A bottle of champagne. The sound of the ocean. Blaine running kisses down the column of Kurt’s neck while they watch the sun set from the balcony of their hotel room, his fingers working through the buttons of Kurt’s shirt beneath the jacket of his tuxedo.

“Blaine,” Kurt whines, tipsy and warm and so incredibly happy he could melt into the floor. “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to get you undressed, love,” Blaine grunts, pinning Kurt to the scrolled iron bannister with his hips to keep his woozy husband (of five hours so far) upright, “but you’re not helping. Please put the camera down.”

“No.” Kurt butts Blaine back and turns clumsily around. “I wan’ to catch every second of this wonderful day.” He throws his arms wide and leans back over the railing, nearly teetering over in the process, but Blaine catches him just in time and holds him steady. “I’ve never been to Italy. I’ve never drunk $1,000 a bottle champagne.” Kurt lowers the swaying camera and gazes into his husband’s eyes. “And I don’t think I’ve ever been this much in love.”

“Me neither.” Blaine ducks his eyes and blushes furiously, one-handedly fumbling with Kurt’s belt. “But if you don’t put the camera away, the video diary of our honeymoon that you wanted to make for our parents is going to turn into a sex tape.” Blaine snaps his head up and Kurt giggles, both men getting the same idea at the same time. Blaine’s grin grows from ear to ear. “On second thought …”

Blaine takes the camera out of Kurt’s hand, ignoring his husband’s disgruntled, “Hey!” and his feeble attempts to grab it back. He puts an arm beneath Kurt’s ass and hoists him up, keeping the camera pointed at them while they waddle awkwardly to the bedroom. Kurt snickers into every kiss. Blaine loses his footing once or twice, the two inches or so of height that Kurt has on him knocking him a bit off kilter, but he still manages to keep them vertical.

“Are we … going to do … what I think … we’re going to do?” Kurt mumbles, talking in to Blaine’s mouth since he refuses to let Kurt break away for something as unimportant as conversation.

“Oh yeah,” Blaine answers, dropping Kurt to the bed and setting the camera on their bedside table. The table is petite and square, but overflowing with more bottles of champagne, an open box of truffles, a gold-rimmed plate with various finger foods arranged – strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, squares of cheesecake - and a small bowl of chocolate ganache for dipping. Blaine has plans of eating dessert off of his husband tonight, but that might have to wait, at least until after round two or three. He has to have Kurt. He has to make love to him, plain and simple, and it has to be now, before the alcohol makes Kurt too giddy, and the adrenaline of the day wears thin and they crash. “Start getting undressed, baby, while I line up this shot.”

“Ooo.” Kurt slips his unbuckled belt out of its loops and tosses it off the end of the bed to the floor. “You sound so official. So … director-y.” Overwhelmed with giggles, he slumps face down onto the mattress, laughing uncontrollably, snorting when he runs short of breath.

“Okay,” Blaine says with a fond chuckle at his goofy husband. “Get a hold of yourself. And here I thought I was the one who couldn’t hold my liquor, remember?”

But Blaine doesn’t blame Kurt for having one too many. He had been an overwound bundle of knots and nerves, paler than a sheet when this whole thing started. Not because he had any doubts that he wanted to go through with the wedding. Blaine couldn’t remember seeing Kurt as excited to do anything as he was about marrying him – not graduating from NYADA, not performing in his first Broadway show (chorus, yes, but it was still an achievement), not becoming a contributing editor at Vogue – and it gave Blaine a huge ego.

All of those enviable accomplishments and Kurt Hummel was about to lose it entirely over marrying Blaine.

He’d even suggested they get married in the airport on the way over; that’s how badly he couldn’t wait. But now that that wedding anxiety is over, it’s kind of nice to see Kurt, who’s always been the designated driver in any situation involving alcohol, cut loose this way. “Don’t go loopy on me now. I’m not sure I can bring myself to have sex with you like this.”

“No, no, no, I’m good,” Kurt says, biting his tongue and quelling his laughter. “See? No more giggling.” He crawls up the bed as seductively as he can with the world around him rocking, preparing to sprawl out on his stomach, but Blaine grabs him by the hip, intent on turning him over.

“Come on, Kurt,” Blaine whispers. “Lie on your back. I want to look into your eyes.”

Kurt hums, the image of his husband on top of him, watching him cum, way more intoxicating than the expensive champagne coursing through him. “I can’t remember the last time you said that.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever needed it as much as I do right now,” Blaine confesses, reaching around his husband’s body to continue ridding him of his clothes. He slides his jacket off his shoulders, followed by his shirt. “Can you handle that, Mr. Hummel?” Blaine asks, stroking down Kurt’s cheek with the backs of his fingers.

Kurt peeks coyly over his shoulder and pouts. “No.”

Blaine stops smiling.

“No?” He kneels up, sobering, though he had nowhere near as much to drink as Kurt. “What do you mean no?”

“I mean no” – Kurt flips over quickly, looping his arms around the back of Blaine’s neck and bringing him down to the bed – “as in, I’m not Hummel. Not anymore.”

“That’s right,” Blaine says, relaxing into his husband’s drunken humor. “You’re an Anderson-Hummel. But that’s a bit of a mouthful, don’t you think?”

“I don’t care,” Kurt says, pecking kisses around Blaine’s mouth, tempting him with licks to kiss him deeper. “I like hearing it.”

“Okay” – Blaine kisses Kurt shallowly so he can talk in between. “Kurt … Anderson … Hummel.”

“Mmm” – Kurt turns his head to the side, giving Blaine a hint on where next he wants to be kissed – “say it again.”

“Anderson-Hummel,” Blaine whispers, lapping at Kurt’s collarbone. “Anderson-Hummel.” He nibbles it into the skin of Kurt’s flank as he slips off his pants and his boxer briefs. “Anderson-Hummel,” he murmurs before he takes his husband into his mouth, sinking slowly and burying his nose into the curls there, stopping and waiting until he has every last one of Kurt’s moans ringing in his ears.

“Oh, yes,” Kurt murmurs, bucking his hips gently to join with the heat constricting around him, following it when it pulls away, riding after it, chasing it like a wave. Kurt weaves his fingers into his husband’s hair, grabbing on tight when Blaine sucks a bit faster, legs spread wide to accommodate the man in the tuxedo kneeling between them. “Yes, Blaine,” Kurt mutters, unable to keep quiet. “Yes, Blaine, yes, yes, yes …”

“Do you like that, Mr. Anderson-Hummel?” Blaine chuckles, pulling off a moment to suck a mark into Kurt’s hip.

“Yes,” Kurt says, head rolling back and forth on the bed as his husband’s lips and tongue travel from one hip to the other.

“Do you love me?” Blaine whispers, standing halfway so he can see his husband’s face when he answers.

“God, yes,” Kurt moans, reaching a hand out to the image on the screen, hoping, praying that this time it will be real, that it will come back, that he will wake up from this life that has felt like a dream – a horrible, terrifying dream for too long. Kurt bucks up into his own fist, but it’s not the same. He runs his hand through the strands of his hair, trying to regain that feeling of his husband’s hair against his skin, but it’s gone. Completely gone. Kurt cums over his abs, soiling his hand, accompanied by a bitter, teeth-clenched groan and a well of tears pouring down his cheeks. There’s no pleasure in cumming this way. It’s a reaction to stimuli at this point.

He grew numb to it a long time ago.

“Oh, Blaine,” Kurt whimpers, sobbing as he watches his husband rise up to kiss him, his smile glorious, so proud to be there with him, to finally be married after the years they spent as friends, then as lovers, broken up, and then back together again. When, even when he hated Blaine, he missed him so much he couldn’t breathe, Kurt knew that it was all over. He’d never love another man the way he had loved Blaine Anderson.

God, Kurt misses him so fucking much.

A bottle of champagne. The sound of the ocean. Making love to his husband in the honeymoon suite of the Positano Art on the Amalfi Coast, and not a single care in the world. Blaine was Kurt’s everything, and life was beautiful as long as they were together. It’s been nine years since that trip. It was perfect, a fairy tale. It was everything Kurt had ever wanted and more. But really, he didn’t need all of that. They could have pitched a two-person tent in Central Park, eaten McDonald’s out of the bag, and shared a milkshake for all he cared. All he needed was Blaine.

He still does.

It’s been nine years since that amazing trip, but only three since the car accident that took Kurt’s husband away. Kurt turns to his bedside table and looks at the collection of items he has accumulated in that time, his constant companions – Blaine’s high school photograph, the one that Kurt kept up in his locker; the bowtie ring made of gum wrappers that Blaine gave Kurt in high school – what he considers his true engagement ring; the camera he took with them on their honeymoon, the SD card filled with pictures of the two of them being in love, being happy; a bottle of Evian; a bottle of Valium, Lorazepam, Xanax, Oxycodone to numb the pain in his shoulder that never healed when his seatbelt nearly cut through it; and a single bottle of that $1,000 champagne, the last of the ones they brought back from Italy. Kurt’s had it open for days, sipping it, trying to keep a shadow of that memory in his mind. The alcohol is warm, flat, and acidic, but the fruity notes still pop. When they hit his tongue, he can almost remember how it tasted in Blaine’s mouth.

Kurt cleans up the mess on his hand and his stomach while he and his husband laugh and kiss in the video that did indeed turn into a sex tape during their wedding night. But Kurt can’t watch it past this point. He can’t sit there alone in his bed and watch them make love. Not this time. He picks up the remote and points it at the TV, waiting a second until Blaine reaches over to readjust the angle of the video camera.

“Happy honeymoon, Kurt Anderson-Hummel,” Blaine growls into the lens.

“Happy anniversary, Blaine Anderson-Hummel,” Kurt answers, holding his breath for the next part. Blaine blows a kiss, and Kurt blows one back. He switches off the video, locking the ghosts away, keeping them safe for another year, when he’ll pull out the video and watch it again.

Kurt sobs in the silence. His chest shudders and it hurts – dull and heavy, like a punch. His eyes squeeze shut, the tears leaking down his cheeks burning as they go. He doesn’t want to cry. He doesn’t want to hurt anymore. Every day, he’s not living. He’s awake, and food and water in between keep him going, but he doesn’t move forward. He doesn’t work anymore. He doesn’t talk to anyone. He doesn’t travel. He’s just passing time. He doesn’t feel anything until the day is done, and then all he feels is pain.

Every night he closes his eyes and hopes he disappears.

He opens one of the amber pill bottles – he doesn’t know which one. They all have the same effect on him now. They wipe his memory for about eight hours, knocking him unconscious like a brick to the back of the head, except lately, they don’t work as well as they used to. So on nights like tonight, when Kurt knows that the only thing waiting behind his eyelids are nightmares and what ifs – what if Kurt had driven instead of Blaine, what if they had just stayed home instead of going to another stupid gala, what if they’d left an hour earlier and missed the tractor-trailer jackknifing across the highway, what if they had stopped for coffee when Blaine said he felt like he was falling asleep - he takes a pill or two more than the prescription written on the label. He takes one last sip – one last gulp really – of that champagne that reminds him of his husband’s mouth, and tucks himself into his cold, lonely bed, allowing himself a second to imagine Blaine’s lips pressed against his temple. The more pills he takes, the sharper that feeling becomes, so he finds himself reaching for another.

Then another.

Then another.

It hits him quick, his lids becoming so heavy there’s nothing he can do but shut his eyes, even as he starts to feel nauseous, like he should crawl to the bathroom and be sick in the toilet so he doesn’t mess the bed.

This time, before the world goes black, he can almost hear his husband’s voice whispering in his ear, almost feel breath tickling his hairline, almost feel a hand cupping beneath his chin.

The breath and the hand are warm against Kurt’s skin that’s gone cold, as are the lips pressing against Kurt’s own.

And the taste of champagne on his tongue bursts to life again.

Did you miss me, Mr. Anderson-Hummel?