Day 000: Sunday 16 September, 2012
The First Step (Maine)

"So what's our first movie going to be?"

"Has to be Forrest Gump. Has to be."

"I think I can live with that. Alright, Anderson. One down, forty-nine to go."

Blaine stood outside the R.V., the thumb of his left hand tracing around the patterns on his pocket watch casing, the fingers of his right absently swinging the keys back and forth. It was just after sunset and the sky was somewhere between periwinkle and cobalt. The stars hadn't yet made their twinkling appearance, though Blaine doubted if they would even be visible through the thin layer of cirrostratus that had contained the late-September humidity since mid-morning.

The entire summer had been leading to this point. All the hours logged on Google Maps and Wikipedia; all the vetoes cashed in when debating movie choices; all the grease that got lodged beneath his stubby fingernails as they fixed up the R.V. outside Burt's shop. All of it done in the name of a bond that they could trace back sixteen years, to a day not dissimilar to this one.

Blaine met his best friend in the entire world for the first time on a Saturday in late September, when he finally jumped out of the big U-Haul truck that had carted his family's entire life all the way from Fredericksburg. It felt good to finally be outside and moving around after having to stay still for so long, so long he could barely contain himself. He felt like he was about to pop, he had so much energy.

Once he had helped his dad take out all the little boxes and earned himself a grin and a high five, all that was left were the big pieces of furniture that only his big brother, Cooper, could help with. His mom told him to go ride his bike since they'd just unpacked it, and to go make friends with the other little boy circling the junction at the other end of the quiet street, since they were going to be neighbors and all.

Soon enough, Blaine's bright green bike—his first big boy bike—was drawing level with the boy's blue one, and they rode to the end of the street with shy smiles before coming to a stop near the bright yellow fire hydrant.

"My name's Blaine," he said, holding out his hand like he'd seen the grown-ups do.

"I'm Kurt," the boy replied, firmly shaking Blaine's hand once. "Do you like singing?"

"I love singing! Disney's my favorite. My big brother Cooper always says I'm real good," Blaine proclaimed proudly, and Kurt grinned.

"I love singing, too. I sing with my Mommy every day. Maybe you can be my friend and come sing with us," Kurt said, twisting his hands together and looking at Blaine shyly. Blaine couldn't understand why he was so hesitant; he had super-cool clothes—his shoes matched his bow tie and everything—and the most awesome bike that even had streamers on the handlebars. Blaine totally wanted to be friends with him—all he'd ever wanted was a real friend.

"Let's be best friends!" Blaine yelled excitedly, and Kurt grinned so wide that it almost split his face right in two. Blaine couldn't help but smile back, and he turned his bike around to face the direction they'd come. "Race you to my house!"

Everything was mostly the same. A little rougher, a little more well-worn and weathered, a little faded and fuzzy around the edges—but the same. It was the reason Blaine had reached this itchy plateau of completion, having done all that he could here. He had hoped, in the dark and cold hours of winter night in London, that he would be able to stick it out here upon returning, but even a week after getting back and spending every waking minute with Kurt, he had known that it wasn't enough. There were places he needed to be, though he didn't know where. All he knew was that he needed to get the hell out of Maine.

"Yes, Dad, I'm sure we have everything!"

Blaine grinned at the irritation in Kurt's voice as he exited through the front door of his cozy little house, the house in which Blaine had always felt more at home than in his own. Burt and Carole were right behind him, both wearing the same expression they had the day he and Kurt had left for Bowdoin—and college was only a couple miles from sleepy, whimsically-named Merrymeeting Road.

Kurt hugged each of them in turn—as always, Blaine noted, Carole rather more briefly than his dad—and beckoned Blaine over.

"Watch out for each other, you two," Burt instructed, hands on both of their shoulders and his shop cap tilted back on his head. Blaine caught Kurt's eye and grinned. "I want you both home in one piece."

"Yes, sir," Blaine replied.

"Kid, how many times? I've known you sixteen years. It's 'Burt'."

"Old habits die hard," Blaine said, and the familiarity of the words that so easily rolled from his tongue brought the point into startling focus—he was truly doing this. Getting out. And he was going to miss these people, this tight, dysfunctional little family that he'd long been expected to call his own.

"Okay," Burt said, sharp inhale and all business, "get outta here."

Kurt crooked his fingers and saluted in a way that Blaine hadn't seen him do since the Unmentionable Flannel Phase, and Burt chuckled, pulling him into one last bear hug. Blaine could hear him whisper something to Kurt but couldn't discern the words, and when he stepped back, Kurt's face was noticeably flushed. Blaine had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smirking—be safe, he wondered with thoughts that meandered back to a sixteen-year-old Kurt practically battering down his front door, red-faced and clutching a handful of pamphlets.

"Let's get out of here," Kurt muttered, avoiding everyone's eyes, and turned on his heel with an awkward wave.

"You'll figure it out, sweetheart," Carole intoned with a meaningful look that preceded a dry, tip-toed kiss to his cheek. "Just see him, alright?"

"What do you mean? See who?" Blaine asked, but Carole simply shook her head and gave him a little push in the direction of the R.V., where Kurt sat waiting in the passenger seat.

"Time to go," she said gently, and Blaine took a step back. One last look at Kurt's house, one last tentative and nervous smile back at Burt and Carole, one lasting closing of the front gate behind him, and his excitement was overwhelmingly threatening to burst out of his skin. He pulled open the door to the cab of the R.V., stepped up and swung himself into the driver's seat, taking a moment to run his hands over the textured leather steering wheel cover before pulling the door shut with a satisfying thud and fastening his seat belt.

"Stoke the fires," Kurt said wryly, rolling down his window.

"Start the engines," Blaine finished, and turned the key in the ignition. As he pulled away from the curb and started toward the end of the street, he continued, "She should really have a name."

"Let's not think about it too hard. I'm sure something suitably fabulous will present itself."

"Hey... Do you maybe want to stop by the cemetery?" Blaine asked quietly, the goodbyes ringing in his ears prompting him to wonder about just one more. Kurt shook his head vehemently as Blaine pulled the R.V. into a wide one-eighty to retrace their road on the opposite side, and they both waved to Burt and Carole where they still stood beneath the porch light, arms wrapped around one another against the slight chill that hung in the air. Blaine wondered if they would start turning it off at night now that both Kurt and Finn had flown the nest completely.

"Okay, last time. Clothes, shoes, toothbrush, hair products, skin stuff," Blaine listed, trying to shake off the lingering vestiges of tension between them as he turned onto Minat Avenue.

"Check. Guitar, laptop, video camera, gas card and credit card even though I still don't agree with accepting your dad's guilt money..."

"Check," Blaine replied, jaw clenched as he pushed all thoughts of his dad far into the dusty, forgotten corners of his mind. He didn't want his still-burning fury with his father to taint their first night on the road together—Baltimore was going to be bad enough. "Halloween costumes."

Kurt laughed as he plugged Blaine's iPod into the stereo and started scrolling. "Check and check," he said in a low voice that made Blaine swivel his eyes just in time to catch Kurt's gaze raking across him before returning to the playlist. Good-naturedly, he reached across and batted at Kurt's shoulder until they were both laughing.

"All right. This is it, Hummel. Last chance to turn back."

"Are you kidding me? Do you realize how long it took me to teach Dad how to track the GPS on my phone?"

"Just checking."

When they merged onto I-295, joining huge freightliners taking catch of the day all over the country, Blaine reset the odometer and Kurt, having waited until then in honor of their unspoken agreement, hit play.

"Yes!" Blaine exclaimed as U2's Vertigo filled the cab. "Yes. Perfect choice."

"I know," Kurt replied, with no hint of self-satisfaction. He was good with music, Blaine had come to appreciate. The fact that he never sang—which was, occasionally, still a bone of contention between them—had refined his listening, and he supplied Blaine with a new playlist every month or so. Indie, new age, show tunes, Top 40—there was a seeming endlessness to Kurt's hunger for music, and Blaine loved that about him.

"Hello, hello," he sang in time with the chorus as they sped south along the freeway.

"Hola!"

"I thought you didn't sing," Blaine said, voice raised to carry over the music.

Kurt quirked one eyebrow at him, the patented and sardonic Hummel Arch, and rolled his eyes. "That wasn't singing."

By the end of the song, the moment was forgotten as Blaine all but bounced in his seat, yelling in time with Bono and quite unable to keep the grin from lighting him up inside as well as out. Is this what true freedom feels like? All asphalt, open sky and your favorite person by your side? Because, Blaine thought, it can't get better than this.

When they were about twenty miles away from the campground, just exiting onto Route 1, Blaine took one hand off the steering wheel and reached underneath his seat. Kurt watched him curiously, and looked torn between dismay and anticipation when Blaine handed him two brightly wrapped packages in succession, one thin and soft, and the other small and box-shaped.

"Happy birthday," Blaine told him sincerely, eyes flicking between Kurt and the highway ahead. "Open the big one first. You know what it is anyway."

Carefully, Kurt pushed his fingers underneath the edge of the paper and tore it open to reveal a bright red t-shirt emblazoned with stylized text that read, 'pale is the new tan'. Kurt stared at it for a full ten seconds, muscles working in his jaw, before he burst out laughing.

Blaine's Awesome T-Shirt Tradition (or Blaine's Terrible T-Shirt Tradition, as Kurt referred to it, insisting that the alliteration was both more mellifluous and, most importantly, more accurate), had begun six years earlier, on Kurt's sixteenth birthday. Blaine had been agonizing for weeks over what to buy. Both movies and music had been out, since Kurt just downloaded everything. He'd thought about clothes or accessories, but hadn't had the funds to cater to Kurt's expensive tastes. And then one day, during his fourth fruitless trip to the Plaza, he had come across a street vendor selling some truly awful slogan shirts. As soon as he'd seen the black shirt hanging proudly on display, sporting a green loading bar beneath the legend 'sarcastic comment loading,' he'd pulled out his wallet.

It had been perfect, and despite the look of utter disdain that had contorted Kurt's face upon opening it, he had still worn it to sleep in that night when Blaine stayed over.

"One day, I'm going to make a quilt from all of these terrible shirts," Kurt said, refolding the shirt in his lap with the slogan facing up. "I'll give it to my kids as proof of what a dork their Uncle Blaine is."

"You've kept them all?" Blaine asked, surprised.

"Of course I have, silly."

Blaine smiled, eyes back on the road as he nodded to the other gift. "Difference is that I got you something good this year, too."

As carefully as before, Kurt unwrapped the box with slow and curious movements. Blaine chewed at his lip and actively worked at keeping his gaze trained ahead—he'd never been so nervous about giving someone a gift before, not even when he'd presented his mom with the portrait of her that he'd painted in high school for their project on Cubism. She'd loved it, and it still hung on her bedroom wall.

In his periphery, Kurt opened the slim, square box and removed the tissue paper, letting out a small gasp. "Blaine..."

"You don't have to wear it, or anything," Blaine rushed out, words tripping over themselves. "It's just that, you know, he's the patron saint of travelers. And I know you're not religious or anything, it wasn't about that, I just—"

"Blaine, shut up," Kurt cut across him, reaching over to squeeze his knee. The silver Saint Christopher caught the headlights of passing freightliners where it was already tangled between Kurt's fingers. "Thank you."

"You really like it?"

"I really like it," Kurt affirmed, letting the pendant drop and swing for a moment before taking it by the chain and putting it on, settling the small disc beneath his shirt and palming it through the fabric. "It's perfect. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Before long, they were pulling into the visitor parking at Hemlock Grove Campground in Arundel. Only an hour from home, and already Blaine was starting to feel like Samwise Gamgee, standing in the Shire and telling Frodo that if he took one more step, it would be the farthest from home he'd ever been. It wasn't exactly accurate, of course—he had spent his entire last year of college at King's in London, after all— but, knowing that this was it, he could understand the sentiment. This was what he'd been hungering for since he was fifteen, and while he could one day return to Maine if he wanted to, it would never be the same.

They made their way toward the site office at a comfortable, ambling pace, and Blaine reveled in the cool and beautifully fresh, woody air of the grounds. Kurt's hand rested absently just below his collar, toying with his Saint Christopher through the fabric until he came to an abrupt halt at the bottom of the steps up to the office porch. Blaine paused at the top, looking back at him in question.

"Would you still have taken this trip if I hadn't come, too? Would you still have left?" Kurt asked quietly, and Blaine was entirely taken aback by the vulnerability that pulled at the corners of his mouth. The lights from inside the office spilled out through half-closed horizontal blinds, and suddenly Blaine wished there wasn't a swath of shadow falling across Kurt's eyes.

The truth was that Blaine had been waiting for this for years. Since the day the bottom dropped out of his world, mere weeks after he and Kurt had both come out to their respective families. For him, Maine represented a lot of things, and not all of them good. He needed to see so much more of the world, leave a mark of himself behind. He wanted to be something good, something great, to reach out and affect someone—even if it was just one person. Those were things he'd never admitted aloud, content to keep them close to his chest—but Kurt must have known. He must have.

"I..." he trailed off, not knowing where to take the rest of the sentence. Would he really have been able to leave Kurt behind again? Would he have found the strength to go another three and a half months—probably much longer, given his lack of desire to ever set foot in Maine again—without his hurricane of a best friend, this immutable kindred spirit who could tear him apart and put him back together in a better combination? He'd never even had to think about it before; when he had first brought up the idea of the road trip, there had been no doubt in his mind that Kurt would be with him.

There were birds chirping a dusk song in the trees surrounding them, and it reminded him a little of the previous day, when he had sung Stop & Stare—he'd been singing it for Kurt, almost as if he'd still needed convincing.

"You don't get rid of me that easily, Hummel," he finally said, trying for nonchalance. Kurt huffed a humorless laugh and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Blaine, be serious. What if I'd said no? Or, maybe in a year? Would I have lost you for good this time?"

"Is that why you said yes?" Blaine countered.

"You know it's not," Kurt stated evenly, before letting out a heavy sigh and dropping his arms. "I'm sorry. It's just... It's been a really long day, and I'm terrible with goodbyes. It got me thinking."

"Never a good idea," Blaine joked, and held out his hand. "Come on. We've got a fire pit and s'mores waiting."

"Always with the damn s'mores," Kurt muttered, climbing the steps and taking Blaine's hand in a fleeting squeeze.

When the young clerk with yawning eyes had signed them in and assigned them site 69—much to Kurt's amusement—they made the short drive around the winding track that ran through the park and pulled into their space with a renewed buzz about them. Blaine left Kurt pulling supplies from the fridge to go out to the fire pit, though it became abundantly clear when he got outside that a campfire was not in the cards. Everything was still too damp from the previous day's rain, and he was still standing forlornly by the pit when Kurt stepped out of the R.V., arms laden with a cooler and plates.

"You're quite the Boy Scout, I see," Kurt quipped, bending down and making a show of warming his hands over the non-existent flames.

"Should've gotten you another sarcasm shirt," Blaine grumbled. "It's too damp; I don't think this is gonna happen tonight. Next stop?"

"Next stop," Kurt agreed, stretching his arms and rolling his wrists. "I'm tired anyway, and we have a movie to watch."

Blaine gathered up the bag and plates, following Kurt back inside with only a passing, dejected glance at the fire pit.

Fifteen minutes later, they were both sitting on the bed, on top of the covers in t-shirts and shorts, sucking the color from slices of honeydew melon while Kurt loaded up the movie on Blaine's laptop.

"It's no campfire, but it's pretty damn perfect," Kurt murmured, chasing a trail of juice down his wrist with his tongue and reaching for another slice after he hit play.

They watched in silence for a time, as the feather curled its way down to where Forrest sat on the bus bench.

"I wouldn't have," Blaine said quietly, just as Forrest finished the classic, timeless line about life being like a box of chocolates. Kurt questioned him with a single look. "I wouldn't have left without you."

Kurt smiled, then, and curled his fingers around Blaine's again in the way that somehow only felt right when he did it, and Blaine leaned sideways to rest his head on Kurt's shoulder, settling in for the duration.



Distance: 50.6 miles