A/N: If any writers are reading this, you know that there are those times when something you were expecting to be a normal scene turns out almost sickeningly adorable. This was one of those times!

Enjoy!

Not a day went by that Blaine and Kurt didn't somehow get in touch, even if it was just for coffee. Almost three weeks after their first kiss and a week before Christmas, they decided to meet at a fountain in Central Park.

"Oh my God," Blaine said, bursting into laughter as Kurt teetered toward him. "Are you in there somewhere or am I going on a date with the Michelin Man?"

"Ha ha, very funny," Kurt said, adjusting his scarves and hoods so that Blaine could see his face. "It's freezing out!"

"So you decided to layer," Blaine said. "And layer, and layer, and layer, and – ow!"

Kurt had reached over and punched him softly on the arm. "That didn't hurt," Kurt said as a smile crept onto his face. "It was a love tap."

Blaine's heart thundered against his ribs. Had he just…no. It was a figure of speech. Still… "A love tap?" Kurt seemed to have realized what he said as soon as it slipped out. He cleared his throat and averted his eyes. Blaine, eager to change the subject, stood up from the bench he had been sitting on and nodded his head down a path. "Want to walk?"

This thing that he had with Kurt was different than any relationship he'd had before. It had been three weeks and neither of them had tried to do more than kiss. Blaine's body had wanted to, screamed to even, but his mind said no. He would not mess this up. They had been to each other's apartments for at-home dinner dates and movie nights but neither ever stayed over nor asked if they could. Of course, Kurt had already spent a night in bed, but Blaine figured that was different. He'd been doing him a favor - he still stuck to that idea stubbornly - and they hadn't been together yet.

They hadn't had their "what is this thing that we're doing" talk yet, so their relationship remained undefined. Nevertheless, Blaine couldn't help but think of Kurt as his boyfriend. He knew that this was the point when he should be freaking out and running away, as he had before. However, he wasn't scared, and he didn't want to run. It was a wholly new experience and Blaine didn't want to spoil it by saying something he shouldn't, or making a move that would ruin whatever was going on.

"My plane leaves tomorrow," Blaine said as they began to work. Kurt turned to look at him quickly. Blaine had mentioned to Kurt that he was going home for the Christmas holiday, but he'd only bought his ticket the night before. "You wouldn't believe how hard it was to book a flight. I couldn't get anything closer to Christmas."

"Is that bad?" Kurt asked, his warm breath showing in puffs in the cold air. "You'll get to be with your family for longer. I mean, that's why you're going in the first place."

"Mmm, yeah," Blaine conceded. "We haven't talked much about our families, huh?" Blaine chuckled. "If we had, you'd have known that getting back together with my family, even once a year, isn't number one on my Christmas list."

"It can't be that bad." Kurt looked out across the snow strewn path. He raised his fingers – clad in Charles Dickens-esque fingerless gloves – to his mouth and tried to warm them with his breath. "They're your family after all. I'm sure you could think of one thing you like about going home."

"One thing?" Blaine asked, looking at Kurt with a grin. He didn't immediately follow his clarification with an answer. He just looked. The cold winter air had blown roses of color onto the apples of Kurt's cheek, and they stood out starkly on his pale skin. The tips of his elven ears had gone slightly pink with cold, as had the tips of his fingers. Scarves – more than one, Blaine was certain – draped across his neck. Sweaters, cardigans, and any number of coats and jackets, unidentifiable from one another in their layered chaos covered him. Based on the description alone, he sounded like a homeless man, but Kurt looked perfect. He looked like he'd just stepped off of the runway for an urban designer's winter collection, with his hair perfectly coifed and slightly windblown.

After a few moments of silence, Kurt looked around himself. "What?" he asked, his voice only slightly louder than a whisper. He made eye contact with Blaine and tilted his head. "Do I have something on my face?"

"Nothing that shouldn't be there," Blaine said, finally looking away. Kurt laughed softly and bumped their shoulders together as they walked. Their fingers brushed together, and Blaine's hand lingered there. He finally moved his hand around and linked their fingers together. "Cold," he commented, brushing his thumb against the back of Kurt's hand.

"Not for long," Kurt said. Blaine looked over to see him biting on his bottom lip, his eyes fixed on the ground in front of them.

Blaine inhaled the winter air. His lungs filled with a sharp sting of coldness but he welcomed it, as he did everything in this moment. "Well, you're right, of course," Blaine continued. "About there being one thing I can think of that I like when I go home. I always get to see Cooper."

"Oh." Kurt looked at Blaine through the corner of his narrowed eye. "Is he…an old boyfriend? I didn't think you had a good track record with old boyfriends."

Hiding a smile, Blaine looked at Kurt, who had his nose scrunched up in displeasure. "Cooper's my big brother," he corrected, watching Kurt's expression turn from displeasure to relief to curiosity. "We're actually really close. We Skype about once a week, but he's living in Los Angeles. We usually only get to see each other when we both go back home."

"You didn't tell me you have a brother," Kurt said in a strange voice. Blaine's brow furrowed momentarily. Not a moment later, Kurt was back to smiling and Blaine thought he imagined Kurt's strange reaction. "Why is he in LA?"

"I guess neither of us was cut out for small town Ohio life," Blaine said, his thumb tracing the back of Kurt's hand subconsciously. "We just happened to go in two different directions, literally. I think about that sometimes, how it would be nice to have him here in New York when stuff seems at its shittiest."

"But that isn't now," Kurt said, leaning into Blaine's side. They'd stopped walking in the middle of a small bridge, and they leaned against the side to look down at the frozen water, hands still linked.

"Definitely not now," Blaine agreed. "You're staying here then?"

Kurt mumbled indistinctly. "I have to work, unfortunately," he said quietly.

Blaine gaped. "On Christmas? Isn't that…I mean…is that a popular…d-do people…" He closed his eyes, sighed, and gave up on the thought, feeling ashamed of himself.

"Do many people go to a gay strip club on Christmas?" Kurt asked. "No, we're closed. Christmas Eve, however, is another matter entirely. Then I'll probably spend the actual day with David."

"I'd like to meet him sometime," Blaine commented, "if you want me to. He almost sounds like family, the way you talk about him."

"He may as well be," Kurt said. "He's helped me out a lot, but I guess that sentiment is mutual between me and him. We actually knew each other in high school. Then we both came here on our own. I knew he was living in the city somewhere, but I never met up with him even once, until about two and a half years after I came here."

Blaine observed Kurt curiously as he slowly revealed tiny bits about his life. Blaine listened attentively to everything Kurt said, which was how he knew it was exactly the second time Kurt had mentioned anything about his high school life, the first being that he left his hometown after graduating. "It's strange knowing someone from high school when you're here, isn't it?" Blaine asked, looking out over the ice. "It's someone you knew before turning into the person you are here. In my case, that's a really different person than I was in high school. They know both sides of you though. I kind of get that now that Jeff is here with his fiancé."

"Nightclub man?" Kurt asked, putting a horrified hand over his mouth. "I'd completely forgotten that your oldest friend here in the city saw me being a complete idiot that night."

Blaine laughed. "He thought it was charming and just a little bit naïve," he reassured Kurt. "I could tell you a million stories about Jeff to make you two even – things not even his fiancé knows. If he ever brings it up when you don't want him to, tell him that you don't think any story can compare to the one about his and Nick's experimental phase senior year." The fact that neither he nor Kurt had ever officially met any of the other's friends didn't bother Blaine. He figured they would get to that when they got to it. That was the view he largely took when thinking about the pace of his relationship with Kurt. Everything seemed to be flowing naturally, and Blaine trusted it to keep moving in such a way.

"Experimental phase?" Kurt asked, face perking up. "Ooh, that sounds exciting! Do tell."

Blaine shook his head. "Nope," he said. "That information is for emergencies only."

"Aw, come on," Kurt said, slipping his hand out of Blaine's. It took Blaine a moment to realize that it was for the purpose of two-handed tickle-persuasion. "Please, Blaine? I won't tell anyone! Straight guy experimental phases make such fun stories."

Blaine gasped between fits of laughter. He tried to grapple with Kurt's hands but was losing spectacularly. "I'll stop if you tell me," Kurt bargained. The one-sided war had caused Blaine to back up to the far side of the bridge and onto the ground on the other side.

"I can't breathe," Blaine gasped out. "Oh God, I was hoping you never…found out that I'm…ticklish! Kurt, I'm dying. I'm dying, I'm dead, I'm dying. You killed me."

"You're being dramatic," Kurt said, laughing. Blaine was wiggling around in his grasp, and had turned around so that he was in the circle of Kurt's arms. Blaine ducked his head down to try to loosen Kurt's grasp on him when he heard a series of noises sound quickly, one after another. First there was the sound of soft impact, then a cry of surprise from Kurt, who immediately let go of Blaine and stepped back as Blaine was showered with flakes of snow, even though it had ceased snowing yesterday. That was followed by a series of cackles from several yards away, and finally a string of swears and panicked fumbling noises.

Startled, Blaine tried to brush the snow away from his eyes. He spun around on the spot until he saw Kurt, who was teetering on the edge of a long hill that they must have made their way toward during the tickle war. He looked at Blaine with eyes that were wide and startled. His hands reached out and circled like windmills in an attempt to correct his balance. Observing the snow covering his face, Blaine had just enough time to deduce that it had been a snowball – probably thrown by the cacklers – that had set off this chain of reactions before Kurt ultimately lost his battle, fell backward, and began to roll down the hill like a snowball of layers. The whole thing had happened in no more than three seconds.

Stunned to a standstill, Blaine watched in horror as Kurt rolled down the hill in a rush of squeaks, squeals, and flailing, scrabbling limbs. As soon as his brain processed what was happening, Blaine quickly took off after Kurt. He tried to lift his legs high as he battled his way through the freshly fallen snow. Unfortunately, his progress toward Kurt didn't work out the way he'd wanted it to.

Kurt had slowed to a stop at the bottom of the hill and he looked up through snow-dusted eyelashes to see Blaine flailing toward him at top speed, eventually crashing into the snow face-first about twenty feet away, and finally sliding to a standstill ten feet later.

Laughing breathlessly, he slowly crawled his way over to where Blaine laid. Kurt reached under one of his arms and flipped Blaine around, so that he was on his back looking up at Kurt, who hovered over him, still laughing. Both of them were coated in snow from head to foot. It stuck in their hair and had worked its way into the folds of their clothes, but neither noticed the chill yet.

Gasping for air, Kurt laid his head on Blaine's chest. He could feel it moving up and down with Blaine's laughter. "You tried to come save me," Kurt said finally, when he had caught his breath.

"Tried being the key word there," Blaine said, still chuckling in spite of himself. Kurt smiled against the fabric of Blaine's jacket as Blaine lifted a hand and began to gently run it through Kurt's hair. Kurt inhaled, closed his eyes, and wrapped his arms around Blaine as they stretched out next to each other on the snow. "I didn't know why I thought trying for the knight in shining armor thing would work for me."

"It worked for me," Kurt said simply, tipping his head so that his chin rested on Blaine's chest and he could look into his amber eyes.

Blaine had stopped laughing. He returned Kurt's gaze as a lazy smile played across his face. His hand moved languidly through Kurt's hair until Kurt moved and disrupted the pattern his fingers had been following. Kurt pulled himself into a sitting position and scooted closer to the upper half of Blaine's body. He saw a moment of disappointment cross Blaine's face – disappointment that they weren't laying together anymore? Kurt found the look amusing, if only because he didn't know Kurt's agenda.

Now closer to Blaine's head, Kurt leaned over him. With one hand, he reached up and touched Blaine's face. His fingers skimmed over Blaine's skin as he gently brushed away the soft snow that had stuck there. That hand fell to the snowy ground on Blaine's other side, right above his shoulder. He bit his lip as he saw Blaine's eyelashes flutter and lower his gaze momentarily to look at Kurt's lips.

Kurt leaned down, savoring the moment when Blaine's eyes finally closed and his chin tipped up fractionally. Softly, his lips chastely cradled Blaine's bottom lip, lingering there for several seconds before drawing away. He didn't move far; he could feel Blaine's breath on his face still. Their lips tickled off of one another's, and their noses brushed together in an eskimo kiss.

He leaned down and kissed Blaine again, this time opening his mouth slightly to accommodate a deeper kiss. Blaine's hands reached up and cupped Kurt's face as their lips moved together. Kurt leaned closer to Blaine so their chests pressed against one another. Their kiss was far from chaste now – they were caught up in their moment. One of Blaine's hands had moved to the back of Kurt's neck and he pulled his face close so they could kiss deeply.

Minutes went by that way – kissing, sighing, tasting, touching – until Kurt broke away, breathless. He pressed his now overheated cheek against Blaine's for a moment before turning his head to kiss Blaine's cheek lightly and then pulling away.

"Maybe I should make a fool of myself more often," Blaine said breathlessly.

"Maybe I should beat you at tickle wars more often," Kurt said. He leaned his chin on his hands, which made a platform on Blaine's chest. "I can't believe that those bastard kids threw a snowball at my face."

Blaine chuckled and turned his head to look up the hill. "They're gone now. Aw, that's too bad. They missed the show."

"Blaine!" Kurt said, blushing furiously and ducking his face into Blaine's jacket.

"What? They did!" Blaine opened his arm wider as Kurt, still chuckling, moved off of Blaine's chest and curled up by his side. "You know what this is?"

"Hmm?" Kurt mumbled, closing his eyes and wrapping an arm around Blaine's waist.

"A Kodak moment!" Blaine scrabbled in his jacket pockets for his phone. He finally found it and held it at arm's length above them. "Smile!" he instructed.

As Blaine counted down from three, Kurt looked over at him. At the count of one, instead of looking at the camera and smiling, Kurt leaned forward and pressed his lips to Blaine's cheek. "Sorry," he said after the picture was taken. "I couldn't help myself."

Blaine averted his eyes in a bashful manner that Kurt wasn't used to. "I think that's probably an unnecessary apology," Blaine said, bringing up the picture and showing it to Kurt.

"Oh my gosh," Kurt said, grabbing the phone and holding it closer to get a better look. Blaine had somehow centered their faces perfectly so that you could still see that they were lying on the snow, as well as how Kurt's arm circled around Blaine. Both of them had snow in their hair and on their clothes. His own face looked serene, his eyes closed as his chin tipped forward to press his lips against Blaine's cheek. He had timed the kiss perfectly, so that Blaine's reaction was caught by the camera. His face had broken out in a huge, white-toothed smile, making the apples of his cheeks stand out. Even his eyes looked like they were laughing – they had crinkled at the edges so that they appeared almost closed. "Text it to me? That way I'll have it to remember you by while you're gone."

"Which will be as short of a time as possible," Blaine said, tapping through menus until he was able to add the picture to a text message. Kurt smiled as Blaine only added a less-than-three to the text box. "I'll be back before New Year's. Any longer than that, and I don't trust Mr. Hillard to not fly to Ohio to make sure I'm alright."

"Dave is having a New Year's party," Kurt said, just remembering. "Will you be my date? You can invite Jeff and his fiancé too, if you want."

"That sounds perfect," Blaine said, putting his phone to sleep and tucking it back into his pocket. "It'll be a welcome return to the city, believe me. And I think Jeff would like to meet the sober version of you. I owe him a favor or ten anyway."

"Nick and his experimental senior year," Kurt said with a grin. "I won't forget. I plan on hearing that whole story sometime, by the way."

"Get him drunk enough on the right kind of alcohol," Blaine advised. "If you spin it right, he'll tell you himself."

"We should probably get off of the snow," Kurt said reluctantly. "We'll freeze to death."

"Ugh, at least we'll die happily," said Blaine, groaning as he pulled himself to his feet. He held out a hand and helped Kurt to his feet. They began to walk back the way they came. Blaine wrapped his arm around Kurt's waist, and Kurt draped his over Blaine's shoulders. "You'll get your present when I get back, by the way."

Kurt smiled as he tried to picture what Blaine had gotten him. "Yours is in my apartment. I can give it to you then, too."

Blaine gaped. "What? I was just there yesterday!"

"I hid it," Kurt teased, leaning close and smiling against Blaine's cheek as he pressed his lips to it in a kiss. "You thought I'd just leave it on the couch?"

"Eh," Blaine muttered noncommittally. "I used to pride myself on having a hidden-present-sensor. All the excitement and secrets in New York must have short-circuited it."

Kurt chuckled and leaned his head against Blaine's shoulder as they walked. Surely a bit more than a week without Blaine wouldn't be too bad. He knew that they hadn't been together for too long – their first date had been about a month ago – but in actuality, a good amount of time had gone by from the time they had first met, and he felt like he'd been with Blaine forever in the best possible way.

"Maybe it'll repair itself when you're back in Ohio," Kurt suggested.

"I don't think anything repairs itself back home," Blaine complained. "It's where happy things go to die."

"That's awfully dramatic!" Kurt said. He hoped that his accompanying laughter hadn't sounded as forced as it felt. "It's been a year since you've been back, right? Maybe you've just forgotten that it isn't really that bad." It was his family, after all. Kurt knew that Blaine wouldn't be complaining about having to visit his hometown if he knew the secret Kurt was keeping about his own family, or rather, the absence of one. That was one of the reasons he didn't want to tell Blaine about it. It would change their whole dynamic. Thankfully, Blaine had never again brought up Sherri Harlan and why Kurt was seeing her, as if he could sense that Kurt wasn't ready to talk about it. One day, he would tell him everything.

"Say hi to Cooper for me then," Kurt said. Blaine's expression shifted into a small grin, for which Kurt was grateful. "If he's anything like you, I can see why he's your one good thing about going home."

Blaine tilted his head to look at Kurt. "Maybe you can meet him one day."

Kurt tried to control the size of his ecstatic smile and the breathiness of his voice as he spoke: "I think I'd really like that."

A/N: There we go! With all the excitement over Cooper going through the internet (and it's SO excitement worthy!) I really couldn't resist adding him in here! When Blaine is on Ohio, if everything goes according to plan, there will be one section from Kurt's POV and one from Blaine's - so we'll get to meet Cooper for real. I have a question forr you guys though! I could write the Blaine-in-Ohio part from Blaine's POV, as I have done on and off in this so far, OR I could do it from Cooper's POV up until he and Blaine seperate again. Pros: you'd get to see what Cooper thinks of his little brother's sexuality and his new romance with Kurt, you'd get to see what Cooper thinks of their parents, you'd get to see everything happen through Cooper's eyes. Cons: that might be kind of abrupt for just a part of the story since the rest of just Kurt and Blaine's POV (though I AM planning on bringing Cooper back at least once), you wouldn't get to see Blaine interact with his family through his own POV, you wouldn't get to be in Blaine's mind when he talks about Kurt to other people. I suppose that if enough people can't decide which they'd prefer, I might be able to craft it through both POVs :P

Thanks for reading guys! I hoped you enjoyed, and please leave a review! :D