Blaine’s heart privately races. He’s only a little disappointed.

“Right… A map.”

“You promised,” Kurt says studying his face. “Remember?”

“No, I do. I remember.”

They stand there for a long time studying every detail of the other, curious and thinking of grander plans.

“Well,” Blaine says finally breaking their silence. “Thanks for the ice cream cone.”

“It’s not an ice cream cone!”

“I know… I’m just… I’m just making a joke.”

“Call me Pollyanna, but… It’s all good!” Kurt says laughing slightly. “And I don’t even say it’s all good!”

“Look, there’s something you should know about Nick…”

Blaine’s going for it, in this moment he doesn’t even care about the repercussions.

“Call me when you get home. Not before.” Kurt deflects. “I want you to get into the deep, beautiful melancholy of everything that’s happened.”

Blaine smiles a little, mostly bittersweet. Kurt looks him dead in the eyes, he’s saying goodbye without saying the words. This is what he’s best at, Blaine’s brain tells him. Kurt Hummel is the master of last looks.

It’s is the brightest and most beautiful day of the year, when the mourners gather at the Lima Cemetery. Only the faithful few are here for the Anderson funeral. What was once a small grassy spot is now swathed in flowers and color. Everybody is in glasses and jackets. Under a tent awning rests the casket, soaking in its last few moments of life above ground.

Blaine looks down into the casket; it’s empty save some news clippings, a few medals, and resting proudly against the indigo lining of that old casket from Columbus… Is the blue suit.

Blaine watches a Paul Karofsky swings the lid shut. Steel wheels engage to lower the casket into the ground. The gears engage and turn, lowering the casket. One of the gears catches, the casket freezes about halfway down to its final destination.

“Of course this wouldn’t be easy to the very end,” Julia Anderson mutters, getting a laugh from the faithful few.

The gears grumble back to life.

Blaine’s grown oddly attached to that casket and to the details of the man who was almost inside it. He is possessed with a strange feeling – He can’t bear for it to end and he can’t bear for it to continue.

The casket lands on the floor of the grave with a thud.

I began to think about what would be hitting the newsstands in just a few hours.

Blaine straps the urn into the passenger seat of his rental car. He’s assembled everything he’ll need for this journey. A case of Redbull and Kurt’s wooden box. He opens it. As a “map,” it’s a meticulous project made by a seasoned traveler, filled with pages of writing and illustrations, on easily-held notecards, with color-coded post-its and map attachments, along with detailed footnotes.

The route of Kurt’s map – With accompanying music – would take 42 hours and 11 minutes.

Blaine loads the first CD into the car stereo with the utmost gravity.

Blaine does so, only looking back one final time.

Kurt has laid out the entire trip, and timed it to music he himself has put onto the CDs…

Blaine gets one final look at Lima, before turning on to Highway 12 and leaving town.

He does so and music fills the car.

On the highway, Blaine’s car speeds onward. Blaine is facing forward with steadfast determination.

The songs, of course, were classic mix-tape songs… About Kurt, of course, and the rich flurry of our almost-romance.

“Forty-two hours of chick music.” Blaine says glumly to the urn.

It was Sunday afternoon.

Blaine has stopped into a Barnes and Noble. He moves across the newsstand searching for the newest issue of The Modern Business Journal.

And he has even provided music for what would happen next. Down to the minute…

The new issue is on the stands. Another magazine has been placed on top of it. Blaine painfully pulls the covering magazine aside. The Modern Business Journal features a funereal black-rimmed portrait of himself and this electric word. FIASCO!

Blaine leaves the book store, getting into his car, backing out of the space, leaving as quickly as possible.

Blaine looks down at the map in his hands as he drives.

Blaine stands on an overpass looking down into the legendary waters. He drops a pinch of the ashes into them.

Kurt’s map was full of strange side-trips too. “This is America,” he wrote, “and if everybody gets a vote where THEIR Thom is buried, here are a few where MY Thom is buried… Or scattered. These are treasures that I will share with only you…”

Blaine stands in a dinosaur park in Kentucky amidst the hand-made statues.

Blaine is staring at a Jesus statue welcoming people into the park.

“What the hell. Dad liked dinosaurs.”

He releases a few more pinches of ashes into the air.

Later in Memphis, Blaine is sitting in a restaurant, silent, facing out a window.

Blaine stands on the balcony of a hotel.

Blaine scoops out more ashes from the purple urn. It’s still rather full.

Back on the road, Blaine’s car burns across the highway headed west.

Blaine is standing in front of the single tree that is now a monument at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. He scoops out another handful of ashes. And another. The urn is still really full.

Blaine is back at the wheel, driving, and listening to another of Kurt’s songs. Somehow on his late night, at this exact moment, the audio and visual blend… and it’s perfect.

But he would not break me down.

Blaine brings a cup of coffee to his lips and sips as he drives. It’s early morning.

Like a dime store kaleidoscope, everything was twisting into sharp focus.

His car passes a sign reading: Wichita, Kansas.

They say just before the end a killer can think of nothing else but the act of killing. I stalked my prey and kept him close, back home, I would make my move.

Blaine looks at the urn riding along next to him.

“You with your many almost great projects and me with my… Fiasco. Both of us working so hard… For what? We should’ve taken this trip years ago.”

The urn bounces in the seat next to him, almost in agreement.

“Do you have any money?” Blaine asks almost in a child-like way. “I’m kinda scared to use my credit card.”

Blaine pulls his road dusted car into a gas station on the side of the highway. He looks in his backpack and finds his father’s brown leather wallet. There’s $120 dollars inside. He pulls out sixty.

“Thanks dad!”

In that moment, he feels like crying. But decides against it.

Blaine pays for the gas. Feeling bad about spending his father’s money, he turns to see a billboard behind the gas station. His ad is on it. Blaine looks concerned.

In a mall, in Kansas, the strangely similar sight was repeated.

Blaine notices his ad on a rolling kiosk in the mall.

The ad had begun to pop up wherever I went… Like a taunting demon.

He sits, watching, looking puzzled. His cellphone rings.

“Hello?”

“Blaine, it’s Sebastian. I know I’m the last person you want to hear from, but just listen to me. Your ad’s gone viral. People can’t get enough of it. You’re gonna be reinstated!”

It dawns on him that the ad is everywhere. He stands trying to let it sink it.

My ad was finding love… Love in the hearts of people… Ok, mostly teens and twenty-something’s… Who found my billion dollar, boyfriend destroying, global merger wrecking, the devil fucking Betty White curiosity… Profound.

Blaine hangs up without a word. He’s stunned and almost delirious. He lingers in the mall for a bit. It’s a curious sensation, beginning in his chin and moving across his face. He starts to cry. It’s all coming out now.

The curly-haired man takes big gulps of air as he drives, still crying. He looks over at the urn, trying to read Kurt’s map.

Blaine has parked the car again and is staring up that the peaks that Kurt writes about. The bluffs are just as powerful as his words.

“Hiram, meet Thom.”

Blaine spreads the most ashes yet.

Ashes fly from the driver’s side window, spraying against the sky as Blaine drives.

Blaine looks at his watch. 2:30 PM. He’s late.

Blaine pulls into the parking lot. The Second Largest Farmer’s Market in the World is three stories tall and one very large block long. He looks at the second installment of Kurt’s instructions.

Blaine steps into the immense Farmer’s Market. It is a museum of Americana.

He goes to the pet area and reaches curiously for the book about Springer Spaniels. A yellow note reads:

He enters the menswear department and finds said smoking jacket on display.

He reaches into the breast pocket and finds a Polaroid of himself at the pet area earlier. Kurt’s close. He has to be. Blaine looks around. His adrenalin is pumping hard. Is Kurt there? He has to be. There is another note attached to the back of the photo.

Blaine tears through the busy store looking for Kurt. There’s a red shawl, a red cap, a red shirt… None of them is Kurt.

Blaine is growing desperate trying to find him. He knows now. He needs Kurt, craves him with every breath in his body. And yet, in the teeming humanity that surrounds him… There is nothing.

Then he sees him… Or maybe it’s him. At the bottom of a small staircase, standing in a little caf�, a pair of the tightest, reddest, skinny jeans Blaine has ever seen in his life are facing away from him. Blaine approaches him from behind as the jeans turn.

It is Kurt, looking at him as if for the first time.

Blaine reacts like a man awakening for the first time. He moves to Kurt kissing him fiercely. He pulls away and opens his mouth to speak.

“You move me Kurt,” he says voice thick and quiet with emotion. “A whole dark chapter of my life is over because of you. I love you.”

He kisses Kurt, who is too stunned to speak, again.

“You ruined all my plans,” he says pulling away again. “And I want to do the same for you.”

No true fiasco ever began as a quest for adequacy… “Those who risk, win.” A single rose is able to grow through cement… The Pacific Northwest Salmon beats itself bloody on its quest to travel hundreds of miles upstream, against the current, with a single purpose… Sex, of course… But also life.