Day 084: Sunday 9th December, 2012
Tumble, Tumble (New Mexico)

"See you tomorrow, okay?"

"Wait—Blaine! We still haven't decided what to watch in New Mexico!"

"No other road, no other way, no day but today!"



"Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?" Blaine sang softly, inclining his head toward Kurt and smiling at the snow-blush on his cheeks. "In the lane snow is glistening..."

"A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight," Kurt joined in, "walking in a winter wonderland."

Downtown Santa Fe certainly felt like one with its adobe buildings covered in snow and unlit farolitos lining the sidewalks and rooftops. Kurt's head rested on Blaine's shoulder, his hand clutching the crook of Blaine's elbow, and they were sitting on a bench by the Plaza monument, quietly watching the world go by.

For the first time, it felt like they were a real couple. Boyfriends. An item. In a relationship. A thing. Blaine couldn't decide whether it was how quickly Kurt seemed to be letting down his barriers, the atmosphere of Santa Fe giving everything the feeling that anything could happen, or a mixture of both. Whatever it was, he was glad for it.

"We should probably get going," he murmured, checking his watch. "Didn't you say the chapel closes at five?"

Kurt made a sound in the back of his throat as he stood and held out his hand for Blaine to take. "Since when do I need to make a noise when I stand up?" he grumbled.

"Old man," Blaine joked, and they set off along the Old Santa Fe Trail. Taking in the adobe storefronts, he caught himself humming again—the same tune he'd had stuck in his head since waking up that morning. It felt somehow familiar, like it was something from childhood or a half-remembered dream—simple and upbeat, and though the words were on the tip of his tongue, they wouldn't reveal themselves. Buoyed up, however, on the good mood that had been blanketing his steps since Colorado, he let the dull frustration of it simply roll off him.

"What is that?" Kurt suddenly asked as they turned onto Water Street.

Blaine's face warmed, and he explained, "I've had it in my head since I woke up and I can't place it. Do you know it?" He hummed a couple more bars, louder this time. Kurt stopped in his tracks, giving him a look tinged with such sadness that Blaine fell silent.

"Kurt?" he ventured after a moment.

"Don't know it. Sorry," he said in a clipped tone, burying his hands in his pockets and taking off again.

What just happened? Blaine thought, standing still for a second before catching up. There was a tension in the set of Kurt's shoulders that had been decidedly absent the past couple of days, and Blaine tried not to think too much about it, even though he had the sudden feeling that he'd made some awful misstep.

As they set foot inside Loretto Chapel moments later, they stood still, both taking in the neat pews, decorated with greenery and twinkling lights for Christmas, and the ornately designed marble stonework over the altar. Carvings of saints stood sentinel, and the vaulted ceilings at the back of the chapel were intricately painted in a swirling red and gold design. To their right was what they had apparently come to see: the miraculous staircase.

"So what is it with this staircase?" Blaine asked, his voice hushed though the chapel was otherwise empty. He leaned into Kurt and gently nudged his shoulder.

"The story goes that the chapel architect died," Kurt began, walking toward the staircase and beginning to climb it. Blaine smiled—Kurt had always had a little flair for the dramatic. "And the builders realized that there was no stairway to the loft included in the designs. The Sisters of Loretto prayed to Saint Joseph for divine intervention for nine days straight, and on the tenth day, a man appeared.

"He told the nuns that he'd build them a staircase, but that he'd need complete privacy in order to do it," Kurt continued from halfway up. "He locked himself in the chapel for three months, and as soon as the staircase was finished, he left. No one knew who he was, and he was never seen or heard from again."

"And what's the miracle?" Blaine asked, sliding his hand over the banister—also strung with greenery and lights—and following him up the staircase.

"The construction," Kurt answered, leaning over the railing of the loft. "No nails, no visible means of support... Apparently, it still has some experts baffled. The Sisters eventually decided that the man was Saint Joseph himself come to answer their prayers."

Blaine clasped his hands together, forearms resting on the railing as he stood close to Kurt and looked out over the small chapel. "What would we film here?" he asked quietly, trying to see the place through Kurt's eyes.

Kurt was quiet for a moment, his gaze roving the ceilings and the pews below. "I don't know," he said at length. Blaine pursed his lips, concealing his surprise—Kurt was the one who had the universes inside his head, and Blaine was the one who riffed off of them.

"Funeral?" he suggested.

"No," Kurt said forcefully with a vehement shake of his head, and Blaine scrabbled around for a different idea.

"Nice place for a wedding, maybe," he murmured quickly, straightening and stretching his arms out in front of him. He framed a shot in a deliberately bad way, knowing that Kurt wouldn't be able to resist correcting him—which he did after a moment, covering Blaine's hands with his own and creating a panning shot that began right below them and traveled across the pews right to the altar.

"Native Santa Feans," he said quietly, his hands lingering on top of Blaine's.

"Nah," Blaine said. "Two guys who've been in love with each other forever but haven't seen each other in years. They run into each other here, and finally admit everything."

"Why here?" Kurt asked.

"This place, it..." Blaine trailed off, dropping his hands and clutching the railing as he looked down. "Do you get the feeling that everything would be better if you just stayed here for a while and figured your shit out?"

"It does have something," Kurt agreed. "Even more so than where we were yesterday."

The previous day, they had visited Madrid—"It's pronounced MAD-rid, not Ma-DRID like in Spain," Kurt had told him—and found themselves quite taken with the quirky, artsy little town that lay in the Ortiz Mountains, twenty minutes from Santa Fe on the Turquoise Trail. Were it not for the colorful fronts of the shops and matchstick houses, Blaine might have felt like he'd stepped into a Spaghetti Western.

They had spent the entire day wandering the streets of the town, walking in and out of stores and restaurants and visiting the Old Coal Town Museum, finally ending up at the Mine Shaft Tavern and only being able to drink two beers before they were tipsy, the elevation making one drink feel like three.

Blaine nodded, and they paused only a moment longer before both seeming to silently agree that it was time to leave.

It was mostly dark by the time they stepped outside, and it was like walking into a different world—the Christmas lights had burst into life, the farolitos lining the sidewalks and rooftops lit as if by magic. Something about it left them in a companionable kind of quiet as they took it all in, Kurt's hand finding the crook of Blaine's elbow once again, and they set off down Water Street toward the Blue Corn Cafe.



They were so tipsy on margaritas by the end of their dinner—despite both eating more than their fill of tamales and calabacitas and carne avodava—that Kurt barely put up a fight when Blaine bought him one of the caf�'s branded t-shirts. He put up even less of a fight when Blaine dragged him to the back of the bus to the campground and spent their fifteen-minute journey lavishing attention on his neck, chasing the scent of Jean Paul Gaultier that always lingered around his pulse point.

Blaine could feel the heat between them as he led Kurt inside the R.V., but it was a slow burn, not a hunger to be immediately sated. Instead they both changed into pajamas and curled up under the covers of the bed, automatically gravitating together in the middle. Blaine set up his laptop to play RENT, and they sang along to all of the songs, and the lingering tension drained out of Kurt by degrees.

Despite every song they sang together, Blaine's mind kept wandering back to that simple tune with which he'd awoken, the words still on the tip of his tongue. He kept biting back the urge to start humming it, something almost ominous growing in the back of his mind, scant memories beginning to knit themselves into a repeating pattern of motion...

And suddenly, woven before him was a picture of starting clarity: Saturday sleepovers at Kurt's house; watching The Lion King every single week because it was their movie; heading up to Kurt's room after he'd watched Kurt standing next to Elizabeth at the sink, their bright voices singing The Dishes Song.

"Scrub, scrub, scrub 'til the dishes are done, dry, dry, dry 'til the bubbles are gone..."

"Shut up," Kurt whispered harshly, and Blaine could have punched himself in the face, not even realizing that he'd been singing the words out loud.

"I'm—fuck, I'm sorry," Blaine got out, but Kurt was already reeling away from him, shaking violently, and it was as if Blaine could suddenly see the legion of paper cut scars that lived beneath the surface of his skin. Angel was dying on the screen, Collins holding her close as Mimi and Roger sang of life going on but dying without each other, and Kurt was scrambling out of the bed too quickly for Blaine to catch him, to hold him and kiss him and make him forget. "Kurt, wait!"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Kurt yelled, and he was running now, his feet bare. He wrenched open the door to the R.V., taking off into darkness that almost swallowed him whole as Blaine ran after him.

The gravel was sharp beneath his feet but still he followed, Kurt's silhouette outlined by the bright white lights that hung from the covered pavilion at the end of the campground. Blood was rushing in his ears and he wanted to stop, lean over and empty the contents of his stomach onto the ground at what he'd done without even realizing, but everything in him was screaming to get to Kurt.

It was like slow motion, watching him stumble up the steps to the pavilion and be brought to his knees, hunched over and barely holding himself up, his body wracked with sobs. The sight made Blaine feel like he was suffocating. Because Kurt didn't cry. Ever.

Just like he had fourteen years earlier, two thousand five hundred miles away under a midnight sky in January, he circled around in front of Kurt and stood there. The soles of his feet stung and tingled against the cold wooden floor, and he hated himself for not knowing what to do. Kurt's sobs intensified until he sounded like a wounded animal, until he was barely breathing, and Blaine fell to his knees, cupping Kurt's jaw and forcing his head upward.

"Look at me," he said. "Sweetheart, look at me. I need you to breathe."

It had been fourteen years, but Blaine still recognized the unique and wrenching shade of green that flushed Kurt's irises when he cried. It was somewhere between lime and pistachio; the color of sun-bleached grass outlined in phthalo.

"Get away from me," Kurt ground out, staring him straight in the eyes for a moment of stone-cold resolve before his face crumpled and he managed to get to his feet, wrapping his arms around his middle.

"Kurt, I'm sorry, I—I never meant to—"

"Sh-shut up, just shut up, please stop talking, I can't—"

"Kurt, it's okay. It's okay, I understand," he rambled.

"Don't say that," Kurt said, his voice ragged. "Don't say you understand."

"I lost someone, too," Blaine reminded him gently. "Of course I understand."

"No, you don't. And just because I finally let you fuck me, don't think it means you know every fucking thing about me," Kurt spat, finally looking Blaine in the eye. The words hit Blaine like a slap in the face and he broke the look, his gaze landing on Kurt's right hand; his thumb was working back and forth over the crease of his index finger.

"That's not fair," he said in a small voice, shaking his head and chancing a glance back up.

"Oh, okay, let's talk about fair," Kurt said, rounding on him with fire in his eyes. "It's not fair that she got taken away from me just like that, like she wasn't my whole world. It's not fair that all I have of her is a fucking dresser and some stupid song. It's not fair that I have to carry around this huge, gaping hole in my chest when some days it feels like it's all I can do just to put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes it feels like I'm bleeding her, Blaine. Do you understand that?"

A split-second was all it took for Blaine to overcome his indecision; he closed the distance between them and wrapped Kurt up in his arms. Kurt struggled against his grip, his half-clenched fists pounding dully against Blaine's chest, but Blaine only tightened his hold, carding his fingers through the back of Kurt's hair as Kurt finally went lax against him, still trembling and sobbing.

"I'm here. I'm here; I'm not going anywhere," he whispered, not knowing what else to do. If it had been anyone else, he would have known. Whenever his mom was upset, he would bring her sweet tea and talk to her about tornadoes. After Tom had broken up with his girlfriend of four years, they went out to drink and commiserate. There had even been one occasion in freshman year when April had come looking for Kurt after a particularly nasty altercation with her roommate, and they had ended up making popcorn and watching Broken Flowers, a movie she'd loved so much that it was how Blaine had nicknamed her 'Flower.'

The Kurt in his arms, however, the Kurt whose knees were buckling underneath the weight of his sorrow and grief and such a fundamental paradigm shift... Blaine didn't know how to help other than sink to the ground with him.

Kurt took a deep, shuddering breath and pulled away, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand and looking miserably at the floor. "I'm sorry. For what I said before, and... This," he said, shaking his head and blinking back more tears. His hand fell to his lap, his thumb rubbing over his index finger again.

"You're not Catholic," Blaine blurted.

"What?" Kurt asked.

"The whole guilt thing isn't hereditary, you know," Blaine joked weakly, gesturing to his hand and adding, "Plus, you look like my grandma at church."

Kurt looked down at his hand like he hadn't even realized what he was doing. "She had a rosary that I used to hold. After," he explained. He flexed his fingers and sniffed harshly, something in his face shuttering.

"You don't need to wear the mask around me. You know that, right?" Blaine asked.

Kurt let out a hollow laugh. "Are you my therapist now? You took one psych class, B," he said, but there was no venom behind the words.

"Come on," Blaine said, tugging Kurt to his feet. "Come on back to me."

"I didn't—" Kurt began, but stopped and looked at Blaine almost sheepishly. "Okay."

A chill swept over them both as the breeze picked up, but Blaine didn't hurry their short walk back to the R.V., even when they were both wincing their way across the gravel. The dim moonlight picked out the tears that were still rolling down Kurt's face—he wasn't done yet, not by a long shot—and it wasn't until they were back inside and passing the bathroom that Blaine realized one small thing that he could do.

He pressed a kiss into Kurt's hair and nudged him toward the bedroom before ducking into the bathroom and rifling through the cabinets until he found what he needed.

Kurt was sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees when Blaine entered the bedroom; slowly, he climbed onto the bed next to him and waited until Kurt unfolded before peeling open the Band-Aid and sticking it onto the fabric of Kurt's shirt, right over his heart. Kurt did nothing but blink down at it for five long seconds, and then he pitched forward into Blaine's arms as his sobs turned frantic again.

Blaine could feel the tears seeping through his thin shirt and onto his chest; it was like Kurt was made of tears, like he'd been saving them all up for this one night where Blaine would finally be able to reach up to him, catch him as he tumbled down, and hold him together. His chest hurt, the tug of being needed spreading throughout him and filling him up in the most impossibly hollow way. And in that moment, Kurt's fingers tightening into the cotton of his shirt as he cried himself out, Blaine realized that he didn't need to be some knight in shining armor, riding in to save the day and make everything better. He needed to be the two-hundred-year-old oak tree, the pillar of strength rooted to the earth. He needed to be the anchor, the tether, the reason to come back and endure.

When Kurt had finally fallen asleep, Blaine tucked him under the covers and breathed deeply when Kurt immediately curled into his usual position. Something about his face had changed; the lines in his forehead were gradually easing out. He looked younger; more at peace... Beautiful.

Pulling the door closed behind him in the hope that Kurt would just continue to sleep, he made his way through to the living area with every intention of giving him some space and spending the night on the couch. The magnets on the refrigerator caught his eye, though, and he took in Kurt's message with a tired smile: "Emotion, devotion, to causing a commotion, creation, vacation, mucho masturbation."

His eyes roved the rest of the magnets, most of them left over from his grandfather's many road trips, and he let his fingers drift over one in particular, shaped into the outline of Arizona and proudly proclaiming in silver and teal, The Grand Canyon State.

After only the briefest of pauses, he pulled the magnet from the fridge and took it with him to the cab. He scrolled through his iPod until he found the song he was looking for, and as Melissa Etheridge began to softly serenade him, "Come on, baby. Let's get out of this town..." he started the engine.

He knew exactly where he was going.



Distance: 12,146 miles