Sugar Baby

Twenty-Three

The scent of fabric softener filled the room, delicate floral notes, as Blaine knelt down to pull the sheet down over the mattress, Quinn walking past behind him shaking pillows into their cases, Brittany carefully carrying boxes of photos and drawings and Santana hefting the chest of drawers and pair of nightstands along the ground, jamming her shoulder against the furniture and shoving. "You know, I don't see why you're playing with the sheets and I'm doing the heavy work," she said, narrowing her eyes at Blaine. "He's your...whatever he is now."

"Baby daddy, friend, person who he's in love with but too scared to tell," Brittany fired off at a rapid pace, winking at Blaine and laying a box down with a sigh of relief, stretching out her arms and sitting down on the edge of the bed, opening the flaps of the box and rummaging around.

"Brittany, what's in that box is Kurt's private property, and I don't think he'd want anyone looking through it," Quinn warned gently, but Brittany just shrugged and pulled her hands out of the box with a snow globe in one and a picture in the other, a little faded and crumpled but still perfectly intact, showing a young woman playing with a small boy, her laughing at the camera with her freckled face flushed in the sun and auburn hair hanging in her eyes, the toddler grinning from ear to ear, Kurt's familiar eyes sparkling in a way Blaine had never seen them.

"That must be his mom," Santana observed, hooking her chin over Brittany's shoulder to examine the picture in closer detail. "God, she's pretty. No wonder he's so gorgeous, he's practically her spitting image." Blaine turned to look wistfully at the picture, wondering if their son would look like Kurt, would have that star-scattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose and his cheeks, the toothy smile, the joyful sparkle in his eyes.

There came a thud from the hallway, a hissed warning, and the edge of a wheelchair came into view as Puck pushed Kurt into the room, grinning around at them before snorting at Santana's effort and shoving the dresser better into place as Blaine turned his face into the mattress to hide the tears of longing manifesting in his eyes. "How do you feel?" Brittany asked softly, pulling Kurt close to the bed before carefully manoeuvring him out of the chair and onto the mattress.

"I hate not being able to walk," Kurt complained, flopping back onto the mattress. "But, I've got the bandages off my hands and the swelling on the side of my head has mostly gone down. Now I only need to take one kind of painkiller." He caught sight of the snowglobe cupped reverently in Santana's hands, and snatched it from her, smiling mistily down as he shook it up and watched the flakes drift down onto the tiny couple inside, standing beside the sign engraved 27th February 1993.

"You were so cute when you were little," Blaine said softly, and Kurt looked up at him, eyes swirling with so many emotions they were unreadable in a way they'd never been before. He snatched up the picture of himself and his mother, and Blaine watched him smile, his heart stopping and starting in his chest as he watched Kurt's fingers run over his mother's faded face.

"Thank you for the room," Kurt said sweetly, largely ignoring Blaine and speaking to the women in the room. "It's beautiful, really, you didn't have to move everything down here, I could've managed."

"What, having to get hefted up and down the stairs at least twice a day for six weeks?" Santana scoffed. "Please, Kurt, it was no trouble. This is where you're staying, and this is what you need. Your own space, where it's convenient from you, away from everything so you can be on your own sometimes."

Blaine knew he wasn't welcome, and left, going to sit on the stairs and gaze abstractly into space, seeing nothing. In theory, he could so easily go back into the room and tell Kurt he was in love with him. Sweep him off his feet and carry him into the sunset. But everything was so complicated, tangled threads frayed and twisted but not quite broken, and he couldn't just drop such a bombshell on Kurt when he had so much to cope with on his own.

"Hi," came a voice from next to him, and he turned to see Santana sitting down next to him, flashing him a smile and crossing her legs neatly, one over the other. "Are you thinking about him?"

"How can I not?" Blaine asked desperately, rubbing his hands along his thighs. "I'm in love with him, Santana. Every time I think it over it's just more obvious to me. And I can't stop thinking about how we could've avoided so much if I'd just seen it sooner, and we could be committed and happy and in love with each other right now instead of him refusing to even acknowledge my existence."

"He's hurt and angry, Blaine, you can't turn this into something where he's the one doing something wrong by ignoring you," Santana snapped at him, eyes blazing momentarily with anger. "Maybe it's not the most mature way to deal with it, but he's a teenager. He's still in school, and suddenly he's in this world where he's having his lover's baby and he has to live with him and everything's changing. Give him a week to just think it over, and then maybe you can look at him and tell him you're in love with him."

"What if this isn't really how I feel?" Blaine asked desperately, feeling like a teenager again, uncertain of feelings and morals and the world as everything tipped into colours and facets. "How do you tell when it's really love, San? What did it feel like when you fell in love with Brittany?"

"It was like standing on the edge of a cliff, and just stepping off and letting myself fall," Santana said instantly, without even needing to think about it. "It was like the world stopped for a second and suddenly everything was about her. It was this huge, amazing thing that was swelling inside me and I just couldn't keep it a secret, everyone had to know. Falling in love is amazing, and scary, and enormous, but I think you can do it, Blaine. But can you see a future with him? Can you see yourself, say, marrying him? Having more children?"

Blaine drifted away into a fantasy. Kurt in his arms, against his body, kissing his lips, warm and safe and sweet. He was nuzzling his nose against the sensitive skin at the crook of Kurt's neck, one hand curving neatly over his belly, leaning down to press a kiss beneath his ear, to the underside of his jaw, his cheekbone and finally moving to his mouth, whispering, "I love you," against his lips before kissing him hard.

He was at Kurt's side, eyes shining with tears of joy as the lusty cry of a newborn baby filled the room, and a smiling midwife, her face swimming in and out of focus beyond a veil of tears, crossed the room to lay their son in Kurt's arms, as he sniffed and tilted his face up to kiss Blaine sweetly, in thanks, in a promise of their future.

Candles laid out a path to heaven as Blaine heard Kurt walk into the house and lowered himself to one knee, a ring glittering with neatly arranged small circular diamonds in his hand, smiling at the look of pure, unadulterated joy on Kurt's face when he caught sight of him, and he threw himself into Blaine's arms with a shriek, knocking him backwards and spending the night entwined irrevocably into him, crying joyfully into his chest.

A gold ring glittered on Blaine's left hand as he chased a small boy, with wild dark curls, freckles scattered like stardust across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, shining gold-green eyes and a wide, curious smile, catching him and tickling him into a spiral of shrieks and giggles as Kurt watched from the shade of the porch, sipping lemonade and caressing the swell of his belly, blowing them a kiss when Blaine stood up with their breathless, flushed son in his arms.

"I can," he finally murmured, and Santana's face split into a grin, her arm sliding around him and squeezing reassuringly. "I can see so much of a future. I want to spend my whole life with him. God, I want to just step off the cliff and fall, I don't even care about the consequences. I just want to be with him every day for the rest of time."

And that was it. He knew so easily what he was going to do now.

He was going to ask Kurt to marry him.