“We’re going to a real costume maker?” Ginny asked as she put the plates on the table for dinner. “Like, a real one? Does he make costumes for movies and stuff?”

“I don’t know, sweetie.” Blaine carried the big pan of spaghetti over and put it down as Ginny climbed in her chair. “But he’s definitely real and he makes costumes, so I guess that makes him a costume maker.”She smiled brightly, holding up her plate, waiting for Blaine to sit down and fill it with spaghetti.

“Is he nice?” She intently watched the little strings of pasta fall onto her plate.

“I think so, yes.” Blaine served himself and watched Ginny attempt to twirl her food around her fork. “I’m sure he won’t poke you with pins on purpose.” Ginny giggled.

“Is he pretty?” Ginny asked casually. Blaine froze, but his daughter seemed too interested in her pasta to have noticed his expression.

“I- I don’t know. I guess. Why do you ask?” He replied, trying to keep his voice calm.

“You always say that it’s very hard to find nice, pretty men.” She shrugged. “I thought that was why you never have a-“ She turned her voice down into a soft, conspiratorial tone “ – boyfriend.” Blaine laughed at that.He never really thought that his daughter had picked up on his lack of dating. Of course, she’d asked him the occasional question about it and he’d always been honest with her. About how daddy likes other men, about how people don’t always accept that.

“But don’t you want to be a husband with someone? Like James’ mom and dad? But dad and dad?” She’d asked one time while watching a wedding show on TV. “Don’t you like anyone? Like, like-like?” And he’d explain to her how he didn’t have much time to find someone special to like-like, because he had to work and take care of her and he didn’t have recess to see a lot of other people and that a lot of the time, if there was someone that he did like-like got a bit scared by her.

“Me?” She’d raised a confused eyebrow at that. “Why would they get scared of me?”

“Cause they can tell that I love you more than anything or anyone in the entire world and they get scared, cause they don’t want that.” He had felt her tiny arms wrap around his waist and her small whisper of “I love you too, daddy” which had made his heart melt.

“Just because someone is pretty and nice doesn’t mean they want to be my boyfriend, Gin.” Blaine smiled. “And it doesn’t mean I want to be their boyfriend, either. That takes a lot more than just being pretty and nice.”

“Well, you’re pretty and nice, too.” Ginny shrugged. “I’m sure you’d get along.” Blaine just shook his head and smiled.

“Just keep eating, sweetie, if you don’t finish in time that movie will start without you.”

---

The next morning was one of the rare Saturdays where Ginny actually woke up before Blaine. She came running into his room and jumped on his bed, screaming into his ear.

“Daddy, wake up!” She bounced next to him. “Wake up, we’re going to the costume maker, wake up!” Blaine grumbled underneath his blankets.

“Gin, calm down.” He mumbled, “It’s too early for this.”

“Daddy, please can we go? Please?” She started tugging on his shoulders now and Blaine finally cracked open an eye.

“How about you go get dressed and make yourself some cereal and then we’ll see if I can get out of bed.” Blaine suggested, yawning, but his daughter wasn’t having it.

“No. I want to go see the costume maker now!”

“Ginny.” Blaine said in a warning tone. He didn’t mind her excitement at all, not really, but there were boundaries. He was still her dad and at the end of the day she had to respect him and learn that screaming isn’t the way to get what you want. Not always, at least. “Go get dressed. I’ll be out in just a minute.”

“But-“ Blaine simply stared at her and eventually she gave up, pouted and slid off the bed, going back to her room to get dressed. Blaine rolled on his back and stared at the ceiling for a while. He felt strangely excited to go to the store today and not in the way Ginny was excited. This was different. Deep down he knew that he was excited to see Kurt, to see if that that spark he’d felt yesterday had been his imagination or if it had been real. And perhaps even more important, he had to know if Kurt had felt that spark too. It might have been the romantic novelist in him talking, because lets be honest, what were the chances of Kurt actually wanting anything to do with him? Kurt was making his daughter a costume, he was paying, and that was all. They were basically complete strangers and whatever Blaine thought he was feeling was probably just a bunch of cropped up frustrations combined with pure insanity.Blaine got up and sighed. He was, yet again, being ridiculous and he should snap out of it before he got too carried away. Before he started dreaming.

Fifteen minutes later Ginny was eating her cereal and Blaine had finally gotten dressed and was trying to find the paper with Kurt Hummel’s number on it. When he found it somewhere in the depths of his bag he grabbed his cellphone and dialed the number. He rocked from one leg to the other as he waited for Kurt to pick up.

“Hello?” He heard after a few rings.

“Hi. Kurt Hummel? This is the crazy costume guy from yesterday.” Blaine ginned as he heard Kurt chuckle on the other side.

“Well hello, crazy costume guy, how may I help you?”

“My dearest daughter got out of bed fairly early today, so I was wondering if you’d be ready to have us over in say, half an hour?”

“It would be my pleasure.” Kurt replied and Blaine heard the smile still in his voice.

“Perfect! See you then!”

“Bye, Blaine.” And Kurt ended the call. Blaine felt a weird jitter when he realized that not only had Kurt remembered his name, but he also had actually called him by his first name. Then he remembered that he was acting like some high school girl with a crush in front of his daughter, which led to a maybe even more shocking realization. Blaine Anderson, writer, father and in the eyes of most people considered a mature adult, had a crush.

---

The car ride back to the store was fun and even though it was still too early for a Saturday, Blaine was about as excited as his daughter and sang along to the radio with her loudly. And by the time one of her favorites came on she actually had to shut him up because ‘she was about to sing a solo’. Blaine watched her fondly as she belted into her invisible microphone and finally parked the car as the song ended.

“Are we here?” Ginny asked, pressing her face to the window. “Where is it? I don’t see anything.”

“Other side, Gin.” Blaine smiled as he got out and walked over to free Ginny from the tyranny of children’s locks. She jumped out and immediately reached for the hand of her father, who took it and led her to the store on the other side of the street. As they walked in, welcomed by the tinkle of the door, Kurt looked up and smiled; he was just finishing up with another costumer, an old lady with some ‘eccentric’ clothing. Blaine gave him a small wave in return and nudged Ginny over to the table where they waited for Kurt to be done. As soon as the woman left the store, Kurt closed the door behind her and walked over to Blaine and Ginny with a wide smile on his face.

“Hello!” He said cheerfully, turning to look at Blaine’s daughter. “You must be Ginny. I’ve heard quite a bit about you. I heard that you want to be a ladybug for Halloween, but your daddy isn’t much of a sewer, am I correct?” Ginny nodded. “I’m Kurt.” Kurt extended his hand to Ginny, who shook it politely.

“Nice to meet you.” She said in her best ‘I just met you but I think we’re going to get along very well’ voice. “Are you a costume maker?”

“Of sorts, yes.” Kurt replied. “I can make costumes anyway.”

“Good.” Ginny stated simply.

“Well, I’ll need to get my measuring tape out and we can start working, okay?”

“Yes!” Kurt looked up at Blaine and smiled.

“This might not be very interesting for you.” He said apologetically “But there’s a really good coffee shop just around the corner, so if you want you can just go there and come back here in half an hour. We should be done by then.”

“That sounds perfect.” Blaine said. “Can I get you anything?”

“A muffin!” Ginny piped up and Blaine chuckled.

“I was asking mister Kurt here, but I guess I can bring you a muffin since you asked so politely.”

“Please!” Blaine shook his head and turned back to Kurt, who was keeping back a giggle himself.

“Um, a Non-Fat Mocha, if it’s not too much trouble.” Kurt smiled. “I’ll pay you back.”

“No, don’t worry about it, it’s on me.” Blaine saw that Kurt was about to protest, but he just raised his hands to stop him. “No discussion. You two have fun, okay? Ginny, behave, I’ll be right back.”

“Bye daddy!”

As Blaine waited in line he was surprised by how comfortable he felt about leaving his daughter with Kurt. He never really liked other people watching her, because they could be axe murderers for all he knew and having his daughter kidnapped was not exactly on the list of things he wanted to happen. There were very few people he trusted with her and he was known to cancel a meeting or two if he couldn’t get one of those to babysit. But apparently Kurt was different. Different to her too, because Blaine didn’t really remember a time that Ginny had voluntarily stayed with someone else. Normally there would’ve been screaming and fake tears, but Blaine had a feeling that this change in attitude might have had something to do with the promise of a proper costume. When he got to the front of the line he ordered one Grande Non-Fat Mocha for Kurt, a Medium Drip for himself and a muffin for Ginny. He wondered if he should bring Kurt some cookies too, but he figured that the muffin would create enough of a mess and he didn’t want to add more crumbs to the chaos and besides, cookies? That was probably kind of overdoing it.

When Blaine walked back into the store a while later, he found his daughter and Kurt giggling together like schoolgirls. Kurt seemed to be sketching and Ginny was ‘making art’ as she liked to call it. They both looked up as he walked towards them and stopped giggling. Kurt looked away again quickly, suddenly very focused on his drawings and Ginny seemed to suppress her laughter.

“Daddy! Guess what!” She smiled widely. “Kurt knows you!”

“Uh, I guess so, yes.” Blaine raised an eyebrow in confusion and he saw Kurt hide his face in his hands. Was he blushing?

“No, not like that!” Ginny said cheerfully. “He knows your books! He said he’s read them at least three times!”

“That was confidential!” Kurt poked her side and she squealed. Then he looked up at Blaine with a soft smile and still a small trace of a blush on his cheeks. “Sorry about that.” Blaine just laughed and handed him the coffee.

“You could’ve just asked if you wanted me to sign your books.” He dared to wink at Kurt and received a small laugh in return “You really didn’t need a costume plot scheme or anything.”

“Costume plot scheme. Your way with words astonishes me.” Kurt smirked and took a sip of his coffee. “No, I really just didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable, but I am sorry. Maybe I should’ve said something instead of letting your daughter rat me out.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Ginny huffed and Blaine ruffled her hair.

“No, you didn’t. How did it go with mister Kurt? Did you have fun? Did you behave?”

“Oh, she was an angel.” Kurt said. “We were done in no time and she even gave me some ideas for the design, so I should have no problems at all.”

“That’s great.” Blaine smiled at him, letting his gaze linger on Kurt’s eyes just long enough to notice that they were slightly grey today, but short enough to not cross any creeper lines. “I can’t wait to see it.”

“Well, it should be ready by next Thursday at the latest, but I’ll try to get it done sooner so that we can make some changes if need be.”

“Sounds perfect. You can just- uh- text me when you’re ready?”

“Sure, yeah.” Kurt smiled and the slightly awkward silence that followed was only interrupted by Ginny, who frowned and started poking Blaine’s side.

“Where’s my muffin?”