“Okie-dokie” - Blaine bumps the loft door, that he left cracked an inch when he left to pick up lunch, open with his hip, his arms filled with brown paper take-out bags - “I've got your turkey and fire roasted pepper panini, and your iced green tea…Kurt, are you crying?”

Kurt, who had started wiping away tears when his husband walked in, turns his head away to blow his nose into a tissue.

“No,” Kurt says in a wobbly voice. “I'm not crying. Who's crying? Are you crying?” He shoves the defiled tissue into his pocket and stares at his husband with a shaky smile, closing the small magazine in his hands and hiding it underneath his thigh.

“Kurt” - Blaine leaves the food on the kitchen table to go comfort his distraught husband - “why are you so upset? What in the world have you been reading?”

“I…I'm not…it's not…”

Blaine drops onto the sofa beside Kurt and grabs the magazine out from under his leg in one swift move. He opens it and flips through the pages, stopping on the ones he figures Kurt had been reading, since they're stuck together in spots, wet with his tears. Blaine skims through only a couple of paragraphs, each one a vignette of how widows and widowers choose to spend their anniversaries now that the ones they love are gone. He only gets about five sentences in on one story - written by an 87-year-old man, who dresses in a suit every year on his wedding anniversary, to eat a picnic lunch at his wife's grave - when he feels himself become teary eyed.

“I thought we both agreed that these old Reader's Digests were destructive literature,” Blaine says, tossing the magazine to the opposite end of the sofa and away from his devastated husband.

“I know we did,” Kurt says, reaching for another tissue, which Blaine passes over. “I just got caught up reading the jokes, and before you know it…” Kurt stops talking to blow his nose.

“Yeah,” Blaine says, putting an arm around Kurt's shoulder and holding him close, “that's how they get you.”

“I just…I know it's stupid to be so upset about the inevitable. I mean, there's nothing we can do about it. When you're gone, you're gone, right?”

“Unfortunately, there's where I'm no use,” Blaine says, handing Kurt a preemptive tissue, “because you believe one thing, and I believe something completely different.”

“I know, I know,” Kurt says, tossing his used tissue aside and moving on to the fresh one Blaine holds out in front of him. “Reading those stories, it makes me think…I don't want to die before you. I don't want to leave you here alone. But, most of all, I don't want you to go before me.” Kurt shakes his head. “I don't want to be left here alone.”

Kurt sobs, hiding his face in Blaine's shoulder, and Blaine gives him a moment to cry. He knows that Kurt's not only thinking of losing Blaine. Kurt's mother is already gone. His stepbrother, too. His father's health has been on a somewhat of a trampoline ever since they were in high school. Kurt's not just afraid of being left alone without Blaine.

Kurt's afraid of being left alone - period.

“You know, Kurt,” Blaine says, kissing his husband gently on the head, “I don't know for certain what happens after we die. I mean, I'd like to believe that we go to a place where we get to be with the people we love forever and ever.” Kurt sniffles in Blaine's arms. Blaine feels it against his chest, and he wishes he could do more for him, come up with a better answer. But this is the answer his mother gave him when his favorite grandfather passed away. This, and the faith he was raised with, is all he has for comfort in this scenario, and faith in a higher power doesn't sit too well with Kurt. “But I do know that you and I probably have a good long time together on this planet, so we'd better make the best of it.”

Kurt nods. “Okay” - He sits up, straightens his wrinkled shirt, and dries his eyes with the last tissue in the box - “we make the best of it. So, where do you suggest we start? Should we go to the movies? A museum? Did you want to try that new Ethiopian place?”

“How about” – Blaine looks at his husband, still adorable with a red, swollen nose, and puffy eyes – “we go back to bed for the rest of the afternoon? We'll change into our pajamas, climb under the covers, and you can tell me some of those jokes you read.”

“Or” – Kurt sniffles – “maybe we can start with sex, and then I'll tell you the jokes?”

Blaine rolls his eyes to the ceiling, pretending that he's taking a moment to think about Kurt's suggestion, then breathes out a long sigh.

“Oh, alright,” he says, taking Kurt's hand and pulling his husband off the sofa, leading him to the bedroom and their still unmade bed. “But let's make it quick. I was really looking forward to hearing a good knock-knock joke.”