Fic: Glee: Making A Baby (Kurt/Blaine, Rachel/Jesse, Mature) 1/2
I am strangely content with the end of Glee, despite the way I love the show and miss it already. I’m content with the ending we got, though. I feel hopeful and happy for the characters I love, and although the finale gave us tons of room to fill the gaps in the story I don’t feel the need to fill most of them. They’re happy, and thus I’m happy. I have tons of headcanons floating around in my mind but not a lot of stories.
Still, there are things I want to explore within canon, and the process of Kurt and Blaine having a child is one of them. So here are fourteen thousand words about that, about their path from deciding to have a child to Rachel becoming pregnant. Ups, downs, and the way they know and love each other.
There are lots of ways to have a child, and while they choose surrogacy in canon, it’s certainly not the only way. Having a child isn’t the only right path for adulthood, either. Nothing in this fic is a value judgment, even though they have to make choices based on their own preferences. It’s just following canon. (I wouldn’t say that it’s negative toward any other option in their voices, but I just want to be clear that I feel strongly that everyone should choose for themselves what is right for them.)
Thanks to Liz for reading this fic for me, for telling me when I needed to write it better, and for understanding. The path to parenthood is complicated for many of us, myself included.
Title: "Making A Baby" [on the AO3]
Author: flaming muse
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine, Rachel/Jesse
Rating: Mature
Word count: 14,000
Summary: Scenes from Kurt and Blaine’s journey to pregnancy.
Spoilers: set within the future shown in 6x13 (“Dreams Come True”)
Disclaimers: The characters belong to various corporate Powers That Be. I make absolutely no profit from playing with them.
Feedback is lovely!
Kurt had thought that the decision to have a child - not knowing they wanted children sometime in the hazy future, which he and Blaine had been talking about since high school, but actually choosing to make it happen in the present - would be an event.
He’d thought finally deciding to take that step would come from a big moment in his life.
He’d thought it would probably be accompanied by something like a health crisis for one of their parents that reminded them all of the passage of time, or a big new role that paid steadily and well, or their friends all having babies around them, or the sudden and inexplicable urge appearing overnight within both Kurt and Blaine to pack up their fashionable little apartment and move to Park Slope.
He’d thought it would feel like a switch flipping or a path turning, a choice.
He’d thought it would feel like a big moment in his life.
It doesn't happen that way at all.
One entirely uneventful Monday night, one among many in their married life, Kurt looks over at Blaine sitting on the other end of the couch, his feet in Kurt’s lap and his attention focused on the book in his hands, and instead of just seeing his handsome husband - and partner in life and best friend and muse and greatest fan and support - and the tidy and attractive apartment around them that is their home and refuge, he sees the hole in their life. He sees that it’s all wonderful, and it’s not enough.
He and Blaine are both happy with what they have, he knows that, but he also knows with a certainty that lodges in the very depths of his heart that they could be happier. Their lives could be more filled with love that they can’t express only between the two of them.
They’re strong and content just the way they are, but they aren’t complete.
His mind reeling, Kurt looks down at his magazine but can’t focus on the pictures.
Instead he can see, not in the abstract but for the first time with any clarity, that something in their lives is missing.
Someone is missing, someone to love and turn their lives upside-down and mold everything they are to each other into a new depth of partnership, a new kind of family.
Yesterday parenthood wasn’t even on Kurt’s mind in the busyness of demanding performances and leisurely brunches with friends, but now it’s impossible to ignore, like a green bud tucked away in the leaves blooming overnight into a vibrant flower.
It’s so breathtakingly simple that all he can do is sit there in shock at how right it feels, like the first time he walked down the street in New York or the first time he put his hand in Blaine’s and it felt like coming home.
“Are you okay?” Blaine asks him, his eyebrows rising in mild concern. “You look far too serious about that spread in Vogue. Have they brought back peplums again?”
Kurt sets his hand down on Blaine’s bare ankle, anchoring himself with the familiar feel of warm skin, soft hair, and knobby bone beneath his palm. “I’m fine,” he says. "No peplums." His smile wobbles out of him, all nerves and excitement and anticipation. His breath shakes into his lungs and out again, loud in his ears. “I think we should have a baby.”
Blaine stares at him, the book falling into his lap as his eyes search Kurt’s face. “What?”
“If you want to,” Kurt says. He knows this is an important choice. He can’t make it for them both. “When you want to. I know our nest egg isn’t as big as we’d wanted it to be, and maybe this apartment isn’t ideal, but I - “
He shrugs, helpless to explain how he feels. Their life is great, but it could be better. He knows what’s missing, and he knows how to fix it. He knows he can.
Kurt always wanted a family - a husband, a child, a happily ever after full of school plays to cheer at and difficult, embarrassing conversations at the kitchen table to laugh about afterwards - and now he’s ready to take the next step to have all of it.
Maybe he’s not not the capital-R Ready he had thought he would be, but he’s sure. He feels settled and strong in himself, in his life, and in his marriage. He’s ready.
He watches Blaine’s face go through a half-dozen emotions from surprise to confusion to hesitation to a bright, awed joy that Kurt can’t help but smile when he sees.
“I don’t want to push you,” he tells Blaine. “I just...” He gestures around the room, like Blaine can possibly sense the hole in their life the way it feels to him, but he can’t quite put the imaginary absence of something into words. “I’m ready,” he ends up saying. “When you are.”
Blaine nods, his eyes going wet with happy tears, and his book and the magazine both slide to the floor as he grabs for Kurt’s hand, his hold on it as tight as a vice. “I am,” he says.
“You don’t have to be,” Kurt says, because he knows all too well that Blaine will say yes to almost anything to make him happy, and he doesn’t want this decision to be anything but right for them both. “And there’s a lot to talk about, about how we want to do it and if we need more space and - “
“Kurt.” Blaine takes Kurt’s other hand and looks right into his eyes with the steady devotion that Kurt is fortunate enough to be able to depend on every day of their lives together; it makes something in Kurt’s body relax and melt to see it. “Yes. We’ll talk about everything, but yes. I've been thinking about it lately, too. I didn’t think you were, but... I like this life we’ve built together, and I want to build more. I want to build a family with you. My answer is absolutely yes.” His smile goes wide and almost unbearably happy, and Kurt finds his own eyes blurring as they fill up with tears.
Kurt thinks he should have known Blaine would be on the same page. They’re different people and still surprise each other, but at their cores they’ve always wanted the same things. Here they are again. They have each other - sure and steady and safe - and now they both want to have more.
Blaine’s voice drops to something even softer and warmer, intimate, something between just the two of them. “Let’s have a baby.”
Kurt bites his lip and nods helplessly. He blinks back his tears, because he wants to be able to see Blaine’s face clearly in this wonderful, happy, overwhelming moment, and the shining light in Blaine’s smile is one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen.
“Let’s have a baby,” he says.
*
Blaine is window shopping on his way back from rehearsal, a bag with a new bowtie swinging in his hand - okay, maybe there has been some actual shopping, too, but the tie has little birds on it, and he couldn’t resist - when he passes by a small children’s boutique.
His steps slow. He’s not drawn to the hand-embroidered christening gowns and almost incomprehensibly tiny little satin slippers in the window, but off to the side, nearly hidden behind a display of pastel knitted sweaters that are so delicate they’re probably hand-wash-only, is the cutest, most cuddly tan teddy bear, with a little pink nose and slightly off-center button eyes that make it look both confused and desperately sweet.
It’s wearing a crisp purple-and-blue-striped bowtie around its neck.
Blaine becomes rooted to the spot on the sidewalk, drawn to this perfect little stuffed animal peeking out at him. It’s perfect to hug, perfect to listen to confessions, perfect to be a guest at tea parties, perfect to ward off monsters under the bed, perfect to soak up tears.
It’s exactly the kind of stuffed animal he’d have wanted as a little boy. It’s exactly the kind of stuffed animal every kid should have.
His fingers tighten on the soft ribbon handle of his shopping bag.
He knows he and Kurt haven’t decided how to have a child yet. They’re only two days into this new phase of their lives, and they haven’t decided how to start the process and when to do it. They certainly don’t know if their child will be a boy or a girl and whether they’re going to choose to have a newborn or adopt an older child. They can’t pick out clothes or decorate or plan for anything yet. There’s far too much up in the air, far too much unknown.
But they are going to have a child. They know that much.
They are.
His stomach fluttering with a nervous sort of excitement and his heart lifting right up into the sky - because it’s real, not a dream anymore; it’s something they are going to do - Blaine nods to himself and goes inside.
Their step is huge and new and still full of questions, but he and Kurt are going to bring a child into their family. It’s not abstract. It’s happening, however they end up deciding to make it happen.
Blaine can count on it.
He knows he’s probably a little ahead of himself to start buying anything, and he also knows if Kurt were here he would object to him jinxing them before they started, but Blaine simply has to give into the urge to pick out something special for the family they’re now officially planning.
He doesn’t need to buy everything in the store, but it feels right to mark the moment with this one important purchase. It makes it all the more real, because he can do it. He can buy something for his child.
The monumentality of that thought nearly bowls him over, and his voice is thick through his smile as he talks to the sales assistant.
Blaine doesn’t know how or exactly when he and Kurt are going to have a child, but they will.
And this cute little stuffed animal, even more soft and huggable in Blaine’s hands than it looked in the window, will be his or her teddy bear.
*
“ - Carole keeps dragging me to these dinner parties, which she says are to help my re-election bid, but I think they’re just an excuse for her to show me off in a suit,” Kurt’s father says, and Kurt smiles as he sees Carole rolls her eyes beside his dad on the other side of the Skype connection.
“What?” Burt says to her. He puffs out his chest. “I know you think I’m irresistible in a tie.”
“You are,” she agrees with a pat to his arm, “but the grumbling about the campaign dinners isn’t quite so attractive.”
Kurt smothers a laugh behind his hand, even as he finds himself aching a little. He can’t help but miss his parents, despite how great his life in New York is and how unthinkable living in Lima again would be; there’s something that pulls at him about seeing them acting like themselves, not just imparting information or having a conversation via computer or phone but playing with each other the way they do in their own kitchen.
He might live hundreds of miles away and be married and grown, but they’re his family. He loves cooking with Blaine in their tiny galley kitchen, but a part of him still misses bumping elbows with Carole at the Hummel-Hudson sink. He loves knowing the subway and city streets like the back of his hand, but he misses the smell of motor oil from his dad’s shop as he walks through the doors. He loves performing, creating, and being able to stroll hand-in-hand down the street with his husband he adores, but he misses being able to walk up the front steps to his parents’ house and close the door behind him and the rest of the world and be welcomed home by his dad’s warm, loving hug.
“Did I tell you she made me give away two of my old suits?” Kurt’s father asks with exaggerated indignation.
“The lapels were so wide you could use them to fan yourself if you got too hot,” Carole says. “And you’re talking to the wrong person if you want sympathy, honey. Kurt’s going to be on my side on this one. It’s fashion.”
“Wide lapels are actually back in,” Kurt tells her and laughs and aches some more as his dad turns to her in triumph.
No, there’s no question for Kurt that he is making the most of being an independent adult, surrounded by dear friends and exciting opportunities and doing the work he was born to do, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t miss these everyday moments with his family.
He wants them involved in his life. He wants them to know about it, about him, about everything. He doesn’t want there to be secrets, especially not about important things.
Especially not about their family expanding.
Yet, as much as it feels wrong not to blurt out his own news, Kurt sighs and makes himself stay silent for the moment about what’s most important to him.
He and Blaine agreed not to tell anyone about their plans to have a child until they have some actual answers and plans. He knows Blaine would happily tell everyone - family, friends, co-workers, the dry cleaner, his favorite barista, the busker on the subway... - but Kurt wants to keep the decision closer to his chest until it’s not so fragile, until they’ve run the numbers and pinned down all of the details and know they can.
He isn’t ready to share this news with the world, not yet. There are still so many options about how they are going to make parenthood happen, if they can. It feels like it could all get yanked out from beneath them in a second.
He doesn’t want to be questioned and judged and given advice. He wants to know, to tell, to inform people of a plan instead of giving them the ability to try to blow down a house of cards they’re just starting to build.
It feels too new and precious to him to open it up to commentary from the world at large. And even if his parents don’t feel quite so dangerous, he made an agreement. He can’t go against what he and Blaine decided.
So Kurt chats with them a little longer and says goodbye with the words he wants to say still trapped behind his lips, and he sits on the couch and yearns for a long moment - wanting to share, wanting them to celebrate with him, wanting them to be there to help support them making this unthinkably huge step that will change all of their lives for the better - before he gets up and re-organizes the closet in the spare room to keep himself occupied.
Blaine comes home to find him there two hours later. Kurt is sweaty, tired, and surrounded by boxes and bins of off-season clothing and sheet music. His heart is still tender, but at least he’s been busy.
Blaine’s smile dims at the sight of him. “What’s going on?” he asks from the doorway as his eyebrows scrunch together in concern. “Did something happen?”
Kurt shakes his head. “I Skyped with Dad and Carole.” He puts another score on the pile he has designated for ‘Fighting Against The World’ music.
“Is everything okay?” Blaine comes to crouch down near him, carefully not dislodging any of Kurt’s organization.
Kurt shakes his head again, feeling raw and foolish, because his discomfort is all a result of his choice, not Blaine’s. “I want to tell them,” he says, and it takes him a moment to look back up into Blaine’s eyes. He knows his unhappiness is of his own doing, and he shouldn’t be changing his mind.
He just wants to share the news with them. He wants them to know. He wants them to share in their excitement. He wants someone to confide in and lean on as they make decisions that will change all of their lives forever.
He and Blaine are trying to have a family, and he wants his family to be a part of it all.
Blaine’s concern melts away. “So let’s tell them,” he says with a smile that is kind and warm.
“We still don’t have anything to tell,” Kurt says, his hands flexing on his thighs. “We’ll be opening ourselves up to a million questions we don’t have answers for, and if it doesn’t work out they’re going to be so disappointed.” He hates the thought of hurting them with failure when he knows that him being gay has already made them reshuffle their expectations for their family. They’ve obviously been accepting and wonderful, but...
“They’re going to be excited,” Blaine tells him. He runs his hand over Kurt’s shoulder and down his arm. “You know they are.”
Kurt nods, helpless against the truth in Blaine’s smile.
“And if things don’t work out for us the first time, they’d want to know that, too,” Blaine says. “They’d want to support us.”
Kurt nods again, because he knows it’s true. He just doesn’t know if he can handle being supported if they’re heartbroken by not being able to afford the fees for a surrogate or having an adoption fall through. He doesn’t know if he can handle their disappointment on top of his own, even though he knows they’d try to hide it.
He looks at his husband - at Blaine’s smiling face and kind eyes and boundless love - takes a slow breath, and straightens his back.
There’s no point in worrying about the potential for failure. If he lived his life that way, he’d never get anything he wanted.
If something doesn’t work out, they’ll just find another way. That’s what he’s always done.
Kurt wants to focus on the good parts of his life, whether it’s new successes or a new child. He wants to share that happiness with the people he loves, people who will support them and be happy about the news. Simple as that.
Life is far too short to hold anything back.
“Help me up,” he says, offering his hand to Blaine and letting Blaine pull them both to their feet. He keeps his fingers linked with Blaine’s as he lifts onto his toes for a moment to stretch his cramped legs. “Come on.” He starts for the door.
“Now?” Blaine says with a laugh, looking over his shoulder at the messy spare room Kurt’s leaving behind him.
Kurt stops them in the hallway, sliding into Blaine’s arms and kissing him, slowly and full of so much love his heart hurts in his chest. This is his husband, the man of his dreams and (even better) his reality, the other father of their future child, and he’s so happy to be taking this step with him. He can’t wait.
Blaine’s a little startled at first by the press of Kurt’s mouth, but he seems more than happy to fall into it. His eyes are dreamy and contented when they break the kiss, his hands wide on Kurt’s back and keeping him close.
“I want us both to tell them,” Kurt says, smoothing down Blaine’s hair. “Right now.”
“Okay,” is Blaine’s easy reply, supportive as always.
“Blaine,” Kurt says breathlessly, because for whatever reason it feels even more real now than it did ten minutes ago. “We’re having a baby.”
Blaine smiles into the kiss as he touches their mouths together again.
“Hey, kid,” Kurt’s dad says when he answers their call. The screen waves around like he’s on his phone instead of the computer they usually talk on. “Hey, Blaine. Everything okay?”
“Is Carole still there?” Kurt asks.
“Yeah, she’s making dinner. Here, I’ll get her.” The image on the screen sways even more as Burt walks from the living room to the kitchen.
Blaine’s hand is tight on Kurt’s where they rest on Blaine’s thigh, and he ducks his head against Kurt’s shoulder for a second, like he’s nervous, even though he’s the one who has wanted to shout out the news from every street corner since they decided, even though he’s the one who already tempted fate and bought a stuffed animal for their future child without there being a plan to have one or even a place set up to store baby things.
Kurt squeezes Blaine’s hand and swallows down his own fluttering nerves.
“All right,” his dad says as his face and Carole’s swim into focus, the kitchen cabinets behind them. “What’s going on? You got me worried now. Is something wrong?”
“No,” Kurt says, and it comes out high-pitched and giddy. He can’t stop himself from smiling wide enough to hurt his face, and he can see in the corner of his screen that with his hair falling down into his eyes he looks like he’s about twelve and beside him Blaine looks like he’s going to cry. “No, nothing wrong. We’re - Blaine and I - “ Kurt sits up straighter, because of all of the things he’s had to announce to his father in his life, this isn’t the most difficult by far. He laughs a little, joy bubbling up. “Blaine and I have decided to have a baby. We don’t know how yet, but - “
He’s cut off by his dad whooping and the screen twisting around wildly as Burt hugs Carole and apparently dances around the kitchen with her for a moment.
Blaine laughs wetly against Kurt’s shoulder, and Kurt holds his hand as tightly as he dares and grins at the screen.
“We’re going to have grandbabies?!” Burt asks when his face is back in frame.
“Well, I think we’re starting with just one - “ Kurt begins, but he stops with a laugh when his dad whoops again.
“Hell, yes!” Burt says with Carole beaming at them at his side. “You let us know what you need. We’ll be there. We’ll help out however you want. Grandbabies!” He smacks a kiss against Carole’s cheek. “Kurt, Blaine, we can’t wait to spoil them rotten.”
Carole nods, her eyes shining, and if Kurt knows she’ll probably mourn the grandchildren she won’t have through Finn he’s still so grateful that she’ll be the doting grandmother to his own child.
“I can see we’re going to need to set some ground rules,” Kurt says, but his voice wobbles with emotion, and he can see himself smiling dopily at his parents in the corner of his screen.
He feels like he could burst with happiness, and Blaine looks about as giddy at his side.
Kurt squeezes Blaine’s hand so tightly it makes his knuckles ache, and Blaine kisses his shoulder and squeezes him right back.
There’s still so much they haven’t figured out yet, and there’s still the possibility of none of it working out, but yes, telling his parents now - seeing them excited and getting to share their own feelings - was the absolute right thing to do.
*
Blaine rolls over, chilled by the way the blankets have fallen off of his bare shoulders, and searches for the warmth of his husband’s body. His dream is still calling to him, dragging him down. All he needs is to curl up against Kurt’s back.
His hand reaches the far edge of the bed before it finds Kurt, though, and Blaine sleepily blinks open his eyes.
The bedroom is dark. The red numbers on the clock beside the bed read 2:43 am. Kurt’s side of the bed is cool; he clearly hasn’t been there for a while.
Confused and concerned, Blaine pushes himself out of bed. The bathroom in the hallway is dark and empty. The bed in the spare room is unoccupied and still made up as neatly as ever.
He finally finds Kurt at the kitchen table, his laptop pushed to the side and displaying a handful of browser windows. He’s punching holes in a stack of what look like freshly printed papers. Blaine wonders if it was the whirring of the printer in the spare room that woke him up.
“Kurt?” Blaine asks as Kurt takes the paper and puts it into the binder that is spread open in front of him. “What are you doing?”
“Getting organized,” Kurt says. He threads a divider onto the rings of the binder and picks up an orange label from the pile of multi-colored labels and sticky notes beside him. He writes something on it with the pen he had tucked behind his ear.
“It’s almost three in the morning,” Blaine says, rubbing some of the grit out of his eye. He doesn’t have to ask why Kurt is organizing at this hour. He knows Kurt better than anyone. He knows why, at least in the abstract. He steps forward to stand behind Kurt’s chair and puts his hand on Kurt’s shoulder. “What’s stressing you out?”
“There are so many choices,” Kurt says. He picks up another stack of papers and squares its edges on the table with a firm series of thwacks. “Adoption, surrogacy, anonymous versus open egg donation. Most international adoption is off the table due to us being gay, but there’s still domestic. Private and foster care. Open and closed. And that’s only adoption. Each path has so many options, each with serious pros and cons.”
Blaine can feel the flex of Kurt’s muscles as he pushes hard on the hole puncher, and he rubs absently at Kurt’s arm. “I know. But we don’t have to decide right now.”
Kurt puts the papers into the binder and picks up another divider. “We need to start narrowing it down.”
“Not in the middle of the night,” Blaine says with a laugh that is half yawn.
Turning in his chair, Kurt looks up at him, his eyes tired but almost wild with the need to have things under control. Blaine knows that look. He’s seen it before too many times: in the middle of finals, the night before an important audition, during Kurt’s father’s health scares, with the extra addition of sadness on the anniversary of Finn’s death.
“This is our child, Blaine,” Kurt insists. “There are so many horror stories. Unethical adoptions, surrogates who don’t live up to their end of agreements, egg donors who lie about their medical histories... How do we pick? How do we know which way is the best? Because if we do it wrong, if we get the wrong child - ”
“Whatever child we have will be the right one,” Blaine tells him, pulling over a chair in part to be able to look more easily into Kurt’s eyes and in part because he feels unsteady on his feet at this hour of the night. He takes Kurt’s hands and doesn’t let himself yawn. “And I thought we wanted to use a surrogate. We’ve talked about it for years, remember? Quinn offered to donate an egg?”
Kurt nods and takes a shallow breath, but he says, “We were teenagers, dreaming of our life. This is real now. We need to look at all of our options.” There’s an edge of hysteria in his voice, his usual desire to have everything pinned down coming out sideways with his fatigue.
“We will,” Blaine says, stroking his thumbs over Kurt’s knuckles.
“It’s so much to ask of a friend,” Kurt continues, almost pleading with Blaine. “We need to have other options. We need to figure out the very best way.”
“Okay,” Blaine says, because he knows there’s no way Kurt’s going to back down from his need to have every detail in place. “We will. But not tonight. We don’t have to have all of our options decided tonight.”
Kurt looks down at his color-coded notes, his fingers tightening on Blaine’s. There’s a tension thrumming through him Blaine knows he can’t totally banish, but as much as he wants to he knows it’s not actually his job to fix it. He can just help Kurt cope with the stress. He knows how to do that much.
“Whatever we decide will be the right choice,” Blaine tells him again. “There’s no wrong way for us to have a baby.”
Kurt’s eyes search his, softening with sadness. “It feels like every way could be the wrong way.”
“I know,” Blaine says, and it’s not that he doesn’t see the same panoply of options for them to choose among but that he sees a smiling little boy or girl at the end of every one. He can’t wait to meet their child, whoever he or she turns out to be. He is so ready. He finds himself smiling at his husband, the love of his life, the co-parent of their future child. “And there are definitely a lot of details for us to figure out, but I’m pretty sure part of why you’re feeling overwhelmed is because it’s the middle of the night. Things always seem harder in the middle of the night.”
Kurt smiles a little, too, and glances over at his now-sleeping laptop. He takes a slow breath and tips his head, unwinding just a touch. “You’re probably right.”
Blaine’s heart warms, even as he shivers a little in the cool air of their apartment. He loves it when Kurt listens to him. “I am right. And I’m also cold.” He stands up and tugs on Kurt’s hands. “Come back to bed. We can talk more about this tomorrow. You’ll feel better if you get some sleep.”
“You just want me to warm you up,” Kurt says with a dry laugh, but he shuts his laptop and doesn’t resist as Blaine pulls him toward their bedroom, and Blaine smiles in reply, because that Kurt’s following means Blaine has done his job.
*
The line for the deli is long enough to snake almost to the door, and Kurt drifts in a pre-coffee haze as Blaine checks his phone beside him.
“That gender-bent Gershwin review has added a matinee tomorrow if you want to go,” Blaine tells him, scrolling down his screen.
“We should tell Elliott,” Kurt says. “He was disappointed he couldn’t get tickets.” They inch forward a step, and he wishes the bagels here weren’t so damn good, because he really, really needed a latte like ten minutes ago, and there’s a Starbucks across the street calling his name. But... bagels...
“I’ll text him,” Blaine says.
“Mm.” Kurt’s eyes drift across the deli and land on a father with a child in his lap, the toddler chewing on a wedge of banana.
It’s strange to Kurt how there seem to be children everywhere now that they’ve started planning to have one. He’s pretty sure the world didn’t have a sudden explosion of children in the past few months, but now he notices them wherever he goes. Now he can’t help but pick out strollers on the sidewalk and babies on the subway. Now he sees pregnant women with a hint of wistfulness instead of at most just appreciating how far maternity fashion has come.
The toddler squishes the banana between his fingers and squeals out a laugh, and the father rolls his eyes, puts down his paper, and reaches for a napkin with a smile.
Kurt feels a pang of longing for the child they still are so far away from having, and as the father kisses his son’s dark curls as he cleans off his fingers, the pull in Kurt’s stomach gets tighter, sharper, more focused.
“ - pick him up a ticket, but if he doesn’t - “ Blaine is saying, and Kurt has no idea what he’s talking about and doesn’t really care in that moment.
They made a choice that was wrong, and he needs to fix it.
Kurt turns to him and says, “It should be both of us.”
“We don’t both need to order - “ Blaine begins.
“No. Surrogacy. It should be both of us,” Kurt insists. “I know we decided to use my sprem first, then yours for our second child, but surrogacy is so expensive, and it’s hard to find the right surrogate, and if we only have one chance at this, I want a little you, too, Blaine. I want the possibility of it. I don’t want to wait.” He’s so certain it’s overpowering - a vision of a different dark-haired, honey-eyed child bright in his mind - and he hopes Blaine won’t argue.
Blaine blinks at him for a moment, and then he leans in to hug him, right there in line for coffee and bagels.
Kurt’s arms wrap around his husband with a dizzy sort of hope and possibility spinning in his heart. “I love you. I want a little you,” he murmurs against Blaine’s cheek.
“Okay,” Blaine whispers back, sounding choked up, and he holds Kurt for another minute until the line forces them apart again.
*
“So,” Rachel says as she unfurls her napkin on her lap across the restaurant’s table from Blaine. She looks at Jesse beside her, who is giving her a knowing smile. “Jesse and I have been talking, and I have a proposal for you.”
“What’s that?” Blaine takes a sip of his coffee and frowns at its bitterness, reaching for the sugar. He keeps his head up and tilted toward her to make it clear that he’s listening; he doesn’t want to seem rude.
“We can’t afford to split that house in the Hamptons with you for the month of August,” Kurt tells Rachel, offering her half of his attention, his eyes trained on the brunch menu in his hands. “Not with saving for the baby. I don’t care how much you think it will help us professionally to move in those social circles. Which I’m honestly not convinced about, even if you know I’d happily off a few of my favorite Housewives just to get to be in the same kitchen as Ina Garten.”
“It would help,” Rachel insists, her eyes narrowing. “It always helps to know people, Kurt. You know that.”
“You’re getting off-track,” Jesse says to her gently.
“Oh. Right.” Rachel smooths back her hair and smiles at them both, suddenly composed again.
Blaine takes another sip of coffee, willing it to perk him up, because they were out late at a Broadway party the night before, and if it’s going to be one of those Sundays where Kurt and Rachel are bickering over brunch he’s going to need all of the energy he can muster to keep them on an even keel. It’s a good thing he’s a morning person.
“Anyway, speaking of babies,” she says, “I’d like to offer you the use of my womb.”
She smiles easily at them as Blaine stares at her, his cup frozen halfway from his mouth to the table. Beside him, Kurt is just as still.
The words rattle in Blaine’s head, a jumble of sounds and meanings that he can’t quite believe he understands. It can’t be possible. Can it?
He wonders for a moment if he’s fallen back asleep while Kurt’s in the shower and is dreaming everything around him, but he recovers before Kurt and sets down his mug with fingers that have gone suddenly numb. “You’d like to offer us - “ he says slowly, trying out the words in his mouth.
“My womb,” she says, patting her stomach.
“Temporarily,” Jesse adds.
Rachel nods. “Obviously. I’m offering to be your surrogate,” she says and looks between them both. “I promise I will do my very best not to be offended if you want to go in another direction, but I know surrogates are expensive, and finding the right one is difficult and...” She takes a deep breath as Jesse puts his arm around her. Her smile wobbles a little with emotion. “You two are my very best friends, and it would be my honor to carry your child if you would like me to.”
Swallowing back a complicated cascade of emotions - disbelief, gratitude, shock, hope, amazement, a fierce and desperate kind of affection toward this woman who is all but family to him - Blaine can feel his face crumple as he says, “Rachel...”
She holds her hand out to him across the table. “I love you both,” she says softly.
Blaine doesn’t know how to put his feelings into words in reply. He’s overwhelmed with gratitude, amazed by their good fortune, utterly floored by her generosity. His eyes sting, and his vision blurs. “We love you, too,” he croaks out. He glances at Jesse, who shrugs his agreement, and Blaine feels his love, too, even though obviously it’s not his body and thus not his choice to make this offer. “God, Rachel, I don’t even know what to say besides thank you.”
“Yes?” she suggests, blinking back her own tears. She looks over at Kurt, who is sitting still and utterly silent beside Blaine, his eyes fixed on the menu in his hands.
“We can - “ Blaine clears his throat, not sure what Kurt is thinking and not wanting to push him into a corner. If Kurt’s not on board with the idea, Blaine can’t agree to anything. “We’ll talk about it,” he tells Rachel, not letting go of her cool fingers. “Thank you for the offer, but obviously we need to - “
He stops when Kurt’s head lifts, and he can see the expression on Kurt’s face far more clearly. Kurt’s eyes are wide and unguarded, stunned and just as overwhelmed as Blaine feels. It’s not often that Kurt is brought to speechlessness, but Blaine is relieved to see he’s smiling.
Kurt reaches out for Rachel’s other hand. “Thank you,” he says with a quiet sincerity. He glances over at Blaine, as if checking for his reaction. “We do need to talk, but... I can’t think of anyone I’d trust more with our child.”
“Obviously,” she says with a nod and a tightening of her trembling smile as her eyes flood with tears again.
Blaine nods his own agreement - because she’s Rachel, and she’d let them be a part of everything, and she would take such care with herself for their child - and Jesse smiles at them all as Rachel takes back her hands and leans against his side.
“Wow,” Blaine says to himself, smoothing his napkin over his lap with hands that are shaking more than a little. “That was... wow. Not what I expected to hear over brunch.”
Kurt breathes out a laugh and then adjusts his silverware on his placemat. He clears his throat. “But we’re still not getting that house in the Hamptons,” he says to Rachel. “Even if we’re able to avoid surrogacy fees and only have to pay for the procedures, we still have to save up for daycare and school. Plus whatever strange cravings you might have.”
“And you know it won’t be for two-for-five-dollars bodega hot dogs,” Jesse agrees.
“Probably Russian caviar and imported Parisian macarons,” Kurt replies, and Blaine makes a mental note to look up if it’s even safe for pregnant women to eat caviar.
“If we’re lucky,” Jesse says to him.
“But this will be the last child-free summer for you two,” Rachel says, leaning across the table toward Kurt. “You should take advantage of it by networking at exclusive parties with the New York elite! It will push your son or daughter further than any school ever could.”
Blaine reaches for his coffee again, hope and joy bright and close in his chest as the two of them start to bicker again.
It’s bickering with love - clearly love, that much more vivid when Rachel would offer them her body, her means of performing, her very self - and Blaine can only smile and wonder how he got so lucky to have all of these wonderful people in his life.
*
“I have to say,” Santana says, leaning her hip against the kitchen counter as Kurt arranges some of the canapes he made earlier, “I’m kind of disappointed you aren’t using this opportunity to tap Berry’s ass. Well, not her ass, obviously - even McKinley’s crappy sex ed taught me that much about getting knocked up - but you could finally punch your v-card.”
“Santana,” Kurt says with a dry laugh and a shake of his head, “I’m hardly a virgin.”
“Yeah, no, I lived with you. I know that. Boy, do I know that. I still can’t scrub those high-pitched, girly moans from my memory, and that was just Blaine.” She takes one of the salmon and creme-fraiche canapes, and he adjusts the ones on the serving tray to fill the gap she left; he refuses to let her see him flush at her comments, because it’s old news and he’s so far from ashamed for having sex with Blaine that it’s not even funny. “I meant v as in vagina.”
“First off, no.” He shudders at the thought of having sex with Rachel. He loves her, but... no. Not ever. She’s beautiful but entirely the wrong shape, all curves and softness instead of hard planes of muscle. Also, she’s Rachel. “And secondly, she’s our surrogate. It’s not going to be her egg.”
Santana laughs and nudges his shoulder. “I know,” she says with a smirk. She grabs another canape and pops it into her mouth. “You’re too easy, god.”
“You’re the only person who thinks so.” Pondering how hungry their guests probably are, he bends down to pull another serving plate out of the cabinet. Better to have too much food out than not enough, and at the rate Santana’s eating he’ll be lucky if half of what he made even makes it out of the kitchen.
“Yeah, well, I’m not scared of you. I bite, too.” She tips her head to the side, her long hair tumbling over her shoulder. The teasing spark fades from her eyes. “Look, I’m happy for you guys. I know it’s a big project to make it all happen, and I still can’t believe you’re letting Berry anywhere near the middle of it, but... I’m happy for you.” There’s a gentle sincerity to her voice that touches Kurt deep in his chest.
“Thanks,” he says, smiling a little at her. He opens another container and starts to set out some of the spinach tartlets. “It’ll be worth it in the end.”
“Yeah. We’ll have to deal with at some point, too,” Santana says with a heavy sigh as she looks out toward the living room where the rest of the party guests, including her wife, are gathering. “Hell, if Brit and I decide someday we want a kid that looks like something out of Lord of the Rings we’ll probably be hitting up you and Blaine for some of your elf or hobbit DNA.”
Kurt snorts and shakes his head, but a part of him is touched by the thought. It’s complicated to think of having a child that’s biologically partly his being raised by one of his best friends, but life is complicated. He’s not scared of it. And Santana and Brittany are two of his best friends. Blaine’s, too. He knows they would both help their friends in any way they could.
“I’m not having sex with you, either,” he tells her.
Santana skims her hands down her sides and sways her hips, showing off her curves in her short dress. “You wish you were that lucky, Lady Hummel. I’m all kinds of hot.”
He shakes his head again and goes back to setting out the canapes. He glances at her out of the corner of his eye. “You know where to find us if you and Brittany get to that point,” he says more seriously.
Santana looks away for a second, suddenly vulnerable in the way she rarely shows even her friends, and then nods. “Thanks. I don’t know if I can stand having a kid with pointy ears or hairy feet, or maybe even a kid at all, but... thanks.”
Kurt meets her eyes and sees the real gratitude and understanding beneath her bravado. He knows she and Brittany will have to make their own choices about how to make it happen if they want children, but that it can’t be straightforward is one of the places their lives intersect beyond the likely experiences of their straight friends.
“That’s what friends are for,” he tells her, feeling unexpectedly touched by the idea of the request to help the two of them have a child. He’s never needed the approval of those around him for the decisions he makes about his life, but there’s something comforting to know that his friends are also thinking about similar issues, about similar sorts of plans involving leaning on each other.
It’s hard to remember the bleak, terrible days of early high school when he felt so alone and hated with the kind of love he has surrounding him now, with the kind of amazing present he’s already living and even more incredible future he is planning to have with his friends and soon-to-be growing family.
She points a finger at him, her eyes narrowing at whatever she sees on his face. “If you start making sappy speeches or singing, I am walking out of this apartment right now.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he promises. “But I can’t speak for Blaine.”
As if on cue, there is the sound of the piano in the other room, an intricate run of notes like someone is warming up. Kurt would know Blaine’s touch on the keys anywhere. It always draws him in to watch, to listen, to admire, to sing along.
“I hate you both,” Santana says darkly. “I wouldn’t even come over here if Brit didn’t like you so much.”
Kurt passes her a tray with a smile; he knows her far too well to be at all hurt by her words. “Mm hmm,” he says and isn’t surprised to catch the warmth lurking in her eyes as they walk out together into the living room.
*
Blaine glances around the fertility clinic’s waiting room, glad that it’s empty apart from the two of them. It’s bland and beige, the pictures on the wall passionless, pastel flower prints and the magazines on the table beside him a mix of parenting and gossip titles.
It could be pretty much any medical office Blaine has ever been in, only he knows what’s behind the plain wooden door the nurse will be walking them through any minute now.
“What if there are pictures of naked women in there?” he asks Kurt in a low voice, barely more than a whisper. He doesn’t want the receptionist behind the window to hear. “I don’t know if I can do this if I have to look at breasts. I mean, they’re not horrible or anything, but I just - “
Kurt puts his hand over Blaine’s, cool and steady, and Blaine becomes all too aware of just how sweaty his own palms are. “They cater to all sorts of clients here,” Kurt reminds him. “Straight, gay. That’s why we picked this clinic.”
“I know,” Blaine replies, but if there’s straight porn all over the room he isn’t going to know where to look, and this is going to be difficult enough, getting hard and jerking off into a cup in an office with everyone outside knowing exactly what he’s doing and -
“You’re cute when you freak out.” Kurt lifts Blaine’s hand to his smiling mouth and presses a quick kiss to the back of it.
“I can’t help it.”
Kurt’s smile doesn’t waver. He looks calm and confident, and Blaine doesn’t know how that’s possible when Kurt’s the more private of the two of them. Still, he’s composed and even a little flirty as he answers. “That’s true; you’re always cute.”
“Kurt...” Blaine wonders what will happen if he can’t do this, if he can’t make it happen in the little room he’s going to be led into any minute now. They could just use Kurt’s sperm, but Kurt’s set on this path that they’ve chosen together, and he knows that when Kurt’s determined he’s a force of nature. He won’t want to change plans. He thrives when things are all in order the way he wants them, and what he wants is for Blaine to go into that room and masturbate into a cup so that they can mix their sperm together to make a baby. Their baby.
But what if Blaine can’t? What if he’s stuck in there, soft and anxious, and no matter what he looks at or remembers or touches himself he can’t get hard and then the nurse knocks on the door and asks him how he’s doing and even though he hasn’t come in days because he’s supposed to be saving up his sperm and it’s been torture not touching Kurt he’ll just be stuck in there for hours and hours until he’s chafed raw and still soft and -
“Blaine, if you’re having second thoughts and don’t want to have - “
“No, I do,” Blaine says. “Of course I do.” He looks into Kurt’s handsome face, clutches at his hands, and reminds himself to breathe. “This is just... awkward?”
Kurt laughs, a flush rising on his cheeks. “Completely,” he says. He leans in closer, his voice dropping into a more sultry tone. “But I plan on thinking of you in there. And of how we can celebrate together later at home.”
Blaine feels his blood stir, his body responding to Kurt’s voice in his ear and breath against his skin and thinks with relief that getting hard maybe won’t be impossible after all. Difficult, but not impossible. He ducks his head against Kurt’s shoulder and closes his eyes for a moment, trying to shut out the nerves and focus on what matters: them.
“I love you,” he murmurs.
“I love you, too,” Kurt replies, squeezing his hand and going stiff as the door opens; it’s comforting in a way for Blaine to see Kurt’s burst of nerves in his body language, to know that he isn’t alone. “Here we go.”
The room the nurse leads Blaine to is small and sterile, and Blaine tries to listen as she explains the process and shows him the bins full of pornographic magazines and DVDs, all sorts of titles and options, straight and gay, from vanilla to kinky and everything in between.
Besides the images tucked in those bins, there are no breasts in sight.
Blaine sighs out in relief and discomfort when she leaves. It’s too clinical to be titillating, and it’s weird instead of hot to know that men masturbate in this room every day. It’s a doctor’s office, not a club bathroom or a boudoir, not at all sexy or full of love, but... it’s what they have to do if they want a family.
And they do. He and Kurt both do. They want a family together.
So he can do this. He can. He has to.
He glances at the door, thinking of Kurt a few rooms away. It’s weird to be apart. It’s weird to think of Kurt picking out a DVD and opening his pants in a room just like this one. It’s just weird in general.
But... he can do it.
Hanging his coat up on the hook on the door and taking a steadying breath, Blaine goes over to the bin full of DVDs and looks for something he’ll like.
He’s sure he can find something, as long as there aren’t breasts involved.
And then - with his husband down the hall doing the same thing on his own in the middle of a busy medical building - he’ll help make a baby.
*
That night, Kurt comes out after his shower to find Blaine standing in the living room, looking out onto the dark city street outside their window. His arms are crossed over his chest, his shoulders are tense beneath his polo shirt, and the little bit of his expression Kurt can see reflected in the glass is tight and sad.
“Hey,” Kurt says softly, sliding his hand over Blaine’s hunched shoulder.
Blaine sighs out in response and softens just a little under Kurt’s palm. He doesn’t turn around.
“You look upset,” Kurt says with some concern. If Blaine most of the time is filled with infectious sunshine and optimism, Kurt knows that the darkness and insecurity that lie beneath can be intense and run deep. This is supposed to be a happy day, the day their future child is conceived, but Blaine looks far from happy.
“It’s unfair that it’s so hard,” Blaine replies quietly. “Other people just get to make love and have a baby and don’t even have to think about it, and we have to think about every step. We need help with every step.”
Kurt strokes the hair at the nape of Blaine’s bowed head and says, “I know.” He is certainly aware of that unfairness, but there are some things in life he can fight against and others - like the realities of reproduction - he cannot change. He can only find a way around them.
“We can’t just do it. We need other people to let us. We have to ask them and pay them and - “ Blaine breaks off as his voice goes tight.
Kurt waits for him to speak again, soothing him with his touch as best he can. It would be easy to fill the silence, but he knows he needs to let Blaine talk.
“People get to make love and make a baby out of that love, and we don’t.” Blaine’s hands fist and open at his sides. “I don’t want to be straight,” he says with a shake of his head. “I want to be myself. I want to be married to you. I want exactly what we have, Kurt, but I just... I hate that we can’t do this on our own, without anyone else.”
“I know,” Kurt says again, and he feels that barb of life’s injustice, too, when he’s known teenagers like Quinn who have gotten pregnant accidentally and against everything they wish and now as a grown, married man has to jump through what feel like endless hoops to be able to have a child of his own.
It grates like sandpaper against his skin. He wishes he didn’t have to get anyone else involved and could choose for himself in the privacy of his marriage. He wishes he could simply announce a pregnancy instead of plan for a medical procedure.
But, at the end of the day, that injustice doesn’t matter to him all that much. Life is what it is.
“It’s still a child from our love, Blaine,” he says. He leans his cheek against the back of Blaine’s head and draws in the scent of his husband’s hair and skin and aftershave. It’s the smell of home, of the person he loves most in the world. “Our love is what’s making this happen.”
“I know.” Blaine sighs again and turns, sliding into Kurt’s arms, right where he fits best. He tucks himself against Kurt, his arms around Kurt’s waist. Blaine’s so slim and strong in his grasp, and if his eyes are troubled they are still beautiful and as easy for Kurt to fall into as they were the first day they met. “And I do love you,” Blaine promises, like he has every day for years and years. “I want a baby with you. Our baby. Our child.”
Kurt smiles at him and draws him close, knowing he can’t fix the pain in Blaine’s heart but giving him what comfort he can. “Well, that’s good,” he says, “because otherwise we did some really weird things in that clinic today. We’re lucky they didn’t call the police.”
As Kurt had hoped, Blaine laughs, ducking his head, and leans up to kiss him. His lips are warm and a little salty, and Kurt hums into the kiss, letting it go from sweet to open-mouthed and greedy in an instant. It’s been a few days since they’ve been intimate, thanks to the requirements of the clinic, and he’s hungrier than usual for the taste of his husband. With the way Blaine clutches at his shirt and leans up on his toes to chase his mouth, he’s pretty sure the feeling is mutual.
Maybe some of it is the emotion of the week, too, he thinks.
“You know,” Kurt says against Blaine’s cheek when they pull apart to breathe, “just because us having sex won’t make a baby, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make love to celebrate the baby we did our part to make at the clinic today.”
Blaine’s hands smooth over Kurt’s waist, pushing up under his soft t-shirt to splay over the skin of his lower back. “Celebrate, hmm?”
“Well,” Kurt says, shivering as Blaine sucks warm kisses beneath his ear, “I mean, it’s all the same in the end, right? Slightly different birds and bees - “
“Or birds and birds in our case,” Blaine murmurs, the vibration of his voice burning into Kurt’s skin.
“You and birds,” Kurt says with a rush of fondness for this ridiculous, sexy man he married. “But still, when a man and another man love each other very much...”
Blaine chuckles against Kurt’s throat and looks up at him again, his thumbs stroking over Kurt’s back. “I do love you very much,” he says, and everything in his eyes and face and body is like an open book of agreement, full of the love for Kurt he is always ready to express.
“I love you, too,” Kurt tells him, his smile pouring out of him. He feels hopelessly besotted and eager to be close to Blaine, because even if sex between them can’t create a child, they did make one today. Together. Their child, to love and nurture and add to the wonderful life they’re already so happy to be sharing.
He wants to celebrate. He wants to share the moment with him. He wants not to erase the memory of what happened earlier in the clinic but to add to it, to turn something they have to do in public because of the particularities of biology into something that can also be private and just between them.
“Come on,” Kurt says, cupping Blaine’s handsome face and kissing him again before leading him to their bedroom.
There it’s the work of moments to strip them both of their clothes, but they don’t rush anything else. Everything slows down once their naked bodies are entwined. They caress and kiss and smile and gasp and clutch until they’re both drunk with love and saturated with need, and much later when Kurt finally pushes into Blaine’s body it’s not simply the means to a pleasurable end but the last, necessary step of joining themselves together as closely as they possibly can.
Their breaths mingle as they moan into each others mouths, their bodies rocking slowly and steadily together, gripping and sliding and thrusting and searching in perfect rhythm. The build is slow and soaked with emotion, hands on faces and loving murmurs on lips, gentleness turning to tight-fingered urging as their control finally breaks.
Their hips snap and grind with desperation, moving together with single-minded desire, and yet it’s still not enough to sate the desire in Kurt’s body, in Kurt’s heart. He needs to be even closer. He hauls Blaine up with him into his lap as he rises to his knees - needing more, needing Blaine, needing everything - and he holds him near with hands splayed over Blaine’s ass.
Groaning with satisfaction and eagerness all at once, Blaine mouths hotly at Kurt’s throat as he sinks down deeper onto him in a tight, velvety glide around Kurt’s cock. Blaine’s skin is slippery with sweat, and Kurt tightens his grip and holds on as Blaine clings to him - chest to chest, his breath ragged in Kurt’s ear and his arms locked around his shoulders - and rides him hard and deep and frantic and so, so close until they’re both wrung dry.
As he shudders through his aftershocks, Kurt doesn’t trust himself to collapse to the bed, because he’s not aware enough of anything more than the pleasure in his body and the press of Blaine against him that he can be sure he can keep them from rolling off the edge, so he buries his face against Blaine’s sweaty shoulder and kisses the salt from his skin with sleepy affection.
After a minute or two, Kurt can feel Blaine’s mouth turn upwards and his cheek tighten in a smile. “Kurt, we’re having a baby,” Blaine says, all sunshine and excitement once more.
“We are,” Kurt replies, butterflies fluttering in his stomach and up into his chest. They are. It’s really happening, or at least they did their best today. Whether the embryo takes or they have to try again isn’t something they can control.
Smiling at each other, they shakily pull apart and get themselves sorted out, but as they lie down again they are drawn to each other in the middle of the mattress once more, trading exhausted, smiling kisses and loving caresses until they drift off in each other’s arms.
They often shift back and forth between being curled together and sprawling free on their own sides of the bed while they sleep, but the night they conceive their child - at the clinic, not in their own bed, but by the time they fall asleep that night that fact doesn’t matter anymore - they don’t move apart all night long.
*
PART TWO.
Still, there are things I want to explore within canon, and the process of Kurt and Blaine having a child is one of them. So here are fourteen thousand words about that, about their path from deciding to have a child to Rachel becoming pregnant. Ups, downs, and the way they know and love each other.
There are lots of ways to have a child, and while they choose surrogacy in canon, it’s certainly not the only way. Having a child isn’t the only right path for adulthood, either. Nothing in this fic is a value judgment, even though they have to make choices based on their own preferences. It’s just following canon. (I wouldn’t say that it’s negative toward any other option in their voices, but I just want to be clear that I feel strongly that everyone should choose for themselves what is right for them.)
Thanks to Liz for reading this fic for me, for telling me when I needed to write it better, and for understanding. The path to parenthood is complicated for many of us, myself included.
Title: "Making A Baby" [on the AO3]
Author: flaming muse
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine, Rachel/Jesse
Rating: Mature
Word count: 14,000
Summary: Scenes from Kurt and Blaine’s journey to pregnancy.
Spoilers: set within the future shown in 6x13 (“Dreams Come True”)
Disclaimers: The characters belong to various corporate Powers That Be. I make absolutely no profit from playing with them.
Feedback is lovely!
Kurt had thought that the decision to have a child - not knowing they wanted children sometime in the hazy future, which he and Blaine had been talking about since high school, but actually choosing to make it happen in the present - would be an event.
He’d thought finally deciding to take that step would come from a big moment in his life.
He’d thought it would probably be accompanied by something like a health crisis for one of their parents that reminded them all of the passage of time, or a big new role that paid steadily and well, or their friends all having babies around them, or the sudden and inexplicable urge appearing overnight within both Kurt and Blaine to pack up their fashionable little apartment and move to Park Slope.
He’d thought it would feel like a switch flipping or a path turning, a choice.
He’d thought it would feel like a big moment in his life.
It doesn't happen that way at all.
One entirely uneventful Monday night, one among many in their married life, Kurt looks over at Blaine sitting on the other end of the couch, his feet in Kurt’s lap and his attention focused on the book in his hands, and instead of just seeing his handsome husband - and partner in life and best friend and muse and greatest fan and support - and the tidy and attractive apartment around them that is their home and refuge, he sees the hole in their life. He sees that it’s all wonderful, and it’s not enough.
He and Blaine are both happy with what they have, he knows that, but he also knows with a certainty that lodges in the very depths of his heart that they could be happier. Their lives could be more filled with love that they can’t express only between the two of them.
They’re strong and content just the way they are, but they aren’t complete.
His mind reeling, Kurt looks down at his magazine but can’t focus on the pictures.
Instead he can see, not in the abstract but for the first time with any clarity, that something in their lives is missing.
Someone is missing, someone to love and turn their lives upside-down and mold everything they are to each other into a new depth of partnership, a new kind of family.
Yesterday parenthood wasn’t even on Kurt’s mind in the busyness of demanding performances and leisurely brunches with friends, but now it’s impossible to ignore, like a green bud tucked away in the leaves blooming overnight into a vibrant flower.
It’s so breathtakingly simple that all he can do is sit there in shock at how right it feels, like the first time he walked down the street in New York or the first time he put his hand in Blaine’s and it felt like coming home.
“Are you okay?” Blaine asks him, his eyebrows rising in mild concern. “You look far too serious about that spread in Vogue. Have they brought back peplums again?”
Kurt sets his hand down on Blaine’s bare ankle, anchoring himself with the familiar feel of warm skin, soft hair, and knobby bone beneath his palm. “I’m fine,” he says. "No peplums." His smile wobbles out of him, all nerves and excitement and anticipation. His breath shakes into his lungs and out again, loud in his ears. “I think we should have a baby.”
Blaine stares at him, the book falling into his lap as his eyes search Kurt’s face. “What?”
“If you want to,” Kurt says. He knows this is an important choice. He can’t make it for them both. “When you want to. I know our nest egg isn’t as big as we’d wanted it to be, and maybe this apartment isn’t ideal, but I - “
He shrugs, helpless to explain how he feels. Their life is great, but it could be better. He knows what’s missing, and he knows how to fix it. He knows he can.
Kurt always wanted a family - a husband, a child, a happily ever after full of school plays to cheer at and difficult, embarrassing conversations at the kitchen table to laugh about afterwards - and now he’s ready to take the next step to have all of it.
Maybe he’s not not the capital-R Ready he had thought he would be, but he’s sure. He feels settled and strong in himself, in his life, and in his marriage. He’s ready.
He watches Blaine’s face go through a half-dozen emotions from surprise to confusion to hesitation to a bright, awed joy that Kurt can’t help but smile when he sees.
“I don’t want to push you,” he tells Blaine. “I just...” He gestures around the room, like Blaine can possibly sense the hole in their life the way it feels to him, but he can’t quite put the imaginary absence of something into words. “I’m ready,” he ends up saying. “When you are.”
Blaine nods, his eyes going wet with happy tears, and his book and the magazine both slide to the floor as he grabs for Kurt’s hand, his hold on it as tight as a vice. “I am,” he says.
“You don’t have to be,” Kurt says, because he knows all too well that Blaine will say yes to almost anything to make him happy, and he doesn’t want this decision to be anything but right for them both. “And there’s a lot to talk about, about how we want to do it and if we need more space and - “
“Kurt.” Blaine takes Kurt’s other hand and looks right into his eyes with the steady devotion that Kurt is fortunate enough to be able to depend on every day of their lives together; it makes something in Kurt’s body relax and melt to see it. “Yes. We’ll talk about everything, but yes. I've been thinking about it lately, too. I didn’t think you were, but... I like this life we’ve built together, and I want to build more. I want to build a family with you. My answer is absolutely yes.” His smile goes wide and almost unbearably happy, and Kurt finds his own eyes blurring as they fill up with tears.
Kurt thinks he should have known Blaine would be on the same page. They’re different people and still surprise each other, but at their cores they’ve always wanted the same things. Here they are again. They have each other - sure and steady and safe - and now they both want to have more.
Blaine’s voice drops to something even softer and warmer, intimate, something between just the two of them. “Let’s have a baby.”
Kurt bites his lip and nods helplessly. He blinks back his tears, because he wants to be able to see Blaine’s face clearly in this wonderful, happy, overwhelming moment, and the shining light in Blaine’s smile is one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen.
“Let’s have a baby,” he says.
*
Blaine is window shopping on his way back from rehearsal, a bag with a new bowtie swinging in his hand - okay, maybe there has been some actual shopping, too, but the tie has little birds on it, and he couldn’t resist - when he passes by a small children’s boutique.
His steps slow. He’s not drawn to the hand-embroidered christening gowns and almost incomprehensibly tiny little satin slippers in the window, but off to the side, nearly hidden behind a display of pastel knitted sweaters that are so delicate they’re probably hand-wash-only, is the cutest, most cuddly tan teddy bear, with a little pink nose and slightly off-center button eyes that make it look both confused and desperately sweet.
It’s wearing a crisp purple-and-blue-striped bowtie around its neck.
Blaine becomes rooted to the spot on the sidewalk, drawn to this perfect little stuffed animal peeking out at him. It’s perfect to hug, perfect to listen to confessions, perfect to be a guest at tea parties, perfect to ward off monsters under the bed, perfect to soak up tears.
It’s exactly the kind of stuffed animal he’d have wanted as a little boy. It’s exactly the kind of stuffed animal every kid should have.
His fingers tighten on the soft ribbon handle of his shopping bag.
He knows he and Kurt haven’t decided how to have a child yet. They’re only two days into this new phase of their lives, and they haven’t decided how to start the process and when to do it. They certainly don’t know if their child will be a boy or a girl and whether they’re going to choose to have a newborn or adopt an older child. They can’t pick out clothes or decorate or plan for anything yet. There’s far too much up in the air, far too much unknown.
But they are going to have a child. They know that much.
They are.
His stomach fluttering with a nervous sort of excitement and his heart lifting right up into the sky - because it’s real, not a dream anymore; it’s something they are going to do - Blaine nods to himself and goes inside.
Their step is huge and new and still full of questions, but he and Kurt are going to bring a child into their family. It’s not abstract. It’s happening, however they end up deciding to make it happen.
Blaine can count on it.
He knows he’s probably a little ahead of himself to start buying anything, and he also knows if Kurt were here he would object to him jinxing them before they started, but Blaine simply has to give into the urge to pick out something special for the family they’re now officially planning.
He doesn’t need to buy everything in the store, but it feels right to mark the moment with this one important purchase. It makes it all the more real, because he can do it. He can buy something for his child.
The monumentality of that thought nearly bowls him over, and his voice is thick through his smile as he talks to the sales assistant.
Blaine doesn’t know how or exactly when he and Kurt are going to have a child, but they will.
And this cute little stuffed animal, even more soft and huggable in Blaine’s hands than it looked in the window, will be his or her teddy bear.
*
“ - Carole keeps dragging me to these dinner parties, which she says are to help my re-election bid, but I think they’re just an excuse for her to show me off in a suit,” Kurt’s father says, and Kurt smiles as he sees Carole rolls her eyes beside his dad on the other side of the Skype connection.
“What?” Burt says to her. He puffs out his chest. “I know you think I’m irresistible in a tie.”
“You are,” she agrees with a pat to his arm, “but the grumbling about the campaign dinners isn’t quite so attractive.”
Kurt smothers a laugh behind his hand, even as he finds himself aching a little. He can’t help but miss his parents, despite how great his life in New York is and how unthinkable living in Lima again would be; there’s something that pulls at him about seeing them acting like themselves, not just imparting information or having a conversation via computer or phone but playing with each other the way they do in their own kitchen.
He might live hundreds of miles away and be married and grown, but they’re his family. He loves cooking with Blaine in their tiny galley kitchen, but a part of him still misses bumping elbows with Carole at the Hummel-Hudson sink. He loves knowing the subway and city streets like the back of his hand, but he misses the smell of motor oil from his dad’s shop as he walks through the doors. He loves performing, creating, and being able to stroll hand-in-hand down the street with his husband he adores, but he misses being able to walk up the front steps to his parents’ house and close the door behind him and the rest of the world and be welcomed home by his dad’s warm, loving hug.
“Did I tell you she made me give away two of my old suits?” Kurt’s father asks with exaggerated indignation.
“The lapels were so wide you could use them to fan yourself if you got too hot,” Carole says. “And you’re talking to the wrong person if you want sympathy, honey. Kurt’s going to be on my side on this one. It’s fashion.”
“Wide lapels are actually back in,” Kurt tells her and laughs and aches some more as his dad turns to her in triumph.
No, there’s no question for Kurt that he is making the most of being an independent adult, surrounded by dear friends and exciting opportunities and doing the work he was born to do, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t miss these everyday moments with his family.
He wants them involved in his life. He wants them to know about it, about him, about everything. He doesn’t want there to be secrets, especially not about important things.
Especially not about their family expanding.
Yet, as much as it feels wrong not to blurt out his own news, Kurt sighs and makes himself stay silent for the moment about what’s most important to him.
He and Blaine agreed not to tell anyone about their plans to have a child until they have some actual answers and plans. He knows Blaine would happily tell everyone - family, friends, co-workers, the dry cleaner, his favorite barista, the busker on the subway... - but Kurt wants to keep the decision closer to his chest until it’s not so fragile, until they’ve run the numbers and pinned down all of the details and know they can.
He isn’t ready to share this news with the world, not yet. There are still so many options about how they are going to make parenthood happen, if they can. It feels like it could all get yanked out from beneath them in a second.
He doesn’t want to be questioned and judged and given advice. He wants to know, to tell, to inform people of a plan instead of giving them the ability to try to blow down a house of cards they’re just starting to build.
It feels too new and precious to him to open it up to commentary from the world at large. And even if his parents don’t feel quite so dangerous, he made an agreement. He can’t go against what he and Blaine decided.
So Kurt chats with them a little longer and says goodbye with the words he wants to say still trapped behind his lips, and he sits on the couch and yearns for a long moment - wanting to share, wanting them to celebrate with him, wanting them to be there to help support them making this unthinkably huge step that will change all of their lives for the better - before he gets up and re-organizes the closet in the spare room to keep himself occupied.
Blaine comes home to find him there two hours later. Kurt is sweaty, tired, and surrounded by boxes and bins of off-season clothing and sheet music. His heart is still tender, but at least he’s been busy.
Blaine’s smile dims at the sight of him. “What’s going on?” he asks from the doorway as his eyebrows scrunch together in concern. “Did something happen?”
Kurt shakes his head. “I Skyped with Dad and Carole.” He puts another score on the pile he has designated for ‘Fighting Against The World’ music.
“Is everything okay?” Blaine comes to crouch down near him, carefully not dislodging any of Kurt’s organization.
Kurt shakes his head again, feeling raw and foolish, because his discomfort is all a result of his choice, not Blaine’s. “I want to tell them,” he says, and it takes him a moment to look back up into Blaine’s eyes. He knows his unhappiness is of his own doing, and he shouldn’t be changing his mind.
He just wants to share the news with them. He wants them to know. He wants them to share in their excitement. He wants someone to confide in and lean on as they make decisions that will change all of their lives forever.
He and Blaine are trying to have a family, and he wants his family to be a part of it all.
Blaine’s concern melts away. “So let’s tell them,” he says with a smile that is kind and warm.
“We still don’t have anything to tell,” Kurt says, his hands flexing on his thighs. “We’ll be opening ourselves up to a million questions we don’t have answers for, and if it doesn’t work out they’re going to be so disappointed.” He hates the thought of hurting them with failure when he knows that him being gay has already made them reshuffle their expectations for their family. They’ve obviously been accepting and wonderful, but...
“They’re going to be excited,” Blaine tells him. He runs his hand over Kurt’s shoulder and down his arm. “You know they are.”
Kurt nods, helpless against the truth in Blaine’s smile.
“And if things don’t work out for us the first time, they’d want to know that, too,” Blaine says. “They’d want to support us.”
Kurt nods again, because he knows it’s true. He just doesn’t know if he can handle being supported if they’re heartbroken by not being able to afford the fees for a surrogate or having an adoption fall through. He doesn’t know if he can handle their disappointment on top of his own, even though he knows they’d try to hide it.
He looks at his husband - at Blaine’s smiling face and kind eyes and boundless love - takes a slow breath, and straightens his back.
There’s no point in worrying about the potential for failure. If he lived his life that way, he’d never get anything he wanted.
If something doesn’t work out, they’ll just find another way. That’s what he’s always done.
Kurt wants to focus on the good parts of his life, whether it’s new successes or a new child. He wants to share that happiness with the people he loves, people who will support them and be happy about the news. Simple as that.
Life is far too short to hold anything back.
“Help me up,” he says, offering his hand to Blaine and letting Blaine pull them both to their feet. He keeps his fingers linked with Blaine’s as he lifts onto his toes for a moment to stretch his cramped legs. “Come on.” He starts for the door.
“Now?” Blaine says with a laugh, looking over his shoulder at the messy spare room Kurt’s leaving behind him.
Kurt stops them in the hallway, sliding into Blaine’s arms and kissing him, slowly and full of so much love his heart hurts in his chest. This is his husband, the man of his dreams and (even better) his reality, the other father of their future child, and he’s so happy to be taking this step with him. He can’t wait.
Blaine’s a little startled at first by the press of Kurt’s mouth, but he seems more than happy to fall into it. His eyes are dreamy and contented when they break the kiss, his hands wide on Kurt’s back and keeping him close.
“I want us both to tell them,” Kurt says, smoothing down Blaine’s hair. “Right now.”
“Okay,” is Blaine’s easy reply, supportive as always.
“Blaine,” Kurt says breathlessly, because for whatever reason it feels even more real now than it did ten minutes ago. “We’re having a baby.”
Blaine smiles into the kiss as he touches their mouths together again.
“Hey, kid,” Kurt’s dad says when he answers their call. The screen waves around like he’s on his phone instead of the computer they usually talk on. “Hey, Blaine. Everything okay?”
“Is Carole still there?” Kurt asks.
“Yeah, she’s making dinner. Here, I’ll get her.” The image on the screen sways even more as Burt walks from the living room to the kitchen.
Blaine’s hand is tight on Kurt’s where they rest on Blaine’s thigh, and he ducks his head against Kurt’s shoulder for a second, like he’s nervous, even though he’s the one who has wanted to shout out the news from every street corner since they decided, even though he’s the one who already tempted fate and bought a stuffed animal for their future child without there being a plan to have one or even a place set up to store baby things.
Kurt squeezes Blaine’s hand and swallows down his own fluttering nerves.
“All right,” his dad says as his face and Carole’s swim into focus, the kitchen cabinets behind them. “What’s going on? You got me worried now. Is something wrong?”
“No,” Kurt says, and it comes out high-pitched and giddy. He can’t stop himself from smiling wide enough to hurt his face, and he can see in the corner of his screen that with his hair falling down into his eyes he looks like he’s about twelve and beside him Blaine looks like he’s going to cry. “No, nothing wrong. We’re - Blaine and I - “ Kurt sits up straighter, because of all of the things he’s had to announce to his father in his life, this isn’t the most difficult by far. He laughs a little, joy bubbling up. “Blaine and I have decided to have a baby. We don’t know how yet, but - “
He’s cut off by his dad whooping and the screen twisting around wildly as Burt hugs Carole and apparently dances around the kitchen with her for a moment.
Blaine laughs wetly against Kurt’s shoulder, and Kurt holds his hand as tightly as he dares and grins at the screen.
“We’re going to have grandbabies?!” Burt asks when his face is back in frame.
“Well, I think we’re starting with just one - “ Kurt begins, but he stops with a laugh when his dad whoops again.
“Hell, yes!” Burt says with Carole beaming at them at his side. “You let us know what you need. We’ll be there. We’ll help out however you want. Grandbabies!” He smacks a kiss against Carole’s cheek. “Kurt, Blaine, we can’t wait to spoil them rotten.”
Carole nods, her eyes shining, and if Kurt knows she’ll probably mourn the grandchildren she won’t have through Finn he’s still so grateful that she’ll be the doting grandmother to his own child.
“I can see we’re going to need to set some ground rules,” Kurt says, but his voice wobbles with emotion, and he can see himself smiling dopily at his parents in the corner of his screen.
He feels like he could burst with happiness, and Blaine looks about as giddy at his side.
Kurt squeezes Blaine’s hand so tightly it makes his knuckles ache, and Blaine kisses his shoulder and squeezes him right back.
There’s still so much they haven’t figured out yet, and there’s still the possibility of none of it working out, but yes, telling his parents now - seeing them excited and getting to share their own feelings - was the absolute right thing to do.
*
Blaine rolls over, chilled by the way the blankets have fallen off of his bare shoulders, and searches for the warmth of his husband’s body. His dream is still calling to him, dragging him down. All he needs is to curl up against Kurt’s back.
His hand reaches the far edge of the bed before it finds Kurt, though, and Blaine sleepily blinks open his eyes.
The bedroom is dark. The red numbers on the clock beside the bed read 2:43 am. Kurt’s side of the bed is cool; he clearly hasn’t been there for a while.
Confused and concerned, Blaine pushes himself out of bed. The bathroom in the hallway is dark and empty. The bed in the spare room is unoccupied and still made up as neatly as ever.
He finally finds Kurt at the kitchen table, his laptop pushed to the side and displaying a handful of browser windows. He’s punching holes in a stack of what look like freshly printed papers. Blaine wonders if it was the whirring of the printer in the spare room that woke him up.
“Kurt?” Blaine asks as Kurt takes the paper and puts it into the binder that is spread open in front of him. “What are you doing?”
“Getting organized,” Kurt says. He threads a divider onto the rings of the binder and picks up an orange label from the pile of multi-colored labels and sticky notes beside him. He writes something on it with the pen he had tucked behind his ear.
“It’s almost three in the morning,” Blaine says, rubbing some of the grit out of his eye. He doesn’t have to ask why Kurt is organizing at this hour. He knows Kurt better than anyone. He knows why, at least in the abstract. He steps forward to stand behind Kurt’s chair and puts his hand on Kurt’s shoulder. “What’s stressing you out?”
“There are so many choices,” Kurt says. He picks up another stack of papers and squares its edges on the table with a firm series of thwacks. “Adoption, surrogacy, anonymous versus open egg donation. Most international adoption is off the table due to us being gay, but there’s still domestic. Private and foster care. Open and closed. And that’s only adoption. Each path has so many options, each with serious pros and cons.”
Blaine can feel the flex of Kurt’s muscles as he pushes hard on the hole puncher, and he rubs absently at Kurt’s arm. “I know. But we don’t have to decide right now.”
Kurt puts the papers into the binder and picks up another divider. “We need to start narrowing it down.”
“Not in the middle of the night,” Blaine says with a laugh that is half yawn.
Turning in his chair, Kurt looks up at him, his eyes tired but almost wild with the need to have things under control. Blaine knows that look. He’s seen it before too many times: in the middle of finals, the night before an important audition, during Kurt’s father’s health scares, with the extra addition of sadness on the anniversary of Finn’s death.
“This is our child, Blaine,” Kurt insists. “There are so many horror stories. Unethical adoptions, surrogates who don’t live up to their end of agreements, egg donors who lie about their medical histories... How do we pick? How do we know which way is the best? Because if we do it wrong, if we get the wrong child - ”
“Whatever child we have will be the right one,” Blaine tells him, pulling over a chair in part to be able to look more easily into Kurt’s eyes and in part because he feels unsteady on his feet at this hour of the night. He takes Kurt’s hands and doesn’t let himself yawn. “And I thought we wanted to use a surrogate. We’ve talked about it for years, remember? Quinn offered to donate an egg?”
Kurt nods and takes a shallow breath, but he says, “We were teenagers, dreaming of our life. This is real now. We need to look at all of our options.” There’s an edge of hysteria in his voice, his usual desire to have everything pinned down coming out sideways with his fatigue.
“We will,” Blaine says, stroking his thumbs over Kurt’s knuckles.
“It’s so much to ask of a friend,” Kurt continues, almost pleading with Blaine. “We need to have other options. We need to figure out the very best way.”
“Okay,” Blaine says, because he knows there’s no way Kurt’s going to back down from his need to have every detail in place. “We will. But not tonight. We don’t have to have all of our options decided tonight.”
Kurt looks down at his color-coded notes, his fingers tightening on Blaine’s. There’s a tension thrumming through him Blaine knows he can’t totally banish, but as much as he wants to he knows it’s not actually his job to fix it. He can just help Kurt cope with the stress. He knows how to do that much.
“Whatever we decide will be the right choice,” Blaine tells him again. “There’s no wrong way for us to have a baby.”
Kurt’s eyes search his, softening with sadness. “It feels like every way could be the wrong way.”
“I know,” Blaine says, and it’s not that he doesn’t see the same panoply of options for them to choose among but that he sees a smiling little boy or girl at the end of every one. He can’t wait to meet their child, whoever he or she turns out to be. He is so ready. He finds himself smiling at his husband, the love of his life, the co-parent of their future child. “And there are definitely a lot of details for us to figure out, but I’m pretty sure part of why you’re feeling overwhelmed is because it’s the middle of the night. Things always seem harder in the middle of the night.”
Kurt smiles a little, too, and glances over at his now-sleeping laptop. He takes a slow breath and tips his head, unwinding just a touch. “You’re probably right.”
Blaine’s heart warms, even as he shivers a little in the cool air of their apartment. He loves it when Kurt listens to him. “I am right. And I’m also cold.” He stands up and tugs on Kurt’s hands. “Come back to bed. We can talk more about this tomorrow. You’ll feel better if you get some sleep.”
“You just want me to warm you up,” Kurt says with a dry laugh, but he shuts his laptop and doesn’t resist as Blaine pulls him toward their bedroom, and Blaine smiles in reply, because that Kurt’s following means Blaine has done his job.
*
The line for the deli is long enough to snake almost to the door, and Kurt drifts in a pre-coffee haze as Blaine checks his phone beside him.
“That gender-bent Gershwin review has added a matinee tomorrow if you want to go,” Blaine tells him, scrolling down his screen.
“We should tell Elliott,” Kurt says. “He was disappointed he couldn’t get tickets.” They inch forward a step, and he wishes the bagels here weren’t so damn good, because he really, really needed a latte like ten minutes ago, and there’s a Starbucks across the street calling his name. But... bagels...
“I’ll text him,” Blaine says.
“Mm.” Kurt’s eyes drift across the deli and land on a father with a child in his lap, the toddler chewing on a wedge of banana.
It’s strange to Kurt how there seem to be children everywhere now that they’ve started planning to have one. He’s pretty sure the world didn’t have a sudden explosion of children in the past few months, but now he notices them wherever he goes. Now he can’t help but pick out strollers on the sidewalk and babies on the subway. Now he sees pregnant women with a hint of wistfulness instead of at most just appreciating how far maternity fashion has come.
The toddler squishes the banana between his fingers and squeals out a laugh, and the father rolls his eyes, puts down his paper, and reaches for a napkin with a smile.
Kurt feels a pang of longing for the child they still are so far away from having, and as the father kisses his son’s dark curls as he cleans off his fingers, the pull in Kurt’s stomach gets tighter, sharper, more focused.
“ - pick him up a ticket, but if he doesn’t - “ Blaine is saying, and Kurt has no idea what he’s talking about and doesn’t really care in that moment.
They made a choice that was wrong, and he needs to fix it.
Kurt turns to him and says, “It should be both of us.”
“We don’t both need to order - “ Blaine begins.
“No. Surrogacy. It should be both of us,” Kurt insists. “I know we decided to use my sprem first, then yours for our second child, but surrogacy is so expensive, and it’s hard to find the right surrogate, and if we only have one chance at this, I want a little you, too, Blaine. I want the possibility of it. I don’t want to wait.” He’s so certain it’s overpowering - a vision of a different dark-haired, honey-eyed child bright in his mind - and he hopes Blaine won’t argue.
Blaine blinks at him for a moment, and then he leans in to hug him, right there in line for coffee and bagels.
Kurt’s arms wrap around his husband with a dizzy sort of hope and possibility spinning in his heart. “I love you. I want a little you,” he murmurs against Blaine’s cheek.
“Okay,” Blaine whispers back, sounding choked up, and he holds Kurt for another minute until the line forces them apart again.
*
“So,” Rachel says as she unfurls her napkin on her lap across the restaurant’s table from Blaine. She looks at Jesse beside her, who is giving her a knowing smile. “Jesse and I have been talking, and I have a proposal for you.”
“What’s that?” Blaine takes a sip of his coffee and frowns at its bitterness, reaching for the sugar. He keeps his head up and tilted toward her to make it clear that he’s listening; he doesn’t want to seem rude.
“We can’t afford to split that house in the Hamptons with you for the month of August,” Kurt tells Rachel, offering her half of his attention, his eyes trained on the brunch menu in his hands. “Not with saving for the baby. I don’t care how much you think it will help us professionally to move in those social circles. Which I’m honestly not convinced about, even if you know I’d happily off a few of my favorite Housewives just to get to be in the same kitchen as Ina Garten.”
“It would help,” Rachel insists, her eyes narrowing. “It always helps to know people, Kurt. You know that.”
“You’re getting off-track,” Jesse says to her gently.
“Oh. Right.” Rachel smooths back her hair and smiles at them both, suddenly composed again.
Blaine takes another sip of coffee, willing it to perk him up, because they were out late at a Broadway party the night before, and if it’s going to be one of those Sundays where Kurt and Rachel are bickering over brunch he’s going to need all of the energy he can muster to keep them on an even keel. It’s a good thing he’s a morning person.
“Anyway, speaking of babies,” she says, “I’d like to offer you the use of my womb.”
She smiles easily at them as Blaine stares at her, his cup frozen halfway from his mouth to the table. Beside him, Kurt is just as still.
The words rattle in Blaine’s head, a jumble of sounds and meanings that he can’t quite believe he understands. It can’t be possible. Can it?
He wonders for a moment if he’s fallen back asleep while Kurt’s in the shower and is dreaming everything around him, but he recovers before Kurt and sets down his mug with fingers that have gone suddenly numb. “You’d like to offer us - “ he says slowly, trying out the words in his mouth.
“My womb,” she says, patting her stomach.
“Temporarily,” Jesse adds.
Rachel nods. “Obviously. I’m offering to be your surrogate,” she says and looks between them both. “I promise I will do my very best not to be offended if you want to go in another direction, but I know surrogates are expensive, and finding the right one is difficult and...” She takes a deep breath as Jesse puts his arm around her. Her smile wobbles a little with emotion. “You two are my very best friends, and it would be my honor to carry your child if you would like me to.”
Swallowing back a complicated cascade of emotions - disbelief, gratitude, shock, hope, amazement, a fierce and desperate kind of affection toward this woman who is all but family to him - Blaine can feel his face crumple as he says, “Rachel...”
She holds her hand out to him across the table. “I love you both,” she says softly.
Blaine doesn’t know how to put his feelings into words in reply. He’s overwhelmed with gratitude, amazed by their good fortune, utterly floored by her generosity. His eyes sting, and his vision blurs. “We love you, too,” he croaks out. He glances at Jesse, who shrugs his agreement, and Blaine feels his love, too, even though obviously it’s not his body and thus not his choice to make this offer. “God, Rachel, I don’t even know what to say besides thank you.”
“Yes?” she suggests, blinking back her own tears. She looks over at Kurt, who is sitting still and utterly silent beside Blaine, his eyes fixed on the menu in his hands.
“We can - “ Blaine clears his throat, not sure what Kurt is thinking and not wanting to push him into a corner. If Kurt’s not on board with the idea, Blaine can’t agree to anything. “We’ll talk about it,” he tells Rachel, not letting go of her cool fingers. “Thank you for the offer, but obviously we need to - “
He stops when Kurt’s head lifts, and he can see the expression on Kurt’s face far more clearly. Kurt’s eyes are wide and unguarded, stunned and just as overwhelmed as Blaine feels. It’s not often that Kurt is brought to speechlessness, but Blaine is relieved to see he’s smiling.
Kurt reaches out for Rachel’s other hand. “Thank you,” he says with a quiet sincerity. He glances over at Blaine, as if checking for his reaction. “We do need to talk, but... I can’t think of anyone I’d trust more with our child.”
“Obviously,” she says with a nod and a tightening of her trembling smile as her eyes flood with tears again.
Blaine nods his own agreement - because she’s Rachel, and she’d let them be a part of everything, and she would take such care with herself for their child - and Jesse smiles at them all as Rachel takes back her hands and leans against his side.
“Wow,” Blaine says to himself, smoothing his napkin over his lap with hands that are shaking more than a little. “That was... wow. Not what I expected to hear over brunch.”
Kurt breathes out a laugh and then adjusts his silverware on his placemat. He clears his throat. “But we’re still not getting that house in the Hamptons,” he says to Rachel. “Even if we’re able to avoid surrogacy fees and only have to pay for the procedures, we still have to save up for daycare and school. Plus whatever strange cravings you might have.”
“And you know it won’t be for two-for-five-dollars bodega hot dogs,” Jesse agrees.
“Probably Russian caviar and imported Parisian macarons,” Kurt replies, and Blaine makes a mental note to look up if it’s even safe for pregnant women to eat caviar.
“If we’re lucky,” Jesse says to him.
“But this will be the last child-free summer for you two,” Rachel says, leaning across the table toward Kurt. “You should take advantage of it by networking at exclusive parties with the New York elite! It will push your son or daughter further than any school ever could.”
Blaine reaches for his coffee again, hope and joy bright and close in his chest as the two of them start to bicker again.
It’s bickering with love - clearly love, that much more vivid when Rachel would offer them her body, her means of performing, her very self - and Blaine can only smile and wonder how he got so lucky to have all of these wonderful people in his life.
*
“I have to say,” Santana says, leaning her hip against the kitchen counter as Kurt arranges some of the canapes he made earlier, “I’m kind of disappointed you aren’t using this opportunity to tap Berry’s ass. Well, not her ass, obviously - even McKinley’s crappy sex ed taught me that much about getting knocked up - but you could finally punch your v-card.”
“Santana,” Kurt says with a dry laugh and a shake of his head, “I’m hardly a virgin.”
“Yeah, no, I lived with you. I know that. Boy, do I know that. I still can’t scrub those high-pitched, girly moans from my memory, and that was just Blaine.” She takes one of the salmon and creme-fraiche canapes, and he adjusts the ones on the serving tray to fill the gap she left; he refuses to let her see him flush at her comments, because it’s old news and he’s so far from ashamed for having sex with Blaine that it’s not even funny. “I meant v as in vagina.”
“First off, no.” He shudders at the thought of having sex with Rachel. He loves her, but... no. Not ever. She’s beautiful but entirely the wrong shape, all curves and softness instead of hard planes of muscle. Also, she’s Rachel. “And secondly, she’s our surrogate. It’s not going to be her egg.”
Santana laughs and nudges his shoulder. “I know,” she says with a smirk. She grabs another canape and pops it into her mouth. “You’re too easy, god.”
“You’re the only person who thinks so.” Pondering how hungry their guests probably are, he bends down to pull another serving plate out of the cabinet. Better to have too much food out than not enough, and at the rate Santana’s eating he’ll be lucky if half of what he made even makes it out of the kitchen.
“Yeah, well, I’m not scared of you. I bite, too.” She tips her head to the side, her long hair tumbling over her shoulder. The teasing spark fades from her eyes. “Look, I’m happy for you guys. I know it’s a big project to make it all happen, and I still can’t believe you’re letting Berry anywhere near the middle of it, but... I’m happy for you.” There’s a gentle sincerity to her voice that touches Kurt deep in his chest.
“Thanks,” he says, smiling a little at her. He opens another container and starts to set out some of the spinach tartlets. “It’ll be worth it in the end.”
“Yeah. We’ll have to deal with at some point, too,” Santana says with a heavy sigh as she looks out toward the living room where the rest of the party guests, including her wife, are gathering. “Hell, if Brit and I decide someday we want a kid that looks like something out of Lord of the Rings we’ll probably be hitting up you and Blaine for some of your elf or hobbit DNA.”
Kurt snorts and shakes his head, but a part of him is touched by the thought. It’s complicated to think of having a child that’s biologically partly his being raised by one of his best friends, but life is complicated. He’s not scared of it. And Santana and Brittany are two of his best friends. Blaine’s, too. He knows they would both help their friends in any way they could.
“I’m not having sex with you, either,” he tells her.
Santana skims her hands down her sides and sways her hips, showing off her curves in her short dress. “You wish you were that lucky, Lady Hummel. I’m all kinds of hot.”
He shakes his head again and goes back to setting out the canapes. He glances at her out of the corner of his eye. “You know where to find us if you and Brittany get to that point,” he says more seriously.
Santana looks away for a second, suddenly vulnerable in the way she rarely shows even her friends, and then nods. “Thanks. I don’t know if I can stand having a kid with pointy ears or hairy feet, or maybe even a kid at all, but... thanks.”
Kurt meets her eyes and sees the real gratitude and understanding beneath her bravado. He knows she and Brittany will have to make their own choices about how to make it happen if they want children, but that it can’t be straightforward is one of the places their lives intersect beyond the likely experiences of their straight friends.
“That’s what friends are for,” he tells her, feeling unexpectedly touched by the idea of the request to help the two of them have a child. He’s never needed the approval of those around him for the decisions he makes about his life, but there’s something comforting to know that his friends are also thinking about similar issues, about similar sorts of plans involving leaning on each other.
It’s hard to remember the bleak, terrible days of early high school when he felt so alone and hated with the kind of love he has surrounding him now, with the kind of amazing present he’s already living and even more incredible future he is planning to have with his friends and soon-to-be growing family.
She points a finger at him, her eyes narrowing at whatever she sees on his face. “If you start making sappy speeches or singing, I am walking out of this apartment right now.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he promises. “But I can’t speak for Blaine.”
As if on cue, there is the sound of the piano in the other room, an intricate run of notes like someone is warming up. Kurt would know Blaine’s touch on the keys anywhere. It always draws him in to watch, to listen, to admire, to sing along.
“I hate you both,” Santana says darkly. “I wouldn’t even come over here if Brit didn’t like you so much.”
Kurt passes her a tray with a smile; he knows her far too well to be at all hurt by her words. “Mm hmm,” he says and isn’t surprised to catch the warmth lurking in her eyes as they walk out together into the living room.
*
Blaine glances around the fertility clinic’s waiting room, glad that it’s empty apart from the two of them. It’s bland and beige, the pictures on the wall passionless, pastel flower prints and the magazines on the table beside him a mix of parenting and gossip titles.
It could be pretty much any medical office Blaine has ever been in, only he knows what’s behind the plain wooden door the nurse will be walking them through any minute now.
“What if there are pictures of naked women in there?” he asks Kurt in a low voice, barely more than a whisper. He doesn’t want the receptionist behind the window to hear. “I don’t know if I can do this if I have to look at breasts. I mean, they’re not horrible or anything, but I just - “
Kurt puts his hand over Blaine’s, cool and steady, and Blaine becomes all too aware of just how sweaty his own palms are. “They cater to all sorts of clients here,” Kurt reminds him. “Straight, gay. That’s why we picked this clinic.”
“I know,” Blaine replies, but if there’s straight porn all over the room he isn’t going to know where to look, and this is going to be difficult enough, getting hard and jerking off into a cup in an office with everyone outside knowing exactly what he’s doing and -
“You’re cute when you freak out.” Kurt lifts Blaine’s hand to his smiling mouth and presses a quick kiss to the back of it.
“I can’t help it.”
Kurt’s smile doesn’t waver. He looks calm and confident, and Blaine doesn’t know how that’s possible when Kurt’s the more private of the two of them. Still, he’s composed and even a little flirty as he answers. “That’s true; you’re always cute.”
“Kurt...” Blaine wonders what will happen if he can’t do this, if he can’t make it happen in the little room he’s going to be led into any minute now. They could just use Kurt’s sperm, but Kurt’s set on this path that they’ve chosen together, and he knows that when Kurt’s determined he’s a force of nature. He won’t want to change plans. He thrives when things are all in order the way he wants them, and what he wants is for Blaine to go into that room and masturbate into a cup so that they can mix their sperm together to make a baby. Their baby.
But what if Blaine can’t? What if he’s stuck in there, soft and anxious, and no matter what he looks at or remembers or touches himself he can’t get hard and then the nurse knocks on the door and asks him how he’s doing and even though he hasn’t come in days because he’s supposed to be saving up his sperm and it’s been torture not touching Kurt he’ll just be stuck in there for hours and hours until he’s chafed raw and still soft and -
“Blaine, if you’re having second thoughts and don’t want to have - “
“No, I do,” Blaine says. “Of course I do.” He looks into Kurt’s handsome face, clutches at his hands, and reminds himself to breathe. “This is just... awkward?”
Kurt laughs, a flush rising on his cheeks. “Completely,” he says. He leans in closer, his voice dropping into a more sultry tone. “But I plan on thinking of you in there. And of how we can celebrate together later at home.”
Blaine feels his blood stir, his body responding to Kurt’s voice in his ear and breath against his skin and thinks with relief that getting hard maybe won’t be impossible after all. Difficult, but not impossible. He ducks his head against Kurt’s shoulder and closes his eyes for a moment, trying to shut out the nerves and focus on what matters: them.
“I love you,” he murmurs.
“I love you, too,” Kurt replies, squeezing his hand and going stiff as the door opens; it’s comforting in a way for Blaine to see Kurt’s burst of nerves in his body language, to know that he isn’t alone. “Here we go.”
The room the nurse leads Blaine to is small and sterile, and Blaine tries to listen as she explains the process and shows him the bins full of pornographic magazines and DVDs, all sorts of titles and options, straight and gay, from vanilla to kinky and everything in between.
Besides the images tucked in those bins, there are no breasts in sight.
Blaine sighs out in relief and discomfort when she leaves. It’s too clinical to be titillating, and it’s weird instead of hot to know that men masturbate in this room every day. It’s a doctor’s office, not a club bathroom or a boudoir, not at all sexy or full of love, but... it’s what they have to do if they want a family.
And they do. He and Kurt both do. They want a family together.
So he can do this. He can. He has to.
He glances at the door, thinking of Kurt a few rooms away. It’s weird to be apart. It’s weird to think of Kurt picking out a DVD and opening his pants in a room just like this one. It’s just weird in general.
But... he can do it.
Hanging his coat up on the hook on the door and taking a steadying breath, Blaine goes over to the bin full of DVDs and looks for something he’ll like.
He’s sure he can find something, as long as there aren’t breasts involved.
And then - with his husband down the hall doing the same thing on his own in the middle of a busy medical building - he’ll help make a baby.
*
That night, Kurt comes out after his shower to find Blaine standing in the living room, looking out onto the dark city street outside their window. His arms are crossed over his chest, his shoulders are tense beneath his polo shirt, and the little bit of his expression Kurt can see reflected in the glass is tight and sad.
“Hey,” Kurt says softly, sliding his hand over Blaine’s hunched shoulder.
Blaine sighs out in response and softens just a little under Kurt’s palm. He doesn’t turn around.
“You look upset,” Kurt says with some concern. If Blaine most of the time is filled with infectious sunshine and optimism, Kurt knows that the darkness and insecurity that lie beneath can be intense and run deep. This is supposed to be a happy day, the day their future child is conceived, but Blaine looks far from happy.
“It’s unfair that it’s so hard,” Blaine replies quietly. “Other people just get to make love and have a baby and don’t even have to think about it, and we have to think about every step. We need help with every step.”
Kurt strokes the hair at the nape of Blaine’s bowed head and says, “I know.” He is certainly aware of that unfairness, but there are some things in life he can fight against and others - like the realities of reproduction - he cannot change. He can only find a way around them.
“We can’t just do it. We need other people to let us. We have to ask them and pay them and - “ Blaine breaks off as his voice goes tight.
Kurt waits for him to speak again, soothing him with his touch as best he can. It would be easy to fill the silence, but he knows he needs to let Blaine talk.
“People get to make love and make a baby out of that love, and we don’t.” Blaine’s hands fist and open at his sides. “I don’t want to be straight,” he says with a shake of his head. “I want to be myself. I want to be married to you. I want exactly what we have, Kurt, but I just... I hate that we can’t do this on our own, without anyone else.”
“I know,” Kurt says again, and he feels that barb of life’s injustice, too, when he’s known teenagers like Quinn who have gotten pregnant accidentally and against everything they wish and now as a grown, married man has to jump through what feel like endless hoops to be able to have a child of his own.
It grates like sandpaper against his skin. He wishes he didn’t have to get anyone else involved and could choose for himself in the privacy of his marriage. He wishes he could simply announce a pregnancy instead of plan for a medical procedure.
But, at the end of the day, that injustice doesn’t matter to him all that much. Life is what it is.
“It’s still a child from our love, Blaine,” he says. He leans his cheek against the back of Blaine’s head and draws in the scent of his husband’s hair and skin and aftershave. It’s the smell of home, of the person he loves most in the world. “Our love is what’s making this happen.”
“I know.” Blaine sighs again and turns, sliding into Kurt’s arms, right where he fits best. He tucks himself against Kurt, his arms around Kurt’s waist. Blaine’s so slim and strong in his grasp, and if his eyes are troubled they are still beautiful and as easy for Kurt to fall into as they were the first day they met. “And I do love you,” Blaine promises, like he has every day for years and years. “I want a baby with you. Our baby. Our child.”
Kurt smiles at him and draws him close, knowing he can’t fix the pain in Blaine’s heart but giving him what comfort he can. “Well, that’s good,” he says, “because otherwise we did some really weird things in that clinic today. We’re lucky they didn’t call the police.”
As Kurt had hoped, Blaine laughs, ducking his head, and leans up to kiss him. His lips are warm and a little salty, and Kurt hums into the kiss, letting it go from sweet to open-mouthed and greedy in an instant. It’s been a few days since they’ve been intimate, thanks to the requirements of the clinic, and he’s hungrier than usual for the taste of his husband. With the way Blaine clutches at his shirt and leans up on his toes to chase his mouth, he’s pretty sure the feeling is mutual.
Maybe some of it is the emotion of the week, too, he thinks.
“You know,” Kurt says against Blaine’s cheek when they pull apart to breathe, “just because us having sex won’t make a baby, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make love to celebrate the baby we did our part to make at the clinic today.”
Blaine’s hands smooth over Kurt’s waist, pushing up under his soft t-shirt to splay over the skin of his lower back. “Celebrate, hmm?”
“Well,” Kurt says, shivering as Blaine sucks warm kisses beneath his ear, “I mean, it’s all the same in the end, right? Slightly different birds and bees - “
“Or birds and birds in our case,” Blaine murmurs, the vibration of his voice burning into Kurt’s skin.
“You and birds,” Kurt says with a rush of fondness for this ridiculous, sexy man he married. “But still, when a man and another man love each other very much...”
Blaine chuckles against Kurt’s throat and looks up at him again, his thumbs stroking over Kurt’s back. “I do love you very much,” he says, and everything in his eyes and face and body is like an open book of agreement, full of the love for Kurt he is always ready to express.
“I love you, too,” Kurt tells him, his smile pouring out of him. He feels hopelessly besotted and eager to be close to Blaine, because even if sex between them can’t create a child, they did make one today. Together. Their child, to love and nurture and add to the wonderful life they’re already so happy to be sharing.
He wants to celebrate. He wants to share the moment with him. He wants not to erase the memory of what happened earlier in the clinic but to add to it, to turn something they have to do in public because of the particularities of biology into something that can also be private and just between them.
“Come on,” Kurt says, cupping Blaine’s handsome face and kissing him again before leading him to their bedroom.
There it’s the work of moments to strip them both of their clothes, but they don’t rush anything else. Everything slows down once their naked bodies are entwined. They caress and kiss and smile and gasp and clutch until they’re both drunk with love and saturated with need, and much later when Kurt finally pushes into Blaine’s body it’s not simply the means to a pleasurable end but the last, necessary step of joining themselves together as closely as they possibly can.
Their breaths mingle as they moan into each others mouths, their bodies rocking slowly and steadily together, gripping and sliding and thrusting and searching in perfect rhythm. The build is slow and soaked with emotion, hands on faces and loving murmurs on lips, gentleness turning to tight-fingered urging as their control finally breaks.
Their hips snap and grind with desperation, moving together with single-minded desire, and yet it’s still not enough to sate the desire in Kurt’s body, in Kurt’s heart. He needs to be even closer. He hauls Blaine up with him into his lap as he rises to his knees - needing more, needing Blaine, needing everything - and he holds him near with hands splayed over Blaine’s ass.
Groaning with satisfaction and eagerness all at once, Blaine mouths hotly at Kurt’s throat as he sinks down deeper onto him in a tight, velvety glide around Kurt’s cock. Blaine’s skin is slippery with sweat, and Kurt tightens his grip and holds on as Blaine clings to him - chest to chest, his breath ragged in Kurt’s ear and his arms locked around his shoulders - and rides him hard and deep and frantic and so, so close until they’re both wrung dry.
As he shudders through his aftershocks, Kurt doesn’t trust himself to collapse to the bed, because he’s not aware enough of anything more than the pleasure in his body and the press of Blaine against him that he can be sure he can keep them from rolling off the edge, so he buries his face against Blaine’s sweaty shoulder and kisses the salt from his skin with sleepy affection.
After a minute or two, Kurt can feel Blaine’s mouth turn upwards and his cheek tighten in a smile. “Kurt, we’re having a baby,” Blaine says, all sunshine and excitement once more.
“We are,” Kurt replies, butterflies fluttering in his stomach and up into his chest. They are. It’s really happening, or at least they did their best today. Whether the embryo takes or they have to try again isn’t something they can control.
Smiling at each other, they shakily pull apart and get themselves sorted out, but as they lie down again they are drawn to each other in the middle of the mattress once more, trading exhausted, smiling kisses and loving caresses until they drift off in each other’s arms.
They often shift back and forth between being curled together and sprawling free on their own sides of the bed while they sleep, but the night they conceive their child - at the clinic, not in their own bed, but by the time they fall asleep that night that fact doesn’t matter anymore - they don’t move apart all night long.
*
PART TWO.