Day 059: Wednesday 14th November, 2012
Total Recall (Arkansas)

"Onto Arkansas..."

"You already know exactly what we're watching: Walk The Line."

"Well, of course."



"Just got a text from April," Blaine murmured from the passenger seat. "She wants to know what songs we want to do solo for the gig this Saturday."

"Must be the text I just got, too," Kurt replied, having felt his phone vibrate against his leg a moment earlier. "What did you choose?"

"It's a surprise."

"Has she sent over those two new ones yet?"

Blaine nodded, presumably tapping out a response. "Yeah, I just got the email. How crazy is it that they're writing their own stuff now?"

"Well, it's only the one she wants to close the show with," Kurt corrected him. "The opener's a We Are Scientists song. But yeah, it's crazy. They've never been serious like this before. In fact..."

"What?" Blaine prompted.

Scratching absently at his jaw, Kurt considered his words for a moment. "When we talked yesterday, April kept talking about Alaska being the last big show, and then she was saying that not everyone in the band was joining in on writing the new material. Ever since Will had to quit for good... I don't know, it just... It got me thinking."

"Thinking what?"

"I think they might be breaking up after this tour. Or like, if they're not breaking up then a few of them are starting a new band," Kurt said. He sat forward in his seat, resting his forearms on the steering wheel, and as he glanced out of the windshield and caught sight of the blue and white sign declaring, Welcome to Arkansas, The Natural State, he said, "Alright, we're in Arkansas. Johnny Cash, and crank it."

In his periphery he caught Blaine's affectionate smile, and within moments, Folsom Prison Blues was pouring from the speakers. Blaine tapped his thumb and drummed his fingers against his thigh, singing along quietly and harmonizing to Johnny's timeless vocals.

"Why didn't you go into music?" Kurt asked as the thought occurred to him, lowering the volume so that he didn't have to raise his voice.

Blaine looked thoughtful for a moment, and then replied, "A lot of reasons. I mean, you know I love film and directing."

"Right, but you love music just as much, if not more. And you're just as good at that."

"I don't know, I guess... It was Dad's thing, you know? I kind of wanted to distance myself from all that, not to mention that you were doing film, too."

"Don't tell me you did film just because I was doing it," Kurt said, shooting him a look.

"Narcissist," Blaine teased; Kurt stuck out his tongue in response. "If I'm honest, it was one reason. Just not the whole reason."

Kurt nodded, mostly to himself. They lapsed into silence, and after a few moments Kurt turned the volume back up, unsure what to do with this new piece of information. He was beginning to feel like both he and Blaine were oddly displaced in their own lives, like they were caught between two distinct phases: the first having ended the day they left Maine, and the second not yet begun.

He still saw the signs pointing toward his career as a director of photography, but he was beginning to think that Blaine was approaching a crossroads. It had been a subtle and gradual shift, so much so that Kurt was only just starting to notice the change, but no longer was Blaine discussing their movies with his usual passionate and analytical fervor. Instead, he was tending to focus on the sound and music, picking out pieces of the score that struck him either as particularly fitting or at odds with the scene.

"I think my arm is getting sunburned," he murmured absently, suddenly noticing that the skin of his left arm was feeling tight.

Blaine glanced over at him and grimaced sympathetically, just as the song switched over to I Walk The Line. "Do you want me to take over in a little bit?"

"Maybe," Kurt replied. "Hey, do you remember that time I got sunburned at Hampton Beach and you ended up icing my legs for me?"

"I still don't get how you can burn through SPF 70 in an hour," Blaine replied, shifting in his seat to turn and face him.

"It's called being pale," Kurt being told him. "We can't all have beautiful olive skin that doesn't even know what a sunburn is."

"Beautiful, huh?"

"Shut up."

"No, really, tell me more," Blaine said, crossing his arms and propping his chin in his hand.

Kurt remained silent—usually, this was territory that certainly warranted exploration, but while driving, was decidedly perilous.

At length, Blaine continued, "Because you know... 'Beautiful' is probably how I'd describe your skin, too."

Kurt scoffed at that, and yet in the pause that followed—knowing that he was taking the bait, but quite unable to resist—he asked, "Since when?"

"Oh, since... Alabama, maybe? Is that where we were when I gave you that massage?"

"I think so."

"Well, either way, since then," Blaine said, waving his hand dismissively. "Let's just say I was really glad when you said you didn't want it to be a one-time thing."

"You were, huh?"

"Yep. I mean, I wouldn't have gotten to figure out all these things about you."

"What things?" Kurt asked, wanting to punch himself as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

"Oh, I don't know..." Blaine trailed off, stretching his arms up over his head. He seemed to consider his words, and Kurt licked his lips with a dry tongue. "That tongue, for instance. I mean, I'd never have known you can do more with it than just tying knots in cherry stems.

"And we probably shouldn't talk about exactly what you do with it," Blaine continued, his voice hushed, like he was speaking in riddles and prayers. "We probably also shouldn't talk about how badly I've been wanting you to drive off the road for the last hundred miles so I can drag you back to bed."

"You wouldn't exactly have to drag me," Kurt said, lightly gritting his teeth and tightening his grip on the steering wheel.

Blaine chuckled to himself, low and dirty, and turned his gaze out of the window. But the seed was planted in Kurt's mind, and while they drove on with only his Johnny Cash playlist and the rhythmic hum of asphalt to soundtrack their progress, his thoughts drifted.

Growing up, Kurt had always felt like he'd seen the world through a different set of eyes to everyone else. He seemed to pick out the tiniest details and take photographs to remember them by: the single droplet of water left on a window long after the rain had passed; the almost invisible, hairline crack in a cup from his mother's tea set; the drooping end of the tinsel string where, try as he might, he couldn't prop it up on a branch.

Yet Blaine was different. With him, the photographs Kurt took were far more sensory: the curve of his cheekbone under Kurt's thumb; the softness of the skin behind his knee; the taste of his lips in the last seconds before falling asleep. They were the most precious pictures he'd ever taken.

They were also all tied up with the panorama shots: Blaine dancing under pulsing lights, the only enticing thing in a sea of what should have been enticing; Blaine splayed out and spent, a sheen of sweat covering his back after his third orgasm; Blaine waking up with pupils already blown wide and pulling Kurt on top of him for lazy morning sex somewhere in the middle of Kentucky.

By the time an hour had passed, Kurt was uncomfortably hard in his jeans; he couldn't focus on any of Blaine's comments about Arkansas being Walmart country or that Hot Springs supposedly had its own red-light district. Instead, he was focusing on the little things again, the lips and eyes and hands that knew exactly how to undo him, and he felt frenzied and desperate with craving.

His frustration hit its peak when Blaine glanced over and, upon noticing Kurt's predicament, did nothing more than toss him a knowing smirk. It was the moment when Kurt finally decided to act on his instincts and drive them off the freeway, following the signs for Buffalo River National Park and barely keeping to the speed limit.

He was winding, tighter and tighter, until they were finally parked and he was able to grab Blaine by the wrist, yank him upright, and lead him to the bedroom without so much as a word passing between them.

Almost parodying their night in Philadelphia, a hazy picture in his mind that blurred around the edges, Kurt pushed Blaine down onto the edge of the bed and leaned over him.

"What do you want?" Blaine asked.

"This," Kurt said, gesturing down to himself, "is your fault. So I want you to shut up."

"Shut up and... What? Just take it?" Blaine clarified, and when Kurt nodded, his eyes grew dark with the edge of a challenge. He smirked again, lifted his chin, and said, "Make me."

Kurt let out a noise somewhere between a growl and a groan, pitching forward and kissing him with no finesse whatsoever; sloppy tongue and lazy lips. Even as Blaine struggled against Kurt's grip around his wrists, he hooked his legs around Kurt's waist to pull him closer; Blaine was still daring him to chase, challenging him to deliver and betting that he wouldn't, like the world's most willing game of cat and mouse.

With only a few breaks in contact, reluctant to give up a single second of the release he'd been craving, Kurt managed to strip them both entirely naked. As he settled his body over Blaine's, teeth raking the skin of his neck, there was a fleeting moment where he felt Blaine's limbs go intoxicatingly lax and it almost made him want to stop, catch his breath, and make this last.

Kurt pulled back to drink him in, resting his crossed forearms across Blaine's chest and letting them bear his weight. Blaine strained against his arms, raising his head off the sheets just far enough to whisper against his lips, "Do something useful."

And with that, the moment passed as quickly as it had come, swept away by the heat and the fire that boiled Kurt's blood.

"Useful?" he managed, mock-offended and screwing his eyes shut as his Blaine dragged his cock along the length of Kurt's own; an appetizer when he wanted a five-course meal. He dragged Blaine further up the bed, straddling his hips and holding him down with one hand. "Fuck you, Blaine Anderson."

"Go right ahead," Blaine shot back, not missing a beat. His grin was roguish, defying Kurt to resist, and Kurt had had just about enough.

"You know what? I told you to shut up."

"And I told you to make me. But if you're not up to it—"

Quickly yet deliberately, Kurt put his hand over Blaine's mouth, locking eyes with him as he moved to straddle his chest. There he waited until Blaine blinked up at him with wide, humored eyes and nodded. He worked the tip of his index finger between Blaine's lips and tugged his mouth open, holding himself just out of reach and reveling in the heat of Blaine's bare chest against the skin of his thighs.

When Blaine leaned up far enough to lick across the head of his cock, it was like relief being painted onto his skin, second by exquisite second. Blaine sank his mouth over the tip and sucked hard, eyes fluttering shut and a moan vibrating through Kurt's sensitive flesh and up, up, up, a puddle of warm tingle in the pit of his stomach.

Kurt's breath stuttered and hitched in his chest when Blaine slowly pulled off with a light, almost tentative rake of teeth along his shaft before going back to working him over at an agonizing pace that was nowhere near close to enough. He began working his hips back and forth, tangling his fingers between Blaine's curls and pumping his cock between Blaine's stretched lips; he spiraled into the sensation of tight, wet warmth around him, driven further lost with each snap forward.

He finally pulled back when his thighs began to shake underneath him, his breathing labored and ragged. Blaine looked up at him with a smug expression as he licked around his lips.

"I hate you," Kurt got out on a ragged exhale, but he couldn't help the smile tugging at his mouth.

"Evidently," Blaine agreed, schooling his features into a knowing, mock-sympathetic expression. "Why'd you stop?"

Kurt moved backward far enough to free Blaine's arms, only to grab his wrists, pin them either side of his head, and fix him with a look. "Because I'm not letting you off the hook that easily."

"Oh, so you were about to come?" Blaine teased.

Kurt shook his head. "You just don't get it, do you? You need to stop talking."

With that, he climbed completely off of Blaine and flipped him onto his front, holding him there with one hand on his back while he palmed a condom and their three-quarters empty bottle of lube from the nightstand. Blaine's muscles shifted beneath his overheated skin and, after rolling the condom onto himself and slicking himself up, Kurt couldn't help but scratch his fingernails along Blaine's spine, leaving bright red trails in his wake.

"You don't need to—"

"I know," Kurt interrupted firmly, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to his shoulder as he leaned over Blaine and wound his hand back into his tight curls, damp with sweat at the nape of his neck. He nudged Blaine's legs apart and pressed in slowly to start; Blaine let out a stuttering breath that sounded like a long-awaited release.

Kurt knew Blaine's body well, how much he could take, how far he could push—these were the secret parts of him that Blaine had allowed him to learn, had given freely even though it was probably far more than Kurt deserved. But being wrapped in such velvet heat expelled all such thoughts from his mind as he drove into Blaine over and over, hands holding him down by his head and his shoulder—Blaine took it all so beautifully, muscles contracting and loosening beneath Kurt's grip and breathy moans leaving him in punches.

"I... Fuck—harder, please..." Blaine begged, the words a broken whine that settled determinedly at the base of Kurt's spine, the little bundle of nerves there firing sparks through his every cell. Kurt bit his lip against a loud moan; he was losing control at a rapidly accelerating rate, and wouldn't be able to hold onto himself much longer.

Instead he held onto Blaine, hooking his hand underneath Blaine's arm and up over his shoulder, the skin turning white where his fingers pressed into his flesh.

"Kurt, please, please—"

He covered Blaine's mouth with his left hand, unable to take any more. Blaine was—undone, so utterly undone that it only spurred Kurt on, faster and faster until his hips were jerking forward of their own volition and he had to press his forehead to Blaine's temple just to block out the look in Blaine's eyes: open and vulnerable and brimming full of something that couldn't possibly be.

Blaine bit down on Kurt's third finger as he came, tensing and clenching around him, and it was that shock of pain that pushed Kurt over the edge, a base and debauched grunt the only sound that left his mouth as his body burst outward and back in on itself.

With the little strength he had left, he managed to carefully untangle himself from Blaine, peel off the condom, and collapse onto the cool and welcoming sheets.

"Old man," Blaine whispered into his ear, the mattress sinking beneath his weight as he lay down next to Kurt and drew circles on his upturned palm.

"There's only a hundred days between us, lest you forget," Kurt reminded him. "I can still kick your ass."

"I think you pretty much just did," Blaine said, chuckling mostly to himself. A comfortable quiet fell, the only sounds those of their matching, labored breaths as they both regained their equilibrium. Kurt could just feel Blaine's fingertips tracing patterns on the skin of his back; it was the ghost of a touch, but still there. "Your freckles are fading."

"Hmm?"

"I said your freckles are fading."

"Good," Kurt grumbled. "I hate them."

"I bet I could make you like them," Blaine countered.

"Remind me that we don't need to buy any more coffee for you," Kurt said absently.

"Yeah? Why's that?"

"You're the only person I've ever met who's buzzed after an orgasm and it makes me hate you a little bit so you neither need nor deserve coffee," he rambled, not caring whether or not he was making sense when his entire body felt at once leaden and floating.

Blaine chuckled, and Kurt heard him fumbling through one of the drawers in his nightstand for a moment before letting out a triumphant, "Ha!" and moving across the bed to straddle Kurt's waist. He winced a little at the jolt of sensitivity, and soon he began to feel a tickling drag across his back.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Making music," Blaine answered vaguely.

"Wait, are you—are you drawing on me?"

"Shh. I'm in my creative space right now."

"Such a dork," Kurt muttered, but pillowed his arms on his head and let his eyes slip closed—Blaine wouldn't be dissuaded when he was in this sort of a mood, and Kurt didn't have the strength anyway. Instead, he imagined himself looking down on them from above: Blaine bent over him, picking out melodies on wavering staffs and covering Kurt's skin with quavers and crotchets and treble clefs until he felt like he was made of Blaine's music.

Could you capture me in four minutes? Kurt wondered, idly feeling himself drifting toward sleep. Ten? Five hundred, twenty-five thousand? Would you have me for that long? Longer?

He came around some time later, fuzzy-eyed and cotton-mouthed, cheek pressed against Blaine's chest. He could hear Blaine's heartbeat, a steady thump-thump in his ear, and when he looked up, he saw a soft smile playing about Blaine's lips. He'd pulled the laptop onto the foot of the bed where it rested, VLC Player open and Walk The Line paused at the very beginning of its opening scene.

"What are you so happy about?" he asked, rubbing at his eyes.

"I just love movies like this. I mean, I know the story's been changed and exaggerated in places, but still... We're watching history," Blaine said, picking at a loose thread on the comforter. "What if... What if you met your soul mate but you were already with someone, like Johnny and June? Is there anything sadder? Someone's heart's going to get broken whatever you do."

Kurt swallowed thickly, hearing that line from the movie playing in his head, and somewhere in that dark corner of his mind, he knew what Blaine was really asking. It was what they did in this boundary-pushing pas de deux of theirs. But Kurt couldn't say it, couldn't offer up his bleeding heart and ask Blaine to tell him he didn't love him, like he was the June to Kurt's Johnny.

"It's sad," he agreed. "But everything worked out for the best, in the end."

"Right," Blaine replied obliquely, and gestured toward the laptop. "Shall we?"

Kurt nodded, and reached out his foot to tap the space bar, shaking off Blaine's words. They'd decided to be happy with this—they'd made a deal, and Kurt intended to hold up his end. Whether it was enough was a question to which he didn't need the answer, because...

Because being cradled against Blaine's chest, wrapped up in his black-magic words and red velvet heart with the afternoon light fading into dusk, Kurt felt as complete as he could ever imagine feeling.

And that was already enough.



Distance: 7,144 miles