There are letters.
Phone calls, video calls, emails, sure.
The letters are tangible, though. Words he can keep close to his heart, tight in his fist, drink every loop, tail and smudge with parched eyes.
Pictures are kept separate from the action. Protected.
Words - love, safe, with, stay - they go with him into combat.
Sometimes - okay, all the time - Olivia Anderson wishes she could hold her articles in her hands. There is a comfort in the tangible. And print journalism, however obsolete, does imply actual ink on actual paper. But times have changed. Everything is virtual. Convenient? Yes. But when it comes to her work? There is nothing quite so nerve-wracking as sending a piece out into cyberspace. Thumb drives and backed-up files be damned.
Writing human interest pieces for the paper ranges from mundane to cute to confounding. Her current assignment, though, is downright terrifying. Because this time, the subject isn't the eccentric old man collecting antlers and other bits of wildlife detritus to display in a garden that could be seen from the highway, complete with life sized plastic owls, deer and foxes.
This time, it is personal. Word had gotten around that her son's deployment would soon be coming to an end. Would she consider writing about Blaine's homecoming and reintegration into civilian life?
She'd written about Blaine before. About how his being deployed had affected her. It had actually been a relief to put words to the gaping, son-shaped hole where her heart used to be.
Her husband, David, had disapproved. He was retired military. They were a military family. Deployments were expected, and it was an honor to sacrifice for their country. Even if it meant sending a son off to war. (Sentiments like this aside, Olivia still turned over in bed the nights Blaine was gone to find David's side of the bed empty. She would inevitably find him in the kitchen, hunched over his laptop. Checking his email. Hoping, she knew, for an update from halfway across the world.)
This new assignment, though, is something else. It is one thing, after all, to write about one's own experience. It will be quite another to mix work and family in the way that writing about Blaine would require.
Thinking back, it is hard to picture his homecoming. It seems strange that something he had imagined for so long would, when conjured, produce only a blur.
Vibrant green overwhelming eyes dulled to the blinding beige of a sun-drenched desert. Rich, homey smells. The buzz of quietly excited conversation. The stretch of a forced smile spreading tension through his face. Clenching his jaw in determination to keep it in place. Family advancing on him one by one. His brother, father, mother. Mechanically hugging each one.
Words play across his mind. Relief. Joy. Contentment. Warmth.
What he should feel in this moment.
But instead, he goes through the motions with an air of detachment. Feeling nothing.
It is disconcerting.
Only the strength of Kurt's arms that night sear his memory.
Safe.
Home.
He exhales.
Seeing Blaine again is like having that final, crucial puzzle piece snap into place.
He is at once familiar and foreign. But there is excitement in rediscovery.
That first night, they hold each other. Breathe each other in. Kurt still fits in Blaine's embrace - no longer without a tether, he lets exhaustion and elation pull him into oblivion.
That is not to say that he sleeps. That first night in Kurt's arms, his eyes scan the darkened room for suspicious movement. Ears attuned to every creak of the floor. The shudder of the refrigerator as it settles in for the night.
Adrenaline coursing, he is grateful for Kurt's position between himself and the wall. If not exactly a secure location, it is at least a protective one.
He only begins to nod off when the sun peeks over the horizon.