"Meet Joe Black. I know it's a little long, but—"

"It's three hours, Kurt. The only other movies that long that I've been able to sit still for are Titanic and the Lord of the Rings movies."

"Trust me, Blaine. It's so worth it."

Something had changed.

It had been a little over a week since they had left Brunswick, and Blaine could already feel the shift that was taking place. Something he couldn't put a name to had burrowed beneath the layers of his skin and taken root, was spreading outward, and the longer he tried to follow the thread back, the more lost in his own history with Kurt he became.

An intelligent person might have said it started the day he caught Kurt with Chandler, saw the way his head was thrown back against the pillows as Chandler mouthed his way down the broad planes of Kurt's chest. It was a flashbulb, burned bright into his mind's eye as if he'd been staring at a lamp for too long, the impression of it blurring before his eyes as his gaze slid sideways. An intelligent person might have said that the reason he wanted Kurt to take his arm or his hand as they walked down the street was a sign that he wanted more from Kurt than just his friendship, that he shouldn't fight something that felt about as natural as taking breath. An intelligent person might have said that it was the push he needed to finally see this man differently, open his eyes to the Kurt-shaped figure that had been in front of him for years, only he'd been staring at the sun too long to take note.

Blaine decided that it was just a sex thing. And that was fine. He could put the sex out of his mind, because sex only ever complicated things. He didn't even need to have had it—aside from those two fumbling encounters back in London—to know that. Just look at what happened to his parents when his father had decided that his mother wasn't enough for him anymore, that none of them were.

No, what he and Kurt had was special, sacred, the kind of friendship that just didn't come along every day, and both of them worked hard to keep it exactly what it was.

So why did he feel that this thing, whatever it was, that had begun to simmer in his gut was only the beginning?

"Blaine."

"Hmm?"

"Have you been listening to a word I've been saying?" Kurt asked exasperatedly, burying his hands in his jacket pockets as they continued their ambling pace around downtown Providence, walking through City Hall Park towards the river.

"Sorry, I was just..." Blaine trailed off, not knowing how to finish the sentence. He shook his head. "What were you saying?"

"I was saying that there are all these movies where Death appears as a person, an entity, but what about Life?" Kurt asked. "Where are the stories where Life appears and coaxes someone back from the edge, or wakes someone up to all of the possibilities that it has to offer?"

Blaine considered the notion for a moment. "I think that's kind of our job, you know? We're the ones who're living, who're supposed to seize the day, and do all of it in the face of everything else."

"Hmm. Maybe you're right," Kurt conceded. "Did you like it? You didn't really say anything when it was over."

"Yeah, it was great. A little slow in parts, but I felt like that was kind of necessary, you know?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Kurt agreed. "It didn't really get to that point where the story got diluted by the length, either."

"I mean, I felt like they could have wrapped it up in maybe two-and-a-half hours tops, if some of the actors hadn't taken so long to deliver their lines," Blaine said, though the words felt harsh as soon as he said them. It was a problem of his, actually, how every time he watched a movie he dissected it in his mind, broke it into its component parts and thought about how he would have done things differently were he the director.

"At least they managed to do it without stuttering or looking constipated, which is more than I can say for the Twilight saga," Kurt countered, and Blaine couldn't help but chuckle.

"What was your favorite part?" he asked.

"Any time Brad Pitt wasn't wearing a shirt," Kurt said wistfully.

"I'm being serious."

Kurt leveled him with his best sardonic look. "So am I."

"Okay, favorite line, then," Blaine tried—at some points during the movie, he'd wanted to sit up and punch the air at some of the lines in the script. The writing, at least, was stellar.

"His one candle wish," Kurt answered after a few moments, eyes fixed straight ahead of him. "That he wants his friends and family to wake up one morning and say, 'I don't want anything more'. Wouldn't that be amazing?"

"Never wanting anything? I don't know. Going after the things we want... It's what drives us, what defines us."

"No, that's not what defines us. What defines us is the choice of whether or not we do go after the things that we want, because either way, your life ends up changing," Kurt said thoughtfully, and Blaine had to admit that there was hardly room for argument.

"I'm not sure if I'll ever be done wanting things. Done... baking," Blaine said.

"That's a good thing, B. Trust me," Kurt replied.

"How so?"

"You're done baking when you settle."

"Like... Settle down with a family?" Blaine asked, and Kurt shook his head, focusing on some point in the middle distance.

"When you settle for all you think you're ever going to get out of life. That's the timer going off," Kurt said. "Anyway. What was your favorite line?"

"Oh, uh..." Blaine began, reaching up to scratch at the back of his neck as if he were thinking. Really, it was to buy himself time to remember anything other than his favorite line of the entire movie, spoken just sixteen minutes in by Anthony Hopkins himself. He couldn't say that that was his favorite line; what would Kurt think? What would he say? Kurt would know. He would know straight away what had been going through Blaine's head for the past couple of days and then things would just become super-awkward, and they had over three months to go. No, he had to think of something else. The problem was that he couldn't. All he could remember were the words that had hooked him:

"I know it's a cornball thing, but love is passion. Obsession. Someone you can't live without. I say fall head over heels. Find someone you can love like crazy, and who'll love you the same way back. How do you find 'em? Well, you forget your head and listen to your heart. I'm not hearing any heart. Because the truth is, honey, there's no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love, well, you haven't lived a life at all. But you have to try, because if you haven't tried, you haven't lived."

"Blaine, seriously, what's up with you tonight?" Kurt asked, stopping to face him with concern in his eyes. "Are you coming down with something?"

Blaine swallowed. "Don't blow smoke up my ass; you'll ruin my autopsy," he said, with as genuine a smile as he could muster.

Kurt looked puzzled for a moment, and then the corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. "Of all the great lines in that movie, you pick that one?"

Blaine shrugged, and Kurt shook his head.

"I would've thought you'd pick something like... Hey, do you hear that?" Kurt asked, inclining his head towards the direction of the river. Blaine mirrored the motion, meeting Kurt's eyes when he also heard it—music, faint and uplifting.

"Free gig?" he asked.

Kurt lifted his head, delicately sniffing the air, and a slow grin curved along the line of his lips. "Tell me you can smell smoke, too," he said, his eyes sparkling in the yellow glow of the streetlamps bordering the park, lighting their way to the water.

A quick, deep inhale and Blaine was nodding—a fragrant, aromatic scent of wood smoke was barely detectable but just there, undercutting the smell of the freshly cut park grass. Kurt grinned even wider, tucked his fingers into the crook of Blaine's elbow and then they were running, faster and faster, towards the river. Kurt's grip on his arm faltered but their pace didn't, and Blaine called out, "Kurt, what's going on?"

"I heard about this but I didn't think there was going to be a show today!" Kurt called over his shoulder, beckoning Blaine onward with a wave of his hand. "You'll see when we get there!"

It seemed like no time at all that they were coming to an abrupt halt on the bridge just past Exchange Terrace, Blaine slotting himself into the teeming crowd next to Kurt. A band was set up behind them on Citizens Plaza, the song they were playing one that Blaine recognized from one of Lucy's study playlists—Ashes, he thought with a brief, nostalgic smile. It soared over the heads of the people gathered to watch what was happening out on the water: heat, and light, and fire.

Stately, torch-lit gondolas glided along the water, past floating braziers that burned and crackled brightly in the night. Leaning slightly over the edge of the bridge, Blaine could feel the heat on his face and he could see the long line of bonfires stretching off into the distance, thousands of spectators lining the banks of the river and all lit up by the flames.

Jostled by people wanting to get closer to the edge, he moved closer to Kurt, standing half behind him with one hand resting either side of Kurt's body on the bridge wall. They were pressed closely enough together that Blaine could smell the spicy top notes of Kurt's cologne over the scents of cedar and pine infused in the night air, and once again he tried not to feel like too much of a creep when he leaned even closer to speak into Kurt's ear.

"Kurt, what is this?"

"WaterFire," Kurt told him breathlessly, head turned towards Blaine but eyes still fixed upon the events below. "It's a non-profit arts thing they do through summer and fall, but I was sure we were going to miss it. Isn't it beautiful?"

Blaine nodded, swallowing thickly—the sense of magic and enchantment in the air was tangible and heady. For most of the song they simply watched, and when he felt Kurt beginning to stand straight and turn around, Blaine quickly stepped back. He caught his breath for a moment, taking in the sight of Kurt gently back-lit by the fire show and having never looked quite so alive and joyous, and then Kurt was tugging on his elbow again, saying something about going to sit out on the end of the stone platform that tapered out from the bridge and into a point, so that they could see the gondolas close-up.

As they were seating themselves at the end of the platform, legs dangling over the edge, the band started the next song on their set list. The crowd's attention was momentarily diverted away from the water as they let out a cheer for the quieter, folksy introduction of a song, and Blaine's breath hitched at the first lyric, the singer's voice ringing out clear over the cheering.

"I am the boy your mother wanted you to meet, but I am broken and torn with halos at my feet..."

He was caught, captured as he took in the beatific smile on Kurt's face, flames reflected in his eyes and flickering across his pale, lightly freckled skin. The crowd joined in with the chorus, hundreds and thousands of voices winding around him as they vocalized and sang the words, "what a crying shame, a crying shame what we became."

The bright yet bittersweet mood of the song juxtaposed against the slow progression of the gondolas along the river somehow buoyed Blaine up, filling him with a sad sort of happiness. Everything was pure and beautiful, Kurt most of all, and he wondered if they had missed their chance, wondered if they had ever been destined for anything else, anything more than what they had confined themselves to in order to hold onto one another for as long as possible. Were they meant for something more?

Kurt was reaching out to a woman clad in floaty white robes gliding past, standing up in her gondola, and she handed him a white carnation that he held to his nose, eyes flicking to Blaine over the top of the petals. Without conscious thought of what he was doing, Blaine slid his arm around Kurt's waist, shifting closer and never once letting his gaze waver. Strings layered through the song's second chorus, a beat kicking in, and Blaine could feel himself leaning infinitesimally closer, tongue darting out to wet his lips. Kurt tensed beneath his arm and let the flower fall to his lap, wide eyes flicking down to Blaine's mouth and back up again, and oh, how had Blaine never seen him before? Was this moment, this single, suspended moment, exactly what Carole had meant?

The song, the water and the sound of fire crackling became nothing but the score to their wonderful, unexpected, perfect movie moment, and at once it felt like something inevitable. He moved in even closer, tilting his face slightly upward, and his breath was leaving his body in a single, shuddering exhale as his eyelids fluttered closed, and—

Cheering, louder even than the singing throughout the song had been. Blaine's eyes snapped open once more and he reared back, realizing that the song had ended abruptly and without warning. Kurt blinked at him owlishly and cleared his throat, finally dropping his gaze to the flower in his lap, the pristine white petals a shock against the dark material of his jeans. Blaine mentally shook himself.

What the fuck was that, Anderson? Your life isn't a goddamn movie; way to go about alienating your best friend a week into the trip.

There was applause, rousing and loud; Blaine took his arm from around Kurt's waist and joined in just to give his hands something to do. He wanted to slap himself silly; what had he been thinking? In the space of twenty bottomless seconds, he'd almost ruined everything, and judging by the confused expression on Kurt's face as he slowly, dazedly clapped his hands, he might have already succeeded.

Distance: 805.8 miles