I've been gone a long time, I do realise this. I've had incredibly bad writers block, and I'm truly sorry. I'm also sorry that I'm not bringing you a Kim!verse installment today, but this just popped into my head and I typed it up in about an hour, so forgive the awful quality, I'm just trying to get back into the swing of writing really.
This is inspired by the fact that whenever I get the train to visit my boyfriend, I notice it's always the same driver, and I think he's starting to recognise me. Add that to an epic love story like Kurt and Blaine's, and voila :)
Excuse any inaccuracies, it's past midnight and I'm sleepy. Hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: Don't own Glee. Never have, never will.
When you've been in a job like mine for as long as I have, you learn a lot about the world.
I don't just mean the fact that I know my route like the back of my hand. That I know there's a railroad switch just outside Canton that you have to take at precisely 42 miles an hour or all my passengers are gonna spill their coffees, or that there's a tiny station on the Pennsylvania border that I have to stop at once a month to let on one old woman on her way to see her grandkids and at almost no other time.
I get to learn about people too.
And boy do I meet some people.
It's on a Tuesday afternoon in late May when I slow into Lima, Ohio, a town as nondescript and dull as any other town I pass through on my way to New York, and see the usually dead platform teaming with people. Well, kids, to be more precise, plenty of them, all crying and hugging this one little girl in a red coat and waving her off onto my train. She looked… I guess sad is the word, but she'll be okay. I know my people, I know that face, and that is one young woman who is gonna be just fine. Of course, it probably didn't help her emotions that the crazy tall boy started running after her like in some ridiculous rom-com-drama-lifetime movie thing that my wife makes me watch. I could almost hear the emotional ballad in the background.
But anyway, that's not why I'm saying all this.
That Tuesday afternoon in late May in Lima, Ohio was the first day I saw him, though I didn't realise it then.
Now, I rarely have to stop in Lima, Ohio, especially on a Friday evening, but in the middle of September 2012, that's precisely what I did.
It was to let on exactly one passenger, a boy with hair as gelled to his head as mine was back when I was courting my wife (and that was in the days of pomade, so I'll let you work that one out), wearing a blue bowtie and carrying a smart leather bag. He saw my head hanging out of the window, as I do at every station, and nodded at me, smiling as he climbed into a carriage.
And then I took him to New York.
It's a long journey, eight hours in all, travelling the back tracks of the Northeast, and it's the early hours of the morning when we arrive at Grand Central Station.
It's one of my favourite parts of my job really, seeing people when they get off my train in New York. Some of them are tourists, and stepping into the terminal is the first time they've ever set foot on New York ground, and the looks of wonder on their faces are both funny and inspiring. Then there's the people coming home, who just look damn relieved to be getting off the train and back to their lives. Sometimes there's people meeting family and friends, running and hugging and kissing like being apart is the most painful thing in the world.
The boy got off my train that Saturday morning looking like none of those people. There was nobody waiting for him, and though he obviously wasn't a native he certainly knew where he was going.
No, he simply looked… Happy to be in New York. Happy to be going somewhere in particular, that maybe wasn't home but could be mighty close to it.
He got back on my train two weeks later. Exact same one, the Friday evening from Lima, spotted me hanging out of the window, smiled and nodded and got on the train, same as before. His hair was still gelled down, his bowtie was still in place (though red this time) and his leather bag was still firmly in hand, and when we got to Grand Central, he stepped onto the platform and headed wherever he was heading with no hesitation and a smile on his face, same as before.
It kept happening. Every two weeks like clockwork, the same boy would take the same journey and I would wonder, same as always, where he was going. We never exchanged a word, never did more than nod and smile, but I found myself insanely interested in what he was up to. Drove my wife mad a couple of times, but what can I say, I'm a curious man.
I found my answer a week before Christmas.
It was a Friday evening, and it was the boy's day to go to New York. I stopped at Lima station and leaned out of my window and saw… Nothing. The boy wasn't there, nothing on that platform but snow and some litter. I sighed and continued on my merry way. I had a job to do after all.
I got to Manhattan, got some sleep and then got back on my train. I do the Saturday afternoon route back to Ohio too, and that day was no different.
It's not the same in New York, I don't get to watch the people getting onto my train. There's far too many of them all pushing for the doors, despite the fact that there's always enough seats to go around. I generally just sit back and let the chaos happen until I'm given the all clear to leave.
So I didn't see the other boy get on the train. The one with the scarf with skulls on it and the lace up boots, pulling along a suitcase in one hand and wearing a gum wrapper ring on the other.
But I saw him get off my train. In Lima, Ohio.
He stepped off the carriage, and I hung my head out of the window like always, and there I saw him. The boy with the bowties, the boy who goes to New York every fortnight, the boy kissing the boy with the gum wrapper ring.
Just right there, on a train station platform in the middle of Homophobia Central, kissing and crying like… Like being apart is the most painful thing in the world.
I realised then that the boy who goes to New York wasn't ever going on a visit, or going home. He was going to see the one person who could make home feel like home again.
I watched them reunite for a few seconds, before both boys turned to me, hanging my head out of the window like always. They both nodded and smiled, and then turned away and walked into the night, gripped hands swinging between them.
So what if I stayed until they were both out of sight. People shouldn't be so fussy about late trains.
In the new year everything went back to normal. The boy with the bowties went to New York every fortnight, and every so often the boy with the boots came back to Lima, and I saw their love grow and their smiles get wider and wider as the summer approached.
I watched as the boy with the boots stepped onto the platform at Lima with the girl with the red coat (neither of them wearing their identifying clothing) at the end of May, lugging a rather monumental stack of luggage between them, and how the boy with the bowties squeezed his boyfriends hand as he nodded and smiled at me.
Next time I saw them was the end of July, all three of them gathering their suitcases and hugging their loved ones goodbye. The boys didn't have to let go this time. They both got on my train to New York, and I knew it was the start of something great.
They got my train every so often the next couple of years, for holidays and summers and such, but time goes by and people grow and change and after a while they stopped getting the Lima to New York train.
I would think of them as I passed through that town, I would think of what they were doing, if they were still in New York, and if there would ever come a time when they would step onto that platform again.
And they did.
My wife had been nagging me for years to retire, and after a while I grew tired of the commuter train life and decided to finally listen to her.
Over ten years after the boy with the gelled hair and the bowties and the leather bag stepped onto my train for the first time, I set off on my final journey from New York.
I pulled into Lima, knowing there were passengers to be let off as there occasionally were, and I stuck my head out of the window. It was a clear summers evening, nondescript and dull but perfectly fine, when I recognised something out of the periphery of my vision.
I turned my head and saw the boy for the first time in years.
He wasn't a boy anymore. He was most certainly a man, a grown man with slightly less gel in his hair but most definitely sporting a bowtie around his neck, and being passed a large suitcase from someone within the carriage.
After setting it down on the ground, he held out his left hand to help someone off the train, and off stepped the boy with the gum wrapper ring. Well, the man with the wedding ring, really, as I noticed the gold shining off each of their fingers. I smiled and watched as they shared a grin, and then turned to pay attention to somebody else. I barely had time to consider before a tiny girl with curly pigtails and a red cardigan jumped off the step and into her fathers arms.
The man with the bowties straightened up after his daughters assault, and glanced around the platform as if to be searching for something, before his eyes landed on me. He grinned even wider, and nudged his husband in the arm. They both nodded and smiled, same as always, and the little girl, noticing her fathers attentions, turned and waved to me too, before gripping her parents hands and dragging them away.
I could hate fate, or myself, for the ridiculous rom-com-drama-lifetime movie ending to my working life, but that's just silly. Life is made up of wonderful little moments, and the boy with the bowties provided plenty for me. And I'm so glad that he seemed to have gotten his.