The District Sleeps Alone Tonight

After everything, they ended up at different schools in different cities on different coasts. They had agreed college was too important to squander over a high school romance and applied to schools quietly, secretly from each other, then when they had reviewed their acceptance letters and made their decision they came together again and swapped names.

Until that moment, Kurt had expected Blaine would apply exclusively to schools in New York City—Blaine knew that was the only place Kurt would consider living. When Blaine said "UC-Berkeley" to him that day it was a slap in the face, a wake-up call. Blaine wasn't following him to New York City.

"NYU," Kurt whispered back.

The tears over this decision were years in the past now.

Blaine carved out his life in Berkeley and loved it. As it happened, Mike Chang went to Berkeley too, and they were roommates their first year, then drifted apart a little and got separate apartments with different roommates after that. They still went out for drinks sometimes and were in the same circle of friends who played football on fall afternoons and went down to the beach to build a bonfire on summer nights. Blaine joined an all-men's acapella group on campus. He made friends. He purchased a toaster on sale. He bought a painting at an art fair and hung it on the wall over his desk. He found a favorite grocery store within walking distance of his apartment. He liked taking the BART into the city and going to the touristy places around San Francisco, buying a post card, and sending it to Kurt with a heartfelt but coded message written on the back. He fell into a routine, and it made him happy, mostly. But he missed Kurt.

Kurt dropped onto the NYU campus like a bomb and the shockwaves never stopped. He made friends with his dorm roommate in five minutes, and the rest of his dorm floor in the next ten. He flirted with everyone, but he refused advances and didn't allow drunken (or sober) blowjobs, even from his best friends. He went out almost every night and sauntered in every morning just before dusk, passing his classes by virtue of his staggering intelligence and immeasurable talent. He was a little bit drunk eighty percent of the time it was dark outside, but so were all the people around him. He embraced New York and it embraced him, sloppily, clumsily, but fiercely. Everyone loved Kurt and he loved everyone and he did anything he wanted in the city. Parties were a given and so was coffee every morning (paired, at least twice a week, with a phone call to Blaine in Berkeley). He leapt into this routine, though sometimes he missed the quieter pre-college life with his dad and Carole and Finn and Rachel and Blaine. But not often, not often enough to temper his enthusiasm.

It was the summer between junior and senior year of college and Blaine had just come back from a semester studying abroad in England. He had a job waiting for him in Berkeley, but he was allowed a week of freedom before they needed him back, and it was with sweaty palms Blaine landed in JFK to visit his boyfriend. Things had been …weird… with Kurt for a while. Blaine didn't suspect him of cheating and he knew Kurt would never suspect Blaine either, but they were distant with each other, less likely to blow off a day of class to hop on a cheap flight and spontaneously spend a long weekend in either one of their cities. They had talked more than ever when Blaine was in London. He had to top up his phone constantly, blowing twenty pence a minute calling Kurt, but the time difference was advantageous to Blaine: Kurt was more likely to pick up his phone during the day than at night, when he would invariably be out with friends. So Blaine thought that whatever strain there was on their relationship might have passed with all the across-the-pond chatting they had been doing.

He was still nervous. It didn't help that Kurt couldn't pick him up from the airport, was busy doing something or other he was unable to make an excuse to get out of and so Blaine had to take a taxi from JFK to Kurt's apartment in the East Village. As the streets flew past outside the taxi window, Blaine was reminded of how little he liked the endless concrete of the city. A tree here, a tree there—it wasn't anything like his gorgeous lush green Berkeley, rolling hills and constant flowers, the air smelling so sweet, as if just breathing it in improved the quality of the contents of his body. New York smelled and the towering buildings were oppressive. He had thought, before he visited, that he would love it as much as Kurt had. But it had stifled Blaine and made him feel so small. Berkeley made him feel like he was part of something vibrant and living. In New York he looked at the sidewalks and wondered what was buried underneath the asphalt: flowers trampled long ago against human greed.

The cab finally stopped outside Kurt's building. Blaine looked up once at the face of the apartment complex before he turned back and paid the driver. He felt a heaviness on him and in him and didn't know how to account for his feelings. This was Kurt's home. Blaine hadn't been to this particular apartment before; Kurt had moved here while he was in England and had entirely new roommates Blaine had never heard of before. He wondered if they even knew his name. He thought, fleetingly, perhaps he should wear a name tag so they would know who he was.

Blaine buzzed the apartment to be let in and someone buzzed him back without asking who he was. He went up the elevator to Kurt's apartment on the sixteenth floor. Blaine leaned back against the cool wall of the elevator, taking deep breaths and licking his lips, trying to calm the unsettled feeling in his chest. Kurt would be here soon too, if he wasn't already. Then everything would be all right.

The elevator doors opened. Blaine picked up his travel bag and walked out into the hallway. He looked at the numbers on the doors until he got to Kurt's apartment. He knocked and after a few seconds the door was opened by a small thin man with three piercings in one ear and a flock of seagulls haircut. Blaine stared at him openly before collecting himself and putting on his game face. He stuck out a hand and said, "Hi, I'm Blaine."

The man tilted his head to one side. "Do you live here?" he asked.

Blaine didn't quite know what to say but finally managed, "No—I'm visiting Kurt."

"Oh, Kurt! Love that guy. Come on then," the man said, and he stood back to let Blaine enter.

As Blaine expected, the apartment was gaudy and looked barely lived in. There were several varieties of liquors stacked elegantly on a ledge that ran across the top of the kitchen cabinets, and Blaine knew the pattern in the colors was Kurt's doing. It was the one thing that made him feel a little more grounded in what was otherwise an alien world to him. Blaine set his bag down next to the couch and sat. He looked at the man, who was pouring himself some orange juice from the refrigerator.

"Do you live here? Are you one of Kurt's roommates?"

"Huh?" The man looked up at Blaine, an eyebrow raised. "Do I—oh, no, I'm just visiting too."

Blaine hated him, immediately. Not for who he was but that he assumed he and Blaine were equals in the apartment. Blaine wanted to explain to this man that he and Kurt were boyfriends, had been for five years, were in love, were everything, were solid, were good, he belonged here more than anyone else deserved to, even Kurt's roommates—wildly, Blaine grew frantic inside his own mind but cringed at acknowledging he didn't belong here, really. This was not the place for him, not the speed he wanted to go at in his life, but it was for Kurt.

Tilting his head back onto the couch, Blaine closed his eyes to prevent tears from falling out of them. He was finally fully understanding the gap between him and Kurt, the bubble that was pushing them apart. Kurt was running at full speed without any destination in mind and loving it. Blaine had finished running, had never really been running in the first place—had finished his slow jaunt, then, toward what he wanted, and what he now had: his quiet apartment and peaceful life in Berkeley. He wanted Kurt in it, but they were at completely different trajectories. Kurt's life was exciting. Blaine's wasn't.

He rubbed a hand over his face and sighed at himself. Being melodramatic as usual. New York wasn't so bad, Blaine thought, looking out the window. And Kurt would be back soon. Maybe then things would be okay again.