A/N: Part b. Kurt and Blaine were in good moods today, so the angst is back on the backburner for this one. This is ultimately a romance/adventure with comedic elements, though, so it's definitely still simmering back there. Just so you're warned.

Kurt was still confused twenty minutes later.

"So what you're saying is you're a wizard. Like Harry Potter."

"No, I'm—I'm magic. Like, a physical embodiment of magic."

"So… like a wizard."

"No. A wizard does it; I am it."

"Disneyland?"

"This is so much more frustrating than I thought it was going to be."

Kurt collapsed onto his back, staring up at the ceiling above him. He thought hard.

"Gandalf."

"I'm not a wizard," Blaine insisted from the chair he had once again taken up residence in. Kurt fought a grin.

Blaine blinked. A knowing smile slowly spread across his face. "That was a joke, wasn't it?" he asked Kurt suspiciously. Kurt's grin won the fight and shone brightly and triumphantly on his face—surprising a laugh out of Blaine.

"Can you do substitutiary locomotion?" Kurt asked, rolling onto his stomach to look at Blaine properly. Blaine had turned the chair backward and propped his elbows overtop the back of it, resting his temple against his left hand. Kurt watched as he shook his head wryly.

"You are something else," he smiled. A bubble of delight expanded Kurt's ribs.

"And you're magic," Kurt responded. "Whatever that means."

Blaine's smile stayed the same, but his eyes moved intently across Kurt's face.

"C'mere," he said determinedly. Kurt raised himself up on his forearms. What? "C'mere," Blaine repeated, shifting up straight in his chair and gesturing Kurt closer. Kurt tentatively sat up and moved toward the edge of the bed. Blaine gestured more emphatically. "Closer. Come on, I'm not going to bite," he nudged.

Kurt hesitated. The only way to get closer would be to sit at the edge of the bed, and since Blaine had moved the chair even closer than it had been before, Kurt considered that a blatant invasion of Blaine's personal space—especially after what had happened only forty minutes prior. He shoved down the nausea that rose within him quickly, hoping to bury it before Blaine noticed.

He stayed where he was.

Blaine's expression softened.

"Kurt, it's okay," he said gently. "I trust you."

Kurt looked into those beautifully reassuring eyes—so open and filled with such conviction—and couldn't help but think how absolutely stupid it was of Blaine to do so.

"Why?" he asked. It came out harsher than he intended. He felt a flicker of surprise at its tone at the same time shock knocked Blaine's expression wide open.

"I…" The assurance Blaine had so confidently projected stumbled, and Kurt felt a tug inside as he watched him search the room for words. "I don't know," Blaine finally said, meeting his eyes. "I just do."

Something inside of him gave way.

He moved to the edge of the bed.

Blaine had a look on his face Kurt couldn't interpret. He was about to move back to the center of the bed when Blaine sent him a sweet smile and reached out. Kurt sucked in a breath and held it in his shoulders, but let the strong fingers wrap around the back of his right hand. Blaine's thumb started stroking a line down the supple center of his palm. Kurt breathed out shakily.

"What are you doing?" he asked nervously. Blaine's gaze had turned inward—and golden. "Blaine?" Kurt asked, alarmed.

Blaine let out a soothing shh, his attention still drawn somewhere inside of himself. His thumb continued its slow caress up and down Kurt's was suddenly immensely thankful he was sitting down, because his knees would have buckled embarrassingly quickly had he not been.

Was there a reason they had to be so close for this?

Blaine's eyes fell half-closed, his lips parting a little. A light tingling accompanied his next stroke. Kurt's breath hitched.

"Kurt," Blaine murmured with a small smile, "Calm down."

"Yep!" Kurt squeaked. "Calm!"

The next stroke the tingling was stronger. A quiet trembling snuck up his spine.

"What are you doing?" he asked again, his voice pitifully high.

A tickle.

A—

OW!

Kurt snatched his hand back at the sharp sting, cradling it protectively to his chest. "What was that for?" he cried. Blaine opened his eyes, still orange-gold and alien, and nodded to the hand.

"Look and see," he said.

Skeptically, Kurt did.

On his hand, somehow woven between the natural lines of his palm, was written a message in flowing cursive:

Sorry : (

Kurt didn't know whether he wanted to laugh, or slap the boy in front of him.

He settled on glaring. Emoticons were never cool, especially not tattooed onto someone's skin. Blaine sent him a sheepish half-smile before reaching out again. "Here," he said, grasping Kurt's hand in a firm handshake before Kurt could pull away. His fingers slid down Kurt's palm like they were exchanging drugs, dragging down his skin and tugging away an invisible string embedded in the center of Kurt's palm.

Blaine's fingers slipped off his, and he dusted off his hands nonchalantly. Kurt glanced down at his palm.

"Oh," he stared, feeling the now-smooth surface with the tips of the fingers of his other hand. "Okay."

Blaine had folded his arms on the back of the chair again, and rested his chin casually atop them. Kurt looked up to find Blaine watching him with an amused smile. His eyes, still glowing ocher, glanced purposely over at the table by the bed before looking back at Kurt. Kurt, a little too dazed to question it, turned to look.

There was no table by the bed.

…WAIT.

Kurt whipped around to stare at Blaine. "What did you–?"

Blaine raised his eyebrows innocently. Alien eyes again gestured to the table-that-now-apparently-didn't-exist. Kurt whirled a fast turn to find—

There it was. Sitting innocently next to the bed as if it had never left.

Kurt's head spun.

"You can make things disappear," he said faintly. Blaine shook his head.

"I can shift things into a pocket of space," he corrected, as if that made any more sense. "They're still there, technically. You just can't see or feel them."

Kurt didn't even know where to start with that one. "And you can… write things on people's palms?" (It sounded as underwhelming as it was.)

Blaine blushed. Kurt was charmed. "I thought it was a neat trick. Wes and David—" He cut himself off suddenly. "My friends liked to use it to communicate sometimes. Like… passing notes."

"Takes a little long to use it to pass notes," Kurt commented.

"Only the first time. Once you've learned the surface, it only takes a few seconds." He swiped a thumb up Kurt's palm to demonstrate, and Kurt's jumped as a sharp stab of pain flared to life underneath it.

Don't be frightened.

Blaine dragged his thumb down quickly, crooking it slightly, and Kurt watched as the letters leached away into the pad of it like splinters being pulled, looking for all the world like they were being unstitched.

"See?"

It had been easier to swallow when Blaine's mysterious talents remained relatively invisible. Now it just felt like Kurt had unintentionally tripped through the looking glass on his way to the Finn's room.

"What else can you do?" Oh, wonderful. His astonishing tendency to rise several octaves in pitch when he was nervous remained intact. Great.

Blaine was squinting at him. "Um…" His hand moved to hover over Kurt's arm. Kurt held his breath.

Nothing happened.

"What are—?"

Blaine's hand suddenly moved to pat Kurt's arm, and drew away. He blinked and the gold in his eyes was gone. "The end! That's it," he said cheerfully.

…Well, that was fake.

Kurt tilted his head. "What were you about to do?" he pressed.

Blaine looked at him with a frozen smile (and really, this boy was an open book; Kurt couldn't believe it had taken him this long to read him). "Nothing," he said. "That's all."

Kurt raised a careful eyebrow.

Blaine rolled his eyes. "It was nothing," he insisted. "Not worth demonstrating."

One of the great things about being so close was the uninterrupted view of Blaine's now-honey-brown eyes: wherein Kurt found evidence of unease crinkled in the corners. Kurt was about to call him on it when Blaine's head snapped over to the door and—

He stood up, moving—Kurt didn't even know, couldn't even see him, one second he was holding the vanity chair and the next he—wasn't? The chair was in front of the vanity, Blaine was at a more appropriate distance, and Kurt still felt a lingering warmth where Blaine's hand had flushed happiness through his system by way of his shoulder.

"Done being boring?" Puck asked as he barreled into the room, throwing an arm around Blaine's shoulder. "Mom Hudson says dinner's ready, and after we eat, you're called to duty."

"Called to duty?" Blaine asked, amusement lacing his voice.

"It's the name of the game you were playing," Kurt explained as he got up and led the way out of his room. "And Puckerman is suffering from highly severe delusions if he thinks he's converting you into a mindless killing machine just so he can beat Finn."

"Hey!" Puck cried. Kurt ignored him, smiling absentmindedly. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered that the last thirty seconds probably would have rendered him completely catatonic with shock had he not been feeling so happily content when it all happened. Damn, Blaine, good call. (And speaking of, Blaine totally lied about what else he could do, because no one could move that fast. No one. Kurt couldn't stop himself from wondering what else Blaine was still hiding.)

"Dude, what did you do to Hummel?" Kurt heard Puck whisper as they headed down the hall. "I didn't even know he knew how to smile like that."

Walking down the stairs, Kurt felt the contentment start to mist away, and he sighed through closed lips as what Blaine had been trying to show him finally registered.

Blaine was magic. He could do things no other human could do, some without so much as lifting a finger. He had some kind of power—no, he was a kind of power Kurt had never seen before. He was magic.

… He wasn't human.

The enormity of the situation hit him.

It was going to be unbelievably difficult finding a romantic-comedy metaphor to fit this.