TO THE WATERS AND THE WILD
Two young men lay naked in the glen, breathless and wrapped up in each other. Blaine rested his cheek against Kurt's glistening chest and hummed contentedly in the back of his throat while the faery twisted the sweaty curls at the nape of his neck.
"I almost won that time," Blaine murmured into Kurt's skin.
Kurt laughed breathlessly when the whisper turned into a kiss. "No, you didn't. But you're more than welcome to try harder next time."
Blaine chuckled as he rolled onto his back. The soft, springy grass dotted with colorful wildflowers felt cool against his skin, and the stars sparkling in a cloudless sky winked down on him. Kurt stretched out on his side next to Blaine and traced patterns over the subtle muscles of his chest and torso with his fingertips.
"You're tickling me again," Blaine laughed and tried to squirm away, but the faery wiggled around with him. There was only ever one way to end the tickling. Blaine teased the tip of Kurt's delicate leaf-shaped ear, and the offending digits stopped tickling and gripped at Blaine's skin.
"So soon, Blaine?" Kurt asked huskily, only half teasing.
Blaine let his hand drop, and Kurt settled into his open arms. They lay in silence while their breathing evened out, staring at the bright stars and letting the nighttime sounds of the forest tempt them into sleep, but the din of gathering voices from lower in the valley kept them alert.
"We should go to the gathering," Kurt said at last.
"But I'd rather stay right here," Blaine purred. His tongue danced along the point of Kurt's ear, and a shudder passed up the faery's body. His cooling skin felt flush again.
"Blaine," Kurt moaned. The young man took the tip into his mouth and sucked at the delicate skin. "We have to go. It's a party in your honor."
Blaine's hand traveled down Kurt's smooth stomach, and the faery let out a frustrated groan as he shuffled away from his companion. Blaine pouted, although Kurt felt himself the injured party in this obvious attempt at distraction.
"You've been here a hundred years," the faery said reasonably. "The others have gone to a lot of trouble to celebrate with you tonight."
"I'd rather celebrate being your companion for a hundred years," Blaine said, winking at Kurt.
The faery clucked his tongue. "We just finished 'celebrating' for the fourth time today. Why don't you want to gather with the others?"
Blaine's lascivious grin fell into a frown, and he collapsed onto the grass to contemplate the stars in his bad temper. Kurt sat crossed-legged over his companion, and took Blaine's hand in his own, partly to comfort him and partly to keep it from straying to the area of Kurt's body Blaine was so preoccupied with today.
"I hate the way they look at me," Blaine admitted. "Every time I see one of them, they give me this look like, 'What does he think he's doing here? He's not supposed to be here.' I'm supposed to be here."
The faery stroked at his companion's face and blinked away the moisture in his eyes. "I'm sorry, Blaine. It's my fault they don't accept you. I broke the rules letting you become a man, and now you have to pay for it."
"No, Kurt. I'm glad you let me grow up here. We wouldn't have this special bond between us if we'd stayed seven-years-old forever. I'm happy to be seventeen forever with you. I just wish the others would let go of their stupid double standard. Finn brings back teenage girls all the time, but it's the end of everything if you take a companion."
"That's because Finn is a silkie, and I'm a changeling," Kurt said gently. "I'm supposed to feel hunger and greed and things children do. Lust and romantic love are not supposed to be in my nature."
Blaine furrowed his brow and considered Kurt for a long moment. "Then what is my nature as a human supposed to be?"
Kurt looked away sharply. In their century together, Blaine had never asked the question, and Kurt had never offered an answer. The young man had noticed differences in himself and the faeries that made him uneasy. Their frivolity took the form of giddiness; his own tended to be darker and more passionate. They felt no remorse for the human lives they destroyed and sometimes ended; he felt gnawing guilt for years after lesser wrongdoings.
"It doesn't matter," Kurt insisted. "You live in this realm, and you're my companion. We'll be here together forever."
"But what if they have a point? What if there are more differences between us than what we can see on the outside?"
Blaine gestured at their naked bodies. Kurt had no hair anywhere on his body save for his head, his skin shone like moonlight even in the middle of the day, and his eyes sparkling like starlight on water held more wisdom than a human could fathom. Blaine had thick, black hair just about everywhere it seemed, and while his skin held faint radiance, it was more like sun-kissed olive than moonlight, and his eyes only sparkled when he was deliriously happy and hopeful.
"You do not have the nature of your people," Kurt snapped. "I took you away before they could corrupt you. Now let's go to the party."
Blaine stared as Kurt stomped across the glen to retrieve their thin summer clothes interweaved with the vines and daisy chains they'd run through and rolled around in that day.
"So human nature is … corrupt?"
Kurt bit his lip. He knelt beside his companion and ran his hands through Blaine's long, unruly curls. "Blaine, please don't do this. It doesn't matter anymore. You are a good man, and you always will be. You've grown up, but you're still that sweet, innocent boy I brought here a hundred years ago."
Reluctantly, Blaine agreed because he could not stand to see his beautiful companion hurting because of him. He dressed and went to the party with Kurt. He let the faeries and their human playthings – many of whom, unlike Blaine, would be sent back to their own realm when the faeries had had their fun – ply him with goblets of wine and put a crown of flowers on his head. He danced to the light, happy music and let a delicious buzz fill up the space between his ears. Kurt loved him again in their glen, and Blaine fell asleep drunk and sated.
But when he awoke in the morning with a clearer head and watched Kurt sleeping still on the bed of grass and wildflowers, he pondered again what Kurt had said about human nature. The notion that his people were more flawed even than the capricious faeries would not leave him in peace.
Blaine ran down the grassy slope towards the loch, pulling off his clothes and tossing them aside as he ran. He waded thigh-deep into the water with a carrying laugh on his lips. The sun had warmed the chilly water to a reasonable temperature today. Blaine turned to watch Kurt's more careful approach. The faery dropped a pile of clothes by the water's edge.
"Come on, Kurt! We wanted to swim, not stare balefully at the loch," Blaine admonished.
With a mischievous gleam in his eye, Kurt tossed the last of his clothes on the ground and sprang towards his companion. They fell beneath the wind-rippled surface of the deep blue water with a splash that drew the attention of the water horses swimming in the depths. The water faeries swam off again when they found nothing more exciting than two naked young men frolicking in the shallows. Blaine surfaced with a gasp, but Kurt had already swum far out into the loch.
"So that's the game we're playing today?" Blaine challenged. "You know I always win this one!"
"Only because I know when to bow out gracefully!" Kurt called across the water. "Victory by forfeiture can't be that rewarding."
Blaine pushed off from the rocky loch bottom and cut through the water with smooth, powerful strokes. Kurt had infinite grace on land, but changelings were not natural water creatures. Only too soon, Blaine had shortened the gap and sent a wall of water at the back of Kurt's head. The faery sputtered indignantly and splashed back.
"You can do better than that," Blaine teased.
He brought his extended arm through the surface again, and Kurt disappeared behind a wave of foamy water. He gasped for breath and blinked at the droplets caught on his lashes like he couldn't tell which way was up anymore. His hair was plastered to his head, and even treading water he could barely keep his chin clear of the surface. Blaine cooed at him and swam closer.
"Come here before you drown yourself."
Blaine pulled the faery into his arms and held him close. Kurt clung to him, arms and legs wrapped around Blaine, and still the young man tread water easily. The faery continued sputtering and blinking and trying to catch his breath.
"You are adorable," Blaine said. He kissed the corner of Kurt's mouth. "Are you going to survive or do we have to stop swimming already?"
"Changelings have fur, you know," Kurt pointed out.
"Not that I'm complaining, but why did you choose a form without hair, then?"
"I was young when I made the choice. I was mimicking your body the best I could, and I didn't know about the wonders of puberty then." Blaine laughed self-deprecatingly. "I've looked this way for so long, I wouldn't change it now unless you asked me to."
"I would never ask you to change anything about yourself."
"Oh, good answer," Kurt laughed. He kissed Blaine deeply, and they slipped several inches down in the deep water. The faery squawked indignantly. "Take us back to shore before we drown!"
"But we haven't swum with the water horses yet," Blaine pouted.
"I've had quite enough being underwater for today, but you have fun. Seriously, Blaine," he added, when his companion continued to look downcast. "A hundred years, and you still feel guilty leaving me to float in peace while you get tugged around the whole bleeding loch by a water horse."
As if to demonstrate how much more he would rather stay on the surface, Kurt let go of Blaine and extended his arms and legs to float along the choppy water. The sunlight felt glorious on his face, and he breathed contentedly as peach lights flashed behind his closed eyelids. He sensed disturbances in the water that told him Blaine still tread close by. He cracked open an eye.
"This would be your cue to go bug a water horse, dummy," Kurt said sweetly. His voice sounded far away with his ears underwater, and it made him giggle for no real reason.
"Hmm. Sorry. I got a little distracted by my beautiful faery companion stretched out and waving his assets for the whole world to see."
Kurt winked saucily and waved his penis around. Blaine inhaled a mouthful of water, and Kurt smiled smugly at the sky as he went back to floating. A few minutes later, after Blaine's coughing had faded, the young man pressed a quick kiss to Kurt's lips, took a deep breath, and dove beneath the dark water. Kurt opened his eyes just in time to see Blaine's perfect, round backside flashing over the top of the water as he dove. He hummed pleasantly.
Blaine surfaced every few minutes, always a bit farther away. Sometimes, one of the water horses would surface too to splash around him. At last, one the water faeries delivered him to the distant opposite shore, and Blaine let the water horse leave before realizing his mistake. With a laugh, Kurt began swimming back to the right shore. He lay on the grass and let the sun dry his skin while he waited for Blaine to walk around the loch. A hand on his shoulder roused Kurt from his nap. Blaine leaned over him, grinning widely.
"I made a friend."
Behind Blaine stood a human girl of maybe fifteen with long, dark hair and tanned skin who looked everywhere but at Kurt and Blaine. The faery almost burst out laughing. He could imagine it, Blaine walking around the loch naked as the day he was born, greeting her enthusiastically as always, and now, the poor girl was faced with a second penis – this one half-hard from a very pleasant dream about Blaine.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," Kurt said.
The girl all but ran up the hill towards the forest. Blaine watched her go with a frown on his lips, but Kurt didn't care where she disappeared to.
"She seems like a nice girl. We should try to find her later for the evening meal. Her faery is a kelpie, so she'll be alone a lot while she's here."
"Can we not talk about girls right now?" Kurt wondered.
"I think we might have another friend sympathetic to our situation. She's a very sweet girl. She said she's a Jew. Do you know what that is?"
Kurt sighed and resigned himself to having wasted a perfectly good dream. Blaine would be no use at all when he was in this mood. Sensing he'd won the right to badger Kurt with questions, Blaine stretched out on the grass over him and propped his chin on his fist.
"So do you know what a Jew is?"
"They're a religious group from Judea in Rome."
"What's Rome?"
"A large country on the continent across the sea east of Alba. Don't fear them, Blaine. The lands the faeries love are safe … for now."
"Ha! The people of Alba will never be conquered," Blaine said confidently.
Kurt patted his companion's cheek affectionately. "I should hope not."
They fell into silence for a few moments, and then Blaine asked the question Kurt had always known he would one day when he realized that he was not only different from the faeries, but from the humans they brought into their realm.
"Do you know why she kept looking at me so strangely?"
"She was trying to work out if you're human or faery," Kurt said quietly.
Blaine laughed. "That's ridiculous. I look nothing like a faery."
"No, but you don't look human either, Blaine. Your eyes are too wise for a teenager, your beauty is too flawless, your manner of speaking is like ours. She didn't know what to make of a naked man who looks to her eyes like a fantasy come to life."
The young man's brow furrowed. "If I'm not faery or human, then what am I?"
"You're the best of both worlds," Kurt answered. "You're something better than any of us, faery or human."
Blaine sat up and turned away. "I'm nothing. I'm some monstrous creation born one thing and shaped into another."
Kurt watched in dismay as Blaine gathered up his clothes and went alone into the forest.