Two and a Half Years Later

It was mid-morning on a Thursday, and neither Kurt nor Blaine had a call time for hours yet. The older kids were in school and Taylor had taken Naomi to the park, so they were enjoying some peaceful time together at home, reveling in the unusual quiet. Until there was a knock on the door.

It was Cooper, well into middle-age now, his usual comb-over hidden by a baseball cap. He looked exhausted and pale, his eyes bloodshot. And he was holding a sleeping infant in his arms, perhaps six months old.

“What on earth …?” Blaine said, taken aback.

“I need your help, little brother,” Cooper said softly.

Kurt fluttered around the kitchen, at a loss for what to do. His first thought had been tea, something to soothe the nerves, but by the time Cooper walked into the living room, he and Blaine were already shouting at each other, and Kurt feared that the hot water might be used as a weapon. He fleetingly considered hard liquor, but of course that was a terrible idea. He finally settled on a plate of cookies, even though that also seemed completely inappropriate, and walked cautiously out to set it on the coffee table where it remained, ignored, through the heated fight.

“I had no idea, Blaine!” Cooper was saying. “I didn’t even get her number, or give her mine. She finally found me again through my agent. We didn’t know what she wanted, so we ignored her calls until she threatened to go to the tabloids. And then I agreed to meet her, yesterday, and she dumped the baby on me and left. I didn’t know what to do, so I caught a red-eye and came here. You’ve got to help me Blaine. I can’t do this, I’m not cut out to be a father.”

The baby woke up and began to cry, and Cooper’s eyes widened. Kurt stepped in quietly and took the baby from his arms, held him up to bounce and soothe.

Kurt looked at the baby’s face and his jaw dropped. “Jesus Christ!” he said, unable to stop himself.

“What?” Blaine asked.

Kurt turned the baby so Blaine could see his face. Blaine paled. It was like looking at one of his own childhood photos. The baby could easily have been his. “Oh my fucking god, Cooper, what the fuck is going on here?” Blaine shouted.

Cooper at least had the decency to look ashamed of himself. “She was an extra on a show I did last year. I thought she was cute, so I invited her back to my trailer. I never saw her again. Not until yesterday, when she handed me the baby and ran away.”

“Her name, Cooper, what was her name?”

“Esmeralda Tan.”

Blaine glared at him with a look sharp enough to cut glass. Not that he had any idea who this girl was, but the implication from the combination of Spanish and Chinese names was clear enough. She must be Filipina. Cooper had always taken after their father, and with a Filipina girl and a little bit of random luck …

“Don’t judge me,” Cooper said.

“I’ll damn well judge you if I please,” Blaine shouted back. He collapsed back onto the sofa and ran a hand through his hair. “I suppose Mom wants you to marry her.”

“She’s not my mother. She’s my step-mother.” Cooper was suddenly defensive and Blaine looked up angrily at this turn of the conversation.

“She raised you since you were five, Cooper, she’s your mother.”

“I kind of haven’t told Mom and Dad,” Cooper admitted.

“What?!”

“I was kind of hoping you’d tell them it was yours, not mine.”

Kurt nearly bit through his own tongue trying not to speak.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?!” Blaine screamed. “You want me to go and tell Mom and Dad that I got some girl knocked up even though I am gay and married? You have got to be fucking kidding me!”

Cooper buried his face in his hands. “I can’t tell her. I just can’t.”

Blaine felt a little stab of sympathy for the first time. Their mother was a force to be reckoned with. She was already eternally angry at Cooper for the way he treated women, and to find out he’d done this, and with a Filipina girl to top it off, she would be livid. Cooper might not escape with all his limbs intact. He sighed. “So what do you want me to do here? Aside from claiming that it’s mine, which I will not do under any circumstances.”

“I want you to take him,” Cooper said. “Adopt him or just keep him, I don’t know, but I want you to raise him.”

Blaine groaned. “Hummel Home for Unwanted Children of Our Friends. Again.”

“He’s family,” Kurt said.

“Please, Blaine,” Cooper pleaded.

Blaine looked at Kurt.

“He is super adorable,” Kurt said.

“You’re just saying that because he looks like me,” Blaine grumbled.

“You’re super adorable, too,” Kurt said, smiling.

Blaine turned back to Cooper. “Does he have a name?”

“Fletcher. Fletcher Anderson.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Cooper looked embarrassed. “I guess she thought if she gave him a name close to mine, I might be happier? I don’t know.”

Blaine stood up. “I can’t deal with this right now. I just can’t. I need some air. I’m sorry, Kurt.” He nearly ran to the front door, grabbed his keys off the table in the front hallway and his gym bag out of the coat closet, and slammed the door behind him.

Kurt and Cooper looked at each other for a moment, stunned.

“You’re really kind of a dick,” Kurt said.

“Yeah, I hear that a lot from people.”

Fletcher started to cry again, so Cooper rooted around in his bag and pulled out a bottle of formula. He handed it to Kurt, his eyes pleading. Kurt frowned at him, but took the bottle and started feeding it to the baby.

“You’re sure you don’t want to raise him yourself?” Kurt asked.

Cooper sighed. “Honestly? I’m such a fuck-up. It’s too late for me to ever make it big. Every acting job I get, I’m stressed out that this will be the last one and I won’t be able to pay my bills. So to keep from thinking about it, I go party all the time. That’s no kind of life to bring a kid into. He’d be much better off here.”

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you went around having one-night stands without using protection.”

Cooper looked down at his feet. “Can I just … um … leave now?”

“It’s not a prison, you can walk out the door. And yeah, if you abandon the baby here we’ll take care of him and we won’t call the cops on you or anything. But I’d suggest staying if you ever want Blaine to speak to you again.”

“Yeah,” Cooper mumbled.