FIC: Surprise Party
Title: Surprise Party
Pair: Klaine
Includes: mpreg
Word Count: ~4280
Summary: AU post S2 Sexy. Kurt’s friends decide to give him a surprise baby shower! The only problem is, he has no idea that he’s pregnant. That goes over as well as one might imagine.
For gleempreg's Weekly Challenge.
Kurt huffed his way up the stairs, feeling out of breath for the third time that day. If nothing else, he needed to start going to the gym again. He’d stopped sometime back in July when he’d been unable to shake that flu, and now hardly any of his clothes fit right, except the pair of hiphugger jeans he was wearing, and his stamina had dropped dramatically.
He set his messenger bag down in the hallway and dug into his pocket looking for his keys.
“Where’s my brain?” he muttered, patting his front pockets, then the back ones. He sincerely hoped he hadn’t left the keys back on campus, because then... God, he just couldn’t take the bus all the way back again. He was so, so tired. Not to mention it was November and so cold today, and he’d forgotten his jacket today, too, so he was stuck with the shirt and cardigan he had on.
Those were not tears stinging his eyes.
Crouching down to his bag, he started to sift through it with high hopes, and that was when he heard something inside his apartment. His heart jerked inside him. It was too early for his roommate to be home... and when he thought about it, she was probably at her girlfriend’s place tonight anyway. His hand touched cold metal, and he pulled his keys out of the back and looked up.
It definitely sounded as though someone was inside, but he had no idea why anyone would want to rob his place. They didn’t even have a TV, and he kept his laptop with him on class days.
A wave of nausea washed over him as he tried to decide what to do. Then at the sound of voices, he leaned an ear to the door and listened.
“-should be home by now.”
“You think he’s okay? He looked really tired the last time I saw him.”
Kurt blinked. Was that Blaine’s voice? He hadn’t expected to see Blaine again for another five months. He cringed at the awkwardness of their last meeting two weeks ago. Blaine had kept starting at him and then ducking his head down as though embarrassed. Have a little friend-sex with someone and they got weird on you. And started avoiding you.
“He’s always been kind of private,” Tina said. “But I think he’d say something if he was having a hard time with it.”
“Would he?” Mercedes asked. “I remember back in school... Not so much with the asking for help.”
Mercedes? What was she doing in New York? Her program at John Hopkins usually kept her pretty busy.
Kurt put the key in the door and all the chattering stopped. It was time to see what his friends were up to. He hitched his heavy bag back onto his shoulder and opened the door to a darkened apartment. He waited a moment, then realized that they were hiding.
Good Gaga. How cliche. Well, at least it wasn’t an intervention. He stepped inside, determining to kill Zoe, since his roommate was the only other person with a key, and turned on the light. He refused to jump at the yells of “surprise,” but his eyes did widen considerably at the brightly colored, enormous banner hanging across his not-so-enormous living room which read,
“CONGRADULASHUNS!!”
“Um. Hi.” His eyes scanned over the gaudy decorations-- pink and yellow balloons, crepe paper everywhere of various other random pastels. God, he was going to have to clean all of this hot mess up, and his back was already hurting from lugging around his books and computer all day. There was a pile of gifts on the coffee table. “It’s not my birthday? And you spelled congratulations wrong.”
Tina giggled and came up to hug him tightly. Brittany was clapping her hands and bouncing in place excitedly. Finn took his bag from him and set it aside before he closed the door.
“Man, you shouldn’t be carrying this,” he said, draping his arm around Kurt’s shoulders. “I tried to get Burt here, but he couldn’t make it. I promised him I’d get you to come down and see him, though.”
“Hey.” Blaine waved and smiled at him, a blush blooming on his cheeks.
“Hi. Again.” The looks on everyone’s faces were starting to weird him out. There was expectation there that he didn’t understand. “I love you all dearly, but what are you all doing here? What am I being “congradulashuned” on?”
“The baby, of course!” Rachel said cheerfully. “I hope it’s a girl. I have so many things in pink that I can pass onto you. My dads kept everything from when I was a baby.”
“Man, you need the gift I got you,” Santana said as she raked her eyes up and down his body. “Like, a month ago.”
Kurt blinked a few times and tilted his head to the side. His brain wasn’t catching up to what Rachel and Santana were saying... not that this was a new phenomenon, but he’d felt a little fuzzy-headed lately anyway.
“We have a whole host of games ready-” Rachel continued excitedly.
“Maybe we should just let him sit down first,” Blaine suggested in a diplomatic, but surprisingly firm, tone. He came up to Kurt and touched his shoulder. “You okay? You look a little overwhelmed.”
“Confused would be the operative word,” Kurt replied tersely. He shrugged Finn’s arm off of him and glanced around again. For some reason there were baby dolls on his couch, a box of diapers, and some yarn and a measuring tape. Kurt walked over to the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room, now cluttered with gifts and covered dishes. On the counter in the kitchen, he could see a big cake, and the plates.... They had a design sectioned into colored quarters: a rattle, a bottle, a safety pin, and a little buggy. In the middle it read “baby” in multicolored letters.
Kurt felt his ears and neck growing redder and redder. He crossed his arms over himself and turned to glare at them.
“What is wrong with you?!” he exploded before he could properly even form something more scathing.
“Hello, mood swings!” Santana teased.
“Whoa, dude!” Finn held his hands up. “Don’t be mad. Just um... Maybe you should sit down.”
“I went to a lot of trouble to get everyone together!” Rachel protested. “You could at least be gratefu-”
“Grateful?” Kurt walked right up to her and poked her shoulder roughly. “I am not pregnant, you bitch!”
“You obviously are!” Santana laughed.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped.
Santana looked pointedly down at his middle, where his cardigan buttons were the most strained. The others turned to one another quietly, as though they didn’t know what to say, and Rachel opened her mouth and looked down, then to Finn, as though he might save her from Kurt’s temper.
“Look, guys, why don’t we all just sit down together and catch... up?” Blaine began to suggest...
right as Kurt was storming out of the room.
He slammed the door to his bedroom behind him and let himself drop back on the bed. He could hear them all begin talking at once right through the walls and he closed his eyes and considered putting a pillow over his head.
After a few moments of:
“Maybe a surprise was a bad idea...”
“I’m worried about him.”
“Are you sure that he’s-”
“He definitely is. Who’s he fooling? Did you see that baby bump?”
“Don’t be so mean!”
“I thought I was pregnant once, but I’d just put on my little sister’s shirt.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Burn in hell!” he shouted.
The door cracked open and Finn poked his head in. Kurt scowled at him, wiping a few traitorous tears from his cheeks, and Finn shut the door behind him.
“In our defense... Zoe said you were. She said you were hiding it.”
“And that made you think that, obviously, a surprise baby shower was the way to go.”
“It was Rachel’s idea.”
“I gathered that from the way she’s defending it and her games.” Kurt closed his eyes and scratched his hair with a sigh. “Just because I’ve put on a few pounds doesn’t mean I’m pregnant. I haven’t even been with someone since...”
When he opened his eyes, he saw Finn staring at him pensively.
“Since when?”
“I don’t know,” Kurt lied. He knew it was June. During Pride. With Blaine. “A while.”
Finn sat on the edge of the bed and looked at his hands. “We didn’t mean to upset you. Trust me, that’s the last thing we want.” “I guess I shouldn’t have yelled. God, this is so humiliating.”
“Maybe you should’ve yelled louder.” Finn chuckled. “That’s assuming a lot, just having a shower without talking to the person. Even if it’s true- was true... You look so tired, and you hadn’t planned on having company to deal with...”
Kurt rubbed his forehead and sighed.
“Do you have a headache?”
“I have a lot of ache.” Kurt rolled his eyes and looked away.
Finn’s hand touched his shoulder. “Maybe you should eat something. Have you gotten headaches before?”
Kurt shrugged. “Sometimes.”
He started to sit up, then placed his palms behind him on the bed to push himself into position. Finn’s eyes never left him.
“We have food out there.”
“I’m not going out there. I’m sorry you spent so much time on that, but I just...” Kurt raised his hands.
Finn patted his leg and rose for the door. Kurt watched him as he disappeared, and, a moment later, the other room grew quiet. He could hardly make out anything.
“...doesn’t know...” Finn said.
“How...”
“...can we do?”
“He shouldn’t have called me a bitch!” Rachel said.
She was shushed.
Kurt sighed and leaned over on his thighs. He could be taking a nap right now. He reminded himself how much he loved his friends, even when they did things like this.
There was another knock on the door, and Kurt looked up cautiously. “Finn?”
“No.” Blaine’s voice was timid.
Kurt sort of wanted to tell him to go away, but it was hard to deny Blaine much of anything. “Come in.”
Blaine’s curls caught Kurt’s eye, and he smiled softly. It was good to see Blaine. They’d been good friends in school, when Kurt had to transfer to Dalton, and had remained so through Blaine’s senior year. After he left, Kurt had transferred back to McKinley, partially due to financial reasons and partially due to the fact that his bullies had graduated. Senior year wasn’t pleasant, but it was less restrictive, at least. Kurt had really missed singing with his friends. He and Blaine hadn’t met up again until college, and then until May, had sporadically met up for coffee or to go see theatre shows or peek in on whatever clubs would let Kurt in with an “under 21” stamp on his hand.
Kurt had always sort of held a candle for Blaine, even if Blaine had always, or so Kurt surmised, seen him as friend material only.
“Sorry for all that,” Blaine managed after a moment. He stood apart from Kurt, all awkward and anxious and shifting his weight from side to side, like he had been the last time Kurt had run into him.
It was sort of painful to watch. Kurt patted the spot next to him on the bed. Blaine hesitated, then sat and looked over at Kurt with big, gentle eyes.
“What? What is it? Why do you keep looking at me like that?” Kurt asked, his own voice betraying him with its breathless vulnerability.
Blaine took his hand in his own and rubbed it. “I don’t think we ever talked about...”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’m not mad,” Kurt promised. To be mad, one would have to have expectations broken, and he’d stopped having expectations regarding Blaine a long time ago. It was just the only way to preserve what they had together.
“I think we need to. I think...” Blaine squeezed his hand. “I know you don’t want to think about it.”
“It’s not that it wasn’t... great,” Kurt assured him. “I just... You...”
“I made it weird.”
“It doesn’t have to be. You’re not obligated to love me, Blaine. We’re friends. Nothing’s changed.”
“Stop!” Blaine sighed and grabbed the back of Kurt’s neck. “Stop trying to let me off the hook! Something has changed, and I don’t want to leave you alone to deal with it. I’m pretty sure I can’t, ethically, but I also want...”
“You want?” Kurt whispered. His eyes were fixed on Blaine’s eyes, suddenly so intense.
Blaine voiced no reply, but instead kissed Kurt firmly. Kurt felt lightheaded as he kissed Blaine back, hungry, almost starving for Blaine’s taste. When their lips parted, Kurt let out a shaky breath, and Blaine touched their foreheads together.
“Don’t get mad,” he pleaded.
Kurt raised his brows.
“You’re pregnant, Kurt.”
Kurt frowned and started to pull away, but Blaine held him tightly, kissed him again, then hugged him around the shoulders.
“You are pregnant. Please believe me. Just look, okay?”
“Stop...” Kurt protested weakly as Blaine unbuttoned the cardigan and pulled up his shirt, revealing his rounded tummy. He blushed and looked away.
“Are you just wearing your hiphuggers now? They still fit, don’t they? And they’re the only thing... Isn’t it weird that you aren’t gaining anywhere else?”
“I’m not...” Kurt looked down at Blaine’s fingers moving gently over the curve his stomach.
“You tired, too,” Blaine said. “Aren’t you? More tired than before? Please let me help!”
“I work and go to school. Anyone would be tired...” Kurt swallowed hard and touched Blaine’s hand, making it stop. He tried to breathe, but found his airway tight and his head spinning. He stood from the bed and took a few steps backward.
Then he was looking at the ceiling, blinking in confusion, and surrounded by his friends. It took him a moment to realize he was in Blaine’s arms on the floor.
“He’s awake,” Tina said. She crouched by him and drew the hair out of his eyes. “Hey, sleepy. I told ‘em we should’ve done this on the weekend.”
“Oh, gosh.” Brittany leaned over him. She whispered in awe, “His tummy’s so cute!”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you this way...” Blaine trailed off, then kissed Kurt’s forehead.
Pregnant.
Kurt covered his eyes with one hand, then curled the other arm around his middle to hide it from everyone’s view.
“Is he okay?” Finn asked.
“He stopped breathing, then fainted,” Blaine replied. “No.”
“Let’s get ‘im back on the bed,” Finn suggested. His brother slipped his arms under him and picked him up easily, with Blaine hovering close by. He then laid Kurt on the bed and gave him a lopsided smile. “That’s got to be more comfortable.”
But there was nothing comfortable about the way his friends were all looking at him. He wanted to tell them all to get out, but no words would make their way to his throat.
“Surprise!” he joked weakly, when he was finally able to speak.
“Breathe, Kurt, okay?” Blaine petted his head and looked down on him worriedly.
“I’m trying.” He drew in a breath with some effort.
“We honestly didn’t know you didn’t know,” Rachel said. “Still, I think we could still play some of the games-”
“Can it,” Mercedes ordered. “He’s awake, and he’s okay. Let’s just give him some air. We’ll be out there if you need us, okay, hon? And if you want us to go, just send Blaine with the message and we’ll clear out.”
She touched his hand and smiled. He gave her a half-hearted smile in return.
Soon, when it was just him and Blaine in the room again, he tentatively moved his hand to the top of his jeans, around the tight band he could barely get closed even if it was just around his hips, then over the curve above the jeans that was preventing him from fitting into the rest of his pants, and a lot of his tops, now.
Blaine kissed his forehead again, and never stopped petting him.
“I didn’t know,” Kurt said. “I didn’t know that I was... I would’ve told you...”
“I wasn’t sure it was mine. I mean, not that you would... It’s just that, I knew you would have told me if it was, and when I saw you... you were...”
Kurt’s hand cupped his belly. “You don’t have to... I mean, it’s not your fault, so...”
“Stop trying to let me off the hook,” Blaine said again, this time gently rubbing his thumb over the crease in Kurt’s brow. “Kurt, after that night... I wanted to be with you. I just didn’t know how to go forward after we’d been friends for so many years, then I realized you were pregnant, and you weren’t telling me, so I thought maybe it wasn’t mine or you didn’t want me...”
“I want you.” Kurt looked up at Blaine with a frown. “I just don’t want to have you if you don’t feel the same way. I’ve wanted you since that first year at Dalton.”
“Yeah?” Blaine’s fingers caressed Kurt’s cheek. “And I want you. Both of you.”
Kurt laughed softly. “Well, that’s the biggest surprise I’ve had today.”
“Is it?” Blaine shifted himself then laid down next to Kurt and rested his cheek on his hand as he watched Kurt’s face.
“You keep looking at me like that.”
“It’s ‘cause I’m in love with you.”
“I don’t think so.” Kurt was about to joke back at him, when he realized what Blaine had just said. Oh. Oh. “I... um.”
He loves me.
“Why did you think it was?”
“Because of the... um...” Kurt’s brow wrinkled.
“Oh. Well. That too. I guess that means I have to stop screwing things up.” Blaine put his hand over Kurt’s on his belly and smiled. “You look so scared. What can I do?”
“I don’t know.” Kurt laughed softly. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Ditto.”
“Well, then we can be scared together.” Kurt sucked in his lower lip. “Right?”
“Right. That’s what I want.” Blaine leaned over and kissed Kurt’s lips again.
Kurt smiled a little dopily, then returned Blaine’s kiss and moved his hand through Blaine’s curls. Oh... Blaine. His Blaine. The one who he always told himself he was ‘just friends’ with, but if Blaine ever changed his mind... he’d be worth the wait.
“You’re trembling. Are you cold?” Blaine got up and looked around the room.
“Not cold.” Kurt pushed himself up, pulling his shirt snuggly back down over his tummy and jeans, and Blaine turned back to him. “How long did you plan to be here? A couple of hours for the party, or...?”
“I can stay however long you need me.” Blaine paused. “Well, I have class in the morning... and work.”
“So do I. But I was just wondering...”
“I’ll stay,” Blaine promised. He came back over to the bed and waited on Kurt to decide what to do. When Kurt started to get up, Blaine grabbed his hand and put his arm around Kurt’s back.
“I’m not made of glass,” Kurt protested.
“No, but you did just faint.”
Kurt waved his hand and let Blaine hover over him as he made his way back out into the hallway. There were his friends, quiet for once and looking worried.
“Hey, boo.” Mercedes smiled as she caught sight of them. “Feeling better?” “A little.” He leaned against Blaine as he eyed the awful decorations again, and Blaine guided him to the couch.
“I’m so glad it really is a baby and not a big lunch,” Brittany said.
“Um. Thank, Britt.”
Rachel moved over to the sofa. “Maybe you’d like to play some games now! We have a guess the size of the belly game. That’s where you all guess how big your belly is by inches and then you measure-”
Kurt frowned and shook his head. “No.”
“Then there’s who can diaper baby the fastest, with the dolls-”
“No.”
“And a pin the sperm on the egg!” Rachel held up a picture of a uterus with a smiling egg inside.
“Never.”
“How about we keep this kind of low key?” Blaine suggested. “Don’t you think this has been enough excitement?”
“I think we should break out the food, personally.” Finn shrugged and started looking at the dishes on the counter.
“That’s what you wanted to do since you got here,” Rachel complained.
“Well, I’m hungry. Maybe I’m pregnant,” Finn joked.
Kurt laughed a little, and Blaine hugged Kurt’s shoulders, then gave his temple a kiss. “I’m all for eating and catching up first.”
After giving Kurt one more kiss, Blaine instructed Kurt to stay, then rose to make up a plate for him. As he waited, he shook his head and looked down on himself once again, baffled as to how it hadn’t occurred to him what was going on with his body. And now... what was going to happen, how much bigger he was going to get, and then there would be rattles and diapers and carriages and an actual living, squirming half-Blaine... His heart started to race again, and he closed his eyes.
“No more swooning, princess.” Santana leaned over the back of the sofa and held a green wrapped box in front of him.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a baby shower,” she said as though he were clearly very slow. “You get swag. Open it.”
Kurt raised a brow then tore off the wrapping and opened the box. Inside was a gray card that read “the maternity gift card” on the right and “motherhood maternity,” “destination maternity,” and “pea in the pod” on the left.
“Every moment of your life is an opportunity for fashion, right?” Santana grinned widely as Kurt looked up at her. “C’mon, smile. We can go with you and help you find some cute stuff that doesn’t cut off your circulation, Captain Tightpants.”
“Thanks. Obviously I did need your gift.” He paused. “Like a month ago.”
“See? Not so bad. And...” Santana lowered her voice. “Is Blaine the babydaddy? I wondered before why he was even here, but he’s been glued to you since he went back there...”
Kurt smiled, realizing that Blaine had shown up to this thing ready to support him no matter what. “Yeah. He is.”
Santana nodded. “So, bonus! Babydaddy’s on board.”
“Definitely.” Kurt nodded as Blaine returned and sat next to him.
“Are you behaving yourself?” Blaine asked Santana.
She narrowed her eyes. “Define behaving.”
Blaine set a plate just full of food onto Kurt’s lap. “I define it by not teasing the already stressed pregnant person about his weight or the baby.”
“Would I do that?”
“I think you already have tonight.”
“These plates really are kind of cute,” Kurt muttered.
“I picked those out!” Brittany squealed, almost knocking over the potato salad in her glee. “That was me!”
“I told them we needed to have a more organized color scheme, but no one listened to me,” Tina complained. “I think we should have gone with silver, white, and blue.”
“But we don’t know what the baby is. You can’t have blue for a girl!” Rachel said.
“Are you kidding me?” Kurt rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to deny any part of the rainbow from my- from my baby.”
He took a bite of Blaine’s pineapple-cashew quinoa stir-fry and looked down quietly. Mercedes sat next to him and rubbed his back. It wasn’t too long before the group cheered up and started to look more like a party, chattering about what was going on that semester, who was dating whom and so on.
In truth, now that Kurt was starting to calm down, and the reality of this was sinking in, he was glad they were all there, and yes, he probably would take the time to go down to visit his father. He needed his friends and family around him to ground him after this big of a surprise.
Pair: Klaine
Includes: mpreg
Word Count: ~4280
Summary: AU post S2 Sexy. Kurt’s friends decide to give him a surprise baby shower! The only problem is, he has no idea that he’s pregnant. That goes over as well as one might imagine.
For gleempreg's Weekly Challenge.
Kurt huffed his way up the stairs, feeling out of breath for the third time that day. If nothing else, he needed to start going to the gym again. He’d stopped sometime back in July when he’d been unable to shake that flu, and now hardly any of his clothes fit right, except the pair of hiphugger jeans he was wearing, and his stamina had dropped dramatically.
He set his messenger bag down in the hallway and dug into his pocket looking for his keys.
“Where’s my brain?” he muttered, patting his front pockets, then the back ones. He sincerely hoped he hadn’t left the keys back on campus, because then... God, he just couldn’t take the bus all the way back again. He was so, so tired. Not to mention it was November and so cold today, and he’d forgotten his jacket today, too, so he was stuck with the shirt and cardigan he had on.
Those were not tears stinging his eyes.
Crouching down to his bag, he started to sift through it with high hopes, and that was when he heard something inside his apartment. His heart jerked inside him. It was too early for his roommate to be home... and when he thought about it, she was probably at her girlfriend’s place tonight anyway. His hand touched cold metal, and he pulled his keys out of the back and looked up.
It definitely sounded as though someone was inside, but he had no idea why anyone would want to rob his place. They didn’t even have a TV, and he kept his laptop with him on class days.
A wave of nausea washed over him as he tried to decide what to do. Then at the sound of voices, he leaned an ear to the door and listened.
“-should be home by now.”
“You think he’s okay? He looked really tired the last time I saw him.”
Kurt blinked. Was that Blaine’s voice? He hadn’t expected to see Blaine again for another five months. He cringed at the awkwardness of their last meeting two weeks ago. Blaine had kept starting at him and then ducking his head down as though embarrassed. Have a little friend-sex with someone and they got weird on you. And started avoiding you.
“He’s always been kind of private,” Tina said. “But I think he’d say something if he was having a hard time with it.”
“Would he?” Mercedes asked. “I remember back in school... Not so much with the asking for help.”
Mercedes? What was she doing in New York? Her program at John Hopkins usually kept her pretty busy.
Kurt put the key in the door and all the chattering stopped. It was time to see what his friends were up to. He hitched his heavy bag back onto his shoulder and opened the door to a darkened apartment. He waited a moment, then realized that they were hiding.
Good Gaga. How cliche. Well, at least it wasn’t an intervention. He stepped inside, determining to kill Zoe, since his roommate was the only other person with a key, and turned on the light. He refused to jump at the yells of “surprise,” but his eyes did widen considerably at the brightly colored, enormous banner hanging across his not-so-enormous living room which read,
“CONGRADULASHUNS!!”
“Um. Hi.” His eyes scanned over the gaudy decorations-- pink and yellow balloons, crepe paper everywhere of various other random pastels. God, he was going to have to clean all of this hot mess up, and his back was already hurting from lugging around his books and computer all day. There was a pile of gifts on the coffee table. “It’s not my birthday? And you spelled congratulations wrong.”
Tina giggled and came up to hug him tightly. Brittany was clapping her hands and bouncing in place excitedly. Finn took his bag from him and set it aside before he closed the door.
“Man, you shouldn’t be carrying this,” he said, draping his arm around Kurt’s shoulders. “I tried to get Burt here, but he couldn’t make it. I promised him I’d get you to come down and see him, though.”
“Hey.” Blaine waved and smiled at him, a blush blooming on his cheeks.
“Hi. Again.” The looks on everyone’s faces were starting to weird him out. There was expectation there that he didn’t understand. “I love you all dearly, but what are you all doing here? What am I being “congradulashuned” on?”
“The baby, of course!” Rachel said cheerfully. “I hope it’s a girl. I have so many things in pink that I can pass onto you. My dads kept everything from when I was a baby.”
“Man, you need the gift I got you,” Santana said as she raked her eyes up and down his body. “Like, a month ago.”
Kurt blinked a few times and tilted his head to the side. His brain wasn’t catching up to what Rachel and Santana were saying... not that this was a new phenomenon, but he’d felt a little fuzzy-headed lately anyway.
“We have a whole host of games ready-” Rachel continued excitedly.
“Maybe we should just let him sit down first,” Blaine suggested in a diplomatic, but surprisingly firm, tone. He came up to Kurt and touched his shoulder. “You okay? You look a little overwhelmed.”
“Confused would be the operative word,” Kurt replied tersely. He shrugged Finn’s arm off of him and glanced around again. For some reason there were baby dolls on his couch, a box of diapers, and some yarn and a measuring tape. Kurt walked over to the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room, now cluttered with gifts and covered dishes. On the counter in the kitchen, he could see a big cake, and the plates.... They had a design sectioned into colored quarters: a rattle, a bottle, a safety pin, and a little buggy. In the middle it read “baby” in multicolored letters.
Kurt felt his ears and neck growing redder and redder. He crossed his arms over himself and turned to glare at them.
“What is wrong with you?!” he exploded before he could properly even form something more scathing.
“Hello, mood swings!” Santana teased.
“Whoa, dude!” Finn held his hands up. “Don’t be mad. Just um... Maybe you should sit down.”
“I went to a lot of trouble to get everyone together!” Rachel protested. “You could at least be gratefu-”
“Grateful?” Kurt walked right up to her and poked her shoulder roughly. “I am not pregnant, you bitch!”
“You obviously are!” Santana laughed.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped.
Santana looked pointedly down at his middle, where his cardigan buttons were the most strained. The others turned to one another quietly, as though they didn’t know what to say, and Rachel opened her mouth and looked down, then to Finn, as though he might save her from Kurt’s temper.
“Look, guys, why don’t we all just sit down together and catch... up?” Blaine began to suggest...
right as Kurt was storming out of the room.
He slammed the door to his bedroom behind him and let himself drop back on the bed. He could hear them all begin talking at once right through the walls and he closed his eyes and considered putting a pillow over his head.
After a few moments of:
“Maybe a surprise was a bad idea...”
“I’m worried about him.”
“Are you sure that he’s-”
“He definitely is. Who’s he fooling? Did you see that baby bump?”
“Don’t be so mean!”
“I thought I was pregnant once, but I’d just put on my little sister’s shirt.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Burn in hell!” he shouted.
The door cracked open and Finn poked his head in. Kurt scowled at him, wiping a few traitorous tears from his cheeks, and Finn shut the door behind him.
“In our defense... Zoe said you were. She said you were hiding it.”
“And that made you think that, obviously, a surprise baby shower was the way to go.”
“It was Rachel’s idea.”
“I gathered that from the way she’s defending it and her games.” Kurt closed his eyes and scratched his hair with a sigh. “Just because I’ve put on a few pounds doesn’t mean I’m pregnant. I haven’t even been with someone since...”
When he opened his eyes, he saw Finn staring at him pensively.
“Since when?”
“I don’t know,” Kurt lied. He knew it was June. During Pride. With Blaine. “A while.”
Finn sat on the edge of the bed and looked at his hands. “We didn’t mean to upset you. Trust me, that’s the last thing we want.” “I guess I shouldn’t have yelled. God, this is so humiliating.”
“Maybe you should’ve yelled louder.” Finn chuckled. “That’s assuming a lot, just having a shower without talking to the person. Even if it’s true- was true... You look so tired, and you hadn’t planned on having company to deal with...”
Kurt rubbed his forehead and sighed.
“Do you have a headache?”
“I have a lot of ache.” Kurt rolled his eyes and looked away.
Finn’s hand touched his shoulder. “Maybe you should eat something. Have you gotten headaches before?”
Kurt shrugged. “Sometimes.”
He started to sit up, then placed his palms behind him on the bed to push himself into position. Finn’s eyes never left him.
“We have food out there.”
“I’m not going out there. I’m sorry you spent so much time on that, but I just...” Kurt raised his hands.
Finn patted his leg and rose for the door. Kurt watched him as he disappeared, and, a moment later, the other room grew quiet. He could hardly make out anything.
“...doesn’t know...” Finn said.
“How...”
“...can we do?”
“He shouldn’t have called me a bitch!” Rachel said.
She was shushed.
Kurt sighed and leaned over on his thighs. He could be taking a nap right now. He reminded himself how much he loved his friends, even when they did things like this.
There was another knock on the door, and Kurt looked up cautiously. “Finn?”
“No.” Blaine’s voice was timid.
Kurt sort of wanted to tell him to go away, but it was hard to deny Blaine much of anything. “Come in.”
Blaine’s curls caught Kurt’s eye, and he smiled softly. It was good to see Blaine. They’d been good friends in school, when Kurt had to transfer to Dalton, and had remained so through Blaine’s senior year. After he left, Kurt had transferred back to McKinley, partially due to financial reasons and partially due to the fact that his bullies had graduated. Senior year wasn’t pleasant, but it was less restrictive, at least. Kurt had really missed singing with his friends. He and Blaine hadn’t met up again until college, and then until May, had sporadically met up for coffee or to go see theatre shows or peek in on whatever clubs would let Kurt in with an “under 21” stamp on his hand.
Kurt had always sort of held a candle for Blaine, even if Blaine had always, or so Kurt surmised, seen him as friend material only.
“Sorry for all that,” Blaine managed after a moment. He stood apart from Kurt, all awkward and anxious and shifting his weight from side to side, like he had been the last time Kurt had run into him.
It was sort of painful to watch. Kurt patted the spot next to him on the bed. Blaine hesitated, then sat and looked over at Kurt with big, gentle eyes.
“What? What is it? Why do you keep looking at me like that?” Kurt asked, his own voice betraying him with its breathless vulnerability.
Blaine took his hand in his own and rubbed it. “I don’t think we ever talked about...”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’m not mad,” Kurt promised. To be mad, one would have to have expectations broken, and he’d stopped having expectations regarding Blaine a long time ago. It was just the only way to preserve what they had together.
“I think we need to. I think...” Blaine squeezed his hand. “I know you don’t want to think about it.”
“It’s not that it wasn’t... great,” Kurt assured him. “I just... You...”
“I made it weird.”
“It doesn’t have to be. You’re not obligated to love me, Blaine. We’re friends. Nothing’s changed.”
“Stop!” Blaine sighed and grabbed the back of Kurt’s neck. “Stop trying to let me off the hook! Something has changed, and I don’t want to leave you alone to deal with it. I’m pretty sure I can’t, ethically, but I also want...”
“You want?” Kurt whispered. His eyes were fixed on Blaine’s eyes, suddenly so intense.
Blaine voiced no reply, but instead kissed Kurt firmly. Kurt felt lightheaded as he kissed Blaine back, hungry, almost starving for Blaine’s taste. When their lips parted, Kurt let out a shaky breath, and Blaine touched their foreheads together.
“Don’t get mad,” he pleaded.
Kurt raised his brows.
“You’re pregnant, Kurt.”
Kurt frowned and started to pull away, but Blaine held him tightly, kissed him again, then hugged him around the shoulders.
“You are pregnant. Please believe me. Just look, okay?”
“Stop...” Kurt protested weakly as Blaine unbuttoned the cardigan and pulled up his shirt, revealing his rounded tummy. He blushed and looked away.
“Are you just wearing your hiphuggers now? They still fit, don’t they? And they’re the only thing... Isn’t it weird that you aren’t gaining anywhere else?”
“I’m not...” Kurt looked down at Blaine’s fingers moving gently over the curve his stomach.
“You tired, too,” Blaine said. “Aren’t you? More tired than before? Please let me help!”
“I work and go to school. Anyone would be tired...” Kurt swallowed hard and touched Blaine’s hand, making it stop. He tried to breathe, but found his airway tight and his head spinning. He stood from the bed and took a few steps backward.
Then he was looking at the ceiling, blinking in confusion, and surrounded by his friends. It took him a moment to realize he was in Blaine’s arms on the floor.
“He’s awake,” Tina said. She crouched by him and drew the hair out of his eyes. “Hey, sleepy. I told ‘em we should’ve done this on the weekend.”
“Oh, gosh.” Brittany leaned over him. She whispered in awe, “His tummy’s so cute!”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you this way...” Blaine trailed off, then kissed Kurt’s forehead.
Pregnant.
Kurt covered his eyes with one hand, then curled the other arm around his middle to hide it from everyone’s view.
“Is he okay?” Finn asked.
“He stopped breathing, then fainted,” Blaine replied. “No.”
“Let’s get ‘im back on the bed,” Finn suggested. His brother slipped his arms under him and picked him up easily, with Blaine hovering close by. He then laid Kurt on the bed and gave him a lopsided smile. “That’s got to be more comfortable.”
But there was nothing comfortable about the way his friends were all looking at him. He wanted to tell them all to get out, but no words would make their way to his throat.
“Surprise!” he joked weakly, when he was finally able to speak.
“Breathe, Kurt, okay?” Blaine petted his head and looked down on him worriedly.
“I’m trying.” He drew in a breath with some effort.
“We honestly didn’t know you didn’t know,” Rachel said. “Still, I think we could still play some of the games-”
“Can it,” Mercedes ordered. “He’s awake, and he’s okay. Let’s just give him some air. We’ll be out there if you need us, okay, hon? And if you want us to go, just send Blaine with the message and we’ll clear out.”
She touched his hand and smiled. He gave her a half-hearted smile in return.
Soon, when it was just him and Blaine in the room again, he tentatively moved his hand to the top of his jeans, around the tight band he could barely get closed even if it was just around his hips, then over the curve above the jeans that was preventing him from fitting into the rest of his pants, and a lot of his tops, now.
Blaine kissed his forehead again, and never stopped petting him.
“I didn’t know,” Kurt said. “I didn’t know that I was... I would’ve told you...”
“I wasn’t sure it was mine. I mean, not that you would... It’s just that, I knew you would have told me if it was, and when I saw you... you were...”
Kurt’s hand cupped his belly. “You don’t have to... I mean, it’s not your fault, so...”
“Stop trying to let me off the hook,” Blaine said again, this time gently rubbing his thumb over the crease in Kurt’s brow. “Kurt, after that night... I wanted to be with you. I just didn’t know how to go forward after we’d been friends for so many years, then I realized you were pregnant, and you weren’t telling me, so I thought maybe it wasn’t mine or you didn’t want me...”
“I want you.” Kurt looked up at Blaine with a frown. “I just don’t want to have you if you don’t feel the same way. I’ve wanted you since that first year at Dalton.”
“Yeah?” Blaine’s fingers caressed Kurt’s cheek. “And I want you. Both of you.”
Kurt laughed softly. “Well, that’s the biggest surprise I’ve had today.”
“Is it?” Blaine shifted himself then laid down next to Kurt and rested his cheek on his hand as he watched Kurt’s face.
“You keep looking at me like that.”
“It’s ‘cause I’m in love with you.”
“I don’t think so.” Kurt was about to joke back at him, when he realized what Blaine had just said. Oh. Oh. “I... um.”
He loves me.
“Why did you think it was?”
“Because of the... um...” Kurt’s brow wrinkled.
“Oh. Well. That too. I guess that means I have to stop screwing things up.” Blaine put his hand over Kurt’s on his belly and smiled. “You look so scared. What can I do?”
“I don’t know.” Kurt laughed softly. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Ditto.”
“Well, then we can be scared together.” Kurt sucked in his lower lip. “Right?”
“Right. That’s what I want.” Blaine leaned over and kissed Kurt’s lips again.
Kurt smiled a little dopily, then returned Blaine’s kiss and moved his hand through Blaine’s curls. Oh... Blaine. His Blaine. The one who he always told himself he was ‘just friends’ with, but if Blaine ever changed his mind... he’d be worth the wait.
“You’re trembling. Are you cold?” Blaine got up and looked around the room.
“Not cold.” Kurt pushed himself up, pulling his shirt snuggly back down over his tummy and jeans, and Blaine turned back to him. “How long did you plan to be here? A couple of hours for the party, or...?”
“I can stay however long you need me.” Blaine paused. “Well, I have class in the morning... and work.”
“So do I. But I was just wondering...”
“I’ll stay,” Blaine promised. He came back over to the bed and waited on Kurt to decide what to do. When Kurt started to get up, Blaine grabbed his hand and put his arm around Kurt’s back.
“I’m not made of glass,” Kurt protested.
“No, but you did just faint.”
Kurt waved his hand and let Blaine hover over him as he made his way back out into the hallway. There were his friends, quiet for once and looking worried.
“Hey, boo.” Mercedes smiled as she caught sight of them. “Feeling better?” “A little.” He leaned against Blaine as he eyed the awful decorations again, and Blaine guided him to the couch.
“I’m so glad it really is a baby and not a big lunch,” Brittany said.
“Um. Thank, Britt.”
Rachel moved over to the sofa. “Maybe you’d like to play some games now! We have a guess the size of the belly game. That’s where you all guess how big your belly is by inches and then you measure-”
Kurt frowned and shook his head. “No.”
“Then there’s who can diaper baby the fastest, with the dolls-”
“No.”
“And a pin the sperm on the egg!” Rachel held up a picture of a uterus with a smiling egg inside.
“Never.”
“How about we keep this kind of low key?” Blaine suggested. “Don’t you think this has been enough excitement?”
“I think we should break out the food, personally.” Finn shrugged and started looking at the dishes on the counter.
“That’s what you wanted to do since you got here,” Rachel complained.
“Well, I’m hungry. Maybe I’m pregnant,” Finn joked.
Kurt laughed a little, and Blaine hugged Kurt’s shoulders, then gave his temple a kiss. “I’m all for eating and catching up first.”
After giving Kurt one more kiss, Blaine instructed Kurt to stay, then rose to make up a plate for him. As he waited, he shook his head and looked down on himself once again, baffled as to how it hadn’t occurred to him what was going on with his body. And now... what was going to happen, how much bigger he was going to get, and then there would be rattles and diapers and carriages and an actual living, squirming half-Blaine... His heart started to race again, and he closed his eyes.
“No more swooning, princess.” Santana leaned over the back of the sofa and held a green wrapped box in front of him.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a baby shower,” she said as though he were clearly very slow. “You get swag. Open it.”
Kurt raised a brow then tore off the wrapping and opened the box. Inside was a gray card that read “the maternity gift card” on the right and “motherhood maternity,” “destination maternity,” and “pea in the pod” on the left.
“Every moment of your life is an opportunity for fashion, right?” Santana grinned widely as Kurt looked up at her. “C’mon, smile. We can go with you and help you find some cute stuff that doesn’t cut off your circulation, Captain Tightpants.”
“Thanks. Obviously I did need your gift.” He paused. “Like a month ago.”
“See? Not so bad. And...” Santana lowered her voice. “Is Blaine the babydaddy? I wondered before why he was even here, but he’s been glued to you since he went back there...”
Kurt smiled, realizing that Blaine had shown up to this thing ready to support him no matter what. “Yeah. He is.”
Santana nodded. “So, bonus! Babydaddy’s on board.”
“Definitely.” Kurt nodded as Blaine returned and sat next to him.
“Are you behaving yourself?” Blaine asked Santana.
She narrowed her eyes. “Define behaving.”
Blaine set a plate just full of food onto Kurt’s lap. “I define it by not teasing the already stressed pregnant person about his weight or the baby.”
“Would I do that?”
“I think you already have tonight.”
“These plates really are kind of cute,” Kurt muttered.
“I picked those out!” Brittany squealed, almost knocking over the potato salad in her glee. “That was me!”
“I told them we needed to have a more organized color scheme, but no one listened to me,” Tina complained. “I think we should have gone with silver, white, and blue.”
“But we don’t know what the baby is. You can’t have blue for a girl!” Rachel said.
“Are you kidding me?” Kurt rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to deny any part of the rainbow from my- from my baby.”
He took a bite of Blaine’s pineapple-cashew quinoa stir-fry and looked down quietly. Mercedes sat next to him and rubbed his back. It wasn’t too long before the group cheered up and started to look more like a party, chattering about what was going on that semester, who was dating whom and so on.
In truth, now that Kurt was starting to calm down, and the reality of this was sinking in, he was glad they were all there, and yes, he probably would take the time to go down to visit his father. He needed his friends and family around him to ground him after this big of a surprise.