Sugar Baby

Twenty-Seven

Kurt rolled his eyes as Tina leaned over to lift two pillows up so he could lean against them, adjusting his bandaged ankle and perching worriedly on the end of the bed. Mercedes had no such compunction, and threw herself lazily onto the bed, crawling up next to Kurt and asking, "So, how's it going with you and Blaine? And the baby, obviously?"

"The baby's fine, he's started kicking, and he's overly fond of doing it when I'm trying to sleep," Kurt answered cheerfully, and Mercedes and Tina both squealed and cupped their hands over his belly, squeaking and beaming when the baby kicked out at them. "As for me and Blaine...I don't know. We talked, and he told me he loves me, and then he asked me to marry him, but I said no because that would be crazy, it would be insane to marry him at the point we're at now, and we agreed to try being just friends for a while and both thinking it over. But I don't know, we'll always be closer than friends, and I liked being close to him and kissing him and while I don't want any of it to lead to anything more right now, I keep thinking about just going back to him."

"Ooh, honey, don't open that door," Mercedes said with a theatrical wince. "The guy treated you so badly from what you've told me, you gotta keep him hanging for a while. He's clearly hopelessly devoted to you, he'll wait for you no matter how long it takes. Maybe you should get out there, play the field a little. New York is full of cute gays."

"Mercy, don't take this the wrong way, but that is horrible advice," Kurt said, smacking her arm lightly. "Who is going to want an emotionally-damaged seventeen year old orphan who's pregnant with someone else's baby and in love with that guy? Not any kind of guy I want to date, let me tell you."

"It's sweet that he asked you to marry him, and he promised to be there for you and the baby no matter what," Tina observed, looking up from chipping away her nail polish and smiling sweetly at him. "He really is devoted to you, even though his career means he can't really claim to be with you and be having this little boy with you in public. That's the worst part of this in my opinion."

"I know, and I do wish I could go outside holding his hand and tell everyone he's mine and we're expecting a baby together, but this is his career, it's important to him and it's not like I can actually get around very well anymore anyway," Kurt said with a slight grin.

A cry of, "Shit!" echoed through the house and all three of them started upright, Mercedes scrambling to her feet and Tina pausing to help Kurt into his wheelchair before they rushed into the kitchen to find a wide-eyed Quinn, an ashen Blaine and a purpling Sam examining a magazine, Santana standing over them. As Kurt went to ease himself up, she pushed him down, shaking her head. "Sebastian spilled everything. It's a shitstorm. Any minute now the press will be pounding on the door."

Ignoring her warning, Kurt stood up carefully, leaning heavily on Blaine as he peered over their shoulders to the brightly-coloured and eye-catching page, and immediately felt all the warmth of his recent happiness leave his body like a deflating balloon, the tears prickling hotly behind his ears and forming a constricting lump in his throat.

BLAINE ANDERSON: CRADLE ROBBER - TWENTY-EIGHT YEAR OLD CREATOR AND PRODUCER OF WARBLER RECORDS HAS KNOCKED UP A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD BOY - SEBASTIAN SMYTHE TELLS ALL INSIDE!

The slam of a fist into the table shocked them all out of their horrified daze, and they all started around to see Sam pacing the kitchen, slamming his fist repeatedly into the open palm of his other hand. "That fucker!" he yelled, and Kurt jumped because he had never heard Sam swear, always assumed him easy and accommodating and effortlessly easy to be around and talk to and befriend. "How dare he?! God, the shit we dealt with after Rachel spilled, and that was only three years ago! He was a part of that, he almost lost his job, you'd think he'd learn! Fucking hell!"

"It's revenge," Quinn said softly, laying a gentle hand on his arm and squeezing to try and calm him down. "He's angry with all of us for kicking him out of this group and he knows the way to get to all of us is through Blaine, and the way to get to him is through Kurt. God, this is awful. Worse than last time."

"Fuck, we're all going to end up in court for some sort of sexual harassment and paedophilia case," Puck observed, cracking open a can of beer despite the early hour and tossing one each to a desperately grasping Sam and Santana. "As if having to be in there to give evidence just to damn Karofsky to a much longer sentence wasn't enough."

Kurt was shaking, trembling from head to toe on weak knees, cold and pale and beads of sweat clinging to his temples, and Blaine grabbed him around the waist and tugged him from the room, an utterly horrified Mercedes and Tina immediately taking their places, running their fingertips over the pictures. Pornographic pictures of private moments between them, stripped and cheapened and edited to make them out as little more than casual fucks, no longer focusing on the twine of Kurt's fingers into Blaine's hair or the beautiful contrast of their skin, but on Blaine's face buried between Kurt's legs and Kurt's face looking almost agonised when truly it was all pleasure, or Kurt up on his hands and knees with a corset hanging off him, Blaine fucking into him from behind with his face so creased and red he almost looked cruel, brutal, when in reality his hands had been gentle and his kisses soft and sweet, bringing so much pleasure to Kurt's tender flesh.

"Kurt, calm down, please try to calm down," Blaine whispered frantically, his fingers squeezing crushingly tight around Kurt's the only thing keeping him grounded as the world floated away, his anchors gone, his spirit lost at sea without knowing if they were safe, if he would have to let Blaine go, if he could even stay in New York, if he would be forced back to the place he'd sworn never to return to after he made it out. "Look at me, okay, look at me. Focus on breathing, slowly, in and out. Don't panic, it's not good for the baby, we can make this okay, we can fix it."

"No we can't," Kurt sobbed out, shoulders shaking violently, his body wracked by shudders as the tears slip-slid down his cheeks, unable to be held back for any longer. "We can't fix this, we can't wrap it back up and shove it into a closet and pretend it doesn't exist. It's all out there, everything we've been through and those pictures of us, God, they're going to be everywhere and everyone will know it's me and I'll never make it anywhere because all I'll be is that freak who slept with Blaine Anderson and got stupid and pregnant and didn't bother to hide!"

"Kurt, stop it, don't talk about yourself like that!" Blaine snapped, cradling Kurt's tear-ravaged face gently between his eyes and looking down at him with such compassion in his eyes that new tears welled up in Kurt's eyes. "You are not a freak, okay. There are hundreds of thousands of men around the world just like you, and every single one of them has someone who thinks they're beautiful. We can fix this, Sam's a professional and people deal with worse scandals than this, okay. And you are not going to lose me. Sadly, you're stuck with an old man whose treated you like shit and doesn't know how to make up for it."

Smiling through his tears, blinking eyelashes clumped together with moisture up at him, Kurt slid their palms together and twined his fingers through Blaine's. "Like this," he whispered. "You can make up for it like this. By being here for me, as whatever I need, no matter the cost to your career and your life. You're putting me first the way no one has done since my parents died, and that means the world."

As Blaine smiled, Kurt raised his head first to kiss him, sweet and soft, lowering Blaine's hands to curve over his belly and curling his arms loosely around Blaine's neck, pressing as close as he could get with his bump between them, lips pressed to lips and moving together like they were learning each other for the first time, two boys just discovering what intimacy and love could truly be. Blaine didn't need to even think on the words tumbling from his mouth as they parted to know that they were the only truth he could speak: "You're the love of my life. My one and only. I know you are, and I'll never want or need anyone else for the rest of my life as long as I have you."

"Wow," Kurt breathed, starry-eyed with a blush curling high in his cheeks, lips curved in a bright, openly and easily happy smile. "I never thought...you just said that, and I never dreamed someone would say that to me, least of all you, and you just said it so easily." Blaine silenced his rambling with another kiss, thumb stroking over the rounded edge of his bump, both of them smiling against each other's mouths. "You're the love of mine too," Kurt breathed as they parted, and Blaine tilted their foreheads together, a laugh bubbling up out him as he swept Kurt into his arms, Kurt's face turned into the crook of his neck, inhaling and exhaling open-mouthed against his skin, and his eyes closed as he revelled in Kurt's warmth and scent and the press of his bump into his stomach as he held him.