Day 043: Monday 29th October, 2012
Runaway Train (Ohio)

"Speaking of classics, you probably already know what I'm thinking..."

"Mmhmm. Shawshank, right?"

"Shawshank."



In quick succession, Kurt had gone from trying to nap in the bedroom, to sitting in the passenger seat with his feet tapping restlessly, to being stretched out on the couch with an arm thrown over his eyes, ear buds pumping The National's Bloodbuzz Ohio into his ears with his phone—set to vibrate—clutched against his chest.

He had been trying to reach his dad for over an hour already, wanting one last chance to check in before Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast, but without fail, he'd received only a busy signal in response every time he'd called.

His phone finally buzzed to life in his hand, and Kurt leapt to his feet, all but tearing his ear buds from his ears and burying one hand in his hair as he answered the call.

"Dad?" he asked frantically.

"Hey, kiddo," Burt said, his voice sounding crackly and far away. "You doin' okay?"

Kurt let out a breath, belatedly noticing that he had begun to pace the length of the kitchen. "I'm fine, we—we're both fine. What's going on back there?"

"Nothin' much," Burt said. "A lotta people are stayin' home tomorrow and they've pulled all the boats in, so it looks like people are just gonna hunker down and wait for it to pass."

"It isn't supposed to hit us too badly, right?" Kurt asked, leaning heavily against one of the kitchen countertops.

"Kiddo, you d— to worry. We're gon— fine," Burt said, his voice crackling in and out of silence, and Kurt stood straight.

"Dad?"

"—arry on havin' fun— check in ag— over—"

The line went dead, and Kurt pulled the phone away from his ear to see that the call had been disconnected. "Fuck," he whispered, his legs suddenly feeling unsteady. As deliberately as he could, he pressed his back against the lower cupboards and slid slowly to the floor, drawing his knees up to his chest and burying his face in his arms.

Everything was quickening, momentum building around him and carrying him along as if he were in the eye of a storm, the middle car of a runaway train. The most unsettling part, however, was not the sensation itself—it was that he didn't know where he was going. All at once, he wished he was back in Maine, sitting on the couch with Carole opposite Burt in his ancient chair and laughing hysterically as they all tried to come up with the most outrageously incorrect answers to questions on Jeopardy.

Everything used to be so much simpler, he thought. An abrupt and unanticipated rush of nostalgia swept over him, and he imagined the sound of a videotape rewinding, the machine churning into high gear after ten seconds or so; the click of jewel cases against one another as he thumbed through CDs at Studio 48; the beeping and scraping of a dial-up modem.

Kurt felt the R.V. shuddering to a halt underneath him, and he raised his head an infinitesimal amount as he heard soft footsteps coming closer. Blaine crouched in front of him, warm fingers wrapping around Kurt's wrist, and asked, "Are you okay?"

"Not really," Kurt answered dully. "I just tried to talk to my dad and the phone cut out; I still have that fucking crick in my neck from sleeping on the floor the other night, and everything was better in the nineties."

"Alright, come on, get up," Blaine commanded softly, pulling Kurt to his feet. Without preamble, Blaine led him to the cab, gently pushing him down into the passenger seat, and started the engine again.

"Where are we?" Kurt asked.

"Taking a little detour," Blaine said, offering nothing more, and Kurt didn't have the energy to probe any further. "So why was everything better in the nineties?"

"Did you ever play Spyro the Dragon?" Kurt asked after a moment's consideration.

"Nah, don't you remember? I was always a Crash Bandicoot guy."

"Really?"

"Come on, Kurt. You really don't remember? I'm the undefeated CTR champion."

"Right, I remember. And you're only undefeated because you used cheats all the time," Kurt grumbled, and Blaine waved him off with a dismissive hand.

"Look at how much we have now compared to the nineties," he said. "High-speed internet, iPods, cell phones, DVDs—"

"No, those can't be separate things. Those all come under the category of technology," Kurt interrupted heatedly. "And anyway, videotapes were so much better. At least they didn't wake you up with the menus if you fell asleep watching them."

"Okay, I'll give you that," Blaine conceded, and Kurt sat back with a satisfied grin. "But what about, um... Hmm."

"Exactly. I defy you to name me one thing that wasn't great about the nineties."

A beat passed, and then Blaine announced triumphantly, "Scrunchies."

"Something pertinent to us, B."

"Lack of equal rights."

"Point. What else?"

"Not being able to use the internet when someone was on the phone."

"And what about the Goosebumps books?" Kurt countered, dredging up memories he'd long thought forgotten. "Space Jam? The Backstreet Boys? Fresh Prince? Corey and Topanga?"

"Okay, okay, oh my God," Blaine exclaimed, laughter running through his words. "I get it. The nineties were awesome. You win, Twentieth Century Boy."

"Thank you," Kurt said, gratified. Sitting back in his seat, he took out his phone and almost without conscious thought pulled up the latest news and weather reports. He could feel the tension seeping back into his body and his eyebrows knitting together but seemed unable to stop himself from scrolling through news report after news report.

"Couldn't have done that in the nineties," Blaine muttered, but Kurt ignored him. With a reproachful glance, Blaine continued, "You're going to drive yourself crazy, you know. Look, let's stop for coffee. We're out of beans anyway so we can pick up some more if they're good, and we'll just get out of the R.V. for a little bit and decompress. Okay?"

"Sounds good," Kurt said offhandedly, adding, "Anywhere but Starbucks."

"Don't worry; I've got it covered," Blaine replied, his tone holding a little too much meaning, and it was then that Kurt looked out through the windshield to find that Blaine was turning into a large parking lot opposite a long strip of stores.

"Is this the detour you were talking about?" Kurt asked. When Blaine nodded, he continued, "Where are we?"

"Lima, Ohio. And we're about to get coffee at The Lima Bean," Blaine told him with all the excitement of a small child at Christmas as he put the R.V. in park and cut the engine.

"What is it with you and puns?" Kurt grumbled, but climbed out of the cab all the same.

The coffee shop's interior was bright and airy, with light walls and simple, mahogany tables. It felt welcoming and homey, carrying a cozy atmosphere while still being spacious. Kurt watched Blaine cast a cheerful and appraising eye around the place, and knew that he'd come to the same conclusion: this place was most definitely a good stopping point.

He drew out his wallet and handed Blaine a wrinkled ten dollar bill, cutting off his protests and telling him to get their drinks while he went to use the restroom. "It'll be nice to use one that I don't have to clean myself," he quipped as he turned on his heel.

There was soft music playing inside The Lima Bean; instead of the generic muzak he'd come to expect from coffee shops, it was smooth and easy listening. As he was washing his hands, he recognized the opening bars of Push & Pull by Nikka Costa, a song he'd instantly loved upon first hearing it play over the closing credits of Blow.

Alone in the restroom and feeling like every movie clich� ever, Kurt regarded himself in the mirror with his hands braced on either side of the sink. There was something tugging him out of the bathroom, that same runaway train sensation he'd been experiencing all day, and he suddenly ached to hum along with the song's lyrics.

Resisting the urge to open his mouth and sing was a thing at which Kurt had become practiced. It started with hearing a song he liked, and progressed through taking note of the beat and rhythm, the little nuances and changes in pattern. The singer might have hummed or vocalized a little. When the singing began, there was always a tightness at the back of Kurt's throat, like the potential in the bud of a flower ready to bloom. His lips may have parted a little, but no sound ever came out—not outside the confines of his room in an otherwise empty house, at least.

Until now.

He dropped his gaze to the gleaming white porcelain of the sink, and without preface or preamble, he was humming: shakily at first, but growing stronger with each note change. He hummed all the way through the first verse and chorus, buoyed up further and further, soaring, flying over the notes and into the second verse, paying no attention to the lyrics or any deeper meaning because this, this was what he had been building toward. This was where his glorious runaway train had been taking him.

Smiling at himself in the mirror like a fool, he left the restroom with a new spring in his step. As he rounded the corner that led back into the coffee shop proper, the second chorus almost at its end, he saw Blaine taking their coffees from the counter. There was a stirrer poking out of the side of his mouth, packets of sugar woven between his fingers, and it was just as the song's true beat began that he noticed Kurt and grinned sheepishly.

I love you.

All at once, Kurt's voice locked up in his throat and he could no longer hear anything. The runaway train had been hurtling at a constant break-neck speed, coming now to a screeching halt before him, only Kurt wasn't a passenger—his feet were tied to the tracks, and the train had stopped mere inches from his face. The moment hung, suspended in stasis with only disturbed dust motes floating around him, and it took everything Kurt had not to reel back.

He shook his head to try and clear the ringing in his ears, shakily making his way towards Blaine like a foal on new legs.

New legs, but old eyes that saw clearly for the very first time—he was in love with Blaine.

"Did I hear someone humming just now?" Blaine asked knowingly when Kurt all but fell into the seat opposite.

He bit his lip and shrugged, lacking the self-trust not to simply prostrate himself at Blaine's feet and make declarations and promises he could never possibly keep, and Blaine chuckled with a shake of his head.

Kurt trained his gaze on the tabletop, because if he even so much as looked Blaine in the eye, Blaine would know, he was sure of it. He would know, and all of what was good and right between them would be dashed, if it wasn't already; it would all come crashing down around Kurt's ears and he'd be left without Blaine, without his heart, without anything.

He reached for his coffee, the blend of rich chocolate and bitter French roast rising before him in a thin coil of steam, and he closed his eyes just for a moment, wishing with all his heart that he could go back to being blind, to not seeing. To being young and unwise with nothing that he could stand to cataclysmically ruin—because they were caught in each other's history; they were each other's history... But they weren't—couldn't possibly be—each other's future.

He took a sip from his thick paper cup, hissing when the scalding liquid burned his tongue. Blaine winced at him in sympathy, and then slid his hand across the top of the table just like he had done in Provincetown.

This time, Kurt didn't refuse; on the contrary, he held on for dear life.



Distance: 5,391 miles