Blaine slept for several hours. He awoke to music. It took him a minute to remember where he was. A man had picked him up—Kurt was his name—and now that man was singing along to a Lady Gaga tune on the radio.

Blaine joined in on the chorus.

“(A-P-P-L-A-U-S-E) Make it real loud; (A-P-P-L-A-U-S-E) Put your hands up, make ‘em touch, touch; (A-P-P-L-A-U-S-E) Make it real loud; (A-P-P-L-A-U-S-E) Put your hands up, make ‘em touch, touch.”

“You're awake!”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you.”

“Not at all. You have a really nice voice.”

“You, too. Countertenor?”

“Uh huh.”

“You don't hear that every day.” Blaine looked around him, “Wow, it's really coming down.”

“Yeah, the snow picked up once we hit central Pennsylvania, but we should only be about an hour out of Youngstown now.” Kurt's estimate was based entirely on his GPS. Most of the road signs had long been obscured by the falling snow, and Kurt was having a hard time even seeing the road. For about the last hour he had simply followed the tail lights of a semi-truck, and he hoped like Hell that the truck driver could see the road better than Kurt could. They could be driving across a field for all he knew; visibility was that bad. The weather was really too lousy to drive through, but Kurt didn't dare pull off the road for fear of getting hit by another driver. He had passed some exits, but in this part of rural Pennsylvania he couldn't risk exiting because if the local roads hadn't been plowed Kurt was going to get stuck somewhere where they might not be found until it was too late. Driving was dangerous, but it was the least dangerous of many dangerous options.

Blaine noticed that the sun was low in the sky. “What time is it? How long was I out?”

“It's nearly five. The snow has really slowed us down. You've been sleeping for, I dunno, maybe seven hours. We've made pretty bad time because of the storm.”

“Geez, I was really out of it. I guess I haven't had much sleep these past few days. It catches up with you.”

“Yeah,” Kurt really didn't know what else to say to Blaine. He didn't know anything about him, not even how long he'd been hitchhiking or where he started. However, it didn't appear that Blaine was too interested in conversation either. He turned and stared out the window despite the fact that there was nothing to see but white, and the two men continued on in silence except when one or the other or both sang along with the radio.

It took much longer than an hour to arrive in Youngstown, because the weather continued to slow all traffic to a crawl. By the time they pulled cautiously off at an exit, the sun was sinking below the horizon. Kurt pulled into a gas station. After a brief argument, Blaine had persuaded Kurt to let him both pump and pay for the gas. Then, after Blaine screwed the cap back on the gas tank, he opened the back seat of the passenger door and grabbed for his bags.

“What are you doing?” Kurt demanded.

“Well…I…thanks for the ride,” Blaine stuttered.

“Are you crazy? You can't get out here; you'll freeze to death or someone will hit you with their car. Get back in; we'll find a hotel.”

Blaine paused for a moment, shrugged, then returned to the passenger seat.

Kurt got out of the car, went into the gas station and talked to the attendant for a while. Through the glass, Blaine saw the attendant pointing and talking. When Kurt returned he said, “There's supposed to be a hotel about 100 yards up the road on the other side of the overpass,” both peered into the white out and saw nothing, “if we can find the road,” Kurt continued under this breath.

Sure enough, not far up the road they saw the lights of a hotel dimly through the haze, and Kurt pulled into what he assumed was a parking space.  “Come on,” he said to Blaine, who opened the car door and followed him.

The front desk clerk was a young, twenty-something with ridiculously long artificial nails. She informed Kurt and Blaine disinterestedly that there were no available rooms at the hotel, and, no, she didn't know if there were any other hotels with any rooms, but all of the hotels close by were full. “Because of the storm,” she added unnecessarily.

Kurt exhaled in an exasperated gust, “Do you at least have a restaurant?”

The clerk pointed one of her talons toward a hall, “That way,” she said gracelessly.

Kurt and Blaine trudged down the hallway that, sure enough, ended in a small, uninteresting restaurant. They took a seat and ordered coffee and burgers.

“What are you going to do?” asked Blaine.

“I dunno,” Kurt shrugged, “Maybe sleep in the car.”

“Are you far from where you're going?”

“About a week,” said Kurt without thought, then he realized his error when Blaine looked confused.

“But I thought you were coming here to Youngstown.”

Kurt's face suffused with color. “Oh…uh…I...”

Blaine reached out and touched Kurt's hand, “You weren't really going to Youngstown, were you?” At Kurt's mortified expression, Blaine smiled and went on, “I get it. It's okay. You don't know me, and you didn't want to be stuck with me for a long time. You don't have to feel bad about that; you don't owe me anything, Kurt.”

“Sorry,” Kurt said in a small voice.

Blaine smiled, “Don't be. I wanted to go West, and you brought me West-ish. Thank you.”

“This ‘West' thing,” Kurt asked, “do you really not have a destination?”

“No, not really.”

“Why not?”

This time it was Blaine's turn to look embarrassed, “This is going to sound so stupid.”

“I won't judge you, Blaine. I hardly know you.”

“Yeah, okay, but it's kind of a long story.”

“Unless this snow stops, I'm going nowhere.”

Blaine considered this for a moment. “Have you ever had your heart broken?”

Kurt thought about it, but he didn't have to think hard. The answer was no. Kurt had experienced the occasional unrequited crush, and he had certainly “spread it around,” as his friend Rachel indelicately put it, out of a desperate need to both feel something and feel nothing, but he had never been in love. His heart was intact. In fact, it was likely in perfect condition, encased as it was in ice.

Kurt shook his head.

“Oh,” said Blaine, “that's good, I guess. Well,” he continued, “when it's bad enough it messes you up. It shakes your confidence, you know. You do stupid things, and I'm starting to realize just how stupid these things can be.” Blaine took a sip of his coffee and asked again, “Are you sure you want to hear all this? It's really a long story.”

“No, no. A story that starts with a broken heart and ends in Youngstown—that seems like a story worth hearing.”

Blaine gave Kurt a wan smile, “Okay. I graduated from college last May, and my parents thought I should have a gap year before starting to work, so my…ex, I guess…we were together at the time…we thought it would be fun to spend the year traveling through Europe together.” Blaine paused here to take a sip of coffee, “Except, it wasn't fun. We were together a long time—since high school—and we had our differences, but it never seemed like a big deal in school when we were so busy and all of our friends were around. When we got to Europe, there was just us. We fought all the time, mostly over stupid stuff, and after about five months it just ended…badly. Anyhow, my ex said a lot of stuff. Stuff about me. About being spoiled and never having experienced real life and being sheltered, and not being able to be alone. I got to thinking that maybe there was some truth to that. I still had six months on my gap year, and I thought that maybe I needed to get to know myself and have some real life experiences, so I thought I would strike out on my own, hitchhike across the United States, and experience life. It sounds so naïve now,” He looked at his watch, “and I've lasted, what, a whole day, and I'm in some bad restaurant in Ohio boring a nice stranger with my completely imagined problems. I'm pathetic,” Blaine ended with a sigh, slumping back in his seat.

“You're not pathetic, Blaine. Maybe this idea what a little…rash, but I admire that you wanted to push yourself. But now what? You're going to cash it in, go back to New York, and forget the whole thing?”

“I have no idea,” Blaine said honestly. “I've got six months before I go to work and my life is over. I'd like to do…I dunno…something. But I am starting to rethink the hitchhiking. Maybe I am spoiled, but I don't even know what I'm going to do tonight, and, frankly, I'm kind of freaked out about it a lot more than I can say.”

“Don't be silly,” said Kurt. “You'll sleep in the car with me. It's freezing out there, but we can stay in this restaurant until it closes at eleven. Then I have some blankets and stuff, and we can bury ourselves in enough clothes to make sure that we don't die of hypothermia.”

“I have a sleeping bag in my pack; it's is supposed to be good for twenty below,” Blaine offered.

“Twenty below? Your ex may have been right about your sheltered life,” Kurt teased. “I was thinking of killing a tauntaun for you to sleep in, but maybe your trek-to-Mt. Everest sleeping bag will do instead. So, tonight we sleep in the car, and, until then, we try to figure out what Blaine does with the next six months of his life.” Kurt raised his coffee mug in a toast.

Blaine clinked his coffee mug with Kurt's, “Sounds good.”