With shaking hands and an effervescent smile, Blaine adds the final cog. No one who knew thought he could do it, but he did it. If he’s being honest with himself, there were many times when he thought he’d never get this far, never live to see this point, but here he is. He’s done it. Out of everything he’s done with his life, the machines he’s invented, the music he’s written, this…this here…is his Magnum Opus.

Blaine gazes with love and adoration at the face smiling back at him, his stooped, frail body so full of joy that he thinks he might just burst.

“Now blink,” he says, his voice shaking as much as his hands. “We need to be sure your optics are fully functional.”

“Of course,” Kurt says, blinking his one human eye – the left one - while the lenses that have replaced what was once his right eye shift back and forth, clicking into focus.

“And how’s that now?” Blaine asks. “Can you see clearly? Do you feel any pain?”

“It’s perfect,” Kurt answers, the melodic nature of his human voice slightly obscured by a tinny whirring. He’ll always sound mechanical. He’s not entirely human. But to Blaine, that voice is the most beautiful thing he’s heard in decades. Kurt doesn’t have much of what can be considered a neck, just his vocal chords concealed beneath a thick, metal-and-leather collar. But with a little oil and some vocal exercises, that metallic undercurrent should smooth out and lessen over time.

Time. Blaine might not have much of that left now, but that doesn’t matter. He lived long enough to see this – his dream manifest. He’ll worry about time…well, a little later, ironically enough. He’s too encapsulated in joy for the moment to even worry about what time will do to him soon.

“Perfect,” Blaine mumbles. “Yes, you are.” He puts a hand to Kurt’s face, brushing calloused fingertips over Kurt’s smooth, partially synthetic flesh. Kurt’s skin is paler than before, woven with a fine, surgical mesh to help the once completely human skin accept the mixture of blood and serum Blaine has created to keep it from deteriorating. Many of Kurt’s organs have been fashioned in the same way. Inside a metal ribcage, meticulously handcrafted by Blaine as well, beats a human heart beset with synthetic veins and arteries; artificial lungs to pump the thicker, manufactured blood along; and a menagerie of patchwork innards.

Fifty-eight long years since the night his husband passed has led Blaine to this. What was left of Kurt’s body after the accident, Blaine acquired through less than appetizing means. The most difficult, but the most important, part - his brain – took the longest for Blaine to acquire. It had been carefully preserved, originally for use as an educational tool by medical students (as specified in Kurt’s will), until about twelve years ago, when Blaine managed to re-transplant it into Kurt’s finely sculpted skull, and the two of them began to learn one another all over again.

Everyone Blaine knew thought he was insane. Family petitioned for his commitment to a sanitarium when they discovered what he was doing. Neighbors tried to get his house condemned when they found out human remains were being stored there. The medical community pulled his license, and decried him as a criminal. A grave robber. A heathen.

And the Catholic Church, where neither Kurt nor Blaine were ever parishioners, painted a black mark on Blaine’s door, so that anyone who dared go near it knew that they were leaving the sanctity of God behind, and entering a den of perversion.

Rumors abounded over what exactly Blaine was doing behind locked doors, from sunup to sundown, that dealt with the acquiring of human blood and donor organs, some of which ended up fed to local dogs when they didn’t suit his needs (part of the rumor). But when Blaine didn’t bother to publicly dispute any of these claims against him, he was written off as a crazy old hermit, likely suffering from some form of mental fatigue due to grief, but otherwise harmless, and he was left alone to finish his work.

Since there was no documented way to reanimate a human corpse, what harm could it do?

After a few decades, anyone who had ever cared about the goings on of the widower Blaine Anderson-Hummel were either dead or long gone.

But Blaine remained, and Kurt remained. As life progressed, and a brand new world grew up around them, they stayed locked in time, with Blaine steadily aging forward, and Kurt standing still.

“And now,” Kurt says, tilting his head awkwardly from side to side, not yet having gotten the hang of fluidity in motion, “we can spend our lives together, the way we did before?”

“Yes,” Blaine replies. “Yes, we…oh…” Blaine looks at his own arthritic hand, cramping around the screwdriver he’s holding, and his happy smile begins to wane. “But…I am so old. I don’t have much time left, and you…” He gazes into Kurt’s face, the picture of youth and exuberance, and sighs. “You look just as young and beautiful as the day you left me.”

Kurt takes Blaine’s hand in his – the joints knobbed, and the skin so thin that they bulge through from underneath. Too many nights spent working and not enough time out in the sun, enjoying his life, have made his tan skin almost as pale as Kurt’s, a map of blue veins marking its surface. Kurt smiles at these, since, in his eyes, Blaine is still the most handsome man in the world, even if the borders of that world have been one small room in one small house. As long as Blaine was there with him, talking to him, spending time with him, it was all he ever needed. Kurt brings Blaine’s hand to his mouth and kisses it, cold lips pressed to skin becoming colder by the day.

“Don’t worry, Blaine,” Kurt says, blinking and focusing, capturing this image and transmitting it to his brain. He files it away with the many he has taken over these long years since Blaine successfully installed that lens to replace his eye and wired it to his temporal lobe. “I’ve watched you. I’ve recorded everything you’ve done to make me – your failures and your successes. And when your time is over, I will remake you…the same way you did with me.”