2015
It hadn't snowed in weeks, long enough for Kurt to feel like spring might actually happen any minute. But then, just after April Fools' Day, a freak snowstorm nearly shut the city down. It was bad enough that half of Kurt's teachers cancelled classes, unable to make it into Manhattan with the state of the mass transit system. He found himself with no classes in the middle of the week. It was unusual enough to seem like a holiday, and he cheerfully slogged through the snow-piled side streets to their favorite neighborhood coffee shop for a mocha to go.
"Coffee for your guy?" the barista asked, and Kurt shook his head.
"Not today. I'm all by my lonesome right now."
It wasn't actually all that lonely, most days, when Kurt was busy focusing on school and his internship. He hadn't even talked to Blaine in over a week. It was strange being at the apartment without him, but when he considered having an entire afternoon to stretch out on the couch and eat junk food and watch movies, it just sounded pleasant.
"Sorry to hear that," the barista said as she swiped his debit card. "You guys were so sweet together."
"Thanks," Kurt said. He hoped she wasn't going to ask what happened, because that was just too much personal stuff to go into in public. It was bad enough that he'd had to deal with the fallout from Blaine having unsafe sex; he didn't want other people sticking their noses into that part of his love life. "We might be okay, it's just going to take some time."
Some time, he thought bitterly. Try five more months of waiting and worrying.
The snow was beautiful, though. Kurt knew in a few days it would all be brown and half-melted, but right now it felt very similar to an Ohio blizzard. He let the flakes fall on his face as he trudged back to the apartment with his coffee.
It was the perfect day to stay indoors, and Kurt abandoned his clothes in favor of a pair of yoga pants and a fleece jacket. He'd just managed to get warm in the old leather chair when the doorbell rang.
"Not home," he called. The bell rang again, and he heaved himself to his feet with a sigh. "Whoever you are, I am not buying what you've got."
"Damn you and your freaking city, Hummel!"
"David?" Kurt ran to the door and flung it open. Dave was dripping melting snow onto the tiled hallway, his now-worn suitcase and hiker's backpack at his feet. "You picked a hell of a week to visit."
"Yeah, well, you don't want to hear about what the fucking airport is like right now. I was supposed to be on a flight to Ohio." He wiped a hand through his hair and shook like a dog, spraying droplets all over Kurt's entryway. "So, can I come in or what?"
"Always." Kurt stepped aside and let Dave in, closed the door behind them, and then went digging in the in the bathroom cabinet for extra towels. He tossed the first one to Dave, who scrubbed at his hair and the worst of the water on his entirely-too-inadequate jacket.
"I wasn't going to assume. You keep inviting me over, but... I just show up one day? You totally have the right to say no."
"I don't think I could say no to you. Not when you look . . ." Exhausted. Ruined. Broken. "Like you've been traveling for god knows how long."
Dave grimaced. "I could probably use a shower."
Kurt brought Dave some clean towels and showed him where the bathroom was. "Come out when you're done, and I'll make us lunch."
"Honestly, I don't think I can put anything into my stomach right now." He looked apologetic. "Thanks, Kurt. I owe you one."
"You don't owe me anything," Kurt insisted.
He waited until Dave had retreated behind the bathroom door and he heard the water start up before heading into the kitchen. There wasn't a lot; he'd been eating a lot of take-out, but he did have an emergency stash of tomato soup in the cupboard, and he always had fixings for grilled cheese in the fridge. On a whim he pulled out the package of bacon he'd bought the last time he had a BLT craving and cooked six slices.
He was just assembling the sandwiches when he heard the bathroom door open. He listened to Dave puttering around while he cooked, but by the time he walked into the living room with two plates, Dave was asleep on the couch, curled up under the soft blanket that Kurt always kept there.
Kurt stood there and watched the rise and fall of his chest, his arm carelessly flung over the edge of the couch, for rather longer than was probably okay. He was reminded of the last time he'd seen Dave asleep, in his bed back in Lima. Dave still looked awful, but at least now some of the tension was gone from his face. If he felt comfortable enough - or exhausted enough - to fall asleep on an unfamiliar couch, Kurt guessed he must be doing okay.
Kurt turned the volume down on the television and went back into the kitchen to put Dave's lunch into the refrigerator. He ate his own sandwich and soup, and then settled back into the leather chair with notes from his Advanced Acting workshop, watching the snow fall through the security bars on the window.
The light was beginning to fade when Dave finally stirred. Kurt set his copy of A Doll's House aside and tucked the pen he'd been using to annotate it behind his ear.
"Hey," he whispered. "Feeling any better?"
"Mmmm," Dave groaned, blinking and rubbing his face. "Like I've been run over by a truck. I guess I needed to sleep."
"You looked pretty bad when you got here."
"I suppose three countries in four days will do that to you. It feels really good not to be in an airport or on a plane or a bus right now."
"How long are you in the city for?" Please don't say you're leaving tomorrow, Kurt pleaded silently. He wanted - he needed more time with Dave before he disappeared again.
Dave just shrugged. "No idea."
"I know the couch isn't all that comfortable, but you're welcome to it."
"It's better than a floor, or a moving bus. Thank you." He glanced around the apartment. "Blaine won't mind me crashing here?"
Kurt shook his head. "Blaine and I are taking a break."
Dave opened his mouth, then closed it again. He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah. So was Blaine, when he told me."
"Told you what?"
Kurt sighed. He hadn't even talked about the circumstances of the split with his father. It wasn't that he was embarrassed, he just didn't want people to judge him, or Blaine, for that matter. "Blaine had a little too much fun over spring break with his friends, and he wasn't smart or safe about it. So I suggested he take a couple months to think about it until the six month incubation period was up." He shrugged. "It's not as awful as it sounds. We're still talking." Kind of.
Dave nodded. His eyes had already glazed over; it was obvious he wasn't in any condition to focus on much. "I'm glad."
"Are you hungry now? There's grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch or we can order out."
Dave blinked a couple of times. "Don't laugh at me."
"What?"
"I really want pizza. The really good thin crust kind with awesome cheese and nice, spicy sauce. There's not much about American food I really miss when I'm gone, but pizza is definitely in the top five. Although it was pretty good in Berlin."
Kurt smiled and got up, snagging the phone and the menu from the delivery place around the corner. "You're in luck then. It's not just the bagels that are amazing here."
They ate right from the box with napkins to catch drippy cheese and watched the local weather broadcast which kept running tape of people and vehicles sliding on the ice. "This shouldn't be funny, right?" Kurt said between giggles. "I mean, we shouldn't be laughing at other people's bad fortunes."
"I think they gave up all right to expect us not to laugh when they decided to try to drive on ice."
Dave picked up a piece of pizza and regarded it, munching. "You know, I tried to order pepperoni pizza in Berlin? And they gave me pizza with these weird pale green little pepper things. Apparently 'pepperoni' is something else there."
"That's . . . kind of gross."
"Tell me about it." Dave chewed and swallowed and then pointed at the tv, where a city bus was sliding half backwards and half sideways down a hill. "Incoming!" he called, and Kurt collapsed in laughter again.
They ate and watched TV until Kurt's eyelids were heavy, and midnight had come and gone. He snuggled up to Dave without really thinking about it. "Classes are cancelled again tomorrow, but I really need to go to sleep."
Dave nodded. "I apologize in advance for my weird sleeping habits. I don't sleep well to start with, and the time difference . . .." He trailed off, his gaze somewhere in the distance.
"You don't have to apologize. It's just nice having you here."
"You don't mind if I crash on your couch? Honestly?"
Kurt shook his head. "As long as you don't mind. It's not bad for a nap, but it's not the most comfortable place to spend a night."
Dave shrugged. "It's soft and it's quiet and I'm not sharing a room in a hostel with three other guys. I'm not picky about where I sleep. Now, if you could just keep it from snowing every time I'm here, that would be most excellent."
Kurt nodded, grinning, and rubbed at his eyes. "I'll get you some blankets and then I'm going to crash."
Except that once he was in bed, he couldn't fall asleep.
What kept him awake was the thought that, no matter how much he'd been all set to enjoy his day to himself, when Dave appeared on his front step, Kurt hadn't thought twice about inviting him in. It hadn't felt like an imposition at all. He wanted him to stay. It was puzzling, how easy it was, and it kept his brain annoyingly active far later than he'd intended to stay up. If Blaine had been there, he would have had someone to hold, to reach out for when it got too hard to deal with things on his own.
He finally fumbled on the nightstand for his phone. He had to squint to see, but he managed to tap out a text to Blaine that wasn't autocorrected too badly.
Dave is here, he sent. He seems a little lost and a lot tired. He's crashing on the sofa. It feels complicated, and I miss you tonight.
He didn't get a response, which kept him up even later, wondering if he should try again, but finally he did fall into a fitful, too-brief sleep.
When morning came, he emerged, grumpy and scowling, into the kitchen. Dave was still buried under the blanket, unmoving. Kurt thought he should be annoyed at Dave for disrupting his sleep, but he couldn't dredge up anything but confusion.
Every morning for two weeks, Kurt got up and went to class, while Dave got up and went . . . somewhere. He didn't talk a lot, except to make dumb jokes and ask Kurt about his classes and the upcoming spring workshop that he was performing in. For his part, Kurt just played along. He knew enough to be sure that Dave would come to him when he was ready, and that pushing would only make him go closed off and silent, so he waited.
The second Thursday of Dave's stay, Kurt got held up after rehearsal and then he missed his train, so it was well after 9 pm by the time he dragged himself home, tired and hungry and craving more than Dave's brooding silence.
He fumbled with his key in the lock and practically fell through the door. He dropped his dance bag and his messenger bag to the floor and then just leaned against the closed door for a moment.
"Something smells good," he said, eyes closed.
"I took a gamble that you like Indian." Dave was bustling around in the tiny kitchen, opening takeout containers and dishing food onto plates. "Chicken tikka masala, saag paneer, vegetable biryani." He nodded at two plastic containers set back from the rest of the food. "I didn't know if you liked kheer or that mango cream stuff, so I got both."
"Oh." Kurt opened his eyes again in a hurry, reaching for the kheer, which was runny and sweet and perfect. He spilled a little on the counter when he opened the plastic container, and when he used his finger to swipe it up, Dave grinned, but didn't comment.
"Dessert first, huh? I should have remembered." He put a big spoonful of basmati rice on his plate. "So ask me where I've been all day."
Kurt eyed the already-open bottle of wine on the counter, and the half-full glass by the edge of the sink. "Wherever it was, I'm guessing it was a long day?"
Dave sighed, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. "They're all long days, lately. I was at the library, just like I was yesterday and the day before. Oh, actually, the day before I was at the LDS research room on 3rd."
Kurt nodded, and reached above the sink for a wine glass of his own. He poured a generous amount and sipped, leaning against the counter. "You're still working on your genealogy? I thought you were done with that. You never mentioned it after your last visit."
"There's not a lot to mention. There's not a lot of anything. There was . . ." Dave swallowed hard, clenched his hand so hard his knuckles went white. "There was nothing fucking left."
"Nothing left where?" Kurt was having trouble following.
"Bialystok. There's hundreds of thousands of people still living there, but there's nothing. Nothing Jewish, anyway. A memorial at a mass grave near the remains of the great synagogue. The people who weren't killed and buried there in town were shipped off to Warsaw, to the ghetto. Most of the existing Jewish cemeteries in Bialystok were vandalized. It's anyone's best guess where the survivors went from there, if they even got out of there. That's what I've been trying to find out, where the survivors ended up."
Kurt watched his hand shaking a little as Dave deposited his own half-empty glass of wine on the counter. "Well, you know some of them got out. You're here, after all."
Dave shook his head. "My part of the family came long before the war. I don't . . . I don't think I'd be here at all if they hadn't gotten out when they did."
Kurt slid into the space between Dave and the fridge, wanting to touch but not wanting to turn off whatever had gotten Dave talking. "You found something today?"
"Eight hundred stones, in Treblinka." He gestured uselessly with his hands. "Inscribed with the names of destroyed Jewish communities in Poland. Because apparently there were800,000 Jews killed at that particular set of gas chambers. The record-keeping isn't spectacular. Two great aunts survived the ghetto, but it doesn't look like they even made it inside Treblinka. Off the train and right into the gas chamber."
"David." Kurt reached out a hand, touched it to Dave's, and startled when Dave gripped back, hard.
"I knew," Dave whispered, his voice thick and hoarse. "I mean, I didn't, really, but I suspected? And it still didn't matter, being prepared or expecting or whatever. It felt like I'd taken a helmet to my stomach. How can that many people just be gone?"
"I wish I had some answer that wasn't pithy or depressing." He let Dave hold on as tight as he needed, leaning in closer. "War isn't ever pretty."
Dave huffed out a sharp, bitter laugh. "No shit."
Kurt surveyed the table, covered with Indian food, the plate with the rice, and Dave's ruined face. "I think," he said carefully, "that you need to eat something. And then maybe some sleep would be good."
Dave nodded, downed the rest of his glass of wine, and filled his plate without any real attention. Kurt followed, taking a little more care with his.
"Do you mind if we eat here?" Kurt asked, gesturing around the kitchen.. "I'm so tired. If I sit down you're going to have to roll me to bed, but I can't fall asleep yet. I still have homework for tomorrow."
"Be my guest." Dave's voice was dull and distracted. The way he ate made it clear his mind was elsewhere. Kurt's heart ached for him, but taking care of Dave wasn't the same as it would have been if he'd tried to do the same for Blaine. There was too much in the way to make it simple. Whatever he could do to help, it was going to
Once they had finished eating and had packed the leftovers away in the fridge, Kurt had come to a decision. "You should take my bed tonight. I'll sleep on the couch."
Dave shook his head. "No, that's okay. You're the one who has to be on his game tomorrow."
"David." Kurt held Dave's gaze when he looked up from wiping down the counter. "I want to. There's not a lot I can do to help, not without things getting complicated. But I can do this. Please. Take my bed."
Dave looked at him for a long moment. "It's already complicated," he said quietly. "And I don't think where I sleep's going to make much of a difference. But if it would make you feel better, I'll switch with you, just for tonight."
"I'm going to take a shower and then I'll be out of your hair. Leave the rest of the cleaning, too; I'll finish that all up later."
Dave was quiet while he got ready for bed. Kurt considered changing the sheets, but it had only been him sleeping there for a while now, and he didn't think Dave was even going to notice one way or the other. But when Dave was finally under the covers and Kurt was about to turn off the light, he stopped Kurt with one word.
"Stay?"
Kurt blinked at him, surprised. "You sure?"
"Please. I don't want to be alone right now." He looked embarrassed by this admission, and added, "I can watch the goriest horror movies, but this..."
"I can understand that," Kurt assured him. He could still remember the nights after the accident, when he would wake up hearing the crash and smelling the smoke, calling for his mother, only to find his father crammed into his tiny twin bed with him. "Will the light bother you, if I stay up and work on my reading?"
"No. That'd be perfect."
Dave looked so grateful, Kurt wanted to hug him, but he just nodded and went to collect his things. He settled down on top of the blankets, letting his leg touch Dave's, hoping the warmth would calm him more than agitate him.
After a few minutes, Dave pressed his leg back against Kurt's, and Kurt smiled.
"'night," Dave mumbled. Kurt started to reply, but Dave was already asleep.
Three hours later, Kurt woke with a start. Someone was crying. Who was crying? He rubbed a hand over his face, but his hand came away dry. It wasn't him. Good.
No. Not good. Who was crying? Blaine was staying with friends. Finn was in Ohio.
Oh.
Dave.
Dave had kicked the blankets back, and he was shivering. "No," he kept pleading. "No. No, I won't. You can't make me. I know what they do in the camps, I won't go!"
Kurt was fully awake now. He reached down and tugged the blankets back over Dave's thrashing form, putting a hand on his leg to let him know he was there. Dave sat up suddenly, breathing hard, but he didn't seem to be coherent enough for Kurt to know if he could tell the difference between reality and the dream.
"David," he said urgently.
"Huh." Dave blinked at him in the almost-dark. "Wha'?" He sniffled and dug at his eyes with the heel of one hand. "Kurt? What's wrong?"
"You were having a nightmare."
Dave just sat there in silence for a moment. "Yeah," he sighed. "Yeah. Right. I was. Sorry."
"Do you remember any of it? Is there anything I can do?" He felt suddenly awkward. "Would you rather I go in the other room?"
"No, please stay. I think - I think I just need to go back to sleep."
"Do you want me to read to you? We're still slogging through A Doll's House, I can't say it's terribly good, though I'm sure the patron saints of theater would have my head for saying that."
Dave burrowed back down under the blankets, leaving one hand out to rest on Kurt's hip. "That's my Kurt: NYADA renegade."
Kurt skimmed back through the manuscript, trying to swallow around the lump in his throat. "I'll have to read all the parts. And the stage directions. It'll put you back to sleep in no time, as long as it doesn't put me to sleep too."
Kurt started in the middle of act one, trying to eliminate any expression from his voice as he read the parts of Nora and Helmer arguing. As Dave's breathing evened out, he leaned in a little to listen.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Mmmmmm," Dave mumbled. Kurt thought Dave might already be asleep when he didn't say anything else, but then he shifted, rolling in closer to Kurt's leg. "Good to be home," he added softly. "You always feel like home."
Kurt held his reaction back, just went on reading as if Dave's words didn't matter, as if he hadn't even heard them at all. Eventually he put the manuscript down, unable to concentrate, and lay down beside Dave, the light still on. He stared up at the ceiling.
"You're still my best friend," he said into the quiet of the room. "I miss you."
It didn't change anything, but it still felt good to get the words out.
The next day, when Kurt came home from class, Dave was already there, sitting at the table with his computer and a stack of books from the library. Kurt picked The Drowned and the Saved up and leafed through it.
"Do I want to know how you convinced them to allow you to check these out?"
"They're under your name," Dave said absently, not looking up from the one he was reading. "I'll bring them back at the end of the week."
"How much did you have to bribe the librarian to get access to my account without my ID?"
Dave shrugged. "I might have sweet-talked her in Polish."
"I didn't know you spoke Polish."
"I don't." Dave smirked at him. "Well. I speak enough to sweet-talk a librarian."
Kurt left Dave there in the kitchen while he showered and changed, then he joined him at the table with his own computer and the paper he was writing. When it was dark out, Dave rooted through the menu drawer and held up a Thai menu, looking at Kurt with one eyebrow raised in a question. Kurt nodded, trusting Dave to order for him while he kept up the momentum he'd gained on his paper.
They ate from the containers of pad Thai and pad se ew, passing them back and forth amidst piles of papers and books, and when Kurt finally drew himself away from his work with a blink and a yawn, Dave was quick to speak.
"Go to bed," he told Kurt. "I think I'm going to be up for a while still, and I'm much better tonight. I can sleep on the couch."
"No you can't," Kurt said firmly. "Tonight it's your turn to read to me."
The rest of the week went like that. Kurt would text Dave on his way home, they'd decide what to do for dinner, and spend the rest of the evening talking through whatever Dave had read that day. It was refreshing to dig into material that was so different from the things Kurt was studying at school, but even better was the opportunity to hear Dave's passion come out in the way he spoke. At night, Kurt would finish his own homework in bed, next to Dave, and when he was sure Dave was sleeping soundly, he would turn off the light and join him. There were no more nightmares after the first time, but Kurt always woke up with Dave rolled up in the blanket, as close to Kurt as he could get without shoving him out the other side. Kurt didn't complain, even though he wondered what Dave was dreaming about.
And then Thursday night, Kurt came home, and Dave was gone, along with all of his things. The library books were in a stack on the table, along with the spare apartment key Kurt had given him. There wasn't anything to indicate where he'd gone, and when Kurt sent him an inquiring text, he received no reply.
Kurt knew Dave well enough not to be scared by this, but it stung to think Dave would revert to his old ways so easily, taking off without a word like that. Then he was annoyed with himself for thinking such a thing. This is David's life. It's not about you; he doesn't owe you anything.
Rather than sit in his apartment, which now felt so much more empty than it had before Dave had arrived earlier that week, Kurt gathered up the library books and brought them back to the library. They weren't just about the Holocaust; there were titles about Darfur and Cambodia and Rwanda. Kurt read the introduction to A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility on the subway, hearing Dave's insightful commentary in his head.
When he set the stack of books onto the counter at the library, the woman who came to check them back in smiled at Kurt. "You must be Dave's partner. I hope these gave him the information he needed."
Kurt stepped back from the desk, startled. "He's not- um. You helped him."
"I did. He's a sweet man. Nobody has spoken Polish to me since my grandmother passed. I told him some of her stories; she came here after the war. But that's neither here nor there. Your Dave, he has lots of questions. Was he able to get some answers?"
Kurt poked at the carpet with the toe of his sneaker. "I don't know," he said honestly.
"Well. Tell him that Eliana says hi."
"I will," Kurt promised, even though he had no idea if or when he'd be able to deliver on it.
He did his best to revert to his old patterns, but it was surprisingly hard to go back to living alone after having Dave there with him. He found himself distracted during class, wondering about the current situation in Darfur or the story he'd heard on the radio about the proposed Holocaust memorial. At home, he started listening to podcasts for company instead of the television, wishing he could share what he was hearing with Dave.
But he couldn't, and he realized that isolating himself wasn't helping, either. The first warm day of May, Kurt took himself to his favorite ice cream place and walked the neighborhood while he ate his cone. He'd just shoved the last crunchy, melty bit into his mouth when his phone rang.
"Mph-o?"
"Kurt?"
Kurt finished chewing and swallowed. "Dad, hey. Sorry. Ice cream."
"I got worried, I didn't hear from you. You're always so good about calling back, but I figured you were busy with the workshop and all."
Kurt tucked his phone between his shoulder and ear and wiped at his ice creamy hands with an inadequate napkin. Once he'd taken care of the worst of it, he plopped down onto a bus bench. "When did you call?"
"A couple weeks ago. You weren't home. David answered, said you were letting him stay there a little while."
"Yeah. He was between trips. He's gone again, now, though."
"Oh." His dad sounded surprised. "When we talked, he sounded like maybe he was thinking of sticking around for a little while. But Paul did say that David's got wanderlust like nobody he's ever met, so I could have read him wrong."
"What did you talk about?"
"I asked about Blaine, and he said Blaine had moved out. So I congratulated him on the two of you finally figuring that out. Not to disrespect what you and Blaine had, Kurt, you know I like the kid, it's just that I can tell Dave is good for you in a different way. I'm happy for you guys, really."
"No, no. There is no us, Dad." Kurt blinked back unexpected tears. "David just took off. I have no idea where he is, or if he's ever coming back. He won't answer my texts. I really thought I'd stopped scaring him off."
His dad sounded perplexed. "But then why did Dave say -" He paused, then sighed. "Okay. I mean, obviously you know best."
Kurt's brain spun with possibilities of what else could have been said between his dad and Dave, trying to pin down what combination of words or expectations might have sent Dave fleeing this time. Finally he just let out a frustrated growl. "He is infuriating."
"He's just a kid, Kurt," his dad said sympathetically. "He's trying to figure things out just like you are. He's gonna make some mistakes, you know?"
He crumpled his napkin in his fist. "Since when are you on Dave Karofsky's side?"
"Since I thought you guys had finally gotten over yourselves and gotten together. You're both too blind to see it, the ways you settle each other. But it's not my life, Kurt, and your life isn't David's. Give him time, he'll stop running eventually."
"He's been running for three years. I'm not holding my breath."
"Good. Don't wait for him, either. Just live your life, and when he's ready he knows where to find you."
Kurt ran his dad's words over and over in his head for the next three days, and when his phone rang late Thursday afternoon, when Blaine asked if he could come home, Kurt didn't hesitate when he said yes.
Blaine brought home a new espresso machine, which struck Kurt as a strange thing to buy in the middle of the sticky New York summer, but he had to admit the way Blaine ground his own beans and fussed over the crema was endearing.
Blaine took to bringing him tiny cups of bitter, rich brew on weekend mornings, while Kurt sat in bed with his laptop, catching up on the Google alerts he had set in regards to new stories in the news about genocide. He wasn't sure if it was Blaine's way of apologizing for his earlier actions, or if he was just being social. Either way, it was nice.
But the second week of August, the story at the top of Kurt's list of links caught his attention. It wasn't the content of the article, a blog entry from a traveler in Rwanda, that gave him pause. It was the byline: DJ Karofsky.
"Blaine," he said excitedly, tapping the screen when Blaine came in with his espresso, "this writer. It's David."
"Let me see." Blaine set the cup on the bedside table and leaned back against Kurt's pillow, pulling the screen closer. "How do you know? There are other Karofskys out there."
"Because -" Kurt paused, remembering the confidentiality agreement they'd always recited at their PFLAG meetings in high school. "I just know."
They read the initial entry together. Kurt couldn't find any other identifying information or contact emails. It could have been anyone writing on that travel blog, except that Kurt could hear Dave saying the words in his head, as clearly as if he'd spoken them in his own voice.
Kurt followed the blog religiously after that. David was a good writer, and his passion for what he was discovering came through just as it had in his postcards. Blaine asked him about it every now and then, but mostly he let Kurt read Dave's words in peace, for which Kurt was grateful. He couldn't have explained to Blaine if he'd asked why it was so important to him to have those words, but he looked forward to reading them every week.
August 15, 2015
I haven't been to Africa before. I'm not sure what I was expecting. Heat, yes. People, definitely. Dust, mosquitos, more languages than I could learn in a lifetime? Of course. But I also wasn't expecting to find community, to find people willing to welcome an American. Because no matter how many places I've been, how many languages I speak well enough to order coffee or ask for directions, I'm still an American. And here, in Rwanda, I'm even more than that. Here, I'm an American researching the genocide.
I came here because I needed a change of scenery. I needed something that wasn't the empty land where Auschwitz or Treblinka once stood. I needed a space that wasn't filled with the ghosts of the ghettos, of the camps.
I thought that it would be different, here, but there are just as many ghosts in Rwanda as there are in Poland, in Germany.
I came here to escape, but there is no escape.
I guess now I'm looking for answers. What makes a people turn on their own? Where does the hate come from? How many more times does the world have to live through another Holocaust, another Rwanda, another Darfur or Bosnia or Syria?
When will it stop?
September 9th, 2015
The Olympic stadium in Sarajevo is bullet-scarred. There's a graveyard in it's shadows. Another city, another people, slain out of hatred and misunderstanding and religious vitriol.
I'm tired, and I have no words.
December 31, 2015
I'm not sure what I thought, coming here to Chile. I guess I wondered if it would feel different if the genocide was the result of a military action, but it doesn't. The Tsitsernakaberd memorial is just as bleak as the others, even with the flowers.
All those people are still gone, 130,000 of them in three years. The streets must have felt so empty, so quiet.
Is that what San Francisco felt like in the early days of AIDS?
Too many thoughts, these days, too many parallels revealing themselves between the different parts of who I am.
No answers, not yet, only more questions.
February 13th, 2016
Back in Warsaw, which is where this whole journey started. I'm off to Belfast tomorrow, to learn more about The Troubles. I have a sweet internship to boot, working with a senior reporter for a Well Known Magazine. I don't know what the future is going to look like. I'm still searching, still wandering, still asking questions and finding fewer answers than I'd like, but I'm also learning not be so worked up about it all.
I suppose the one thing these last months have taught me is that you never know when the world is going to shift under your feet.
I'm worn out, not from all the traveling but from all the hate and all the ghosts. I can't carry them with me anymore, so I leave them here.
Thank you all for your loyal readership these last few months.
-DJ
That was the last entry. Kurt tried to find him somewhere else, searching all kinds of combinations of Dave's name, but he never got any hits. That first winter he checked almost every day, but the longer Dave went without a word, without any kind of hint as to where he was or what he was doing, the more Kurt decided it was time to step back. He remembered his father's words: just live your life, and when he's ready he knows where to find you.
So he went on, living his life, for three years after that.
His father was right: Dave did know where to find him, 3 am on a February Tuesday. Kurt picked up the phone without thinking. He didn't even recognize the ringtone he'd chosen until he heard Dave's voice.
"Kurt," he said. Dave was crying. "I'm so sorry, I just - I didn't know who else to call."
"It's... it's okay." He rubbed his eyes irritably, shaking his head at Blaine's sleepy inquiry. "What's going on? Where have you been? David, do you know I've been looking for you for -"
"I need you."
Dave's words stopped Kurt, the anguish in them almost slamming Kurt back against his pillows. He stumbled out of bed, grabbing his robe off the back of their bedroom door and tying the belt around his waist while balancing his phone on his shoulder.
Kurt thought later that there was no logical reason for him to answer the way he did. By all rights, he should have hung up on Dave, told him to call back in the morning, that he'd been the one to walk away. That he could have said something, anything, to let Kurt know he was safe.
He wanted to ask where have you been and did you find what you were looking for, but he couldn't think about any of that while Dave was crying into his ear. "Where are you?" he finally managed to ask.
Dave's words were mangled by tears and distance. Kurt didn't understand.
"Where?" He flipped his laptop open on the kitchen table and waited for it to restart.
"Paris," Dave said. "I'm in Paris."
He'd set aside enough money for an emergency plane ticket when his dad had first gotten sick, and it was still there.
"Okay." He sighed. He was going to have to wake Blaine for this. "I've always wanted to go to Paris." He scrutinized the list of available flights. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"
"He's dead. He's been dead for three months, and I only just found out - fuck."
Kurt's hand froze on the keyboard. "Who's dead?"
"Eitan. My boyfriend."