Chapter Six: Draw Those Lines

I was still on Romanian time, which meant that I fell asleep early and was up again at the crack of dawn. I sat in my friends' kitchen editing and uploading the previous day's vlog while I waited for them to get up.

After a long night's sleep, what had happened between Rachel and me the night before was starting to seem crazy and surreal, but I focused on replying to tweets and Youtube comments and emails from the theatre in Boston instead of dwelling on my potential relationship drama.

Kurt and Blaine emerged from their room shirtless with their arms around each other and disappeared into the bathroom without even noticing me sitting at the table watching them. I tried not to try to identify the sounds I heard down the hall as they showered, presumably together.

"Morning, Finn," mumbled Blaine once they emerged. He sat down at the kitchen table and put his head on the table. His hair was still wet and curly from the shower and he didn't look at all like he wanted to be awake.

"Rough night?" I asked, raising an eyebrow and glancing at Kurt.

Kurt shook his head. "He's just not a morning person."

Blaine didn't take his head up off the table until Kurt passed him a banana. Then he lifted his head just high enough to nibble on the banana while Kurt cooked oatmeal and brewed coffee.

"I've been up since four," I said, "Jet lag."

Blaine shuddered, and Kurt said, "Ouch. But I guess you probably had work to do, huh?"

Nodding, I said, "Our promoter in Boston emailed me sometime last night to let me know that there's going to be a ton of reviewers in the audience tonight. We're the last Avonroy grant show to premiere, so I guess a lot of publications are getting pretty antsy to profile the series. I hope you're ready!"

Blaine seemed to brighten ever so slightly at this news, but his bleary eyes still didn't seem to be focusing on anything.

Rachel emerged from her room fully dolled up as Kurt finished cooking the oatmeal. He portioned it into three bowls and poured us all coffee. He passed Blaine some coffee and the rest of us oatmeal and coffee. Rachel brought rice milk and some sugar to the table, and Blaine poured it into his coffee, still not speaking.

Adding rice milk and sugar to her oatmeal, Rachel said, "I just checked my email, and RattleBingBang's Youtube channel has gotten a hundred thousand hits since Finn tweeted that link last night. We've got thirty thousand new comments and ten thousand new subscribers."

Kurt's jaw dropped a little, and Blaine finally seemed to wake up a little. "What?" Kurt gasped, "Ten thousand subscribers? Just from a tweet?"

Even I was impressed by the swiftness of my followers. "And my vlog for yesterday should go live any second now, so you're about to get thousands more. I hope you're ready."

Blaine started scrolling through his iPhone for proof, and I said, "Speaking of which, I should vlog our parting feast."

I took out my camera while Kurt went to the fridge for (much to my relief) the real milk. "Good morning everyone," I said filming the whole room, "We're up early and enjoying breakfast. We've got to be on the road in about an hour to get to Boston in time. Soundtrack premiers tonight. How excited are we?"

Rachel waved to get me to film her, and she said, "I'm unbelievably excited, and unbelievably blown away by all the support we are already getting from you guys. Can't wait to hit the road."

Kurt nodded. "I'm already getting jittery. Months of hard work are coming to fruition tonight. I hope we see some of you there!"

"And what does the mastermind behind the show have to say on this momentous morning?" I asked, panning toward Blaine.

Blaine looked up from his phone and gave my camera a forbidding look. His eyes flicked immediately back down to his phone.

"Don't talk to him!" Rachel said sharply, pulling my arm to get the camera off of Blaine. "Rule number one of Blaine Anderson: don't talk to him in the morning before he's had at least two cups of coffee."

Kurt nodded. "Memorize that rule if you want to survive more than a day with him in an RV."

I glanced at Blaine, whose face was blank and dozy as though he had no idea we were talking about him.

I told my vlog, "Alright. See? We're already learning things about each other."

I ate my oatmeal and drank my coffee, and then Rachel started bossing us all around.

"We need to get that RV packed and we need to get out of here. Now. Blaine: chug the coffee. Let's move."

I'd been living out of a backpack for five years, so I'd forgotten how time consuming packing could be for normal people. It took half an hour of gathering and last minute shoving stuff into bags before we were ready to take the first armful of stuff down the RV, which I'd parked on the street across from their apartment.

And then they started exploring the RV.

I vlogged the exploration as it happened. The RV had a couch behind the driver's cab that would be where I slept at night. In the loft right above the cab was a double bed, which Rachel claimed. There was a kitchenette with a microwave, fridge, and a stove across from the couch, and a closet-sized bathroom with a tiny sink, toilet, and shower at the end of the couch. Another double bed across the back end of the RV would belong to Kurt and Blaine.

There were storage compartments underneath and on top, plus a trailer towing behind, so with effort, we managed to fit all of their luggage, sets, costumes, instruments, and sound equipment in.

"It's really not nearly as bad as I thought it would be," said Blaine, "I didn't realize we were getting a trailer too. There's plenty of space."

I nodded, but both Kurt and Rachel looked dubious.

"What about sex?" asked Kurt bluntly.

Rachel, Blaine, and I all blushed and turned to him in surprise.

"Oh come on," said Kurt, "Blaine and I just got engaged. Finn and Rachel are long-lost lovers. Don't try to tell me none of you have wondered about it. We should set ground rules."

The four of us were standing in the tiny RV that we were about to spend the next four months in, and my step-brother was talking about sex. I wondered momentarily how my life had come to this.

I said, "You'll just have to get used to doing it quietly or adjust to the idea that we're going to know what you're doing."

Rachel looked incredibly uncomfortable by the conversation, and Blaine's expression had changed so little that I knew he was silently begging for the topic to change. I tried not to burst out laughing.

And Kurt was way too unapologetically Kurt to give a shit. He said, "Okay. Just as long as we're all agreed that it's okay."

Rachel and Blaine nodded quickly, and I said, "We'll just go with the flow. I've got headphones if you guys get too freaky."

Blaine interjected, "And we'll get hotels sometimes too, right?"

I said, "We get to stay in hotels if we sell enough merchandise."

"What counts as enough?"

I said, "Well, right now we're breaking even on the tour, provided that gas prices don't skyrocket, the RV doesn't break down, and we stick to our food budget."

"So any profits from merch go to hotels?"

Rachel was much much much too high maintenance for four months in an RV, and we all knew it.

I said, "Well, no, because first we need to make back the money we spent on the merch in the first place."

"What? We paid for the merch in full, didn't we?" Rachel asked, "So it's not like we're in debt or anything. Any cash we make is ours."

Sometimes it boggled my mind how these people could be so talented and so yet bad at math. I said, "Theoretically, yes, but we need to make back the investment first, so that we can reinvest it."

"In what?" asked Kurt.

"In more merch," Blaine told him, nodding at me.

"Right," I said, "We've got to have cash in case we need to order more merch partway through the tour."

Blaine asked, "Well, we'll be getting more money from ticket sales, right? Can't we use that?"

"The Avonroy Foundation will pay you any profits at the end of the tour. At that point it's a little too late for hotels. Once we start earning from merch, you can decide to spend that money however you want."

"Ugh. Okay." Blaine shrugged. "I guess you're the boss."

I sensed a tiny amount of resentment in his tone. Granted, it was his ideas and his music that made the tour possible in the first place, but I refused to apologize for working my ass off to help spread his brilliance around the country. Around the world, really.

I said, "I'm not saying that you can't get a hotel with your own money if you can afford it. I'm just saying that RattleBingBang-the touring budget-can't afford it until we sell half the merch. Do you know how hard it was to even get an RV on that budget? The only reason we can afford this one is because the rental company gave me a discount if I promote them on my vlog."

Blaine nodded, giving me a small sort of smile that I don't really understand, and I wondered if I misinterpreted his resentment.

Rachel said, "Okay. Well, I invested every penny I had in the touring budget, so I guess it's the RV until we sell some merch."

Kurt said, "Not a problem. I designed kick-ass merch. We'll have hotels within a month."

"That's the spirit," I said. Blaine kissed him.

I'd been sleeping in dorms, tents, and stranger's couches for five years, so the RV itself seemed like an insane luxury while a hotel was almost incomprehensible, but I admired their ambition.

"Do you have an actual copy of the budget somewhere?" Blaine asked, "I'd like to see it."

I nodded. "I'll bring it up on my laptop when I get the chance. But trust me; it all balances out, and as long as we stick to it, we should be quite comfortable on this tour."

I really actually didn't think that any of them were at all cut out for living on the road for four months, but I knew that they were all self-important enough and perseverant enough to pretend they were coping with it anyway.

Rachel said, "Cool. Well, I dibs driving first."

The guys and I exchanged glances. "Are you kidding?" I asked, "You want to drive a twenty-four foot motorhome with a six-foot trailer through Manhattan?"

She put her hands on her hips haughtily. "What, so because I'm a girl, I can't drive?"

"Well…" Kurt raised his eyebrows, "I mean, it's not so much that you're a girl as that you're a tiny theatre nerd who has never even owned a vehicle."

Putting her nose in the air, Rachel said, "That means nothing. I know this city better than all of you, and I took a driver's ed class for this tour. I bet I could outdrive all of you."

"You took a class?" Blaine stared at her.

She rolled her eyes. "Of course I did. Finn said we'd all be expected to take our turns driving. I never go into anything unprepared. Now give me the keys, Finn, and I'll get this show on the road."

Kurt, Blaine and I found places to sit as Rachel got behind the wheel and started the engine. We watched apprehensively as she pulled out onto the street and started driving. Rachel was about five-foot-two and barely weighed a hundred pounds, but she drove like a pro, and I thought it was sexy as fuck.

Once they started feeling safe with Rachel's driving, Kurt and Blaine started exploring the RV more extensively.

"Oh cool," said Kurt, opening the fridge, "You already got groceries."

I nodded. "Yeah. I got pretty excited when I picked up the RV. Even though it won't be stationary, this thing is the most permanent residence I've had in years. I nested a bit, I guess. I got groceries and I even bought myself my own blankets."

Kurt and Blaine laughed.

"Wow, I never really thought about that," Blaine said, looking at me in a new way, "This place is a luxury for you, huh? I guess this whole tour is. What's the longest you've stayed in the same bed for since you left?"

"Well," I said, "I had the same tent and sleeping bag for about ten months while I was in Africa."

Kurt said, "That doesn't count. What's the longest you stayed in a place you couldn't carry on your back?"

Shrugging, I said, "Hard to keep track. I'd have to consult the vlogs. But it's pretty rare for me to stay in the same place for more than a week. I was in that village in Belize for like twelve days when I had that weird virus last summer, I guess."

"Twelve days." Kurt shook his head. "Fuck. I honestly don't know how you do it." He looked through the cupboard by the fridge, examining my choice of groceries.

"Of course," I said, "Another reason for the grocery shopping was excitement over being back in an American grocery store."

Kurt slid a jar of peanut butter out of the cupboard and held it up, giving Blaine a very pointed look. Blaine rolled his eyes, and Kurt gave him an even sharper look.

"What?" I asked, watching their silent argument.

Blaine made an expression of surrender at Kurt and said, "Uh… let's just say that peanuts are to me what video was to the radio star."

I heard Rachel giggle from the driver's seat, and Blaine gave me an apologetic grimace as Kurt nodded in annoyed agreement.

It took me a moment to figure out what Blaine meant, and then I grimaced. "Oh. As in… they'll kill you. Right. You're allergic."

I had a vague memory of Blaine blushing through an explanation of how to save his life with an EpiPen back in high school.

Blaine nodded, and Kurt said, "I'm throwing this out."

I didn't want make anyone sick, but I'd practically lived on peanut butter and jelly for years. I was seriously annoyed as the jar hit the bottom of the garbage bin.

"Well don't waste it!" I said, stepping forward to pick it out of the trash. "It's sealed. It won't hurt anyone. I'll keep it for after the tour."

"Thank you," said Blaine sheepishly.

I took a seat on the couch while Kurt and Blaine started finding homes for all of their belongings. I scrolled through the comments on the video I'd uploaded before breakfast and couldn't stop grinning at my audience's reaction to my latest video. With very few exceptions, my audience was very excited to see me exploring new avenues and reconnecting with the past that I'd always been deliberately vague about with them.

And, as expected, everyone already had opinions about my friends.

"Everyone wants to know if you're single, Blaine," I said, laughing.

Blaine grinned with a casual shrug and said "Let them wonder."

Kurt rolled his eyes. "Why is everyone always in love with my boyfriend?"

"Fiancé," Blaine corrected him, putting his hand on Kurt's waist and kissing him playfully, "And it doesn't matter, because I'm in love with you."

From the driver's seat, Rachel asked, "Nobody's asking about me?"

Kurt and Blaine were reading comments now too. "They all think you're a diva," Kurt told Rachel with a congratulatory tone. "But hot."

The Rachel I'd loved years earlier would have been defensive about a diva accusation, but she'd clearly long since embraced it. "I was pretty eager in that announcement video." She shrugged. "The ones who count will see me perform and know it's justified."

Blaine and Kurt groaned but gave her proud grins, and I just laughed.

The thing about Rachel was that she would be intolerable if it weren't for the fact that all of her self-importance wasn't entirely backed up by talent you couldn't help but root for and cry about.

Blaine said, "Well, at any rate, tons of people say they're getting tickets. This is cool. I've gotten six hundred new Twitter followers in the last two hours."

"Yeah," I said, "Well, now would be a good time to think real carefully about how much of yourself you're willing to give, because my audience wants it all. And they will pry. That's just the nature of the Internet."

Kurt said, "Yeah, I know. I've seen the Tumblr blogs dedicated to you. It's a little… intense."

"Yeah?" I asked, "Well. I've been warned by other vloggers not to go on Tumblr, so I never have. I really only ever read stuff that people comment directly on my videos or tweet directly at me. I can't even keep up. But I do know that there are some groups of Peregrinators out there who are extremely dedicated and kind of fierce about it."

"Why do you think they get so protective of you?" Blaine asked, "There are people out there-I've looked at stuff-who are like… scary obsessed with you. On like... crazed teenage fangirl levels."

Blaine had so much talent and so much passion for other people's talents that I think it must have been infuriating to see a talentless buffoon like me have so many dedicated fans.

I said, "Because I interact with them. I mean, I show them my life, and I talk to them about my decisions and ideas… there are a lot of lonely people out there who don't get that kind of intimacy anywhere else. They know more about my life and my thoughts than anyone else'."

Kurt said, "It is pretty addicting. Even I feel like I know you better than I know a lot of people who I actually talk to every day."

"And sometimes I do wonder if maybe it's a little unhealthy," I admitted, "Because obviously I can't know them or listen to them even a fraction of the amount that they know and listen to me."

Rachel spoke up, "But you actively encourage a lifestyle that doesn't include sitting in front of a computer all day idolizing a stranger. And from what I've seen, the majority of your fans understand that, and they try their best to live that lifestyle. I wouldn't call that unhealthy."

"Some of them do just sit there loving him and not following his advice though," said Blaine fairly.

"Sure," said Kurt, "But that's not Finn's fault. And I think that the most die-hard of his fans are die-hard the way they are because the philosophies that Finn lives by resonate with them. And for the most part, those are positive, productive philosophies."

I ignored his 'for the most part' clause, and silently thanked Rachel and Kurt for sticking up for my choices.

"So they love you because you share with them," said Blaine, "But we all know that there are some things that you don't share."

I said, "Exactly. Which is why I'm telling you-decide how much you want to share now. Draw those lines. And then we'll all stay within them."

Blaine said, "And I suppose you need us to stay within your lines too?"

Blaine was always so composed and deliberate with what he said that I could never guess what he really meant by anything. I couldn't tell if he resented my lines or respected them.

"I don't want people knowing where I'm from or the details of my personal relationships, but that's pretty much all I keep private."

Rachel asked, "But why?" asked Rachel, "Why keep where we're from a secret? Surely knowing where you came from would give a better context to your life now?"

I said, "Because where we're from is attached to a lot of stories that aren't mine to tell. It's more than my own privacy that I'm protecting."

All three of them are silent for a moment, knowing immediately which stories I mean. Blaine gave me a look I could definitively identify as respect. I felt a little nauseous, but I pushed it back and said, "And I keep my relationships private because that's between me and those I care about. The whole world doesn't get to judge and probe into that. It's not fair to anyone."

Rachel and I exchanged extremely brief glances, and Kurt said, "Good for you. Those are good lines to draw. I'm happy to stay within them."

Blaine and Rachel nodded.

I asked, "And what about you, Kurt and Blaine? Do you want to announce your engagement? Or should that stay between us?"

Kurt glanced at Blaine, who seemed to trust his fiancé to speak for both of them. Kurt said, "We don't really care if people know, but we think it would be fun to just never address it. Keep people guessing, you know? It could be funny. For us, if nobody else."

I grinned. "There are only three beds in the RV, and I guarantee you that my viewers are going to notice that. They're immediately going to start trying to figure out which of us are sleeping together."

Blaine laughed quietly, and Kurt laughed outright. "Perfect," said Kurt, "We'll leave it open for interpretation."

Laughing, Rachel said, "You guys are cruel. This'll be fun."