A/N: Okay. So. Gah! I'm still sort of freaking out about this story, especially because I can see it starting to take shape in my head and it's a little overwhelming. However, I want to say thank you thank you THANK YOU to the people who reviewed/favorited/alerted. You are the reason I decided to continue this. I know this isn't a typical Klaine story, but I'm hoping you'll stick with me as I see how this whole thing unfolds. And please, please (yes, I am shamelessly begging) review and let me know what you think - I've never written anything like this before, so I'm desperate for feedback. At the moment, I'm planning on writing a few more chapters of this and seeing how I feel about it and what the response is like, and then I'll decide where to go from there. So please review or message me or whatever so I know whether this is something people actually want to read! Okay sorry, now I will stop harassing you and just let you get to the story.
Blaine closed his eyes and counted to ten, wondering if he was dreaming again. But when he opened his eyes, the boy in green, the one from his dreams, was still standing over him, looking intrigued and slightly guilty.
"Sorry, did I wake you?" the boy said.
"I - no," Blaine stammered, sitting up quickly and inching to the other side of his bed. As he backed away, he got a better view of the boy - he was lithe and fair with dark brown hair, atop of which perched a green cap with a red feather sticking out of it. He wore a short-sleeved tunic, belted at the waist, over forest green leggings, with moccasins on his feet. He was every bit as beautiful in real life as he had been in Blaine's dreams, which perhaps accounted for Blaine's reluctance to run screaming out of his room and alert his parents that a strange boy had suddenly appeared in his bedroom. That, and the fact that although they had never actually met in real life, Blaine still felt like he knew this boy.
"Oh. Good." The boy was looking around the room curiously, apparently unaware that it was rather rude to arrive in someone's bedroom in the middle of the night without offering any sort of explanation.
"Sorry but, uh, who are you?" Blaine said, having now reached the far side of his bed. It was a blunt question, but one he felt he had the right to ask given the current situation.
"Oh!" the boy said, his attention returning to Blaine. Blaine felt his heartbeat quicken slightly as those beautiful blue eyes fixed on him. "Sorry, I forgot. I'm Kurt. And you're Blaine, right?"
"Umm. Yeah," Blaine nodded, surprised. "How did you know?"
"I heard you fighting with your parents earlier," Kurt explained casually, as if listening in on people's private conversations with their parents was something he did on a regular basis. "That's why I'm here, actually."
"Oh." Blaine wondered whether he should be frightened, and whether any of this was supposed to make any sense at all to him. There were a lot of questions he wanted to ask this boy, like am I dreaming and how did you hear me fighting with my parents and how are you here if I was just dreaming about you and what the hell is going on? Instead, he settled for, "Wait, what?" Not the most eloquent wording, perhaps, but it certainly summed up his current state of confusion.
"Well, didn't you say to you didn't want to grow up?" Kurt asked, looking completely unashamed that he had obviously been eavesdropping.
"I guess so, yeah."
"So that's pretty much a direct invitation for me to pay you a visit. Like putting a tooth under your pillow would be for the tooth fairy."
Blaine stared at him blankly, still feeling like he was missing something very important. "And why is that, exactly?"
"Well, I'm from Neverland, of course. And I'm here to take you back with me, if you want to go. Which it sounds like you do."
"You're from Neverland?" Blaine said incredulously. "Like Peter Pan?"
For the briefest of moments, something like pain seemed to flash across Kurt's face, but it very quickly dissolved into irritation. "Well sure, everyone knows about it because of him," Kurt scoffed. "But Peter doesn't even live there anymore. I took over for him a while ago." He drew himself up proudly.
Blaine felt overwhelmed by this news. He was still trying to make sense of the fact that a boy who, up until tonight, existed solely in his subconscience, had suddenly appeared in his bedroom. And now this boy - Kurt - was talking about Neverland like it was a real place and Peter freaking Pan like he had known him for years. This had to be a dream.
"Am I dreaming?" he asked, voicing his thoughts.
"Nope," Kurt said cheerfully.
"But Neverland - and you, I've seen you -" he paused, wondering if it would be strange to announce that he'd been dreaming about Kurt for months. But then again, everything about this situation was strange. Very, very strange.
"In your dreams?" Kurt finished the sentence for him.
"Yeah," Blaine admitted, torn between sheepishness and wonderment at how much Kurt seemed to know about him.
"Yeah, that happens a lot when people are really worried about growing up. It's less often that I actually hear someone say it out loud, though, like you did."
"How did you even hear that?" Blaine asked suspiciously.
Kurt flushed slightly and looked away. "I was just, uh, passing by."
Blaine felt that this was a vague, and perhaps not entirely truthful, answer - passing by on his way to where? - but he let it slide because there were far too many other things he wanted to ask. "So did you say you've come to take me with you? To Neverland?"
Kurt nodded. "If you want to go, yes."
"I can't just leave," Blaine said, more to himself than Kurt.
"Why not?"
Blaine was surprised when he found it difficult to answer that question. "Well -" he fumbled. "I have school, and my parents..."
"Both of which have you on a fast-track to being an adult, which you clearly don't want."
"Well..." Blaine thought about this for a moment, possessed by some inexplicable need to defend the parts of his life that were making him most unhappy. But then he remembered the college meeting and the fight with his parents, and he realized Kurt was right. "Yeah," he sighed.
"So then what's the point of staying?" Kurt was staring at Blaine intently, daring him to argue. "Get out while you can. In Neverland, you don't have to grow up. You don't have to worry about the future. You just get to live your life the way you want to live it."
Blaine swallowed. Wasn't this exactly what he wanted? The chance to be free of pressure, of expectations, of everyone's constant obsession with preparing for the future? Kurt was offering him the opportunity to live in the present, to focus on the now. Hadn't that been what he was yelling at his father about just a few hours ago?
"I know it's a lot," Kurt said kindly, evidently sensing Blaine's inner turmoil. "But just think about it - never having to grow up. You'd be free, Blaine."
Blaine nodded. Oh God, was he seriously thinking about doing this? "So - just say, hypothetically, I decided to go. How would we get to - to Neverland?"
Kurt smiled. "We'd fly, of course."
"Fly?" Blaine gaped at him.
"Well yeah, there's no other way to get there," Kurt said matter-of-factly. Then he noticed Blaine's shocked expression. "Oh, wait, I forgot. You can't fly, can you?"
"Umm, no." This was certainly the first time he had been asked that question. "Can you?"
"Of course," Kurt laughed. And then, very suddenly, he was sitting cross-legged in the air next to Blaine's bed. "See?"
Blaine's jaw dropped. He had never seen anything like it. Kurt wasn't flying so much as he was floating. He didn't seem to be exerting any effort at all - he simply hovered there, apparently weightless, sitting in the air as if there were an invisible chair beneath him. It was remarkable.
Kurt laughed again at Blaine's reaction, and this time Blaine noticed the beauty of the sound, sweet and pure and filled with merriment. It made his heart skip a beat, and the thought briefly crossed his mind that it might be worth going to Neverland just to hear Kurt laughing like that all the time.
"Okay, so you can fly," Blaine said once he had adjusted to the shock of seeing Kurt suspended in midair. "But what am I going to do?"
"Luckily, I have just the solution to that problem," Kurt replied. He glanced around the room as if looking for something. "Mercedes, Tina, where'd you go?" His gaze fell on Blaine's dresser, and he rolled his eyes. Blaine followed his line of vision and was surprised to see what at first appeared to be two small balls of light hovering in front of his mirror. Upon closer examination, he saw that they were in fact two very tiny girls, both with delicate wings sprouting out of their backs - fairies, he assumed. The one with darker skin was twirling around in front of the mirror, striking poses and clearly admiring herself. The other, much fairer, was perched on a bottle of his hair gel, shaking with silent laughter as she watched her friend.
"Oh, for the love of God, get away from the mirror," Kurt said in exasperation. Turning to Blaine, he added, "we don't have them at home, so they get a bit distracted whenever we come across one." He shook his head, half amused, half annoyed. "Come on, girls."
The darker skinned fairy struck a last pose, and then they both zoomed over to Kurt, coming to a halt in the air on either side of his head. "Girls, this is Blaine. Blaine, meet Mercedes and Tina."
Blaine smiled uncertainly, wondering what the proper etiquette was when being introduced to a fairy. Surely he wasn't supposed to shake their hands? He settled for an awkward wave, which was returned with great enthusiasm by Mercedes, the darker of the two, and also, albeit more shyly, by Tina.
"I think a bit of fairy dust will do the trick," Kurt said thoughtfully, looking back and forth between the two fairies. "You know what to do." They nodded and zipped over to Blaine, who watched in awe as they circled around his head, a fine, yellowish powder falling from their fluttering wings. When they had finished, they returned to their posts on either side of Kurt.
Blaine examined the layer of fairy dust that was now coating much of his upper body. He had half-expected to find himself floating in midair the moment the dust touched his skin, but alas, he remained seated on his bed, apparently still subject to the laws of gravity. He briefly contemplated flapping his arms, but decided against it, thinking that would look foolish. "So... now what?" he asked, looking up at Kurt.
"Think of something happy," Kurt instructed. "And just... believe that you can do it. It might help if you close your eyes."
"Okay..." Blaine shut his eyes and cast around for something happy to think about. Certainly not his parents, school, or college - not even his friends had been making him particularly happy lately. He settled on music, particularly his guitar, remembering the peace he felt whenever he played. Focusing very hard, he willed himself to be weightless, to simply rise up into the air and stay there. Nothing happened. He sighed in frustration, opening his eyes.
"Maybe I can help," Kurt said, drifting forward and extending his hands. Blaine took them tentatively, praying Kurt couldn't hear the way his heartbeat had suddenly picked up. "Okay, now focus really, really hard this time. Make it the happiest thing you can think of. And trust me." He squeezed Blaine's hands lightly. "You can do this."
Blaine nodded, closing his eyes again. This time, he focused on the feeling of Kurt's hands, so soft compared to his own. He reflected on the dreams he had had about Kurt, dreams where they flew together, hand-in-hand, beautiful landscapes rushing by beneath them. He thought about actually getting to live that dream, and his heart soared at the thought. And then he heard Kurt make a noise of triumphant approval, followed by the soft pattering of clapping fairy hands. Opening his eyes, he found himself floating above his bed. He was so startled that he promptly fell out of the air, landing on his pillow with a soft thump.
"You did it!" Kurt said with a laugh, reaching for Blaine's hand again. "Come on, try again."
Blace accepted his hand eagerly, conjuring up the same images that had worked so well for him last time, and before he knew it, he was suspended in midair once more. Kurt clapped his hands together in excitement. "Try flying around a bit," he suggested. He spread his arms and glided in a circle around Blaine's room, demonstrating. Blaine mimicked his posture, pushing uselessly at the air in an effort to propel himself forward. He wasn't sure how he did it, and he certainly did not look as graceful as Kurt, but he somehow managed to make an airborne lap around his bedroom. He practiced it a few more times until he felt he was getting the hang of it.
"Wow," he said, awed. He was flying.
"So now that that's all taken care of, are you ready to go?" Kurt asked, doing a nonchalant midair flip before flying over to Blaine's bedroom window.
"Wait, I haven't said I'm going yet."
Kurt sighed, crossing his arms as he hovered by the window. "What's holding you back?"
"What will my parents think when they wake up and see I'm gone? They'll freak out."
Kurt shook his head. "No they won't. Time works differently in Neverland. If you ever decide to come back, you'll arrive back in this exact moment. No time will have passed. The rules are a little different for me, of course, but that's how it will work for you."
Blaine stared at Kurt and the open window behind him, weighing his options. He could say no, tell Kurt to leave, and go back to bed. He would wake up tomorrow and convince himself that this was all a dream. And then he would slip back into the exact same routine, going to school, doing his homework, listening silently as his parents and teachers and friends went on and on about the future. It was not a particularly appealing option, but it was certainly the safe one. The whole idea of going gallivanting off to Neverland with a boy he barely knew was absolutely ludicrous, not to mention completely irresponsible.
But it was also so very, very tempting. If fairies from Neverland had already provided him with the ability to fly - oh God, he had forgotten he was still flying - he could only imagine what other wonders this far-off land might have in store. And it would give him the chance to literally stop time, to shirk responsibility and embrace his freedom. Perhaps most importantly, he would get to do all of this with Kurt at his side, laughing that gleeful laugh and looking at him with those amazing eyes. The thought gave him butterflies.
"Come on, Blaine," Kurt said softly, stretching out a hand.
It was a rash decision, Blaine knew. He had not thought it through nearly enough. He was still completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of new information he had received tonight, and his judgment was clouded by the presence of Kurt and the anger he still felt regarding his argument with his father.
But his mind was made up.
He grabbed his guitar and threw it over his shoulder, then flew forward and grasped Kurt's extended hand.
Kurt beamed at him. "Here we go!" he cried.
And they sailed out of Blaine's window together.
TBC... Thanks for reading!