It was a few days back into their relationship when Kurt mentioned it.
"What happened to your bowties?"
They were walking along an abandoned street in Lima, where sparse trees decorated the sides of the road, and there were wooden railings fencing off farms further behind them.
Blaine looked down, mumbling into his chest. "I don't know, I never really noticed…"
"Spare me," Kurt said immediately, but softened his voice when Blaine looked up with alarm. "Your bowties are like your life and blood. Why aren't you wearing them?"
"I never wore them at Dalton."
"You had to wear a uniform."
Blaine didn't say anything and looked down again, watching the gravel street beneath him stand resolute.
"Hey," Kurt said, coaxing Blaine's chin up. "This is important to me. Don't ignore me?"
Blaine didn't smile, but Kurt could feel his jaw becoming less tense, and his eyes opened up a little. Kurt watched the way his thick eyelashes framed his eyes, contemplating the way they dilated, contemplating how much more time he'd have to become familiar with them…
The silence stretched too long, but Blaine didn't seem to care. He was lost in Kurt, and for a minute Kurt almost felt as if the past year had never happened.
We can get out of this cow town, Blaine. Don't you worry your pretty little head.
"Aw, come on! I haven't been able to touch you like this in so long. To know you as well as I want to in so long. We've got to start somewhere, right?"
"Do you really want to?" Blaine mumbled. "Because I know where we can start."
"Great," Kurt replied. "Lead the way."
Blaine interlaced his fingers with Kurt, and they walked hesitantly past the row of trees, to the wooden fencing rising up behind them.
"Trespassing?" Kurt questioned.
"No." Blaine's voice was sluggish, and Kurt had the anxious urge to slap it out of him, or do something equally distinctly un-boyfriendish. But Blaine had been acting so weirdly lately, and for god's sake, he went through a lot of mental stress to get to a mindset for them to be where they were right now. He wanted everything to be back to normal, damn it. But they were so far away from that, with everything from the bowties to the way Blaine held his hand, and after the first overwhelming joy of being back together, the unfamiliar thing between them made itself known. And Kurt hated it.
"We're on the brink," Blaine finished, snapping Kurt out of his pensive thought, which he had fallen into with his gaze conveniently landed on Blaine's lips.
"Of what?" Kurt asked, watching a cow sleep near the end of the field. Blaine propped himself up on the fence.
"What do you think we're on the brink of?" Blaine asked him curiously, leaning forward, and Kurt had to plant his hands on his chest to keep him from falling off.
"You make it sound like war."
Blaine made a curious hum in the back of his throat.
"I missed you for so long." He removed one of Kurt's hands from his chest but covered the other with one of his. Kurt felt his fingers naturally curl into Blaine's, and it felt so fresh and familiar that he almost started crying on the spot.
There will be days when I'll cry, Blaine. I'll cry over you and your stupid bowties too with a box of chocolates in my hands and Rachel breathing down my neck about Finn.
"And it hurt so much," Blaine continued.
Kurt looked away from him, face tense, but not just with worry. It was tense with what he knew was coming, the dreaded talking that they always did. The tight rope act, where Kurt always fell. No matter who helped him reach the end. He always fell.
"And what? You deserved it."
The terse speech was halfhearted and Blaine knew that, but his own pathos was blocking his senses.
"I know I did. But I… I feel like I should… feel more."
"Feel more what?"
Blaine arched an eyebrow at him.
"Take your other hand off of me."
Kurt looked up, questioningly.
"You'll fall."
"I know. If you let go."
"I won't," Kurt responded resolutely.
"I know."
Kurt paused, and for a few moments it was just their cultured breaths tainting the small town.
"So you… do you understand?"
Kurt hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "It's not a feeling; it's a precipice. And you've already gone over it. You don't need to worry about it anymore."
"But if you were to let go of me-" Blaine started to pry Kurt's hand off, but Kurt raised his other hand to counteract that. "-It could happen again."
"But I wouldn't," Kurt replied, the upper corners of his mouth twitching up. "You knew that. You know that."
I promise this with all my heart, Blaine. I won't forget you just because I'm in a fast moving city.
"I thought I knew I would never do it before…" Blaine trailed off. "And now I feel… too much… and not enough… at the same time. I can't… I need to look out for myself too…"
"Sweetie," Kurt interrupted, balancing Blaine and then hopping to sit up beside him. His face gradually become somber, in the way emotions worked on his face, starting slowly in the mouth and then spreading throughout the rest of his body. "Did I hurt you that badly?"
"You didn't," Blaine spit out bitterly, his mouth arching into a negative half-moon.
"You did," Kurt said quietly.
"And it's all really obvious, and it's all a big joke now, and we should all put it behind us, right?" Blaine slowly started drawing himself up. He still never looked at Kurt, only stared angrily ahead, but there was something red blazing in his veins. In a perverse way, it thrilled Kurt. "But I don't think I can put it behind me. I'm the problem here, not you, not the circumstances, not any of that. And you've forgiven me and it's all great but it's not great for me because I can't do that!"
Kurt ran his hand across Blaine's back, slowly at first, but more rapidly as Blaine began to get more worked up.
"This is… this… I was so focused on getting you back. So much that I ignored myself, which is fine. Which is usually how I get through. And now that you're here, I don't have a distraction anymore. And I know I'm one of 'the good guys'," Blaine made air quotes, "but you don't… you don't make me feel like that."
"Why not?"
"No," Blaine amended, seeming to disregard Kurt's question. "It's not that. I feel complete when I'm around you. You know that." Kurt nodded, trying to control his dry mouth. "But my complete right now isn't the same complete that it was before… that thing. I can't really be complete anymore, with or without you! And it's killing me to be with you and not give you everything, and it's killing me to be without you, and I don't know how to fix this, Kurt. I don't know how to tell you this in a way that doesn't insult you but there's no other way to tell it-"
"-I'm not insulted," Kurt interrupted defiantly. "Not as long as you're telling me the truth."
"Well that's it then," Blaine said, slumping again. "The truth."
Kurt sat quietly beside him for a minute, still rubbing his hand across his back. He wanted it to mean more, though. He wanted Blaine to feel his guiltiness too. He wanted to make Blaine soak in all of his scathing insults, all of his selfish deeds, every horrible thing he had done or would ever do. Kurt wasn't a saint; Blaine wasn't a saint. They didn't become par to par; they'd always been par to par.
Blaine made a mistake. A horrible, horrible mistake.
But it was only a mistake.
"I don't think the problem is me," Kurt started slowly, hushing Blaine when he started to protest. "And yes, I know you just said it's yourself. But it's not that either."
"Then what is it? The universe? Karma?"
"I don't think you have a problem at all," Kurt told him.
Blaine stiffened next to him.
"No, wait! Listen! You don't have a problem," Kurt repeated. "You're just… remembering."
"Remembering?" There was a slight indignant tone to his voice.
"I mean that… I'm just saying that your ghosts and past are constricting you."
Blaine's previously inflated stature floated down again, and he crumpled next to Kurt.
"The only part- the only part of my past…." Blaine seemed to struggle, in a different way than he had been struggling getting out his words before. He knew what he wanted to say, but they weren't natural coming off his tongue anymore. "I want you," he settled on at last.
Kurt suddenly hopped off the fence, and he held out a gentle hand for Blaine to take and hop off too.
"I want you too," he said in a low voice.
"I don't… dese-I want you a lot more than I should."
"What you don't deserve is what you've been doing to yourself! I'm here, with you, and I don't want to be anywhere else, or be with anybody else. We love each other. That's enough, right?"
"I don't know if I can trust myself," Blaine forced out, his words trailing off quickly, and sounding less strangled than before.
"Yes, you can!" Kurt said energetically. "You're not the Blaine-who-cheated-on-me-months-ago anymore. You're not even the Blaine-who-kissed-me-five-minutes-ago. You're not any of those people! You don't even have to be my-Blaine, Blaine. You're just Blaine. And," he said, smirking, "I love me some Blaine."
Blaine laughed gently. "I'll get the obvious out of the way: I love you too." The energy that returned to Blaine's spine made Kurt smile. It stood so much taller than it had before. Like something more thought out and cared for was stitched into it by more hands than one.
"I love you, silly goose," Kurt said, wrapping a fist into Blaine's coat and pulling him closer. "I'm always going to. How many times do I have to say it?"
You're stressing, aren't you? Don't, even though I know you probably can't control it, and that's okay. I love you. I'd say it over and over again if there wasn't a plane about to leave without me on it.
Blaine's face still looked cautious.
"Please believe yourself," Kurt pleaded while shaking his coat. "You feel it in your gut, right? In your heart of hearts?"
Blaine nodded, lifting up shining eyes and a timid smile to Kurt.
"It is telling you what you want to believe. You live for the moment, so listen to what it's saying now. It's right."
"It seems that," Blaine responded, smiling more broadly now, "my gut has finally found a receptionist that knows what it's doing. I think the messages are starting to get through again."
Kurt smiled, tapping his nose and pressing a kiss to his cheek.
Blaine smiled softly into it, turning his head and meeting Kurt's lips with his own.
"Buy me one," he said, in between kisses.
Kurt pulled back, amused.
"A bowtie?"
Blaine's nod affirmed him.
"I've bought you plenty of bowties!"
"All pre-break up, honey," Blaine countered, bringing his lips to Kurt's again. "I need a new memento."
"You know what…" Kurt trailed off, his voice becoming more decisive as he pulled away from their kiss. "No."
Blaine's fallen face almost made Kurt keel in laughter. "What?" he asked.
"We're going to get you a new plaything, but it's not going to be a bowtie."
When his face lifted so quickly that Kurt had to fake a coughing fit to hide his now freed laughter, Kurt knew he had the same Blaine on his hands. The same Blaine he had always known so well, whose faith in beauty would never be shaken. The same Blaine he had pledged to cry over in New York in the airport before he left this damn cow town. The same, different Blaine.
I'm still going to be the same Kurt and you're going to be the same Blaine, and we're going to be the same Kurt-and-Blaine. Except soon we'll be Kurt-and-Blaine in Kurt-and-Blaine take the city, and I'll miss you every moment until then.
I have to go; the plane's boarding.
And from the way Blaine was looking at him, his eyes alight with laughter and a little wild behind their irises, Kurt thought he was thinking the same way too.