh, God….that's a loaded topic. I could go on for hours about the good and the bad. Want to narrow it down a little?"

"Tell me about…" Blaine thought for a moment. "Tell me about the first day of rehearsal for the show you're currently in."

"Oh. That one was interesting, because on the very first day we didn't even rehearse, really. Hardly touched the scripts. Instead we played a lot of those getting-to-know-you games, and trust games, to help us bond as a cast. Then we all sat on the studio floor and our director asked us to talk about the turning points in our lives, the moments that defined us and made us who we are, especially those moments when things didn't just happen to us, but we made deliberate choices that changed our lives."

"And what did you tell about?" Blaine asked, curious.

"One I already told you about, when my dad had his heart attack. But when the director pressed me to name an event that I proactively chose, that would have to be moving to New York when I was eighteen."

"Eighteen, wow. That was brave."

"Well, I went with my best friend Rachel. So at least we had each other. I don't think I could have done it by myself."

"Still, you made the leap. I admire that."

"How about you? What were your defining moments?"

"Umm…" Blaine stalled while taking a bite and chewing. What big choices had he made in his life? "I guess, when I decided to live here, that was a pretty big turning point."

"And how old were you?"

"Fourteen."

"I'm sorry, what? You moved here on your own at fourteen? Where were your parents?"

"Not on my own, I had family here."

"But you said that you decided to move here. Not your parents. I'm confused, Blaine. What happened?"

Blaine sighed, and gave up on any pretense of eating. He set the brownie back down in the plastic box and sealed the lid. "I suppose I should back up and explain from the beginning, huh?"

Kurt nodded, and set down his napkin as well, turning more fully toward Blaine and giving him his full attention.

"When I was about twelve, things got….hard." He glanced at Kurt, and found him listening, gaze intent on Blaine. "We'd been in Ohio for about a year I guess, and I came out to my mom. Just my mom, because I was afraid of my dad's reaction. You know, military mentality, gotta be macho and tough, all that."

"How'd your mom react?" Kurt asked.

"Oh, she was great. Turns out she'd suspected for a while, but waited for me to be ready to say it. And when I did say it, well….she just gave me a hug and said nothing would ever make her love me less." Blaine smiled at the memory, even as he felt the old familiar pain that he associated with his mom.

"That's great," Kurt said softly. "My dad was great too. I wasn't as brave as you, I waited till I was sixteen. But when I finally did it, I couldn't have asked for him to be more supportive than he was."

"Your mom wasn't supportive?" Blaine asked.

Kurt hesitated. "My mom died when I was eight," he said. "So it was just me and my dad for several years."

"I'm sorry," Blaine said, always feeling stupid to say sorry to someone for losing a loved one, but what else was there to say? Nothing made it hurt less, as he knew well enough.

Kurt shrugged. "It was a long time ago, and not that I wouldn't give anything to have her back, but my dad remarried when I was in high school and my stepmom's great. So I could have had it worse." Silence for a moment. "I'm sorry, I hijacked your story. You were telling me about coming out to your mom. When did your dad find out?"

"Well, turns out you and I have more in common than a love of Broadway," Blaine huffed out a laugh, but there was no humor in it. "I lost my mom too, about a year after I came out. I didn't find out till after her funeral"—his voice broke and he fought to steady it—"that before she died, she told my dad herself. And he said she told him if he wasn't 100% supportive of me, she'd come back and haunt him." He laughed again, and this time it felt genuine, because it just sounded so much like his mom, he could hear her voice saying it. Sweet and demure she was most of the time, but she could turn into a force to be reckoned with when it concerned her family.

"I'm sorry," Kurt whispered, his voice barely carrying over the sound of the waves. "Sounds like she was amazing."

"She was."

"And….was your dad supportive?" Kurt asked after a moment.

Blaine hesitated. "He tried. But….I don't know, it's like he didn't know how to relate to me any more, as if I was a different person once he found out I was gay. And without my mom there to be a buffer, a connection between us, without her there to smooth the way, our relationship was never the same again."

"So how did you end up in North Carolina? Did your dad get stationed at that military base nearby? What's it called?"

"Cherry Point," Blaine supplied. "And no, he didn't get transferred there. The summer after my mom passed away, my dad was still stationed in Ohio, and I came down here to spend a couple months with my cousins. I'd done it before, but only for a couple weeks, not months. That summer…." Blaine trailed off, looking back toward the fort and the American flag flying over it, visible even at this distance, then back at Kurt with a shrug. "Just seemed like my dad and I could use a break from each other, so I asked if I could stay most of the summer."

"And you ended up staying for good?"

"Yeah. While I was here that summer, my dad got orders to transfer to Japan. He asked my aunt and uncle if I could stay here a while longer, start the school year here, just till he got settled in the new post and then he'd send for me. But a couple months later, when he said I could go live with him…..I could tell his heart wasn't really in it. I don't think he had any clue how to be a parent without my mom. She'd always taken care of making a home for us, no matter what country we were in. So I asked if I could stay here permanently. I'm pretty sure he was relieved."

"I bet he missed you though," Kurt said softly.

"And I missed him. But honestly, this seemed like a better place for me to be. I'd spent my childhood moving from one country to another, one school to another….the idea of staying in one place for all my high school years, attending with my cousin Sam, who's not only my cousin but my best friend for life….at the time it seemed like paradise."

"It's pretty, I'll grant you that," Kurt mused, looking out over the water again. "But it's not paradise anymore?"

"I guess…it's a case of always wanting what you don't have?" Blaine smiled ruefully. "As a fourteen-year-old who'd just lost his mom and had always moved around a lot, getting to stay in one place for a few years, with an intact loving family, it was what I needed, you know?"

"That makes sense. You must have felt really lost back then." Blaine nodded. "And now?"

"Now? I've been here for sixteen years. It's really weird to say it out loud."

"Miss your days of moving around all the time?"

"Not really. I don't want to move every two or three years. I'm not sure I want to move at all, it's just…" Blaine pulled his knees up and rested his chin on them, staring out over the water. "You know I told you I teach kindergarten through eighth grade?"

"Yeah."

A beep sounded and Blaine realized it was Kurt's phone, but the other man made no move to answer it, so Blaine continued.

"Well, the majority of my eighth grade students this year, who'll be graduating in a couple months and moving on to high school, are the same students who were in kindergarten my first year of teaching. One of them pointed that out to me the other day, saying how she felt so lucky to have had me as a music teacher all the way through elementary school." Blaine smiled at the memory, at Anna's wide smile and her blonde hair wisping loose from her ponytail.

"That must have been a proud moment for you."

"It was. And I'm so, so honored to have been a part of these kids' lives, and it was so sweet of her to tell me how she felt. But it just made me realize how long I've been teaching, and when I realized that my first kindergarten babies will be high school freshmen next year…" Blaine sighed. "It just feels like they're moving on, shooting for bigger and better things, while I'm still in the same place."

"Ever feel like doing anything about that?" Kurt asked. Blaine looked over at him, not sure how to respond. "This could be your If/Then moment, you know." Kurt's eyes crinkled as he smiled at him and Blaine couldn't quite tell if he was joking or not.

Kurt's phone beeped again and Blaine said, "You can answer that if you want." He was grateful for the distraction from Kurt's direct gaze, asking if he was ready to make big decisions about his life.

"Sorry, it's probably my dad," Kurt said as he drew it from his pocket, reading the screen. "Oh…my parents want to know when I'll be back. I do feel a little guilty, I came down here to spend time with them and then immediately run off to a picnic date with someone I just met." He glanced up. "Not that you aren't worth spending time with," he smiled, "but I probably should spend the rest of the day with them."

"Sure, I understand. And I promised I'd help my uncle and cousin with something this afternoon." Blaine started putting things back in the bag. "Are you…free tomorrow, maybe?"

"I feel like I should spend tomorrow with my family," Kurt said, and he sounded regretful. "But the next day?"

"Sure! Actually….my aunt and uncle are having an oyster roast that evening at their house in Bettie, last one before the season closes." He tried not to sound too eager. "Would you like to come to that? Your parents can come too, that way you don't have to feel guilty about not spending time with them."

"I'm not sure what an oyster roast is, but if you're there and I can spend time with my Dad and Carole too, sounds like a win-win."

They exchanged phone numbers with the promise to touch base the next day and finalize the details, and Blaine worked hard to restrain his air-punch that he had Kurt's number. Would it be too forward to text him on the way out of the parking lot?

He stood and adjusted the strap of his bag across his chest, then reached down a hand to help Kurt, who was still fiddling with his phone. He looked up with a smile, pocketed his phone and took Blaine's hand, standing. He was wiping the seat of his jeans free of sand when Blaine's phone vibrated in his pocket.

From Kurt:

Thanks for lunch!

"You're very welcome," he responded out loud, and grinning, held his hand out. Kurt hesitated but took it, swinging their hands between them. "C'mon, let's see how much more sand we can get between your toes on the way to the parking lot," Blaine teased, and Kurt only groaned, looking down at his expensive shoes.