Day 072: Tuesday 27th November, 2012
Anchors (North Dakota)

"Some slim pickings right there."

"We've discussed the Southern accent, Blaine."

"Ugh, fine. Fargo?"



"So... Just what is it about this place you're taking us?" Blaine asked, reclining in his passenger seat as they cruised along US-85 at a comfortable speed. They were on their way to Williston, North Dakota, a small town that Kurt had been adamant they had to visit, even though it would result in needing to park overnight at a Walmart.

"Ooh, Georgia," Kurt said, pointing to the SUV in the passing lane, before answering Blaine's question, "It's where I got the paperweights."

"What paperweights?"

"The ones I have on my desk. You kept fiddling with them when we first started planning this trip."

"How do—oh, look, another South Dakota—how do you always remember things like that?" Blaine asked, as he always did when Kurt presented clear recollection of even the tiniest details.

"Cinematographers have to be good with details," Kurt sing-songed his stock response. "But, um... Do you remember when Dad flew us all out to Bismarck for Grandma Betty's funeral?"

"Yeah, the week before graduation," Blaine clarified, pitching the end of his sentence into a question. Kurt nodded, scratching at his shoulder and licking his lips; Blaine turned sideways in his seat, leaning his cheek against the warm leather of the headrest—Kurt had never told him what had happened during their trip.

"She—in her will, she left us instructions for this ridiculous scavenger hunt, which was just like her. We ended up at this kitschy little art shop in Williston, and she told us that we had to get something to remember her by, instead of her leaving us something."

"Why'd you choose the paperweights?" Blaine asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"Well, they're Tree of Life, and Grandma Betty spent her entire life here. Like she was rooted, or something. And she always kind of reminded me of Grandmother Willow in Pocahontas, you know, talking in loose riddles and dishing out life advice like it was her sole purpose for existing," Kurt said, his tone belying a fondness that his words did not.

Ignoring Kurt's cry of "Wisconsin!" as he pointed through the windshield at a sleek Buick pulling slightly ahead of them, Blaine asked, "How much of her wisdom made it into your valedictorian speech?"

Kurt laughed. "None of it, actually. Although, I guess—I guess in a way, she was in it. The thing I said about people wanting us to be only one thing—that was how she was. I always felt like she was trying to categorize me, and it was infuriating."

"God, you rehearsed that speech for weeks. Do you still remember it?"

"That's like asking if you remember Sam's monologue at the end of The Two Towers—and don't recite it right now, oh my god."

"I wasn't going to," Blaine shot back, sticking out his tongue for good measure. "I was going to ask you to recite yours."

"Really?" Kurt asked, glancing at him sidelong. When Blaine nodded, he took a deep breath and flexed his hands around the steering wheel. "From the top?"

"From the top."

"Okay, um... We're always taught the importance of remembering where we started, and appreciating how far we've come," Kurt began, cycling through the speech with none of the inflection Blaine remembered, but instead at a speed betraying the fact that he was trying to remember enough to get through it. "We can't look at the end of an era, like this one, without going back to the beginning. And in the beginning, they told us to be individual, that diversity is good, that we have to make our own special music and sing our own special song. Okay, well—maybe that last one was just Mama Cass, but you know what I mean.

"My point is, somewhere along the way, we tend to forget all that," Kurt continued, voice growing momentarily soft and his recitation slowing. Blaine found himself nodding along, just as he had while sitting in the front row at graduation, gazing up at his incredible best friend with a tassel swinging in the corner of his left eye. "We're not told to, but we do it anyway. We become caught up in the everyday, in making sure that we fit into a nice, neat little box that we can slap a label on and show to the world. Because suddenly, when we got to high school, people only wanted us to be one thing: the cheerleader, the audiovisual geek, the stoner, the science nerd, the zero... In my case, the gay kid.

"After a while, I think a lot of us found those labels a comfort. Life was easy if we only had to be one thing. We could even group people together by their labels and judge them accordingly. And I see some of you side-eyeing me right now, but we all did it.

"The thing is... I'm looking at all of you in your caps and gowns, and I can't remember a single one of your so-called labels. I don't see anyone squeezed into a box or shoved to the side—I only see a graduating class of the people I've known since kindergarten, people I've grown up with and loved and fallen out with and—loved again," Kurt recited, speeding up once more and tripping over the word 'love.' "You're all sitting in front of me right now because you defied what everyone expected of you, what they labeled you as, and came here to be united.

"After we've said goodbye to each other, we'll be going out into a world where more people will try to label us and put us into boxes. But I want you to remember this day, this beautiful day where for once, we were one. Where for once, if we wanted to be two things, three, five, fifty, a thousand—we felt like we could be all of them. Where we didn't feel like we had to make other people happy, because we were here only for ourselves.

"My final advice to you, my fellow Class of '08 graduates, is to remember that. And when you leave today—please don't forget to take yourselves out with you into the world, with whatever labels you want."

As Kurt finished, taking as much of an exaggerated Shakespearean bow as he could while driving, Blaine loudly applauded him, lost in memories of their senior year of high school, when things like being valedictorian mattered. It had been a good-natured race between them, and they'd been neck and neck until Blaine had caught the flu and missed three weeks of school—afterward, he'd never quite managed to drag his Physics grade back up.

"It was a kick-ass speech," Blaine told him, and quite uncharacteristically, Kurt blew him a kiss.

Blaine caught it, and slowly lowered his hand back into his lap as he considered just how out of character Kurt had been acting since... Well, that was the thing: he could no longer remember when the shift had occurred. Perhaps it had been a gradual shift that he was only seeing now that he looked back at the beginning, like Kurt's speech told him to.

"Texas," Kurt pointed out quietly, and Blaine's thoughts turned once again to Hugh's offer of moving to New York to be part of their new outfit. After a few moments passed, Kurt broke the silence by saying, "You've gone quiet."

"I'm just thinking."

"About what?"

"What would you say if I told you I was thinking about New York?" he asked, crossing his hands in his lap and thumbing at his index finger.

"I'd say tell me something I don't know," Kurt replied at length, his tone overly bright. "And I'd say that you should go for it."

"I should—wait, really?"

"Mmhmm. What's there to keep you in Maine?"

"Well, I—I..." Blaine trailed off, his thoughts short-circuiting before they made it to his mouth. You, he wanted to say, though all at once he realized that he had no idea what Kurt's plans even were beyond his long-held dream of 'creating beautiful things.' "What are you going to do? After we get back, I mean."

Kurt opened his mouth but said nothing, and dismissed the question with a simple shrug. "Still figuring out that part."

"Would you come to New York with me?" Blaine blurted, the words tumbling out before he could stop them. He quickly added, "I mean, don't get me wrong—I love those guys, but I'd go crazy if I had to live with them. I'm gonna need a good roommate."

"I don't know, B," Kurt said with a heavy sigh. "Honestly, I'm trying not to think too much about what'll happen when we get back."

"Why?"

"Being on the road like this, it's... Kind of magical, don't you think?"

"Of course."

"I know it has to end, and I know that it will, but... I just don't want it to."

"Me neither," Blaine reassured him, reaching over and covering Kurt's hand with his own. "You okay if I go surf for a bit?"

"The internet?"

"No, Kurt, the miles of choppy water currently surrounding us."

"Well, who even says 'surfing the internet' anymore? But yes, fine, go," Kurt said, waving him off, but before Blaine could exit the cab, Kurt took his arm and added, "I'll think about it."

Blaine made his way into the living area and fell back onto the couch with a sad smile on his face—he knew what "I'll think about it" meant when Kurt said it. The deal was as good as off the table. But there was still time for them to figure everything out; he could feel the right moment to tell Kurt how he really felt growing closer, as if he were standing in the middle of train tracks that were just beginning to vibrate beneath his feet.

He killed a little time by catching up on news from back home, and guiltily sending a couple of short responses to emails that had been sitting in his inbox since before Louisiana. The thought of Louisiana made him itch to get back to Kurt's side, and before he'd spent too long frustrated at the space between them, they were jumping out into a mostly-empty parking lot out front of a small strip mall.

He found himself hanging back a step, watching Kurt's long legs take the sidewalk in stride, and at once he wondered, What will I do if he doesn't come to New York?

The thought made him swallow hard as he followed Kurt past the Economart and Country Floral. Blaine had experienced their relationship in both extremes, now, and he knew exactly which he preferred. Being without Kurt in any capacity would be like losing a vital piece of himself—had felt exactly like that his entire year abroad, in fact—but being without Kurt's heart, however veiled it might currently be, was unthinkable.

"I... It didn't look like this last time," Kurt murmured as they came to a stop outside a storefront.

Woolgathering cut short, Blaine gazed up at the store and took it in. The wooden fa�ade that covered the brickwork was painted entirely black, and the display in the front window was a selection of Ray Caesar paintings—surrealist images of women in various poses, some of them displaying animal characteristics and others completely abstract in their composition. The silver lettering above the storefront read Moiety: Fine Art for the Discerning Collector.

It was the last place Blaine ever expected to find in Williston, North Dakota. "Are you sure this is the right place?"

"Yeah, Moiety," Kurt said, gesturing up to the sign. Blaine liked the way the word sounded when Kurt spoke it. "It's the same place; it just looks completely different. Before, it was—well, almost the exact opposite; all kitschy and bright."

"Do you wanna go?" Blaine asked, brushing his knuckles over Kurt's elbow, the stiff canvas fabric of his jacket scratching against his skin.

"No... No, we came all this way," Kurt answered with a sigh, and pulled the door open.

The interior of Moiety smelled strongly of sage and sandalwood. Its lighting was surprisingly dim for an art store—spotlights set at intervals along the ceiling cast fuzzy circles of yellow along the floor between aisles of postcard-size paintings. One wall was entirely taken up with a nighttime scene of winter-bare trees, and the glossy, dark stain of the floorboards made Blaine think of his father's cabin at Saint Mary Lake, where they would be staying their three nights and two days in Montana. A slow, echoing, piano-driven song was playing over the speakers, and it lent an even darker atmosphere to the already dark store.

Moiety was a place entirely at odds with the other small stores along the strip mall, sticking out like a sore, bruised thumb, and when Blaine said as much, there was a dark chuckle from the back.

A tiny woman with graying hair appeared as if out of nowhere, thin-framed spectacles hanging from a chain around her neck and bare toes just peeking out from beneath her floor-length black velvet dress.

"That's because we're the only place with a modicum of culture in this backward town," she said, her voice a thin and croaking rasp. As she approached them, the scent of cigarette smoke hung around her like a cloud. She looked them both from head to foot, and the crooked, toothy smile that twisted her mouth sent a shiver running the length of Blaine's spine. "What can I help you gentlemen with today?"

"I was here a few years ago," Kurt began when Blaine remained silent, and from the corner of his eye, Blaine could see him drawing himself up a little straighter. "At least, I think I was. It looked completely different back then."

The woman nodded, her eyes narrowing and her smile growing wider. "Yes, it was very different. Why did you come?" she asked, but before waiting for an answer, she barreled on, "I took over from the old owners about a year ago, you see."

Kurt hesitated a moment, seemingly thrown off by her odd pattern of speech. "I came to find something to remember my grandmother by, after she passed."

"And what did you choose?" the woman asked, her gaze narrowing even further. She stepped closer to them both, her head tipped back as she looked Kurt in the eye. "The old owners were unaware of how an art shop such as this one should be run, you see. Very unimaginative."

She paused to clear her throat, then, and Kurt said, "A paperweight with the Tree of Life."

"Do you know what 'moiety' means?" she asked suddenly, turning her attention to Blaine. He shook his head quickly and felt an inexplicable disappointment in himself, as if he'd failed a test for which he'd been studying all week. "The owners didn't, either. So laughable, all of the things they didn't know. But I'm here, now."

"Could you tell us what it means?" he asked.

"What what means?"

"'Moiety.'"

"It means, 'one of two equal parts,'" she told him, looking between them both. "You see? You see why they were so blind, why I had to take over?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, definitely," Kurt broke in. "How could anyone not see?"

The woman threw her hands up with an air of exasperation, then placed one on Kurt's arm and fixed him with a gentler smile, one that almost looked kind. "You are welcome to browse," she said, and then turned her gaze to Blaine. "You must listen while you look. Take it in, you see?"

Blaine opened his mouth to ask what he should be listening for, but the woman simply pointed up, raising her eyes to the ceiling—for a moment, the song's volume seemed to be amplified, as it would between snatches of dialogue in any given movie trailer, and Blaine finally understood.

"Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have books to balance," she said, the fingers of her hand twitching in mid-air. Without another word, she excused herself and disappeared toward the back of the store again, passing through a heavy black curtain that swayed in her wake.

"What the fuck?" Kurt whispered, and Blaine instinctively stepped closer to him. "Seriously, what the fuck?"

"Was it just me or did that seem kind of... Hills Have Eyes to you?" Blaine asked.

"It wasn't just you."

"Do you wanna get out of here?"

"Can we stay? Just for a couple minutes? I kind of..."

"What?"

Kurt waved his hand dismissively and averted his eyes to scan the store. "I had this idea that I'd get another paperweight here; one to remember our trip—if she even has any amongst all the dead flowers and animal bones."

"Okay," Blaine said, nodding and gesturing down the aisle.

They made a quick circuit of the store, and among the long displays of dark, surrealist paintings they found various end shelves full of odd ornaments, a box of ornately jeweled pen and journal sets, and finally by the cash register, the paperweights they had been looking for.

There were heavy glass globes in all sizes, nestled within black boxes lined with white silk, and after a few seconds, Blaine watched as Kurt picked one up from the back of the shelf. It was clear as crystal, no bubbles or imperfections, and suspended within was a black, frosted silhouette of the United States.

"Oh my god," Kurt whispered, holding it out to Blaine. "How perfect is this?"

"Pretty perfect," he murmured.

Kurt hesitated by his side for a moment, then took the paperweight in its box to the cash register to wait for the old woman's reappearance.

Blaine returned his gaze to the rest of the display. Most of the paperweights looked like something he could have found at Nightshade—the single 'alternative' store in Brunswick, where the vast majority of their high school's goth and emo population shopped for their accessories. One of the globes in particular caught Blaine's eye: a perfect likeness of a human skull, cast in obsidian. As his eyes lingered on it, he couldn't help but shiver once again, and instead turned his attention to the paperweight sitting to its left: more of an oval in shape, and containing a single sprig of lilacs.

At once, he thought of Kurt's mother and how, on his first visit to Kurt's house after they'd met in the street, he'd noticed the basket of lilacs hanging from a hook on their porch. The basket had hung there for months after the car accident, the lilacs slowly dying and curling in on themselves.

Just as Blaine resolved to buy the paperweight for Kurt, the old woman reappeared from the back. She was silent as she rang up Kurt's purchase and pulled a glossy black bag from behind the register, gently setting the paperweight inside.

Kurt thanked her and turned to Blaine, raising his eyebrows as if in relief.

"I'll meet you outside," Blaine said, nodding in the woman's direction; Kurt briefly squeezed his arm as he passed by, seeming not to notice the box in Blaine's hands.

He approached the register cautiously, the woman's dark eyes boring into his with an intensity that made his hair stand on end.

"Just this," he said, attempting to break the tension.

"Where did you find this?" she asked as she took the paperweight from him. "I told them to take all of it with them, you see. But they didn't listen, and there was so much waste. Why did you choose this?"

Because it's the least depressing thing in this entire store, Blaine thought, but bit his tongue. "My friend's mom, she always loved lilacs."

"She's dead?"

"Yes. When he was eight."

"Restless and torn, you see," the woman said, quite inexplicably.

"I beg your pardon?" Blaine asked, feeling more confused by the second.

The woman sighed with that same air of exasperation, and leaned over the counter to grab Blaine's hand with a force he wouldn't have thought her capable. "How can you love someone like that? You didn't listen when I told you to."

"How can I... What?" he asked weakly.

"'How do you love someone so restless and torn?'" the woman asked, pointing upward again, and suddenly it clicked into place—she must have been quoting the lyrics of the song.

Blaine paused, carefully considering his response as a wave of indignation crested over him, hot and furious. "With hope," he said, and the woman released his hand with a scoff. "With faith," he continued as she rang up his purchase. Frustrated, he leaned over the counter and looked her straight in the eye. "With everything that I am."

She regarded him coldly for a moment more, then shrugged as if to indicate that she was finished with him. He paid, took his black bag, and walked away from the counter in silence, anger and defensiveness putting a terrible weight into his step. How dare she? She didn't know him, and she certainly didn't know the man he loved.

"That heart of yours. Did he steal it or did you give it?" he heard the woman ask in the second that his palm settled flat against the door's silver push panel. He half-turned back toward her, and she was standing at the end of the aisle farthest back, looking at him with that almost kind smile. "I know that they'll come back, you see. So I have to keep it everything it can be."

"He stole it first, but I'll give it over and over again if he'll let me," Blaine said quietly, dropping his gaze.

The expected reproachful response that already had him bristling never came, and when he looked back up, the woman was gone. Mentally shaking himself, he passed through the door and into the bright, cold sunshine outside. Kurt pushed off the wall he'd been leaning against and Blaine felt the residual anger drain from him. It left him almost dizzy, and Kurt seemed to sense it, taking his hand and leading him away from the store with a concerned glance.

"Are you okay?" he asked when they were halfway back to the R.V.

"Just... Really, really creeped out," Blaine answered.

"What did you get?"

"Something for you."

"Really?" Kurt asked. "What is it?"

"Surprise," Blaine told him, swinging the bag in his free hand. "Do you wanna see now?"

"Ugh, let's not talk about seeing things," Kurt said with a shudder, retrieving the keys to the R.V. from his pocket and unlocking the side door. He turned around as he climbed the first step and leaned down to press a dry kiss to the corner of Blaine's mouth. "Come on. We've got a movie to watch and a Walmart to suffer."

Blaine hesitated a moment before following him inside, sparing a single glance back at the storefront from across the still-empty parking lot.

With everything that I am, Blaine thought, feeling somehow imbued with more resolve than ever, than even before setting foot inside the dark walls of Moiety. Weighing the bag in his hand, he mused idly that, rather than buying the paperweight to honor a memory, perhaps he could use it instead to anchor a memory soon to be made.



Distance: 10,072 miles