1

Several days into their week-long retreat from the world after getting married, Blaine was draped bonelessly across Kurt's chest.

"I hope we never turn into one of those married couples that lose their passion for one another over the years," he murmured.

"We won't," Kurt replied sleepily.

"Mmmmm," Blaine answered, trailing his fingertips in light circles around Kurt's bellybutton. "I'll never stop wanting you."

Over time, the fear lessened, and Blaine came to redefine passion again and again. They lost the desperation that had marked so much of their early lovemaking, lost the acute fear of losing one another forever that had haunted them all across Villalu and into Cloudlen. They learned to slow down and truly savor one another, knowing that they had time.

So much time.

Kurt introduced Blaine to several new types of flower oils and nectars; none were as consistently perfect for all occasions as their red flower oil, but there were many that they found themselves turning to again and again. Like the oil from the deep yellow flower that made them last for hours and hours, or the oil from the dark green flowers that made their skin feel like it was rippling, or the nectar from the pale pink flower that allowed them to enter a near-trancelike state together, to catch a glimpse of the heart of all worlds just by making love.

They loved spending entire days in bed when they could, loved learning new ways to enjoy one another with painstaking attention to detail. Blaine once awoke to something soft, wet and tingling dragging across his body, to discover Kurt with a small paintbrush and an opened red flower, sitting cross-legged and naked on the bed. He painted Blaine's nipples and wrote his name in Elfin across Blaine's stomach and hips. He wound the tiny brush in a spiraling shape around Blaine's erection, and then dipped it into his slit, smirking happily at Blaine's broken cry.

Later Blaine painted Kurt with oil, starting at the tips of his ears and working his way down as Kurt shivered with pleasure, dipping in behind his shoulder blades and tracing his spine. Blaine painted his name in Villaluan across Kurt's ass and then kissed each cheek, causing Kurt to laugh and roll over and capture his tingling lips.

Every now and then the desperation would come back; every now and then Kurt would be gone for too many days, or they would finally emerge from an argument that had dragged on far longer than it should, or one of them would find themselves barely evading death or serious injury of some sort. Sometimes the fragility of their bond and their lives crashed down on them and then they would reach for one another, get as close as they physically could, cry and kiss and cling and whisper everything they needed to say and to hear as they moved together.

Blaine especially liked to paint Kurt's tattoo with oil and then press his own against it while they kissed, reminding him that Kurt was his, that Kurt wanted him and no one else in the world.

They never lost their passion for one another. And really, Blaine wasn't surprised. He hadn't really been all that worried to begin with.

"I'll always want you too," Kurt replied on that afternoon in bed so soon after their wedding, stroking Blaine's cheek softly and sighing contentedly as a cool breeze wafted in from the open window, sliding across their warm, intertwined naked limbs.

"Always and forever?" Blaine asked even though it wasn't really a question, his voice growing softer as he moved closer to sleep.

"Always and forever," Kurt murmured, bringing his hand to rest in Blaine's soft curls before they slept away another afternoon.

2

He didn't think about what he was going to say, or if he was going to say anything ever again, really.

His entire existence had been so inward since Blaine left him, and the only way that he could cling to his husband in even the barest shadow of a physical way was to keep his mind occupied with a constant stream of memories and images.

How beautiful Blaine had been when he was young, so sweet and full of wonder, misted around the edges in the depths of Kurt's memory.

How elegant Blaine had been in his advanced years, the way he slowly settled into a new kind of handsome, lines that Kurt could touch with his fingers, tracing the history of their lives together, the history of their love.

Kurt occasionally dipped the slightest corner of his conscious mind into all the things Blaine had said to reassure him; how they would always find each other, how this wasn't really goodbye, how Kurt had turned Blaine's shell of a life into something beautiful and precious and perfect.

But he couldn't stand to think about those things for too long.

Toward the end, Blaine had said I love you far too often. He'd said it so much that it sometimes hurt to hear it, made Kurt sneak into the backyard to cry quietly after Blaine had gone to sleep.

Because he knew what was happening. And he couldn't do it. He had signed up for this, had decided to devote himself to a human man and now that man was dying, and it had been so long, four hundred years was so long, how did it feel like the blink of an eye? Why did it feel like nothing close to enough? His life had stretched itself around Blaine, held Blaine at its very heart, and when he left he wouldn't just leave a Blaine-shaped hole in Kurt's life.

When he left, the spine of Kurt's life would snap and collapse into shapeless chaos.

And it did. And Kurt didn't even try to fight his way to the surface when it happened.

But Kurt hadn't anticipated the numbness that would follow the chaos. The fact that pain could become too much to actually even feel, too much to contain in a single body.

He would have killed himself without a second thought if he'd really thought it would bring him to Blaine. But the universe doesn't bend itself to mortal wills like that, and such an act would probably just result in even more lifetimes standing between them, even more time wasted.

But living...living was too much to ask of him.

He only kept himself alive so that he could think about Blaine, his body nothing more than an irritation with its demands for food and water and shelter and warmth. He couldn't fathom the concept of communicating with other beings, of using a single bit of his attention to focus on the world.

What did he want with the world, after all? The world didn't have Blaine in it anymore.

When the Guardian found him, he barely even saw her. He tried to ignore her, but she sighed and reached into his heart gently, and stirred the memory of Blaine begging him to live, to work, to continue changing the world.

And Blaine's request. Blaine's final request that Kurt had promised he would fulfill.

With a dry sob and the last shred of energy he could muster, Kurt climbed onto the Guardian's back.

He knew exactly where she was going to take him.

It was a relief that nothing more than staying alive was expected from him when he settled at Cloudlen. No one spoke of making him go back to Khryslee, and even though people talked to him, no one got angry when he didn't answer.

He had no idea how much time had passed. He didn't want to know. All it would do was make him feel further away from Blaine.

Eventually, he wanted to answer. Sometimes. But the idea of speaking, of holding a conversation felt so overwhelming that all he could do was cry.

Because the last living person he had spoken to was Blaine. And as soon as he said something else, that wouldn't be true anymore.

It wasn't something he'd planned, something he'd thought about at all, really. But one day he found himself almost smiling at the tiny creature sitting on his knee. Because it made him think of Blaine, and it was part of the world outside his own head, and perhaps – just perhaps – he could let himself see the world again and still remember Blaine.

He looked at the tiny creature, and he let himself remember Blaine. The look on Blaine's face the first time he had seen a pixie. The way he laughed so hard he almost fell to the ground while Kurt swore and swatted at the pixies that had raided his dried honeysuckle supply in the cupboard ("It was sweetened with a very rare crystalline mineral, Blaine. It's not just something I can whip up any old time, but I'm glad you're so amused"), the way Blaine always tended to wounded pixies he found, trying everything to nurse them back to health with the gentlest hands when even Kurt knew there wasn't any hope.

Their backyard had been littered with tiny pixie graves. And for every grave, there had been a small ceremony. And Kurt had stood beside Blaine for every last one.

Blaine wasn't in the world anymore. But there were still pixies, and that small fact would have made Blaine smile.

Blaine.

My husband is dead.

He didn't speak the words out loud, but he didn't need to. The pain didn't decrease; in fact, he only cried harder. But a weight seemed to lift, a previously unnoticed pressure that had been squeezing in tight all around him. Kurt closed his eyes for a brief moment, sighed deeply.

"Blaine always liked pixies," he whispered, and the pressure lessened just a little bit more.