(I don't own Glee or anything, and certainly not the song "Walking After Midnight" but I sure can't get Patsy Cline's voice out of my head now!)

Chapter 15: Walking After Midnight

Santana stood and stared at her front door, not moving to enter her house but wondering what else she should do. In the end, her mind was in too much turmoil to do anything other than go off walking or maybe jogging, and try to either sort out or else get rid of her thoughts through exercise. Or just wandering.

Wandering is what happened, and she ended up miles from home, still wanting to walk farther but forcing herself to circle back. She figured she'd make it a circuitous route, allowing herself to wander for as long as it took. But she would definitely NOT, no matter what she did, go past Brittany's house.

Some lines from a song kept growing in her, independent of any conscious thought, until without realizing it and not knowing when she had even started, she was singing. Winding through the streets of her town, far from her own neighborhood, her voice was softly gracing the trees with doleful notes.

"I go out walking, after midnight,
Out in the moonlight,
Just like we used to do,
I'm always walking, after midnight,
Searching for you."

Santana couldn't understand why she should be wandering around lonely and pining away like this, when she had already walked past several houses of boys she knew she could merely knock on their door and have them fall over themselves for the chance to spend the night with her. There is absolutely no reason for her to be alone if she wants some company.

"I stop and see a weeping willow,
Crying on his pillow,
Maybe he's crying for me,
And as the skies turn gloomy,
Night winds whisper to me,
I'm lonesome as I can be…"

"I'm always walking…"

Thinking he heard a familiar voice, Kurt looked up from where he had been gazing at Blaine's sleeping head in his lap, but of course there was nothing to see out the dark windows without getting up to go over there. He let his eyes drift back down to those soft curls he was stroking and those eyelashes that fluttered just a tiny bit every time those tantalizing lips parted ever so slightly in a tiny soft snore (so funny so adorable so cute so... um well, kinda sexy) and he tried to tune his ears to draw in what he was hearing out the window.

He didn't even consider getting up to look outside or to open the door to hear better, because as his mom always used to say, "I can't get up right now, I have a cat!" The whole family (all three of them plus any visiting aunts or uncles) used to use that phrase to mean that the cat was curled up asleep in their lap, which gave them the right to have everyone else bring them things and do anything for them that would otherwise require getting up. Who can get up when a cat is happily sleeping on their lap? Well, this time he had a Blaine. Same concept. Same conviction not to get up as long as that soft purring (I mean snoring) was going on.

It dawned on Kurt that the voice he was hearing outside, moving along his street, was Santana's. As her sultry and deeply contemplative and somewhat pained-sounding voice passed closer by his house now, the lines she was singing went straight to his soul with no chance for escape.

"…Well that's only my way,
Of saying I love you.
I'm always walking after midnight,
Searching for you."

His eyes were so riveted to Blaine's completely safe, peaceful, contented surrender in his lap that he thought he'd never look away again. But... why do I feel like I'm searching for him if he's right here?

He could go out there right now and ask Santana how the night went and ask if she left early since there was still no text or call from Artie or anyone else, showing yet on his phone over on the arm of the sofa. He could also find out if she needed someone to talk to, she sounded so melancholy and almost defeated. Oh, but he had a Blaine. There was a Blaine in his lap. There he was, Kurt Hummel, the one guy in the world who was allowed to run his hands over his hair as he slept. Oh damn, I think I'm in love with him… He stroked Blaine's cheek just like he would a cat, and thought, Oh wow, I am definitely in love with him.

An actual cat from the neighborhood ran in front of Santana, a black one, and it didn't even register in her short-term memory (not that she was superstitious at all about that kind of thing) as her whispered words still created the most beautiful melody amidst the trees and houses along the sleepy street,

"... as the skies turn gloomy,
Night winds whisper to me,
I'm lonesome as I can be..."

"I'm always walking, after midnight,
Out in the moonlight,
Just hoping you might be,
Somewhere out walking after midnight,
Searching for me."

The moon peeked through some trees and she stared up at its bright crescent shape and wished that she didn't want Brittany so much right now, wished that she didn't need and desire and love... Love? Oh, crap.

Artie sat bolt upright all of a sudden, jostling Brittany out of almost-sleep. "What is it, Sugar Pot-Pie?" Artie paused for just a split second at this one (every once in a while, just once in a blue moon, one of her nicknames would make him think "what?" but since she had a different and newly fresh and inventive nickname each and every time she addressed him, it ended up being just another one of the many, many things he adored about her) and then gave her a little kiss saying, "nothing, sweetie, I'm sorry to wake you. Is my phone over on your side? I totally forgot to text Kurt." She groped all over the top of the bedside table without even turning her head to look, and eventually landed on something that felt very much like a phone. She brought it over to look at it, and it was indeed a phone, but not Artie's. She put it back on the bedside table, saying, "Nope. No phone."

Artie gave her that "are you kidding me?" look that always morphed into "oh, she's not kidding" - an expression his face was an expert at by now. "Sweetie, do you think I could just use your phone since we know where that one is now?"

She giggled as she handed him her phone, and he couldn't help taking a moment to smother her with kisses so he could feel her giggling in his arms, squirming with joy under his talented lips.

She felt so contented, like she couldn't remember another time in her life she had ever been so serene, so... at home. At home... there was something there in the back of her head... yeah, there were some times she felt more at home... lost in the back of her mind, swimming just out of reach, what was it? What was trying to come to the surface but nowhere near?

As she searched her mind, the moon moved just into the right position (or she supposed the earth was the one moving faster, although they both move, don't they? Another bit of information swimming too far out of reach to bother fishing for tonight before falling asleep) and a bright moonbeam broke through the orange blinds of her pink-bordered window. Her eyes were caught as though in a tractor-beam. The shape of the moon sorted itself in her blurry eyes as they adjusted to the light, and then as fast as the crescent became sharp and clear, it blurred again from her sleepy eyes losing focus on purpose. And for some reason the image that popped into her mind was Santana, covering the moon so those eyes, those lips, that hair, that face was all she could see.

The phone lit up on the arm of the sofa, finally! and Kurt reached for it, reading the text, "Hey Kurt, it's Artie typing... Sorry so late!"

Another text popped up replacing that one since he hadn't swiped to unlock the screen yet. "Night was fine. All good. Everyone happy. No worries. Night, dude! Sorry!"

Kurt looked down and just soaked in his boyfriend's sleeping features again, quietly and happily wondering how to wake him to tell him the news and let him head home finally.

He didn't know that this was Blaine's dream from earlier, coming true. Only it was coming true backwards, with him being the one who fell asleep on Kurt's shoulder while watching an old Fred Astair movie to get the violence of "Super" out of their heads, Kurt helping his sleepy head slip softly down to his chest with enough awareness still to cuddle in, and then eventually when heavier sleep made his head heavier, drifting down to rest in his lap. All of it was almost exactly how Blaine had dreamed it earlier, right down to the boy gazing at a boy he loves, contemplating how and when to wake him from his sensual slumber.

Kurt wasn't aware of Blaine's little dream, but he was certainly living a dream. Even with the subtle worries he had about when Blaine would let him in, really let him in, he knew he was already in further than anyone before, and that made him happy beyond measure.

He didn't even realize he was humming, "Just hoping you might be, Somewhere out walking after midnight, Searching for me..."

.

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