Benfay - Part 4: A BTSB Story
Title: Benfday: Part 4 - A BTSB Story
Author: Dri
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Puck/Kurt, past Sam/Kurt
Rating: a light R for the whole fic
Word Count: ~3100
Genre: AU, Future Fic, mentions of past mpreg
Summary: Because it’s a new benfday, and the past should remain in the past where it doesn’t hurt… too much.
Disclaimer: They are so not mine, but I gotta keep Ben for myself!
Author’s note: It’s Benfday; enough said. I foresee four parts for this story, and I'll do my best to update more often. So please bear with me for a little while, k? Still unbetaed, so sorry for any possible mistakes.
Author’s note 2: Sorry once again for the late update. Just when I found the time to write again, I got stuck in a particular moment of this chapter that almost drove me crazy. Still I hope you guys enjoy the chapter all the same. Also, I promise you guys I’ll be catching up with your amazing feedback before the weekend is over. Please, just a little bit more patience.Anyway remember that feedback is loved, cherished and framed!
*g*l*e*e*
Nobody, absolutely no one had the right to laugh at Kurt after the five seconds from hell he had lived the moment Ben, Kurt’s own flesh and blood, his precious baby, his sole reason for living started screaming bloody murder in the back seat of the SUV halfway to Lima.
At that time not even the sight of Noah going all ninja jumping to the back seat of the car to see what the hell was going on with their baby (only to very gracelessly land on the peanut butter sandwich Ben had dropped when he started screaming his head off for Papa) while barking at Kurt to ‘Take the shoulder, take the shoulder’ had been enough of a turn on to erase from Kurt’s mind the image of their baby drenched in Coke crying and in the rearview mirror.
But with a hand covering her mouth so she wouldn’t wake Ben up, laugh Mercedes did. Hard enough to have her shoulders shaking and tears running down her face.
Oh, so the blue mascara lining her eyes was probably waterproof. Kurt had to ask her if they had clear ones in their catalogue. Noah liked it when Kurt’s eyelashes were all curled up and stuff.
Just thinking about the way Noah got all grabby and horny whenever Kurt batted curly eyelashes at him…
But that was neither the time nor the place to continue with this nonsense. There was no room in Kurt’s skinny jeans for a hard on while his best friend, the godmother of his child was about to pee in her pants because of Kurt’s earlier predicament.
“Mercedes, Versace help me if you don’t stop now.”
“Sorry… White boy…”
Did she really hiccup?
She did, and Kurt was kind enough to let her know in no uncertain terms she was one hiccup away from having a glass full of water dumped on her newly blow-dried-salon styled hair if she didn’t get a grip now.
“Don’t you dare, White Boy! This hair is off limits to any - got it? - any water based element!”
“Good, so now could you please be a little more sympathetic to the way I felt every freaking time I had to use a damp cloth to clean my baby in that restroom? Do you have any idea of how many germs and diseases my baby was exposed to in that place? His perfect baby skin can get blemished for the rest of his life, Mercedes!” Kurt’s voice was rising in perfect synchronicity with his agitation, so for the sake of his son’s rest he took a deep breath, got his nerves under control, and got back to hanging his and Noah’s clothes in the closet. “I hope his pediatrician has an opening to see us on Monday. We’ll have to take our baby to the dermatologist first thing in the morning, won’t we, my precious?” Kurt asked his sleeping child, whose only answer as far as Kurt could see was to turn on his side and keep sleeping his earlier stress away.
“We as in you and I? I’m not driving all the way to Columbus to support you on this nonsense.”
Sweet Versace.
“Of course not, Mercedes,” he sighed, “We as in Noah and I.”
At long last Mercedes countenance got more in tune with the kind of reaction he had expected from her: kind and soft, if not a little bit too close to a dreamy smile, which in that case wouldn’t make a lot whole of sense.
Still there it was, wistful and soft around the edge of her mouth, of her eyes, filled with a kind of quietness that didn’t agree with Cedes’ boisterous personality, which got Kurt slightly unsettled, and almost missing the earlier ribbing and teasing coming from her.
She kept him company while they covered many different topics in the few minutes it took Kurt to organize their toiletries in the attached bathroom he used to share with Finn when they were teens.
Kurt was silently debating with himself the benefits of letting Ben sleep for another couple of hours over waking the baby up and dealing with the typical uncoiled energy that moved toddlers back and forth nonstop, when he thought he heard Mercedes say something so quietly, at first he believed it hadn’t been meant for his ears.
Then he took his chance and asked her to repeat it, to which she blinked her eyes as if coming back to her senses after being long entranced by something going on far beyond Kurt’s gaze could reach.
She shrugged and smiled at him embarrassed and blushing all at once. Mercedes shook her head and Kurt followed her as she moved back to the bathroom door, her thoughts still visibly far away, her eyes locked in Ben sleeping in his new bed when she asked softly, “How can something so small cause so much trouble?”
“It’s only trouble when you can’t fix it, Cedes,” Kurt replied just as softly, because when it was about talking about the Ben-shaped place in his life, Kurt would forever be more about heart than reason. “As a parent you have to make do, make it work no matter what or how…”
“Inconvenient? Improbable?”
“No,” he laughed softly with her, “Unpredictable… Yeah, no matter how unpredictable it is, you will always do your best to find a way to make it work.”
Mercedes leaned heavily against his side. “You make it sound so easy…”
No matter how hard Kurt tried, he would never be able to make Mercedes understand it was far from being easy, that he died a little every time he had to leave Ben sitting on his green-time-out-pillow without reacting to his two-year-old baby - who was really just trying his first steps towards learning about the world - crying and calling for Papa as Kurt walked away without looking back whenever his child did something wrong.
“Believe me, Cedes, it’s not,” Kurt said resting his chin on the top of her head, careful to not disarray her hair too much. “It’s actually a never ending cycle of always second-guessing every decision you make, of always dreading how much it will hurt your child and interfere in their future. It kills me every time I have to punish Ben for something he is just too young to really understand is wrong or dangerous or both.”
“But you do it anyway.”
“I have to if I want him to become the man Sam and I dreamed he would grow up to be.”
“And you are doing it, sweetie,” Mercedes rushed to assure him grasping his hand in hers, without a doubt moved by the sadness and insecurity that laced the final part of his speech. “You are doing a remarkable job, Kurt. Ben is adorable, a perfectly happy and healthy child.”
Then she cradled their entwined hands between her chin and shoulder and Kurt could feel her hesitancy in the air. Kurt playfully nudged her with his shoulder and they smiled at each other.
“Clock is ticking?” Kurt asked more out of courtesy than anything, because he had seen that same longing gaze in another pair of eyes, but with Mercedes it came without the pressure Noah was still to learn how to totally repress.
“More like my womb has been screaming at me lot lately.” Her attempt at humor sounded flat and so out of place Kurt felt sorry for her. “I don’t really know what I’m waiting for, Kurt. I’m woman enough to raise a child on my own, but here I am, waiting for that guy who will want to start a family with me and all that crap we used to hear about in the fairy tales.”
“Happy endings do exist, Cedes.”
“I know they do, but I’m getting a little impatient while I wait for mine to happen.” She lowered her eyes and looked back to where Ben was sleeping. “It’s kind of sad when you have to wait for it by yourself.”
“Come here, my girl; let’s get comfortable because I think this conversation will take time,” Kurt said steering her to his bed.
They kicked off their shoes and laid down atop the covers while Kurt rubbed soothing circles on Mercedes’ shoulder and pretended his presence alone would be enough to make the tears dampening his shirt not hurt them too much.
“I liked it better when you were crying because you thought I had an amusing journey back to Lima.”
“So-sorry.”
“Hush, silly girl. We don’t apologize for needing each other, remember?”
“I thought Marcus and I would get things right this time, you know,” she said after a short while between sniffles. “Four years in this on again, off again thing is too long.”
“I agree with you, Cedes. He is a great guy, just not right for you.”
“This time it’s for good, Kurt. There is no way back for us. We will never be on the same page. He says he is too young to give me what I want. And to tell you the truth I’m not even sure I want that kind of commitment with him.”
“You just wanted his sperm.”
“I guess,” she laughed softly.
“So this time you’re calling it off for good?” Kurt asked just to make sure, although he assumed Mercedes meant it, because she had never cried this much before because one of her and Marcus’ time off.
“Yeah. Yesterday Finn helped me pack the few things he kept in my apartment.”
“I bet Finn was ecstatic,” Kurt mused aloud. He never really understood why his brother despised Mercedes’ on again, off again ex so much.
“I almost knocked your brother out when he said we should have one of those divorcee parties, you know,” Mercedes confessed and they both laughed for real. “Then I thought, hell, why not? I let him take me out to dinner and we finished our night at a karaoke bar. I made him sing every lame song they had available with me. We had so much fun.”
“There are worse ways of ending a relationship.”
Kurt thought back to when he buried Sam and in how he had gagged in his own vomit that last time Noah had walked away from him, that for the first time ever the loneliness that had assaulted him was not because of his late husband.
“I know, sweetie. You are so much stronger because of it. I’ll learn from your example and do the same.”
Kurt smiled and squeezed her hand and they remained in silence, Kurt glad because with each breath she took, Mercedes seemed to get stronger and more in control of herself.
Good, because that was the Mercedes that made Kurt believe they could be anything; could do anything.
“I’ll give myself until I turn thirty. If I’m not married by then, I will consider getting a baby on my own. What do you think?”
“I think something will be real wrong with the straight male population of this country if you’re still single by then.” It felt real good as Mercedes laughed against his side. “But if things come down to that, I have faith you will make a wonderful mother, Cedes.”
Mercedes smiled up at him and pecked his lips. “That’s why I love you so much, Kurt.”
“Because of my more than wise, down to earth insights?”
“That too, but mostly because I knew you would support me. And if I end up going through the sperm donor routine, I can just pray I’ll be a single parent as good as you are.”
A single parent, a widower, titles Kurt knew he carried because the biological father of his son was dead and he hadn’t remarried. However those were also words that were so far from his reality, from the way he had been seeing himself since Noah had taken him and his child into his life, gifting Kurt and Ben with so much love and devotion Ben had stopped being only Kurt’s child a long time ago. It was high-time he shared this piece of newfound happiness with his best friend.
“I knew it,” Mercedes said wearing a knowing grin that should have made Kurt turn his 5-degree bitchiness towards her; but it was Mercedes, so why bother? He grinned back at her instead. “You may haven’t noticed it, but you’ve been using a lot of we’s and our’s to refer to both your men.”
“I have?”
“Just now you said and I’ll quote, ‘we’ll have to take our baby to the doctor.’ That was the only thing that made your delirious nonsense sound really cute.”
“Nonsense?” At her perked eyebrow, Kurt turned his words back to the one thing that was really upsetting him and that there would be really stupid of him to try to hide from Mercedes. “I think this way all the time too, Cedes, that Ben is ours.”
Oh, Lord, just voicing his feelings, even knowing that Mercedes wouldn’t judge him for them, made Kurt feel like he was stomping over Sam’s memory without any remorse.
“Don’t you do this to yourself, Kurt,” she said once again squeezing his hand the way she does whenever she wants Kurt to see reason. “Don’t feel guilty for thinking this way. Try to see this as you taking another step to fulfill Sam’s last request, Kurt. And you chose a good man, sweetie. So help me God, but Puck has proved he is perfect for your and Ben.”
“He really cares about Ben and me.”
Kurt could hear her rolling her eyes, but he also knew Mercedes understood he wasn’t ready to call what he and Noah had by its name and still could respect him for this; just one of the reasons why he loved her so much.
“Do you guys talk about the future?”
“Not really. So far things have been happening for us and… well…”
She slapped his stomach softly, “Tell!”
“I can’t remember what it was like, you know, before,” he smiled awkwardly, feeling awkward, but at the same time it was so good to just talk. “I don’t remember what it was like to look and not find him there by my side. It still scares me from time to time, but I’ve been relying heavily on the good things his presence has brought to our lives, too. He makes breathing and being happy easier, Cedes.”
“And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
He nodded and she squeezed his belly again encouraging him to say more because Mercedes knew nothing about letting sleeping dogs lay.
“He wants more kids.” Mercedes said nothing nor asked anything respecting Kurt’s time, letting him gather his thoughts and decide whether he wanted to talk more or not, although Kurt suspected she knew he would; this had been the sole purpose of their private conversations since they became friends in high school. “When I see him with Ben, he has so much love to give. He will be a great daddy.”
“He is a great daddy, Kurt. You couldn’t have chosen a better daddy for Ben and for your future babies.”
“And who says he wants to have those babies with me?”
Mercedes squirmed her way out of his arms and knelt down beside him on the mattress, pointing a finger with at least two rings shining on it up to his nose, “He wants your kids, White Boy, and just by looking at this silly smile of yours I can say you’re just dying to get knocked up by him. So when the time is right, you just let it happen and go for it without letting yourself be consumed by guilty or whatever other lame excuse this pretty head of yours come up with to stop the natural course of things, you hear me?”
Rising bitchiness level up to another degree would, once again be useless, so Kurt did what any sane person who had crossed paths with his best friend at least once would do in this situation:
He rolled his stinging eyes and a tear fell, but he let his radiant smile speak for itself, the same way hers was doing for him.
“Natural course of things,” he repeated slowly, savoring the many shades of forever those words carried and that felt perfect rolling around his tongue.
“You know you two are meant to be together.”
When she took his hand and helped him out of bed, she made him talk about all the wonders of morning sickness and the impossible weird things he would guilty Noah into getting him to satisfy his midnight cravings. And Kurt, baby monitor tucked into his back pocket, laughed as he followed his best friend to the kitchen downstairs, loving her even more because, even if right now she was having a hard time believing a fairy tale could happen to her, she was writing for Kurt the happy ending he thought he would never have when Sam died.
Once in the kitchen, if his mom smiled and Mercedes shook her head with fake disgust whenever they caught him mixing the dough for the homemade pizzas or any other snacks they would serve at the party while dreaming at the sight of Noah tiptoeing around his father in the back yard, well it was because they knew Kurt was taking the lead of his life.
And they forgave him because it was obvious to everyone one of the three leading roles in this happy ending they were writing together belonged to Noah and Noah alone.
*g*l*e*e*
End of Part 4. To be continued in Part 5a.
Thanks for reading.
Author: Dri
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Puck/Kurt, past Sam/Kurt
Rating: a light R for the whole fic
Word Count: ~3100
Genre: AU, Future Fic, mentions of past mpreg
Summary: Because it’s a new benfday, and the past should remain in the past where it doesn’t hurt… too much.
Disclaimer: They are so not mine, but I gotta keep Ben for myself!
Author’s note: It’s Benfday; enough said. I foresee four parts for this story, and I'll do my best to update more often. So please bear with me for a little while, k? Still unbetaed, so sorry for any possible mistakes.
Author’s note 2: Sorry once again for the late update. Just when I found the time to write again, I got stuck in a particular moment of this chapter that almost drove me crazy. Still I hope you guys enjoy the chapter all the same. Also, I promise you guys I’ll be catching up with your amazing feedback before the weekend is over. Please, just a little bit more patience.Anyway remember that feedback is loved, cherished and framed!
*g*l*e*e*
Nobody, absolutely no one had the right to laugh at Kurt after the five seconds from hell he had lived the moment Ben, Kurt’s own flesh and blood, his precious baby, his sole reason for living started screaming bloody murder in the back seat of the SUV halfway to Lima.
At that time not even the sight of Noah going all ninja jumping to the back seat of the car to see what the hell was going on with their baby (only to very gracelessly land on the peanut butter sandwich Ben had dropped when he started screaming his head off for Papa) while barking at Kurt to ‘Take the shoulder, take the shoulder’ had been enough of a turn on to erase from Kurt’s mind the image of their baby drenched in Coke crying and in the rearview mirror.
But with a hand covering her mouth so she wouldn’t wake Ben up, laugh Mercedes did. Hard enough to have her shoulders shaking and tears running down her face.
Oh, so the blue mascara lining her eyes was probably waterproof. Kurt had to ask her if they had clear ones in their catalogue. Noah liked it when Kurt’s eyelashes were all curled up and stuff.
Just thinking about the way Noah got all grabby and horny whenever Kurt batted curly eyelashes at him…
But that was neither the time nor the place to continue with this nonsense. There was no room in Kurt’s skinny jeans for a hard on while his best friend, the godmother of his child was about to pee in her pants because of Kurt’s earlier predicament.
“Mercedes, Versace help me if you don’t stop now.”
“Sorry… White boy…”
Did she really hiccup?
She did, and Kurt was kind enough to let her know in no uncertain terms she was one hiccup away from having a glass full of water dumped on her newly blow-dried-salon styled hair if she didn’t get a grip now.
“Don’t you dare, White Boy! This hair is off limits to any - got it? - any water based element!”
“Good, so now could you please be a little more sympathetic to the way I felt every freaking time I had to use a damp cloth to clean my baby in that restroom? Do you have any idea of how many germs and diseases my baby was exposed to in that place? His perfect baby skin can get blemished for the rest of his life, Mercedes!” Kurt’s voice was rising in perfect synchronicity with his agitation, so for the sake of his son’s rest he took a deep breath, got his nerves under control, and got back to hanging his and Noah’s clothes in the closet. “I hope his pediatrician has an opening to see us on Monday. We’ll have to take our baby to the dermatologist first thing in the morning, won’t we, my precious?” Kurt asked his sleeping child, whose only answer as far as Kurt could see was to turn on his side and keep sleeping his earlier stress away.
“We as in you and I? I’m not driving all the way to Columbus to support you on this nonsense.”
Sweet Versace.
“Of course not, Mercedes,” he sighed, “We as in Noah and I.”
At long last Mercedes countenance got more in tune with the kind of reaction he had expected from her: kind and soft, if not a little bit too close to a dreamy smile, which in that case wouldn’t make a lot whole of sense.
Still there it was, wistful and soft around the edge of her mouth, of her eyes, filled with a kind of quietness that didn’t agree with Cedes’ boisterous personality, which got Kurt slightly unsettled, and almost missing the earlier ribbing and teasing coming from her.
She kept him company while they covered many different topics in the few minutes it took Kurt to organize their toiletries in the attached bathroom he used to share with Finn when they were teens.
Kurt was silently debating with himself the benefits of letting Ben sleep for another couple of hours over waking the baby up and dealing with the typical uncoiled energy that moved toddlers back and forth nonstop, when he thought he heard Mercedes say something so quietly, at first he believed it hadn’t been meant for his ears.
Then he took his chance and asked her to repeat it, to which she blinked her eyes as if coming back to her senses after being long entranced by something going on far beyond Kurt’s gaze could reach.
She shrugged and smiled at him embarrassed and blushing all at once. Mercedes shook her head and Kurt followed her as she moved back to the bathroom door, her thoughts still visibly far away, her eyes locked in Ben sleeping in his new bed when she asked softly, “How can something so small cause so much trouble?”
“It’s only trouble when you can’t fix it, Cedes,” Kurt replied just as softly, because when it was about talking about the Ben-shaped place in his life, Kurt would forever be more about heart than reason. “As a parent you have to make do, make it work no matter what or how…”
“Inconvenient? Improbable?”
“No,” he laughed softly with her, “Unpredictable… Yeah, no matter how unpredictable it is, you will always do your best to find a way to make it work.”
Mercedes leaned heavily against his side. “You make it sound so easy…”
No matter how hard Kurt tried, he would never be able to make Mercedes understand it was far from being easy, that he died a little every time he had to leave Ben sitting on his green-time-out-pillow without reacting to his two-year-old baby - who was really just trying his first steps towards learning about the world - crying and calling for Papa as Kurt walked away without looking back whenever his child did something wrong.
“Believe me, Cedes, it’s not,” Kurt said resting his chin on the top of her head, careful to not disarray her hair too much. “It’s actually a never ending cycle of always second-guessing every decision you make, of always dreading how much it will hurt your child and interfere in their future. It kills me every time I have to punish Ben for something he is just too young to really understand is wrong or dangerous or both.”
“But you do it anyway.”
“I have to if I want him to become the man Sam and I dreamed he would grow up to be.”
“And you are doing it, sweetie,” Mercedes rushed to assure him grasping his hand in hers, without a doubt moved by the sadness and insecurity that laced the final part of his speech. “You are doing a remarkable job, Kurt. Ben is adorable, a perfectly happy and healthy child.”
Then she cradled their entwined hands between her chin and shoulder and Kurt could feel her hesitancy in the air. Kurt playfully nudged her with his shoulder and they smiled at each other.
“Clock is ticking?” Kurt asked more out of courtesy than anything, because he had seen that same longing gaze in another pair of eyes, but with Mercedes it came without the pressure Noah was still to learn how to totally repress.
“More like my womb has been screaming at me lot lately.” Her attempt at humor sounded flat and so out of place Kurt felt sorry for her. “I don’t really know what I’m waiting for, Kurt. I’m woman enough to raise a child on my own, but here I am, waiting for that guy who will want to start a family with me and all that crap we used to hear about in the fairy tales.”
“Happy endings do exist, Cedes.”
“I know they do, but I’m getting a little impatient while I wait for mine to happen.” She lowered her eyes and looked back to where Ben was sleeping. “It’s kind of sad when you have to wait for it by yourself.”
“Come here, my girl; let’s get comfortable because I think this conversation will take time,” Kurt said steering her to his bed.
They kicked off their shoes and laid down atop the covers while Kurt rubbed soothing circles on Mercedes’ shoulder and pretended his presence alone would be enough to make the tears dampening his shirt not hurt them too much.
“I liked it better when you were crying because you thought I had an amusing journey back to Lima.”
“So-sorry.”
“Hush, silly girl. We don’t apologize for needing each other, remember?”
“I thought Marcus and I would get things right this time, you know,” she said after a short while between sniffles. “Four years in this on again, off again thing is too long.”
“I agree with you, Cedes. He is a great guy, just not right for you.”
“This time it’s for good, Kurt. There is no way back for us. We will never be on the same page. He says he is too young to give me what I want. And to tell you the truth I’m not even sure I want that kind of commitment with him.”
“You just wanted his sperm.”
“I guess,” she laughed softly.
“So this time you’re calling it off for good?” Kurt asked just to make sure, although he assumed Mercedes meant it, because she had never cried this much before because one of her and Marcus’ time off.
“Yeah. Yesterday Finn helped me pack the few things he kept in my apartment.”
“I bet Finn was ecstatic,” Kurt mused aloud. He never really understood why his brother despised Mercedes’ on again, off again ex so much.
“I almost knocked your brother out when he said we should have one of those divorcee parties, you know,” Mercedes confessed and they both laughed for real. “Then I thought, hell, why not? I let him take me out to dinner and we finished our night at a karaoke bar. I made him sing every lame song they had available with me. We had so much fun.”
“There are worse ways of ending a relationship.”
Kurt thought back to when he buried Sam and in how he had gagged in his own vomit that last time Noah had walked away from him, that for the first time ever the loneliness that had assaulted him was not because of his late husband.
“I know, sweetie. You are so much stronger because of it. I’ll learn from your example and do the same.”
Kurt smiled and squeezed her hand and they remained in silence, Kurt glad because with each breath she took, Mercedes seemed to get stronger and more in control of herself.
Good, because that was the Mercedes that made Kurt believe they could be anything; could do anything.
“I’ll give myself until I turn thirty. If I’m not married by then, I will consider getting a baby on my own. What do you think?”
“I think something will be real wrong with the straight male population of this country if you’re still single by then.” It felt real good as Mercedes laughed against his side. “But if things come down to that, I have faith you will make a wonderful mother, Cedes.”
Mercedes smiled up at him and pecked his lips. “That’s why I love you so much, Kurt.”
“Because of my more than wise, down to earth insights?”
“That too, but mostly because I knew you would support me. And if I end up going through the sperm donor routine, I can just pray I’ll be a single parent as good as you are.”
A single parent, a widower, titles Kurt knew he carried because the biological father of his son was dead and he hadn’t remarried. However those were also words that were so far from his reality, from the way he had been seeing himself since Noah had taken him and his child into his life, gifting Kurt and Ben with so much love and devotion Ben had stopped being only Kurt’s child a long time ago. It was high-time he shared this piece of newfound happiness with his best friend.
“I knew it,” Mercedes said wearing a knowing grin that should have made Kurt turn his 5-degree bitchiness towards her; but it was Mercedes, so why bother? He grinned back at her instead. “You may haven’t noticed it, but you’ve been using a lot of we’s and our’s to refer to both your men.”
“I have?”
“Just now you said and I’ll quote, ‘we’ll have to take our baby to the doctor.’ That was the only thing that made your delirious nonsense sound really cute.”
“Nonsense?” At her perked eyebrow, Kurt turned his words back to the one thing that was really upsetting him and that there would be really stupid of him to try to hide from Mercedes. “I think this way all the time too, Cedes, that Ben is ours.”
Oh, Lord, just voicing his feelings, even knowing that Mercedes wouldn’t judge him for them, made Kurt feel like he was stomping over Sam’s memory without any remorse.
“Don’t you do this to yourself, Kurt,” she said once again squeezing his hand the way she does whenever she wants Kurt to see reason. “Don’t feel guilty for thinking this way. Try to see this as you taking another step to fulfill Sam’s last request, Kurt. And you chose a good man, sweetie. So help me God, but Puck has proved he is perfect for your and Ben.”
“He really cares about Ben and me.”
Kurt could hear her rolling her eyes, but he also knew Mercedes understood he wasn’t ready to call what he and Noah had by its name and still could respect him for this; just one of the reasons why he loved her so much.
“Do you guys talk about the future?”
“Not really. So far things have been happening for us and… well…”
She slapped his stomach softly, “Tell!”
“I can’t remember what it was like, you know, before,” he smiled awkwardly, feeling awkward, but at the same time it was so good to just talk. “I don’t remember what it was like to look and not find him there by my side. It still scares me from time to time, but I’ve been relying heavily on the good things his presence has brought to our lives, too. He makes breathing and being happy easier, Cedes.”
“And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
He nodded and she squeezed his belly again encouraging him to say more because Mercedes knew nothing about letting sleeping dogs lay.
“He wants more kids.” Mercedes said nothing nor asked anything respecting Kurt’s time, letting him gather his thoughts and decide whether he wanted to talk more or not, although Kurt suspected she knew he would; this had been the sole purpose of their private conversations since they became friends in high school. “When I see him with Ben, he has so much love to give. He will be a great daddy.”
“He is a great daddy, Kurt. You couldn’t have chosen a better daddy for Ben and for your future babies.”
“And who says he wants to have those babies with me?”
Mercedes squirmed her way out of his arms and knelt down beside him on the mattress, pointing a finger with at least two rings shining on it up to his nose, “He wants your kids, White Boy, and just by looking at this silly smile of yours I can say you’re just dying to get knocked up by him. So when the time is right, you just let it happen and go for it without letting yourself be consumed by guilty or whatever other lame excuse this pretty head of yours come up with to stop the natural course of things, you hear me?”
Rising bitchiness level up to another degree would, once again be useless, so Kurt did what any sane person who had crossed paths with his best friend at least once would do in this situation:
He rolled his stinging eyes and a tear fell, but he let his radiant smile speak for itself, the same way hers was doing for him.
“Natural course of things,” he repeated slowly, savoring the many shades of forever those words carried and that felt perfect rolling around his tongue.
“You know you two are meant to be together.”
When she took his hand and helped him out of bed, she made him talk about all the wonders of morning sickness and the impossible weird things he would guilty Noah into getting him to satisfy his midnight cravings. And Kurt, baby monitor tucked into his back pocket, laughed as he followed his best friend to the kitchen downstairs, loving her even more because, even if right now she was having a hard time believing a fairy tale could happen to her, she was writing for Kurt the happy ending he thought he would never have when Sam died.
Once in the kitchen, if his mom smiled and Mercedes shook her head with fake disgust whenever they caught him mixing the dough for the homemade pizzas or any other snacks they would serve at the party while dreaming at the sight of Noah tiptoeing around his father in the back yard, well it was because they knew Kurt was taking the lead of his life.
And they forgave him because it was obvious to everyone one of the three leading roles in this happy ending they were writing together belonged to Noah and Noah alone.
*g*l*e*e*
End of Part 4. To be continued in Part 5a.
Thanks for reading.