Fic: "100 Days" [Glee, Kurt/Blaine, 10.4/10]
Title: 100 Days
Author: dazzlebug
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Kurt and Blaine have been best friends (and nothing more) since the age of six. Now college graduates, they take a roadtrip around the USA, visiting every state in 100 days. Fifty states. Two boys. One love story.
Disclaimer: I paint the pictures; I just borrow the names.
This fic will be updated twice-weekly on Wednesdays and Sundays at 4pm EST/9pm GMT (estimated). Also available on ffnet, Tumblr, S&C and AO3. Previous chapters here.
NOTE: The next update will be Wed 26 Feb at the earliest-I need a little extra time to get the ending just right! In the meantime, here's a supersized update that I hope will tide you over until then :)
Day 099: Monday 24th December, 2012
The Boy with the Band-Aid (Alaska)
“No, we already wrote Into the Wild down for Oregon.”
“Okay, what about Insomnia?”
“Looks pretty good. Okay, only one left!”
Blaine had had a new text post open for nearly an hour, typing and deleting over and over again until finally he just wrote, Fuck everything. After hitting ‘Submit,’ he pushed the laptop away and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. It was nearly five a.m., and he was exhausted. But with the torrential downpour of rain battering against the R.V., not to mention the anger thrumming in his veins, there was no way he could sleep. In all his life he’d never experienced such rage-not at Roberto Mancini, not at Kurt in Chicago or Minneapolis, not even at his own father. The only thing keeping him from going postal and trashing the R.V. were the memories of his grandfather that lingered in every square inch of the place-that, and the note full of empty apologies that he held between his fingers, thumb rubbing over the ink almost obsessively until it began to fade beneath his fingerprint.
Blaine was done trying to be fair, trying to see things from Kurt’s perspective as well as his own. He didn’t care that Kurt was scared, that he’d discovered Blaine’s song and run away because he’d thought he was doing what was best. He’d about had his fill, at this point, of what Kurt wanted and needed-he had changed so much of himself for this boy, and for what? To be left when they had a path laid out before them, just because he was too scared to walk it?
“Fuck that,” he muttered, finally crumpling Kurt’s note and tossing it away.
Now that Kurt was gone, there was too much silence. The air was too still. Some of his things still hung in the closets, and he’d left behind his toothbrush in the bathroom, and there was still some leftover lasagna in the refrigerator from the night before. But these were all trace elements of a love obviously now lost to him. For the first time, Blaine imagined, really imagined, what his life would be like without Kurt in it, because Kurt had been right; they wouldn’t recover from this. But that wasn’t the thing that made Blaine angriest of all-no, it was the fact that when he imagined life without Kurt, he saw nothing.
It was Blaine’s phone, vibrating across the table where he’d left it, that pulled him from his imagining. When he picked it up, he saw April smiling up at him from the screen.
After a moment’s hesitation, he answered, “Hey, Flower.”
“Hey,” she said quietly. “Um… Are you okay?”
Blaine snorted derisively. “Who the hell does he think he is?” he spat, under no illusions that April was in the dark. “He keeps me hanging for months, fucks somebody else to try and get me out of his system or whatever the hell that was, and then when he finally gives in like it’s some big chore, he up and fucking leaves the day before my birthday.”
“Jesus, Blaine,” April whispered, and in the background Blaine could hear the sound of a door closing. “What happened?”
“Well, the movies and TV shows lie.”
“Okay…”
“They make chasing someone through an airport look a shit-ton easier than it really is,” Blaine said, his words tailing off into an almost hysterical laugh as he began to pace back and forth. The anger surged up in him anew, and he couldn’t dam it up anymore; he had nowhere left to redirect it… So he let loose. “They wouldn’t let me check in using my ticket to Anchorage, so I had to buy a goddamn ticket to Nebraska just to get through security, and then getting through security took forever, and for what?
“For nothing; it was all for fucking nothing, because I caught up to him and he still left!” Blaine exclaimed, voice rising. “And do you want to know the worst part? I don’t get it. Nothing happened! I was hanging out with some friends, and he was happy when I left, and now he’s just gone. So I guess that’s it. It’s over. What happened on the road trip will stay on the fucking road trip after all.”
There was a long silence after his tirade, Blaine’s rapid, uneven breathing the only sound.
“Blaine, what the fuck is going on?” April finally asked, and Blaine sighed.
“I was hoping you’d tell me,” he said, waving his free hand before letting it drop limply to his side. “Kurt just took off, says I shouldn’t let him hold me back from my dream and that he was getting in the way.”
“Motherfucker,” April said. “That fucking idiot; I can’t even believe him sometimes.”
“That about sums it up, yeah. And-actually, no, this is the worst part: it is just like him to take off right before a storm hits. Everything out of SeaTac is delayed and I can’t do anything so I’m just sitting here like an idiot,” Blaine said. “Is he with you?”
“His flight gets in at six,” she said, “and I’m the asshole who said I’d go pick him up. To be honest, I’m tempted to fucking leave him there.”
“Don’t do that,” Blaine said automatically-even with his blood boiling, he couldn’t quite hold himself in check. Sighing again, he said, “You’re his best friend. He’s gonna need you.”
After a pause, she asked, “And what about you?”
“What do you mean, what about me? Game’s over, I might as well go home,” Blaine said.
“Excuse me? No,” April said. “No, that is not the Blaine Anderson I know-“
“April.”
“You two fucking love each other, okay? And it’s more than that; this has been going on for years and I’ve seen it, fucking everyone has-“
“April.”
“-and I did not spend the past three fucking months sending you…”
Blaine stopped in his tracks as she trailed off, muttering swears under her breath. “Sending me what?” he asked slowly, repeating the question more loudly when she just continued muttering. “Sending me what, April?”
“Ugh. Well, I was going to tell you anyway, and if it really is game over, you might as well know now,” April said, resignation clear in her tone. “You’ve been getting messages on your blog, right? Both of you have. Though I guess neither of you knew that you both had blogs. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that I’m F. I was the one sending you the songs.”
“You’re F,” Blaine repeated weakly. “F for… F for Flower. Fuck, how did I not see that?”
“Because you and Kurt have a habit of not seeing what’s right in front of your dumbass faces,” April said.
Blaine dropped heavily onto the couch, his exhaustion finally getting the better of him. He barely even had the energy to be surprised at the revelation that she’d been acting as puppet master for months. Who even knew what songs she’d been sending to Kurt? Had all of this been because of her? Would anything have happened between them without her? And, knowing that, would he have even wanted it to?
Pinching between his eyes, he said, “April, I’m so fucking tired. I’m tired of putting myself out there, tired of waiting and being patient, and I’m tired of chasing after him when he’s given me no reason to. I mean, honestly, what am I even still doing here? I should have just cut my losses and turned the fucking R.V. around as soon as I got back.”
“Was it worth it?” she asked. “All the putting yourself out there, all the chasing. Did it make you happy?”
Blaine bit down on the inside of his cheek, exhaling slowly and wishing he hadn’t picked up the phone.
Without waiting for an answer, she continued, “You love him. That’s what you’re still doing there.”
“I wish I didn’t,” he said quietly. “I wish that none of this had ever happened.”
She scoffed at that. “No, you don’t. So what are you going to do now?”
Casting his gaze around the interior of the R.V., inescapable traces of Kurt everywhere, Blaine closed his eyes against it all and thought for a moment. “Maybe I should go back to Maine. See if we can talk this all out when he gets back.”
“Talking about your feelings? What a world,” she deadpanned.
“Well, what would you suggest?”
“You’ve still got that ticket to Anchorage, right?”
“No,” Blaine said. “I mean-yes, I do. But I’m not chasing after him anymore. If he wants me, he can come fucking apologize.”
“Oh my god, you’re ridiculous!” she exclaimed exasperatedly. “Maybe if both of you had just stopped being such guys about this whole thing and actually, you know, talked to each other from the start, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”
“Yes, April, I get it. Okay? We’ve both been dumb as shit,” Blaine said. “So… You’re telling me to come to Anchorage.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” she said gently. “I’m just saying that you already have the ticket, and I don’t think this is over until it’s over. And…”
“And what?” he prompted.
“And I have one last song for you,” she said almost timidly, as if she was expecting Blaine to bite her head off. “Sweet Disposition, by The Temper Trap. Do you know it?”
He laughed humorlessly, threw up a hand and said, “It’s my favorite song.”
“Do me a favor and go listen to it? And then… Then do whatever you need to do,” April said. “And I’ll be here for you whatever happens. You know that.”
“I know,” Blaine said. “But no more songs, okay? You’re way too good at the puppet master thing.”
“Just making sure you guys finally saw each other,” she said.
“Hey-how did you even find my blog, anyway?” he asked as the thought occurred to him.
“Googling your name isn’t exactly difficult, honey,” she said.
Managing a small smile, he said, “Thanks, Flower.”
It wasn’t until they hung up and Blaine slumped against the back of the couch that he made the connection between April’s parting words and what Carole had said the day he and Kurt had left Maine: “You’ll figure it out, sweetheart. Just see him, alright?”
Blaine trudged into the bedroom, fighting off a yawn and blinking to try and keep himself awake. Way too much had happened over the past few hours for him to process, too much to even leave space to care that Kurt had found his song. He brushed the scraps of paper off the bed sheets and watched them flutter to the ground, hating the fact that his anger was slowly dissipating and leaving behind a terrible, scarring ache-he missed Kurt, and what he hated the most was that if he’d known their last kiss was going to be their last, he wouldn’t ever have stopped.
He collapsed onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling until it blurred-Philadelphia, shell-shocked, Kurt curling into him and falling asleep. The rain was hammering dully on the roof and windows-West Virginia, torpidly frantic, Kurt’s fingers twisting inside him. The leftover taste of his single cocktail was turning stale in his mouth-Portland, disbelief, Kurt promising him the world. He took in a deep breath just so that he could sigh-Bowdoin, comfort, Kurt’s morning double-spritz of cologne never changing from one day to the next. The sheets grew warmer beneath his cheek as he turned his head to look at the clock on the nightstand-everywhere after Florida, everything at once, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt.
Growing tired of turning his phone over and over in his hands, he held it over his face and scrolled to his Top 40 playlist, an ever-changing selection of songs to which he couldn’t add without taking away. Sweet Disposition was the oldest song on there, and had held the top spot ever since he’d discovered it.
He hit play-sweet disposition-his eyes drifted closed-never too soon-and as he let the song lull him into the cold embrace of a lonely sleep-oh, reckless abandon-he thought of Kurt-like no one’s watching you-and wondered if he was doing the same, somewhere up in the sky.
I swear to god when I get ahold of him, Blaine thought as he pushed his way outside and a blast of frigid night air assaulted him. First, he leaves. Then, April reads me the riot act. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I’m so dumb that I decide to follow him, and then I get to spend the entire flight sitting next to a crying baby. On Christmas fucking Eve.
These were all trials for which he could shift at least a little of the blame-particularly the storm over Seattle that had delayed all outbound flights until late evening. He’d awoken to it around noon, the rain shot through with snowflakes and hailstones which pelted the roof and sides of the R.V. until he’d wanted nothing more than to bury his head beneath his pillow and go back to sleep. Instead, Blaine had yielded to the tugging in his gut.
The one thing for which he couldn’t shift the blame, however, was his utter failure to pack anything appropriate for Alaska. His mind had been scattered, fissures in his own self-trust distracting him from the task at hand, and somehow he’d made it all the way to the departure lounge before realizing that he’d packed for warm weather. Which was why he was standing outside Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage, dressed only in jeans and a button-down, freezing his ass off and cursing under his breath. He yielded three cabs to other harried-looking passengers before deciding that, in this particular instance, manners were for squares and jumped into the next one that came along.
“The Tap Root on Spenard Road, please,” he told the driver, raising his voice over the country music playing through the crackling radio. The driver grunted in the affirmative, and Blaine couldn’t exactly blame him. It was Christmas Eve, after all; he probably had a family to be getting home to.
The ten-minute journey passed at a crawl, but finally they were pulling up outside an unassuming, one-story building with red siding and the name of the bar in contemporary, swooping text to the right of the door. Blaine paid his fare, retrieved his suitcase from the trunk, and took a deep breath.
The second Blaine stepped inside, he saw Kurt sitting at a small, round table by the deliberately weathered bar, watching April and the rest of the band up on stage. There was a slump to his shoulders and despite his immaculate outfit, his hair was almost on end, standing in fifty different directions and lacking its usual coiffed perfection. It staggered Blaine, that lack of posture, and he hadn't even been able to keep track of such a gradual change because he'd been too close until now, but that was how Kurt used to hold himself. It had been less than twenty-four hours, and it was like looking at a different person entirely.
A soft guitar intro filled the bar, and Kurt shifted uncomfortably, his body language matching Blaine's inner turmoil. As Blaine approached Kurt’s table, April's haunting, breathy voice floated through the speakers, “Fall forward in the atmosphere; it’s a heavy load to bear.”
Bending down to speak into Kurt’s ear with his heart louder than his words, Blaine asked, “Is she on her own tonight?”
Kurt started and looked up at Blaine through wide, panicked eyes. “Mostly,” he answered, his voice thin and rasping.
Blaine gestured to the empty chair next to him and, after a moment of clear trepidation, Kurt nodded. As he was taking his seat, he asked, “How’s she doing?”
“Some upbeat stuff, but mostly ballads. Seems to be that kind of crowd,” he commented, glancing around as if to ensure he was looking anywhere but at Blaine. “I requested My Love by Sia about an hour ago. She was flawless, as usual.”
“The Twilight soundtrack? Really, Kurt?” Blaine asked, attempting to overcome the tense awkwardness with the good-natured ribbing that had formed one of the foundations of their relationship for years.
Kurt looked at him sharply for a second before seeming to give in to the tug of a wry answering grin. “Just because they’re bad movies doesn’t mean the song is any less beautiful.”
“It is beautiful,” Blaine conceded, “and at least Eclipse was the best one of the series.”
“Probably had something to do with David Slade.”
“Probably.”
They fell silent, Kurt picking at the label on his beer bottle and Blaine fiddling with his suitcase handle, trying not to watch him. He didn’t want to be the first one to break, not this time. Not when, after getting over the initial shock, Kurt looked utterly unsurprised to see him.
“Where are you? I am already gone,” April sang, Marcie and Liam’s backing vocals rounding out their lilting three-part harmony; when Blaine looked up at the stage, April was watching him with kind eyes that slipped closed as she repeated the lyric, obviously singing it for them and all that was broken between them.
At length, the better part of the label shredded, Kurt stilled his hands and turned toward Blaine. Without meeting his eyes, he asked, “Why are you here?”
Blaine’s dulled anger flared back to life, and he crossed his arms over his chest to keep from reaching out and shaking him. “You know exactly why I’m here, Kurt. I’m here because this isn’t finished, not by a long shot.”
Kurt shook his head, blinking rapidly. “I wanted to…”
“Wanted to what, Kurt? Wanted to set me free so that I could go off and live my dreams without you?” Blaine hissed, voice low so as not to cause a scene. He still had some manners. “Newsflash. I don’t need you to rescue me, and I’m not your fucking holiday pet. I’m not someone you can keep around while I’m fun and then kick to the curb whenever it’s fucking convenient.”
“That is not what this is,” Kurt spat. The anger clear in his tone gave Blaine a perverse sort of satisfaction.
“That’s exactly what this is,” he countered, leaning forward over the table. “This is you suddenly having to stay the course with another person, and that terrifies you. But why wouldn’t it? Especially after all you went through with Max, and all those boys that turned out not to measure up after you half-fell for them, and let’s not forget how my leaving for a year was all about you.”
“Don’t-“
“You owe me a fucking explanation, Kurt Hummel,” Blaine interrupted, fixing him with a hard look.
“I know. I...” Kurt trailed off quietly, shaking his head. His eyes were trained on the bottle in front of him and he pulled out his Saint Christopher from beneath his shirt, running his fingers along the chain and capturing the silver disc between his thumb and forefinger. “All of this, it’s… It’s too much all at once. You, and this trip, and L.A.-something’s going to give sooner or later, right? Because I can’t possibly have all of it.”
“Why not?” Blaine asked slowly.
“Because no one gets everything they want,” Kurt said, finally looking up. His eyes were close to brimming over, and the sight of it stung. “Who the hell am I that I get to be with the boy I somehow managed to fall in love with at six years old, let alone get to take him with me to do something that’s my dream?”
“Kurt-“
“But that’s exactly it, Blaine-my dream. Your dream is up on that stage,” he barreled on, gesturing to the band. “And I can’t take that away from you. I won’t.”
“So why didn’t you even think about New York?” Blaine asked. “Better yet, why didn’t you even give me a chance and talk to me about it before making me chase you all the way to fucking Alaska?”
“I’m sorry-“
“And how dare you ever say that you’re afraid I’d leave you. You remember that, on Santa Monica Pier? How you said that you didn’t trust me?”
“Of course I do-“
“I mean, you do get that by trying to make this about me, you’ve actually made it all about you, right?”
“Blaine, I’m sorry!” Kurt exclaimed, earning them a few dirty looks from nearby patrons. In a lower, yet somehow even less controlled voice, he said, “I’m sorry, I am. I told you not to follow me; I never wanted this.”
“Of course I followed you, you fucking idiot. You took what we were finally starting to build together, and you threw it away just to prove yourself right. And I needed you to know exactly how much you fucked up. ‘Sorry’ isn’t going to cut it this time, Kurt, because you know something?” Blaine said, his hands shaking and his voice becoming more and more unsteady. Taking a deep breath, he continued, “I wanted to be the score to your movie. That’s kind of how I’ve started to think of us lately-me the music, and you the pictures. But… Maybe I should just be a deleted scene. Maybe that’s all I was ever going to be. And if you want to leave me on the cutting room floor, then leave me there. I don’t want to chase you anymore.”
A beat of silence passed and then Kurt’s hand shot out to grab Blaine’s wrist. “I wanted to come back to you as soon as the plane took off,” he said in a near whisper, looking at him with wild, desperate eyes and tears slowly rolling down his face. “Please, B. Please tell me how to fix this, how to fix us.”
Gently, Blaine pulled out of Kurt’s grip. He wasn’t angry anymore-he was sad, and resigned, and exhausted by the last three and a half months. He sighed and got to his feet as April’s song finished; the crowd loudly applauded her, and after thanking them, she offered him a tentative smile from the stage.
And then she started to play a completely stripped-down, acoustic version of Anything Could Happen. She probably thought she was helping-a puppet master’s encore-rather than playing out the tearing asunder of something that could have defined the rest of their days. Kurt gazed up at him with the look of a heartbroken man-Blaine knew it from when he had awoken that afternoon after a fitful sleep and caught sight of himself in the bathroom mirror. But even with their song playing, a hushed affirmation to which they should have been listening with soft smiles and even softer words, Blaine hadn’t the wherewithal to tell him that all this could be mended-not with jagged edges pressing between his ribs and a desolate future wrapped tightly around his chest.
Standing up straight, he blinked back tears and took a deep, shuddering breath. “It shouldn’t be this difficult, Kurt. Maybe we’re too broken to fix. I might be here, I might have chased you all the way here, but I-I… I’m worth more than that.”
“Blaine, please,” Kurt begged, hiccupping over a sob, “please stay with me.”
He bent down, cupped Kurt’s face with both hands, and kissed his cheek. He lingered there a moment, pressing his forehead to Kurt’s temple and willing himself not to cry even as a tear slipped free and disappeared into Kurt’s skin. “I can’t,” he whispered.
“But since we found out, since we found out that anything could happen…”
Screwing his eyes tightly shut, he let Kurt go. He turned his back on the interior of the Taproot and started walking, pulling his suitcase along behind him as he wound his way through tables of patrons who paid him no mind, and even when he heard Kurt calling his name around a strangled choke, he kept moving.
It was freezing outside, the empty streets silent as snow began to fall, and his ragged breaths came out in thick plumes of white that he walked through as if beginning to traverse the foggy future he saw before him. He’d had everything, and now he was leaving behind only footprints that would soon disappear.
The more Blaine tried to blink back his sorrow, the stronger it hit him. He made it as far as the gas station across the parking lot and stopped, hanging onto one of the roof pillars as he doubled over and swallowed convulsively. It hurt, cold and deep in his gut, radiating outward until he was freezing with it, his hands shaking against the concrete. His head was swimming, entrenched in flashbulb memories of sun-chapped smiles and snow-bitten touches, and he was shattering. How could it end like this? How could it end at all?
His only instinct was telling him to go back, to grab Kurt’s hand and never let it go, but where would he be taken if he did that? What would-
“You’re not a deleted scene.”
Blaine started, jumping so quickly that he managed to hit his head on the pillar. Pain exploded behind his eyes and he swayed on his feet, and then there were strong hands gripping his arms to keep him upright. He raised a hand to cradle his head and squinted up at Kurt, who somehow looked more wrecked than Blaine felt, impossibly enough.
“Are you okay?” Kurt asked in a small voice, his stormy blue eyes looking at Blaine with concern.
“Peachy,” Blaine managed, his heart pounding double time. “Today really can’t get any worse, can it?”
“Never say never,” Kurt murmured, slowly pulling Blaine’s hand away and examining his head in the dim light of the streetlamps. His fingers gently combed through Blaine’s curls and it took everything Blaine had not to close his eyes and give himself over to it.
“You came after me,” he said.
“And I’m glad I did,” Kurt replied, “seeing as you’re going around giving yourself concussions now.”
“Well, if you hadn’t appeared out of nowhere to tell me-“ Blaine paused. “What did you say before?”
Kurt’s hands fell away and he wrapped his arms around his middle. “You’re not a deleted scene, Blaine.”
Blaine shook his head, suppressing the urge to wince at the dull throbbing. “I can’t trust that. How am I supposed to trust that?”
Kurt looked up, blinking and inhaling deeply. “You don’t have to,” he said. “I’m not asking you to, and I don’t deserve your trust. I don’t deserve you. But I had to come after you, I had to try.”
“Kurt…”
“I don’t want it to end this way, Blaine. I don’t want it to end at all.”
“You haven’t exactly…” Blaine trailed off, gesturing around them.
“I know,” Kurt said. “That’s why… Here-“
Blaine watched as he reached into his chest pocket and produced a Band-Aid; he quickly pulled off the backing, cautiously reaching forward to stick it onto the front of Blaine’s shirt, right over his heart. He left his hand there and, with his eyes fixed on it, said, “I’m not crossing my heart. That’s pretty worthless at this point, and if you swear on a promise, you have to swear on something you believe in. You’re the only thing I believe in anymore.”
“What are you promising?” Blaine asked slowly.
“Back in Vegas, you said that I just had to be with you. That we’d figure out the rest later,” Kurt said. “But I’m not promising that, because promises have to be specific. So I’m promising to be with you, to follow you wherever you want to go, to never judge you when you eat an entire loaf of sourdough in one sitting, and to love you with everything I have.”
Blaine wanted to smile, wanted to breathe out the relief that suddenly flooded his system-that sensation of being wanted, feeling special, and knowing that he needed no more than this was dizzying. Stalling for precious seconds, he asked, “Where the hell did you get a Band-Aid?”
“There was a first aid kit at the bar,” Kurt said. “I had to give them my last twenty dollars for it, so if you don’t take me back I’m pretty screwed, because I don’t have cash for an airport cab.”
“You paid twenty dollars for a Band-Aid,” Blaine said flatly.
“I guess I sort of… Volunteered the money? But I was desperate! It was either that or cut myself, and you know how I feel about blood. Plus, then I would have needed the Band-Aid…”
“Some cabs take credit cards these days.”
“I can’t believe you’re bringing in logic to ruin my perfect scene,” Kurt said, humor gradually fading from his tone. He swallowed, and said quietly, “This is our movie moment.”
Blaine shook his head. “Movies end.”
“I don’t want ours to,” Kurt said quickly, his fingertips curling into Blaine’s shirt.
“Couldn’t you have realized that, I don’t know… Yesterday?”
“April kinda… Beat it out of me. Literally.”
“You know, you call me the nomad, but you’re the one who runs…”
“Maybe I just had some running to get out of my system.”
“But you’re done now?” Blaine asked, looking up at him and silently imploring him to say yes.
“No,” Kurt said, and Blaine’s heart fell until he added, “It’s who I am. Remember what I said, back in Providence? About not settling? The difference now is that… That I found someone I’d like to run with. And he makes me not care about where I’m running to.”
“Why not?” Blaine asked.
“Because…” Kurt said, stepping closer and reaching up to cup Blaine’s cheek; Blaine leaned into the touch and met Kurt’s eyes. “Because he makes everything else go away. I’ve loved him for nearly seventeen years, and one day I’d like to be able to say that I’ve loved him my whole life.”
Blaine studied him for a moment-the dark circles underneath his eyes; the wrinkled front of his shirt; the slump in his shoulders under the weight of his penance-and out of the corner of his eye, he could see the snowflakes falling. Falling with them-slowly, gradually, steadily-was easy, because it was right. He stepped forward and crushed his lips against Kurt’s, swallowing Kurt’s surprised squeak and humming against his tongue. Kurt tensed momentarily, but then seemed to melt back into his former self, standing straight and winding his arms around Blaine’s neck as a gust of icy wind swept past.
A clock struck midnight somewhere in the distance and, breathing heavily as he pulled back, Kurt dusted a kiss to the left of Blaine’s mouth. “Happy birthday, B,” he whispered breathlessly.
“Merry Christmas, Kurt,” Blaine replied, wrapping his arms around Kurt’s waist.
“Tell me something you want,” Kurt said.
“What, you didn’t get me anything?” Blaine asked, and finally, Kurt smiled. “There is something, actually.”
“Hit me.”
“I want you to never do that to me again.”
“I promise,” Kurt said quickly, nodding with wide eyes. “What else? What else do you want?”
Considering, for a moment, not only the question but the choice before him, Blaine realized that it wasn’t a matter of caving, or of going with the flow anymore. With the exception of Wyoming, he’d been sitting back and letting things happen for far too long.
“Just you,” he said, with utter conviction. “I just want you to stay with me. For good.”
Kurt closed his eyes and smiled, letting his head fall back for a second. The world was lit as if from below by the white carpeting the ground; it covered the black and gray and made everything seem brand new. They weren’t so far from the bar that Blaine couldn’t hear the music; as Kurt looked down at him and took his hand to pull him away from the pillar, he could just hear April winding up their song with the words, “I know it’s gonna be, I know it’s gonna be.”
“Come on,” Kurt said, reaching for Blaine’s suitcase. “You’re shivering; let’s get inside.”
“I’m not cold,” Blaine protested, and tugged on his hand. “There’s one other thing.”
“What is it?” Kurt asked slowly.
“What happens on the road trip stays on the road trip,” Blaine said. “When we get to L.A., we both get a fresh start.”
“You’re sure? About all of it?” Kurt asked.
“Who says any of it has to be permanent? So we go to L.A. and make a movie about killer tomatoes,” Blaine said. Kurt chuckled and bit his lip. “Then maybe we end up in New York for the next thing, or Europe, or Australia. Maybe even the Steve side of Montana if we’re really lucky.”
“My own personal lumberjack? Ugh, L.A., what was I thinking?”
“My point is-“
“That we’ll be together,” Kurt said softly, “so who cares where the train takes us?”
“Exactly,” Blaine said.
For the moment, they didn’t need any more words-that much was clear in the way Kurt simply took Blaine’s suitcase and laced their fingers together. They walked back to the bar in silence, save for returning the Christmas wishes of the two punky girls smoking outside. Though it was cold, and though it had been the longest day of Blaine’s life, the air seemed abundant where before it had been so very thin.
“I’m so sorry, B,” Kurt said outside the door. “I’m sorry to have done that to you.”
“For now, just… Just be with me, okay?” Blaine said, his fingers curled around the door handle.
“Okay,” Kurt said, the corner of his mouth twitching into a smile, and after one last quick kiss, Blaine followed him into the warmth.
Distance: 15,815 miles
*
Next: Hawaii
Author: dazzlebug
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Kurt and Blaine have been best friends (and nothing more) since the age of six. Now college graduates, they take a roadtrip around the USA, visiting every state in 100 days. Fifty states. Two boys. One love story.
Disclaimer: I paint the pictures; I just borrow the names.
This fic will be updated twice-weekly on Wednesdays and Sundays at 4pm EST/9pm GMT (estimated). Also available on ffnet, Tumblr, S&C and AO3. Previous chapters here.
NOTE: The next update will be Wed 26 Feb at the earliest-I need a little extra time to get the ending just right! In the meantime, here's a supersized update that I hope will tide you over until then :)
Day 099: Monday 24th December, 2012
The Boy with the Band-Aid (Alaska)
“No, we already wrote Into the Wild down for Oregon.”
“Okay, what about Insomnia?”
“Looks pretty good. Okay, only one left!”
Blaine had had a new text post open for nearly an hour, typing and deleting over and over again until finally he just wrote, Fuck everything. After hitting ‘Submit,’ he pushed the laptop away and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. It was nearly five a.m., and he was exhausted. But with the torrential downpour of rain battering against the R.V., not to mention the anger thrumming in his veins, there was no way he could sleep. In all his life he’d never experienced such rage-not at Roberto Mancini, not at Kurt in Chicago or Minneapolis, not even at his own father. The only thing keeping him from going postal and trashing the R.V. were the memories of his grandfather that lingered in every square inch of the place-that, and the note full of empty apologies that he held between his fingers, thumb rubbing over the ink almost obsessively until it began to fade beneath his fingerprint.
Blaine was done trying to be fair, trying to see things from Kurt’s perspective as well as his own. He didn’t care that Kurt was scared, that he’d discovered Blaine’s song and run away because he’d thought he was doing what was best. He’d about had his fill, at this point, of what Kurt wanted and needed-he had changed so much of himself for this boy, and for what? To be left when they had a path laid out before them, just because he was too scared to walk it?
“Fuck that,” he muttered, finally crumpling Kurt’s note and tossing it away.
Now that Kurt was gone, there was too much silence. The air was too still. Some of his things still hung in the closets, and he’d left behind his toothbrush in the bathroom, and there was still some leftover lasagna in the refrigerator from the night before. But these were all trace elements of a love obviously now lost to him. For the first time, Blaine imagined, really imagined, what his life would be like without Kurt in it, because Kurt had been right; they wouldn’t recover from this. But that wasn’t the thing that made Blaine angriest of all-no, it was the fact that when he imagined life without Kurt, he saw nothing.
It was Blaine’s phone, vibrating across the table where he’d left it, that pulled him from his imagining. When he picked it up, he saw April smiling up at him from the screen.
After a moment’s hesitation, he answered, “Hey, Flower.”
“Hey,” she said quietly. “Um… Are you okay?”
Blaine snorted derisively. “Who the hell does he think he is?” he spat, under no illusions that April was in the dark. “He keeps me hanging for months, fucks somebody else to try and get me out of his system or whatever the hell that was, and then when he finally gives in like it’s some big chore, he up and fucking leaves the day before my birthday.”
“Jesus, Blaine,” April whispered, and in the background Blaine could hear the sound of a door closing. “What happened?”
“Well, the movies and TV shows lie.”
“Okay…”
“They make chasing someone through an airport look a shit-ton easier than it really is,” Blaine said, his words tailing off into an almost hysterical laugh as he began to pace back and forth. The anger surged up in him anew, and he couldn’t dam it up anymore; he had nowhere left to redirect it… So he let loose. “They wouldn’t let me check in using my ticket to Anchorage, so I had to buy a goddamn ticket to Nebraska just to get through security, and then getting through security took forever, and for what?
“For nothing; it was all for fucking nothing, because I caught up to him and he still left!” Blaine exclaimed, voice rising. “And do you want to know the worst part? I don’t get it. Nothing happened! I was hanging out with some friends, and he was happy when I left, and now he’s just gone. So I guess that’s it. It’s over. What happened on the road trip will stay on the fucking road trip after all.”
There was a long silence after his tirade, Blaine’s rapid, uneven breathing the only sound.
“Blaine, what the fuck is going on?” April finally asked, and Blaine sighed.
“I was hoping you’d tell me,” he said, waving his free hand before letting it drop limply to his side. “Kurt just took off, says I shouldn’t let him hold me back from my dream and that he was getting in the way.”
“Motherfucker,” April said. “That fucking idiot; I can’t even believe him sometimes.”
“That about sums it up, yeah. And-actually, no, this is the worst part: it is just like him to take off right before a storm hits. Everything out of SeaTac is delayed and I can’t do anything so I’m just sitting here like an idiot,” Blaine said. “Is he with you?”
“His flight gets in at six,” she said, “and I’m the asshole who said I’d go pick him up. To be honest, I’m tempted to fucking leave him there.”
“Don’t do that,” Blaine said automatically-even with his blood boiling, he couldn’t quite hold himself in check. Sighing again, he said, “You’re his best friend. He’s gonna need you.”
After a pause, she asked, “And what about you?”
“What do you mean, what about me? Game’s over, I might as well go home,” Blaine said.
“Excuse me? No,” April said. “No, that is not the Blaine Anderson I know-“
“April.”
“You two fucking love each other, okay? And it’s more than that; this has been going on for years and I’ve seen it, fucking everyone has-“
“April.”
“-and I did not spend the past three fucking months sending you…”
Blaine stopped in his tracks as she trailed off, muttering swears under her breath. “Sending me what?” he asked slowly, repeating the question more loudly when she just continued muttering. “Sending me what, April?”
“Ugh. Well, I was going to tell you anyway, and if it really is game over, you might as well know now,” April said, resignation clear in her tone. “You’ve been getting messages on your blog, right? Both of you have. Though I guess neither of you knew that you both had blogs. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that I’m F. I was the one sending you the songs.”
“You’re F,” Blaine repeated weakly. “F for… F for Flower. Fuck, how did I not see that?”
“Because you and Kurt have a habit of not seeing what’s right in front of your dumbass faces,” April said.
Blaine dropped heavily onto the couch, his exhaustion finally getting the better of him. He barely even had the energy to be surprised at the revelation that she’d been acting as puppet master for months. Who even knew what songs she’d been sending to Kurt? Had all of this been because of her? Would anything have happened between them without her? And, knowing that, would he have even wanted it to?
Pinching between his eyes, he said, “April, I’m so fucking tired. I’m tired of putting myself out there, tired of waiting and being patient, and I’m tired of chasing after him when he’s given me no reason to. I mean, honestly, what am I even still doing here? I should have just cut my losses and turned the fucking R.V. around as soon as I got back.”
“Was it worth it?” she asked. “All the putting yourself out there, all the chasing. Did it make you happy?”
Blaine bit down on the inside of his cheek, exhaling slowly and wishing he hadn’t picked up the phone.
Without waiting for an answer, she continued, “You love him. That’s what you’re still doing there.”
“I wish I didn’t,” he said quietly. “I wish that none of this had ever happened.”
She scoffed at that. “No, you don’t. So what are you going to do now?”
Casting his gaze around the interior of the R.V., inescapable traces of Kurt everywhere, Blaine closed his eyes against it all and thought for a moment. “Maybe I should go back to Maine. See if we can talk this all out when he gets back.”
“Talking about your feelings? What a world,” she deadpanned.
“Well, what would you suggest?”
“You’ve still got that ticket to Anchorage, right?”
“No,” Blaine said. “I mean-yes, I do. But I’m not chasing after him anymore. If he wants me, he can come fucking apologize.”
“Oh my god, you’re ridiculous!” she exclaimed exasperatedly. “Maybe if both of you had just stopped being such guys about this whole thing and actually, you know, talked to each other from the start, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”
“Yes, April, I get it. Okay? We’ve both been dumb as shit,” Blaine said. “So… You’re telling me to come to Anchorage.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” she said gently. “I’m just saying that you already have the ticket, and I don’t think this is over until it’s over. And…”
“And what?” he prompted.
“And I have one last song for you,” she said almost timidly, as if she was expecting Blaine to bite her head off. “Sweet Disposition, by The Temper Trap. Do you know it?”
He laughed humorlessly, threw up a hand and said, “It’s my favorite song.”
“Do me a favor and go listen to it? And then… Then do whatever you need to do,” April said. “And I’ll be here for you whatever happens. You know that.”
“I know,” Blaine said. “But no more songs, okay? You’re way too good at the puppet master thing.”
“Just making sure you guys finally saw each other,” she said.
“Hey-how did you even find my blog, anyway?” he asked as the thought occurred to him.
“Googling your name isn’t exactly difficult, honey,” she said.
Managing a small smile, he said, “Thanks, Flower.”
It wasn’t until they hung up and Blaine slumped against the back of the couch that he made the connection between April’s parting words and what Carole had said the day he and Kurt had left Maine: “You’ll figure it out, sweetheart. Just see him, alright?”
Blaine trudged into the bedroom, fighting off a yawn and blinking to try and keep himself awake. Way too much had happened over the past few hours for him to process, too much to even leave space to care that Kurt had found his song. He brushed the scraps of paper off the bed sheets and watched them flutter to the ground, hating the fact that his anger was slowly dissipating and leaving behind a terrible, scarring ache-he missed Kurt, and what he hated the most was that if he’d known their last kiss was going to be their last, he wouldn’t ever have stopped.
He collapsed onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling until it blurred-Philadelphia, shell-shocked, Kurt curling into him and falling asleep. The rain was hammering dully on the roof and windows-West Virginia, torpidly frantic, Kurt’s fingers twisting inside him. The leftover taste of his single cocktail was turning stale in his mouth-Portland, disbelief, Kurt promising him the world. He took in a deep breath just so that he could sigh-Bowdoin, comfort, Kurt’s morning double-spritz of cologne never changing from one day to the next. The sheets grew warmer beneath his cheek as he turned his head to look at the clock on the nightstand-everywhere after Florida, everything at once, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt.
Growing tired of turning his phone over and over in his hands, he held it over his face and scrolled to his Top 40 playlist, an ever-changing selection of songs to which he couldn’t add without taking away. Sweet Disposition was the oldest song on there, and had held the top spot ever since he’d discovered it.
He hit play-sweet disposition-his eyes drifted closed-never too soon-and as he let the song lull him into the cold embrace of a lonely sleep-oh, reckless abandon-he thought of Kurt-like no one’s watching you-and wondered if he was doing the same, somewhere up in the sky.
I swear to god when I get ahold of him, Blaine thought as he pushed his way outside and a blast of frigid night air assaulted him. First, he leaves. Then, April reads me the riot act. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I’m so dumb that I decide to follow him, and then I get to spend the entire flight sitting next to a crying baby. On Christmas fucking Eve.
These were all trials for which he could shift at least a little of the blame-particularly the storm over Seattle that had delayed all outbound flights until late evening. He’d awoken to it around noon, the rain shot through with snowflakes and hailstones which pelted the roof and sides of the R.V. until he’d wanted nothing more than to bury his head beneath his pillow and go back to sleep. Instead, Blaine had yielded to the tugging in his gut.
The one thing for which he couldn’t shift the blame, however, was his utter failure to pack anything appropriate for Alaska. His mind had been scattered, fissures in his own self-trust distracting him from the task at hand, and somehow he’d made it all the way to the departure lounge before realizing that he’d packed for warm weather. Which was why he was standing outside Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage, dressed only in jeans and a button-down, freezing his ass off and cursing under his breath. He yielded three cabs to other harried-looking passengers before deciding that, in this particular instance, manners were for squares and jumped into the next one that came along.
“The Tap Root on Spenard Road, please,” he told the driver, raising his voice over the country music playing through the crackling radio. The driver grunted in the affirmative, and Blaine couldn’t exactly blame him. It was Christmas Eve, after all; he probably had a family to be getting home to.
The ten-minute journey passed at a crawl, but finally they were pulling up outside an unassuming, one-story building with red siding and the name of the bar in contemporary, swooping text to the right of the door. Blaine paid his fare, retrieved his suitcase from the trunk, and took a deep breath.
The second Blaine stepped inside, he saw Kurt sitting at a small, round table by the deliberately weathered bar, watching April and the rest of the band up on stage. There was a slump to his shoulders and despite his immaculate outfit, his hair was almost on end, standing in fifty different directions and lacking its usual coiffed perfection. It staggered Blaine, that lack of posture, and he hadn't even been able to keep track of such a gradual change because he'd been too close until now, but that was how Kurt used to hold himself. It had been less than twenty-four hours, and it was like looking at a different person entirely.
A soft guitar intro filled the bar, and Kurt shifted uncomfortably, his body language matching Blaine's inner turmoil. As Blaine approached Kurt’s table, April's haunting, breathy voice floated through the speakers, “Fall forward in the atmosphere; it’s a heavy load to bear.”
Bending down to speak into Kurt’s ear with his heart louder than his words, Blaine asked, “Is she on her own tonight?”
Kurt started and looked up at Blaine through wide, panicked eyes. “Mostly,” he answered, his voice thin and rasping.
Blaine gestured to the empty chair next to him and, after a moment of clear trepidation, Kurt nodded. As he was taking his seat, he asked, “How’s she doing?”
“Some upbeat stuff, but mostly ballads. Seems to be that kind of crowd,” he commented, glancing around as if to ensure he was looking anywhere but at Blaine. “I requested My Love by Sia about an hour ago. She was flawless, as usual.”
“The Twilight soundtrack? Really, Kurt?” Blaine asked, attempting to overcome the tense awkwardness with the good-natured ribbing that had formed one of the foundations of their relationship for years.
Kurt looked at him sharply for a second before seeming to give in to the tug of a wry answering grin. “Just because they’re bad movies doesn’t mean the song is any less beautiful.”
“It is beautiful,” Blaine conceded, “and at least Eclipse was the best one of the series.”
“Probably had something to do with David Slade.”
“Probably.”
They fell silent, Kurt picking at the label on his beer bottle and Blaine fiddling with his suitcase handle, trying not to watch him. He didn’t want to be the first one to break, not this time. Not when, after getting over the initial shock, Kurt looked utterly unsurprised to see him.
“Where are you? I am already gone,” April sang, Marcie and Liam’s backing vocals rounding out their lilting three-part harmony; when Blaine looked up at the stage, April was watching him with kind eyes that slipped closed as she repeated the lyric, obviously singing it for them and all that was broken between them.
At length, the better part of the label shredded, Kurt stilled his hands and turned toward Blaine. Without meeting his eyes, he asked, “Why are you here?”
Blaine’s dulled anger flared back to life, and he crossed his arms over his chest to keep from reaching out and shaking him. “You know exactly why I’m here, Kurt. I’m here because this isn’t finished, not by a long shot.”
Kurt shook his head, blinking rapidly. “I wanted to…”
“Wanted to what, Kurt? Wanted to set me free so that I could go off and live my dreams without you?” Blaine hissed, voice low so as not to cause a scene. He still had some manners. “Newsflash. I don’t need you to rescue me, and I’m not your fucking holiday pet. I’m not someone you can keep around while I’m fun and then kick to the curb whenever it’s fucking convenient.”
“That is not what this is,” Kurt spat. The anger clear in his tone gave Blaine a perverse sort of satisfaction.
“That’s exactly what this is,” he countered, leaning forward over the table. “This is you suddenly having to stay the course with another person, and that terrifies you. But why wouldn’t it? Especially after all you went through with Max, and all those boys that turned out not to measure up after you half-fell for them, and let’s not forget how my leaving for a year was all about you.”
“Don’t-“
“You owe me a fucking explanation, Kurt Hummel,” Blaine interrupted, fixing him with a hard look.
“I know. I...” Kurt trailed off quietly, shaking his head. His eyes were trained on the bottle in front of him and he pulled out his Saint Christopher from beneath his shirt, running his fingers along the chain and capturing the silver disc between his thumb and forefinger. “All of this, it’s… It’s too much all at once. You, and this trip, and L.A.-something’s going to give sooner or later, right? Because I can’t possibly have all of it.”
“Why not?” Blaine asked slowly.
“Because no one gets everything they want,” Kurt said, finally looking up. His eyes were close to brimming over, and the sight of it stung. “Who the hell am I that I get to be with the boy I somehow managed to fall in love with at six years old, let alone get to take him with me to do something that’s my dream?”
“Kurt-“
“But that’s exactly it, Blaine-my dream. Your dream is up on that stage,” he barreled on, gesturing to the band. “And I can’t take that away from you. I won’t.”
“So why didn’t you even think about New York?” Blaine asked. “Better yet, why didn’t you even give me a chance and talk to me about it before making me chase you all the way to fucking Alaska?”
“I’m sorry-“
“And how dare you ever say that you’re afraid I’d leave you. You remember that, on Santa Monica Pier? How you said that you didn’t trust me?”
“Of course I do-“
“I mean, you do get that by trying to make this about me, you’ve actually made it all about you, right?”
“Blaine, I’m sorry!” Kurt exclaimed, earning them a few dirty looks from nearby patrons. In a lower, yet somehow even less controlled voice, he said, “I’m sorry, I am. I told you not to follow me; I never wanted this.”
“Of course I followed you, you fucking idiot. You took what we were finally starting to build together, and you threw it away just to prove yourself right. And I needed you to know exactly how much you fucked up. ‘Sorry’ isn’t going to cut it this time, Kurt, because you know something?” Blaine said, his hands shaking and his voice becoming more and more unsteady. Taking a deep breath, he continued, “I wanted to be the score to your movie. That’s kind of how I’ve started to think of us lately-me the music, and you the pictures. But… Maybe I should just be a deleted scene. Maybe that’s all I was ever going to be. And if you want to leave me on the cutting room floor, then leave me there. I don’t want to chase you anymore.”
A beat of silence passed and then Kurt’s hand shot out to grab Blaine’s wrist. “I wanted to come back to you as soon as the plane took off,” he said in a near whisper, looking at him with wild, desperate eyes and tears slowly rolling down his face. “Please, B. Please tell me how to fix this, how to fix us.”
Gently, Blaine pulled out of Kurt’s grip. He wasn’t angry anymore-he was sad, and resigned, and exhausted by the last three and a half months. He sighed and got to his feet as April’s song finished; the crowd loudly applauded her, and after thanking them, she offered him a tentative smile from the stage.
And then she started to play a completely stripped-down, acoustic version of Anything Could Happen. She probably thought she was helping-a puppet master’s encore-rather than playing out the tearing asunder of something that could have defined the rest of their days. Kurt gazed up at him with the look of a heartbroken man-Blaine knew it from when he had awoken that afternoon after a fitful sleep and caught sight of himself in the bathroom mirror. But even with their song playing, a hushed affirmation to which they should have been listening with soft smiles and even softer words, Blaine hadn’t the wherewithal to tell him that all this could be mended-not with jagged edges pressing between his ribs and a desolate future wrapped tightly around his chest.
Standing up straight, he blinked back tears and took a deep, shuddering breath. “It shouldn’t be this difficult, Kurt. Maybe we’re too broken to fix. I might be here, I might have chased you all the way here, but I-I… I’m worth more than that.”
“Blaine, please,” Kurt begged, hiccupping over a sob, “please stay with me.”
He bent down, cupped Kurt’s face with both hands, and kissed his cheek. He lingered there a moment, pressing his forehead to Kurt’s temple and willing himself not to cry even as a tear slipped free and disappeared into Kurt’s skin. “I can’t,” he whispered.
“But since we found out, since we found out that anything could happen…”
Screwing his eyes tightly shut, he let Kurt go. He turned his back on the interior of the Taproot and started walking, pulling his suitcase along behind him as he wound his way through tables of patrons who paid him no mind, and even when he heard Kurt calling his name around a strangled choke, he kept moving.
It was freezing outside, the empty streets silent as snow began to fall, and his ragged breaths came out in thick plumes of white that he walked through as if beginning to traverse the foggy future he saw before him. He’d had everything, and now he was leaving behind only footprints that would soon disappear.
The more Blaine tried to blink back his sorrow, the stronger it hit him. He made it as far as the gas station across the parking lot and stopped, hanging onto one of the roof pillars as he doubled over and swallowed convulsively. It hurt, cold and deep in his gut, radiating outward until he was freezing with it, his hands shaking against the concrete. His head was swimming, entrenched in flashbulb memories of sun-chapped smiles and snow-bitten touches, and he was shattering. How could it end like this? How could it end at all?
His only instinct was telling him to go back, to grab Kurt’s hand and never let it go, but where would he be taken if he did that? What would-
“You’re not a deleted scene.”
Blaine started, jumping so quickly that he managed to hit his head on the pillar. Pain exploded behind his eyes and he swayed on his feet, and then there were strong hands gripping his arms to keep him upright. He raised a hand to cradle his head and squinted up at Kurt, who somehow looked more wrecked than Blaine felt, impossibly enough.
“Are you okay?” Kurt asked in a small voice, his stormy blue eyes looking at Blaine with concern.
“Peachy,” Blaine managed, his heart pounding double time. “Today really can’t get any worse, can it?”
“Never say never,” Kurt murmured, slowly pulling Blaine’s hand away and examining his head in the dim light of the streetlamps. His fingers gently combed through Blaine’s curls and it took everything Blaine had not to close his eyes and give himself over to it.
“You came after me,” he said.
“And I’m glad I did,” Kurt replied, “seeing as you’re going around giving yourself concussions now.”
“Well, if you hadn’t appeared out of nowhere to tell me-“ Blaine paused. “What did you say before?”
Kurt’s hands fell away and he wrapped his arms around his middle. “You’re not a deleted scene, Blaine.”
Blaine shook his head, suppressing the urge to wince at the dull throbbing. “I can’t trust that. How am I supposed to trust that?”
Kurt looked up, blinking and inhaling deeply. “You don’t have to,” he said. “I’m not asking you to, and I don’t deserve your trust. I don’t deserve you. But I had to come after you, I had to try.”
“Kurt…”
“I don’t want it to end this way, Blaine. I don’t want it to end at all.”
“You haven’t exactly…” Blaine trailed off, gesturing around them.
“I know,” Kurt said. “That’s why… Here-“
Blaine watched as he reached into his chest pocket and produced a Band-Aid; he quickly pulled off the backing, cautiously reaching forward to stick it onto the front of Blaine’s shirt, right over his heart. He left his hand there and, with his eyes fixed on it, said, “I’m not crossing my heart. That’s pretty worthless at this point, and if you swear on a promise, you have to swear on something you believe in. You’re the only thing I believe in anymore.”
“What are you promising?” Blaine asked slowly.
“Back in Vegas, you said that I just had to be with you. That we’d figure out the rest later,” Kurt said. “But I’m not promising that, because promises have to be specific. So I’m promising to be with you, to follow you wherever you want to go, to never judge you when you eat an entire loaf of sourdough in one sitting, and to love you with everything I have.”
Blaine wanted to smile, wanted to breathe out the relief that suddenly flooded his system-that sensation of being wanted, feeling special, and knowing that he needed no more than this was dizzying. Stalling for precious seconds, he asked, “Where the hell did you get a Band-Aid?”
“There was a first aid kit at the bar,” Kurt said. “I had to give them my last twenty dollars for it, so if you don’t take me back I’m pretty screwed, because I don’t have cash for an airport cab.”
“You paid twenty dollars for a Band-Aid,” Blaine said flatly.
“I guess I sort of… Volunteered the money? But I was desperate! It was either that or cut myself, and you know how I feel about blood. Plus, then I would have needed the Band-Aid…”
“Some cabs take credit cards these days.”
“I can’t believe you’re bringing in logic to ruin my perfect scene,” Kurt said, humor gradually fading from his tone. He swallowed, and said quietly, “This is our movie moment.”
Blaine shook his head. “Movies end.”
“I don’t want ours to,” Kurt said quickly, his fingertips curling into Blaine’s shirt.
“Couldn’t you have realized that, I don’t know… Yesterday?”
“April kinda… Beat it out of me. Literally.”
“You know, you call me the nomad, but you’re the one who runs…”
“Maybe I just had some running to get out of my system.”
“But you’re done now?” Blaine asked, looking up at him and silently imploring him to say yes.
“No,” Kurt said, and Blaine’s heart fell until he added, “It’s who I am. Remember what I said, back in Providence? About not settling? The difference now is that… That I found someone I’d like to run with. And he makes me not care about where I’m running to.”
“Why not?” Blaine asked.
“Because…” Kurt said, stepping closer and reaching up to cup Blaine’s cheek; Blaine leaned into the touch and met Kurt’s eyes. “Because he makes everything else go away. I’ve loved him for nearly seventeen years, and one day I’d like to be able to say that I’ve loved him my whole life.”
Blaine studied him for a moment-the dark circles underneath his eyes; the wrinkled front of his shirt; the slump in his shoulders under the weight of his penance-and out of the corner of his eye, he could see the snowflakes falling. Falling with them-slowly, gradually, steadily-was easy, because it was right. He stepped forward and crushed his lips against Kurt’s, swallowing Kurt’s surprised squeak and humming against his tongue. Kurt tensed momentarily, but then seemed to melt back into his former self, standing straight and winding his arms around Blaine’s neck as a gust of icy wind swept past.
A clock struck midnight somewhere in the distance and, breathing heavily as he pulled back, Kurt dusted a kiss to the left of Blaine’s mouth. “Happy birthday, B,” he whispered breathlessly.
“Merry Christmas, Kurt,” Blaine replied, wrapping his arms around Kurt’s waist.
“Tell me something you want,” Kurt said.
“What, you didn’t get me anything?” Blaine asked, and finally, Kurt smiled. “There is something, actually.”
“Hit me.”
“I want you to never do that to me again.”
“I promise,” Kurt said quickly, nodding with wide eyes. “What else? What else do you want?”
Considering, for a moment, not only the question but the choice before him, Blaine realized that it wasn’t a matter of caving, or of going with the flow anymore. With the exception of Wyoming, he’d been sitting back and letting things happen for far too long.
“Just you,” he said, with utter conviction. “I just want you to stay with me. For good.”
Kurt closed his eyes and smiled, letting his head fall back for a second. The world was lit as if from below by the white carpeting the ground; it covered the black and gray and made everything seem brand new. They weren’t so far from the bar that Blaine couldn’t hear the music; as Kurt looked down at him and took his hand to pull him away from the pillar, he could just hear April winding up their song with the words, “I know it’s gonna be, I know it’s gonna be.”
“Come on,” Kurt said, reaching for Blaine’s suitcase. “You’re shivering; let’s get inside.”
“I’m not cold,” Blaine protested, and tugged on his hand. “There’s one other thing.”
“What is it?” Kurt asked slowly.
“What happens on the road trip stays on the road trip,” Blaine said. “When we get to L.A., we both get a fresh start.”
“You’re sure? About all of it?” Kurt asked.
“Who says any of it has to be permanent? So we go to L.A. and make a movie about killer tomatoes,” Blaine said. Kurt chuckled and bit his lip. “Then maybe we end up in New York for the next thing, or Europe, or Australia. Maybe even the Steve side of Montana if we’re really lucky.”
“My own personal lumberjack? Ugh, L.A., what was I thinking?”
“My point is-“
“That we’ll be together,” Kurt said softly, “so who cares where the train takes us?”
“Exactly,” Blaine said.
For the moment, they didn’t need any more words-that much was clear in the way Kurt simply took Blaine’s suitcase and laced their fingers together. They walked back to the bar in silence, save for returning the Christmas wishes of the two punky girls smoking outside. Though it was cold, and though it had been the longest day of Blaine’s life, the air seemed abundant where before it had been so very thin.
“I’m so sorry, B,” Kurt said outside the door. “I’m sorry to have done that to you.”
“For now, just… Just be with me, okay?” Blaine said, his fingers curled around the door handle.
“Okay,” Kurt said, the corner of his mouth twitching into a smile, and after one last quick kiss, Blaine followed him into the warmth.
Distance: 15,815 miles
*
Next: Hawaii