Blaine takes Kurt to Pete's. It's a place Kurt has known existed. The fifties era ice cream parlor has been a landmark for as long as Kurt remembers, but his Dad always stopped at Dairy Queen. Alongside the road, the neon outlining Pete's big ice cream cone sign glows a bright welcome in white and orange. The glass block front and flat ridged roof are so familiar to Kurt, he's always thought of it as a bit sad and tacky. It takes him a moment to see the place as Blaine may be seeing it. Vintage advertisements hang in the wide plate glass window at the side, and colorful stylized ice cream cones are painted in a playful line on the wall beside. It's well maintained, retro, and—as Kurt looks at it with fresh eyes, he realizes—pretty cool.

"Would you believe I've never actually been here?" Kurt says to Blaine as they pull in and park.

"It said they make their own ice cream," Blaine says. That's something Kurt can respect. He even dredges up some anticipation as they get out of the car, though the heaviness in his heart persists, a dull foundation to his mood.

There're only two other cars in the parking lot. Inside, an older couple sits in a corner booth with milkshakes, and a bored college-age girl in a pink and white striped uniform attends the counter. Blaine orders a sundae, Kurt a banana split, and they ask for a bowl of shoestring fries to share. They choose a table by the window and sit on curvy metal and vinyl chairs. The floor is shiny green and white checkered linoleum; Elvis Presley sings about his blue suede shoes.

Blaine smiles at Kurt, and Kurt does his best to smile back. Now that he's sitting down with Blaine, he's profoundly tired, still stuck swinging on an unwanted pendulum ride between sad and angry with disappointed still the wide center of the arc. "How was your day?" he asks Blaine.

"Fine," Blaine says, a note of dismissal there. His gaze is concerned and intent resting upon Kurt. "Tell me about yours," he says, low and soft and certain.

It feels like that day at Dalton over coffee. Blaine's got the same look, the same tone of voice. And Kurt feels the same flavor tears spring up sharp. He bites his lip to stop it from trembling. Hadn't he told Blaine this version of himself was in the past? The old, alien loneliness has no right to be welling up. He's meant to be done with all of that. He's not lonely any longer.

"Hey," Blaine says gently. He starts to reach across the table, but then withdraws his hand again with a regretful grimace. "You're not okay."

Kurt shakes his head. Has to release his lip to breathe, it comes out a sob. His voice is frail and high, but he keeps it soft. "I never wanted to feel this way again with Finn," he says. "I thought we were friends now, brothers, you know? But it's all just the same as it was."

"I don't know your history with Finn," Blaine says. "But I've had some rough times with my brother. You can tell me about it, if you want."

Kurt blinks back his tears. He's not going to cry in public. The girl brings their ice creams and fries. Blaine thanks her, and Kurt unwraps his long metal spoon from its napkin. Once the girl has retreated back to behind the counter, he starts to talk.

It's not easy, finding the words and bringing them up around the lump lodged in his chest, but he does, because he can see that Blaine cares, that he wants to hear them. Kurt starts with what happened tonight, the conversation in his room. (He still can't get over Finn calling the design "boring".) And then, to try to provide context for how Finn's judged him in the past, he tells Blaine about Sam—

("Sam's your friend who delivered the pizza, right?" Blaine interrupts to ask. Kurt confirms and continues.)

—and the duets assignment, and that leads to more about Karofsky and the black-eye Sam got for defending Kurt when Finn wasn't. Some of the things he hasn't told Blaine before. He tells Blaine about trying to teach Finn to dance in the choir room. His Dad cornering Karofsky in the hall. How scared Kurt was for his Dad in that moment. Then more about Sam and how they never did sing together, and how he and Sam became friends anyway, and how Kurt knows now that Finn had been wrong about Kurt singing with Sam back then, but he'd believed him at the time, ultimately because of the things his father said to him. He feels weird about it now. A little guilty, a little betrayed. Sad. Still confused.

There was, of course, progress after that; so he tells the story of the wedding and how Finn sang to him, and then Kurt backtracks all the way to when he was going to sing to Finn himself, the Olivia Newton John song about being resigned to and accepting a hopeless, unrequited love. He never got to sing that song either, and he wonders if it would've helped if he had. So then he has to tell Blaine about sharing the room in the basement and what happened there, but he doesn't dwell long on those events, doesn't tell Blaine everything.

Somehow he winds up talking about the time he and Finn spent on Jean Sylvester's funeral, because he'd felt so close to Finn then, and Kurt starts to cry again, so he has to stop talking. He scoops at the last of his melting ice cream and can't quite look up at Blaine. Everything coming out of his mouth, the disordered sequence of it, all feels like a jumble of non sequiturs. The emotional logic of it isn't in the details, but the details are all he has to tell.

"You really do love him, don't you?" Blaine says eventually.

"What?" Kurt says, stunned, abruptly flushing hot as his tears cease. "No, I'm... so over him, I have been for a long time. Blaine, I love you."

"I don't mean romantically."

Kurt blinks. "Of course I care about him," Kurt says. "But... love? Why should I love someone who's hurt me like that?"

"If I knew the answer, I'd be a smarter person than I am. But I think, sometimes, we're uniquely vulnerable to the people we love."

"I don't want to be vulnerable to Finn," Kurt says bitterly, and he finds his anger resurfacing. "I just want him to be..." Kurt drops his spoon into his empty glass dish with a clatter. "Someone who doesn't make me feel like crap as easily as he does."

Blaine smiles sympathetically. Then he stands up and extends a hand toward Kurt. He tilts his head toward the door. "Come on."

Kurt glances over toward the counter. The girl has her back to them. The other couple is gone. He takes Blaine's hand.

#

After the chill of air conditioning and ice cream, the summer night is humid enough, it cloaks them in welcome warmth. They walk back to the car, hand in hand, letting go only when they must. "You like Duran Duran, right?" Blaine asks over the top of the car. The car makes a muffled thunk as Blaine unlocks it.

Curiosity overwhelms his general grumpiness. Kurt rolls his eyes and smiles weakly. "Who doesn't?"

Blaine returns Kurt's smile with a brilliant flash of his own, says, "They were my brother's favorite band when we were young, and so, of course, they were my favorite band for a long time after he left."

"Okay," Kurt says as he slides into the passenger seat and closes the door. He's not sure what Duran Duran or Blaine's brother's musical taste has to do with anything right now, but Blaine moves and speaks as if he has a plan.

Inside the car, with the dome light illuminating the interior, Blaine looks at him, and there's something glittering bright in his gaze. Something Kurt hasn't seen before. "Do you trust me?" Blaine asks as he pulls the driver side door closed and the interior light cuts out.

The way Blaine asks the question, as if this is truly something important, stops Kurt from answering with a glib, 'of course'. Without the light, Kurt can no longer see his expression well enough to try to read anything more there. He reaches for Blaine's hand where it's resting on the buckle of his seatbelt. "What are you asking me?"

"Sometimes, when I'm feeling... frustrated, I have this playlist I listen to. Sometimes I drive with it, so I thought maybe we could go for a drive."

The suggestive way Blaine says 'drive' makes Kurt's heart beat faster. A glance at the clock shows he has a half hour left before his amended curfew. His breath catches. "Okay."

Street light glints on Blaine's teeth when he smiles. "Buckle up," he says (Kurt does), and Blaine starts the engine. He thumbs the click-wheel on his iPod, pushes play, and then backs out, swinging the car toward the parking lot exit with decisive—and alarming—speed.

The music starts. Gentle piano at first, but it's swiftly swamped by a menacing electric guitar, and it's nothing by Duran Duran Kurt recognizes; it's not even remotely romantic. He wonders what he's got himself into. 'Drive' is clearly not a euphemism for driving somewhere private and making-out in the back of Blaine's car.

In the pause before they pull out of Pete's driveway, Kurt asks, "Blaine?"

"Just try to relax," Blaine says. "And let yourself feel it." Then he dials the volume up loud enough any further conversation is impossible, and he pulls out onto the long, dark road, heading south. It's the opposite direction from the way they came.

There are no cars ahead of them. Blaine accelerates fast—fast enough that Kurt's pressed back, breathing rapidly and shallowly, and gripping the sides of his seat with stiff fingers. The music wails and thunders around him. It's all instrumental, impulsive, aggressive. Strange and terrifying. "Oh god," Kurt says; he can't even hear himself.

Kurt tears his gaze from the black ribbon of road unfurling too fast in front of them, looks at Blaine. Blaine's the image of calm concentration, his eyes are clear upon the road, never straying to Kurt, just minute flicks to the shoulders, down to his instruments, then back to the distance ahead. A glance at the speedometer shows they're passing seventy miles per hour and still accelerating.

Kurt can't breathe. He shuts his eyes, but that only makes it worse, makes him more aware of the gravity at his back, how it swings around him as Blaine takes a wide turn without slowing. He's hurtling along, out of control in the night. There's too much momentum.

He opens his eyes, looks out the side window. The sparse ranks of trees lining the road whip past, backlit by the waxing half moon. Their tops seem to drag at its stationary pale belly. The guitar screams, and the drums pound as hard as Kurt's heart. They're heading toward the river, Kurt realizes.

It's a cold sweat prickling his skin as the music slams into silence. Blaine's foot comes off the accelerator and they swing into a tighter turn. But before Kurt can rally his breath for words, the next song kicks in with bright pulsing synthesizer and funky throbbing bass.

"Yes, we're miles away from nowhere..." Simon Le Bon sings. It's an old song, one Kurt recognizes from the Rio album, "Hold Back the Rain". It's on his own driving playlist. With the less frenetic beat, Blaine lets the car coast, gradually bleeding off their excess speed. The familiar music is less suffocating; Kurt manages to take a deep, even breath and release the fierce grip of his hands on the seat.

Kurt remembers what Blaine told him, and he tries to relax. The road curves in toward the river; Blaine takes each arc, neat and smooth. The water paces them, black in the night. Moonlight snags against its ripples, live silver wires in the dark.

And... it's okay. Somehow, it's okay. The car is slowing—still speeding, but it feels less helter skelter—the steady pulse of bass syncs with the heartbeat in Kurt's throat. Everything eases, and it feels like he has become the stationary point in the universe just then, everything else revolves about his axis. Kurt breathes, Blaine drives, and the music plays.

They glide on, cleaving to the graceful bend of the river road, through the ruthless energy of the new single, "Girl Panic," and Kurt watches Blaine as he sings along, "'The heat is wrapping 'round us / This city's strapped around us.'"

And his gaze is caught. He keeps staring at Blaine, though Blaine's concentration never once wavers, and Kurt doesn't dare interrupt him. He lets himself sink into the music as it soars.

"... the midnight traffic in her eyes / like a hypnotic, and I am mesmerized."

#

By the time they've turned back in to the garage, the playlist has moved onto the melancholy and poignant "Ordinary World": "Ours is just a little sorrowed talk / And I don't cry for yesterday / There's an ordinary world..."

Blaine parks the car, but they don't make any move to get out until the music fades and no new song begins.

The first breath Kurt takes in the silence is bizarrely difficult—jagged—as if the tops of his lungs don't want to accept the air. And the first look Blaine gives him, after what feels like hours, is hesitant and vulnerable.

They stay in that moment for a while, quietly suspended in uncertainty and wonder. Kurt doesn't know how to name what they just shared. His entire body still hums with too much adrenaline, and he's oddly wrung out as the exhilaration fades from his blood. He looks away from Blaine to Eliza. She's exactly as they left her, and that familiarity is discordant. Kurt doesn't feel the same, but he's not sure how to mark the change.

He wonders if this is how it works, Blaine's ritual. Start with anger, apply danger and music, transform it into something else. Then he wonders how often Blaine does this. He's almost afraid to know the answer. The thought of it isn't comforting or thrilling, not at all.

Blaine touches his forearm, says his name quietly, and Kurt turns his attention back.

"That was dangerous," Kurt says, just as quietly.

"I'm a good driver," Blaine says, matter of fact, not at all defensively. And it's true enough, but that doesn't make it not dangerous. Still, Kurt doesn't want to argue with Blaine.

"You scared me," Kurt says; he has to be honest.

Blaine drops his gaze to where one of his hands still rests on the steering wheel. "Do you still feel scared?" he asks without looking up.

Kurt shakes his head, says, "No."

Blaine cocks his head, a glance at Kurt. "How do you feel?"

"Different," he says.

"Better?"

"I... yeah. I think so." Kurt tests the word: "Better."

The sweetest smile of relief from Blaine. "Good."

"But I don't want to do that again, at least not like that."

"All right," Blaine says.

"I don't like to think about you doing it again either."

"I don't do it often. The driving," Blaine says, and then his words take on the hushed tone of confession: "Usually I... hit a heavy bag. I box."

Kurt sees it in a flash: Blaine pounding all his anger into a big leather punching bag. It's not hard to imagine it. He remembers how fiercely Blaine threw himself at Karofsky in the school hall the night of New Direction's benefit concert. It's strange though: a part of Blaine he finds remote and alarming. Less so now, though. He thinks he understands better now.

Kurt smiles, reaches to cover Blaine's hand on his arm with his own. "Something else your brother taught you?"

Blaine shakes his head. "No, something I did on my own. After the Sadie Hawkins dance, I asked for lessons, for self-defense, and my Dad approved."

And that thought, of Blaine feeling the need to defend himself physically with violence makes Kurt feel ill. But he can't fix the world for Blaine, and Blaine can't fix the world for him. Some days all they can do is this. "Does it help?" Kurt asks.

"Yeah," Blaine says. "Most of the time." He's thoughtful and silent for a moment; his jaw works, clenching and relaxing as if there's something else he wants to say to Kurt.

Kurt waits.

"Since I met you," Blaine says. "I don't do it as much. I don't need to."

Kurt nods, feels a smile pull at his lips.

Blaine looks at him, urgency in his gaze. "Kurt, can I—?" Blaine says. "Can I kiss you?"

"You don't have to ask," Kurt says.

Blaine lunges at him then, kisses far too hard and off center. It's rough and their teeth crash together painfully. Kurt ends up biting Blaine's lip and mashes his own nose uncomfortably against Blaine's cheekbone when he tries to recover. It's by far the worst kiss they've shared. Kurt starts laughing, and they break apart.

"Ow," Blaine says, sucking at his abused lip, but amusement lights his eyes.

"That was terrible," Kurt says, covering his mouth.

"Awful," Blaine agrees.

Kurt looks at the time, and immediately wishes he hadn't. "I should go soon," he says, pushes a regretful sigh through his smile. "Thanks for coming all the way out here to cheer me up."

"Anytime," Blaine says, "So long as you're actually cheered."

Kurt shrugs. "Not cheered exactly, but you helped clear my head, and I think..." Kurt lets out a long breath. "...maybe I overreacted earlier, with Finn."

Blaine's serious as he nods. "He loves you too, Kurt," Blaine says. "I don't need to know him well to know that, from everything you've told me and what time I have spent with him—you guys can figure this out."

"I hope so," Kurt says, surprised by how fervently he means it. "Thank you," he says to Blaine, and then, with a grin he asks, "Now, before I go, may I please have a decent kiss good night?"

#

By the time Kurt gets home, whatever may be left of his disappointment has turned itself inside out. It's a hollow ache behind his breastbone. The things he said to Finn were, some of them, responses to things Finn didn't actually say to him. Kurt realizes he's been unfair. He goes upstairs and looks for the glow of light from beneath Finn's door. Hears the uneven, muted thump of whatever game Finn's playing.

Kurt gets ready for bed. He feels refreshed after a quick, cool shower. In his pajamas and robe, he goes back downstairs to the kitchen and heats enough milk for two mugs. Injuries to his pride are hardly a novel pain, and if this one seemed worse, Kurt suspects Blaine is right: it's because Kurt loves Finn that he's reacted so badly to Finn's awkwardly expressed criticism. So he's going to take the olive branch himself: warm milk and an offer of calmer, more constructive conversation. Kurt puts the mugs on a tray, along with a few homemade oatmeal cookies, and takes it up to Finn's room.