“Yes, Anna…yes, Anna…I know, Anna…I understand, Anna,” Kurt says, searching through spread sheets and photo files on his laptop in an attempt to hunt down the elusive Kylie Jenner in her panties walking a French poodle photograph that everyone’s been raving about since seventeen seconds ago. “I’m sending you a link to that photograph…now.” Kurt clicks send and immediately feels a piece of his soul leave his body. Yes, gossip is part of his game now that he works at Vogue, and he knew what he was getting into when he signed up to work there full time, but his job description sometimes includes doing things that he’s not proud of…like helping spread a photograph he personally feels is tacky as hell and promoting it as the next newsworthy viral image. Apparently, the underwear Kylie is wearing in the photo (which her poor dog is also wearing) are brand spanking new from her sister’s clothing line. And being a part of the fashion industry, it’s Kurt’s responsibility to make sure photographs like that one make it to the Vogue homepage…even though he’d rather shoot his big toe off than do anything that puts another cent into that family’s pocket.

But, he doesn’t get a say.

At least it’s a departure from the designer grill craze of seventy-two hours ago. Kurt may have hated that more. The thought of anything fitting over a person’s teeth like that, especially considering what those things are made of…

“And the meeting this afternoon?” Kurt sits up, his mind working. Why doesn’t that sound familiar? “Is there a meeting this afternoon? I wasn’t told…”

Knock-knock-knock. “Come on, Kurt! Let’s go!”

“Uh…” Kurt looks to his right and sees his husband waiting at the door, making a strained face and pointing to his watch. “I…can’t make the meeting?” Kurt says out loud, waiting for confirmation from Blaine. Blaine shakes his head, then points to his watch again, indicating that indeed no, Kurt can’t make the meeting. “I’m sorry, Anna. I specifically asked for this afternoon off.” Blaine walks into the office and starts dressing his husband, grabbing his jacket off his chair and throwing it over his shoulders. “Why? Because I have something very important I have to take care of, and it has to be done today. Am I sure?” Kurt looks at Blaine again, and Blaine gives him a stern nod. “I’m sure. Yes, I’ll come straight up to your office first thing in the morning to get caught up.” Blaine drags Kurt towards the door, the cord of the phone still pressed to Kurt’s ear stretching and straightening as he struggles to stay on long enough to hear Anna’s every last word. “Eight a.m. sharp. I promise. Absolutely. Yes. I understand…goodbye, Anna. Blaine!”

“Kurt!”

“Couldn’t you have given me three seconds to finish that call?”

“No,” Blaine says, taking Kurt’s hand in his and leading him down the hall.

“But it was an important call!”

“You say that about all your calls,” Blaine points out. “And I’m sorry, not sorry, but we only have two hours before Tracy gets out of school. It’s going to take us roughly fourteen minutes to speed-walk to our hotel, so we need to get our asses moving! Yours especially.”

“Ooo, a hotel room?” Kurt coos, instantly leaving behind him how vexed Anna sounded about being cut off. “Oh no. Did I forget an anniversary or something?”

“Nope.”

“Phew,” Kurt says, afraid at first that he may have forgotten the anniversary of their first kiss, their first date, the first time they went for coffee at the Lima Bean, or something equally as important. But he couldn’t have, because those have been plugged into the calendar on his phone since they day they happened, and transferred over every time he made a switch until he broke down and saved it all to his Google account. “So…are you going to tell me what this is all about then?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you might say no, and I need you not to say no.”

Kurt stares curiously at his husband’s back as they round the corner and exit the building, nodding to the doorman who hurried to hold the door open when he saw them coming. “Okay, well, that sounds a little creepy.”

“It’s not…creepy.” Blaine pulls to the side to take a pause and face his husband. “I promise. It’s just…this is important to me.”

Kurt looks at his adorably anxious husband, pleading with Kurt through bright eyes and a bitten lip, and smiles. When Kurt started working full time at Vogue and Blaine got his big break directing an off Broadway production, it became hard for them to find time to spend together. So they made a pact to try and eat lunch with one another at least twice a week. But one decade, a hit Broadway show, and a four-year-old daughter later, this is the first afternoon they’ve been able to carve out in a while. They both want to make the most out of it, and Blaine obviously has a plan. Kurt isn’t going to disappoint him.

“Alright,” he says. “If it’s important to you, lead on to our hotel room so we can get started with the not creepy thing.”

“Thank you,” Blaine says, giving Kurt a small kiss on the cheek before racing in the direction of the Midtown Hilton.

***

The room Blaine rented isn’t the largest or the most lavish hotel room they’ve ever stayed at in the city, but it compensates for that by being city view; with unblocked, diffused sunlight coming in through sheer white curtains; and situated on a floor far enough above street level so that traffic noise is attenuated to nothing but a low, lulling hum. Kurt notices that Blaine must have stopped by before he came to pick Kurt up at his office because several dozen red roses, arranged in clear glass vases, sit on most of the hard surfaces. There’s a room service cart parked in the corner, on which sits a bottle of champagne, a bowl of raspberries with a side dish of chocolate ganache, and several bottles of boutique bubble bath, massage oil, and body lotion.

The amount of romance effervescing in this one room reinforces that ditching Anna and racing out of the office with his husband was definitely the right decision.

The second they step through the door, Blaine says, “Take off your clothes,” and starts in on the buttons to his dress shirt.

“Ooo,” Kurt purrs, “that sounds promising.” But Blaine doesn’t hear him, kicking off his shoes and socks, nearly tearing at his pants in his haste to get rid of them. Blaine doesn’t hang up a single article of clothing, tossing everything frantically to the floor in a Brooks Brothers and Ralph Lauren hurricane, which makes Kurt cringe, but when he realizes that it’s in Blaine’s eagerness to get into bed, Kurt decides he can forgive him…just this once.

“Hurry up, hurry up!” he groans when he sees Kurt working on his socks. “Get in bed!”

“Well, well, well,” Kurt says, tossing his last sock over his shoulder, “I like where this is going.” Kurt slinks onto the bed like a cat, eyes locked on his lover, ready to pounce and make him his prey.

“Under the covers,” Blaine says, yanking the blankets aside so fast Kurt almost flies off the bed with them. “Quickly!”

Kurt raises an eyebrow. “Why so shy, baby?” he asks, but does as his husband requests and climbs beneath the blankets. “You know how much I like seeing you.”

“Now…turn around,” Blaine says, adjusting the blankets over them to cover them completely.

Kurt giggles excitedly as he turns his back to his husband, shimmying as seductively as he can into a horizontal position. “I think I like this bossy side of you. So in control. So commanding. So, what do we do now? Do you force me into submission? Grab me by the hips, and make me your…”

“Now, we nap,” Blaine announces, sinking in to his pillows, sighing so deep and so long that Kurt assumes his husband has lost five pounds and flattened three inches.

In the sudden silence of their rented room, Kurt stares straight ahead at the window glowing with afternoon light, completely baffled.

“I…I’m sorry,” Kurt says, becoming progressively more perplexed when his husband makes no effort whatsoever to ravish him. “Did you say…nap?”

“Yes,” Blaine says thru another relaxed sigh. “I put my arms around you…” Blaine slides forward to wrap strong arms around his husband’s torso “…we close our eyes…” Blaine yawns “…and we get some sleep.”

“I…okay, but I…I don’t understand.” Kurt shakes his head. “You rented a room at the Midtown Hilton…just to nap? What about the champagne and the raspberries and the bubble bath?”

“Oh…” Kurt feels Blaine’s head pop up behind him. He had hoped that maybe Kurt would overlook that part. “Well…we’re in one of the honeymoon suites. It was the only room I could get at short notice, and that stuff comes with the room. But…we can use them later on, if you want,” he adds when he hears Kurt’s disappointed sigh. “I just…I wanted to have this opportunity to sleep with you first.”

“But, Blaine, we sleep with each other every night.”

“No, we lie unconscious beside each other. I come home after you’re already asleep some nights, and when you’re the one who gets home later, sometimes you’re so exhausted you don’t even take off your clothes. We don’t always hold each other, and when I wake up with your arms wrapped around me, sometimes I don’t even remember feeling you.” Blaine tightens his hold. “I want to feel you, Kurt. I love having sex with you, I do, and maybe I should have communicated better what I was thinking. But I don’t want us to rush having sex and then have to race out to get our daughter. I’m willing to give up that step to have just you and me and some peace and quiet. I want to recharge a little. Reconnect.” Blaine sighs. “Does that make sense?”

“Yeah.” Kurt nods. “It does.” It’s not what he was expecting after all this build up, but it sounds amazing. Blaine is right. Between deadlines and Blaine’s show and their daughter’s school, doctor appointments, extracurriculars, etc., sometimes it feels like they are two people living in the same apartment who rarely ever talk to one another. And he needs his husband. Kurt took for granted how wonderful it feels to lie down naked in his husband’s arms till just now…and he never wants it to end.

“So…” Kurt snuggles into his husband’s embrace with a similar deep inhale in and a long, soul-cleansing sigh, “this is all you want to do?”

“Yup,” Blaine replies, kissing the back of Kurt’s neck in a non-provocative way. A sweet, chaste way.

“Just…sleep…until Tracy gets out of school?”

“Yup.”

Kurt can admit that he’s still a tiny bit disappointed. Watching his husband rip off his suit with such passion was definitely a turn-on. But Kurt needs more of this. More non-sexual skin-to-skin contact. More holding. More breathing at the same speed, more melting into one another.

Much, much more.

“And you’re sure you don’t want to fool around first? Just a little?” Kurt teases, wiggling his ass against his husband’s crotch because, yeah, napping is great, but so is a good, afternoon fuck. He feels his husband’s cock become hard at the contact and ruts steadily against it, seeing what his husband will do.

“Uh…” There’s a shuddery pause, and Kurt can feel his husband’s arms twitch as he deliberates, but Blaine finally says, “N-nope. No, I don’t.” Blaine grabs Kurt’s hips to stop him before he changes his mind. “This is what I want to do before we pick up our daughter from school. Just take a nap…with you in my arms.”

“Alright.” Kurt tugs his husband closer, surrounding himself with Blaine until he feels nowhere on his body left untouched. “You know, I’ve got to hand it to you. This is nice. You really are something.”

“Thank you. I know. Now shush, I’m trying to sleep.”