They didn't speak much in the morning. After spending a relatively sleepless night where Blaine heard, “I swear, this has never happened to me before,” as I don't find you that attractive, and Kurt heard, “It's fine; don't worry about it; it's no big deal; it happens to a lot of guys,” as so much white noise, they were back on the road after a stilted and awkward truck stop discussion over barely eaten waffles and bitter coffee.

“I'm going to Yakima today, do you want to go?”

“Do you want me to go?”

“It's a long drive—like sixteen hours—so it would probably be good to have company, although I might stop at a hotel if it gets too exhausting.”

“Kurt, I'm a hitchhiker you picked up on the road. You don't have any obligation to me. If you don't want me to go, that's fine. It's your prerogative.”

“So you don't want to go?”

“No, I didn't say that. I'm just saying you shouldn't feel like you have to invite me. You don't owe me anything.”

“No, you can come if you want.”

“Okay, if you want.”

“Okay.”

The conversation did nothing to convince Blaine that Kurt really wanted him along, but he came anyway. They kept their conversation to a minimum. Nobody mentioned love again, and they certainly didn't talk about that thing that had happened—or not happened, as it were.

They switched drivers in Rock Springs and then again in Ogden, and they tried to make polite conversation, but attempts at reestablishing their normal interactions soon fell flat, and they eventually gave up trying. Once, after they switched drivers, Blaine had reached out automatically to rest his hand on Kurt's thigh, but as soon as his fingers brushed the material on Kurt's jeans, Kurt tensed, and Blaine remembered and pulled his hand back.

Blaine's head swam with self-recrimination. What kind of a delusional idiot falls in love in less than a week and then tells the guy? Surely Blaine was just a pleasant distraction to Kurt, and by blurting out his love, Blaine had spoiled everything. He was such a moron.

On Kurt's side, he didn't know what to think about last night. Blaine's confession of love was a shock, but it hadn't felt like a cold shower. In fact, it felt…nice. Kurt didn't know how to explain his sudden inability to perform. His body was on fire for Blaine—he couldn't think of a guy that he had ever wanted more—but apparently his cock didn't get the memo. Maybe he was coming down with something. With his luck, it would be cancer.

About eight uncomfortable hours into the drive, both men heard a rhythmic thumping under the car. “Shit,” Kurt exclaimed pulling off to the side of the road just in sight of a freeway off ramp. He knew exactly what it was. He looked at the outside temperature gauge on his dash: 2 degrees Fahrenheit. Great.

Both men exited the car, and it was exactly as they suspected. The rear passenger tire was completely flat—too flat to safely drive it another inch. Kurt popped the hatch on the back of the car, and Blaine helped Kurt reposition bags so that they could gain access to the hatch where the spare tire, the lug wrench, and the complicated blacksmith's puzzle that doubles as a jack were stashed.

“Fuck!” Kurt exclaimed when they lifted the spare from the compartment. It was flat, too. Kurt looked at Blaine, “I was busy when I left New York, and so I took my car in to be serviced instead of doing it myself. I told them to check the spare, but I didn't check that they had checked the spare.” He ran his gloved fingers through his hair. Kurt kicked the bumper in frustration, “I know better.”

“It's okay,” Despite the unpleasantness of their situation, this was the first normal feeling conversation they had had all day. Blaine pointed to a neon sign just beyond the off ramp. “There's a truck stop; it can't be more than a quarter mile away. I'll run the spare up there and get it filled while you get the car jacked up and get the flat off.”

When Blaine returned thirty minutes later with the now-usable spare balanced on his shoulder, Kurt was still painting the air blue by cursing hydraulic lug wrenches everywhere as he finally managed to remove the last stubborn lug nut from the wheel base without a power tool and slide the flat off the car. Blaine helped Kurt wrestle the spare onto the axle, then he stood by and shivered, hands in his pockets as Kurt tightened the lug nuts, lowered the jack, and tightened the lug nuts again.

Blaine noticed that Kurt's cheeks were an unnatural pink and his lips were nearly blue from the cold. His fingers were white, since Kurt had removed his gloves in order to be able to handle the lug nuts. Blaine was cold, as the icy wind whipped his coat and cut through his gloves and hat, but he had practically run to the truck stop and back, warming from the exercise. Kurt, on the other hand, was chilled to the bone.

After they heaved the flat tire into the cargo hold, Blaine grabbed Kurt's shoulder and said, “Let me drive. You can barely move your fingers, you're so frozen.”

Kurt nodded, teeth chattering, and he walked around to the passenger-side door while Blaine buckled his seat belt and waited for Kurt to do the same before pulling back onto the Interstate. At the exit from which Blaine had just returned, he pulled off, but he didn't pull into the truck stop to get the tire repaired, as Kurt would have imagined. Instead, he pulled around behind the truck stop to a no-frills but relatively new looking Super 8 hotel.

“What are we doing?” asked Kurt.

“We,” Blaine answered, stripping off his gloves and taking Kurt's hands into his own, chafing them to warm them, “are going to get a room, get you into a hot bath, and then go to that restaurant there…” he nodded to a busy but not particularly impressive looking truck stop diner with a blinking sign that read Connor's Café, “…and eat something hot. Then we're going to snuggle in bed, watch some bad television, and pray that tomorrow is a better day.”

Kurt looked at Blaine, nodded, and offered a weak smile, “Okay.”

When they entered their generic, but clean, hotel room Blaine ordered, “Strip,” and went into the bathroom. Kurt could hear the water running in the bathtub. He wasn't much of an exhibitionist, but he was simply too cold to care right now, so he did as he was commanded. By the time his frozen, shaking fingers managed to push off the last of his clothes, Blaine had returned, guiding him to the bathroom with a warm hand on the small of Kurt's back.

Kurt sunk into the steaming hot water that set his extremities to pins and needles. It was almost too much and, yet, not enough. It was so hot, yet Kurt knew in five minutes he would be adding more hot water to the tub. He closed his eyes and just luxuriated in the pleasure/pain sensations of the hot water.

Blaine nodded with satisfaction and left the bathroom. After a time that Kurt could not possibly measure, Blaine returned still wearing his jeans but having stripped down to a soft t-shirt and carrying Kurt's toiletry kit. He knelt by the tub and handed Kurt a dry washcloth. “Dry your hands,” he said, and Kurt did, registering that he should probably be a little affronted by the fact that Blaine had been ordering him around non-stop since they arrived, but also enjoying being taken care of.

Blaine held Kurt's open toiletry bag in front of him, “Pull out your shampoo and your face wash, because I don't want to rifle through your stuff,” Blaine explained simply, and Kurt complied again.

“Are you warming up?”

Kurt nodded.

“Okay, close your eyes and hold still. I'm going to wash your hair and your face.”

“Blaine, I can do it myself. I'm cold; I'm not an invalid.”

Blaine smiled at Kurt, “I know you can do everything, Superman, but I'm going to do this for you, so that you can relax. Also,” he grinned wickedly, “you have some wheel grease on your face, and I'm not sure you'd get it all by yourself.”

Kurt's eyes grew wide and he opened his mouth to squawk that Blaine should have told him and should have never let him parade through a hotel lobby looking like that, but then he realized he felt too languid to care, so he closed his mouth, and his eyelids soon followed.

Blaine took one hand and put it behind Kurt's neck, tilting Kurt's head back but supporting it with Blaine's strength. Using a cup he had brought over from the sink, he dipped it in the water and poured it gently over Kurt's hair. Then he did it again and again.

Kurt made a noise.

“Was that a purr?” Blaine asked teasingly.

Kurt made the noise again, and Blaine giggled.

Removing his hand from behind Kurt's neck, Blaine poured shampoo into a puddle on one hand, and then rubbed his hands together. Then he threaded the shampooed hands into Kurt's hair, massaging the scalp and scratching behind the ears.

“Feels so good,” Kurt mumbled.

Going back to supporting Kurt's neck, Blaine rinsed away the shampoo, then he washed Kurt's face gently, rubbing a little harder on the grease-streaked spots on his cheek and nose.

Kurt moaned with pleasure.

When he finished, Blaine pulled the plug on the drain. “Dry off and join me in the bedroom,” Blaine said, standing and leaving.

Kurt wasn't sure if he could stand, he felt so noodly, but he was also getting cold from the loss of hot water, so he heaved himself up and dried himself as well as he could with a small, rough towel. He thought about wrapping it around his waist but then thought, Fuck it, and he went into the bedroom stark naked.

The bedroom was really warm, much warmer than when they had entered. Blaine had clearly turned the heat up to a level that was responsible for so much environmental damage but felt so good. The bed was folded down, and soft piano music was playing from Blaine's phone.

Blaine had changed out of his jeans into the thick sweatpants he had worn in the sleeping bag on the first night, which seemed like a lifetime ago, and he gestured to the bed, “Lie on your stomach.”

Kurt had been enjoying following orders so far, so he lay down on the sheets that were cool enough to raise some goosebumps on his flesh. He turned his head to the side and closed his eyes. Blaine took Kurt's arm on the side that his head was facing and brought it up so that Kurt's hand was near the headboard, which took a lot of pressure off of Kurt's neck. He briefly wondered how Blaine knew to do that.

Then Blaine began doing…something to Kurt's back. It wasn't really massage. It was just touching, and it was so light, and Blaine's hands felt supernaturally warm. It felt wonderful. Blaine's amazing, long fingers—Kurt had taken much of his time as a passenger staring at them and thinking about how great they would feel carded in his hair, and just one time it crossed his mind how easily they could reach his prostate—were skimming lightly over the surface of Kurt's skin, just pressing in enough to keep from tickling. Occasionally those clever fingers would find a knot and work it with more pressure until it gave and was smoothed out by more gentle touches.

When Blaine's fingers got to Kurt's hips, Kurt was shocked to discover a world of pain he didn't know he had. All the driving and sitting had built up a secret cache of agony at the top of the hip flexors, and Blaine's fingers worked that away, too, until Kurt was panting with relief. Then Blaine's fingers began working their way across Kurt's buttocks, and Kurt quit feeling quite so relaxed and started feeling a lot more aroused. Blaine's touch wasn't sexual, and yet Kurt had spent so much time over the last few days thinking about Blaine's hands right there that the combination of Blaine's fingers and Kurt's fantasies collided to make Kurt's penis stretch underneath him.

“Make love to me,” Kurt whispered.

Blaine didn't say anything, and at first Kurt wondered if he had heard him. Then Blaine simply bent down and began dragging his silken lips down Kurt's spine. When he got to the rise of Kurt's ass, he used his hands to part the cheeks and continued kissing lower. Then his tongue was laving around Kurt's entrance, alternating between pushing in and flattening out to smooth over the surface. Kurt wondered why he'd never before realized that Blaine was a fucking genius.

After some time of absolutely filthy licking (on Blaine's part) and porn-star groaning (on Kurt's part) it was starting to get painful to be on Kurt's stomach in his state, so there was a little time re-adjusting, and Blaine took that time to dig through Kurt's suitcase to find the condoms and lube. Then Kurt settled back to his original position, this time with a pillow under this pelvis and his engorged cock in a more comfortable place, while Blaine knelt between Kurt's knees and snapped the top open on the lube bottle.

Kurt didn't bottom often—in fact, almost never—so the pressure of a finger easing into him was almost foreign, but he could have handled it if Blaine hadn't assisted his own nimble, probing finger by returning his tongue to Kurt's rim, too. That combination had Kurt crying out in pleasure loudly enough that Blaine had to remind him that there were probably people in the next room. So Kurt reined it in for a while, but then Blaine was breaching him with two of those magic fingers, then three, curling them and hitting his prostate just so, and to Hell with the people in the next room, or the next town for that matter, because there was no way that Kurt could keep quiet with Blaine doing that.

And then Kurt was begging. He was pulling at the sheets and he was begging for Blaine's cock right now before I fucking die! And then Blaine was rolling him over, because “I have to see you,” and then Blaine was inside, gloriously, amazingly inside, and they both stilled, and Blaine looked at Kurt with wide eyes, pupils blown, and he giggled. Blaine giggled!

“What?” asked Kurt smiling, because God damn if that giggle wasn't the sweetest thing he had ever heard.

Blaine put a hand to his still grinning mouth. “Sorry. It's just…I've never done this before. Topped. How have I never done this before? It feels amazing. You feel amazing. You're so tight, how can I even be…? I can't believe I'm in you.”

“The bottom's pretty good, too,” Kurt grinned, “or it would be if my top would shut up and just move already.”

“Someone's pretty demanding for a bottom,” Blaine teased.

“Just shut up and fuck me.”

So Blaine shut up. And fucked him. Soon they were both sweating and panting, and Blaine was powering into Kurt's body so hard, his balls slapping against Kurt with a satisfying thwacking sound, and then Blaine was touching Kurt between their body, stroking in time with his thrusts, and Kurt thought he might explode, and then he did, convulsing and gripping the sheets and crying out and whipping his head from side to side as he splattered everything.

The contractions of his sphincter muscles with the orgasm pushed Blaine to the other side and in three more hard strokes he was falling apart, too, and Kurt was far enough along to be able to see Blaine, head thrown back, mouth open, tears leaking from behind closed eye lids. It was the most beautiful sight Kurt thought he would ever see.

Neither remembered falling asleep, but when Blaine woke, he knew immediately that something was wrong. Next to him Kurt was breathing fast, cold and sweating to the touch. Blaine could feel Kurt's pulse pounding triple time under his hand that was lying against Kurt's neck.

“Kurt, what's wrong?”

“I don't know. My chest hurts.”

“Should I call an ambulance?”

Kurt shook his head.

“Then I think I should drive you to the hospital, okay?”

Kurt hesitated, then nodded.

Blaine threw on some clothes as fast as he could and got Kurt into some clothes as well. He really didn't want to bother dressing Kurt in more than simple sweats, but Kurt insisted, and he was so agitated that Blaine was willing to do whatever it took to get him in the car already.

He wrapped an arm around Kurt's waist and escorted him down to the lobby, where the lobby clerk gave quick and clear directions to the hospital. Then Blaine was speeding across town, keeping one eye on the road and another eye on Kurt, who looked like he might bolt out of the car at the first opportunity.

“Has this ever happened to you before?” Blaine asked.

“No.”

“Do you think it's a heart attack?”

“I don't know. It feels like it.”

“Just hold on, we're almost there.”

And then they were there, pushing through the emergency room doors.