And Baby Makes Three

Chapter 26

“Oh, Kurt, that's incredible! Did you really put that up by yourself?” Carole gushed as Kurt proudly showed her the crib that he and Blaine had bought several hours earlier but was now fully standing, parts and all, securely in place in the middle of the living room. Blaine was sitting with his hands over his stomach, cross-legged next to it on the floor, a decision he was currently regretting because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get back up again.

“I’ve been fixing cars for years. I could hold a spanner before I could talk. I can put up a crib by myself.”

“Isn’t it great, Burt?” Carole nudged her husband, who had gone into stunned silence the moment he’d walked into the living room. 

“Oh! Yeah, yeah it’s great. You did great, Kurt." 

Was it just him, or did his father seemed distracted? He looked as though he was on the verge of saying something, but kept thinking better of it. 

"It’s actually really good timing because your father and I have something we’d like to tell you. Don’t we, Burt?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, we do. You might want to be sitting down for this." 

Kurt looked at them as if to say, Well? What is it?

"We want to turn the spare room into a nursery!” Carole burst out, apparently unable to contain the secret any longer; his dad was beaming, looking at them both. 

“Oh my God - you - you don’t have to do that!” Kurt said. “That’s too much. I’ll help out if you want me to-”

But Burt put up his hand to silence him. “This is our gift to the both of you. I know that you’ll eventually want to go back to New York but while you’re here, we want to make sure that there’s a place for all three of you here. And I’ve already talked to your parents, Blaine, and they’re completely on board too.”

“That’s - what Kurt said, it’s too much, I couldn’t possibly let you do that for me - for both of us.” Blaine said, tripping over his words. “It’s too much.” He repeated lamely, building emotion constricting his voice.

It became a little too much for Kurt to take. He rushed forward, throwing his arms around his father’s middle and hugging him so tightly he was sure in some subconscious part of his mind that he was hurting him, but at that moment he breathed in the smell of flannel and car oil and let himself express the things he had such difficulty saying through touch instead of speech.

His dad awkwardly patted him on the shoulder, chuckling to himself. “It’s the least we can do, kid. For the both of you.”

Pulling away with wet eyes, Kurt helped Blaine unsteadily to his feet. He sniffed loudly and forcefully, hiding his face in the crook of Blaine’s neck so that his dad didn’t seem him crying. 

Carole drifted off to see to preparing dinner and Burt went to fetch a beer from the kitchen, muttering something about “giving you two some alone time.”, and so they were alone. 

Unwrapping himself from Kurt’s grasp, Blaine wandered over to the newly-built crib, looking into it carefully. 

“We should paint it yellow. Or maybe green. That way it’s gender neutral and afterwards we can either paint over it or keep it the way it is."