Kurt whisks his bowl of egg whites until his omelet base is dangerously close to becoming meringue. Standing in front of the kitchen stove with a huge lump in his throat, his eyes dart to the microwave clock, the switching numbers causing him to jump as if they’re gun shots going off without warning. He’s waited too long. He shouldn’t be down here making breakfast. He should be upstairs, waking his husband.

They haven’t even started their day, and he’s already doing everything wrong.

The numbers flip again, and Kurt hears his husband start to descend the stairs. His heart skips a beat, but he keeps whisking, not ready yet to turn around and face him.

Blaine runs a hand through his sleep-mussed hair, and checks the same clock Kurt has been keeping vigil over for the past few hours. He scoffs, making his way to the kitchen table on uncharacteristically unsteady legs.

“So, either you let me sleep late, or you’re still not talking to me,” he mumbles, taking a seat at the table and resting his head on his arms. He watches Kurt bounce between pots and pans on the stove, preparing what looks like a colossal meal, and he groans.

“Are you expecting guests for breakfast? Because I’m not really in the move to receive visitors this morning.”

“No,” Kurt says, cursing the waver in his voice. He prepares two plates, piling them high with eggs, waffles, biscuits and gravy … everything he knows Blaine likes. He takes a deep breath, counts to three, and steels himself. In one fluid move, like ripping through a seam, he turns to face his husband sitting at the kitchen table, and gasps. Blaine sits straight up, looking around for what caused Kurt to react like that, whatever flaw has offended Kurt’s eye. Did Blaine leave his dirty boots on the Persian rug by accident? He made certain to stomp them clean outside and leave them in the garage – he knows he did. Is it him, looking like death warmed over, with his bloodshot eyes and freshly trimmed but messy hair? Blaine swears Kurt has tears in his eyes when he walks to the table and sets the plates of food down in front of him. Blaine eyes Kurt with concern, considering his offering of this incredible meal with suspicion.

“So, you’re not still mad at me for taking one last tour of duty?”

“No. No, I’m not.” Kurt sniffles.

“But … what about your new musical?” Blaine tilts his head to look into Kurt’s stormy eyes. “And everything you said last night about …?”

“I don’t care about that! About any of it!” Kurt rushes around the table and throws himself into his husband’s arms. Blaine pushes his chair back to accept him, letting Kurt fall into his lap and drape his body over him, and Kurt holds Blaine, tighter than he ever remembers holding him.

He hugs him like he’s afraid to let him go.

“Just forget it? Please? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for what I said, for every fight we’ve ever had. For every time I couldn’t admit I was wrong. Please, just …”

"Kurt? Honey, what’s wrong?” Blaine tries to pull Kurt’s gaze up to meet his, but Kurt buries his face into the crook of Blaine’s neck and breathes in deep. “Kurt, you’re trembling, sweetheart.”

Kurt braves a peek from where he’s hid his face against Blaine’s neck, finding hazel eyes looking back at him, wide awake and brimming with worry.

“I … I just … I’m scared, Blaine. Scared you’ll go away to some far off country and never come back.”

Blaine’s concerned expression melts into a relaxed and somewhat cocky grin. “Oh, baby. We’ve been over this. I’m invincible, remember?”

“Yeah.” Kurt sniffles again, nodding sadly. “Yeah … you’re invincible.”

Blaine runs a hand down Kurt’s spine, and holds him against him until he stops trembling.

“How about we go out for some retail therapy? Hmm? Saks, Bloomingdale’s, you name it. We’ll see how close to the limit we can get on the new gold card. What do you say?”

Kurt’s head snaps up to look at the clock. It’s almost noon. It’s getting so late already.

“No,” Kurt says. “No, not today. Let’s stay home.” He turns back to Blaine’s surprised face and presses tentative lips against his husband’s skin. He feels an old, familiar spark travel across his mouth, making him tremble harder, just when he’d stopped. He pecks a path across Blaine’s cheek, blazing a trail of progressively needier kisses towards his husband’s mouth. “Let’s go back to bed, and not get up again until the president himself pulls you out.”

Blaine’s eyes roll back, and he moans at the double entendre.

“That sounds like a fantastic idea.” Blaine lifts Kurt off his lap while Kurt continues to kiss him, carrying his husband upstairs to get started on their perfect last day together.

***

Kurt wakes up alone.

The room he’s in, dreary and gray, reveals itself beneath the dim, bluish light. The center has worked hard to get the details right, but little things are amiss if he really takes the time to notice them. The pale blue paint on the walls isn’t exactly the same shade of Powdered Robin’s Egg that Blaine had picked out for them when they first moved into their small house in San Diego. The knick-knacks on the shelves are only cheap imitations of the Hummels Blaine’s mom had originally started buying for Kurt as a joke on their second date … the same ones Kurt smashed to pieces with his fists the day he found out.

Kurt climbs out of bed slowly, fighting through a fog of his own depression as he starts to get dressed, pushing away the idea that all of this, and everything he went through to get it, doesn’t make things any easier than they were before.

He takes his time fixing his face and his hair, even though he couldn’t care less at this point. It doesn’t matter if he looks perfect. That’s not why he’s stalling. He doesn’t want to leave his purgatory just yet and plummet back into reality, which will seem like hell at this point.

When he’s okay with the mask he’s created, he walks downstairs to the kitchen, down that same staircase his husband walked yesterday morning, a short 24-hours ago. His publicist and best friend, Rachel Berry, meets him there. She looks him over, quietly fixing buttons on his shirt that are fastened wrong, and turns out a portion of his collar that is partially tucked. Kurt’s blank eyes remain glued to the imitation hardwood floor, so close in style to their real floor, which he and his husband had made love on many, many times.

But not this one. This one is sanitary, and a little too glossy.  

It’s not real, just like him now and the life he leads. A façade.

“Are you ready?” Rachel asks, trying to gauge her friend’s state of mind.

Kurt opens his mouth to answer, but as he barely has the energy to handle his life right now and he knows the worst is yet to come, he ends up nodding in response.

“Okay,” she says, smiling for his sake, but she doesn’t feel it. This cold, impersonal house and her heartbroken friend drain every inch of happiness from her body. “Let’s go. The vultures are waiting.”

They walk through the living room of the replica house and out the front door into a large, two-level laboratory. A congregation of doctors dressed in coats too white to be taken seriously appear out of the woodwork, their expressions a mixture of carefully hidden eagerness and practiced compassion. But Rachel, anticipating their approach, throws herself into the fray.

“Mr. Hummel has nothing to say to you at this time, ladies and gentlemen,” she heads them off firmly. “I am sure he’ll be willing to meet with you in a week to answer all of your questions.”

“My apologies,” the lead lab coat says, “but it’s crucial for our research if he …”

The doctor’s insistence stops short at Rachel’s icy glare. She may be petite, but she is fierce. A single flash of her fiery brown eyes have brought much more important and intimidating people than this lab rat to their knees.

“Of course,” the doctor recants. “Whenever Mr. Hummel is ready. We’ll wait.”

The doctors part like The Red Sea to let them pass, and Rachel breathes a sigh of relief. But they were only the preview. The main feature, gathered outside for the past week, will be more daunting and less easy to dissuade.

Rachel holds Kurt’s elbow while she guides him through a maze of brightly lit hallways until they finally reach the lobby. Kurt, who’d been walking on autopilot, content to let Rachel lead while he followed, stops at the glass double doors, his hands poised on the tension bar. He becomes nauseous at the feeling of sunlight on his face, and at the murmur of voices beyond, already yelling at him before he’s even emerged. He swallows hard to fight back the urge to vomit.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Rachel whispers. “Just … take your time.”

Kurt squeezes his eyes shut. He locks himself back in a moment from last night when he looked into Blaine’s eyes, saw his husband smile, kissed his lips and heard him say, “I love you,” and takes one final, steadying breath. He leans on the tension bar and opens the door a second before he opens his eyes again. He walks out, and is greeted by the largest crowd of people he has ever seen in his life, even with his overwhelming success on Broadway. Reporters race towards him, microphones at the ready to catch every word Kurt has to say. Security officers from the center along with Kurt’s own bodyguards hold their arms outstretched to keep the reporters at bay, but that doesn’t keep them from firing off question after question, barely giving Kurt time to answer. Beyond the reporters stand flocks of protestors holding signs aimed directly at him and the cameras.

“Here we are now with Tony Award winner Kurt Hummel as he leaves the Second Chance Regeneration Center,” he hears a reporter from CNN rattle off. “As the public knows, Kurt Hummel’s husband, Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Blaine Anderson, was killed by insurgents overseas over five years ago. Mr. Hummel is the first client who has actually gotten the opportunity …”

Kurt tunes the reporter’s voice out, but another voice takes its place.

“… enough of Staff Sergeant Anderson’s DNA was recovered in the rubble of the explosion to allow Mr. Hummel one last day with a fully regenerated version of his husband. Had more DNA been recovered, days, weeks, even months might have been possible …”

Kurt hears Rachel placating reporters with rehearsed remarks while she escorts him through the crowd. He walks numbly to his SUV, ignoring the microphones, the cameras, and the hands that reach out to him, some people cheering their support, but just as many screaming in revulsion.

“This is unnatural!” faceless people cry. “Ungodly! Inhuman! Let the dead rest in peace!” They chase their commentary with Bible verses like they’ll mean anything to him, like a single word from a book that so many people use against him is going to change his mind.

Crueler jeers are tossed his way, insinuations that link his decision to regenerate his husband with the “perversion” of his sexual orientation. This has, for months, sparked a debate which has put the rights of LGBT+ people in jeopardy. Because of this, Kurt has received death threats from both sides of the argument, but he doesn’t register them. Let some psychopath with an ax to grind over religion or marriage equality follow him into a dark alley and shoot him through the skull.

What does he have to lose now anyway?

He reaches his vehicle, his chauffeur waiting till the last minute before opening the door. Rachel leaves his side, giving one reporter an opening. The young rookie weeds his way through the crowd before Kurt can slide into the safety of his seat and calls out a single question.

“Was it worth it, Mr. Hummel?”

The voice carries through the cries of the crowd and hits him like a sledgehammer.

Kurt turns toward the young man, his face expressionless.

“What was that?” Kurt asks quietly.

The reporter, stunned at actually being addressed, quickly pulls himself together before he can lose the nerve to ask his question again.

“You paid $3.5 million to get one last day with your deceased husband,” the man clarifies, hoping to sound confident in the face of Kurt’s cold, grey glare, “a decision widely regarded as ill-advised by not only respected members of the scientific community, but obviously, the faithful. It’s a decision that may also cost you your career. Was it worth it?”

Everyone around them has gone silent – the reporters, the bodyguards, Rachel. Even the protestors, holding their hateful signs over their heads, wait on the cusp of that question to see what Kurt has to say.

Kurt lets go of the breath he’s holding, and in spite of himself, in spite of the pain, in spite of the agony of living the rest of his life alone, he smiles.

“It was worth every penny.”