“You have to talk to her.”

“Why do I have to talk to her?” Blaine asks, tone resembling a whine as he watches his husband prepare dinner.

“Because we decided when we found out we were having a girl that I would handle menstruation and puberty; we would handle sex, religion, and death together; and you would handle everything else. This has nothing to do with menstruation, puberty, sex, religion, or death, so it falls under your purview. Besides …” Kurt opens the door to the refrigerator and grabs a package wrapped in butcher paper “… I’m not in the mood to be the bad guy today.”

“Let me clarify. What I mean is, why do we have to talk to her about it at all? To tell you the truth, I think it’s hilarious.”

Kurt drops the package on the counter with a loud, symbolic slap, then tears into the paper. “Because she says it all the time, no matter where we are. I don’t want people thinking that we let a nine-year-old read those books or watch that show. Someone’s going to call CPS. And if they do, I fully intend on blaming you.”

Blaine’s jaw drops in offense. “Nice.”

“Well, someone has to keep custody of our daughter. I’m just being practical.”

“Sure you are. How did she hear that line anyway?”

“She was looking up Frozen memes on the Internet,” Kurt explains, transferring a large salmon fillet to a cedar plank. “Apparently some blasphemer mashed them together.”

“Wait … I thought you didn’t like Frozen?”

“I wasn’t thrilled with having to listen to Let It Go fifty times a day, but I adore Idina Menzel. Elsa doesn’t deserve this.”

“What do you want me to …?”

“Shhh!” Kurt hisses, waving Blaine quiet. “Here she comes.”

As the conversation drops, slow, deliberate footsteps can be heard coming down the hallway, and both men turn in time to see their daughter appear. She’s a miniature version of her mother Rachel, from her shoulder-length brown hair, to her intelligent eyes, and her frighteningly ambitious expression. Her pink, bedazzled microphone (a present from her Godmother, Mercedes), which she’s never without, clutched in her hand like a scepter, nails the whole image home. Tracy stops in the doorway, her face drawn into a severe mien not quite fitting a typical nine-year-old.

Of course, with Rachel as her mother, and Kurt and Blaine as her fathers, there was never any chance of her being a typical anything.

“Hello, Father. Father.”

“Hello, Tracy.”

“Hey, Bug.”

“May I ask what’s for dinner?”

“Uh …” Kurt’s eyes dart to Blaine’s face when he hears a muffled snort and sees his husband biting his bottom lip so hard, he’s afraid he’ll take a chunk out “… we’re having grilled salmon and brown rice pilaf.”

“I don’t like fish,” she says with a scowl dramatic even by Rachel Berry standards.

“But it’s good for you.”

“I refuse to eat it.”

“Well, then, get ready to go to bed hungry because I’m not making another meal.”

Tracy looks with dark eyes from Kurt, standing his ground firmly with arms crossed, to Blaine, trying to present a unified front while his face turns beet red and his eyes water from holding back a laugh. Locked in a standstill, it’s Kurt and Tracy mostly who stare one another down, waiting for the other to cave. When Tracy’s face changes from disgusted to grim, Kurt knows it’s coming. She stands up straight, squares her shoulders, holds her head high … and Kurt fights the urge to roll his eyes.

“Winter is coming, Father,” she says, nose in the air. “Just you wait.” Then she turns crisply on her heel and marches off towards her bedroom.

As soon as she’s around the corner and out of sight, Blaine bursts out laughing, and Kurt gives in to that stifled eye roll. It’s a phase his father would say. Kurt knows that. They’ve been through several of them so far, but he hates this one the most.

It reminds him of high school, when he and Rachel couldn’t stand one another, constantly at each other’s throats. It took years before they could honestly call each other friends, not to mention best friends, but there was still an incident or two of mild backstabbing along the way. He doesn’t need history repeating itself. Not like this.

“She gets that from her mother, you know,” Kurt laments to his snickering husband.

“I like her style,” Blaine says, dabbing tears from his cheeks. “That will never get old.”

“Speak for yourself, Ned Stark.” Kurt swats his ridiculous husband with a cloth napkin. “Now, go talk to your daughter.”