One year later

Maya’s dress was a filmy rainbow of flowing cotton, graduating from red to gold to green to violet in a dreamy ombre that swirled around her legs as she spun in place, giggling with delight. It was a gift from Kurt – he spoiled her rotten with new outfits these days, but this particular dress was perfect for the occasion, and his willpower had simply slipped away to nothing after five straight days of staring at the colorful frock in a boutique window during his commute home from work.

“She never lets me pick out her clothes,” Blaine grumbled, his arms crossed stubbornly over his chest as he leaned in Maya’s bedroom doorway.

Kurt shot Blaine a smug look up from where he sat cross-legged in the middle of Maya’s fluffy white rug, dappled with early morning sunlight. “That’s because you’re her dad. Ell doesn’t let me pick out his clothes, either. It’s just a...thing,” he said with a toss of his hand before he turned back to Maya. “Hold on, Maya, stay still for a sec.”

Maya abruptly stopped spinning; the skirt of her dress suddenly swished to stillness against her long legs. Kurt hummed, cocking his head before giving her hemline a satisfied nod. “Perfect! Just needed to be let out a little.”

“Can you take the pins out now? Please!” Maya asked impatiently.

“Yes, ma’am. Turn!” Kurt rose to his knees and gripped Maya’s shoulders, rotating her so she was facing the opposite direction. He quickly unfastened the pearly white buttons lining the back of the dress and began to gingerly lift the garment off her shoulders. “She’s a weed, I swear. She’s grown like two inches since winter,” he remarked absently to Blaine, who answered with a murmur of agreement.

“Don’t prick me!” Maya cried, hunching her spine in self-defense as the pin-lined skirt hem brushed against her back.

“I won’t,” Kurt assured her.

“But you did that other time,” Maya reminded him in an accusing voice, half-muffled by fabric as her dress came up over her head. “Remember?”

“Beauty is pain, love.” Kurt tossed the words over his shoulder as he made to leave her bedroom. He caught Blaine’s amused stare and returned it with a pleased smile, pausing in the doorway for a split-second to let Blaine press a kiss to his cheek before he headed back to the living room to restitch Maya’s hem on his sewing machine – which had at some point, somewhere along the way, taken up permanent residence in Blaine’s moderately more spacious apartment.

Kurt and Maya had a lot of style consultations now – lively chatter and exclamations behind her closed bedroom door that had Blaine wondering when his bookish baby girl had begun growing up into the budding model he now feared she’d become.

“I still like reading, too, Daddy!” she’d assured him once, crawling into his lap wearing a gauzy white nightgown and a ridiculous pair of silver-jeweled kitten heels – the latest gift courtesy of Santana and the shops of Tokyo. “I’m gonna be smart and go to college and be a doctor. Or maybe the President of the United States!”

“Yeah,” Elliot had opined from his seat on the other end of the couch – he rarely strayed far from Maya’s side – where he clutched the latest edition of InStyle, wide open to one of his father’s articles. “You can like clothes and be smart, too!”

Maya and Elliot’s childish boyfriend and girlfriend relationship had softened over the past year to something closer to best friends. They still held hands wherever they went – a relic of childhood that Kurt feared would fade in a few years when puberty set in. Though by then, no doubt, their relationship would be changed again: this time, to brother and sister.

Kurt and Blaine were it. They knew it as well as they knew how to whip up a Monday evening meal two eight year olds would happily inhale; as well as they knew their children’s favorite books and colors and school subjects, and the Christmas presents they’d received each year since they were born. They’d known it from the day they met and every day after, three hundred sixty-five times over.

Kurt’s family knew it – just a single night after Kurt had introduced Blaine to Finn and Rachel, and mere moments after his parents had stepped off their plane from Ohio the previous Thanksgiving.

“That one’s a keeper,” Kurt’s stepmother had discreetly whispered in his ear as Blaine took their suitcases and Maya started charming the pants off Kurt’s father.

“Yeah,” Kurt had affirmed, biting down on a radiant grin. “I’m never letting him go.”

Blaine’s friends knew it, too – his theatre colleagues and his college buddies, his neighbors and his nanny. Not a week after his and Kurt’s first date, Amanda had offered Blaine a two-for-one deal so he and Kurt could go out.

“You guys deserve it,” she’d said, dismissing Blaine’s objection with a wave of her hand. “Now go back to his place and make out, already.”

So they did. Happily.

Kurt and Blaine had had a year’s worth of heart-pattering moments of bliss, reclaiming what years of dirty diapers and no-show babysitters and second jobs worked clear through the night had robbed them of. Dreams were discovered, hopes were confided, their souls were laid bare for the other to hold and shelter.

Their days together were filled with simple domesticity – not much changed from before they met, except now they both had a friend, a companion to help them slog through even the most monotonous and stress-crazed times. Blaine’s harried enthusiasm melded with Kurt’s cool, even-tempered humor, creating a beautiful harmony as they learned how to become a parent with a partner. On some evenings, Kurt led cooking lessons; others, Blaine taught the kids how to plunk out melodies on the keyboard he’d somehow managed to cram into a corner of his apartment. Then, around one dinner table or another, they’d fill the air with rich chatter and laughter as Maya and Elliot told stories about their school day, and Kurt gushed about the newest designer fashions he got to preview, or Blaine read in silly, dramatic voices from the latest scripts he received from his agent.

And the nights...once their children were tucked tightly into bed, or handed off to the care of a babysitter, Kurt and Blaine’s nights together overflowed with passion that simmered and bubbled to the surface, long trapped under the burdens of young, single fatherhood. Sometimes they raced toward ecstasy, breathing soundless gasps into the other’s sweat-slicked skin; more often they lingered, slow and languid, just like the first time they’d lain together in Blaine’s silent, candle-lit bedroom, when their limbs had shaken with nerves and the sheer force of the love they’d finally uttered aloud. Though most nights, they were content to revel in the simple comfort of clutching their lover close, whispering words of affection as they drifted toward sleep.

Soon, their days, their nights – all their tender moments together would become more frequent.

It had happened at random, without plan, just like their chance meeting. The first Friday after Blaine’s musical closed in April, Kurt and Elliot had stumbled upon an oft-talked about, yet never witnessed Anderson Dance Party. Blaine and Maya had pulled the two hesitant Hummels up on the couch with them to belt out and bounce along with a playlist of decade-old pop hits.

“Think you could get used to this?” Blaine asked, breathless, as the music ended. He wrapped his arms around Kurt’s waist to keep them both upright on the plush couch cushions.

“I think I’d murder you if you ever tried to jump on my couch like this,” Kurt deadpanned.

Blaine shook his head slowly, ignoring Kurt’s sarcasm. “That’s not what I was getting at.”

Kurt arched an eyebrow. “What were you getting at?”

Blaine opened his mouth; closed it. “I-I want you here all the time,” he finally confessed, an air of desperation in his stuttering voice. “Both of you. S-should be here. With us.”

Kurt blinked at him – one, two, three times. “What?”

“Live here with us.” Blaine tightened his embrace, pressing his sweat-dampened body closer to Kurt’s. “Let’s...let’s be a family.”

Kurt was silent and still as his eyes roamed Blaine’s face – soft and open and imploring, and full of love. “That’s what Elliot said he wanted,” he finally whispered. 

“Really?” Blaine’s expression shifted to curiosity. “When?”

“The first day we met...when I got home from our date.” Kurt spoke slowly, recalling the quiet, shadowy moment in Elliot’s bedroom many months prior. “He asked if you were my boyfriend, and I asked him if that would be okay. He said it would because then we could all live together and he could see Maya every day.”

Blaine barked out a laugh. “No kidding.”

“Yeah.” Kurt swallowed hard and dropped his face down to stare at their feet, sunken into cushions that sagged under their combined weight. “We’re going to need a bigger couch,” he declared.

Blaine’s eyes, which had widened with alarm when Kurt’s gaze had fallen away, now crinkled under the force of his beaming smile. “You’re probably right,” he replied, his voice faded to a quiet rasp.

Kurt briefly looked back up at him before casting a glance around the warmly lit living room, crammed with a hodgepodge of furniture and overflowing bookshelves and pink- and purple-hued plastic toys. “And a bigger apartment.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Blaine breathed, nodding. “Let’s do it?”

Kurt returned his nod, slow and sure. “Want to do the honors?”

Blaine blew out a calming breath before speaking, raising his voice so it would project beyond the intimate circle they’d formed. “Hey, guys,” he called down to the kids, who’d wandered away from the dance party to examine something seemingly more interesting on Blaine’s iPad. “What do you think about all of us living together in the same place? Would you like that?”

His question was met with a pair of surprised gasps, coupled with a frantic nod from Elliot and an enthusiastic “Yeahyeahyeah!” from Maya.

“Well, the jury’s in favor,” Kurt quipped as an enormous grin bloomed over his features.

Blaine matched it, inch for joyful inch. “That sounds unanimous to me,” he said as he leaned forward to capture Kurt’s mouth in a searing, closed-lipped kiss.

“Yessss.” Elliot held out a hand for Maya to high-five; Maya responded by throwing her arms around Elliot’s shoulders with an exuberant screech, sending a fiery blush rising high on Elliot’s round, freckled cheeks.

They were coming together under a single roof – four people, two names, one family. Begun in the most unconventional of ways, now merging as if nature had formed them as a single unit. But first, they had to revisit the event where it all started: the pride parade, the place of their meeting and the perfect, ebullient celebration of their newly formed life together.

Kurt grabbed Blaine’s wrist to glance at his watch as they gradually weaved their way toward the edge of the parade barricade. “How is it ten-thirty already?” he asked, frowning down at Blaine’s watch face.

“Well, you basically remade Maya’s dress this morning,” Blaine said.

“I hemmed it,” Kurt huffed, sliding his hand from Blaine’s wrist to his palm and giving it a light squeeze. ”It didn’t take that long. I think it’s your habitual tardiness rubbing off on me.”

“Hey! You’re the one who changed your outfit twice. It’s a miracle we made it here at all.” Blaine grinned when Kurt shot him a mock scowl.

“Forgive me for wanting to look nice, Blaine.”

“You always look nice, Kurt,” Blaine complimented as his eyes drifted down to the neckline of Kurt’s pale purple button-down.

“It is our anniversary, after all,” Kurt reminded him.

Blaine grinned even wider. “It is.”

Kurt made a face again. “Except now we’re not gonna be able to get lunch before we see the apartment. It’s going to take forever to get back to Brooklyn.”

Blaine shrugged. “That’s why we have snacks!” He reached out and grabbed the zipper of Elliot’s backpack, tugging until the fastening freed enough to stick his hand inside. Elliot craned his neck to shoot Blaine a startled glance, but quickly turned back to Maya, jabbering incessantly by his side.

“You’re a dork,” Kurt muttered, a hint of a smile tugging at the remnants of his frown.

“A dork you love,” Blaine countered.

Kurt’s pale blue eyes danced with delight. “Very true.”

“And a dork who has food!” Blaine made a triumphant sound as he pulled his hand from Elliot’s bag.

“Goldfish,” Kurt commented, seizing the tiny pouch of yellow fish crackers Blaine clutched in his fist. “You sure know the way to my heart.”

“Well, I must be doing something right for you to want to be with me for a whole year.” Blaine playfully nudged him in the arm with his shoulder.

“For me to want to be with you forever,” Kurt corrected him with a knowing smile.

Below them, Maya’s voice suddenly rang out, echoing in the outer ring of their consciousness. “Look, they’re taking pictures! Daddy! Kurt!”

“Daaaad,” Elliot called up to them. “Earth to Dad!” 

“Okay, Ell,” Kurt muttered to dismiss his son, his gaze never straying from Blaine’s. Elliot and Maya rolled their eyes at each other.

“They’re doing it again,” Elliot moaned. “Being all kissy faced.”

“How come you never kiss me, Elly?” Maya asked innocently; she rocked back and forth on her feet, sending a ripple of rainbow-hued fabric swaying across her legs.

“B-because,” Elliot stammered. “We have to be, like, eleven to do that.”

“But you can kiss me on the cheek!”

“N-no. I can’t!” Though they weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend anymore, it would be an understatement to say that Elliot still harbored an enormous crush on Maya.

“Fine. Then I’m gonna kiss you!” Maya declared, grinning broadly as she leaned closer to a wide-eyed Elliot.

“I can’t believe it’s only been a year,” Blaine murmured to Kurt, both men oblivious to their kids’ kissing debate.

“I know,” Kurt agreed softly.

“A lot’s happened since then, huh?” A year before, at that very moment, the first sparks had fizzed and flown between them as they stood in the middle of a crowded street, holding their children close and their dreams at arm’s length. And now they were back in the same place, embracing all the love the world had gifted them.

“I wonder what we’ll be celebrating at next year’s parade.” Kurt shot him a long, significant glance, one that Blaine mirrored for a moment before quickly shifting coy.

“Another baby?”

An astonished laugh burst from Kurt’s chest; he threw his head back, letting the bubbly noise waft high above the crowd around them. Blaine took advantage of the moment, diving forward and latching his lips onto the smooth, exposed skin of Kurt’s neck and blanketing it with noisy kisses.

That was the image Maya found during her daily scan of The New York Times the next morning: Kurt grinning widely, his arms wrapped around Blaine’s shoulders with Blaine’s face pressed against his neck. Below them, Maya’s lips were sealed delicately to Elliot’s flame-red cheek, with one honey eye trained on the photojournalist’s camera that Kurt and Blaine never noticed. A scatter of colorful confetti floated around the edges of the scene, framing the moment like a perfect picture of joy.

The family portrait was the first thing Kurt and Blaine hung on the walls of their new apartment, where it remained for years to come.