Day 097: Saturday 22nd December, 2012
One for the Road (Washington)

"So is it really possible to just be 'whelmed' in Europe?"

"What are you talking about?"

"...Honestly, Blaine. Anyone who doesn't get 10 Things I Hate About You references deserves to be paddled. And not in the fun way."



"B, I'm pretty sure I won't lose my mind in the few hours you're forcing us to spend apart so that you can go hang out with my ex-boyfriend," Kurt deadpanned, holding up the pair of the rubber gloves he was about to don and adding, "That is, unless you want to stay and help clean up. I still maintain that you cheated."

"You can't cheat at beer pong," Blaine said.

Kurt snorted derisively. "Getting naked wasn't exactly part of the game."

"It got warm," Blaine said innocently. "You were welcome to remove clothing as well."

"Still. Tipping the water bottle over yourself was a little much. This isn't Flashdance."

"Well, you were winning. You know what that does to me."

"Ha! So you're admitting it!" Kurt crowed triumphantly, and Blaine at least had the decency to look shamefaced.

"It's not like you're totally innocent," he said, moving closer and backing Kurt against the kitchen counter.

"Don't know what you mean," Kurt said, squarely meeting Blaine's gaze, chin up and finger raised. "Choose your next words very carefully. Remember, I'm the one cleaning up this thing so we can have her tidy for the drive home."

"Excited?" Blaine asked, leaning into him and setting his arms atop Kurt's shoulders.

Kurt considered the question for a moment. "Ready, I think. It's been... A little insane, to say the least. I think I'm just ready to start everything. With you."

"See, now you're making me want to stay and take you back to bed," Blaine said.

"Always an option," Kurt agreed wistfully, fingers dancing along Blaine's hip. "But no. Go have fun with Brad the Great Deflowerer."

Blaine tipped his head back and laughed, the sound filling the kitchen. "And you're sure it's not weird?"

Though it shouldn't have been, considering that Blaine had been friends with Brad even after he and Kurt broke up, it was a little weird.

Kurt had thought of Brad Jefferson as a stereotypical jock right up until senior year, when he'd surprised the hell out of Kurt and everyone else by joining Brunswick High's Gay-Straight Alliance and coming out shortly thereafter. On more than one occasion, Kurt had turned to say something to Blaine during a meeting and found a pair of pale gray eyes watching him from beneath stray strands of ash blond hair, shy half-smiles tinged with a faint blush when Brad looked away.

It had gone that way until one Saturday in December. Kurt had been standing by his mailbox at an ungodly hour for a weekend, cradling a mug of coffee in his freezing hands and still blinking sleep from his eyes while he waited to see if his early admissions letter would arrive. Brad lived on Kurt's street and, despite the early hour, Kurt didn't think anything of it when he saw Brad driving by—he'd heard plenty of the guys on the football team bemoaning extra weekend practices, after all. But Brad had come back ten minutes later, pulling into the driveway behind Burt's truck and looking like he was dreading whatever was about to happen. Kurt watched him curiously as he got out of the car holding a rose wrapped in plastic, his shirt buttoned all the way up and, from the looks of it, hastily pressed.

"Hi," he'd said after a moment of awkward silence had passed between them. "I, um. I saw you out here and I thought—um. Well, I—I've seen you at the GSA meetings and I thought maybe we could... This is for you."

Kurt accepted the rose, and Brad almost jumped out of his skin when their fingers brushed. "Thank you," he'd said, smelling the rose and meeting Brad's eyes. "I've never gotten a rose before."

"Do you wanna go out some time?" Brad had asked—in the exact same moment that Kurt's eyes began to water and he started sneezing.

As it happened, 'some time' turned out to be right then, a profusely apologetic Brad following Burt's truck as Kurt was taken to the hospital to be treated for a severe allergic reaction. Burt had been highly amused by the whole thing, telling all the nurses that the red-faced teenager trailing them was his son's date. Kurt didn't quite recover from the embarrassment until the following Friday at dinner with Brad, texting Blaine under the table halfway through the starter to call off their pre-planned bailout.

Brad was sweet, cute, and funny in an off-beat, slightly awkward way. He was the first boy to make Kurt's heart race and follow through, kissing him goodnight on his doorstep with the porch light flickering overhead. They'd explored everything together, and amicably parted ways when Brad got accepted to the University of Washington and it was clear that love wasn't on the cards.

So, yeah, a little weird—but Kurt just nodded and said, "I'm sure. Now go, I have things to do."

"Okay," Blaine said, grinning and pressing a quick kiss to Kurt's mouth before casually tossing over his shoulder, "Love you!"

"Love you, too!" Kurt called after him, and once the door to the R.V. had closed with a soft click and he had watched Blaine walk away, his curls cast golden under the yellow lights of the campground, Kurt closed all of the blinds against the night outside the windows and got to work.



It was a few hours before Kurt finally took a break, and if he'd known there would be so much to do, he might not have bet their match on it. Both of them had gotten into pretty good habits their first year at Bowdoin when they'd roomed together in the dorms, but by the time he'd finished getting all of the water marks off the shower door, he was sweating and cursing Blaine for distracting him into losing. His only saving grace throughout cleaning the kitchen and tidying the living area was his music—a playlist of songs that wrapped him up in memories from their journey so far: Blaine at The Cannery, singing Break Me Out and cementing Kurt's conviction that, yes, he would go on the road trip; equalizers and flashing lights, Victim pumping out of the speakers behind him and driving him toward Blaine; Anything Could Happen, the first song F had ever sent him, scoring a kiss that felt like coming home after the longest day Kurt had ever lived.

He collapsed onto the couch, pulling off his gloves and setting them aside in favor of Blaine's laptop, wanting to see if he could finally beat the level of Candy Crush he'd been stuck on for the past week and a half. But when he opened the lid, his stomach lurched and his heart stopped—open on the screen was his blog.

"Fuck," he whispered, mind in overdrive. There was so much on there that he wasn't ready for Blaine to see, that he didn't even know if he wanted Blaine to see. "Shit, shit, fuck."

Upon closer inspection, however, he realized that it wasn't his blog at all—there were no video diaries, only text entries and pictures. He was halfway through scanning the most recent entry before he realized to whom the blog actually belonged.

I'm going to miss the road, and all the incredible things Kurt and I have seen together, Kurt read, eyes wide, and I might have finally figured out that music and composing are what I want the most, but going to L.A. is the right thing to do—for both of us.

Kurt slammed the laptop closed with far more force than necessary and shot to his feet. His hands flexed uselessly at his sides as he paced around the living room, thoughts racing. He was still uneasy at the idea of Blaine giving up a chance to join the band and make the music he wanted to. Why did he have to see that blog entry now? He turned back toward the laptop, worrying his lip as he considered.

Since when does Blaine have a blog? he wondered briefly, before coming to the conclusion that these private spaces were probably a mutually exclusive secret, kept since before the beginning of the trip.

"So much for no more secrets," he muttered to himself, his mind wandering back to Santa Monica Pier. At the time it hadn't even occurred to him to tell Blaine about it, what with so many more important things to say, but now he wondered why Blaine hadn't told him.

He needed to know more, he needed to know everything; as if unable to help it, Kurt sat back down, opened the laptop, and started poring over the entries. The more recent ones were happy, and filled with Blaine's lighthearted humor; they had Kurt smiling, tension draining from his limbs as he settled back into the couch. He noted with no small measure of surprise that F had been sending songs to Blaine as well, and Kurt wondered if he'd heard these songs but been told lies about where they came from, just as he had lied to Blaine.

All too soon he was on edge again; reading their story not only in reverse, but also through Blaine's eyes, was odd and discomfiting, as if he were watching houses being unbuilt, deconstructed into their component parts right before his eyes. The further back Kurt read, the more Blaine talked about movies—it wasn't who he was anymore; somewhere along the way, he'd truly found himself.

He got as far back as Florida and stopped, his heart sinking heavily into his stomach.

What happens now? he thought. Do I come clean and tell him everything? Get him to sit down and talk to me about it properly instead of announcing it like he needs it to be some big gesture?

The territory was uncharted, and yet again Kurt found himself standing on shaky ground, wondering if he needed to start cupping his hands beneath Blaine's once more, just in case.

Kurt fought off the familiar world-weariness threatening to settle over him and resolved to talk to Blaine about it whenever he returned—he could easily distract himself with tidying the bedroom and packing for their flight to Anchorage the next day. Ear buds firmly in place, he set about putting things away and pulling out the warmest things he owned, setting them down by his open suitcase. Within a matter of minutes he was humming again, his troubles put away to be addressed later.

He smiled when he found one of Blaine's pens in the pocket of his own jacket—he must have left it in there one of the times he'd borrowed it. The image of Blaine wrapped up in his jacket finally let him shake off his lingering unease... Until he opened the drawer of Blaine's bedside cabinet to put the pen away.

Inside the drawer were dozens of scraps of paper covered in words and musical notes. Some of them only contained a line or two; others held entire verses. With shaking hands, Kurt sat down heavily and began laying them out. Certain phrases here and there jumped out at him: And I have given less than you deserve; wait up, I'm coming home; my love will clothe your bones. Kurt swallowed thickly, his eyes stinging as Blaine's lyrics ricocheted around his mind. This was Blaine, the poetry of him finally in motion and on track to what he was so clearly meant to do—Kurt saw that, now, and he was about to keep Blaine from it. If Cooper hadn't offered the movie to them, they would without question have gone to New York, where Blaine would have gotten a jump start. Instead Blaine was following Kurt to California and accepting a job that wasn't his dream, wasn't what he was meant to do.

Scrubbing a hand over his face, Kurt took a few deep breaths and swallowed convulsively, fighting down the acrid taste of bile rising in his throat. He cast his eyes around the room, and suddenly it was like he was back home, running his hands along the uneven mantle over the fireplace. One last look. One for the road.

It shouldn't be this way. I can't take this away from him, Kurt thought. He ran his fingers over the scraps of paper and traced circles around the line, I have given less than you deserve.

"But what have I given you?" he murmured, eyes fixed on that one line. How could Blaine ever think it was true? On the contrary, Blaine had given him too much... And Kurt had given nothing. He took a deep breath, buried his face in his hands, and considered. It felt too big, pressing in on him from all sides and leaching air from the room. He wondered again just when everything had gotten so important, so full of weight and responsibility.

He sat up, and his eyes landed on his suitcase. He reached out, picking through the contents just to give his hands something to do, and the thought occurred to him, This is what I can give you.

It was with an eerie sense of calm that Kurt retrieved his flight ticket from the folder in the glove compartment, called a cab to the airport, and scribbled out a note: You deserve the chance to live your dream, and you'll miss out on it if you follow me to California. Please don't do that, Blaine. Not for me. I love you, and I'm sorry. He read it over and over again, looking between it and the scraps of paper littered across the bed, sheets pulled tight as if he and Blaine had never been there in the first place. Maybe that would have been best, if this was how it had to end... And hadn't that always been the doubt chip-chip-chipping away at his resolve? That this would end, that they couldn't possibly see it through without wrecking each other?

The cab arrived just as Kurt was looking at SeaTac live departures on the laptop, checking to see if there were any flights back to Maine. The earliest wasn't until mid-afternoon, and now that he'd made his decision he needed to be gone as soon as possible, so instead he brought up the details of an earlier flight to Anchorage—April and the band were heading straight back to Brunswick on Christmas Day, after all, so perhaps he could hitch a ride with them.

Standing at the door to the R.V. with his suitcase in hand, Kurt took a long last look, whispered, "Goodbye," and left.

He was calm for the entire journey to the airport, even when he realized that he'd left flight details open on the laptop and Blaine's song fragments strewn across the bed. He was calm all the way through the process of rebooking his flight and paying the transfer fee, even when his credit card was declined and he had to pay with most of the cash he had on him. He was calm for the ten minutes he waited to board with the other sleepy-eyed passengers on his 3:30am flight, even when April responded to his text by calling him and yelling at him until he simply told her, "My flight gets in at six, so we'll talk about it then."

It wasn't until he'd handed over his boarding pass and turned toward the concourse that it all caught up with him—he hadn't been calm; he'd been numb—and all it took was one word.

"Kurt!"

He wheeled around at the pained, confused dropping of his name across the gate lounge, and of course it was Blaine. The expression on his face was pure frustrated torture—I can't do this to you anymore—and it felt like one of those awful, clich�d movie moments, the ones where the music had been building to a crescendo and suddenly just died into silence the moment the two leads saw one another again. Like everything could be solved inside the quiet simplicity of eyes meeting across a crowded space.

The music in Kurt's left ear, however, didn't die. It peaked in a shatter of glass and the words, It feels like I am just too close to love you, laid down over a pounding dub-step bass—not his usual fare, but nonetheless apropos. Eyes filling with unexpected and unwelcome tears, he found himself shaking his head. Imperceptibly to begin with, but harder until the hope in Blaine's eyes darkened into something that made Kurt's gut heat up into a molten lead and solidify into a knot so heavy, it felt like settings roots down into the worn carpet of Gate 14.

He ignored the screaming of his every cell, the memory in his muscles to move toward Blaine and push him into a future that wasn't Kurt's to decide. Blaine took one step forward, Kurt one step back. Another—I'm sorry—and then another—I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—and then the fire in Blaine's expression was but an afterthought, an image burning behind Kurt's eyelids as he sprinted down the concourse.



Distance: 14,369 miles

Additional Listening: Where I Stood by Missy Higgins