Glee!fic, Unscripted: Tread Softly
Back on the cruddy internet connection for a couple of weeks, you would not *believe* the fight to get this posted. I know there's comments not replied to yet either, sorry, guys, even checking my emails is a mission right now. Have some weekend Unscripted fluff to make up for it? (Sorry ^^;)
Tread Softly, Glee!fic, Unscriptedverse, suddenly invaded by children. Halp.
Disclaimer: However far on from canon we travel, it never will be mine.
Rating: PG-13 because I actually noticed that I swore, mostly because it was Kurt and Kurt never really swears. Tequila. *shrugs*
Spoilers: Very vaguely sort of for the next episode, if you've actually lived under a rock for the last few months and don't even know its title yet.
Summary: (Once again pushing the boundaries of paper-thin plot, an Unscriptedverse piece in which nothing actually happens! Shock! Kurt and Blaine have a conversation over coffee! Gasp! Blaine spends some time staring at the ceiling! omg!) Saturdays off work are great, but Blaine's been missing Kurt.
Saturdays off work are great, but Blaine's been missing Kurt. The last few weeks Kurt's been helping run the Blue Elephant Players' under-sevens theatre school, which Kurt rolls his eyes over and tells Blaine is mostly used by liberal, trendy New York parents as a Saturday morning creche, though he doesn't object to basically playing with a bunch of kids every weekend. Blaine wouldn't either, and Blaine spends his whole week surrounded by kids, some of them very much in need of a playmate (he and Masha, eight years old and wearing a purple bandana over her bare head, wink at each other every time they catch the other's eye; Blaine doesn't know how the game started but knows that that bed is the last place in the world the girl wants to be, and he loves the twinkle of fun in her eye before the wink).
So on Saturday morning he goes for a run in the park, headphones playing The Legionnaire's Lament (he's trying to learn the accordion part). It's a gorgeous April day, a few long clouds chasing each others' tails across the blue blue sky, green green grass underfoot and daisies beginning to show through like stars coming out. Blaine picks up two Labradors somehow, running in crazy figures-of-eight right around him, so he pops his headphones out and jogs backwards with them spiralling him until he can see the woman in shorts and glasses, waving the leash overhead and shouting. He runs back to her to drop the dogs off and get formally introduced ("As in Weasley? Best dogs ever. Bye Fred, bye George!" "No, that's Fred, that's George." "God, sorry Fred, I thought you were George. Sorry, George, thought you were Fred. Bye guys!") and wave his way off again, while the dogs strain their leashes and whine after him.
Dogs like Blaine. "I wonder why," Kurt always says wryly, and that twitch of the corner of his smile catches on something in Blaine's chest like a spark off a metal handrail, unexpected every time with how hard it can hit.
Back in their apartment he showers and lounges on the sofa for a while, playing the guitar propped off his stomach (got no deeds to do, no promises to keep) and watching the sunlight ripple on their ceiling through the slit-shadows of the blinds in the breeze. He loves this apartment, first place that's ever been theirs. Coffin-small but he's never known any home feel so full of life, everything touched by Kurt and pressed through with memory like scent, and it gets more sunlight than it really should by catching reflections from brighter buildings cut from glass opposite them. He'll miss this apartment, when they move somewhere bigger, somewhere out of the city. He hopes he's going to remember those fluttering stripes of light on the ceiling when they leave. He hopes he remembers being young, and waiting to spend an afternoon with his husband, and watching the sunlight tremble overhead.
He checks the time, thumps his head back into the sofa's armrest, and wishes Kurt was there. He likes knowing Kurt's in the apartment, likes the gentle sounds of him moving around the next room, likes the hum of the pipes as Kurt showers. They had a weirdly scheduled week between their jobs and didn't talk like they normally do, they only shared maybe two meals for the whole week, most of the time they actually spent together was slipping under the sheets to spoon whoever was already asleep in the bed. It doesn't seem fair to not get Kurt for most of the week and then lose any of the weekend with him as well.
Blaine strums and stops the strings with a pat of the palm. He can take Kurt out for lunch after the class finishes, surprise him at the theatre. And if he arrives early enough to maybe lend a hand with the kids, well, it's not like he planned it . . .
He leans the guitar against the wall, remembers to catch up his keys, flicks his eyes up one last time to the laughing lines of light on the ceiling, and closes the door behind himself.
*
Scooter safely parked near the theatre Blaine knocks on the slitted-open door and lets himself into the lobby, where a woman is stacking mats on the desk. "Yoga class?" Blaine says, and she looks at him over her shoulder - she's a thin, bird-like woman (bird-like like the imperious gull rather than the cheery little robin) with strands of steel-coloured hair through the brown.
"You're forty minutes early, the last class is still in."
"No, I meant - do you want a hand with those?"
"Angel." she announces, and tosses a set of car keys at him. "Green sedan right outside, can you bring the last two boxes in?"
It's another ten minutes before Blaine actually makes it into the theatre proper, which spends much of its time when it's not being acted in as a space for dance and yoga classes and WeightWatchers meetings. Everyone's on the stage as Blaine walks down the sloping aisle, if he had his eyes closed he'd be able to walk to them by the sheer noise they make as a crowd of excited children wrestle Samuel in a pair of papier-mache horns to the ground. Kurt stands by looking amused, holding a little girl, and Blaine stops dead to stare as Kurt glances over and spots him and smiles.
The little girl in his arms, five at the very most, has puffy dark hair tied into two balloon-bunches, plump brown arms snug around Kurt's neck, and huge dark eyes turning to blink at Blaine. She's got an apron tied on over her purple dungarees, and Kurt's holding her up looking settled and easy and happy and something about the sight of Kurt holding a child, something about the tilt of his hip to steady her weight, makes something in Blaine crack open and warmth and weakness spread out all the way through his veins, it's all he can do to suppress the whimper. He thinks that if he actually had ovaries they would have just imploded: Kurt holding a baby looks so natural. Every part of Blaine which was designed by nature to care for children has just broken down and started sobbing on the floor, and a lot of Blaine was designed by nature to care for children.
Kurt's eyebrows communicate that Blaine is probably letting quite a lot of this show on his face, and Blaine tries to clear his throat, tries to put a less oh god Kurt the baby expression on. "Hey, am I early?"
"You can come help, they're about to suffocate Samuel." Samuel is rolling on his back, laughing, while children scramble to sit on him and pin him down. "He's being the Jabberwock, I don't think they paid attention to the part where they were supposed to beware him."
Kurt offers a hand and arches his body back to help pull Blaine onto the stage, with a stretch and a kick. "So if he's the Jabberwock who're you?"
Kurt bounces into a little run on the spot, and the little girl's face lights with joy in his arms. "I'm late! I'm late! I'm late I'm late I'm late!"
Blaine grins the of course; Kurt actually does have a pocket watch in his waistcoat pocket, and even without the ears no-one would make a better White Rabbit. "And so this must be Alice," he says, grinning at the little girl, who shifts herself nervously closer to Kurt. He lifts her in his arm and smiles.
"Her name really is Alice, so of course she is. Are you going to say hi to Blaine? He's nice," Kurt promises her, and she hides her cheek behind her own arm, and Blaine thinks, Oh my god Kurt can we steal her I love her.
Kurt jigs her, and gives Blaine a little shrugging smile. "She's a little bit shy of new people but if you were someone in Wonderland I bet she'd say hi. Guys, I think you subdued the Jabberwock already! Give him some room to breathe, c'mon off -"
"Can I?"
"Prop box is in in the corner," Kurt says, and leans down to look into Samuel's face - he's spreadeagled on his back with children picking their way off him, eyes rolled back and tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth. "Samuel, do you want to go back to being the Caterpillar? I think it was less dangerous."
Blaine's shoes squeak off the stage as he hurries back from a quick root through the box of props, jamming the top hat onto his head as he goes. "Oh of course," Kurt says, and Alice bursts out, "Tea party!" before she can stop herself, then hides her face behind her arm again.
Blaine twirls the hat by the brim and pops it back on his head, knocking it with a flick to a cock-eyed angle. Kurt is completely failing not to smile. Blaine throws his arms out. "Tea time!"
Samuel levers himself off the floor in one long sinuous movement like a snake unwinding, with a little boy still hanging off each arm. "Dormouse and March Hare -"
"Me me me," a blond girl in glasses announces, bouncing up and down, waving one arm in the air.
Blaine thumps to his knees to 'walk' over and throw an arm around her shoulder. "By any chance," he asks her, very seriously, "might it be your un-birthday today?"
*
Parents start arriving and sit on the front row chatting, applauding when the kids all bow at the end, lining up at the edge of the stage on Kurt's instruction (ordering people around has always come very naturally to Kurt; even children tend to fall immediately into line when he acts so entirely assured of obedience). Kurt finally puts Alice down at the feet of her mother, hair cut short and iPhone in hand. "Hey baby girl, you have fun? She behave?"
"She was an angel," Kurt says, and Alice pulls at his hand. He leans down so she can whisper in his ear, then stands up and leans into Blaine - still wearing the top hat, he's not letting go of that until he absolutely has to - and whispers on to him, "Alice says she likes you."
Blaine whispers back, "Tell her I like her too."
Kurt leans down to pass this secret message on to Alice. Alice is, Blaine thinks, desperately in love with Kurt the way that small children do fall in love, she so obviously worships him, hanging off Kurt's hand and squirming with happiness to learn that Blaine likes her too. Part of Blaine thinks that of course she loves Kurt, he doesn't understand why the entire planet isn't passionately, hopelessly besotted with Kurt Hummel. The other part of Blaine is mostly preoccupied with oh god the kids. He thought he'd work this out of himself in the hospital every day but the longer he's on the children's ward the more he thinks all the time - and Kurt would be an amazing father - and how epic would Blaine's life be with a back yard and some kids to run around with -
Kurt murmurs into his ear, "You look like you're high." Then, "Pete, put that sword back, sword back, thank you. See you guys next week, we're doing Red Riding Hood!"
The kids cheer, and Samuel runs his hand over the head of a small boy before sending him down to his father. Blaine takes Kurt's hand, says, "Who will you be?"
"The wolf," Kurt says, looking like he's rather evilly looking forward to it. "Samuel will be our heroic woodcutter. And granny, when required."
"You'll make a terrifying wolf."
Kurt smiles his acknowledgement of this, flicker of warmly amused danger in his eyes (for some reason right now, under the stage lighting, so blue like the colour behind the sky). "So did you actually want to see me in crashing my class or did you just want to kidnap some kids for half an hour?"
"I missed you," Blaine says, swinging Kurt's hand a little, resisting the urge to kiss Kurt's stupidly kissable mouth in front of all these children having jackets pulled on by parents as they trickle out. Kurt gently pulls at his hand too, and their fingers play and settle together. "Hardly seen you this week."
"Tell your hospital to put you on a better rotation or I will find ways to make them pay."
"You'll huff and puff and blow their hospital down."
"Wrong story. But essentially, yes." Kurt's thumb runs across the back of Blaine's hand. "I missed you too."
*
Samuel they wave off to catch a bus home as they're bustled out by the gull-like yoga lady, dressed now in lycra with her hair scraped back tight, looking like a twenty-first century warrior queen. There's a coffeeshop a block away from the theatre that specialises in bagel melts, and muffins with blueberries in them the size of eyeballs. Kurt says, "This is a week's worth of calories." but he still eats it. He loves food, loves cooking, loves eating. Blaine loves anything that makes Kurt happy.
Underneath the table their legs have slotted casually together, knee loosely hooked between knees, feet just pressed against the heel. "So," Kurt says, wiping crumbs from his fingers with a napkin and settling back, coffee cupped in his hands. "You're still wearing the face, Blaine."
"The face." Blaine says, watching Kurt's eyes, he always fails to not smile when looking at Kurt.
"The face," Kurt confirms, and takes a sip of coffee. "Do you want to tell me what you're thinking?"
Blaine lays his arm along the table and Kurt puts a hand into his, so easy he doesn't even have to think about it. This isn't Lima and they're not kids anymore, and here their forgetting the rest of the world bustling noisy around them in a lunchtime coffee shop never comes back to haunt Blaine cold on the back of his neck, what could have happened. He takes Kurt's hand, the way he's taken Kurt's hand from the very beginning, because Kurt's hand is supposed to sit in his, and no other reason matters.
"When do we get to get some kids?"
"Oh god, Blaine, in that box of an apartment? Where would they sleep?"
"They could have our room."
"I am not sleeping on that sofa."
"No, I know, I know we have to be in a responsible position to provide for them before we get them. I just - seeing you holding that little girl -"
Kurt's smile twitches with fondness, and something in Blaine jumps and aches at how beautiful Kurt's children would be, Kurt's genetic children, how beautiful and talented and breathtaking Kurt's children would be. Blaine holds his hand and looks at his face (it is a crime that those eyes won't live on through the generations) and says, slowly, "Have you ever thought about - do you want your own kids? If . . . if we used a surrogate, or-"
"They will be my own kids." Kurt says, eyebrows lowering a little though he looks more puzzled than annoyed. "Where has this come from? Do - do you want to use a surrogate now?"
"No! No, that's not why I'm asking, no. I just - I don't know, seeing you holding that little girl, you just looked . . . I don't know, I just thought . . ."
"Blaine - I don't - Blaine, you know where I stand on this. If you want something different then we can talk about it, but there are an awful lot of kids out there who already need people to love them, and we have a lot of love to give. We've been so lucky. I want to share that around, I think we ought to."
Blaine looks at their clasped hands, looks back at his eyes, and his smile grows a little. He remembers Kurt, drunk on his back on their sofa while Blaine sat on the floor next to him with his back to the coffee table holding the tequila bottle, the Magnetic Fields on the speakers, Kurt waving his half-empty glass while he forcefully espoused his view on the matter: there are all these irresponsible straight people going around dropping babies they can't care for and it's so unfair when the kids didn't ask for that and they can take them in and give them all the love they need and they will feel like the luckiest family in the world to have no reason to love each other other than love, no duty of blood is worth as much as love is, Kurt will love his family viciously, will love them all the more because they will be so wanted. "You know we, we, you and me, we risked enough for this." His clumsy hand swung out, found Blaine's drink-drowsy hand lifting for his. "I'll walk through fucking fire for our kids. Know it'll be tough. It'll make it more worth it."
"I know what you think about it," Blaine says. "I agree with you. I see enough kids in the hospital going through - stuff, they really need people who'll love them. I agree with you one hundred percent. I just thought . . ." He rubs an eye, picks up his coffee cup, shrugs. "It just doesn't seem fair that the world doesn't get to have your kids. They'd be really amazing kids, Kurt."
Kurt laughs, startled and unselfconscious, which in public is pretty rare. "Blaine," he says teasingly, rocking Blaine's hand left and right on the tabletop in his. "And yours wouldn't be? God they'd be like puppies. Little balls of sunshine. I just - it just doesn't seem fair when there are already amazing kids out there who need a family, and . . ."
Blaine feels more settled already, his anxieties never last long under Kurt's scrutiny. "Do you remember when Sim Kurt got Sim Blaine pregnant?"
"That was your fault for downloading that hack. I had to redesign their whole house."
"We'd have really beautiful babies, that's all I'm saying."
Kurt checks his face to work out how serious he's being, and Blaine waggles his eyebrows. Kurt rolls his eyes away, grins and lifts his coffee cup. "You are ridiculous."
"I almost felt myself growing a uterus watching you with those kids."
"You are ridiculous." Kurt takes a sip of coffee, puts the cup down. "I will leave my bloodline to the multiple Hummel cousins, who have never been shy about breeding. And I guess you just have to look forward to being uncle Blaine."
Blaine tries to imagine Cooper breeding, and screws one eye up trying to work out how much of a good thing that would actually be. "And uncle Kurt. What about Finn, do you think he's planning on having kids?"
"If he can hold onto for a girlfriend for five minutes, maybe." Kurt turns Blaine's hand left and right a little, and Blaine watches Kurt watching the light run liquid over his wedding ring as it turns. "When I was in high school . . . before you. I don't think anyone thought I'd be married and planning for kids before Finn."
"Before pretty much everyone."
"Is this what you thought your life would be like?"
Blaine thinks about the lines of light undulating on the ceiling of their apartment like waves coming inshore. "It's a lot better than what I thought my life would be like."
Kurt's thumb runs over Blaine's wedding ring. "Me too. Okay." His eyes are serious but bright with fun at the same time. "Ten years from today, where do you want to be?"
Blaine looks right into his eyes. "I want to be in a house out of the city with you, with a dog and at least a couple of kids. Where do you want to be?"
"Anywhere you are. But I'd like to be in that house with you and the kids, having a Talk about how much the dog sheds."
"We'll get a non-shedding dog. I'll brush it religiously. It'll be fine. But -"
Kurt tilts his head, swirling the last coffee in the bottom of his cup, waiting.
Blaine shrugs a shoulder. "If ten years from today I'm hiding out with you in a warehouse armed with a baseball bat trying to escape alive through the zombie apocalypse, so long as it's us I think I'd still be okay. Even if other things didn't work out the way we wanted, if it's us, it still would be okay. For me it would be."
"Zombie apocalypse, Blaine." Kurt says, but his hand presses Blaine's. "I know. I don't know exactly how we'll end up getting there, but really all I'm ever looking forward to the most is getting to stay with you. Being old with you, and knowing it was all worth it."
"It'll totally be worth it. Even when we're fighting about dog hair on the sofa."
"Okay, that dog is seriously not allowed on my sofa."
"We'll have a Talk about this."
"We'll have an ugly silence and a capitulation about this, Blaine."
"We could get a throw."
"That currently nonexistent dog gets on the nonexistent sofa in our nonexistent house over your dead body."
Blaine laughs, because Kurt's mouth is twitching with wanting to, and he squeezes Kurt's hand in his, and Kurt's right, they've been more lucky than anyone has a right to be. They'll share the luck around. They are wealthy in love, their lives overbrim with it, they have so much to give, when it's time.
But now, right now, now they're young, and they have an empty Saturday ahead of them. They'll finish their coffee and pay for lunch, pick up groceries for dinner and head back home, Kurt a comforting body behind Blaine's on the scooter. They'll take the stairs up, talking or not talking, comfortable either way. Blaine will carry the groceries so Kurt can get the keys. They'll unlock the door and walk inside their apartment and they'll have a whole afternoon there for them, waiting like a gift to be unwrapped, while the light dances like water for them on the ceiling.
Tread Softly, Glee!fic, Unscriptedverse, suddenly invaded by children. Halp.
Disclaimer: However far on from canon we travel, it never will be mine.
Rating: PG-13 because I actually noticed that I swore, mostly because it was Kurt and Kurt never really swears. Tequila. *shrugs*
Spoilers: Very vaguely sort of for the next episode, if you've actually lived under a rock for the last few months and don't even know its title yet.
Summary: (Once again pushing the boundaries of paper-thin plot, an Unscriptedverse piece in which nothing actually happens! Shock! Kurt and Blaine have a conversation over coffee! Gasp! Blaine spends some time staring at the ceiling! omg!) Saturdays off work are great, but Blaine's been missing Kurt.
Saturdays off work are great, but Blaine's been missing Kurt. The last few weeks Kurt's been helping run the Blue Elephant Players' under-sevens theatre school, which Kurt rolls his eyes over and tells Blaine is mostly used by liberal, trendy New York parents as a Saturday morning creche, though he doesn't object to basically playing with a bunch of kids every weekend. Blaine wouldn't either, and Blaine spends his whole week surrounded by kids, some of them very much in need of a playmate (he and Masha, eight years old and wearing a purple bandana over her bare head, wink at each other every time they catch the other's eye; Blaine doesn't know how the game started but knows that that bed is the last place in the world the girl wants to be, and he loves the twinkle of fun in her eye before the wink).
So on Saturday morning he goes for a run in the park, headphones playing The Legionnaire's Lament (he's trying to learn the accordion part). It's a gorgeous April day, a few long clouds chasing each others' tails across the blue blue sky, green green grass underfoot and daisies beginning to show through like stars coming out. Blaine picks up two Labradors somehow, running in crazy figures-of-eight right around him, so he pops his headphones out and jogs backwards with them spiralling him until he can see the woman in shorts and glasses, waving the leash overhead and shouting. He runs back to her to drop the dogs off and get formally introduced ("As in Weasley? Best dogs ever. Bye Fred, bye George!" "No, that's Fred, that's George." "God, sorry Fred, I thought you were George. Sorry, George, thought you were Fred. Bye guys!") and wave his way off again, while the dogs strain their leashes and whine after him.
Dogs like Blaine. "I wonder why," Kurt always says wryly, and that twitch of the corner of his smile catches on something in Blaine's chest like a spark off a metal handrail, unexpected every time with how hard it can hit.
Back in their apartment he showers and lounges on the sofa for a while, playing the guitar propped off his stomach (got no deeds to do, no promises to keep) and watching the sunlight ripple on their ceiling through the slit-shadows of the blinds in the breeze. He loves this apartment, first place that's ever been theirs. Coffin-small but he's never known any home feel so full of life, everything touched by Kurt and pressed through with memory like scent, and it gets more sunlight than it really should by catching reflections from brighter buildings cut from glass opposite them. He'll miss this apartment, when they move somewhere bigger, somewhere out of the city. He hopes he's going to remember those fluttering stripes of light on the ceiling when they leave. He hopes he remembers being young, and waiting to spend an afternoon with his husband, and watching the sunlight tremble overhead.
He checks the time, thumps his head back into the sofa's armrest, and wishes Kurt was there. He likes knowing Kurt's in the apartment, likes the gentle sounds of him moving around the next room, likes the hum of the pipes as Kurt showers. They had a weirdly scheduled week between their jobs and didn't talk like they normally do, they only shared maybe two meals for the whole week, most of the time they actually spent together was slipping under the sheets to spoon whoever was already asleep in the bed. It doesn't seem fair to not get Kurt for most of the week and then lose any of the weekend with him as well.
Blaine strums and stops the strings with a pat of the palm. He can take Kurt out for lunch after the class finishes, surprise him at the theatre. And if he arrives early enough to maybe lend a hand with the kids, well, it's not like he planned it . . .
He leans the guitar against the wall, remembers to catch up his keys, flicks his eyes up one last time to the laughing lines of light on the ceiling, and closes the door behind himself.
*
Scooter safely parked near the theatre Blaine knocks on the slitted-open door and lets himself into the lobby, where a woman is stacking mats on the desk. "Yoga class?" Blaine says, and she looks at him over her shoulder - she's a thin, bird-like woman (bird-like like the imperious gull rather than the cheery little robin) with strands of steel-coloured hair through the brown.
"You're forty minutes early, the last class is still in."
"No, I meant - do you want a hand with those?"
"Angel." she announces, and tosses a set of car keys at him. "Green sedan right outside, can you bring the last two boxes in?"
It's another ten minutes before Blaine actually makes it into the theatre proper, which spends much of its time when it's not being acted in as a space for dance and yoga classes and WeightWatchers meetings. Everyone's on the stage as Blaine walks down the sloping aisle, if he had his eyes closed he'd be able to walk to them by the sheer noise they make as a crowd of excited children wrestle Samuel in a pair of papier-mache horns to the ground. Kurt stands by looking amused, holding a little girl, and Blaine stops dead to stare as Kurt glances over and spots him and smiles.
The little girl in his arms, five at the very most, has puffy dark hair tied into two balloon-bunches, plump brown arms snug around Kurt's neck, and huge dark eyes turning to blink at Blaine. She's got an apron tied on over her purple dungarees, and Kurt's holding her up looking settled and easy and happy and something about the sight of Kurt holding a child, something about the tilt of his hip to steady her weight, makes something in Blaine crack open and warmth and weakness spread out all the way through his veins, it's all he can do to suppress the whimper. He thinks that if he actually had ovaries they would have just imploded: Kurt holding a baby looks so natural. Every part of Blaine which was designed by nature to care for children has just broken down and started sobbing on the floor, and a lot of Blaine was designed by nature to care for children.
Kurt's eyebrows communicate that Blaine is probably letting quite a lot of this show on his face, and Blaine tries to clear his throat, tries to put a less oh god Kurt the baby expression on. "Hey, am I early?"
"You can come help, they're about to suffocate Samuel." Samuel is rolling on his back, laughing, while children scramble to sit on him and pin him down. "He's being the Jabberwock, I don't think they paid attention to the part where they were supposed to beware him."
Kurt offers a hand and arches his body back to help pull Blaine onto the stage, with a stretch and a kick. "So if he's the Jabberwock who're you?"
Kurt bounces into a little run on the spot, and the little girl's face lights with joy in his arms. "I'm late! I'm late! I'm late I'm late I'm late!"
Blaine grins the of course; Kurt actually does have a pocket watch in his waistcoat pocket, and even without the ears no-one would make a better White Rabbit. "And so this must be Alice," he says, grinning at the little girl, who shifts herself nervously closer to Kurt. He lifts her in his arm and smiles.
"Her name really is Alice, so of course she is. Are you going to say hi to Blaine? He's nice," Kurt promises her, and she hides her cheek behind her own arm, and Blaine thinks, Oh my god Kurt can we steal her I love her.
Kurt jigs her, and gives Blaine a little shrugging smile. "She's a little bit shy of new people but if you were someone in Wonderland I bet she'd say hi. Guys, I think you subdued the Jabberwock already! Give him some room to breathe, c'mon off -"
"Can I?"
"Prop box is in in the corner," Kurt says, and leans down to look into Samuel's face - he's spreadeagled on his back with children picking their way off him, eyes rolled back and tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth. "Samuel, do you want to go back to being the Caterpillar? I think it was less dangerous."
Blaine's shoes squeak off the stage as he hurries back from a quick root through the box of props, jamming the top hat onto his head as he goes. "Oh of course," Kurt says, and Alice bursts out, "Tea party!" before she can stop herself, then hides her face behind her arm again.
Blaine twirls the hat by the brim and pops it back on his head, knocking it with a flick to a cock-eyed angle. Kurt is completely failing not to smile. Blaine throws his arms out. "Tea time!"
Samuel levers himself off the floor in one long sinuous movement like a snake unwinding, with a little boy still hanging off each arm. "Dormouse and March Hare -"
"Me me me," a blond girl in glasses announces, bouncing up and down, waving one arm in the air.
Blaine thumps to his knees to 'walk' over and throw an arm around her shoulder. "By any chance," he asks her, very seriously, "might it be your un-birthday today?"
*
Parents start arriving and sit on the front row chatting, applauding when the kids all bow at the end, lining up at the edge of the stage on Kurt's instruction (ordering people around has always come very naturally to Kurt; even children tend to fall immediately into line when he acts so entirely assured of obedience). Kurt finally puts Alice down at the feet of her mother, hair cut short and iPhone in hand. "Hey baby girl, you have fun? She behave?"
"She was an angel," Kurt says, and Alice pulls at his hand. He leans down so she can whisper in his ear, then stands up and leans into Blaine - still wearing the top hat, he's not letting go of that until he absolutely has to - and whispers on to him, "Alice says she likes you."
Blaine whispers back, "Tell her I like her too."
Kurt leans down to pass this secret message on to Alice. Alice is, Blaine thinks, desperately in love with Kurt the way that small children do fall in love, she so obviously worships him, hanging off Kurt's hand and squirming with happiness to learn that Blaine likes her too. Part of Blaine thinks that of course she loves Kurt, he doesn't understand why the entire planet isn't passionately, hopelessly besotted with Kurt Hummel. The other part of Blaine is mostly preoccupied with oh god the kids. He thought he'd work this out of himself in the hospital every day but the longer he's on the children's ward the more he thinks all the time - and Kurt would be an amazing father - and how epic would Blaine's life be with a back yard and some kids to run around with -
Kurt murmurs into his ear, "You look like you're high." Then, "Pete, put that sword back, sword back, thank you. See you guys next week, we're doing Red Riding Hood!"
The kids cheer, and Samuel runs his hand over the head of a small boy before sending him down to his father. Blaine takes Kurt's hand, says, "Who will you be?"
"The wolf," Kurt says, looking like he's rather evilly looking forward to it. "Samuel will be our heroic woodcutter. And granny, when required."
"You'll make a terrifying wolf."
Kurt smiles his acknowledgement of this, flicker of warmly amused danger in his eyes (for some reason right now, under the stage lighting, so blue like the colour behind the sky). "So did you actually want to see me in crashing my class or did you just want to kidnap some kids for half an hour?"
"I missed you," Blaine says, swinging Kurt's hand a little, resisting the urge to kiss Kurt's stupidly kissable mouth in front of all these children having jackets pulled on by parents as they trickle out. Kurt gently pulls at his hand too, and their fingers play and settle together. "Hardly seen you this week."
"Tell your hospital to put you on a better rotation or I will find ways to make them pay."
"You'll huff and puff and blow their hospital down."
"Wrong story. But essentially, yes." Kurt's thumb runs across the back of Blaine's hand. "I missed you too."
*
Samuel they wave off to catch a bus home as they're bustled out by the gull-like yoga lady, dressed now in lycra with her hair scraped back tight, looking like a twenty-first century warrior queen. There's a coffeeshop a block away from the theatre that specialises in bagel melts, and muffins with blueberries in them the size of eyeballs. Kurt says, "This is a week's worth of calories." but he still eats it. He loves food, loves cooking, loves eating. Blaine loves anything that makes Kurt happy.
Underneath the table their legs have slotted casually together, knee loosely hooked between knees, feet just pressed against the heel. "So," Kurt says, wiping crumbs from his fingers with a napkin and settling back, coffee cupped in his hands. "You're still wearing the face, Blaine."
"The face." Blaine says, watching Kurt's eyes, he always fails to not smile when looking at Kurt.
"The face," Kurt confirms, and takes a sip of coffee. "Do you want to tell me what you're thinking?"
Blaine lays his arm along the table and Kurt puts a hand into his, so easy he doesn't even have to think about it. This isn't Lima and they're not kids anymore, and here their forgetting the rest of the world bustling noisy around them in a lunchtime coffee shop never comes back to haunt Blaine cold on the back of his neck, what could have happened. He takes Kurt's hand, the way he's taken Kurt's hand from the very beginning, because Kurt's hand is supposed to sit in his, and no other reason matters.
"When do we get to get some kids?"
"Oh god, Blaine, in that box of an apartment? Where would they sleep?"
"They could have our room."
"I am not sleeping on that sofa."
"No, I know, I know we have to be in a responsible position to provide for them before we get them. I just - seeing you holding that little girl -"
Kurt's smile twitches with fondness, and something in Blaine jumps and aches at how beautiful Kurt's children would be, Kurt's genetic children, how beautiful and talented and breathtaking Kurt's children would be. Blaine holds his hand and looks at his face (it is a crime that those eyes won't live on through the generations) and says, slowly, "Have you ever thought about - do you want your own kids? If . . . if we used a surrogate, or-"
"They will be my own kids." Kurt says, eyebrows lowering a little though he looks more puzzled than annoyed. "Where has this come from? Do - do you want to use a surrogate now?"
"No! No, that's not why I'm asking, no. I just - I don't know, seeing you holding that little girl, you just looked . . . I don't know, I just thought . . ."
"Blaine - I don't - Blaine, you know where I stand on this. If you want something different then we can talk about it, but there are an awful lot of kids out there who already need people to love them, and we have a lot of love to give. We've been so lucky. I want to share that around, I think we ought to."
Blaine looks at their clasped hands, looks back at his eyes, and his smile grows a little. He remembers Kurt, drunk on his back on their sofa while Blaine sat on the floor next to him with his back to the coffee table holding the tequila bottle, the Magnetic Fields on the speakers, Kurt waving his half-empty glass while he forcefully espoused his view on the matter: there are all these irresponsible straight people going around dropping babies they can't care for and it's so unfair when the kids didn't ask for that and they can take them in and give them all the love they need and they will feel like the luckiest family in the world to have no reason to love each other other than love, no duty of blood is worth as much as love is, Kurt will love his family viciously, will love them all the more because they will be so wanted. "You know we, we, you and me, we risked enough for this." His clumsy hand swung out, found Blaine's drink-drowsy hand lifting for his. "I'll walk through fucking fire for our kids. Know it'll be tough. It'll make it more worth it."
"I know what you think about it," Blaine says. "I agree with you. I see enough kids in the hospital going through - stuff, they really need people who'll love them. I agree with you one hundred percent. I just thought . . ." He rubs an eye, picks up his coffee cup, shrugs. "It just doesn't seem fair that the world doesn't get to have your kids. They'd be really amazing kids, Kurt."
Kurt laughs, startled and unselfconscious, which in public is pretty rare. "Blaine," he says teasingly, rocking Blaine's hand left and right on the tabletop in his. "And yours wouldn't be? God they'd be like puppies. Little balls of sunshine. I just - it just doesn't seem fair when there are already amazing kids out there who need a family, and . . ."
Blaine feels more settled already, his anxieties never last long under Kurt's scrutiny. "Do you remember when Sim Kurt got Sim Blaine pregnant?"
"That was your fault for downloading that hack. I had to redesign their whole house."
"We'd have really beautiful babies, that's all I'm saying."
Kurt checks his face to work out how serious he's being, and Blaine waggles his eyebrows. Kurt rolls his eyes away, grins and lifts his coffee cup. "You are ridiculous."
"I almost felt myself growing a uterus watching you with those kids."
"You are ridiculous." Kurt takes a sip of coffee, puts the cup down. "I will leave my bloodline to the multiple Hummel cousins, who have never been shy about breeding. And I guess you just have to look forward to being uncle Blaine."
Blaine tries to imagine Cooper breeding, and screws one eye up trying to work out how much of a good thing that would actually be. "And uncle Kurt. What about Finn, do you think he's planning on having kids?"
"If he can hold onto for a girlfriend for five minutes, maybe." Kurt turns Blaine's hand left and right a little, and Blaine watches Kurt watching the light run liquid over his wedding ring as it turns. "When I was in high school . . . before you. I don't think anyone thought I'd be married and planning for kids before Finn."
"Before pretty much everyone."
"Is this what you thought your life would be like?"
Blaine thinks about the lines of light undulating on the ceiling of their apartment like waves coming inshore. "It's a lot better than what I thought my life would be like."
Kurt's thumb runs over Blaine's wedding ring. "Me too. Okay." His eyes are serious but bright with fun at the same time. "Ten years from today, where do you want to be?"
Blaine looks right into his eyes. "I want to be in a house out of the city with you, with a dog and at least a couple of kids. Where do you want to be?"
"Anywhere you are. But I'd like to be in that house with you and the kids, having a Talk about how much the dog sheds."
"We'll get a non-shedding dog. I'll brush it religiously. It'll be fine. But -"
Kurt tilts his head, swirling the last coffee in the bottom of his cup, waiting.
Blaine shrugs a shoulder. "If ten years from today I'm hiding out with you in a warehouse armed with a baseball bat trying to escape alive through the zombie apocalypse, so long as it's us I think I'd still be okay. Even if other things didn't work out the way we wanted, if it's us, it still would be okay. For me it would be."
"Zombie apocalypse, Blaine." Kurt says, but his hand presses Blaine's. "I know. I don't know exactly how we'll end up getting there, but really all I'm ever looking forward to the most is getting to stay with you. Being old with you, and knowing it was all worth it."
"It'll totally be worth it. Even when we're fighting about dog hair on the sofa."
"Okay, that dog is seriously not allowed on my sofa."
"We'll have a Talk about this."
"We'll have an ugly silence and a capitulation about this, Blaine."
"We could get a throw."
"That currently nonexistent dog gets on the nonexistent sofa in our nonexistent house over your dead body."
Blaine laughs, because Kurt's mouth is twitching with wanting to, and he squeezes Kurt's hand in his, and Kurt's right, they've been more lucky than anyone has a right to be. They'll share the luck around. They are wealthy in love, their lives overbrim with it, they have so much to give, when it's time.
But now, right now, now they're young, and they have an empty Saturday ahead of them. They'll finish their coffee and pay for lunch, pick up groceries for dinner and head back home, Kurt a comforting body behind Blaine's on the scooter. They'll take the stairs up, talking or not talking, comfortable either way. Blaine will carry the groceries so Kurt can get the keys. They'll unlock the door and walk inside their apartment and they'll have a whole afternoon there for them, waiting like a gift to be unwrapped, while the light dances like water for them on the ceiling.