In the end, it was an easy decision to make. They talked about moving back to Ohio. Never Lima, but maybe Columbus. They thought about the west coast. Blaine had fallen in love with Seattle during his short stint with the Mariners at the end of his career and Kurt still had pictures of San Francisco covered in fog hanging on the walls of their apartment. They had almost decided on New York. Fast paced and urban, exciting and something new every single day, exactly what Kurt dreamed about when he was a teenager and stuck in the middle of nowhere.


But when Blaine had taken Kurt’s hand from across their dining room table, gripped it tight and said, “what about the Cape?” Kurt didn’t have a single doubt in his mind that that was where they belonged.

//

“Ben!” Kurt calls out, his voice carrying over the wind and the waves. A small boy skids to a stop down by the water, digs his heels in and whips his head back around to see who called his name.

“Papa,” Ben says back, an almost scolding tone to his voice and a small pout on his little lips. He throws his hands out to the water as if to say, ‘you expect me to leave this?’

“Come on buddy, back up here. You know you have to put your sunscreen on,” Blaine says, shaking the small bottle to mix the liquid together. Ben ignores them though, content to splash his hands down in the surf.

Blaine and Kurt share the same ‘he’s your son’ look before Kurt runs down to the water, Ben letting out a surprised squeal when Kurt picks him and throws him over his shoulder.

“Papa! Let go!” Ben laughs, feet kicking wildly in the air. Kurt just holds tightly onto Ben’s middle and walks him back up the beach to Blaine.

“Did you hear something?” Kurt asks innocently, head looking back and forth. ”I thought I heard something.”

“Daddy!” Ben tries Blaine this time, his laughter shaking Kurt’s shoulder. He holds his hands out to Blaine for help, but Blaine just keeps his hands on his hips.

“I don’t hear anything, either,” Blaine says, his son’s high pitched giggles filling his ears. ”But I wonder if anybody is ready to put on some sunscreen.”

“Me, daddy! Me!” Ben shouts, his dark floppy curls falling into his eyes as he tries to wiggle out of Kurt’s grasp. Kurt finally plops him down on his feet, Ben wobbling unsteady for a moment, before Kurt places a kiss on the top of his head.

“Arms out,” Blaine instructs and Ben thrusts his arms out immediately. Blaine rubs the lotion onto Ben’s arms and elbows, the tips of his ears and the freckles that cover his nose. Ben waits patiently, small body buzzing with excitement, his eyes darting between his dads and the water.

Blaine finishes up and Kurt says, “okay, you can go back to the water. Just your feet, though!”

“I promise, papa,” Ben says as he darts back to the water, the bottom of his rolled up jeans instantly getting wet as the waves splash around his feet.

Kurt and Blaine settle down onto their blanket, elbows and feet digging into the sand. They watch their son play down in the cold ocean water, running away when the waves rush in and then tip toeing back. He drops down every once in a while to pick up seashells, the bottom of his too large baseball jersey dipping into the water. He drops the broken ones, looking carefully until he finds a whole one and and calls back to them, “Daddy! Papa! Look! A pretty shell!”

They smile back to him, Kurt cupping his hands over his mouth to shout, “that’s very pretty, Ben.” He smiles proudly at his parents before shoving the seashell into his pocket. He walks a little higher up, where the water doesn’t quite reach but the sand is still wet, and sits down to start building a sand castle. Kurt sighs and leans into Blaine’s shoulder. ”Well those jeans are ruined.”

Blaine just laughs and tucks an arm around Kurt’s waist. ”They’ll be fine. I’ll wash them when we get home. I still have to get those grass stains out of his jersey from earlier when he decided sliding on his stomach across the yard was a good idea.”

“Always feet first,” Kurt mumbles distractedly, too busy watching as his son turns mounds of sand into castles.

They lean together, weight resting on each other, the sun beating down and warming their faces. Kurt let’s his eyes drift shut, completely content, when he hears Ben call out, “Daddy! Papa!” and his eyes snap open.

He runs up to them as fast as his little feet can take him, kicking up sand as he goes. He comes to a stop in front of their blanket, almost toppling over and into Blaine’s lap.

“Woah, buddy. What’s up?” Blaine says as he holds out his hands for Ben to steady himself.

“Look! Look what I found!” Ben says, bouncing up and down. He opens his tiny little fist and shows Kurt and Blaine a small rock, perfectly round and off-white from scraping against the sand.

“That’s a very pretty rock, Ben,” Kurt says, reaching up to wipe a smudge of sunscreen from his eyebrow that Blaine missed. ”Do you want to bring that one home?”

“Papa. No. Not a rock. A baseball,” Ben explains, flattens his palm and puts the rock directly in front of Kurt’s face. It kind of does look a like a baseball, Kurt notices, smaller and with no red stitching.

“Huh, he’s right,” Blaine says, taking the rock from Ben’s hands and rubbing his fingers over it before offering it to Kurt. Kurt takes it, let’s the rock roll around in his hand before his fingers automatically form a fastball grip around it.

“A baseball,” Ben says proudly. He opens his hand and Kurt drops the rock in. Ben smiles before turning around and running off, searching the sand in front of them until he finds a small stick. He tosses the rock up in the air and then swings the stick, connecting with the rock and hitting it a few feet away.

“A born hitter, just like his dad,” Blaine says, bumping his shoulder into Kurt, and Kurt scoffs.

“You know he takes after me. He’s a pitcher if I ever saw one. He loves throwing the ball when we play in the back yard,” Kurt says as he watches Ben dig around the sand for more rocks.

Blaine just hums his agreement and then asks, “do you think Hummel-Anderson would fit on the back of a jersey?”

“I think it’d curve from elbow to elbow,” Kurt jokes and Blaine laughs, places a kiss on Kurt’s cheek. ”You want to call him up? We have to start dinner soon.”

“Ben!” Blaine calls out loudly over the sound of the crashing waves. ”Come on, buddy. It’s almost dinner time.”

Ben drops the stick from his hand and races up to his dads, grabbing onto each one of their hands. The three of them start to make their way way home, through the sand and onto the wooden boardwalk, pausing every other step to pull Ben up by the arms and swing him back and forth.