They are clumsy with each other; building barriers just to tear them down and establishing new boundaries as old ones are hastily erased. He realizes this one day when he is left alone with his thoughts as they wander (slow, drifting, lazy like a summer stream) into the might have beens; the how did we get heres. This realization is the slow, steady kind. The kind that leaves him gasping oh and of course and there you are as it settles hot in the pit of his stomach – a revelation that has his world stopping, tilting on its axis, and resuming rotation in an altered orbit. He’s had these big, apparently life changing moments before, of course, but it always leaves him reeling, equilibrium lost in the seismic shift that readjusted a life lived in complacency. So he does what he does best – he breathes. Inhale, count to ten, exhale, repeat: A pattern so tangible and finite that it centers him. And with the cool burn of the clear liquid down his throat, he allows himself to remember.

He lets the rolodex of images he keeps tucked away in his mind flip backwards in time to that moment buried in the years past in which his world quaked, cracked open, and offered a different reality. Oh, there you are. Where have you been all of my life? I have been waiting for this moment to arrive. He thinks; his conscience streaming, gasping unintelligible thoughts, alive, as the man (although he is very much a boy at this point in time) stands before him desperation dripping cerulean and clear down high cheekbones as his voice rushes heavily through the room. His body falls lax and boneless, the room swims drunkenly around him, his heart switches places with his head and he is left mentally staggering trying to figure the hows, the whys, and the where does he go from heres. So he breathes once, twice, three times and opens his tightly clenched eyes to the bright colors and deafening sounds of his new world. It will take a few days to grow accustomed to this new revelation that he feels not only in his heart but in that intangible core that is life. And, after the colors dim and the roaring diminishes slightly, he allows himself to lengthen, to grow, and wrap himself around that boy that could alter his thoughts and perceptively shift his world.

It is a messy transition full of twisting tongues, secrets stuttered and stammered into thin air as they rush to relearn each other in their shifting paradigm. He is sloppy with his affection (although that really is not surprising to most as it falls within his amiable personality). However, hidden innuendos become blatant knowledge uttered with knowing smirks and touches, which were once reserved for confidence and comfort when words were not adequate, boldly linger over exposed skin and occasionally slip under fabric to blaze new paths in uncharted areas even as the younger boy is trembling nervous and uncertain besides him. They push each other away as much as they pull each other tight blocking out the intruding world as they let themselves fall uncoordinated, clumsily, in an innocent bliss of new found acceptance. The relentless spinning that comes with these altitude changes settles slowly as they find themselves once more (and see themselves reflected in the deep blues and golden hues of the other’s eyes). In the stillness they find solidarity.

Another moment creeps upon them after they settle back into their bodies but this one does not create fissures; instead, it kneads them pliant, softly rearranging, molding them into a new shape. Horrifying at first (they had only just learned how to be) but, ultimately, it is a defining moment. It is delivered in the quiet, bodies tangled yet still, in a darkened room as images flicker nonsensical before them.

“Blaine,” he will whisper, brokenly calm, “I have to go back.”

This next scene, where he pulls sharply away from the quivering boy, is the one that he freezes and files away. Blue eyes (although they are grayer than anything in this moment) expand, grow infinitely deeper, all consuming, as he falls into the idea that he is being left. When he finally lands (whether or not it is feet first, he does not know) he is gasping, angry, only to be tempered, grounded by the softly whimpered I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry left on repeat in the still night. Eventually he will touch the fair boy (who, in the mean time, had folded in upon himself), urgently, clinging to the need to memorize the lines and plains if his body so it can be recalled when he is alone once more.

“Don’t,” he will say later after the panic has subsided and he can breathe again (although his voice is cracked rough in desperation), “leave me, Kurt.”

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry will follow him out of the door where he is left alone, light headed, unable to comprehend the hollowness that is left inside of him.

It takes a few days for the realization that he cannot live without the fair boy in his life to sink in. But when it does, the simplicity of that thought (the complexities of it will be discovered later, though) anchors him with a sense of security that has not been felt before but, somehow, is peaceful. So he smiles, alone in his room, body light and unhindered, and finds the phone that was left forgotten in the jeans that he was wearing that day. It is a simple message that he sends; four inconsequential words strung together in a way that would not be considered creative but that is neither here nor there. It is not a grand proclamation or gesture but those words – it will be alright – will be absorbed within them and they will quickly become his, their, mantra (those words are what he clutches now as he contemplates the clinking ice in the empty tumbler). That night he will drive in the rain and solidify himself in the weighty drape of the slight boy’s arms. I’m sorries are exchanged for it’ll be alrights and they continue down their chosen path (the fates spin a thread, you know, and it tugs them forward).

Pouring more of the burning liquid into the glass standing harmless before him, he allows the images to filter slowly in front of his eyes. Secrets whispered into existence during the depths of night blurs into their first date which gives way to the simple joys of being together only stopping when he reaches that moment that shook them at the most rudimentary level. The picture he recalls is of the boy, all pale skin and blue eyes, arms wrapped around his torso, as he quivers with rage trying not to let other people break him. It’s a warm day in April that has the birds flittering with the sense of spring, sense of revival. He pulls the trembling boy in tight against his body trying to absorb some of his hurt and they stand for awhile in the rays of warmth breathing
slowly, deeply together.

“They are not going to let us go to prom,” the slight boy will eventually murmur against the crook of his neck. “They say it will make people to uncomfortable.”

In that moment, he will break for both of them fully knowing that the world is cruel but still not understanding the injustice of it all (the next year Blaine’s dad will tell him that he will not support him financially after Blaine chooses a performance arts school over the ivy league and, a few years later, they are refused service at a restaurant in Georgia when visiting a friend). But for now, he will find solace in the boy that is wrapped tight in his arms hoping that he will never understand how anyone can deny someone happiness.

“They don’t understand that all we ever want is love,” he will whisper into the softness of the boy’s hair, inhaling shakily, eyes clenched against the beaming sun.

They will fight the school board’s decision to no avail (they won’t see the results of their equality campaign until next year’s senior prom) and it wears them down as they grow resigned to the fact that maybe, just maybe they are not entitled to happiness. Prom night comes and they will watch their friends dress (ignoring everyone’s feeble suggestions of staging a boycott because it wouldn’t make much of a difference, anyways) and watch despondently as they leave in a flurry of excitement. They spend their prom night dressed simply in jeans and t-shirts swaying gently to the muffled sounds of an old boom box in the sanctity of the night. The blanket of stars become their tea lights, the warped wooden planks of the old park gazebo is their dance floor, and they lose themselves in this little world where they can love each other freely and openly. The next year they will end up going to the senior prom and surprisingly they will not be the only gay couple. That night, though, will be about friends and reminiscing, not about them.

The images blur once more spinning past the sad nostalgia of graduation, past the start of summer jobs, and the carefree days spent sun drenched and laughing at the lake until the slideshow stops, hesitating on a sticky hot moment in mid-July. They had stolen away to his parent’s lake house for the weekend (they were at some conference in New York which may or may not have been mentioned to the younger boy’s parents). Skin buzzed electric to the heat, the vibrations of the summer, of each other, as they mold together in a shy meeting of skin, of mouths. And they fall (dive is more of an apt description, actually) into the rush (dizzying and terrifying) that is freefall as hearts beat erratically and hands seek to claim exposed skin. They take their time, each leaving no skin left unexplored, and, when they finally come together in a slick slide, he silently gasps oh, of course, I have been waiting for this moment for forever. But this is not the moment that he treasures, keeps sacred, because they are clumsy, awkward in their own bodies let alone each other’s (first times are usually stuttering, stumbling steps anyways). It is the afterwards that he likes best. That he recalls in his mind’s eye on nights such as this one.

The aftermath is the still sort of calming that leaves him loose-limbed and satiated gasping shaking breaths into the skin of the boy flushed pink beneath him. Humid air presses weighty and reassuring around them smelling like them yet not as the sepia toned light drifts lazily unconcerned into the spacious room. He slips slightly to the side, their legs remain entwined, his ear resting over the pounding heart as his finger tips trail delicately unknown patterns from chest to stomach and back again. His mind is quiet. The slight boy is silent, peaceful besides him; skin still humming radiating steady warmth that is not stifling nor is it all consuming. It is an innate quality. It is him. It is love.

The room is eerily dark when he fast forwards once again this time by-passing their six month anniversary (which was full of miscommunications, stumbling apologies, and laughter floating against skin, lips – so wholly imperfect but totally them), the start of senior year, and hushed conversations about the future (everyone told them that they wouldn’t last, first loves never do). He lights a cigarette allowing the acrid smell and a burning inhalation of smoke ground him as he falls into the frozen scene before him. It is an inconsequential mid-January day that reflects that certain unrelenting grey scale that only comes with the depth of winter. A tense sort of quiet radiates through the little black car as they wander the back roads going nowhere, really. He spares a glance at the lean boy sitting stonily in the passenger seat beside him. The corners of his mouth were turned down, lips pressed in a tight line, eyes staring unfocused at the road whirring pass. The silence is unbearably loud, suffocating in the way that the calm before fights or big, life changing revelations can only be.

“I want you to listen to me, Blaine,” he will say some miles later when the sun is burning low in the horizon, voice loud in the confines of the car. “I’m not giving up on my dreams, ok? I am just incorporating you into them. If being with you means going to Emerson – which has a renowned performing arts program, mind you – instead of NYU, then so be it. I will make it to New York, hell even L.A. will suffice, eventually but I want to be there with you.”

He inhaled sharply at those words, covering the hand that is tracing back and forth over his cheekbone before rotating his head slightly to press a kiss to the middle of his palm. A new kind of tension fills the car as those words (never had they talked so boldly about the future; those talks were usually prefaced by what-if) are absorbed, ruminated upon – weighty in their minds but dizzyingly light in their souls.

“So,” he will murmur after the darkness had enveloped them, “this is a forever kind of thing?”

“It really is,” the younger boy will answer firmly, resolutely.

Six months later they will move into a studio apartment that is within walking distance to both of their respective campuses. They will fake their way through playing house (they are clumsy and uncertainly shy at first) only to find that they really only succeeded in building a home. However, right now the dark haired boy will turn the car around and head back to their separate houses deep in thought but elated with the prospect of a future he can actually imagine. The fair boy will make some snide remark about some top forty song being played over the radio but they will exchange glances and know that, if they were lucky, they will have an infinite number of nights like this one.

No amount of Vodka poured sloppily over ice will stop the slow leak of tears, he realizes, not long after the cigarette had burned down to the filter and the nicotine had started cursing through his veins. It is ridiculous to even try to stop them, he knows, as he pushes to his feet and slips out onto the balcony. The air is shockingly cold against his burningly numb skin but it still doesn’t stop the bombarding images as they rocket forward once more only to stop at a pleasantly warm day in October. The picture is simple, really, with the two boys lounging lazy on an old fleece blanket in a park surrounded by yellow-tinged grass, trees blushing crimson and orange, and looming modern art sculptures. The taller boy has himself propped up on his elbows, head tilted up towards the clear, glowing sky, a magazine forgotten by his side. He lays stretched out on his back, head nestled in the softness of the other boy’s cashmere sweater diligently taking notes in the margin of the book he holds over his head.

“Have you ever noticed,” Kurt will say running his fingers absentmindedly through dark curls, “that the sky looks different here than back home?”

He hums his agreement, although, he realizes that it isn’t the sky that has changed; it is them that the difference lays within now that they have escaped the confines of small town life. Settling the book securely on his chest, he rotates his head just enough to stare up at the content boy who is blissfully gazing up at the stained glass of their new world.

“Read me something,” the cloud gazing boy will demand sometime later.

Thumbing through the modern poetry book that he has hoisted once more over his head pausing only upon reaching a worn, dog-eared page devoid of any pencil marks, he will start, drowsy and soft in the golden light,

“Partly because of my love for you partly because of your love of yoghurt
Partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
Partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
It is hard to believe that when I am with you that there can be anything as still
As solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
In the warm New York four o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
Between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

And the portrait show seems to have no faces at all, just paint
You suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look at you and I would rather look at you than all of the portraits in the world”

The book slips from his grasp landing on the grass with a soft thud as he twists around and climbs the length of the other boy’s body. Strong arms wrap around his waist as he claims the fair boy’s lips in a slow, sweet kiss out of the sheer joy of being alive and being together without the fear and relentless judgment that had once dictated their relationship. I love yous are whispered almost incoherently against skin when they break apart breathless, electric, alive.

“That poem is us,” the younger boy, no longer gazing at the sky but at the boy curled into his side, will grin.

This is the moment, he decides in the not so distant future, which truly defines them.

The honeymoon phase will fade, though, and petty fights will surface exasperated by unrelenting schedules that only leave room for late night conversations as they fall into bed exhausted and early morning good-byes rushed over cups of coffee and, possibly, toast if time permitted. It is hard but they push through their first holiday spent without family (they couldn’t afford to make the trip home), the stress of finals week, forgotten dates, and all nighters. They grew in this time together quietly finding a rhythm that only comes with knowing someone better than you know yourself. Maybe, just maybe, each couldn’t help but think during a quiet moment spent tangled together during a snowy day their junior year, that they might defy the odds not knowing or understanding
how quickly resentment can tear apart a relationship.

The quick succession of images leaves him slumped ungracefully against the black railing as the world below him continues marching to the mean procession of time. His muddied mind is reeling as tremors of anguish trace up and down the tense lines of his body. Pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes desperately trying to stop the next inevitable scene from replaying before his eyes even as he can hear it echoing around him, he gives in and slowly sinks down to the ground allowing the crystal clear moment, that only succeeded in leaving both of the boys shattered and alone trying to form their own world separate from each other, play on. It is a sticky early morning in late August, a week or two after the start of their senior year, that had him stumbling into their apartment (when had it stopped being his home, he did not know) reeking of the remnants of the previous night. The sight of the boy (now mostly a man) – head buried in his hands, shoulders shaking uncontrollably – will be one that haunts him. But during this moment, the image of this broken boy will merely be enough to stop him in his tracks and stutter out some half hearted excuse about an all night study session.

“Fuck that, Blaine. Do you really think that I am that stupid?” He will spit out, jaw clenched, puffy red-rimmed eyes flashing thunderously. “I sure as hell hope that he was a good enough lay to warrant missing dinner with my
parents last night.”

“Oh dear God, did I not live up to the expectations of Saint Kurt once again?” He will mutter as he stalks to the kitchen for a glass of water, vision tilting, stomach rolling dangerously, “There isn’t anyone else, by the way, I just needed a break from failing at pleasing you. So go fuck yourself.”

The room is silent, eerily and utterly so, as they regard each other from across the room. Their delicate world that they had painstakingly built is shattering, crumbling around them in chunks and they do nothing to stop it.

“All I ever wanted was for you to be there for me,” the fair boy will murmur resolve and rigidity dissolving instantaneously as tears crescendo down the plains of his face dripping unceremoniously off of the sharp curve of his jaw.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore,” he will say, in return, as his heart and mind switch places once again.

The door slams when he leaves. He doesn’t break down until he finds himself at the park, their park.

The next few months pass in a burning limp as he tries to return to a life that is not defined by their relationship. He crashes weary yet restless on friend’s couches quietly determined to just get by. What he misses the most is the constant jostling, bumping of two bodies together accidentally or on purpose, sensually, awkwardly, and inpatient in rage or love, as he jumps from couch to couch desolate, lonely. The fourth month, November as it happens to be, finds him being pulled to some college bar on some random Thursday and he will forget the sadness, the loneliness. Consequently, he will forget himself, too. He will laugh, dance, sing (slightly slurred and a little off key) and meet a stocky, dark man that is nothing like the fair boy that he was once defined by. Numbers are exchanged and he will head back to his latest couch and crash into a fitful sleep. They will go on a handful of dates, sleep together a couple of times, but not enough to necessitate a label. By January, he realizes that he can live and eventually be happy without him in his life. By mid-February, he realizes that, although he can live without the man he left in pieces nearly six months ago, he doesn’t want to. So on a bitterly cold day at the end of February (it took a little time to come to terms with this new way of thinking), he finds himself standing in the park, their park, gazing at the brown, fragile grass and the skeletons of the trees that were waiting for their own revival. He inhales, counts to ten, exhales, and repeats until he can feel his own pieces reforming, rearranging not quite in the same order but close. Eventually, he will walk to the apartment and apologize without asking for forgiveness because he doesn’t deserve that right now. For the next two days, they will cocoon themselves into the little apartment and talk about everything. Sadness and a little anger hangs weighty over their heads but, every time knees bump accidentally or fingers tentatively ghost over the backs of hands, hope blossoms. Please let it be alright, please let it be alright, please, please, please, he finds himself repeating silently as he stares at the other boy’s furrowed brow. By the middle of March they will establish a shy, hesitant rhythm of coffer dates, nightly phone calls, and dinners when schedules permitted. Oh, there you are, I can’t believe you slipped away, he will think as he gazes at the beautiful man happy and glowing in the strengthening sunlight that filters welcomed and unconstrained through the windows of their apartment. It will be alright, it will be alright, it will be alright becomes their mantra once more.

Harsh, gasping breaths and the banging thud of his heartbeat holds their own symphony against the endless drone of the night. It drowns out the sirens, the honking horns, at least in his ears, as he tries to still his body and wait for the swooping sensation of the world dissolving to stop. It’s nauseating, really, this feeling of simply not knowing. So he sits and waits, breathing deeply through his nose, as his mind moves past the next few years (he will later name them the “in between” years) which saw them moving into a small, somewhat dirty apartment in New York while trying to figure out this whole grown-up thing – sometimes he thinks he has yet to figure it out. He doesn’t know when he stops playing to impress record companies and starts playing his Wednesday and Friday gigs only for himself and the small legion of fans he is able to cultivate but he is ok with this subtle shift. Similarly, he isn’t able to pinpoint the exact moment that Kurt stops talking about potential auditions; maybe it was the slow erosion of having more rejections than callbacks that slowly ate away at his ambitions, his dreams. He wasn’t sure if what they had here was happiness, exactly (how does one define happiness when everything he worked for, everything he thought he wanted was just out of reach), but he is content, that much he knows. He asks Kurt this one night as he curls himself around the slight man. That man lying on his side facing the surprisingly big picture window merely shrugs his thin shoulders.

“Are you happy, Kurt?” He will ask in the depth of the darkness, half-afraid, in the not so distant past.

“No,” will be his not so simple answer. More of an expulsion of air than a fully formed word as the man folds in upon himself and the darkness overwhelms his slight frame. He wakes up alone the next morning with a hastily scribbled note lying innocuous on the pillow besides him. Four fucking words – I need to think – were all that he was left with in the early grey light on an indifferent May morning. It is this scrap of paper that he will remember when he thinks back upon this moment.

He is done remembering now that the past has finally caught up to the future doing nothing to fill the hollowness inside him or quiet the trembling of his hands. This must be what the end feels like, he thinks, even as the how did we get heres rampage through and consume his mind. Maybe he wasn’t happy prior to this weekend, after all. Maybe contentment was confused with some sort of complacency. He was never really good at understanding his feelings; after all, he has always been clumsy, stumbling into where he needs to be. The slamming of the door startles him alert. Eyes snapping open unable to make anything out in the impenetrable darkness until his world is standing before him, tear tracks marking porcelain skin, dark circles haunting translucent eyes. That man who had sent his world tilting on its axis over nine years ago is moving now, sliding down the railing until they are pressed shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. The quiet, the darkness seems a little more bearable with the taller man anchoring him down. The blind, spinning sensation quells just a little bit.

“I was never going to leave you, not really,” he finally says into the night, “I was so afraid that I had lost myself. I panicked, Blaine.”

He wants to tell him that he was so afraid that he would simply disappear and never come back. That it was their relationship; it was him which drove the younger boy away. But he stops himself. Those words will be gasped, choking breathless into skin; instead, he tangles their fingers together and asks where he went.

“I took a bus to Boston,” he chuckles lightly, “and wandered around remembering everything. Mostly, I wanted to remember what it was like to believe in myself, in the future once more.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” He asks as his eyes roam the glowing skin and tightly drawn features.

“You know I was really nervous when we moved here. I don’t think I ever told you but everything just was so overwhelmingly large and over the top. It was so noisy and chaotic that it made me feel insignificant. I think I went back to Boston because it was the last place that I could breathe easily.” He hesitates, breathing deeply once, twice, three times before meeting the dark hair boy’s eyes, “I ended up at our park and I sat on a bench for what had to be a good four or five hours trying to remember that poem you read to me our freshman year but I couldn’t."

“It was Frank O’Hara’s Having a Coke with You,” he interrupts, a slight smile ghosting over his features.

“Yeah, that one. So I sat in that damn park trying to remember the poem about being together in New York which made me feel so utterly ridiculous and insecure.”

Inhale, count to ten, exhale, repeat; of course, oh there you are, I have been waiting for this moment to arise, he thinks, as his world shifts again allowing his heart and mind to fall in sync for the first time.

“You are always so sure of yourself, Blaine, and I am so envious of that,” he continues weaving an arm around his waist, pulling their bodies closer still.

“God, Kurt, I am so far away from being sure about anything. You have no idea.” He laughs in utter disbelief, “you make my world constantly shift, move. I feel like I am in free fall every time you look at me. I have been trying to find my footing for over nine years now and I don’t think I am going to anytime soon.”

The younger man laughs, then, light and happy amongst the sadness, even as stray tears slip carefully down his face,
“Shit, have we always been this much of a mess?”

“Yeah, but it works,” he agrees, letting his lips graze the other man’s temple.

“Anyways, I caught the last bus back and that’s when I found the card that you made me for graduation. I didn’t realize it was still in my messenger bag. All I did for the entirety of the bus ride was cry hysterically and read what you wrote me over and over again – I am pretty sure that everyone on that bus is scarred for life,” he murmurs as he burrows into the other boy’s chest.

“I love you infinitely and in every direction. I love you when words matter and when they don’t. I love you because you make words not matter. I love you for stupid reasons and clever reasons and for every reason. I love you without reason.” He recites against the crown of his head, inhaling the familiar scent of sandalwood, “It’s true, you know. I meant everything that I wrote.”

“I had an epiphany on that bus tonight. You know the kind that makes you stop and think, of course, that’s what I have been waiting for.” He whispers into the waning darkness as he wraps himself further in the shorter boy’s arms, “I realized that I couldn’t possibly lose myself when you know me better than I do.”

They sit on the chilly concrete wrapped totally and completely within one another simply being content with being together. The younger boy, without any real hurry, will trail his lips up the smooth expanse of exposed neck, pausing to flirt with his thrumming pulse point, before meandering over the angular jaw and settling slowly, tenderly on soft lips. Skin pulses radiating energy which intertwines, buzzes, as they pull away with pounding chests. Quiet becomes them as they settle into calmness letting their minds play catch-up to their words and feelings. The world around them blushes pinks and oranges as dawn glows over them in ethereal light.

“What happens now?” Asks the younger man softly but without reservation, as he tips his head up to welcome the strengthening rays of light.

“We let the world spin on and stumble our way through it until we get it right,” he says, eyes closing as the warmth radiates around him, through him.

“We will be alright,” he will add as an afterthought, hands running a slow path up and down the taller man’s sides, voicing a much needed answer to an unasked question as he drifts along the path to unconsciousness.

We will be all right, we will be alright, we will be alright – four harmless words joined together in a simple way that will eventually mean the world to them. For now, he will freeze this moment and store it in the recesses of his mind to be savored when needed the most and pour them into bed where they can feel the future, tangible and needy.