The Sonoma Renaissance was a far cry from AmeriSuites. From the grapevine sculptures of its foyer to its well-stocked wine bar and private spa, the hotel dripped with laid-back elegance.

It also wasn't home.

Kurt had checked in to a junior suite, rationalizing that six months of living rent-free had more than saved the Taste budget enough to pay for the upgraded accommodations, at least for a few weeks. After that, he hoped to talk Quinn into cutting the assignment short and letting him return to New York before spring.

The sooner the better, he reasoned.

Yet he couldn't leave, not entirely. He had every reason to move over to Napa — the volume of wineries, the abundant hotels, the distance from Glen Ellen. But he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. Sonoma had become a familiar part of his routine, a slow-ticking clock by which he had recalibrated his life. Carefully planned and timed, he could still enjoy restaurants on the Square or visits with Santana without too great a risk of an awkward run-in.

Lunch? Lunch was workable. Dinner, less so. Evening cocktails were out of the question.

So he scheduled lunch, under the guise of advance planning the 2014 Taste Challenge.

"Like hell that's what you want to talk about."

Santana was hearing nothing of it.

"I know what you really want to talk about and the answer is that the both of you had better get your collective shit together soon or I may have to take drastic measures, because I'm getting a little tired of this."

Kurt pursed his lips, poked at his salad and said nothing.

"He spent some quality time around here while you were out of town."

"And?"

"Our boy was miserable without you. I couldn't get rid of him — like a mopey puppy."

"Maybe he should have said something about it."

"He said plenty about it, once he got liquored up, which has been a little more often than I'm comfortable with. He's pining, Kurt. It's not attractive."

"Sure, he feels that way now that I'm gone."

"Don't kid yourself," Santana said sharply. "He's felt that way for ages. What the hell is up with you two, any way? I've seen him more in the past three weeks than I had in the previous three months. He's spending all his spare time over at the bar and he's acting like his dog just ran away."

"It just... wasn't working out," Kurt mumbled, staring at his plate.

"Mm-hmm. Sure. If you ask me, you're both idiots."

"What? What did he tell you?"

"Exactly what you just told me, which tells me you're both lying. This has to do with your job, doesn't it?"

"I don't know."

"Liar."

Kurt grunted and glared, and went back to stabbing random pieces of arugula with his fork.

"Maybe you should have given him more of a chance."

"Why? He wrote this relationship off before it even started."

"I call bullshit, Hummel. After our little friend got himself good and drunk the other night — and I'm the one that pulled the short straw and had to get him home  — he kept mumbling something about all relationships being date-stamped and that he wouldn't be anyone's vacation boy toy. It was a little incoherent, but I think I got the gist of it."

Kurt focused on the table top and shut his eyes. "I don't know..."

"Again, bullshit. Had you two talked about this, like, at all?

"Look, I know you two are close. I know there's this thing, but I've also known him a lot longer than you, and if you haven't figured this out yet, then let me spell it out for you: Blaine isn't like you. He doesn't express every thought that pops into his head. He's usually pretty quiet. The fact that he was in that contest? Participated in all those other activities? Invited you into his life? That speaks volumes, Kurt. And the fact that you didn't leave Sonoma, that you spend so much time on the Square? That says something, too."

Kurt allowed himself a moment — just a moment — to lock eyes with Santana before he settled back into his tabletop stare.

"You two communicate, normally pretty well, so I don't know who dropped the ball here. I think you're both fools for letting this get so out of hand because you're obviously miserable without each other."

"What?"

"That man changed his life for you. He might not have said the words, but did you give him any credit for his actions? And let's put this in context, shall we? You wrote about 'going back to your regular duties' without even having the conversation with him? Come on, Kurt. He was an idiot for holding back, but you're no saint here."

Kurt meant to look angry. He should look angry, he thought, but instead his face wore the look of  someone who'd just had the wind knocked out of him.

"He's losing you. He's losing Diego. He feels alone. And yeah, he's done things that contributed to those losses..."

"What do you mean?"

"Do I have to spell this out for you?"

"What did you mean about Diego?"

"He didn't tell you, did he? Damn him. Kurt, Diego's going to school because Blaine's paying for it. After that fundraiser of yours, Blaine told him that it was time for him to go out and get himself a seat at the table. The guy had the skills but not the degree. It was the only thing holding him back, so Blaine opened the door for him."

"Blaine helped him with the paperwork, made a few calls on his behalf, got him a scholarship and is paying the rest of the bills."

Kurt's jaw dropped, just a little. He raised his hand to his mouth, then rested it against his forehead.

"Yeah, he's really an asshole, isn't he, Kurt?"

Kurt silently measured her words, then made a half-hearted effort to claim that they carried little weight.

"I don't know what that has to do with anything," he said. "We weren't in the same place."

"Oh, don't give me that crap. He's miserable and you're obviously the life of the party right now. The point is this — for better or for worse, Blaine doesn't always say everything that's on his mind. But sometimes, actions speak louder than words."

"It was just a mistake."

"Let me tell you something about mistakes. Eight years, Kurt. For eight years I lived with regret and misplaced hate because Quinn and I didn't talk it out, because we were both too stubborn and chicken shit to hash out our issues. And now that we have, it's so much better."

"And you're not together."

"No, we're not, and we shouldn't be. We both know that. There's still plenty of chemistry, and we more than worked that out, but a long-term thing is impossible for us. We had our moment, and then we had a couple more. And we can live in peace now that we've got this behind us."

"That doesn't sound very encouraging."

"I didn't say it was impossible for you."

Kurt set his fork down and looked at Santana like he was trying to solve a riddle.

****

Blaine shuffled around the house, rearranging things: a chair moved next to a window to take in the view, a picture shifted to a new wall, a commemorative plaque from the Taste Challenge removed from the office and stored in a box.

He walked the new property, comparing it to his vineyard plans, and began clearing high-growth weeds from what would soon be rows of seedling stock. He ordered supplies, rented a truck and made a run down the valley to pick up loads of irrigation and trellising supplies.

He dug out an old Frisbee and threw it repeatedly for KD. It killed a good 45 minutes, until the energetic sheepdog was distracted by a much more interesting flock of crows.

Then he moved on to the barn, cataloguing equipment for the second time in two weeks. He sterilized the stainless tanks that no longer held hundreds of gallons of young wine before sealing them off for the season. He scrubbed the crusher destemmer that had already been cleaned at the conclusion of harvest. He washed and stored the bins, buckets and barrels that had been used to store grapes and must through early fermentation.

Some of the work was necessary. Most of it consisted of redundant, mindless tasks that allowed his brain to go blank, if only for a little while.

He moved on to the caves, inspecting the racked oak barrels that didn't need attention for another six weeks. He reasoned that there could be leaks, or a stray barrel of Zinfandel commingled with Syrah, but they had been racked with precision.

With a loud chirp, his phone lit up with an incoming text.

Santana  3:26p: He's at the Renaissance.

"Damn it. Drop it, Santana."

He shoved the phone back into his pocket and readied to leave — nearly stumbling over an  unmarked case of recently-bottled wine. The bottles were clean; the labels had been delivered by the printing company Christmas week, right about the time his life had gone to hell.

Blaine leaned against the racked barrels, then eased himself to the floor. He sat there for close to an hour, looking blankly at the cardboard box and letting his mind drift and fill with the thoughts he'd worked so hard to block out.

The bottles had been intentionally left blank, and set in an inconspicuous spot so as not to gain notice. In the upset of the last several weeks, he had forgotten about them, leaving the labels in the barn.

In a moment of resolve, he finally rose to his feet, grabbed a bottle from the box and took a corkscrew from a nearby table along with one of the tasting glasses kept in the cave for monitoring and sampling. 

He opened the bottle, and poured a small taste into the glass. He held it to the light, revealing a deep, velvety crimson. He swirled the juice, watching defined legs drift down the inner walls of the glass. He placed his nose into the glass and inhaled, then took a small taste. The wine was young, its tannins wound tight, but it offered hints of complex things to come: berries, plum, lilac, leather and the slightest suggestion of smoke.

Blaine focused on the glass, then granted himself a moment's relief from his state of a mind, a break he hadn't granted himself in weeks. He let himself smile. 

He sealed the bottle, placed it back in the cardboard container and then carried the case back to the barn, where he found his newest set of wine labels and a spare wooden wine crate, the type that larger wineries used for gift boxes. 

He moved without much of a plan as he grabbed the keys to his truck and raced down the dirt road toward town.

****

Kurt settled into his room after his unsettling conversation with Santana. She had really overstepped this time. She'd played with his head, and now he didn't quite know which way was up. He knew this much: He needed to talk to Quinn, and soon.

Kurt 3:21p: Q, I need to talk about coming back. When can you book a block of time?

It didn't take long for an answer.

Quinn 3:22p: All tied up today. Tomorrow 3pm ET?

It would have to do. 

He plugged his phone into its charger, grabbed his iPad and headed for the foyer lounge.

****

Blaine called once, but got no response. He figured that would be the case, so he didn't bother trying to text or call again. Instead, he knew he could call in a favor from his friend in the hotel's wine bar who could easily secure a quick glance at the room log.

He drove in silence, biting his lower lip and tapping the steering wheel as he followed the narrow, winding road toward the Sonoma city center. He pulled into the first open spot he could find in the hotel parking lot, picked up the small wooden crate from the passenger seat, and made his way to the lobby bar.

As luck would have it, he wouldn't need to call in that favor. Sitting in a back corner, nose deep in his iPad, sat Kurt.

Blaine saw him immediately: Dressed down in dark jeans and a vest over a snug, long-sleeved T,  and engrossed in work — or possibly a gossip column — a glass of what looked to be Pinot Noir close at hand. Whatever he was doing, he was riveted to it, and didn't see Blaine approach. It wasn't until he was standing across the table that Kurt looked up, and blanched.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you," Blaine said. His voice was ragged but soft, and was a tip-off to his frayed nerves.

"What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you."

"I don't want to do this here."

"We can go somewhere..."

"What I mean is, I don't want to do this," Kurt said, powering down the tablet. "There's a reason you haven't heard from me. I don't want to talk to you."

It may have been the afternoon light streaming through the western lobby windows, or it may have been Blaine trying to choose the right words, but he squinted and tilted his head in a way that suggested he wasn't buying it.

"If you don't want to talk, that's okay. But would you listen? Just for a few minutes? Because I need to apologize for..." Blaine swallowed. He could feel the tension rising in his throat. "I need to apologize for that night. I was drunk and I was terrible and the last few weeks have been..."

"Fine. Apology accepted. Now go."

"Kurt, please? Can we just go get a cup of coffee or something? Can we just go somewhere private and talk?"

Kurt looked down at the table, as if considering Blaine's request.

"We're better than this, Kurt. Please."

Kurt raised his eyes to Blaine. He was silent, but something he had said had connected, Blaine was sure. Kurt glanced at his Bluetooth keyboard case, then snapped it shut around the tablet. He shut his eyes and nodded.

"Okay," he said quietly.

****

They ordered coffees and walked across the courtyard slowly and without words, both heads bowed in tension and concentration. They took advantage of the unseasonably warm day to settle on the patio outside Kurt's suite, where they could sit and talk in relative privacy.

They spent long minutes simply sipping at their drinks, neither one quite ready or prepared to be the first to speak.

Kurt bit his lip.

Blaine tapped on his coffee cup.

Both looked around the space, to the chairs, the sparse winter foliage, the densely-lined vineyards in the hills behind the hotel.

Kurt finally broke the silence.

"Why didn't you tell me about Diego?" he said, skirting the issue.

"What?"

"His leaving. College. It was your doing. You arranged for it. You're paying for it. You didn't say anything."

"There wasn't much to say."

"But if you were upset about him leaving..."

"I'm wasn't upset. I'm not... He deserves this. That's all."

"It was kind, Blaine. There was no reason to keep it a secret."

"There was no reason to advertise it. He deserves this. He's as good as any of us — maybe better. He just hasn't had the same breaks, and that's because he doesn't have a diploma."

"But you left yourself without a manager," Kurt said, his tone sympathetic.

"I'll find a way to make it work."

Blaine looked down and kicked at the floor for a moment before getting up the nerve to say what needed to be said.

"I'm sorry, Kurt. I'm so sorry about how I behaved." 

Blaine's eyes were trained squarely on his coffee cup. 

"I swear, I didn't mean those things. I was drunk, I was upset, and I am so, so sorry."

"I hear it's not the only time you said it."

Blaine raised his focus to Kurt's face. Tension wrinkled his brow.

"I may have been drinking a bit while you were away."

Kurt rotated his cup in slow circles between his hands and nodded.

"You said those things to me when you were drunk. Then you got drunk again and said them to other people. Wouldn't that mean there's some truth to it?"

"I'm sorry. I was so upset when you left. I was lonely," Blaine looked up at the hillside, gazing at the rows of local vines. "I don't remember ever feeling lonely before. I mean I live alone, but I've never felt truly lonely until you left. It had been building for so long, and then you left and..."

"What are you talking about?"

They finally made solid eye contact. Blaine held it, drew strength from it, and spoke from his heart.

"The end. I'm talking about the end. It's been building toward this for months, and the closer it got to the end of your assignment, the more I... the less confident I felt. And we never talked about it. Then you left..."

"I went home..."

"Without me. And I got to thinking that if you didn't want to be with me over the holidays, if you didn't want me around your family, then maybe there was nothing there in the first place."

"That's crazy."

"In the light of a sober day, that's true. But in the cloud of Scotch, it made perfect sense."

Kurt nodded.

"I'm sorry, too," he said. "I should have spoken up. I should have told you about the holiday plans earlier."

"You should have invited me, unless my craziness was on point."

Kurt looked at Blaine, his eyes softening somewhat, then looked away.

"No, you're right. The moment you talked about going away, I should have invited you. I just didn't know where we stood, and it didn't feel right asking you to meet my family when I didn't have any idea how you felt."

"Couldn't you tell?"

"No. I still can't. Sleeping with someone isn't the same as loving someone, Blaine. And as many times as I told you how I felt, you never said anything. You still haven't."

Blaine cupped his hands to his chin, and took a deep breath.

"I wanted to."

"You say that now..."

"Kurt, I wanted to."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because it would have just made it worse."

Blaine blinked back the tears he could feel building, and he could see his action mirrored on Kurt's face.

"I do love you, Kurt. I do, I have — even if I didn't say it in so many words..."

"You didn't say it at all. How do I know you're not just saying this now that I'm gone?"

"I love you." Blaine's words were urgent. He reached over to take Kurt's hand for emphasis. 

Kurt sighed and started to pull back, but Blaine hung on until Kurt relaxed into his grasp.

"Why now? You've had months to say something. Why now? I mean, I look at you, and I see that look in your eyes and... I want to believe you. But I know I shouldn't stake this on a look, especially when it's you, looking at me the way you are. It makes me feel weak all over again," Kurt said, leaning in for emphasis. "I just can't help but think this is because I left."

"I love you. I've loved you for months, and I know I should have said something, but..." Blaine's voice drifted off. He looked around for a moment, let go of Kurt's hand and stood up, walked to a side table, and picked up the box he had been carrying when he first entered the hotel lounge.

"I can prove it."

"What's that?"

"Your Christmas gift. I didn't get a chance to give it to you."

He handed Kurt the small wooden crate.

"Open it."

"You gave me wine for Christmas? Really?"

"Just open it."

Kurt slid the cover off to reveal a dark Bordeaux-style bottle of green glass resting in a bed of raffia. The label was black, inscribed with simple, elegant gold script: Appoggiatura.

"What is this, Blaine?"

"It's for you."

"This is new..."

"I made it for you. The bottles you found in the caves that day. I'd tucked them away where I thought you wouldn't notice them."

"Because it was a new wine?"

"Because it's your wine. I made this for you, for us. It was going to be your Christmas gift. It's good, Kurt. I just sampled it. It's young, and it's wound a little tight right now, but I know it will mellow with age, and the notes that are straining against each other right now are going to complement each other over time. It think it's special. It may be the best thing I've ever done. It's like the grapes just... knew."

Kurt stared at the bottle, dumbfounded. Blaine must have worked on this new vintage for months, but had never said a word.

"What does it mean?"

"An appoggiatura is what's known as a leaning note. It's a dissonance that resolves in consonance."

Kurt gave him a blank look. It wasn't connecting.

"In Italian, it means to support something, to be leaned against. 

"Think 'Someone Like You,' Kurt. It's loaded with them. It has this strong visceral impact, and leaves the listener very... emotional. It's the effect of the appoggiatura that the wine is named after."

Kurt turned the bottle over in his hands. The golden script on the front, the familiar Claddagh on the back. The discussion of the blend, and the relevance of its name.

"Yes, but what does it mean?"

"It means you came into my life and you supported me, and left me feeling... so much."

Blaine swallowed, closing his eyes as he tried to control his breath, then opening them in revelation.

"It means I love you. I have for a while now, and I should have told you a long time ago. It means I don't want you to leave. It means I want you to come back. I want you to stay, for good."

Kurt felt his breath catch in his throat. He looked at the label again, and then he saw it, near the base, in small gilded letters.

He read it once, and again. Then he looked to Blaine, and took his hand.

For K, my grace note.