“You need to wake up,” he whispers, breathe washing hot over the earcheekneck of the sleeping boy. “I need to see your eyes, love.”

Coarse fingers traced up and down the expanse of skin left exposed after the thin sheet had slipped down during sleep. The slight boy, lying prone on the bed, stretches lean and cat-like before cracking one blue- eye hazed over in sleep.

“What’re you doin’?” He mumbles, voice rough with sleep, as he scrubs his hand down the length of his face before rolling onto his back.

“Let’s go for a drive,” lips whisper a trail from ear to mouth.

“Are you ok?” The boy (all tangled hair and flushed skin) asks, lips brushing neckshoulderchest as he buries deeper into the shorter boy’s warmth catching a torn and bruised hand against his cheek.

“Please, Kurt?” He murmurs, rough desperation settling into his voice, “let’s just be somewhere that’s not here.”

“Ok,” he nods, lips grazing temple as he pulled the caramel-eyed boy in tighter, hands running through dark curls, before disentangling their bodies.

The light was still soft and grey when they pulled quietly out if the driveway (a note for Finn was left on the counter), slowly twisting their way through the back roads in silence. Blue-eyes were fixed on the dark haired boy (whose eyebrows were drawn together, a frown marring his graceful features).

“Blaine,” he says softly, (hand curling around jaw, thumbing tracing the sharp relief of his cheekbone), as they pull onto the Ohio Turnpike, “I can feel you thinking, sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

Features softening, he shakes his head slightly, before covering the hand tracing unknown rhythms on his cheek, “Let’s just drive, ok?”

“Ok,” Kurt says, pressing his lips to the center of his palm before entwining their fingers and resting them firmly against Blaine’s jean clad thigh, “Where are we going?”

“The ocean,” Blaine says, eyes dancing as he meets Kurt’s gaze briefly, “We are going to the ocean.”

Kurt stares at the boy (all stubble and loose curls, still uncertain and clumsy in his body) “Blaine, sweetie, that’s at least a ten hour drive.”

“Can we just escape for a little while?” He pleads into the weighty silence that had enveloped the car, “Let’s just disappear for awhile, please?”

Kurt sighs, then, a near silent release of pent up energy, as his eyes roam over the boy whom had quickly became his everything.

“Ok, let’s do this,” he nods slowly, “As long as we get back home before my parents return from Columbus.”

A slow smile (slightly crooked, shy, wholly perfect) eases its way across his face erasing the lines of discontent and worry that hardened and muted the liveliness that usually radiates from the older boy. I love you, I need you, you are beautiful becomes the mantra murmured against knuckleswristpulsepoint which quickly transforms into the pulse, the life force, of the little car, of their little world. With the white lines blurring before his eyes and the adagio of life pulsating through the little car, he falls asleep clutching the hand of the boy trying hard not to break.

He starts awake, blinking blearily, when the vibrations of the car stop and the driver’s side door slams shut. Stumbling slightly on the way out of the car, he hesitates long enough to stretch before sliding into the arms of the boy slouched against the side of the car.

“Hi,” Kurt murmurs as he buries his head into the crook of Blaine’s neck.

“Hey sleepyhead,” he chuckles, breathe tracing patterns across his cheekearneck, “Have a nice nap?”

Kurt hums against his neck before pulling back and pressing his lips slow and sweet against the other boy’s.

“Where are we?” he asks softly, fingertips trailing slowly across his eyelidscheeklips.

“Mid-Pennsylvania, about four hours out,” he replies, lips brushing fingertips, before slipping out of the slight boy’s grasp and securing the gas tank. “There’s a Starbucks here, you want coffee?”

The fair boy quirks an eyebrow at him, blue eyes dancing with silent laughter, before joining their hands together once more.

“I know, I know,” Blaine groans, pulling Kurt towards the store, “Stupid question.”

The late afternoon glows a muted gold when the two boys quietly make their way, hand in hand, to the water’s edge. They walk for awhile, bare feet slipping through soft sand, hearts keeping tempo to the crashing surf, breaths deepening, evening, as tension rolls off of them in steady waves.

“My family had a beach house here,” the dark haired boy starts as he pulls the slight boy down into the sand and up against his chest, “The last time we were here was the summer after I turned fourteen. That summer was the last time I remember my family being truly happy together.”

He pauses, then, arms tightening around the boy cradled between his legs, before nuzzling into the crook of Kurt’s neck, allowing the thin cotton to muffle his voice, “I just wanted to go somewhere so I could remember that we were happy.”

Kurt turns his head slightly, pressing his nose into soft dark hair, lips whispering over ear, “Tell me about summers here, sweetheart, it must have been magical.”

Blaine straightens, hooking his chin over Kurt’s thin shoulder, before gesturing to the dock that could barely be seen in the distance, “That’s the yacht club. Every Fourth of July they hold a sand castle building contest. My dad and I would go all out planning out our castle days before the competition so that we could build the most ridiculous and unrealistic building we could think of. We hardly ever won but it didn’t really matter. Then, the adults would BBQ before the fireworks show and the kids would run around playing some epic variation of tag until the parents would drag us inside.”

“That sounds lovely,” Kurt murmurs eyes fixed on the horizon, hands ghosting up and down Blaine’s thighs.

“It really was,” he says, pressing his lips to the soft skin just behind the ear, “There were times that my dad and I would go out fishing for hours and comeback sunburned and reeking of fish. My mom would complain incessantly until we showered and changed. Or my mom and I would take a day trip to D.C. so that we could see some of the museum exhibits and comeback to find my dad stretched out on the deck asleep refusing to wake until my mom bribed him with dinner at their favorite restaurant.”

They pause for awhile watching a husband and wife stroll by, arms twisted around waists, as their kids ran in front of them gleefully searching for sea glass and shells. Blaine let out a shuttering breathe after they passed, body tense and shaking against Kurt’s back. Silently, Kurt tips his head back lips tracing over pulse point, trailing over his jaw, before twisting in Blaine’s lap and meeting his lips in a desperate attempt to absorb some of his sadness, his loneliness. They separate quietly, foreheads touching briefly, before Kurt traces the wetness that meandered down the contours of Blaine’s face. Slowly, they part, Blaine’s hands tracing a path down his neckshouldersides before settling on his waist as Kurt returns to their former embrace.

“I miss the little things, mostly,” Blaine continues, voice cracking, “My mom would laugh more. My dad would go days without shaving. I miss watching them dance on the beach to Sinatra.”

He pauses, eyes scrunching closed, as the memories press down, smothering him in their oppressive weight. Kurt waits (he would always wait for Blaine), fingers trailing up and down the arms that wrap protectively around his torso keeping both of them tied to this moment, to reality.

“The pier over there,” he begins again gesturing up the beach away from the yacht club, “That’s where I had my first kiss. His name was James Gregory and he was sixteen. He was a rich prep school boy down here from New York with his parents for the summer. You would have hated him. He was all alligator shirts and khakis but he really listened to me and helped me realize that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. I never saw him again after that summer."

“I could never hate someone that helped you. Someone who was there for you,” Kurt interrupts, interlocking their fingers and securing them to his chest.

“With James’ encouragement, I came out to my parents at the end of the summer and that’s when everything changed. It’s like they couldn’t figure out how to continue loving me. So the next summer, we didn’t go to the beach house; instead, I spent the whole summer refurbishing a ’59 Chevy. I think my dad thought that doing something ‘manly’ like that would shake me out of this so called ‘gay phase.’” He finishes softly, eyes still fixed on the looming length of the pier.

“What happened to your hand, Blaine?” Kurt asks softly, hesitantly, gently kissing each bruised knuckle.

“I was just so angry. I didn’t know what to do so I punched a wall. And I was so relieved when I felt the pain because it meant that I was ordinary, I was human,” He gasps into Kurt’s shirt. Tears once again flowing freely down the plains and ridges of his face. “All I knew was that I needed to get out of there. Hell, I needed to get out of Ohio, at least for a little while. And, I needed you. God, I need you so fucking much, Kurt.”

Kurt twists slightly so he could rest his forehead against the temple of the trembling boy before murmuring against earcheekjaw, “What did he do, sweetheart?”

“He told me, point blank over the dinner table, that he would not support me if I pursued furthering my education in something as asinine as the arts especially since I have already made a mockery of the Anderson name by deciding to be gay,” he chokes as sobs rack his body, “He said that the only way that I would garner his support financially after I graduated from high school was if I majored in something like business or pre-law at a reputable university so that I could carry on the Anderson legacy.”

“Oh, honey,” Kurt says, turning fully around, before desperately pulling the broken boy flush against his body, “Blaine, I want you to listen to everything I have to say, ok?” He pauses long enough to feel him nod against his chest, before he continues, raspy and wavering, “it breaks my heart to think that anyone could not love everything about you, Blaine, because you are so full of love and optimism that you make people want to be better. I don’t know why there is so much hate in this world but if your dad cannot see past your sexuality and appreciate you for what you are then he is a bastard. If anyone deserves to follow their dreams, Blaine, it is you because you are a good person and so incredibly talented.”

Kurt closes his eyes, slowly rocking to the relentless rhythm of the waves crashing wishing fervently that something could come easy for them for once.

“I believe in you so fucking much, Blaine,” he whispers almost to himself, face wet with quiet tears “and if you really, truly want Berklee, then we will find a way to get you down to Boston regardless of your parents.”

They sit silently for awhile, bodies tangled, just breathing; building their own world in the ocean, in the sand under the fading spring light.

“I love you so much that it hurts, Blaine,” the fair boy whispers against slightly chapped lips.

He smirks, bottom lip trembling with the effort, “a good kind of hurt, I hope,”

“Most definitely good,” Kurt chuckles through the last of his tears.

“God, I love you so much,” Blaine murmurs before kissing him hard, lips parting in a slick give and take.

And they fell into that inherent rhythm that was known only to them and the ocean.

Reassurance came in the gentle exploration of hands mapping facesbackssides, gentle sighs, and the connection that tugged at their cores. It is the overwhelming darkness that finally pulls them apart with racing hearts and burning lungs.

“Come on,” Blaine says, fingers ghosting over Kurt’s features once more, “Let me treat you to dinner before we head back. I know a place that has the best hamburgers.”

Just like that, their carefully constructed world is
shattered and they head back up the beach still entwined.

The windshield wipers became metronomes for the night as big, lazy raindrops beat an erratic staccato on the roof of the car only to be harmonized by the slushy hum of tires on wet pavement. It had started raining as soon as they crossed the Maryland/Pennsylvanian border and the inky blackness of the sky provided no comfort as they inched their way home. Blaine fell asleep shortly after the rain began, clutching Kurt’s hand like a lifeline. He spares a smile at the dark haired boy glowing ethereal in the dashboard lights, breathing deep and evenly, face relaxed and free from the weighty worry that had lingered throughout dinner.

“You ‘right,” the older boy slurs, curling deeper into the passenger seat, eyes still closed against the imposing darkness.

“I’m fine, sweetie, go back to sleep,” he says, voice loud in the quiet car, grimacing as he runs his thumb soothingly over the swollen knuckles.

The torn skin is a painful reminder of what had transpired. He knows that the skin will mend, the swelling and bruising will subside and fade, but there will always be a phantom pain lingering in the recesses of the mind (just as the clang of slamming lockers and the stale locker room air will unconsciously make Kurt shudder). But, not only is the heart delicate, fragile, it is also resilient; always healing stronger than it was before. So Kurt will continue driving, humming to the sounds of the night, finding solidarity with the scattered, lonely vehicles on the turnpike and comfort in the flushed warmth of the boy sleeping, undisturbed, besides him. Soon Blaine will awake, eyes still hauntingly sad, and they will talk about nothing, everything, silenced only by the rosy, flushed hues of the sun emerging in the distance.