I know, I know! Most of you have read this before! You haven't, not really. Basically, I re-read the story I had written and realised that I was stupid for abandoning it. I love writing this story but I forgot about it and lost all inspiration and then real life came and stood in the way. But then I saw that (in my opinion) as I've done more reading and learned more about writing and how to word things, my old chapters were shocking, and they weren't at all up to the standard that I think I can write to now - still not brilliant, but better. So I've re-written the chapters I uploaded before and will be updating them all today before the internet gets busy, and then will be carrying on with the story as I was planning to.
I'm still accepting prompts and remember that they don't have to go in any kind of order!
I have around eight revamped chapters to upload and then I'll start uploading the new prompts. Thank you for being so patient and for everyone who followed the story and added it to alerts, I apologize in advance if I clog up your inbox with updates but please keep checking and a new chapter will be up soon!
As always, feedback is really appreciated and I'll update an actual new chapter soon!
The middle of the summer holidays was always a great time for force families to sit indoors and socialise, or so thought Blaine Hummel-Anderson. Since he and Kurt had moved to New York they only really got to see their parents on special occasions, and so the holidays were a perfect time to organise a get together.
They had plenty of room in their house for them all; Kurt's fashion career had really taken off and the money he got from running his own boutique in the city did well for them, while Blaine's salary as a kindergarten teacher and his private piano lessons topped up their bank accounts. The four bedroom house easily fit them all and provided the three children with a chance to "camp" on the floor of Toby's bedroom.
They were there for two weeks of the long summer, and three nights in were spending their first evening in the large Hummel-Anderson family room. The kids had disappeared upstairs (whatever they were doing went ignored by the adults in the hope that the 'what they don't know won't hurt them' philosophy would be enough to stop them worrying) and the adults were all sat around chatting aimlessly and enjoying the moment of peace.
Kurt lounged contentedly against Blaine's chest, legs tucked under him as his husband fiddled with the short hairs at the base of his head. Blaine was engaged in a friendly debate with his father about the proposed changes to the education system while Blaine's mother, Jean, nattered with Carole about the gorgeous evening dress Kurt had designed for her. Burt and Finn sat and joked with Cooper and his wife, Andrea, about their two rivalling football teams while Kurt listened, flitting in and out of the conversations as he saw fit.
Checking the clock, Kurt was about to head upstairs and check on the children, who had been gone an hour and really no good could come from that, when there was a loud clattering from directly over their heads.
"Are they in our room?" Blaine asked nervously as Finn sniggered, commenting for the thousandth time how relieved he was that he only had to deal with kids part time, and that he got paid to do so. Kurt nodded and they exchanged a humiliated glance. "Did you hide the..." Blaine started to ask, cutting off when Kurt nodded again, a lot more harshly and giving his husband a warning glare.
"Holly?" Andrea called sternly, her eyes twinkling as Cooper tried to stifle his laughs at his brother's humiliation.
There was a thundering as three pairs of footsteps clattered down the stairs and entered the room, all with guilty looks on their faces.
"What was that?" Andrea asked, focusing on her daughter who plastered on an innocent smile and shrugged.
"What about you, Toby?" Blaine asked, frowning when Toby shook his head and attempted a casual confused expression and raised his eyebrows at his sister. "Chloe," Blaine said gently as he knelt in front of her. She looked up at him, biting her lip and blinking quickly. "Remember what we talked about last week?"
"Daddy and Papa will be more angry if I lie about breaking things," she responded quietly, fixing her gaze back on the floor. Blaine sat in front of her; his legs crossed as he watched her expectantly. At the age of five, she was already well trained by her brother in the art of passing off broken vases and lost toys and blaming them on the cat, but Blaine prided himself on being able to make her crack eventually.
"Well, Toby said he should hide my little dolly I got from Sarah for my birthday, you know the one with the pretty dress?" Chloe waited for Blaine to nod before looking to Kurt to check that he understood too. Clearly that was a detail of the upmost importance. "Well he went into your bedroom and put it in Daddy's table by the bed," she said, shifting guiltily as Toby and Holly protested behind her.
"Chloe, we told you never to go in there!" Kurt sighed from the couch, discreetly aiming a kick at Cooper's leg when he loudly asked whether they found any slippery, deflated balloons in there.
"I never! It was Toby!" Chloe exclaimed loudly, pointing an accusing finger at her brother, who moved forward immediately to defend himself.
"I had to do it!" he protested, standing in the middle of the room and looking earnestly at Kurt. "Honest Daddy, I never meant to look in there! I knocked the lid off when I was walking away and saw in there. I'm sorry!" At this Cooper snorted loudly while Finn shifted awkwardly from his place on the floor.
"Trying a little fifty shades of gay are we Squirt?" Cooper said in a sing-song voice, still laughing as Blaine glanced at Kurt with panicked eyes.
"Shut up," he hissed at his brother as Kurt headed upstairs into their bedroom followed by the three children. Blaine returned to his seat on the sofa before glancing around in the awkward silence. "It's not, I mean, we don't... it's nothing like that, it's erm... it's just something private. We don't have like, a blindfold in there or..." he trailed off, his face bright red as he picked at a thread in his sleeve. He took a little comfort in the fact that Burt, Finn and his father looked as uncomfortable as he did.
"Riding crop?" Cooper suggested gleefully, before Andrea threw a cushion at him and the awkward silence resumed. Kurt's muffled voice could be heard upstairs as he lectured the children on never going into adults rooms to play before his footsteps thumped back down the stairs and he re-entered the room, a large blue box in his hands.
"They've knocked them all out of order, we'll have to resort them," he huffed as he plonked the box on the couch in front of Blaine. Finn groaned loudly and buried his face into the arm of the chair Carole was sat on as Burt cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows. "Problem, Finn?" Kurt asked as he took a seat on the couch opposite Blaine, the box in between them.
Blaine muttered awkwardly, as Chloe climbed onto his lap and rested her head on his chest. Kurt shook his head, gesturing that he couldn't hear. "They think they're kinky toys," Blaine said a little louder, causing Kurt's eyes to widen and glance around the room. He cleared his throat awkwardly.
"Well, um, first of all, they're not," he said loudly, staring pointedly at Cooper who looked slightly disappointed. "They're photos, decade's worth. I had them all sorted according to year and occasion but they're all just scattered now."
The tension in the room eased and the children sat carefully down, making sure they were next to an adult; Blaine always thought Kurt was a better disciplinarian than a time-out system. There was silence as Kurt sifted through the collection, smiling occasionally as one caught his eye.
"Wait, Blaine, you kept the photo thing going all these years?" Blaine's father asked incredulously. "I thought you hated it?"
Blaine nodded happily as his mother piped up. "Of course he kept it going Michael, it was a brilliant idea," she said proudly. Carole and Burt exchanged confused looks over Toby's head, where it was tucked into Burt's shoulder.
"Dad and Papa take photos all the time, and then they get them out and talk for ages when me and Chloe go to bed. It's really annoying," Toby scowled, frowning at the box that had got him in trouble by sticking out so far that he couldn't help but knock it over.
"Ah, but Papa used to moan about it when he was your age too, and look at him now," Michael Anderson said, smiling fondly at his son.
"Ever since Coop and I were babies Mom and Dad would take photos of us literally all the time and kept them all in an old refrigerator box with our baby clothes. When Kurt and I got together we thought it would be nice to start our own box; some of the photos in there go back to when we were both at Dalton. It drives Toby crazy but Chloe loves it, and it's nice to look through them every so often," Blaine explained to the Hummel's who smiled and exchanged soppy glances.
Jean knelt on the floor next to the box and picked up a photo. "This is pretty good," she said, "but I think we both know that my collection is more cringe-worthy, darling." Her eyes glinted as she raised her eyebrows at Blaine, who snorted.
"Yeah sure, Mom, you haven't seen the photo of Kurt after Chloe gave him a makeover. I'd say that there is more cringe-worthy that any baby photos you have of me. Mainly because I stole quite a few of them and put them in my own box," Blaine grinned back, pulling out a photo of himself at the beach covered in sand and chocolate ice cream.
Jean sat back down, cooing at the photo that had been commandeered by Chloe as she giggled uncontrollably at her Papa's mucky face.
"Can we see some of them?" Carole asked hopefully. Kurt nodded and checked the time.
"We can, but I need to get out of these jeans and I think Miss Chloe needs to put her princess nightie on to show you all." Chloe grinned sleepily and Blaine carried her upstairs to get her ready, followed by Toby who was shouting happily about the fact that Kurt had had to buy pyjamas made for an eight year old, ("It's really good too, because I'm only seven but I look much bigger!").
Ten minutes later, everyone was suitably comfortable in their pyjamas, the children with a mug of warm milk each and the adults sipping Kurt's homemade iced tea.
"Do you want to pick the first one?" Blaine asked Chloe gently, holding her drink steady as she leant forwards and pulled out a strip of four photos taken from a photo booth before nuzzling back into Blaine's chest. She watched as Kurt smiled softly at the pictures and exchanged a soppy glance with his husband.
"Urgh, god, are you going to be that cheesy for every photo?" Cooper moaned quietly so as not to disturb his daughter who, like Chloe, was falling asleep on her father's lap.
Blaine looked over at him and let out a chuckle. "Coop, you're looking at the couple who got engaged on a gingham picnic blanket in the middle of Central Park, what did you really expect?"
Cooper grumbled but sat back and allowed his brother one night of tooth-wrecking sweetness. He didn't really have much choice.