Day 065: Tuesday 20th November, 2012
Look Down (Oklahoma)

"Come on, it must fit in somewhere."

"That's what she said."

"Blaine, really? We're talking about Rain Man."



As soon as they walked into the lobby of the Route 66 Museum in Clinton, Oklahoma, it immediately felt like passing into the days of a bygone era. The Rolling Stones' cover of Route 66 was playing over the P.A. system, and as Kurt caught sight of the classic red Chevy parked in front of the curved windows, Blaine watched him light up from the inside out.

"Oh my god," Kurt breathed, slowly approaching the car with his hands flexing at his sides. "This is a 1957 Chevy Bel Air. What I wouldn't give to own one of these."

"Is grand theft auto still a felony?" Blaine stage-whispered, and Kurt cast him a wistful look.

"You'll just have to buy one for me when you've wrapped on your first big-budget shoot," he said, his gaze full of reverence as he returned it to the vintage car.

Blaine hummed non-committally, for once not wanting to talk about his intended career path. More and more as of late, it was starting to feel like the wrong fit for him. He still loved the prospect of directing, but now that he was no longer surrounded by film day in, day out, he found that his passion for it was muffled somehow. The second Hugh had approached him with the idea of fronting the new band, creating and performing their own music—in New York, no less—something had seemed to click.

He'd ignored it until Kurt had shut down on him once again. All day before the Cheer Up Charlie's show, Blaine had been sure Kurt was going to say something about them: their arrangement; his own feelings; anything. But he hadn't, and now Blaine needed to have some kind of contingency plan for what happened when they got back to Maine. Whatever it was, it couldn't involve staying there and pretending to pick up the threads of a life he'd all but kicked to the curb and forgotten about.

"Ready?" Kurt asked, pulling him from his thoughts. Blaine nodded, and after signing the guest registry and paying their admission fee to the chatty proprietor, they set off on their self-guided tour.

If Blaine had thought the glass-tiled front of the museum had looked cool, it was nothing compared to progressing their way through the museum itself. Each room was themed around a different decade in the highway's history and featured exhibits of vintage cars reaching as far back as the thirties. It was more like an art gallery than a museum. The history of the place was overwhelming and Blaine drank it all in, his eyes roaming over old-style gas pumps and a wall full of postcards from all of the states through which Route 66 wound its way. The rooms were interconnected by a series of tunnel-like hallways, the walls plastered with newspapers, headlines proclaiming MARILYN DEAD, PRESIDENT KENNEDY IS SLAIN, and THE WAR IS OVER!

"I'm glad we have Leona," Kurt said after they'd taken turns posing with the VW camper covered in sixties hippy designs. "I don't think we'd have made it this far in one of these."

"Yeah, being on top of each other like that all the time..." Blaine trailed off, shooting him a wink.

"Please, like you'd complain about me being on top of you."

"Never said that I would."

"In fact, I think it's your favorite thing," Kurt continued loftily, bending at the waist to examine a model car inside a glass case—a yellow 1967 Ford Mustang, Blaine read from his position opposite. He glanced through the glass at Kurt and took in the fascinated look in his eyes, his blue irises reflecting the yellow of the model car and suddenly taking on a singularly unique shade of green that Blaine hadn't seen in fourteen years.

"And what makes you think that?" Blaine asked in a low voice, even though he could see from just a glance that there was no one else around.

"After all the times we've slept together, what wouldn't make me think that?" Kurt asked, though it was more a statement than a question. Slowly, he circled around the case to back Blaine up against it, brow furrowed as his eyes drifted down Blaine's body and closed. He cocked his head to the right, tensed his shoulders, and let out a low, "Mmm."

"What are you—" Blaine began, but Kurt silenced him with a finger pressed against his lips. Eyes still closed—clearly trusting Blaine to keep watch—Kurt looped his arms around Blaine's neck and pulled their bodies tightly together.

"Fuck," Kurt whispered, the fingers of one hand carding through Blaine's hair. "Right—right there... Fuck, Kurt, harder..."

"Oh my god, I do not sound like that," Blaine protested, but Kurt's breathing grew shallow and harsh, hitching in his chest as his arms shivered and he crowded Blaine even closer to the glass case. The corners of it pressed between his shoulder blades almost painfully.

"Just a little more..." Kurt pleaded, his voice pitched high and desperate. Blaine's face burned as he continued, "Come on, fuck me, make me yours."

"Kurt, you have to st—"

When Kurt opened his eyes, his pupils were blown wide, and Blaine fell silent. Kurt leaned down, so close that their lips were a hair's breadth apart, and without breaking eye contact whispered, "Please, please—"

"Someone's coming," Blaine blurted, and Kurt abruptly stepped back, hands falling to his sides.

As if nothing had happened at all, he went back to looking at the exhibits, casting only one salacious look over his shoulder and stating, "No one's coming."

Blaine felt like he'd been knocked over sideways. How could this Kurt—his favorite Kurt, all sultry tease and subtle love—have eluded him for so long? Because what they had was love; Blaine could see it, now. Yet still he waited, because it was all he knew how to do when he'd put the object of his affection up on a pedestal without any idea of how to climb up and stand beside them.

He waited for the descent, the press of a kiss that tasted like love, the vowels and consonants that would spell it all out, knowing all the while that they would never come. And really, what reason could he have to think they would? History seemed to repeat itself for Blaine Anderson—at least where his unrequited crushes were concerned. He'd mooned after Jamie, one of the guys working at the Subway on Pleasant Street, for the entire summer before he'd left for his internship. He had put the guy up on a pedestal and never done a goddamn thing about it, because how could anyone reach so high as to touch an idol?

And this thing with Kurt was so much more than an unrequited crush. If the feelings were so much more powerful, didn't it follow that the likelihood of it turning out the way Blaine wanted was even less unlikely? The fear of it was paralyzing.

Do you honestly believe that this is just a road trip thing? he wanted to ask as he followed Kurt through the last hallway and out into the foyer. Blaine watched his fingertips trail along the wall just as they trailed along his own skin in dark clutches of night, and wondered, What if we'd met in another life? What if I was different, braver, more sure that I'm even worthy of you? What then?

"Gift shop?" Kurt asked lightly when Blaine caught up with him. "I'm thinking a shirt from this place might not be so bad."

"Yeah?" Blaine asked, his mood brightening.

"Just this once."



Later that day, long after darkness had fallen and they had both glutted themselves on one another, Blaine left Kurt sleeping. Unable to drift off himself, he padded out into the living room in socks and pajama pants, pulling on his hoodie as he went; the nights were turning colder.

With music quietly playing in the background, Blaine caught up on the news and replied to a few emails he'd been meaning to get to, exactly none of it distracting him in the way he'd hoped. Every thirty seconds or so, his eyes drifted to the half-closed bedroom door, and he realized just how lonely it could be on the road.

After only a moment's hesitation, he opened his blog and began a new post.

I think I need some advice, guys.

Blaine considered his next words carefully, fingers poised over the keyboard. He sighed quietly, the sound barely carrying further than the laptop.

The thing is... The thing is that I know you've all been able to see it. How I've been feeling, how I've been falling, even if I couldn't. You'll have to clue me in to how you do that one of these days. But the point is that I really don't know what to do about it, any more than I did the night I realized that... That I, Blaine Anderson, am in love with Kurt Hummel.

He stopped short, the cursor blinking at him almost tauntingly as he took in the words he wanted to vocalize but couldn't, fear holding his heart captive when it should have been Kurt. Blaine had thought them over and over, at least once per waking minute in the days since the meteor shower, but hadn't let them out. It had been... Nice, at first, having the thrill of something secret and new—old, he kept reminding himself, but newly realized—to hold close, to keep just for him. But what had felt like a feather between his fingers at first now felt like a weight around his neck, full of responsibility and ruin.

I wonder if you were all taking bets on how long it'd be before I realized or owned up to it. Sorry to anyone who lost out, he wrote, halting between sentences as he tried to work his way around to the point. The point is that, for a while, I was doing okay. I even kind of thought that Kurt might feel the same, or at least be on the way to it. I mean, god, he told me back in Minnesota that he'd thought he was caving, which was why he—well, you know. So it's not like I'd be completely off-base, right? And all day on Saturday he kept looking at me like I put the sun in the sky, and I was so sure that he was going to say something.

But he didn't. I mean... Why would he fall for me anyway, right? He's just. He's everything. Everything.

I talked to Hugh at the gig on Saturday night, and he told me that a few of them are forming a new band once their tour's over and moving to New York to see if they can make it. He wants me to go with them, sing and write, and the first thing I thought was, What about Kurt?

Should I hold on? Should I wait, half-expecting to get my heart broken? Should I just take this for exactly what it we've said it is, take everything he'll give me and let the timer run out?

What should I do?

After Blaine hit the 'submit' button, he closed his incognito window and shoved the laptop away. He stretched out his legs and arms, the deep ache of satiation in his limbs reminding him just how rough they'd gotten earlier, and despite the heaviness of what he'd just been putting into words, he couldn't help but smile a little to himself.

He turned to curl up on his side, arm tucked up under his head, and closed his eyes. But it was no use—sleep was eluding him, just as it had been toward the beginning of the trip. Idly, he wished that Kurt might wake up of his own accord and suggest making warm milk. Blaine could never get it to taste quite the same when he made it himself.

When a few minutes had passed with no respite, Blaine sighed heavily, picked up his phone and stood, making his way to the cab and dropping himself into the driver's seat. Resting both arms over the steering wheel, he leaned over it to look out into the wooded clearing at the center of the semicircle formed by the other few R.V.'s and campers in the park. There was a group of people gathered around the fire pit, all drinking from red Dixie cups and paired off with blankets wrapped around their shoulders.

He and Kurt still hadn't had a campfire, and Blaine ached to know what it would be like, now that they were... Whatever they were. Their campfires used to be legendary, all-night affairs that only ended when the embers were dying out, and Blaine had always found himself entranced by the inherent romance of sitting by the dancing flames and speaking with hushed voices and shadowed eyes. There was something intrinsically special about that aspect of their shared childhood, and Blaine longed to recapture it.

His woolgathering was interrupted when his phone buzzed in the cup holder, and he swiped his thumb across the screen to open the new email that had just arrived.

It was a comment on his blog, submitted anonymously and signed only with the initial F. There was no text other than a YouTube link. It only took a moment for Blaine's curiosity to get the better of him.

Having never really been a fan of the artist's work, the corners of his mouth twisted when he saw Cary Brothers' name beneath the video window, but the song—Ride—was one that he hadn't heard before, so he let it play. After all, there must have been a reason that 'F,' whoever they may be, had sent it to him.

The song had a slow guitar intro, quiet at first and full of melancholy; almost immediately Blaine sat up straighter in his seat, setting his phone back into the cup holder and letting his palms cup his knees.

"You are everything I wanted; the scars of all I'll ever know," Cary sang, "If I told you you were right would you take my hand tonight? If I told you the reasons why, would you leave your life and ride?"

Blaine's eyes slipped closed, exhaustion settling over him like a blanket of snow. He felt himself becoming slowly buried beneath it, the only light above him an unattainable one—he could reach up toward it, but saw only the silhouette of his own hand eclipsing the source of his warmth. The song wrapped itself around him until he knew nothing but its soaring, echoing measures, and he wondered what would happen to him and Kurt if he decided to go to New York.

Knowing what he now knew about how his absence during his internship had affected Kurt, he felt selfish for even considering it. But was it really so selfish for not wanting to be beholden to something that was finite? Then again, how could he give up everything they had discovered between them over the course of this road trip, not to mention all that he had worked so long for?

A shuffling behind him alerted him to Kurt's sudden presence, and warm, sleep-heavy arms curled around his shoulders.

"I thought you hated Cary Brothers," Kurt mumbled sleepily as he rested his cheek atop Blaine's head and swayed a little from side to side.

"Someone sent it to me," Blaine said.

"One of the guys in London?" Kurt asked, and Blaine nodded absently, grateful for being given an out before having to scrabble around for it himself. "What do you think?"

Pretty accurate, Blaine thought, but bit his tongue. "I like it."

Kurt hummed, still swaying as the tips of his fingers drifted up and down Blaine's chest. He tensed when Cary sang again of the what if's, and as the song faded into silence, he whispered, "You should come back to bed."

"What's in bed?"

"Someone who won't really mind if you wanna have sex half-asleep."

"I was hoping that'd be the case," Blaine said, chuckling.

"It's like one mind," Kurt replied, and straightened up.

As Blaine turned and stood, he drank in the sight of Kurt—relaxed like he rarely was during daylight hours, his Henley and sweatpants rumpled and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He looked far more inviting than the mess inside Blaine's head, so he left everything behind in the cab—his phone, his thoughts, his reliance on lyrics to put into words what he couldn't—and simply let himself be led.



Distance: 8,584 miles