Day 036: Monday 22nd October, 2012
Past Misdemeanors (Tennessee)

"What are we thinking for Tennessee?"

"How about The Green Mile?"

"Mm. We did say we'd leave it for later. Okay, sure."



"You've reached the voicemail of Alice Cooke. I'm currently unavailable, so please leave your name and number, and I'll return your call as soon as possible."

"Hey, it's me—"

"Sweetheart?"

Blaine smiled, sinking back into the couch and watching the world go by through the window opposite. "Hi, Mom," he said. "How are you?"

"Happy to hear from you, oh prodigal son of mine," she said, and Blaine grinned even wider. It had been a week or so since they'd last spoken, and he'd known that if they'd gone on much longer without speaking, she'd be putting out a Code Adam. "And you? How are you and Kurt doing?"

"We're fine. Am I catching you at a bad time?"

"Not at all! No, I'm just finishing up a couple of reports, so I've been letting my calls go to voicemail."

"Any big storms heading in?" Blaine asked, absently tapping his foot along to the beat of Blue Suede Shoes when he caught it faintly over the deep and constant rumble of the R.V.'s engine.

"Sunny skies here, but there's something forming out in the Caribbean that we think might get upgraded to a tropical storm soon," Alice said, a note of barely-masked excitement in her voice. Blaine knew very few people who loved their job as much as his meteorologist mother did, and ever since completing her training as a SKYWARN severe weather spotter, she'd been going into work each morning with a brightness about her the likes of which Blaine hadn't seen for years.

"Oh yeah? Where's it headed?"

"We don't know just yet; we're waiting for the NHC to confirm, but we should have a report by five. Anyway, enough about the weather! Where are you boys?"

"Mom, we're on the way..." Blaine began, pausing for effect, "to Graceland."

"Graceland?" Alice breathed. "Oh, honey... Will you take lots of pictures for me?"

"Of course, Mom. I know how you love Elvis," Blaine said fondly. "I'll get you something from the gift shop and send it home next time we stop at a post office."

"You're a good boy," Alice said.

"I try."

"So what have you boys been up to? Anything exciting?"

Blaine bit his lip, wondering how much to tell her. He knew she'd been hoping for years that he and Kurt would "end this silly 'just friends' charade," but despite the numerous times they'd had sex at this point, they weren't boyfriends. There wasn't a label for what they were—not one that wasn't so reductive that Blaine was comfortable with it, at least.

"Honey?"

"I'm here, sorry," he said, standing up and moving toward the bedroom. He slid the door mostly closed behind him and sat down heavily on the bed. "Um, Mom... Kurt and I, we..."

There was a long pause on the line, and then, "Are you boys being safe?"

"Mom!" Blaine yelped indignantly, his face growing hot.

"Oh hush, honey. I have a right to ask," Alice said.

"Yes, Mom, we're being safe," Blaine grumbled.

"Good. Now tell me everything! I've been waiting years for you two to get your acts together!"

"Mom, we're not—together, we're just..." Blaine trailed off, swallowing hard. He didn't particularly want to examine it too closely, not when he didn't fully understand it himself—and he didn't particularly want to tell his mother that he and Kurt were just having sex. He cleared his throat and, feeling inexplicably like he was telling a bald-faced lie as he did so, said succinctly, "We're just seeing how things go."

"I see. Well, that's... I'm happy for you, honey," Alice said, her words stilted but backed by a warmth that somehow reassured Blaine. "Just be good to each other, you hear me? I've seen you two apart, and it's not pretty."

"Oh my god, please don't be talking about when Burt took Kurt to Missouri for that fishing trip," Blaine said. "I was eight, Mom."

"No, I just mean that I've seen it from both sides, and..." Alice trailed off, and took a deep breath as Blaine tried to puzzle out her meaning. "It may not be entirely healthy, but being apart isn't good for either of you, and I'd hate to see you get your hearts broken if this isn't want you both want."

"What do you mean, you've seen it from both sides?" Blaine asked.

"While you were in London," Alice said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "We'd have Kurt over for dinner once a week. He just looked so sad, honey, especially when you weren't able to make it home for Christmas. After that... Most weeks he'd go up to your room after dinner and I'd hear him listening to that song you love, the one from that Zooey Deschanel movie."

"Sweet Disposition?" Blaine asked, swallowing hard against the sudden fracture in his mind. He looked at the mostly closed bedroom door, a single beam of light peeking through from the living area, and remembered lying on his single bed on Christmas Eve last year, listening to When I Fall In Love on a loop for two hours—Kurt would never admit to a soul that it was his favorite song, Blaine knew, but he'd heard Kurt surreptitiously turning up the volume whenever it got played on Brunswick's oldies station enough times to know that it was. "I, um... I didn't know about that."

"Well, of course you didn't, honey. Kurt wouldn't want to upset you, and I'm sure he knew you were missing him just as much," Alice said. "But that's why I'm telling you. I just want you to be happy."

"I'm trying," Blaine replied. Quiet suddenly fell around him like the dropping of a curtain, and he cleared his throat again. "Mom, I think we're here so I'd better get going. We have—tickets for the tour and all, so..."

"Don't forget about those pictures," Alice reminded him, and Blaine nodded.

"I won't. Love you."

"I love you too, honey."

Blaine hung up feeling by turns miserable, confused, and peculiarly buoyed up. As he emerged from the bedroom and made his way toward the front of the vehicle, he caught sight of Kurt standing in the cab, leafing through the folder from the glove compartment and extracting print-outs for both their booking with the Memphis-Graceland R.V. park, and the tour of Graceland itself. His look was subdued again: straight leg, vintage wash jeans and a nondescript white t-shirt under a black military jacket with tabbed shoulders. When he turned around, a smile curving his lips as his eyes found Blaine's, he saw that Kurt had added a small pin above his chest pocket: the American flag.

"Aren't you laying it on a little thick?" he asked, gesturing to the pin, and Kurt shrugged.

"Why not go all out? It's not as easy for everyone to pass as it is for you, you know," he replied, neatly folding the sheets of paper in his hands and looking at Blaine expectantly.

"Ouch. Do we have anything for burns in that Narnia cabinet of yours?" Blaine asked, and Kurt chuckled, coming closer and shaking his head.

"Sterile bandages?" he quipped, and Blaine rolled his eyes.

"It's not like I'm some alpha-male type," he replied, tweaking the corners of his cream bow tie for emphasis.

"You know I didn't mean it like that. I just meant that we'd be stupid not to take... Precautions," Kurt clarified, eyes dropping to the front of Blaine's fitted black button-down. "I like this shirt on you. I don't think I've seen it before."

"I got it in—in London," Blaine said, and his stomach tightened as Kurt's eyes clouded for a moment, a shadow of a frown whispering across his features before being swallowed by a tight smile. He wanted to make it stretch from ear to ear, make Kurt grin and laugh and be silly and free, like he used to on the first day of every summer break when they'd go to the Brunswick diner and split an ice cream sundae for breakfast, reliving all the best moments of another completed school year.

His tentative, newfound sense of bravado was suddenly gone, broken apart by the dawning of terrible light at just what he'd put Kurt through by not being there for him, by letting his emails go unanswered and calls unreturned. Considering that Kurt had applied for the same internship, at the time Blaine had told himself that it was probably better for Kurt not to be hearing about all of the amazing things he was doing and learning—conveniently forgetting, of course, that Kurt would have his own stories to tell.

He stepped forward and cupped Kurt's face in his hands, watched as Kurt's eyes slipped automatically closed like he knew exactly what was coming, and kissed him firmly on the mouth. It still made him feel like he was tilting sideways, the feeling of Kurt's impossibly soft lips against his own, the way Kurt yielded and returned in equal measure, and for a moment he reveled in it.

"What was that for?" Kurt asked a little breathlessly when Blaine pulled back, dropping his hands to his sides.

"I just—wanted to kiss you."

"Any particular reason?"

"That was Mom on the phone," Blaine said after a pause. "She told me you used to go over for dinner sometimes, while I was away."

Kurt's features hardened, and he worked his jaw. Blaine's stomach dropped; the last time he'd seen that look on Kurt's face had been over Skype, when Blaine had told him he wasn't coming home for Christmas.

"Come on, Blaine. Plenty of students take Christmas off, even if it's just a few days. Look at you! You've lost weight, you look like you're barely sleeping—"

"Save it, Kurt; I've already had a lecture from Mom."

"I'm not lecturing you, Christ! I just, I—I was really looking forward to seeing you, and—"

"Kurt, I'm sorry. I have too much work to do here; I can't just put extra hours in the day."

"Then you know what? I don't want to hear the words 'I miss you' from you ever again."

"What? What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that every time you tell me you miss me, all I can think about is standing in front of you telling you that I missed you. Past tense. If all there's ever gonna be is missing you in present tense then I certainly don't need to be reminded of it."

"You know what, Kurt? If this is how it's gonna be, I'm fucking glad I'm not coming home."

"What else did she say?" Kurt asked, his tone measured and so tightly controlled that Blaine knew it would be a mistake to say more. Instead, he took Kurt's hand and tried to link their fingers, but Kurt gently pulled out of his grasp. "What else did she say, Blaine?"

"Nothing," Blaine lied. "She just told me about the dinners. Kurt, I'm—"

"Let's not talk about it," Kurt interrupted, busying himself with scanning over their papers again.

"Kurt, come on, I—"

"No, Blaine!" Kurt exclaimed, rounding on him with fire in his eyes. Blaine took a half step back, hands raised. "Last year was one of the worst years of my life, and I don't want to talk about it with anyone, least of all you."

"I think we should talk about it," Blaine said quietly.

"Why? Why, so I can tell you about all the nights I spent waiting by my phone for a call or an email that never came? So I can tell you about going over to your house and up to your room and listening to your favorite song like I was a fucking dog pining for its master? So I can tell you how much I hate myself because I can't listen to you talking about London or your internship without hating you a little bit, too?"

"You hate me?" Blaine whispered, eyes trained on that stupid flag pin because he couldn't meet Kurt's eyes, he couldn't.

Kurt sighed heavily, his shoulders dropping. He wrapped his arms around his middle, and said, "No, B. Of course I don't hate you. I just hate what that year did to me, what it turned me into."

"Oh."

"Look, let's just... Let's just go; we're almost late for our slot. Okay?" Kurt asked, ducking into Blaine's eye line with what looked like an attempt at a reassuring smile. He rubbed both hands up and down Blaine's arms, and Blaine returned his smile as best he could while still feeling like he'd caused an irreparable rift in their friendship.

What if that's what this is? he thought as he followed Kurt out of the R.V. What if I caused this chasm between us and the only way for us to fill it isn't with what we used to be, but with sex?

What if this breaks us both?

Although he managed to remember to take plenty of pictures, the tour almost passed Blaine by completely. While Kurt looked fully engaged by the tour guide, following everything she said with the kind of rapt attention Blaine had only seen in their Golden Age of Hollywood lectures, the musty smell of the house was too close to how the hallway of his building in London had smelled, and try as he might, he couldn't put any of it from his mind.

They progressed through the tour quickly, and Blaine barely took in the grand mirrored staircase in the foyer, the clean and crisp white living room with its fifteen-foot couch, the dark wood and light countertops of the kitchen, or the royal blue accents of the dining room. The billiard room, with its walls covered in pleated, patterned fabric only drew his full attention when it elicited a small gasp from Kurt and excited whisperings from the other members of their group. Upstairs in the jungle room, Kurt leaned over to murmur something to him about how Elvis would have hotel rooms remodeled to look more like home when he was on the road, and Blaine simply nodded, not trusting himself to open his mouth lest a litany of apologies fall out: they were far too little, and far too late.

He and Kurt had never apologized to one another. Rather than "I'm sorry," it was Kurt driving to Yarmouth to get Blaine a loaf of his favorite sourdough from Rosemont Market to make up for the stale one in the bread box. Rather than "I'm sorry," it was Blaine staying up all night with Kurt to help rewrite the report he'd accidentally deleted. Rather than "I'm sorry," it was both of them arriving back at their dorm room at the same time, carrying DVDs and bottles of Cuervo and bursting into laughter that swept away any lingering vestiges of their disagreement about the cleaning schedule.

Once the tour was over, the glitz and shine of the vast array of awards in the racquetball building already fading from Blaine's mind, the tour guide left the group in the Meditation Garden behind the main house, quietly paying their respects at the graves of Elvis and his closest family members.

He and Kurt made a slow circuit of the garden's small pool, watching the clear blue water and listening to the steady splash of the fountains, and by the time they circled back around to stand at the foot of Elvis' headstone, the rest of the group had moved off.

Kurt was standing next to him, arms crossed over his chest as he took in the smooth, dark stone and the tributes of flowers and flags and stuffed animals bordering it. As Blaine watched, he removed the flag pin from the front of his jacket and placed it on the corner of the marble before straightening up and letting out a quiet sigh.

Blaine glanced around surreptitiously, checking that no one was within immediate earshot, and buried his hands in his pockets. He rocked back and forth on his feet a little to the rhythm he was counting off in his mind, and when he started humming the first line of Always On My Mind, it was barely audible even to his own ears—maybe I didn't treat you quite as good as I should have, maybe I didn't love you quite as often as I could have...

As he settled into it, keeping his gaze trained on the water beyond the headstone, he grew a little louder. In his periphery, he saw Kurt freeze, and he wondered if he was thinking of all those times they'd apologized but not, those times they'd needed to but shown it instead of saying it.

At the chorus—you were always on my mind, you were always on my mind—he turned to look at Kurt, wavering a little at the expression in his eyes: shock, bewilderment and turmoil a storm of gray on blue. Pulling his right hand from his pocket, he reached out to brush his knuckles against Kurt's hip.

"I was?" Kurt asked thickly.

"Of course you were," Blaine answered. And then, because he nevertheless needed to say it, "I'm so sorry."

Kurt bit his lip and, faster than Blaine could register, threw his arms around Blaine's neck, whispering into his skin, "Thank you."

"I told you," Blaine said quietly, wrapping his arms tightly around Kurt's waist.

"Told me what?"

"That I'd sing you a love song if you wanted me to."

Kurt sighed and shook his head, murmuring, "Don't ruin it, B," and all at once, Blaine was harshly reminded of their agreement.

What happens on the road trip stays on the road trip.

Just then, he caught sight of a middle-aged man approaching the headstones and regarding their embrace through dangerously narrowed eyes. Reminded of exactly where they were and how careful they had to be, Blaine thought quickly. He gestured to the man in his arms and, with an exaggerated eye-roll, explained, "He's a big fan."

The man quickly averted his gaze with an abrupt nod, and Kurt stepped back, seeming not to even need to see for himself to whom Blaine had been speaking. He cleared his throat and made a show of wiping at his dry eyes, biting his lip against the grin Blaine knew was threatening to break free. It made him feel lighter, somehow—like things were back to normal, like... Like he could do this.

"Come on," Kurt murmured in a low voice, inclining his head towards the house.

"Gift shop?" Blaine asked knowingly, and Kurt nodded.

"I'm sure it's all gold and sparkly, and so tacky-fabulous that we'll spend hours there."

Blaine chuckled, motioned for Kurt to lead the way, and said, "Let's go."



Distance: 4,494 miles