Kurt flipped through the pages of his latest issue of Vogue, exuding the illusion of calm that being a well-practiced Dom afforded him, but betrayed, unfortunately, by the rapid tapping of his toe on the faux-wood waiting room floor. Blaine peeked over at Kurt – his beautiful lover, his uncharacteristically frazzled Dom – and smiled. He put his hand on Kurt’s knee, massaging gently, which, though comforting, did nothing to stop the tapping of Kurt’s foot.

“It’ll be alright,” Blaine reassured him, leaning in and giving him a peck on the cheek.

Kurt turned the page of his magazine and huffed. “What do you mean? I know it’ll be alright. Everything’s alright. I’m fine. It’s all fine. Everything’s fine. Yup.” The words tumbled from his mouth with each hard consonant snapping on his tongue like firecrackers. He turned the next page without reading the first and sighed again. Blaine raised a brow, but Kurt didn’t see, focused on nothing, his eyes sweeping over the pictures on the page but entirely occupied with the thoughts in his head.

Kurt definitely was not fine.

Blaine shook his head and leaned over toward the young lady sitting on his opposite side. With one hand on Kurt’s knee, Blaine reached out the other and took Eva’s hand in his, watching her fidget uncomfortably in her wheelchair.

“You would think he was having a cast removed,” Blaine whispered in her ear. The little girl giggled, kicking her feet and rocking back and forth, keeping her eyes locked on their hands. She was scared. Blaine could feel it in her grip, saw it in the way she swayed to comfort herself – something she hadn’t really needed to do in a while. “We’re almost there, kiddo. Quick and painless, remember? Are you ready?”

Eva nodded her head, trying to look brave with tears pooling in her eyes, each nod becoming longer as she snapped her head harder.

“Quick and painless,” she repeated, gnawing on her lower lip till it was chapped. “Hunter promised.”

“That’s right,” Blaine said. “So if it isn’t, who do we blame?”

“Hunter!” Eva cheered, laughing in that chaotically cute way that made most people stare, but which Blaine loved. Earning a laugh from Eva had become like winning an Emmy to him. Blaine loved Eva. He loved everything about her – her eclectic fashion sense (today’s outfit, for example, expertly mixed pastel polka dots and neon stripes with floral leggings, but she somehow managed to pull it off), her coloring using only two crayons – Blackest Night and Purple Mountains Majesty, her repetitive singing (usually soundtracks from the Barbie movies that Barbra watched on constant loop and, of course, anything that Blaine performed on Sing), her high-pitched cackle, and all the rest. Too much to name; so much to love.

They were having her cast removed – finally. Blaine found it hard to remember what she looked like without the pink-covered plaster appendage. But this was not the first time they had scheduled it, and they were not at her regular doctor’s office. Actually, they made this appointment, and then had to change it last minute, which didn’t give Kurt adequate time to prepare Eva, and that was usually the recipe for an episode.

A hiccup. They’d hit a hiccup – a change in their schedule - but it didn’t seem to bother Eva, at least not as much as things like alterations to her carefully maintained routine used to. The girl who, once upon a time, would have had a level twelve meltdown over this kind of change, who would have bawled at the top of her lungs and needed constant comforting, was slowly growing, slowly evolving, learning how to work within the confines of her triggers every day. It had started after the move, which Eva had managed with flying colors thanks to the help of her brother and sisters, doting new friends, and Blaine. Her best friend, Blaine. They worked daily to make Eva comfortable with these new surroundings. She learned a lot about her home from trips to (what would be) her school, and to the rec center where Hunter took her to do her therapy. Spending time around people who weren’t her family but who understood her struggle enforced within her a valuable lesson.

It didn’t necessarily matter who she was, what she did, or what difficulties she had, but the fact that she was trying her best every day – that’s all anyone cared about.

And the fact that she knew some people who had lots of money and were on TV didn’t hurt either. Even when she babbled in that way that she did (that had become a lot less like babbling now that Hunter had taught her those funny riddles and songs that gave her words), when she mentioned the name Blaine Anderson (which she did a lot because he was her absolute best friend in the world) people stopped and listened.

Eva discovered that she liked words. Words were good. They got her things that she needed, and whenever she learned a new one, everyone around her cheered like it was Christmas, and her Uncle Kurt made her favorite buckwheat and blueberry waffles – even for dinner. She also liked her words because they helped her express her feelings, which sometimes got so bunched up inside her that they fought to break free, scraping against each other until her brain echoed with them and her head hurt. But now they were more under her control, and they didn’t make her quite so frustrated. The only words she had problems with were the ones that Uncle Kurt and Uncle Dave and Hunter and her best friend Blaine tried to teach her about a man and a woman that she used to know. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but talking about them made her happy and sad all at once. She didn’t really remember them, not the way she remembered her favorite book or show or song. They weren’t tangible things in her mind. She remembered them with her heart. They were caught up in sounds and smells, like lilacs and Ivory soap, and things that they did, like singing and football and playing the piano.

The man looked like her brother, and the woman was beautiful. Together they reminded her of a place she used to call home. But Eva could only think about them for a few minutes at a time before she had to walk away and wrap her arms around herself, which was about the same time that Blaine would decide he wanted to play Crazy Eights, and then they would go sit on the floor in her room and do that for a few hours.

But this was the third time they were having her cast taken off, and they had hit a bump. The first time, Eva didn’t like the saw. It made a loud whirring noise that frightened her. It sounded like the chainsaw that the gardeners used on the dead oak in their back yard. She had watched them cut it down, seen how it ate through the bark of the tree, chewing it up and spitting pieces of it all over the lawn.

If a saw could do that to a massive seven foot oak, what would it do to her leg, which was much, much thinner and smaller?

She saw it coming for her, heard it buzz through her noise dampening headphones, and she panicked. She didn’t want her leg eaten by a saw. She screamed and struggled and fought until the doctor turned the saw off, and Blaine picked her up and carried her away.

A setback, yes, especially considering how long it took to get this appointment, but it turned out to be an unexpected blessing. When the doctor X-rayed Eva’s leg to make sure she didn’t injure herself in the struggle, he found a fingerling fracture that looked about a month old, caused randomly by the original set of the bones in her leg. They needed to leave the cast on a little longer.

Kurt breathed a sigh of relief. All’s well that ended well.

After that, Hunter brought a small cast saw to the house, and bit by bit they got Eva accustomed to it. Every member of the family, including Nick and Jeff, had a fake cast put on and then cut off of them – twice. Even Adam. They showed Eva how the saw cut through plaster and that it wouldn’t hurt her. She was closer to okay, but she wasn’t entirely convinced, and Hunter promised that if she got hurt in any way, he would make it up to her.

They put aside time to talk about the procedure every day. Eva became more at ease with the idea of having her cast removed, and as the days drew close, excited about the prospect of running in the backyard, pushing herself on the swing, and jumping off it while it was still in the air. It would be the most freedom Eva had in a long time. The way she talked, Kurt was sure she’d be back in a cast within a few days.

But the second time they went to the doctor’s office, Eva’s favorite orthopedist was called in to emergency surgery, and Eva wouldn’t allow anyone else to touch her, so they had to reschedule.

It was all par for the course, but when Kurt found out that the next available appointment wasn’t until over a month, he rallied to get Eva sent to a participating provider’s office. Which she was, but the nurse at their regular office warned Kurt that the other office’s policies were a little different in some regards - unnecessarily stringent, in Kurt’s opinion - and that required some creative planning.

“Eva?” the nurse behind the counter – a woman with a bottle-blonde bob and an impressive faux tan, wearing crisp violet scrubs and an expression way too cross for her young years - called out to the room, even though Kurt, Blaine, and Eva were the only ones there. “Eva Hudson?”

“Here,” Blaine answered. The nurse gave Blaine a queer look. “I mean, she’s here. I’m not Eva. This little girl is Eva.” Blaine stood as he rambled and rolled Eva’s wheelchair up to the nurse’s counter, with Kurt following behind.

“And who are you?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m Blaine Anderson,” he answered smoothly and with a cocky smile, which he did when people didn’t recognize him right away. It was most likely part of a knee-jerk reaction from back when he was kind of an asshole. He probably didn’t even realize he did it. Kurt found it hilarious. He was dying to point it out to Blaine, but he didn’t want to make his sub self-conscious.

“He’s a friend of the family,” Kurt clarified.

The nurse shook her head and looked back down at Eva’s chart. “Family only.”

Kurt sighed. He had hoped for the best, but after the other nurse’s warning, he had a feeling this would happen. “But she won’t go anywhere without him.”

“Sorry,” the nurse said with a barely there shrug, handing Kurt a clipboard with paperwork for him to fill out. “Those are the rules.”

Kurt and Blaine exchanged a glance, and Kurt started in on the paperwork.

“You know,” Blaine said, leaning with one arm casually against the counter, “I can’t help but noticing the sign on the door. The one that says no animals allowed unless they’re service animals.”

“That’s right,” the nurse said, looking up at him with a tight grin, as if Blaine hadn’t gotten the memo that the conversation part of their encounter was over for now.

“So, if Eva had a certified service animal or comfort animal, it would be able to go in with her?”

The tight grin became tighter, and the nurse started to look confused. She knew Blaine was trying to get around the rules, she just couldn’t figure out how.

“Of course,” she answered. “A trained service animal would be able to accompany her.”

“Well good,” Blaine said, standing up straight, looking absurdly proud, “because I’m her service animal.”

“What?” she said, any trace of good humor lost in her expression.

“I am a certified comfort person.”

The nurse sighed. Kurt, filling out the paperwork beside his sub, could hear the eye roll in it.

“There’s no such…”

The woman’s voice petered off as Blaine reached into Eva’s backpack hanging from her wheelchair and produced a blue vest. He slipped it on over his Marc Jacobs polo. Kurt kept his eyes glued to the paperwork in his hands. If he looked at Blaine in his blue vest again, he would burst out laughing and ruin Blaine’s argument. Blaine pulled the ends of the vest together. It looked a bit like a Girl Scout vest, covered in brightly colored patches, each one denoting a different training course he had taken, much in the same way dogs and cats and other animals do, that proclaimed him absolutely and without a doubt Eva’s “Service Person”.

And while Blaine beamed with ridiculous pride over his service vest, Kurt handed the nurse – Cyndi, according to the name tag attached to the lanyard hanging around her neck - a note from Hunter. The nursed snatched the square of paper from Kurt’s hand, not too kindly, and unfolded it.

“You know, I don’t mean to be rude, but you rich guys always think that the rules don’t apply to you,” Cyndi snapped.

“Oh, I’m not rich,” Kurt said, not at all concerned by the condescension layered thick in his voice. “He’s the rich one.”

“You know, you’re pretty rich now, too, sweetheart,” Blaine said, blowing Kurt a kiss in the air.

“I know exactly who the both of you are,” the nurse said, “and I’m sorry, but…” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the note in her hands. “Hunter?” she questioned, reading it several times over, scrutinizing every word. “Hunter Clarington? H-he practices here? In Los Angeles?”

“That he does,” Kurt said, flipping through the sheaf of papers burdening the clipboard clip to be sure he filled in every helpfully highlighted space and initialed every page.

“I didn’t…I didn’t know that,” she said, her voice dropping in temper and volume. Kurt handed her the clipboard, but the nurse didn’t take it, too fixated on the note – specifically, on the signature. Kurt gave up and left the clipboard on the counter in front of her. He caught Blaine’s eyes, furrowing his brow, and Blaine shrugged. If Hunter knew this woman, he never brought her up. In fact, regardless of Hunter’s reaction when Kurt first met the man, he was beginning to think that Hunter wasn’t interested in anyone, regardless of gender.

“Yup,” Blaine said, giving Kurt a significant look, “and Eva here is one of his two favorite patients.” Blaine put a hand on Eva’s shoulder to add emphasis to the point. This one. This girl here. The one you’re kind of being a jerk to. That’s right. Hunter’s fave, you bitter, bitter, not nice woman.

“Wh-who’s the other?” she asked, as if the answer might clue her in to what Hunter’s been doing with his life since last they saw each other, whenever that was, and under whatever circumstances. Kurt could only guess, but he had every intention of grilling Hunter later over some Chesapeake Bay crab cakes (which turned out to be his Achilles’ heel, the way Nutella crepes and salted caramel and double fudge cupcakes were Nick’s).

“That would be my other daughter,” Kurt said with a superior grin. “Barbra.”

Blaine leaned over the counter and winked at the woman.

“Kind of makes you want to rethink this whole family only thing, doesn’t it?” he said, and Kurt was shocked by how conniving his sub made it sound. It actually struck Kurt as kind of hot. “This way we might be willing to put in a good word for you.”

“Um…” The woman sat with her mouth open, the note crumpling in her hands, unsure of what she should do, when from the office door behind her a face peeked out – an older man with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing dark rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, and a smile that crinkled his face all the way up to his sky blue eyes.

“Is there an Eva out here? Eva Hudson?” he asked, his eyes quickly finding the girl in the wheelchair. Eva leaned in to Blaine’s arm, but she didn’t hide. She had stopped hiding in front of strangers, but she still needed her best friend for support.

“That would be us,” Kurt said, knocking his fist against the counter to bring the nurse out of her stupor. “We’re all coming in. Is that alright?”

“Sure, sure,” the man said, opening the door wide for Blaine to roll Eva through. “The more the merrier.”

The nurse’s mouth clamped shut, but she didn’t object as the three of them strolled by the counter and into the back office.

“Snazzy vest,” the man commented as Blaine walked in with Eva. “Service Person. Very cool. I wish more of our caretakers had those.”

“Why, thank you,” Blaine said, throwing a haughty look over his shoulder at the nurse before Kurt walked in and the door closed behind him.

“I’m Dr. Arnold,” the man said, sticking out his hand for Kurt and Blaine to shake, and then offering it to Eva for her approval. She looked at his hand, then up at him, then grabbed his hand in hers and shook it. He made a face and uttered a playful oof!

“You’ve got one heck of a grip there, little lady,” he said, shaking out his hand when she let it go.

“My name Eva,” she announced primly. “Not little lady.”

“My mistake,” the doctor said, “Eva. So, we’re here to have that cast taken off?”

“Yup,” Kurt said. “Finally.”

The doctor laughed, taking in the faces of the two men who looked more than eager to have their precocious girl free of her wheelchair.

“This way.” He walked through the office, out another door, and into a hallway, and the three of them followed.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Kurt started, “since you don’t seem to be bothered by all of us coming back here, what’s up with your nurse out front?”

The doctor put a hand to his forehead and groaned under his breath. “That’s Cyndi,” he said in the apologetic way people talk about older relatives so set in their beliefs it’s generally understood that their overwhelming and often times inappropriate flaws are simply better off excused. “Did she give you any grief? I’m sorry about that.”

“A bit,” Kurt admitted. “Dr. Arnold, as an advocate, I have to say that I really don’t agree with this policy of ‘family only’ regarding patients like Eva, who tend to rely on specific people, family or no, significantly for comfort.”

“Yeah, you know, I’m kind of a new physician here,” Dr. Arnold explained, “taking over for the doctor that retired, and the ‘family only’ thing was a policy she had. But I’m like you. I personally don’t agree with it, so I don’t endorse. And it’s not written in the office’s charter, so I’ve told Cyndi to ease up, but I’ll make sure that it’s addressed in more detail. We’re here to take care of our patients, not abide by outdated rules.”

“Thank you,” Kurt said, feeling much more at ease. He’s not sure they’ll personally ever have to come back here again, but it was nice to know that another child like Eva wouldn’t be subjected to the same treatment.

The doctor led them through a set of double doors, and Kurt held one open so that Blaine could roll Eva through without the door hitting her legs.

“How did you guys slip past her anyway?” Dr. Arnold patted a long, white table, and Blaine pulled Eva’s wheelchair up next to it. Eva wrapped her thin arms around Blaine’s neck and he lifted her out. He set her down gently, talking softly in her ear, and she smiled, threading her fingers in his curls and humming in response. All the while, Kurt watched the two of them, so close to one another, so happy in each other’s company. Their friendship seemed so effortless, so natural, right from the start.

Kurt and Blaine might consider each other soulmates, but in a way, so were they.

Kurt really hoped with all his heart that Finn and Rachel could see them, too.

“What do you mean?” Kurt asked offhandedly, vaguely remembering that the doctor had asked him a question.

“Well, that’s the first time she didn’t complain when I’ve let non-family members back here, so I’m just curious what you guys said to keep her quiet.”

“Hunter Clarington,” Kurt answered, tearing his eyes away from Blaine and Eva and jumping back into the flow of conversation. “One of my daughter’s therapists. He wrote a note explaining that Eva doesn’t go anywhere without Blaine, but…I don’t know. She seemed to know him, maybe?”

Dr. Arnold chuckled as he started examining the cast on Eva’s leg. Kurt saw Eva tense, her arms wound tightly around Blaine’s neck. Blaine smiled, stooped over uncomfortably to keep himself in her grasp, cooing to her as she steadily wrung his neck.

“Ah…The Hunter Clarington,” Dr. Arnold said with a profound nod and a curious grin. “So the mystery man does exist.”

Kurt looked at Blaine with an eyebrow raised and an, “oh yeah, he is so getting grilled” look on his face, and Blaine snorted a laugh.

“Yup,” Blaine said. “He’s been a friend of mine for years, but we’ve kind of adopted him as part of our family. Haven’t we, Eva?”

Kurt and Dr. Arnold continued the conversation, their voices fading into the background, because Eva’s sole focus became Blaine and the word he just said.

“Family?” Eva mumbled around the thumb she had stuck in her mouth for comfort. “Blaine and Eva are family?”

Blaine brushed the hair away from Eva’s eyes, running his fingers carefully through a few sausage curls.

“You will always be my family, Eva,” Blaine said, placing a kiss on the girl’s forehead, and another in the silky mass of curls on the crown of her head. “But there’s something I would like to do to make it official,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Would you like to help me?”

Before Eva could answer, the doctor interrupted.

“Okay,” Dr. Arnold said, smiling reassuringly at Eva, “I’m going to get started. You’re going to hear a lot of buzzing, and there may be some tickling, but I promise you’re going to be okay.”

“Okay?” Blaine reiterated, and Eva nodded.

“Okay,” she said, beaming up at Blaine as if the doctor didn’t even exist, as if no one else in the room existed.

“Here,” Blaine said, handing her the black noise cancelling headset from out of her backpack, the ones Uncle Kurt let her put her Hello Kitty stickers on. Eva fumbled with the oversized headset in her hands and quickly slipped it over her ears. Her eyes glowed up at Blaine and she giggled, her gaze only on him. And as long as she looked at him and thought of that word family, as long as she had this concept bouncing around her head with this image of Blaine to add to it, the noise from the cast saw didn’t bother her much at all.

***

Eva came away from her trip to the doctors with a sugar-free lollipop, an Eric Carle coloring book, and a brand new leg. That’s how she saw it. The skin under the cast was lighter in color than her other leg, and it looked a little thinner. Blaine told her that she needed to eat a ton of buckwheat and blueberry waffles, drink as much water as she could, and run around on it to get it all nice and plump. She liked that plan. She liked it a lot, and couldn’t wait to get home and set it in motion.

Sitting in the back seat of Kurt’s car, Blaine held Eva close and filled her in on his secret plan, detailing how she could help. It was dubbed their ‘Secret Squirrel Mission’, and her participation in it came with a brand new sketch pad and charcoal pencils, specially made for ‘Secret Squirrel’ work. From that day on, Eva carried the sketch pad everywhere, with two of the pencils wedged into the binding, and was very protective of them. This mission of Blaine’s was of the utmost importance to her, and she couldn’t risk anyone finding out. Whenever she carried her ‘Secret Squirrel’ tools through rooms of people, she tiptoed so as not to draw attention to herself, and covered her sketch pad rather conspicuously with her body so that Kurt realized immediately that Eva was keeping a secret.

Kurt didn’t like secrets. They usually never led to anything good. And in the case of the children, secrets (for the time being) were forbidden in their house. Kurt knew there were times when the kids needed their privacy, when they needed to have lives he knew little or nothing about, but the look on Eva’s face as she snuck through the living room had him concerned. Her attention seemed to be completely taken by something, and Kurt suspected it revolved around that pad she hadn’t put down for over a week. A lot had happened for her in that week since her cast was removed. Kurt couldn’t pinpoint any one thing that would be more important to her than another.

She was close to the entrance to her room, nearly at the shut door, when Kurt decided there was no time like the present to put an end to this mystery.

“Eva, sweetie,” Kurt said, putting down his newspaper and getting up from the couch. “Can I talk to you a second?”

Eva looked up at Kurt with an adorable but seemingly frightened, wide-eyed expression, and his heart sank. It must be worse than he thought. She thinks she’s going to get in trouble.

“Maybe…” she said, drawing the word out as she tried to think of an objection, a way to get away, or how to maybe hide her sketch pad first so that it didn’t get into the wrong hands.

“You’re not in any trouble,” Kurt prefaced, trying to soothe the skittish girl’s fears, but it seemed to have no effect, no change in her demeanor. “I’m just curious what’s in that sketch pad you keep carrying around.”

Kurt paused, giving Eva a chance to respond, which she did, in the form of a heavy swallow and a step back towards the wall.

“Stuff…” she said, her mind searching for a better response to Kurt’s questions. She knew there’d only be more of them. Adults never seem satisfied with short, to-the-point answers.

“Well, is it stuff that you’d be willing to show me?” Kurt asked carefully, trying not to frighten her too much more than she already looked. He didn’t want to frighten her at all. But she had started going to a full-day recreational program a few days a week, something that she had never done before, and if something was going on – if someone was bullying her, or if the kids were teasing her, or if one of the teachers was being mean to her - then Kurt needed to know right away. He needed to run down there and take care of it.

He needed to protect his Eva.

Eva didn’t vocalize an answer, shaking her head furiously back and forth until her curls broke free of the new sparkly hair clips Blaine bought her and bounced in her face.

“Eva,” Kurt said. He reached out a hand to touch her arm, but then pulled it away. He could tell by her rigid shoulders, and by the way she bit her lip and scrunched up her face, that this was not a good time for touching. “We talked about keeping secrets before. Do you remember that?”

Eva stopped shaking her head and nodded once.

“Remember what we talked about after the last secret you kept?”

Eva nodded again. Her last secret had to do with her dislike of lima beans. That, however, wasn’t the secret. The secret was that she was afraid of what Kurt would say if he found out she wasn’t eating them, so she hid them in her pockets and, after dinner, stowed them in the toy chest in her room, beneath her board books and a broken Etch-A-Sketch. No one would have known they were under there except the air conditioning in her room broke for a couple of days, and while she was bunking with Elphaba, Eva’s room started to stink something fierce. Kurt had to tear apart the room to hunt down the source of the foul stench. By the reek, he was certain something had holed up in her room and died.

By the time Kurt found the concealed beans, it was about as bad. They had become a science project – a horrid grey-green white-speckled mess sprouting tiny protrusions that looked suspiciously like mushrooms. Finn took a picture and posted it on his Facebook page. He said it was the coolest thing his little sister had ever done.

Eva took that as a compliment.

But her sketch pad had nothing to do with nasty old lima beans. Her sketch pad was super important, and Kurt wasn’t allowed to see it, or he’d know about the surprise.

Blaine’s surprise.

Eva held the pad tighter until it started to bend in the middle.

“Eva…” Kurt said, and hearing her name spoken sternly, she looked as though she might cry. Kurt didn’t want to make her cry. He hated when Eva cried. But secrets for a girl with limited verbal skills could be dangerous. What if there was something in that book that Kurt needed to know? Or was he just blowing things out of proportion? God, if there was only a book that had all the answers!

He scoffed at his own sense of irony.

“Eva,” Kurt said in a slightly more commanding voice, “I need to know…”

“So how long do you think you guys are going to be gone?” Dave asked in a low voice, walking close beside Blaine, knowing Kurt had to be in the living room somewhere.

“Probably no more than a few days. A week, tops,” Blaine answered. “Will that be alright? Nick and Jeff offered to babysit whenever you need…”

The two men walked in and first thing, Blaine spotted Kurt talking with Eva. He didn’t think anything of it until he heard his lover use that Dom voice that made his spine tingle, and saw Eva with her arms wrapped around her torso, a familiar looking sketch pad clutched to her chest. He put two and two together and knew he had to intervene.

“Hold up,” he said, putting a hand up for Dave to pause their conversation and rushed over. “Wait!” he called out, leaping over the sofa to get to the two before it was too late. “Wait, wait, wait, wait.” Blaine stepped between the mildly distressed girl and her concerned uncle. “What’s going on here?”

Kurt jerked back at Blaine’s demanding tone. Normally he loved it, the take charge side of Blaine, but worry had Kurt pinned down so hard he couldn’t appreciate it.

“Well,” he said, addressing Blaine with a shrewd eye on Eva, “I noticed Eva with this sketch pad she seems exceptionally protective of, and considering our last conversation regarding secrets, I think that I should take a look…”

“No!” Blaine cut in, eyes wide, his anxious expression a match for Eva’s. “No, it’s okay. I know what this is about, and there are no secrets in that sketch pad that you need to see.”

Kurt raised an eyebrow, both shooting up when he heard Dave behind him, stifling a laugh. Whatever this was, Kurt realized, everyone seemed to be in on it.

“Really?” Kurt said - a sarcastic comment, not a question.

“Yes, really,” Blaine replied, smiling too brightly, showing too many teeth, knowing he was in for it. “In fact, she’s working for me. Doing a little project. And it is a secret, but between me and her, and I can tell you that it’s all good. Nothing to worry about.”

Kurt crossed his arms, finding the humor in a grown man employing the aid of a little girl to carry out his covert plans.

“All good?” Kurt asked. “Are you sure?”

“Yup. I’m sure.” Blaine peeked back at Eva and winked, and Eva smiled, but she ducked out of view when she saw her uncle walking toward them. Kurt stepped forward into Blaine’s space, running a single finger beneath his collar in a sensual, though subtly dangerous way, and Blaine made a shooing motion behind him with his hands.

“Go, Eva,” he whispered dramatically, motioning the giggling girl to run away. “Hurry! While you still can!”

Eva scuttled along the wall with the bent sketch pad pressed to her chest, laughing all the way to her room, and shut the door. Kurt heard the sound of another door shutting, faintly, and he knew that Dave had gone to his room and left them alone.

“You better be right about this, Anderson,” Kurt whispered, gathering Blaine’s collar tight in one hand, twisting it a bit at the hollow of his neck.

“Trust me,” Blaine said, eyes lowering in submission, luring his black swan out from hiding. Kurt tightened his grip, eager to take the bait, but then Kurt’s smile turned sad and his hold on Blaine’s collar loosened.

“I do,” he said. “I just…” He sighed. “She’s growing up. She’s her own person. Soon, she won’t need me anymore.” He didn’t want to mention that these milestones with the kids, as wonderful as they were, tore Kurt to pieces. The more self-reliant the kids became, the closer they were to leaving him, and it felt like losing Finn and Rachel all over again. Kurt fell forward against Blaine’s body, and Blaine raised his arms up along Kurt’s sides, wrapping them around Kurt’s back to hold him.

Blaine didn’t want to admit it because he’d only been a part of the Hudson-Hummel-Karofsky family for a short while, but he was beginning to see Eva blossoming…and he felt that way, too.

“She’ll always need you, Kurt,” he said, rocking his Dom from side to side, saying what he knew was true and what Kurt needed to hear. “Everyone in this house does.”

“Yeah?” Kurt sniffed, resting his head on Blaine’s shoulder, letting Blaine move him, following where his sub led instead of the other way around.

“Yeah,” Blaine said. “Eva needs you and Finn needs you. Barbra and Elphie, they’re going to need you for a long time still. Dave needs you…”

“Why would Dave need me?” Kurt laughed, amused by the notion of big bear Dave Karofsky needing him – at least, any more. They weren’t struggling, they weren’t scrounging to pay the bills or buy food, they weren’t deciding between replacing the refrigerator or getting the car fixed, all things that Kurt’s calm head always seemed better at negotiating than Dave’s notoriously short fuse. But Dave grew into a man who could handle those things on his own and more. Plus, he was pursuing his dream, and he’d found love. What else could Kurt possibly contribute to Dave’s life?

“Because he loves you, Kurt,” Blaine said. “I know he has Adam, but he still loves you. And when people love you, they need you in their lives. Like me. I need you.” Blaine took Kurt’s hand in his – his left hand – weaving their fingers together and holding on, like this was the point that connected them, that no one could pull apart. “In fact, I need you now…if you don’t mind...”

Blaine asked, and Kurt answered. Blaine led, and Kurt followed. As Kurt and Blaine retreated to their room, to play hide and seek (as Barbra had explained to Eva once when Eva mentioned that Kurt and Blaine slept a lot), Eva hid under the pale blue Laura Ashley comforter on her bed. She held tight to the pad Blaine gave her, the pad of sketches she worked so hard on and never let out of her sight, because inside its covers, on its pages, it held the future of her happy family.