Day 035: Sunday 21st October, 2012
In Flux (Mississippi)

"All I'm saying is that we need more horror films on this list."

"Kurt, please just—look, I know. I know we do, but you know how much Tobin Bell freaks me out..."

"Alright, alright. How about The Ladykillers?"



"...out in North Carolina and then there's Madison, Wisconsin and Olympia in Washington—"

"Blaine," Kurt whined, cracking an eye and searching for Blaine's face in the dim light.

"Phoenix, Arizona and Lansing, Michigan," Blaine continued, his voice coming softly from somewhere behind Kurt. Limbs heavy, it was with what felt like a Herculean effort that he managed to prop himself up enough to turn his head to face the other way, where Blaine was stretched out next to him on top of the bed covers. A wide smile stretching his full lips, Blaine reached down and linked their hands, singing, "Here's Honolulu; Hawaii's a joy, Clarksdale, Mississippi—"

"It's Jackson, not Clarksdale," Kurt corrected him, voice raspy and still thick with sleep.

"I know. But we're in Clarksdale, now," Blaine said.

"We are? You drove the rest of the way?" Kurt asked, tensing his body to stretch as Blaine shrugged. "What time is it?"

"Almost midnight," Blaine answered, and unlinked their hands to trace a fingertip along the line of Kurt's brow. "How's your head?"

"Better. Remind me not to watch our movies in the dark," Kurt answered, and buried his face in his pillow to stifle a yawn. He shivered pleasantly when Blaine's hand dropped to his neck, a ghost of sensation that he steeled himself against chasing: it was late, and they had plans.

"I've never noticed just how many freckles you have," Blaine said absently, dotting them out with his fingers, and Kurt chuckled as he turned onto his side and tucked his elbow underneath his head.

"Remember that time you stole your mom's eyebrow pencil and drew them all over your face because you wanted us to be twins?"

"Oh, God, don't remind me," Blaine groaned. "I looked like I had the chicken pox."

"And then she went white when she saw you and started chasing you around with the thermometer," Kurt said, shaking with laughter. "I haven't thought about that in forever."

"Thank heaven for small mercies. You used to give me hell about it," Blaine said, his smile easy and fond. "Anyway, time to get up, Sleeping Beauty. We don't wanna be late."

As Blaine made to move away, Kurt caught his hand and pulled him close to press their lips together: an impulsive, sweet, and lingering kiss that felt timeless, like he'd possessed the knowledge of how Blaine kissed for far longer than three days.

Has it really only been three days? he thought.

Blaine sighed into the kiss, tension Kurt hadn't even known was there leaching from his muscles, and just before he climbed off the bed, he whispered against Kurt's lips, "Later."

Kurt rolled onto his back and laid there for a moment, listening to the sounds of Blaine moving around the R.V. There was music playing, something with a dark, catchy synthesized riff that Kurt recognized as a song from the playlist Blaine had brought back from London—Changed The Way You Kiss Me, he thought, and almost started to hum along until he caught himself. Shaking his head, he threw off the covers and walked around the bed to the small, mirrored closets set along the back wall of the bedroom. Out of the far left he pulled a simple white t-shirt and a thick, red and black plaid jacket. With a rueful smile at his own reflection, he plucked once at the front of his threadbare sleep shirt—the one Blaine had bought him for his twentieth birthday: charcoal black and bearing the slogan 'don't need a permit for these guns,' with arrows pointing left and right—and pulled it over his head.

When he caught Blaine watching him in the mirror, he called out, "Later, Casanova," and carried on dressing himself, trying to put all thoughts of 'later' out of his mind.

Sex with Blaine was... Well, it was sex with Blaine.

On the surface, at least—and that was where Kurt wanted to keep it. Nothing deeper, no hidden meaning belying every word or look or movement, and absolutely no mentioning just how dangerous what they were doing probably was. No, if it was kept strictly on the surface then nothing would change, and that was what Kurt wanted more than anything.

He didn't want to examine too deeply, for instance, the pleasant hum and buzz that pooled in his limbs whenever he caught Blaine looking at him like he'd hung the moon and hand-dotted the sky with stars. That would verge way too closely on something he didn't want to be, something he'd never been to anyone. He was the player, the quick fuck, the sure thing, and he liked it that way.

In his second year of college, he'd tried the relationship thing with a guy called Max whom he'd been pursuing for a while—and who insisted on dates first. Kurt had managed to stick it out for eleven months, having fallen hard and fast into something that was like love but that he'd never wanted to fully give himself over to. It would have been easy, but it would also have a felt a little like dying because there was love but too much, like being smothered by it instead of wrapped up in it.

And then, after a week of fighting about Kurt's numerous shortcomings, Max decided to show Kurt just how well he was meeting expectations. Kurt had showed up at Max's apartment with white tulips and a promise to do better on his tongue, only to find that Max had already found the affection he'd been seeking in the arms and lips of another.

The next day, Blaine had received the email calling him to London for his internship, and Kurt had learned once and for all what he was really worth.

He wasn't vain enough to think that Blaine's leaving had anything to do with him, of course, but it was that it seemed so very, very easy for Blaine to leave him behind—both on the day he left, and during the course of their year apart.

Before that year, Kurt had taken Blaine for granted. He knew it, and so did Blaine. Kurt had always been content enough to spend time alone—he'd needed it more than anything, at times, but the memory of the crushing loneliness he'd felt with Blaine so far away kept him grounded, and grateful to have him back. He had to hold onto their friendship at all costs, and push everything else into the corner of his mind where he kept all the things he never wanted to think about.

"Kurt, are you—? Whoa. You look nothing like yourself," Blaine said as he came back into the bedroom, cutting through Kurt's melancholic reminiscing.

"That's the point," he replied shortly, appraising his appearance in the mirror before turning to Blaine. "We're in the south, after all."

"Yeah, but—" Blaine started, but Kurt cut him off with a swift kiss.

"Are you going to serenade me?" he asked, gesturing to the guitar slung across Blaine's back.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Blaine replied as he adjusted Kurt's lapel. "Come on."

They were parked only a short walk away from the crossroads, but with the light chill riding on the night breeze, Kurt was grateful for his thick jacket.

"What does 'chilling on my Jack Jones' mean?" he asked after a minute or so, the bewildering lyric from the song stuck in his head.

"It's Cockney rhyming slang," Blaine explained after a moment. "It means 'on my own'. God, I had the worst time trying to understand Tom when I first got over there."

"Which one is Tom, again?"

"He's the one who wants to be a music supervisor."

"Is he the one who—with the double-jointed thumbs?" Kurt asked, trying to separate out the faceless names in his mind. He'd heard so many stories about Blaine's friends from London over the summer that it was like being there and yet not, like he knew these people but never would—not until they each rose to the top of their respective fields, like everyone else who had studied under Serafino.

"No, that's Steve. He's also the one who switched me on to that song."

"Cinematographer, right?"

"Yep. He's got nothing on you, though."

Kurt smiled down at his Chucks for a moment, letting the good overtake his frustration surrounding 'the whole London thing,' as he referred to it—it stung, even now—and capitalized on the opportunity to change the subject.

"As much as I love film," he said, "it's kind of nice to not have to talk about it constantly. You know? To not have to dissect and deconstruct every single little detail."

"Even though that's exactly what we've been doing with every movie we've watched," Blaine said, bumping their shoulders together. The movement jostled his guitar, and he righted it with a quick tug on the strap.

"Yes, but we're not being forced to. No term papers or projects to show around and get feedback on."

"It's just easy, right? At our own pace."

"Another reason I'm happy we're doing this," Kurt said.

"But the main reason's the sex, right?" Blaine asked, leaning over conspiratorially, and Kurt tensed so that he didn't duck his head out of the curious sense of modesty that had been settling over him since Key West.

"Of course," he agreed, and took a sip of water from the Camelbak he'd borrowed from Blaine.

"Look, there it is!" Blaine said, pointing ahead to a fairly nondescript, triangular traffic island at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49. Out of a clump of trees rose a large sign bearing three guitars atop the legend 'The Crossroads,' their color drained under the orange of the streetlamps. There were no cars on the roads, and save for the increasing wind, there was silence.

"It's like we're the only two people in the world," Kurt thought aloud. Blaine gave him that look again, the one that electrified Kurt's very blood, and pulled him across the street to stand beneath the sign.

"So what would you make a deal with the devil for?" Blaine asked as he pulled out his phone to take a picture.

You, Kurt thought, and shook himself. Get it together. "Right now, taking a bath in a real bathtub. I miss my Sunday Soak. What about you?"

Without missing a beat, Blaine answered, "A box of Double Dip Crunch."

"Really? I never tried it," Kurt said.

"It was only the greatest cereal the world has ever known," Blaine said, and sighed heavily. "They had something similar in London, but it wasn't the same. Honey Nut Shreddies, I think—like Quaker Shredded Wheat."

"Did you feel more at home there than you do here?" Kurt asked abruptly, looking at the way Blaine was rubbing his thumb along his forefinger. It was something he only ever did when talking about London, and something that gave him a distinctly dichotomous air, like there were two separate versions of him: the one whose heart belonged to London, and the one whose heart belonged to—

That belonged to this—this nomadic life and the search for home.

"I haven't ever really felt at home anywhere," Blaine said. "But less so here."

Kurt smiled wanly and buried his hands in his pockets with a shiver. "I believe you owe me a serenade, good sir," he reminded him.

"And I believe I told you I wouldn't dream of it," Blaine replied, but was already swinging his guitar around and flexing his fingers. "How about some blues, since we're here?"

"I don't know; wouldn't that be bad luck? It's a good thing we're not here on Halloween, what with all the spirits walking the earth again," Kurt bantered, casting around an exaggerated glance. Blaine simply smiled, pulled a guitar pick from his pocket, and began to play.

"I got ramblin', I got ramblin' on my mind," he sang, and Kurt couldn't help but laugh. "I got ramblin', I got ramblin' all on my mind. Hate to leave my baby, but you treats me so unkind."

Blaine seemed to settle into the song's unusual rhythm almost effortlessly, and all at once, Kurt could see the change in him. It had been subtle; something in the way he'd been holding himself just a little bit taller the past couple of days. Like he used to, Kurt thought. When Blaine had been performing with the Cogs at The Cannery, he'd almost been leaning forward, still trying to convince Kurt to go even though he'd long since agreed. In his father's basement, he'd been sitting hunched over his guitar, working himself through his regret. Now, his chin was tipped up, his shoulders down and that old shine back in his eyes. He was just... Blaine again.

"Runnin' down to the station, catch the first mail train I see. I got the blues about Mister So-and-So, and the child got the blues about me," he sang, circling Kurt with stilted steps and slowly crowding him underneath the tree. Under the dark cover of the leaves above their heads, Blaine's eyes were nothing more than dark smudges, and yet Kurt could feel them locked on his own. Blaine began to strum more softly, his voice dropping to little more than a whisper.

Despite Kurt's small height advantage, in that moment Blaine seemed disarmingly tall. A few seconds after his back hit the trunk of the tree, Blaine wound the song up, the last notes fading into the charged air between them. He was breathing heavily, matching Kurt exhale for exhale, and Kurt reached forward to slowly push the guitar out of his hands and turn it to settle against his back. As easily as if they'd been doing it for years, Blaine hooked his arms around Kurt's waist beneath the flannel of his jacket, his cool hands finding their way to the skin at the small of his back.

"How's that for a serenade?"

Kurt's huff of laughter was shaky with anticipation. "I don't think you can serenade someone with the blues unless you're Clapton."

Blaine inched closer, rocking forward to whisper into Kurt's ear, "I'll sing you a love song if that's what you really want."

Caught between a spike of fear at just what Blaine could do to him and feeling like an eager, wide-eyed groupie, Kurt tipped Blaine's chin up and kissed him. Blaine wrapped his arms more tightly around him and blistering heat seeped through Kurt's clothes, his skin, his flesh and muscle all the way down to his bones. It was searing, adding to the welt forming somewhere deep in Kurt's chest.

It was a claim he couldn't ever hope to honor.

He could take Blaine's body, even though he couldn't take his heart. And that would just have to do.



Distance: 4,418 miles