What do you do with a BA in English?

The phone on the other end rang several times as Kurt waited, elbows on knees, slumped over, too aware of the slammed-closed door in the hallway. He wiped under his eyes, sniffled back the frustration.

“Hummel Tires and Lube.” The familiar drone of power tools and the metallic bang of automotive parts being fitted together nearly drowned out his dad’s voice, making Kurt more homesick than he’d been for a long time. He’d grown up in that tire shop. “Hello?”

“Dad, hi.” He swallowed down the anger and hurt and failure.

“Kurt. Hey buddy, what’s up?”

“Do you have a minute?”

“For you? Always. Just...gimme a sec here.” He heard his dad, voice muffled now, speaking to someone. “Take over here, will ya? Mrs. Latham needs this back by three.” A moment later, the shop sounds muted slightly. “All set, pal. Want to tell me about it?”

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“Hello, beautiful. Good morning.” He leaned in to drop a soft kiss on the end of his nose. “I love your nose,” he whispered. “Maybe more than your Daddy K’s, but don’t tell him, okay? It’ll be our secret.”

Tiny fists waved in the air, hitting Blaine in his own nose. And his eye. He straightened, rubbing at it.

“Hey, where’s the love, Gillyweed?” he asked in mock affront, getting only a happy gurgle in return. Tiny feet kicked in the air for sheer joy of being able to do it, before coming down with a hard whump on the mattress.

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A/N: This takes place after Blaine graduates and moves to NYC (so the New New York episode), but before Christmas of that year.

“It’s more fun to be out there doing it,” Kurt commented, watching the skaters at Rockefeller Center. “Even if it did take a week for the bruises on my ass to go away.” He looped his arm through Blaine’s, inching closer as they leaned on the rail about the rink. Close enough to feel the exhale from Blaine as he leaned in, close enough that the white puffs of their breath mingled.

“Hmm….should’ve worn more layers. Ice skating is one time when I might excuse all your multiple layers, they provide padding when you fall.” Blaine reached over to pat Kurt’s hand where it looped around his own forearm, and had his touch lingered on Kurt’s ring finger? He’d seen the way Blaine zeroed in on his engagement ring when Kurt took his glove off to count out change for their coffees. Had he really doubted whether Kurt was still wearing it?

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He loved his city. Loved, loved, loved it. But at the moment, he needed his noisy hectic city with its trillion inhabitants — at least a million of whom were between him and his destination — to give him a break already. Stepping aside to let a mother with a toddler on her hip go up the stairs before him, because even a near panic attack was no excuse to be rude, he pulled out his phone and dared fate by texting as he walked up the subway stairs. He hit send as he hurried up Broadway toward 43rd Street.

Blaine to Kurt: What are you doing?

The answer came almost immediately.

Kurt to Blaine: Stuck in mtng w/ morons.

He stopped in front of the Conde Nast building, fighting his urge to barge in.

Blaine to Kurt: Chk your msgs & call me. Important.

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Kurt approached the check-in desk, where the nurse merely raised her eyebrows as she listened to whoever was on the other end of the phone. He signed Gil’s name, his own and Blaine’s on the sign-in sheet, then waited.

“Kurt,” the nurse greeted after hanging up. “Is Gil here to punch another hole on his frequent visitor card?” She smiled as she tapped away at her keyboard.

“Afraid so. Blaine’s bringing him in now. Tell me, Kathy--does he get an extra hole punch for a head injury?”

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“Blaine!” Kurt called from the living room.

“Bwaine!” A voice piped from by his knee.

“I need your help with something.”

“Need help sump'in!”

“Blaine, today please!”

“Bwaine! Day pweese!”

He looked down at the boy whose hand he held, at the paint on his Baby Gap sweater and in his blonde hair, at the overjoyed grin that made it impossible to be truly angry about the mess.

“Sweetie, you don’t call him Blaine. Daddy calls him Blaine, you call him Papa.”

The grin dimmed a little. “But I wike saying Bwaine. Bwaine!” he called again, as Kurt fought not to roll his eyes. He was trying to break the habit, as he was sure their son would throw the gesture back at him soon enough without his Daddy giving him something to mimic.

“He’s an independent thinker, that one.” The subject of their conversation finally made an appearance. “Just like his Daddy.”

“I’m not the sole cause of his contrariness, Blaine,” Kurt retorted.

“Yeah, Bwaine!” And this time Kurt lost the eye-rolling battle.

“Apparently I have an echo.”

Blaine smothered a laugh behind his hand. “Your child,” he said pointedly to Kurt as he walked over, taking in the scene. Finger paints spilled over the cloth covered table and onto the tarp that had been spread out beneath it. He bent down to toddler level. “What have we here?”

“He decided to decorate his clothes, instead of just the paper,” Kurt informed him.

“Want make wothes pretty wike Daddy do,” was the explanation.

Blaine looked up at Kurt. “Your child,” he repeated. “So what do you need me to do?”

“Help me get his clothes off, I was afraid to try it on my own because if he got away he’d spread paint over everything. Then you can dunk him in the bathtub while I try to get the paint out of the sweater.”

“Okay, Sport, arms up.”

Together they managed to get his clothes off without getting more paint on anything that didn’t already have it. Once their little boy was stripped, the damage to him wasn’t that bad. His hands got the worst of it, since he'd used them in lieu of brushes. Other than that, it was just a few smears on his face and in his hair.

“Now, straight to the bathtub with you,” Kurt ordered, turning to gather up the clothes.

“You know, you should be flattered that he’s imitating you,” Blaine said over his shoulder.

“I’ll be flattered when it doesn’t make such a mess,” he answered, accessing the damage to the red sweater. These paints were supposed to be washable, so they’d find out today.

“Wook at me!”

He looked up, suddenly realizing that Blaine was still beside him and their son was……across the room on the couch. Jumping on the couch, which now had little handprints to show where he’d held on to pull himself up. He closed his eyes and reminded himself that it was just a couch, they could clean it, just like they could clean the clothes, and the carpet, and—-

“Daddy B, Daddy K, wook at me!”

He opened his eyes again, to the sight of their little boy jumping as high as he could, making bunny hops from one end of the couch to the other, then standing on the arm to jump back down to the cushion. He turned to his husband, who wasn’t even trying not to grin this time.

“Your child, Blaine.”

The door swung closed behind the physician’s assistant, and Blaine stared dumbly down at the brochures in his hands. “Signs to Watch For,” says one in a weirdly cheerful font. Another has a mother and father cradling their boy between them. “Support Services” is the title on that one. Each pamphlet has a single jigsaw puzzle piece in the upper right corner. He didn’t know why the jigsaw piece was there, but it seemed oddly fitting to his mood just now, because he definitely felt like the pieces were not fitting together.

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He raced up the stairs rather than wait for the elevator, nearly falling down the steps when he tried to take two at once. Silly Blaine, he knew better. His legs weren’t long enough for that, but he couldn’t help himself. Today was the day. They’d gone through all the paperwork, all the sleepless nights of worry, and this morning the call had come while they were both at work. It had taken Blaine a while to get away, and now he couldn’t wait one moment longer to share this excitement with his husband. He fumbled with his key and finally succeeded in opening the door, calling out.

“Kurt? I’m here, sorry! Took them a while to find someone to cover for me, and then there was a delay on the subway. Did you book our flight?” No answer. “Kurt?”

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Rating: G
Word Count: 3,892
A/N: I found this while organizing my fic folders a few days ago. I think it was a false start to "Careful the Wish." I figured with a little polishing and a few hundred more words, it worked well as a short stand-alone piece.


No tux was meant to be worn this long. Not all night while its wearer wandered the city, lost in thought, in turmoil, unsure whether to go home. Unsure of the welcome he might receive if he did. It occurred to him that anyone who saw him, in a wrinkled tux just past dawn, wandering the sidewalks with his head down unwilling to meet the eyes of passersby…..those people might well think he’d been partying all night, that he’d cheated on his spouse and now was doing the walk of shame back home to beg forgiveness. That couldn’t be further from the truth. He’d never cheat on Kurt. But he did need to beg forgiveness. He wasn’t even sure for what, but felt in a vaguely unsettling way that the fight last night was his fault. He was the one who was balking. They’d talked about this before. They’d agreed that they weren’t ready before, but yes, they definitely wanted it one day.

Apparently, ‘one day’ had arrived for Kurt. And it wasn’t till he announced it, so sure of himself, so happy and eager, that Blaine felt the bottom drop out and was overtaken by an irrational knee-jerk reaction of no, no, no….I can’t.

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