Sugar Baby

Nine

Kurt wrapped his arms around himself with a sad sigh, nuzzling his cheek against the sleeve close to his face, the soft warmth of the cashmere jumper he’d found at the foot of his bed on Christmas Day, from Blaine, still lingering with faint hints of his sweet scent. They hadn’t spoken in eight days, and it seemed that every time Kurt looked at Blaine, Sebastian was standing close, lingering touches and smouldering glances, the way Kurt was supposed to be with Blaine.

It was all his fault. He shouldn’t have gone so far to try and ensnare Blaine, he shouldn’t have tried to out-perform him in bed and he should never have outright asked Blaine his opinion on his technique versus Sebastian’s. Now both of them were punishing him, close and whispering and laughing, never taking their eyes off each other, flirting and teasing and almost kissing.

It was breaking his heart. And he kept thinking of Quinn’s warnings, telling him not to fall for Blaine, how dangerous it would be, how much hurt he’d have to go through, and he hadn’t fallen for him, he hadn’t, but it hurt to think of Blaine with someone else with so much smouldering sex appeal, when he had not a shred of it himself. It just hurt.

He had New Year’s Eve, at least. Sam had insisted that Blaine stay behind to work while the performers went to watch the ball drop in Times Square, and had taken a look at Kurt before kindly but sternly telling him he couldn’t be seen in public with them, leaving him sitting in the room, legs crossed neatly beneath him and trying not to think about everything going on with Blaine as the soft swell of Blaine’s working music drifted lazily through the air.

“Kurt?” Kurt opened his eyes as the music came to a slow halt, turning his head to see Blaine looking at him over the stacks of papers. “Since we’re alone, I thought you might want to-”

“I don’t want to have sex,” Kurt said, stretching his legs out in front of him with a haughty sniff. “I am not letting you bat your eyelashes at me and pull me into bed when you hurt me and you’re too immature to even see how you did it. We are not having sex until you realize what you did and make it up to me.”

“I don’t understand why you’re getting so upset,” Blaine said, making Kurt blink hard to hold back the hot tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “I have a history, and in this environment you might meet people who I’ve been with, and you’ll have to get used to the fact that I’m not your dreamy high school boyfriend who’ll take your virginity at the same time you take his.”

“I don’t care about that, I knew I was never going to have that connection with anyone, and I sleep around,” Kurt says, voice quivering over the last few words. “I care about Sebastian blatantly flirting with you in front of me when I know that you two were fuck buddies for almost a year, and he knows what there is between us.

“Kurt, come here.” Blaine gave him a stern look, and Kurt let out a heavy sigh as he climbed to his feet and crossed the room, only for Blaine to kneel at his feet and take his hands, almost as if he was proposing. For a wonderful moment, Kurt almost thought he would, his heart leaping into his throat and an incredulous smile beginning to form across his face, before reality kicked sharply back in. “Kurt, I can promise you, Sebastian doesn’t mean anything to me, and you don’t need to worry about anything between him and me. You are the person who matters to me right now.”

Kurt smiled down at him, wondering if he was being too nice to forgive him on the strength of a single speech, but Blaine climbed to his feet and kissed him sweetly, and he forgave him immediately, draping his arms around Blaine’s neck and leaning into his touch.

They went to bed without having sex, and as Kurt lay in Blaine’s arms, he reflected that it was the first time a kiss between them hadn’t led to something more. And that was progress, something that warmed his heart as Blaine wrapped his arms around him and buried his face in the back of Kurt’s neck, kissing his cheek and whispering, “Goodnight, sweetheart.”

The door flew open to Kurt standing in the frame, all colour drained from his face but for his reddened, swollen eyes, entire body trembling violently as he strode into the apartment and sank down into the nearest chair, eyes dim and distant and lower lip quivering with the effort of suppressing tears.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead,” he said vaguely, voice heavy and hitching with emotion. “I know we didn’t have anything organised for tonight, and you hate me showing up unannounced, but there’s something I really have to tell you. I...I’m going to-” He dissolved into tears, wrapping his arms around himself, fingers curling into the fabric of the expensive cashmere clinging to his chest, his shoulders, his arms. “Blaine, I don’t know what to do, what do I do?!”

“If you’re not here to fuck, then get the hell out,” Blaine said coldly, ignoring the shuddering sobs of the boy curled in on himself in the armchair. “Don’t come around bothering me with any stupid problems with the other guys you’re sleeping with.”

“Blaine...I...I’m pregnant,” Kurt choked out, a breathless sob wrenched from his lips. “I’m sixteen and I’m going to have a baby and I don’t know what to do!”

Blaine froze in the act of making himself coffee, knuckles tightening into the edge of the counter. Pregnant? Someone else’s, no doubt. And what, Kurt expected him to hand over money and gifts for a bastard child that wasn’t his? “How dare you?!” he screamed, rounding on the clearly frightened teenager. “Coming over here looking pathetic and lonely, asking me to help you take care of a bastard baby that probably isn’t even mine? Boys like you make me sick!”

Kurt shook violently where he sat, curled in on himself, eyes pleading and round and wet when they met Blaine’s. “Please, please, you’re the only person I have,” he begged, reaching out a hand desperately for Blaine. “My parents are dead, my foster family threw me out, my friends hate me for never being around because I’m with you, I’m alone apart from you. I didn’t know where else to go.”

“I’ll tell you where, to the arms of whatever boy you opened your slutty legs for and let get you pregnant!” Blaine roared, the clink of breaking china echoing up to the high ceilings as his coffee mug smashed into the sink, and he stalked towards the ashen, cowering teenager. “Go get him to get some menial job scrubbing dishes or picking trash off roads to support that bastard baby. Or don’t you know who he is? You’re already the town whore, do you even know the name of everyone you let fuck you?”

“Blaine, you’re scaring me,” Kurt whispered in the high, innocent voice of a young child. “Why are you yelling at me? This isn’t my fault, I didn’t even know I could get pregnant.”

“You’re a fucking freak with a pussy, in what universe does that not mean you can get pregnant?” Blaine screamed, seeing Kurt wince at the insult but unable to bring himself to care, about the boy who he’d been fucking in every position and over every surface for four months, who he’d taken to New York with him for Christmas and introduced to his signed performers and his manager, who he’d talked out emotional issues with the relationship with for the first time in years. “This is your fault for lying back and letting every man in this state fuck you. You are not my responsibility and you have no right to fucking come over here and beg me to take care of you and a baby that isn’t mine!”

He saw Kurt’s lower lip quiver once, the tears pooling bright and glistening in his eyes, and the boy stood up and ran from the apartment, the dull thuds of his shoes against the floor echoing for several seconds after the door slammed shut, until Blaine’s vision flashed violent red and he chased the teenager down the stairs, into the grey early-morning, the rain lashing cold as steel at the ground. “Don’t you dare walk away from me!” he yelled, yanking Kurt back by the shoulder, hard.

You’re an asshole, Blaine Anderson!” Kurt shrieked, a hand clamped over his shoulder and the other curved protectively over his still-flat belly. “You’re a user, you chew people up and then you spit them out again! Do you understand that you’re all I have in this world? No one will take care of me except for you! But maybe sleeping with you was a mistake! Is it any wonder I had to sleep with three of your performers while we were in New York, when you can’t even keep up with me?!”

The crack of Blaine’s hand against Kurt’s cheek echoed viciously through the rain-washed empty streets, as did the snap of Kurt’s hand against Blaine’s jaw a second later. They stared at each other, breathing heavy as bulls after the charge. Looking on the boy, fire slowly fading from his eyes, a hand clasped to his rapidly reddening cheek and face paled beyond the vivid handprint and stained with glistening tear tracks, Blaine felt all the fight go out of him. With a sigh, he turned on his heel, throwing a, “Come back inside, we’re going to talk about this,” over his shoulder.

Back in the apartment, he quietly, calmly, cleaned up the shattered remains of his dropped coffee mug and brewed two more, laying the steaming mugs down on the low table between the sofa and armchair and collapsing down into the cushions, seeing how tensely Kurt sat, skin tinged with grey and eyes distrusting on him. “I’m sorry I hit you,” Blaine finally said after a long, uncomfortable silence. “I’m sorry for yelling at you, and calling you a slut and a whore and a freak.”

“I’m sorry that I’ve been lying to you since the night we met,” Kurt whispered, sincerity in his expression as he finally looked up from the swirling sepia depths of his coffee to meet Blaine’s eyes. “I’m not a slut. Guys don’t want to fuck me. They think I’m a disgusting freak and they use me as a punching bag. I haven’t slept with hundreds of men. In fact, I’ve only slept with one: you.”

Blaine nearly choked on the scalding sip of coffee he’d just had in order to have something to do with his mouth, coughing violently at Kurt’s confession. “But you...you always seemed so experienced, so sure of yourself.”

“Hours of research and a lot of late nights with my fantasies and a vibrator,” Kurt said with a small shrug. “I never thought I’d get to put everything I’ve learned into action with such a fantastic, gentle, sexy man. You’re more than everything I’ve ever imagined, and I’ve never been so satisfied as you leave me every single time. It amazes me, sometimes, that I can keep up with you, when you know so much and I only have a vague idea of how things should go.”

“Does that mean I’m-” Blaine choked on the words, twirling his hands in the air and looking pointedly down to Kurt’s stomach, something clenching in his heart as Kurt’s hand instinctively dropped to cover the smooth skin over the cashmere, the tiniest smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

“It’s yours,” he murmured, eyes bright and very blue behind the fringe of lashes. “It’s ours, Blaine. I have no idea when he or she was conceived, there are so many times it could’ve been. I started feeling sick a few weeks ago, and I didn’t tell you because it didn’t matter, but I went to the doctor about it and he told me. My foster family threw me out when I told them, no questions asked. I can’t go to any of my friends. There’s only you for me.”

Blaine cleared his throat and began, “Are you going to have an-” before he was interrupted by Kurt frantically shaking his head. “How far gone are you?” he asked softly, eyes dropping to Kurt’s stomach with some kind of morbid fascination.

“Five weeks, not long,” Kurt said, curling his arms around himself. “I guess that means it was one of the times around early January, maybe even while we were still in New York. I’m due around mid-October, around the one-year anniversary after we met.”

Blaine reached for Kurt’s hand, and the teenager slid their fingers together, their eyes meeting. Blaine squeezed Kurt’s hands as he murmured, “A baby. I...I just can’t believe this.”

“Can’t? Or don’t want to believe it?” Kurt’s voice was edged with danger, and he disentangled a hand from Blaine’s to lay it protectively over his stomach. “I am not having an abortion. If you don’t want to believe that you happened to sleep with someone who could get pregnant and successfully procreated, then I’ll just go somewhere else. I just hoped you would help me.”

Blaine gripped Kurt’s hand as he made to stand up and leave. “You are not walking away from me,” he said, voice cold and deadly. “You aren’t going back to a family that would throw you out. You’ll stay with me. I’m going back to New York for the rest of the year, and you’ll come with me. Online schooling or tutors would be available, if you want to keep up your education, and Quinn had a baby before she signed with me, I’m sure she’d be willing to help you with anything.” He met Kurt’s eyes and said, “I won’t let it be known that I didn’t take care of someone who was pregnant with my child.”

Kurt’s eyes shone with a mist of tears and he threw his arms around Blaine, crying into his shoulder. Blaine tentatively put his own arms around the teenager, patting his back in a nervous gesture of comfort. “Thank you,” Kurt whispered, voice thick with tears. Blaine rocked the boy in his lap and let him cry, holding him close.

They stayed like that for a long time, Kurt’s head buried in the crook of Blaine’s neck long after his shoulders stopped shaking with sobs, Blaine just holding him silently, clinging to each other as everything about their lives began to change for good.

Blaine watched Kurt sleeping, his pale face just peeking out from above the blanket, leaning on the doorway, worries weighing heavy on his shoulders. He’d been hoping to slowly scare Kurt away, being colder and aloof around him, to stop having to worry about how deep he seemed to have gotten himself in with a teenager he’d picked up in a bar, but now all hope of that was gone. He never dreamed he would ever have to deal with accidentally getting someone pregnant, but the reality remained that he had. And Kurt didn’t have anyone else to take care of him.

He turned away into the living room, where Kurt had fallen asleep in his arms, exhausted with crying, sliding the door shut behind him. He would have to tell people, get the requisite lecture from Sam, change the way he acted with the group because Kurt needed his support, no matter what. With a heavy sigh, he picked up the phone and dialled Sam. He tapped his fingers against the wall through the inane chatter, until Sam left an open window in the conversation and he found himself simply blurting it out.

“Kurt’s pregnant.”

There was a long moment of silence before Sam, voice edged with danger, said, “What?”

Blaine clutched the phone closer to his ear as he repeated, “Kurt’s pregnant. It’s mine.”

“How could you be so irresponsible?!” Sam exploded, sounding more furious than Blaine had ever seen him. “The kid is sixteen years old, you should never have hooked up with him in the first place, but to not use protection and knock him up is just stupid! You know about carriers, we all know about them, and you knew you were hooking up with one, you should’ve used a condom! How am I supposed to cover this up? Are you going to leave him behind?”

“I’m bringing him with me,” Blaine told him, without any question. “I won’t abandon him, not when it’s my baby and it’s all my fault that he’s stuck in this situation. He’s going to continue his education with tutors and he’ll have more support with us than he will with his foster family here. I care about him, Sam, and even when I tried I couldn’t get him to want to leave me. He’s a permanent fixture in my life, and covering up our indiscretions is your job. I’ll keep him out of the public eye, and we can use the family friend story. No one will notice him.”

“No one will notice a pregnant teenager who hangs around you with heart eyes visible from space?!” Sam exclaimed, but he seemed to have calmed down. “Okay, we can cover this up, but he has to stay out of the public eye, and you can’t associate with him if he does go out in public. Everyone can be trusted to be discreet. Do you want me to tell them, or will you?”

“I’ll tell them, I’ll call them all, because they need to know before I’m back out there,” Blaine said, rubbing the back of his neck as he heard a footstep in the bedroom. “Okay, I have to go, but I’ll see all of you soon, with Kurt.”

Blaine tossed the phone onto the sofa and looked up with a soft smile as Kurt padded into the room, the blanket around his shoulders. “Blaine, I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t be here, but I don’t have anywhere else to go, and I just wanted to tell you. You don’t have to help me, there are places I could try.”

“No, it’s my moral obligation to help you, it’s my fault you’re in this situation and it’s my responsibility to help you and take care of you,” Blaine assured him, taking his hand gently and pulling him closer. “I do care about you, Kurt.”

Kurt smiled at him and leaned into him, the blanket falling to the ground around his feet as Blaine took the boy in his arms, holding him close. One of Kurt’s hand wrapped around his wrist and lowered his hand to his stomach, and Blaine curved his palm over the skin, closing his eyes and thinking of a day when there would be a tangible swell beneath his fingers.