As he had promised her, Sunny had felt perfectly fine come Wednesday morning, running around and chattering as if she had been given extra energy to make up for the time she had been ill. Brittany, on the other hand, had started throwing up Tuesday afternoon, right after returning from the grocery store with Sunny's precious Sprite, and was pale even now, on Friday night, and the thought of any food besides saltines and 'sweet water' made her turn positively green.

Kurt supposed he should have been thankful that he hadn't caught whatever bug his girls had gotten, but he was a little too stressed about taking care of them to be so. He had put Brittany on immediate quarantine the whole week, and so had been rushing back to the dorm between all his classes to check on both her and Sunny, who before the first day was out, had grown decidedly upset at not being able to play with Mommy. His only respite came on Friday morning when his friend Noah knocked on his door and declared he was skipping classes and starting the weekend early, and would Kurt care to join him?

Kurt had declined the invitation but had somehow managed to wrangle the truant into watching after the girls so he could focus on his classes without worry. Noah had sent him several texts throughout the day, as many asking where something was as complaining about what a drag babysitting on a Friday, even during daylight hours, was. Kurt knew it was all just talk, though. When he walked through the door after his last class of the day had ended at one, he was greeted with a loud, heated, back and forth debate about the virtues of the unicorn versus the pegasus that Noah was having with Brittany as he sat outside her door while Sunny painted his nails a vivid, sparkly blue.

"One word and you're dead, Hummel," he said before launching into a long rejoinder on how flying was way cooler than anything a unicorn could do, and it was all Kurt could do not to laugh.

That had been hours ago, though, and Kurt couldn't find it in him to laugh when he was washing out Brittany's sheets for the third time that week. He didn't understand why her sickness was lingering so long. Sunny was right as rain in twenty-four hours. But Brittany? He shook his head and turned up the volume on his iPod as he switched the sheets from the washer to the drier.

"So it's times like these I wonder how I take it—"

If someone had told him back in high school that he'd be playing homemaker while still in college, he would have called them crazy. He was Kurt Hummel, fashionista extraordinaire, and the bright lights of New York City were calling him away. Even after Sunny, that was still his destination. Except when he realized that Brittany's parents had no plans to pay for any of her schooling, or any other monetary needs she might have, and he was stuck between a school in Oklahoma and one in Montana, both of which were 'legacy' schools for Brittany, her parents having attended each, which meant that she would be able to pay in-state tuition. And then the Montana school was the only one that had enough sympathy for their situation to give her a scholarship as well, plus a cheerleading position, which was key. Getting scholarships for himself wasn't such an issue; Kurt was just glad they had accepted his credits from the community college he had attended while Brittany finished her high school degree.

"For just another day...For another stolen hour."

The words reverberated throughout his being, and Kurt sighed. If he was being realistic, he had to admit he had it better than the characters he was singing of. But the funny thing about musicals like Next to Normal was that their problems only lasted the three hours it took, give or take, to perform the show. After the curtain went down, the actors could go back to their daily lives without a care. There was no final curtain for Kurt and his girls. He was stuck, for better or for worse. And apart from the time he did his laundry, or when putting Sunny to bed, he couldn't even spare the time to sing about it.

Kurt wiped angrily at a tear that had somehow made its way down his cheek.

"It only hurts when I think."

He knew he was being a bit ridiculous. It was almost Thanksgiving, and he always got a bit melancholy towards the holidays. He knew this was in large part due to his mother; she had loved celebrating the holidays, decorating the house, cooking the mountains of food such occasions required, and when she had passed away the fall of his eighth year, Kurt hadn't been able to reconcile his love of holidays with his love of her, and so they were always a bit of a bittersweet time. Things had gotten better as he got older, but there was still a tug of pain in his heart.

Add all that into the fact that he was exhausted and there was no one he could really talk to and he was sick and god-damned tired of playing the responsible one.

"And I think the house is spinning," he finished the song brokenly, and then jumped as a voice intruded.

"Are laundry-room concerts your thing, or am I just the lucky fellow who gets the free VIP tickets?"