“So … two years, huh?”

“Yup.” Kurt smiles, pulling a tray of poached pears out of the broiler. “Two whole, wonderful years off the market and madly, deeply in love.”

“Oh, Kurt! I envy you so much!” Chandler hugs his leg as he gazes out the window of his apartment, phone cradled between his cheek and his shoulder. The moon overhead shines bright on New York City – brighter, it seems, over Kurt’s loft, which leaves Chandler’s abode in the shadows. “Two years ago, I thought it was going to be you and me settling into life as old, moldy bachelors in an apartment filled with cats.”

“Old and moldy?” Kurt chuckles. “Chandler! We’re barely leaving our twenties!”

“Yeah, well, some of us are aging better than the rest of us.” Chandler checks his reflection in the tinted glass. With his index finger, he lifts what he sees as sagging skin, tugs gently beneath his eyes to smooth fine lines.

“Chandler” – Kurt puts the pears down on the stovetop and begins transferring them to plates – “you barely look older than you did when you graduated high school.”

“And that’s one of the reasons why I love you so much. You’re either blind, or you’ve started drinking in the afternoons. Either way, you don’t see what I see when I look in the mirror. I have the transit map for the five buroughs branching out all over my face.”

Kurt shakes his head. He would continue to argue that his friend looks as handsome and youthful as ever, but it won’t get him anywhere. Chandler’s in a mood, and no amount of flattery is going to lighten him up.

Besides, Kurt doesn’t have the time.

He’s afraid that his centerpiece may have started to droop while he’s been gabbing and getting dinner ready. He’ll treat Chandler to wheatgrass shots and Botox during lunch sometime next week.

“So, how are you guys spending the evening?” Chandler asks, bouncing back fairly quickly.

“With a nice, quiet, candlelit dinner.”

“Ooo! That sounds so romantic.”

“Doesn’t it though?” Kurt brags with a satisfied smirk. “It was all Blaine’s idea.” The oven timer dings, and Kurt hurries over on tiptoes to lower the temperature. “I’ve got to go, love. My soufflé should be ready soon.”

“Alright.” Chandler sighs, gloomy at being brushed off when he has no one of his own to romance and get dirty with, because it’s generally accepted as common knowledge at Vogue that when Kurt and Blaine aren’t being the ‘sappy duo’, they’re having kinky sex all over their loft. “Remember to bring leftovers to the office.”

“Always do.” Kurt hangs up his phone and turns off the ringer. He doesn’t want to chance any more interruptions.

Not on this special night.

Kurt takes his soufflé out of the oven and puts it beside the other side dishes he’s prepared. Then he puts the final touches on the rest of the meal – roasted cod, creamed spinach, tarragon mushrooms, potatoes with olives and lemons, poached pears, all assembled on a plate with a modest helping of the chocolate soufflé in its own dish, topped with a lightly sweetened whipped cream.

Pleased with his plating, Kurt switches on music – a special Barry White/Marvin Gaye/Joni Mitchell playlist he put together just for the occasion. He does a last minute rearrange of the flowers in vases scattered around the room. At the table, he lights a row of taper candles one by one, saving the longest - spiraled, gold, and protruding from Blaine’s ass - for last. Before cooking began, Kurt trussed his sub up on the table naked, wrists tied to ankles to force his head and shoulders down and keep his ass in the air. Kurt sets his own carefully plated meal in front of the chair beside Blaine’s left flank. Blaine’s meal he scrapes into his pet’s silver doggy dish, and places with a thunk beneath his sub’s chin.

Then Kurt grabs Blaine’s hair and shoves his face into the dish.

“This is what you meant when you said you wanted an intimate candlelit dinner at home, isn’t it, pet?”