Time is relative; the older one gets the more this becomes devastatingly apparent.  Days drift by so slowly in youth – hours, minutes, seconds feel like weeks, months, years – entire lifetimes can be lived in imagined worlds over a single afternoon.  Yet it never feels long enough, and as the weight of responsibilities and Adulthood bear down there is never enough Time to do everything.  A flood of sand; the weeks, months, years trickle through your fingers like hours, minutes, seconds.  Regrets pile up like logs and stones, damming your mind and silting up joy with ‘I should have's and ‘I wish I'd's until Happiness seems like a foreign concept – something for other people.  Less busy people with less Responsibility; the less Important people.  It is a disease – this Hurrysickness of Adulthood, facilitated as it is by the age of Instant Information; the ‘I need it Yesterday!'s, and Now Now Nows. 

Douglas glances again at the clock, his foot tapping subconsciously against the leg of his chair as he waits. 

He muses on the currency of Time; recalls days of precious Summer as a boy spent at a desk in his father's office hand addressing mail to clients in his neatest handwriting.  His father had called it ‘Work Experience', designed to instil a good work-ethic into him and to make him appreciate his pocket money.  Instead he merely recalls resentment and jealousy – his mind torturing him with images of friends playing in the freedom-fresh air – the Time-Rich.  Those days were the longest of his life, irrevocably intertwined with the vivid taste-smell of the horse-derived glue of the thick envelopes, and the taste of the glossy black licorice wheels his father's secretary had secreted to him out of sympathy.  It disappoints him that he can no longer recall her name – only that she smelt so strongly of roses he could literally smell her approach before he heard her, so dense was the perfumed cloud she swam in.  He half expected the Nostalgia of Time to have softened the memory like an abandoned boiled sweet in a long-forgotten pocket…

He glances again at the clock and grimaces.

No – Time can become treacle still, even at his age.  Perhaps it slows again as one gets older?  Slowing until it finally stops.

He tries not to let his thoughts meander down darker paths plagued with questions but as the sticky seconds stagnate they begin to clot his mind anyway.  Douglas sighs and tries to re-focus on the latest report from Project Narcissus, pushing down the rising panic and doubt that line and clog his thrumming veins.

It is silly really.  He knows it is silly.  But it does not stop the thoughts nudging the back of his mind even though he knows Blaine will come home.  Blaine is safe.  Blaine loves him.  Blaine is just worried for a friend, understandably.  A friend who is in hospital.  A friend who is an ex, but a friend still.  Which is good, because everyone needs friends…  He was right to encourage that friendship.  He was right, and it will all work out because Blaine will come home.

Because if he does not…

Douglas returns to watching the clock.

-+-

            It is light when he finally makes it back home – each step feels detached somehow as if his muscles had gone to sleep before him – but he knows that he is unlikely to be able to simply fall face-first and fully-clothed into bed.  Or even onto bed.  He would probably settle for onto right about now…or even in the vicinity of…

His mind ambles as the elevator does its job and, for once, he is glad of the numbing effect of the double-whammy of emotional and physical exhaustion as they cloud out the overwhelming dread that a small part of him knows he should be paying more attention to. 

If he had more energy he would have planned out a response – perhaps a string of justifications as to why he took off to the hospital – but as it turns out he would have been fretting for nothing.

Douglas simply holds him tightly, kisses him chastely, and ushers Blaine to bed.

-+-

            Coffee – his lips taste like coffee.  They curve upwards into a delicious bow and Blaine finds he needs to claim them; to taste them again just to be sure.

Definitely coffee.

He feels a matching grin tighten his own lips in response.  A press of demanding tongue and his partner opens for him.  Blaine deepens the kiss until, lightheaded, he remembers they have to actually breathe.  Kurt's breath ghosts over Blaine's cheek as he tilts his head to nuzzle and kiss and suck and bite into the glorious pale column of skin below Kurt's jaw.  The resultant moan is low and needy.  Blaine needs to make Kurt repeat it.

Kurt's body is a map of freckles and dimples that Blaine has memorised by touch and taste and smell – he trails his lips – suck, nibble, lap, drag – over each dip and curve and plain.  He plays Kurt as if he were made solely for their enjoyment with as much finesse, dedication and skill as he plays any instrument.  Grazing his teeth over Kurt's right collarbone will make Kurt's hips buck slightly, and sucking at his left nipple will result in Kurt gripping Blaine more tightly.  A bite to the wing of his left hip and Kurt will bite Blaine's neck before pressing his lips to the bruised skin in pants - demanding and impatient. 

The thick, hot press of Kurt's arousal grinds into Blaine's inner thigh.  He creates a little distance – he knows Kurt can wait a little longer.  Hands grasp Blaine's ass and kneed as Kurt tries to re-gain delicious friction, but Blaine moves down to lick a wet stripe along the crease of Kurt's thigh. 

A leg hooks between Blaine's and Kurt flips them – his hands finding Blaine's and pinning them above his head.

            ‘Tease.'

Kurt's voice is gravelly, his eyes lust-blown.  Blaine licks his lips.

Hands pull his knees up and spread his legs further apart – Blaine leaves his hands where they were placed as the weight of Kurt moves back and down.

Thick laps of tongue tease him but he is good – he keeps his hands where they were put and his hips from bucking.  Kurt laps and tongues and circles and presses until Blaine's toes are curling and he wants it to be enough – because it is what Kurt is giving him – but he needs more.  Kurt stops then. 

Blaine's abdomen is pre-cum slick.  He throbs.

A blunt, wet circle-dip-circle-press starts and Blaine's eyes roll back.  One knuckle.  Circle-dip-circle-press.  Two.  Circle-dip-circle-press.  Three.

One.  Two.  Three.

The finger stretches and crooks and strokes him.

A second joins it.

A third.

One.  Two.  Three.

They fuck him then.  It is not enough and he knows that Kurt is purposely avoiding his prostate, but he takes it because it is Kurt.

            ‘Now who's the tease?'

Kurt laughs and Blaine's cock twitches as Kurt crooks his fingers and rubs.

The emptiness is worse.

A kiss.

Another.

Another.

One.  Two.  Three.

His lips are coffee.

-+-

            Bleary eyed he wakes alone and cold and empty and painfully hard.  The bedside table boasts cooling coffee and a hastily scrawled note.  Blaine groans in frustration, closes his eyes and tries to chase his dream before he realises that not only is it pointless, but also massively inappropriate and very, very wrong. 

The thought of Douglas taking the time to make him coffee before he left for work makes Blaine feel physically ill and soul-dirty.  Leaving both note and mug he heads for the shower, turns the temperature all the way past “brrrrr” and “teeth-shattering-chattering” to “blue-balls” and lets the freezing water beat some sense into his brain and away from his more traitorous parts. 

-+-

            They do not get a chance to talk about it until it all blows up.  In hind-sight that is probably why.

Blaine had noticed Douglas' ever lengthening work days – he certainly noticed how tired and tense his partner had become, but beyond shared takeout and a cursory kiss before lights out, there never seemed to be time to actually talk.  Not about things that mattered anyway.  Blaine's attempts at enquiring after Douglas' day were usually met with

            ‘I really don't want to talk about it right now, darling…  I'm sorry – I just want to unwind, with you.  Is that alright?'

So Blaine stopped asking, and Douglas was either too tired to remember or he did not really want to know the answer because he never asked Blaine how his day was.

It was not as if Blaine really did anything anymore anyway and beyond an initial concern post-Douglas' last trip to China, the subject had never resurfaced. 

In a way Blaine was glad as it meant he did not have to admit to being a drop-out failure who destroyed everything he touched.  Instead he focused on making sure there was dinner (take-out at least) ready when Douglas came home – and didn't that just make him feel like a proper little househusband – but Blaine had become a little addicted to seeing Douglas' tired, resulting smile so he persisted.

He spent his mornings avoiding Sylvia – the housekeeper had tried to get him ‘back on track' when she had discovered him spending more and more time lying-in.  He found her embarrassing meddling to be enough motivation to get him to wake, dress, and leave before she arrived.  Blaine usually ended up at Charlie's – he did not exactly have anywhere else to go – and there he remained, usually on Charlie's couch, until it was time to return to the penthouse via a restaurant to pick-up that day's dinner.

It was only a matter of time though until the fragile routine crumbled.

‘I have to go back out to China.'

Blaine swallows a mouthful of pad thai and blinks.  Douglas stares at his chopsticks.

            ‘Oh.  OK.'

-+-

            ‘Heard from Blaine recently?'

Kurt rolls his eyes and adjusts his neckerchief in the mirror before biting out a

            ‘You know I haven't, Rachel.'

            ‘So you didn't invite him then?'

            ‘No.'

            ‘But it's Sondheim!'  Her whine sets his teeth on edge.

            ‘I know.'

            ‘I know you know, Kurt.  I just thought –'

            ‘- You never think –'

            ‘- that it would be nice to invite him seeing as he did try to help with my Winter Showcase performance – which was perfect by the way – and we haven't seen him since your accident –'

            ‘- It wasn't an accident –'

            ‘- fine!  Hate crime!  He looked terrible at the hospital, Kurt –'

            ‘- I'm not surprised.  'Cedes said you completely laid into him-'

            ‘-I was worried!'

            ‘I know.  But we've been over this a thousand times already –'

            ‘-Ku-rt!'

            ‘He won't come, Rachel – and before you say anything: Kurt Hummel does not beg.'

            ‘But if he did somehow show up…?'

He spins to face the brunette then.

            ‘What did you do, Rachel?'

            ‘Nothing?'  Her smile is enormous and utterly mischievous as she backs out of Kurt's “room”. 

            ‘Rachel?!'

            ‘You totally owe me!' 

            ‘If you think this makes us even again you are mistaken, Berry!' 

A giggle from behind the curtain diffuses panicked-anger to something else just as heart-hammeringly jittery and he finds himself compelled to re-check his clothing choice.

            ‘You look perfect!  Now get out here!'  Another fit of giggles erupts from behind the curtain.  ‘Come on!  You're going to be late!'

He takes a steadying breath.  One. 

Another.  Two.

Another.  Three.

-+-