Chapter Text
Kurt surveyed the hatchback of the Prius and sighed. It wasn’t all going to fit. He had known this before they started packing. Known that Blaine’s books, summer clothes and shoes, and vintage robot collection and all the scrapbooks he made in high school were not going to fit in the back of a Prius, for god’s sake.
But he also knew that they needed to figure out how to get everything Blaine wanted to New York. The last time Blaine moved to New York he showed up with just a suitcase and had his mom send a couple of boxes of clothes after he arrived. He had moved into Kurt and Rachel’s loft and used Kurt and Rachel’s things. That had been a disaster. When he had moved out the first time, Kurt was sort of surprised at how easy it was for him to do--at how little of Blaine had actually been in the loft, since it had seemed liked he and his things were everywhere.
The second time Blaine moved out Kurt was just relieved. Relieved that after all that time and all that drama Blaine could actually disappear from his life with one trip to UPS and a couple of fully-stuffed pieces of luggage. The first night after they broke up Kurt sat completely alone in the loft and found himself staring at Blaine’s piano, wonderingly idly if Blaine would come get it. He didn’t, of course. Blaine had meant the piano as a gift for Kurt, even though he was the one who still played. But though Blaine gave it to him, Kurt always thought of it as Blaine’s piano.
Blaine bought it to play classical music on weekend mornings, Vivaldi and Chopin, while Kurt made pancakes and fruit smoothies for late brunches, and to run scales for Kurt while he practiced for vocal classes. Blaine bought the piano so that he could serenade Kurt with cheesy pop songs when Kurt got home late from the diner, tired and smelling of french fries and apple pie, and so that Blaine could write songs for them to sing together. After he left the second time, Blaine never contacted Kurt about the piano. It sat in one corner of the loft, unused, piled with Kurt’s designer books and sheet music, like an extra bookshelf.
Kurt shook the memory from his head, focusing again on the back of the Prius in Blaine’s mother’s driveway in Ohio, and on the three boxes piled up on the pavement that were simply not going to fit. Movers were coming to bring the piano and the rest of Kurt’s furniture from the loft to their new apartment on the Lower East Side next weekend. That part was set. But right now he had to figure out how to make more space for Blaine’s things because not making room for them was a mistake he wasn’t going to repeat.
Blaine came out of the front door with a garment bag stuffed full. And there was his mom coming behind him with the lamp from his bedside table and a couple of pillows. Definitely not going to fit.
Blaine saw the problem immediately. His face fell.
“Oh. Maybe I need to figure out what to leave behind.” His brow was starting to knit as he surveyed the boxes strewn on the driveway.
Kurt turned away from the car, fishing his phone from his pocket.
“Nope,” he said lightly. “Not this time. I’m calling U-Haul.” The smile that broke out on Blaine’s face made Kurt smile too.
Two days later, with a U-Haul trailer packed and attached to the back of the Prius, they were getting ready to leave Ohio. Again.
It was a ten-hour drive, across the state on Route 71 and then onto Route 80 through mostly rural Pennsylvania. Kurt’s dad had insisted on checking the car over before they left, fiddling with things under the hood that Kurt knew were perfectly adjusted, but which made his dad feel better for having had his hands on.
At one point Blaine leaned in under the hood with him and asked Burt something about when to check the inverter and Kurt went back into the house, pretending he didn’t hear his dad answering, pretending to be looking for water bottles for the trip, his chest a little tight and his eyes a little watery from knowing what it meant for Blaine to want to talk cars with his Dad.
Kurt had left Ohio for New York before. He left the first time, with no college admission, no job and no place to live, terrified and lost, but completely determined. He left Ohio again after Mr. Schue’s first wedding, the memory of a night in a hotel room with Blaine still branded on his mind and on his skin, uncertain about how to be in New York with Adam when the biggest part of him was still firmly lodged in Blaine’s heart back in Lima. And once, he left Ohio with an engagement ring on his finger, dessicated rose petals falling out of his suit pocket as he pulled his boarding pass out at the airport in Dayton. Each of those times he left Blaine behind. This time was different.
He went back outside with the water bottles to find Blaine still watching Burt as Burt checked the tire pressure in all four tires.
“Hey,” he said. Burt didn’t even look up before he answered.
“Kurt, I need about another half hour. I want to make sure that trailer hitch is connected properly.”
“Fine, Dad, can I steal Blaine for a quick walk down to the park? We’re going to be in the car for a long time.”
His dad just grunted, but Blaine smiled and fell in step by Kurt’s side as they walked down his street to the little park at the edge of Kurt’s neighborhood. Correction: At the edge of his dad’s neighborhood. It wasn’t his anymore.
The park was quiet this morning, a few runners and a dog walker, but the mothers with strollers weren’t yet here. Blaine and Kurt sat on the swings, Blaine kicking idly at the dirt under the swingset.
Kurt looked around the park, remembering picnics with Blaine the first summer they were dating. Kurt used to create ridiculously complicated menus with themes intended to impress a new boyfriend, dates stuffed with cheese and couscous salad for Morroccan Day, or rainbow fruit salads composed of kiwis and melon and pineapple, laid out in perfect rows in the tupperware. Blaine admired it all, and he ate everything, but he was just as happy the day Kurt ran out of inspiration and packed a brick of cheddar cheese and Ritz crackers.
“It’s perfect, Kurt, “ Blaine told him, as he carefully cut pieces of cheese with his swiss army knife and laid them on crackers to present to Kurt. And Kurt knew he meant it, the humid air swirling around them and the noise of children on this same swingset making a chorus in the background. He knew because he could see the way Blaine looked at him, a drowsy half smile on his face, eyes heavy-lidded in the heat, watching Kurt’s mouth as he popped in a cracker and chewed it.
Kurt remembered parking here after the junior prom, the emotion of the night still heavy in his chest, but Blaine sure and certain in his arms in the back seat. Blaine carefully took the crown off of Kurt’s head and laid it with that ridiculous scepter on the front seat. Then he turned to Kurt in the dark under the oak trees at the edge of the parking lot, and kissed him without words, until the heaviness disappeared and all Kurt could think about was Blaine’s fingers tight on his back, and the scruff of Blaine’s cheek against his jaw and their breath together, warm and still sweet from the punch.
Last winter, he and Blaine had come to this park late at night after they went to dinner with that couple from the jewelry shop. Blaine had seemed antsy and on the verge of saying something, but he didn’t and Kurt didn’t want him to. He wanted to walk through the park on a dark, cold night and look at the remains of some little kid’s snowman under the moonlight, not to talk at all. His dad didn’t have cancer, Blaine was in his life again, and he didn’t want to tempt the universe by talking about any of it. He just wanted to let it be.
Today, back in the park on a warm June day, it was Blaine’s turn to say, “Hey.”
And Kurt looked over at him, sitting on the swing next to him looking at Kurt with open eyes and a broad smile. He smiled back and then Blaine said, “I bet I can swing higher than you,” with a gleam in his eye. Kurt snorted. Said, “You’re on Anderson,” and pushed off with both feet.
This time Kurt wasn’t leaving anything behind. He wasn’t leaving Blaine (or any of Blaine’s things) and, even though his dad and Carole were still here, he knew now that the distance didn’t mean he was leaving his dad either. He also wasn’t leaving with the taste of failure in his mouth.
Kurt and Blaine swung their swings higher and higher until they were breathless, laughing and giddy with all of it. Kurt let memory swirl together with anticipation in his mind and watched the leaves on the oak trees advance and recede with each push of his legs. And then they walked back to Kurt’s house hand in hand, buckled themselves into the fully loaded car and Kurt headed toward the entrance ramp to the interstate to take them both back to New York.