The year was 1968.

There was a big demonstration at Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. Blaine had come there in a bus filled with other Ohio activists.

It was a hot day in late July, and they had been crammed into the bus, close and sweaty, most of them stoned and naked. Songs and the tunes of an acoustic guitar had been humming throughout the entire bus, and even though Blaine hadn’t known anyone but his two best friends when he got on the bus, he felt like he knew everyone once they arrived in Washington.

They had left Ohio on Thursday night and the night on the bus had been spent on singing and drinking. Blaine’s best friends, Gary and Linda, were engaging openly in the sharing of love between the passengers.

That was the one thing Blaine had never really felt comfortable about in the lifestyle he had chosen: the way the expression “love” was used. He gladly kissed and shared intimate moments with friends and fellow activists - but he never let it go any further than that, because he didn’t feel that it was right.

Blaine and Gary had grown up side by side, attending the same schools, had sleepovers and celebrated their birthdays together - all the stuff little boys do, so Gary knew perfectly well how Blaine felt about this, and he didn’t pass a moment to joke about it.

“Oh, but be careful about Blaine here - he’s a bit of a tease,” was one of the first things Gary said when they met new people.

He always laughed, and Blaine knew that it was all in good fun, but he couldn’t help feeling a pinch in his chest every time it happened. Gary was with Linda, and had been for over a year - but they pretty much fucked with anyone; they said it was a part of the love they were sat on this Earth to spread to the Universe.

Friday afternoon Blaine had started to feel sick, and he had ended up on a seat by himself sleeping with his head against the window, his denim jacket pulled over his head to shield out the noise of the partying passengers. He had felt so awful, guessing it was a mix of the heat and the long ride - of course also the brick wall thick cloud of smoke constantly hovering over their heads.

When he had stepped out to the green on Saturday morning everything had felt different.

Blaine was so excited to be there. He had never left Ohio before, and never in his wildest imaginations would he have guessed that he would spontaneously let Gary talk him into jumping on a bus and going across the country.

The square was almost black from the people at Capitol Hill. Young people singing and dancing, flowers and banners everywhere. Never in his life had he seen so many smiling faces and peace symbols in one place.

The roaring feeling that had been growling in the pit of his stomach since he had left the note on his parents’ counter two days earlier eased up a little, and as a blonde girl put her arm around him and placed a deep kiss on his lips he let himself engage in the act.

From the parking lot he saw Linda send him a thumbs up and a wink, and he decided to let his fingers lock with the stranger’s and followed her into the crowd.

The girl had seemed like she knew everyone and was used to those kinds of demonstrations, so Blaine felt comfortable that he had chosen to walk with her, even though he felt weird just leaving Gary and Linda behind.

The air was thick with anticipation and summer. The morning heat was overwhelming, and the grass felt cooling on his naked toes.

The blonde dragged Blaine through a crowd of people with signs singing some anti-war song he couldn’t really make out the words of.

The girl curled her arm around his waist, and started singing along with the others. Every now and then she would jump on the spot or turn to grin broadly at him, baring her white teeth with a laugh.

That was the moment Blaine saw him. A skinny boy in a dusty short-sleeved shirt. Even though the sun was baking down over them, and had been across the country for more than a month, his skin was pale and delicate, and his brown hair was a strong contrast, arranged in a fashion that mostly resembled James Dean.

The boy smiled at him from the midst of the crowd, his hand clenching around a sign with bright green and purple letters spelling something Blaine didn’t even spare his time to figure out what it read, he was too busy keeping up eye contact with the stranger.

It wasn’t until the blonde girl firmed her grip on his hand and dragged him towards the green some feet away that he changed his focus. Blaine didn’t know what else to do than to follow her, his neck craning over his shoulder, desperate not to leave the boy out of sight.

They dumped down in the grass with a little group passing around a joint. The girl giggled at him and accepted the joint, before she blew the smoke into his face and fell down in the grass.

They sat there for some time; listening to the masses singing, painting protest banners and discussing politics, which pretty much had been the way of the entire day.

When it started to get dark Blaine returned to the bus where he met up with Gary and Linda. They were stoned and horny, so Blaine quickly decided that he wasn’t interested in sleeping too close to them when they arrived at the commune where some of the local activists lived and had opened to let them in.

Blaine crawled into the corner of the backseat feeling how the new town was crawling under his skin, suddenly hit by a sting of guilt by the thought of his mother’s face when she found the note.

“Gary and I are going to D.C. to a demonstration against the war. I don’t know when I’m coming back. If I even am. I love you both, but world peace is bigger than a son’s love for his parents. I’ll call you in a few days. Blaine.”

It had been so easy to scribble the quick little note and just leave it on the counter before he grabbed his backpack and his guitar and followed Gary out the door. It hadn’t been until he was on the bus hearing some of the other kids talking about their parents in really hard tones that he felt a tinge of guilt.

He didn’t feel like that about his parents. His mom was a loving woman who had raised him well, taken him to church, fed him, and helped him with his homework. His father was a decorated military man, and had often let a slap fall to Blaine’s face under their heated discussions of politics - but he didn’t want to spite his father, because he knew it would cause his mom troubles with her husband.

They arrived at the commune after half an hour drive where Blaine almost fell asleep. The bus hadn’t been as full as on the drive from Ohio and since most of them had been stoned or drunk, there hadn’t been nearly as much of a racket.

The commune apartment was decorated with carpets all over the place, floors and walls. Some of the walls were covered in grandiose paintings of vivid colors and flowers dancing with suns, birds flying above clouds.

Those of them who were to sleep there were led into a room where the entire floor was covered in mattresses and blankets, and got the message that they could sleep as they wished or join the residents in the rest of the house in love and spiritual release of their souls.

Blaine dumped his backpack in a corner and followed Gary and Linda into the lounge. The windows were covered by large scarves in dazzling colors and motives, and a heavy scent of incense and cannabis filled the room.

He dumped to the floor where he leaned against the couch that Gary and Linda took seat in.

Teenagers were dancing dozily on the floor to the tunes of The Doors’ You're Lost Little Girl. Couples were embracing each other and kissing, some feeling each other up, naked or dressed. The small coffee table was covered in bottles and filled ashtrays.

Blaine quickly felt his brain go clouded and his eyelids starting to drift. The stuffy air and the sweaty feeling of his clothes clinging to his skin made him wish for a shower and a long night’s sleep.

“Hey. Is this seat taken?” A high pitched voice asked into his ear, making him do a little jump from the surprise of someone addressing him in this dimmed light filled with unknown faces.

“No. Feel free to sit,” Blaine replied a little sore-throated from the long day of singing and shouting.

Two piercing blue eyes were looking at him through the dimmed light of the room, the boy’s white skin almost turning pink from the red lamp shades in the corners of the room.

It was the boy from the crowd.

He was still wearing the same dusty shirt he had been wearing in the crowd, and his hair still looked like he had only just fixed it a minute ago.

The boy sat down next to Blaine on the floor, pushing a little at Linda’s feet so he could sit close to Blaine, but not clingingly close. He smelled like rain even though it hadn’t rained for a long time, and Blaine could feel the heat radiating from his body.

“You seem lost. Are you here alone?” The boy asked, letting his gaze lock back into Blaine’s eyes, making Blaine feel like this stranger was looking into his soul.

“No. I’m here with my best friend and his - Linda. Girlfriend… or whatever it is the kids call it these days.” Blaine chuckled, trying to disguise the fact that he had no idea how to tackle this sudden conversation, only making it harder when the boy didn’t as much as let the corners of his mouth twitch.

“But why do you feel so lost then?” The stranger was completely serious, and didn’t even blink as he waited for an answer, but Blaine was so baffled that he couldn’t grasp his control of speech.

“I saw you on the bus from Ohio. You were playing guitar and singing Desolation Row. It was really beautiful. But you seem so sad, like you don’t know what your purpose is here.”

Blaine suddenly realized that the knot in his stomach had grown stronger. There was something about this boy that crawled under his skin.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.” The boy let his hand brush lightly over Blaine’s cheek, before he had let it slide gracefully back into his own lap.

“I’m Kurt. And you’re Blaine. You’ve got really lovely eyes. Like dark chocolate and stardust.” He didn’t even move a muscle in his face while saying it, which impressed Blaine. Had anyone but this boy said those kinds of words to him he would have laughed at them, but the poetic words flowed so naturally from the boy’s lips that there was no questioning that he truly meant it.

“Do you want some?” The boy named Kurt asked. He offered Blaine a smoking glass bong, but when Blaine nodded and reached out to accept it, Kurt put the bong to his lips, lit the unknown herbs with a big flame of a match and drew in a heavy breath.

Blaine let his hand back to take the bong, but Kurt held in the smoke and placed a gentle palm on Blaine’s cheek, indicating for him to open his mouth. With eyes locking Blaine’s he let his mouth so close to Blaine’s that their lips nearly touched, before he exhaled and let the sweet smoke flow into Blaine’s mouth.

Blaine let the smoke fill his mouth and nostrils, feeling like he was inhaling a part of Kurt, letting the stranger fill his lungs and body, and the scent of rain take over his mind, dizzy even before he exhaled.

“Come on,” Kurt suddenly said and jumped to his feet, grabbing Blaine’s hand and leading him to the mattress-room.

There weren’t any doors in the commune, except for the bathroom and the meditation room. The residents said it stopped the love and spirits from running freely and it could hinder the muse in her way of finding the artists, so instead they had separated the rooms with hangings in psychedelic colors and patterns.

When they stepped into the room it was like they stepped into a dark cave of another universe. The air was warm, and hushed sounds of snoring, breathing and people having sex was filling the room.

Kurt’s hand was warm in Blaine’s, and he didn’t know why, but he was afraid that the boy would feel how sweaty his palm was.

Blaine was led tiptoeing over the mattresses to the corner where he had left his backpack. The corner was close to black compared to the rest of the room that was draped in the colored lights stealing its way through the hangings in sneaky streams of light from the lampposts outside.

Kurt dragged Blaine down to lie with him, their bodies close enough to feel each other, but still not close enough to touch.

Blaine could almost feel Kurt’s breathing on his lips, and he appreciated that his eyes had adjusted to the dark so he could find Kurt’s blue.

After they had laid in the darkness, staring into each other’s eyes, for what felt like an eternity, and yet like no time at all, Kurt took around Blaine’s hand and placed it on his chest. Thereafter he placed his own hand on Blaine’s chest, his eyes flickering rapidly as if he was listening very closely after something very silent.

“Can you feel that?” Kurt whispered almost inaudible.

“We’re alive. We’re here. Together. And we’re alive. Isn’t it incredible?” Kurt’s voice was dripping with excitement through the dark, and it was like all the other people in the room had disappeared. Or like a bubble had closed around Blaine and Kurt in their little corner of the world.

Blaine felt the pounding of Kurt’s heart in his chest, welcoming the vibrancies through his fingertips, letting the prickle be a part of his skin.

“Yeah. It’s beautiful,” Blaine responded, suddenly realizing that the giant ice cube that had filled his stomach since he left Ohio had melted away, like it was Kurt’s touch that had started a fire inside him and wiped his fear away.

Blaine had felt scared his whole life. Not for any apparent reason; he just had. Politics had been a subject close to his heart since he was a kid, and the military had been a part of his childhood home through his father, so he had never been very vocal about that fear. He had thought it natural to feel that way, so when Gary had asked him to come to D.C. with him and Linda it had seemed like the perfect possibility to escape those fears.

Here he was now. 17 years old, lying in the dark with a boy he had never met before, who knew his name without telling him how, sharing heartbeats with this very same boy; and feeling safer than he had ever done in his own nursery as a child.

The touch of Kurt’s hand against the skin of his chest was soothing and comforting. Almost as if he could heal the holes Blaine had felt in his life.

*

“Try and smell this. Isn’t it unbelievable?”

Kurt let his hands, filled with fresh blades of grass, up to Blaine’s nose, waiting for him to inhale the sweetness of the green.

“Close your eyes and feel it run through your veins with the fresh air,” Kurt encouraged as he closed his eyes himself.

Blaine let his eyes drift closed and sniffed in. All he could sense was the fragrance of Kurt mixed with what he had to guess was grass.

He opened his eyes to find Kurt’s blue ones so close that their noses almost banged together. It wasn’t until now that Blaine noticed that his blue irises had tints of green and brown in them too, depending on the way the sun was shining.

“Do you ever feel like you’re screaming in the middle of a crowd, but your voice is on mute?” Blaine asked suddenly, unable to stop himself. He didn’t know where the question had come from. It was like Kurt touched something inside him, like Kurt knew him better than he knew himself.

Kurt didn’t look away. He raised his hand and let it brush Blaine’s eyes closed again.

“Listen. Can you hear that? It’s the universe, it’s the only thing you will ever need to be heard. If you let the universe in, you will be heard when it’s time for you to have your voice.”

Kurt took away his hand, and let himself fall down in the grass under him.

“Your voice is beautiful, Blaine. You won’t have any problems with being heard when your time comes. One day you will sing, and everyone will listen,” Kurt said as he placed his arms behind his head to look at the clouds.

Blaine sat staring at him. No one had ever made him speechless like this.

Blaine had been an honorary student at Dalton Academy back home. He had been leader of the debate club and front of the choir. He never got anything less than A and he had received honors from the staff for his extraordinary help in integrating the young students, and working on charity projects outside school hours. He was set to speak at his graduation, to inspire his fellow graduates to go out and do something meaningful with their lives.

Yet here he was not having a single word to fight its way over his lips.

He searched his brain for something clever and intriguing to say. Something that would make Kurt think that he was intelligent and innovative, but he couldn’t find anything.

It suddenly hit him that even though he and Kurt had been spending the last week together he hadn’t heard Kurt laugh one single time. Not as much as a giggle. His eyes were always wide and bright, almost glasslike, and he rarely smiled. The most he did was let the corners of his mouth go a little up whenever his and Blaine’s eyes met on accident.

This had him wonder whether there was something that was troubling Kurt.

It seemed so unlikely when one first met him. He seemed so at peace, in harmony with the world and the nature, but Blaine started to feel that behind the balanced appearance he was fighting some demons that he didn’t vocal.

“Are you going back to Ohio?” Blaine asked, eager to find out more about this boy he had grown so fond of in such short time.

“I don’t have any reason to go back,” Kurt answered in his charming young voice.

“But… don’t you have a family that is missing you?”

“No. Elizabeth, my mother, died when I was little, and Burt, my father, remarried. His new wife, Carole, had a son with her. He’s a good boy, but he’s a proud military man now. Burt and Carole are very proud of him, he’s doing really great. He’s in ‘Nam right now. They don’t need me to be another worry and burden,” Kurt explained, his voice as calm as always, but Blaine couldn’t help feeling a sting to it.

“I don’t think you could ever be a burden,” Blaine argued, taken aback by the thought that anyone could ever find Kurt as a burden.

“It doesn’t matter. I am here now. That is all that matters. Where I was yesterday and where I will be tomorrow is insignificant for this moment.”

Blaine sat a little while, letting the words turn over in his mind, feeling them, tasting them, before he let himself fall down on the grass next to Kurt. He looked to the sky, where the white smoky clouds were flowing over their heads.

The blue was almost sharp in his eyes, and a pinch started behind his eyebrow, so he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

He felt the August wind caressing his skin and the sun prickling in his face. He wanted to reach out and put his hand on Kurt’s in the grass between them, but he didn’t.

On some level Blaine knew that it would be okay for him to do so, but there was something holding him back; telling him that it wasn’t the time or the place.

Blaine had never considered the question of sexuality.

In his home being straight had always been the only option there was, so that’s what Blaine had identified himself as.

When Gary had introduced him to the activists at home, Blaine had started expanding his views on the issue. He had never had a girlfriend, and he had never been interested in neither girls nor boys, but even at his first time at an event in the local park he had found out that he felt it natural to kiss both girls and boys, and be intimate with them.

He had never felt anything for any of them. He had kissed them, and let them touch him and he had touched them too, but he had never let it go any further than that - there was something that held him back.

He enjoyed the intimacy, and he had often sought it out at the events he and Gary had been to, but he had never felt that thing, and he had never missed feeling it. He had been happy that way, he felt that he had bigger things to worry about,

Now, for the first time in his life, Blaine was wondering about the sexuality of another human being. Whenever the only sound around them was the sound of the cars and the birds singing Blaine couldn’t stop his thoughts from wandering, and they always ended at the same place; whether Kurt was gay or not.

Would it matter if he was?

*

Linda fell down on the futon next to where Blaine was sitting on the floor with his guitar. She took a huge mouthful of the glass bottle of beer in her hand before she offered it to him.

“Are you forgetting us, young Blainers?” Linda asked as he drank himself. Her voice was teasing, but he knew that she wanted more than to just tease him; she wanted real answers on something he couldn’t see through what could be.

“It’s hard to forget someone who fucks each other senseless next to you every night,” Blaine joked back, giving her the almost empty bottle as he let his fingers back to the strings.

“I did offer you to join. Several times. But you so virtuously decline every time so what am I supposed to do?” She rolled her eyes at him, letting her head fall to her arm.

“But you know what I mean. That boy. Is there something with you and him? Gary is worried about you, you know.” She was serious. Which was scary, because to Linda life was a game that consisted of sex, booze and drugs - occasionally accompanied by music.

“Kurt? There’s nothing. We just… talk. Spent the days together. He’s got a very interesting view on the world,” Blaine said, even though he wasn’t sure it was the whole truth. He didn’t know what the truth about him and Kurt was. But was it really relevant?

“You sleep together every night, that doesn’t seem like nothing to me. You have a connection. I just wanna know what that connection is.”

She started poking him in the side, tickling at his ribs, almost making the guitar hit her in the face as he twitched.

“We don’t - we don’t sleep together. We talk, and then we fall asleep next to each other. People around us are banging all the time, and you choose to see something into two guys talking?”

When the words escaped his lips Blaine heard that he sounded hurt.

“Just - Blainers, listen… I know you’re different from us. You believe in waiting for the one true love instead of pursuing it, or something like that. No let me finish…” She held up a hand to stop him when he opened his mouth to argue.

“All I am saying is that I’ve heard that this boy is flighty. I don’t know if you’re gay or straight or both… or maybe even not anything at all. I just know that you have a delicate heart, and you should take care of it.”

Linda let her fingers run through his curls, making him feel like a child being caught by a serious conversation with his mother.

“I never said that I am waiting for my ‘one true love’. But it doesn’t matter, it’s not like that. Kurt and I just talk - he’s a bright kid. It’s summer. He teaches me stuff about the universe and I play for him every now and then because he likes my voice. It’s nothing,” Blaine scuffed.

He shook his head and got to his feet. It was such a relief to be able to walk around barefooted and shirtless, leaving his curls to grow and not having to worry about appearance. He couldn’t do that at home. If he ever did his father would have a heart attack and send him directly to military school.

“Tell Gary that I’m fine, okay? There’s nothing to worry about. I don’t have ‘a delicate heart’.” Blaine wrinkled his nose as he said those last two words, obviously stating that he thought that she was talking nonsense and she should mind her own business.

He turned his back on her and left the lounge. Suddenly the incense in the air had made his head very heavy, and he needed some fresh air to be able to play again.