Day 078: Monday 3rd December, 2012
Everything but the Truth (Wyoming)

"Brokeback?"

"Oh, can we? Please? I'm still trying to repress watching it with Dad."

"Cowboys, Kurt. Do you need to ask? It's like you don't even know me at all."



"Hmm... Are you starting to feel better?"

Kurt arched his back, hissing pleasantly as Blaine's fingernails scratched over his hipbones. "I'm still fucking sick of driving, and Kathy Bates is still a fucking liar."

"But are—you starting—to feel better?" Blaine repeated, carefully punctuating his words in time with his rocks back and forth, Kurt buried to the hilt inside him. He looked down at Kurt with eyes that said, I'm accepting none of your bullshit today, Hummel.

"Yes. I'm—fuck—definitely feeling better," Kurt answered, and finally let it all drain away: the frustration that they had run out of coffee and there were no decent beans to be found anywhere; the anger at the GPS having led them astray and dumped them at a campground in Rock Springs; the constant dull ache that had been plaguing his lower back for days.

All that was left behind was Blaine, tight and slick around him—angel—gorgeous as he leaned back and planted his hands behind him on Kurt's thighs—fierce, owning, beautiful—rolling his hips slowly, deliciously and agonizingly slowly.

Kurt ran his fingers up and down Blaine's torso, lazily, like there was no rush—there wasn't; there never had to be. Having Blaine above him, riding him like it was the thing he was put on Earth to do, made him close his eyes, moan through his bitten lips, and sink.

There doesn't have to be anything but this, the voice in the back of his head reminded him. His hands trailed down to squeeze Blaine's hips—just once, just enough of a signal. But Kurt didn't try to quiet the voice, didn't try to ignore it, simply sank further and further past it to the very core of his pleasure: burning hot, crackling energy and made just for him. It felt as if the brokenness inside him had been being repaired ever since their first kiss; strands of yarn were slowly knitting back together something he hadn't even known was torn until Blaine had held it up before him. He could see it all behind his eyelids, playing out like a movie of his life: silent and monochrome until Blaine, and then glorious Technicolor that exploded in a riot of light and noise and love.

"God bless Wyoming, fuck," Blaine whispered, dropping forward and bracketing Kurt's head with his forearms. The chill of the frigid December air was gone as soon as they were skin to skin, and the blanket covering them captured the heat from their campfire, wrapping them in a cocoon of warmth and the scents of forest air and clean sweat.

Breathlessly, Kurt said, "I keep telling you, it's not even a real place. It's a state of mind."

"Don't think it was where Billy Joel was singing about, though," Blaine quipped, laughing on a ragged exhale that disappeared inside a moan, and oh, the feeling of that was two different types of bliss.

"That's—Blaine—that's because... Fuck, keep doing that..."

"Admit it, Kurt: Wyoming is real. Otherwise, where exactly are we right now?"

"North Colorado."

"There's already a north Colorado."

Not missing a beat, Kurt chuckled and rolled his eyes, wrapping his arms around Blaine's middle and rolling them over underneath the thick blanket. "Really north Colorado, then."

"Fine, really—fucking hell, Kurt—really north Colorado it is," Blaine acquiesced, hooking his legs around Kurt's waist and urging him closer, faster, deeper, until Kurt felt like they might both split apart and be fused instead into one person. He surfaced, buried his face in the curve of Blaine's neck, and licked a sloppy kiss over his collar bone.

He was spinning out, Blaine's hands scrabbling for purchase on his back; Kurt pulled back and buried himself again with stronger movements and utter abandon. Always the chasing—it was always the chasing and always had been, but with Blaine, it was running hand in hand toward something: running toward a horizon appearing as if they were painting it onto the sky themselves; running toward the next ten years; running toward each other. And Kurt knew that the truth was far from any of that—from all of it—but the lie was too seductive, too easy to believe, too hard to resist.

"Sweetheart," Blaine intoned, reaching up and cupping Kurt's jaw, "get out of your head and come join me."

Smirking down at him, Kurt moved as if to twist out of his grasp but Blaine held firm, eyes locked on his—all at once, something shifted between them and Kurt realized that he was close, right on the brink, as if he'd been falling with the ground rushing up to meet him.

"Eyes on me," Blaine murmured, his voice half-strangled as he arched and writhed.

Kurt swallowed, the motion almost constricted by the way Blaine was holding him, and when had Blaine become this? When had he transformed into this bundle of sex and want and arcane knowledge, sizzling with an electricity that made Kurt dizzy?

"Don't close your—fuck, I'm so close..."

And Kurt wasn't just running, now; he was racing, like his heartbeat, pounding Blaine into the unforgiving ground and winding his hand between them to twist it around Blaine's length. He could feel himself cracking, leaving shards of himself behind as he moved harder, faster, pivoting and falling into the honeyed amber of Blaine's eyes until—

Breaking point, both of them coming, slack-jawed and silent, pulsing and trembling—a flat line and a shock back to life all at once. Flashes in Blaine's eyes: light and dark; life and death; love and despair—everything Kurt had seen in him in Louisiana, and it was too much. He collapsed, his limbs shaking and spent, and with loose lips he silently mouthed those three painful little words into the bare skin of Blaine's shoulder.

The freezing nighttime temperatures caught up with him all at once as he carefully shifted them both onto their sides, curling into Blaine with a shiver—his hands were burning yet freezing to the touch—and still buried inside him even as he softened.

"Blaine Anderson: kinky exhibitionist. Who knew?" he said quietly, glancing up at the patches of sky visible through the tree canopy above. It felt like too soon to look Blaine in the eye again.

"You're the one who told me you wanted to have sex outside," Blaine said, tugging the blanket up under their chins and hissing as their feet were briefly exposed to the cold.

"When the hell did I say that?" Kurt asked. Slowly, wincing all the way, he pulled out and sat up to retrieve more blankets from the pile, heaping them on top of them both until they resembled something of a nest.

"July fourth."

"There's no way I said that."

"You did!" Blaine exclaimed, his voice loud in Kurt's ear where he'd curled into Blaine's arms once more. "After the fireworks were done, don't you remember? We were still squeezed into that lounger, and I saw Hugh and Lisa coming out of the bushes..."

"Right," Kurt said, nodding as the memory resurfaced. "And you made The Face, and I told you to lighten up, and then you made The Face at me, and I said—"

"You said that you'd wanted to try it for a while. Just to see what it'd be like," Blaine finished for him, his fingertips ghosting the skin of his arm. "And?"

"Pretty damn perfect, I'd say."

They lapsed into quiet after that—or at least as much quiet as there was to be had in the middle of the wooded clearing, owls hooting in the trees and insects chirping, not to mention Kurt's iPod playing somewhere almost out of reach behind them.

How can this be a lie? he thought, suddenly overcome with desperation and reeling from the way his emotions ricocheted from one extreme to another. How can he lie here with me, wrapped up in my favorite blanket and looking like everything I want for the rest of my life, and not be the real thing? How can I be wrong when I know that he's it; not just my best friend but my everything?

The clarity made him swallow his fear, and he wriggled out of Blaine's arms, licking his lips and clearing his throat. Letting it out in increments wasn't enough—it would never be enough, not until he let it all out in one exhale—and this moment... Until the music switched, 'pretty damn perfect' was exactly how Kurt would have described it.

But the song did switch, to Yellowcard's Keeper, and while it began with an almost uplifting sound, Kurt knew the song inside out. Fear broke over him like the waves of a sea in the height of a storm—I want you to love me, I want you to leave me—and he was gone, again—I wish I could be somebody else—and Blaine was wrapped around him but so far out of reach with the way he suddenly tensed—Wish there was something inside me to keep you beside me—and moving to switch the song would be too much of an admission: Kurt knew it, and he knew that Blaine knew it, too.

So they lay there silently until the song ended—I should've told you everything, I should've told you everything—watching each other in the dark, and Kurt thought it was all over.

Abruptly—too abruptly for it to be the cold finally getting to him—Blaine moved away, his arm shooting out to grab the iPod and switch it off. Kurt swallowed, sitting up and wrapping a blanket around himself. He felt more exposed than he ever had in front of Blaine, like a raw nerve expecting to be brought to wreck and ruin.

"We're always listening to music," Blaine said, looking out into the darkness of the trees that edged the clearing. "We used to be able to be quiet around each other and now it seems like it's this huge, scary thing.

"And do you know why that is, Kurt?" he continued, fixing his gaze on him—it penetrated to Kurt's very core, like Blaine could see through his every mask. "It's because ever since we started this, we've stopped knowing how to talk to each other. It's because we've always known that this is something bigger than either of us thought it was, but there's so much riding on it that we both just shut our mouths and got on with it. But I—I... I can't do it anymore.

"I'm in love with you."

And just like that, the strands unraveled. I'm not ready, he thought, openly gaping at Blaine and pulling the blanket tighter. How could Blaine love him, after all he'd done, after Chicago, after all the time he'd wasted? It made no sense. It defied comprehension. All at once he wished with his entire being that there was music, because the utter silence that fell inside his mind made him feel as if he were stuck in a dark space with the walls closing in on him.

He thought of Anne of Green Gables, unable to accept Gilbert's love because she still viewed herself as a little girl. It was too adult a weight to carry upon his shoulders; having that responsibility both to and for another person. When had everything gotten so... Important? Where were the days of hanging at each other's houses or on campus or at Coffee Pond, whiling away non-precious hours by watching the same movie over and over or playing What Would We Film Here or even studying?

Slowly, cautiously, Blaine reached for his hand. "Please say something."

Kurt couldn't help it: he pulled his hand back and said the first thing that came to mind: "Why now?"

"It's not like you didn't know," Blaine scoffed.

"What?" Kurt breathed, eyes wide—how can he... He can't know, he can't, he can't...

"Please, you've known ever since Louisiana; I saw it in your eyes."

"I told you that it—meant something with you; can't we just leave it at that?"

"You told me what meant something?" Blaine spat, suddenly getting to his feet, and both of them were naked under their blankets and this was so not the way Kurt had wanted this evening to end but he hadn't even known it until now.

Scrabbling for words, for coherency, for anything, he sputtered, "The... The sex, the—all of it."

"When?"

"After the first time I—in West Virginia, it doesn't matter, it—"

"Don't you see? That's exactly what I'm talking about!" Blaine shouted.

"You're my best friend; of course it means something!" Kurt shot back, scrambling to his feet and looking Blaine straight in the eye.

"Okay. Okay, Kurt. I get it," Blaine said softly. "This really is just a road trip thing for you, isn't it?"

What if? What if I was to tell him everything, offer him my bruised heart in exchange for his own? What if this is the moment that could begin something new, something wonderful, something that won't ever have to end? But that was the thing. All good things had a shelf life—why should it be any different for them? They had laid down the rules for a reason. "We had a deal, Blaine. What happens on the road trip—"

"Stays on the road trip, I know," Blaine interrupted, his voice low and dangerously controlled. His shoulders slumping, he turned as if to walk away, but seemed to think better of it at the last moment. He approached Kurt slowly, as if scared he might run away, and stopped when they were mere inches apart. "See, the thing is, I don't believe you. And you can be as stubborn as you want about it, but I know that what you feel for me is more than 'best friends.' So I'm not giving up, and I'm not going anywhere. It's out there, now. You can do whatever you want with it."

With that, he rocked forward and kissed Kurt tenderly—like he might at any other time of the day, like he hadn't just fractured the fundamental building blocks of Kurt's entire universe—and then walked away without looking back.

Kurt stood perfectly still, splintered and shivering in the dark.



Distance: 11,313 miles