Blaine’s alarm clock went off with its ever-delightful string of beeps, waking him up feeling like he should’ve at least had another three hours. He rolled over, stretching out his arm and trying to find the damn thing by touch. When he found it, he tried to turn it off, but after all these years he still hadn’t mastered the skill of pressing buttons without looking, so he had to actually sit up to get it to stop beeping. Sitting there he yawned, staring at the little beam of light peaking through the blinds, then stretched a little before getting up and going into the bathroom. He stared at his reflection in the mirror and decided that he really did have to shave today, because Ginny would start complaining about him having a beard. The final battle of his morning was his hair. He liked his hair, he really did, but he felt like that big mop of dark curls would turn into some wild jungle if he didn’t at least try to fix it a little bit. Sometimes he wistfully thought back to his high school days, when he actually bothered to put hair product in there, but now, at 26, he didn’t care that much anymore – as long as he could keep birds from nestling on his head.

“Wake up, sunshine, time for school.” Blaine kissed his sleeping daughter on her forehead, smiling as she tried to pull the covers over her head. Ginny had never been a morning person and she definitely took after him in that respect. She was so young now, Blaine already feared the day she’d become a teenager. He’d never get her out of bed then. He reached over and poked her sides, making her squirm under the blankets. “Come on! No breakfast for sleeping people!”

“Are there pancakes?” She asked sleepily, adding a yawn for extra effect, and Blaine shrugged.

“Not if you’re not dressed in five minutes.” It worked. She threw her blankets off of her and jumped off her bed, running over to her closet.

“What should I wear, daddy? Help!” she stood in front of the open doors with a desperate look on her face, motioning for him to come look

“I think you should go with the yellow dress.” Blaine suggested, messing up her dark curls a bit before walking out of the room, grinning as he heard her annoyed “Daddy!”

Blaine glanced over his shoulder and smiled. She looked like him; he’d always loved that. Her hair, her eyes even the way she carried herself was all him. Granted, her nose, her chin and her attitude were pretty much all her mom, but Blaine tended to ignore that. It’s not that he didn’t like those features of his daughter, she was beautiful to him anyway, but it was too painful to think about. He’d like to think that they were family traits that skipped a generation and that she was just all his.

Blaine looked up from the pancakes he’d been making to see Ginny come running into the kitchen of their apartment. He smiled as she grabbed a pancake and started chatting about what she planned to do that day. Sometimes Blaine couldn’t help but feel like the luckiest man on earth when he looked at her. Of course, being a gay, single dad was far from easy. He still couldn’t escape the judging looks and sometimes even harsh words here in the big city, although he had learned to ignore that with time. He often got questions from mothers if he needed any help and he knew it all from a place of caring, but he got slightly annoyed sometimes that apparently they had no faith in his parenting skills. Of course it had been hard, mainly because he had no one to help him out but the occasional friend, but he had indeed had some luck along the way and with 3 popular novels out and a running column in one of the biggest newspapers of the country, he couldn’t complain. Not that he thought there was nothing to improve in his life. There were loads of things to improve on. His car had issues, he currently had one of the biggest writer’s blocks he’d ever had and his love life was pretty much non-existent. And it wasn’t that he didn’t want to date or find love like in the movies he couldn’t get Ginny to stop watching, it was just hard to find a guy who didn’t get freaked out by a single dad with a daughter. And he never blamed her for a moment. If someone couldn’t take her, they couldn’t have him, it was that simple. Family first.

“Daddy.” His daughter’s voice pulled him back from his thoughts and the glare she was giving him meant that he’d missed something important.

“What, sweetie?”

“The pancake is smoking.” Blaine couldn’t keep the curse word from slipping his mouth, earning him a squeak of ‘a dollar!’

After they’d finished breakfast, Blaine and Ginny had their little morning ritual in front of the door. She’d stand in front of him, hands straight next to her body and a serious look on her face.

“Bag?” Blaine asked, hands on his hips.

“Check.” She’d reply.

“Lunch?”

“Check.”

“Shoes?”

“Check.”

“Ready to go?”

“Yes, sir!” She did her little salute and Blaine opened the door for her, grabbing his keys from the table. He followed her down the stairs and to his car. She waited patiently for Blaine to catch up and open the door.

“Hurry up! I’ll be late!” She told him, tapping her foot impatiently.

“You were the one who took two hours to get out of bed.” He countered as he opened the door and she climbed in.

“That’s not true!” She huffed. Blaine smiled and buckled her in.“Comfy?”

“Yes, daddy.” Blaine closed the door and walked to the driver’s side and got in himself. He started the car, the radio turning on and much to Blaine’s annoyance it had just started playing Ginny’s new favorite song. Favorite songs meant singing along loudly and being generally too excited for this time of the morning. Blaine had to be honest, she was a good singer, but in the morning, before school, favorite songs were his least favorite things. He saw her face break out into a huge smile through his rear view mirror and she started singing along. Blaine sighed. This was going to be a fun ride.

“Oh, daddy?” Blaine heard his daughter pipe up from the back of the car.

“Yes, Gin?” They were almost at her school and Ginny had been right, they were running late. Blaine hissed through his teeth as a cyclist almost crashed into them.

“Can I be a ladybug for Halloween?” Shit. He’d forgotten about that. Halloween was coming up and if he wasn’t mistaken, it was next Friday. Ginny loved Halloween, as any child did, but there was one big problem. She always wanted handmade costumes. He’d tried to convince her to let him buy her something, but she wouldn’t change her mind. Ever since her aunt made her that princess dress a few years back, she wouldn’t have anything else. And although most people expected him, as a not very fashionable but still very much gay man, to be able to sew, he couldn’t even get the buttons of his shirt back on properly, let alone get a whole costume together. The last couple of years some of the moms from Ginny’s classmates were kind enough to help him out, but he felt bad to keep asking them every year. And now he had one week to figure something out. He was so screwed.

“A ladybug?” He asked as calm as he could possibly manage.

“Yes. With wings and everything!” She sounded so excited and Blaine could see her bouncing up and down in the back.

“Are you sure?” He could try to get her to change her mind. She could still pick something easy. Blaine sighed when he saw her nodding enthusiastically. Why could he not resist her? Why did she have to have that power over him?

“Fine.” He gave in and she squealed. He gave himself a mental slap as he parked in front of Ginny’s school. He was going to regret this.

After he dropped Ginny off at school, he went by the supermarket to get some supplies and food for that night. As he strolled through the isles with his cart, he wondered how in the world he was supposed to get this done. He had no skills. He had no time. He threw some pasta in his cart and moved on. As he turned the corner he almost bumped into a woman pushing a stroller.
“Oh, hello Blaine!” She smiled. It was James’ mom. James was one of Ginny’s best friends. Blaine knew that among teachers, they were referred to as ‘The Dynamic Duo; Jim and Gin.’

“Hi, Sandra.” He smiled politely. “How are you? I haven’t seen Jim in a while.”

“Yeah, poor boy’s been sick.” She replied, “I hope that it’ll be over by Halloween. He would throw a fit if he missed it.” Blaine cringed internally. Would he never escape this? “What’s Ginny going to be this year?”

“Um. A ladybug.” Blaine shrugged, trying to sound nonchalant and confident.

“Oh!” She squealed, her smile wide. “I bet she’s going to be adorable! I can’t wait to see it!”

“Yeah, um, I have to get going though.” He smiled awkwardly. “It was nice seeing you, Sandra.”

“Likewise, Blaine!”

When he got back to the apartment, he put all the groceries away, walked over to the living room, opened up his laptop and checked his email. A couple of emails came from Mrs. Franklin, or Queen Mom, as Blaine liked to call her, about the organization of a school trip, one from his publisher, who seemed slightly annoyed about him not making any progress and one from his dad. He frowned as he opened it and scanned through the message. It turned out to be some kind of mail about how he wished that Blaine had been at that family dinner and how disappointed uncle Marc had been that he hadn’t got to see his favorite nephew. His dad knew perfectly well that Blaine couldn’t leave for Ohio in the middle of the week just for some dinner, but apparently any opportunity to make him feel bad was a golden one. Blaine sighed, answered the emails from Mrs. Franklin and his publisher and closed his laptop again.Greater problems were at hand; the problem of the Halloween costume, for example. He knew that he still had some leftover fabric from that one time Ginny had been Little Red Riding Hood. Karen’s mom had made the cape and she’d given him back the fabric she didn’t use, because ‘you never know when it might come in handy’. Right now, that’d be.

He found the red piece of fabric hidden in a box on top of one of the bookshelves they had. It wasn’t very much and he knew that if he messed it up, he’d have nothing to work with and he’d have to go look for a place to buy fabric. Blaine had never in his life felt the need to buy fabric and he wouldn’t even know where to find a store like that, so he just prayed to every deity he could think of that whatever he was about to produce was enough for his daughter. He found an old sewing machine hidden away in a closet and blew the dust off the top. Just because he couldn’t sew, didn’t mean he wasn’t prepared. Always be prepared, it was lesson number one. He brought the fabric and the machine to the living room table and made himself a pot of coffee. He sighed deeply before sitting down and starting to work. He worked all afternoon to try and put something together with the fabric he had. He knew it wasn’t going to be great, because sadly he didn’t get magical sewing skills since the last time he tried to fix a hole in his socks, but by the time he had to pick Ginny up from school, he’d made something that he thought was relatively decent. It at least slightly resembled a dress and he still needed to add details, like wings, dots, and antennae and well – pretty much everything. But the base was covered. He totally got this.

“You’re not very good at sewing, daddy.” Ginny was standing in front of her mirror wearing the red thing that was supposed to be the beginning of her costume. She had her hands on her hips and she had a judging look on her face that Tyra Banks would be proud of. She turned around, looking at the back of it, but from what Blaine could gather from her face, that wasn’t any better. “I’m not sure if this is going to work.” She finally said thoughtfully and Blaine laughed at her strangely polite tone.

“I think you might be right, Gin.” He chuckled. “Actually, I’m pretty sure your daddy shouldn’t go into costume design.” She shook her head violently and Blaine smiled.

“Why don’t you ask Karen’s mom again?” She asked. “She could make something.”

“Ginny, I can’t keep asking other people’s moms all the time. And besides, she’s probably busy making Karen’s costume. You did come up with this pretty late, you know. But we could still buy something at that party store we saw.” He suggested.

“No.” She crossed her arms. “I wanna be a ladybug.”

“I-“ Blaine sighed. “Okay, fine. We’ll figure something out.”
Blaine just really hoped his fairy godmother would show up soon.