Notes:
Written for the Klaine Advent Day 2 prompt - bucket. It bounces back and forth between comical and melancholy, and comes from a very personal place.
"Kurt! Kurt, come here! Quick!"
"Where's here?" Kurt jokes, descending the staircase from their daughter's bedroom, where's he been busy putting away her clothes.
"The kitchen! Hurry!"
Startled by the urgency in his husband's voice, he rushes through the living room towards the kitchen. "What? Why? You didn't hurt yourself, did you- oh … oh no!"
Kurt stops short of the kitchen door when he finds his husband kneeling on the floor beside the very stiff, very dead body of their daughter's beloved cat, Professor Fluffers.
"What happened?" he asks, alternating between crouching down to get a better look at the poor thing and stepping back in disgust because even though Professor Fluffers has been a cherished family pet for the past ten years, he's still deceased, and Kurt can't stand death.
Kurt and death haven't had a good relationship.
"I don't know for sure," Blaine says, his fingertips hovering closer to the dead cat's fur than Kurt is personally comfortable with. "He doesn't seem injured. It looks like he just keeled over and died."
"When do you think it happened?" Kurt tiptoes around his husband to fetch a plastic trash bag. "We went to bed after midnight, but up until then he was lying on the couch with us, remember? He seemed fine."
"I have no idea. I'm no forensic expert, but it looks like he may have been here a while. He's not just stiff, he's freezing cold, too."
As a consequence of that remark, Kurt returns with not only the trash bag, but a container of antibacterial wipes for Blaine's hands. Kurt stands over both husband and corpse, hands on hips, overwhelmed by a sudden surge of irritation.
"Dammit, Fluffers! Couldn't you have waited until after Thanksgiving break?"
"I know, right? I mean, I'm not prepared for this! I knew he was getting on in years – moving a little slower, not grooming that well - but I didn't think he was close to death!"
"You don't … you don't think he was sick, do you?" Kurt asks, horrified that they may have missed the signs of something that could have been completely curable – or, at least, manageable - had they caught it in time. "Like diabetes? Or cancer?"
"I don't know," Blaine admits, racking his brain with similar questions.
"What are we going to do about Tracy? How do we tell her that her favorite thing in the whole world kicked the bucket?"
Blaine stares at the cat while he wipes his hands, the unbreathing body of this animal he's hugged and petted so many times so alien now without the spirit of their beloved cat inside, it doesn't seem real. He expects to see their Professor Fluffers walk in any second, sidle up to the imposter, and meow in defiance. He cleans his hands in silence, lost in thought, deep in thought, which makes Kurt more anxious by the second. Suddenly, he balls up the wipes, tosses them into a nearby trash can, and rises to his feet.
"I say we don't."
Kurt stares at Blaine, wide eyed, not sure his husband is serious. "What?"
"Mercedes isn't scheduled to drop Tracy off for another hour. I say we text her to stall till later this afternoon. Then we go to every pet shop in New York City until we find a cat identical to Professor Fluffers, and when we do, we switch them out before Tracy gets here."
Kurt shakes his head, sure he didn't hear his husband right. "I'm sorry … come again?"
"It's perfect, Kurt! She'll never know!"
"Are you insane!? Professor Fluffers was ten-years-old! When's the last time you saw a ten-year-old cat in a pet store?"
"You're … you're right," Blaine concedes, and Kurt hopes that's put an end to it, but he knows his husband better than that. "We should … go to the pound! We have a better chance of finding a mature cat there! In fact …" Blaine pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and opens a web browser "… I'll hop on some websites. That'll be quicker. Then, when we find an animal we like, we can put it on hold!"
"Blaine …"
"Or maybe Cat Finder! And Craigslist! Maybe there's a family looking to re-home their adult cat! If I can find …"
"Blaine …" Kurt puts a hand over Blaine's phone and lowers it, taking his husband's focus back "… what I mean is we adopted Professor Fluffers when Tracy was born. He was her cat. They grew up together. She knows every hair on his furry little head. Thinking you can replace him easy-peasy without her noticing isn't just ridiculous. It's an insult to our daughter's intelligence."
Blaine looks up at Kurt with sorrow-filled eyes – eyes so much like their Tracy's.
Eyes that look exactly like Tracy's will look once she finds out about her friend.
Blaine sighs. "I know, I know. I just … I don't want to see the look on our daughter's face when she finds out her best friend is dead. Did you see her when she left last night with her mom? She was the happiest little girl in the world!"
"Telling her that her cat is dead isn't going to kill our daughter's happiness. Not forever. Death is a part of life. These things happen. And as parents, it's our job to help her through it, not hide her from it. Who would we be if we kept replacing her pet cat every time it passed away?"
Blaine's shoulders sag, like a talked-down little boy who's just been told Santa Claus isn't real. "We'd be liars."
"That's right. And how would we get her to trust us again once she found out? And you know she'd find out. She's way too smart for that."
"That's because she takes after he father."
Kurt jerks back. He crosses his arms, fixing Blaine with his steely, judgmental glare. "You know, biologically, she's yours."
"I know." Blaine peeks up at his husband, eyes sad but teasing. "And I happen to be brilliant."
Kurt chuckles, wrapping his husband up in his arms. "Yes, you are."
Blaine exhales into his husband's neck until there's nothing left, then breathes back in so he can fill his lungs with the warm, floral scent of his husband. Why? Why did this have to happen today? Not that there's ever a good day for a pet to die, but Blaine isn't ready for this conversation. Every day he wakes up, he takes inventory of his parents, of Kurt's dad and his stepmom, of Mercedes, all of their closest friends and family, because he's not ready for the death talk. They've done the bullying talk, the homophobia talk, the "womanhood" talk, even the sex talk, and though he's internally cringed through some of those and nearly broke down in tears during others, he made it through fine. But this one … this is the one he knew he couldn't handle in the least.
Not since he'd recently parted ways with his Christian faith.
Not since he'd stopped believing in God.
He hadn't intended on losing his faith; it just sort of happened. It became too difficult a thing to blithely hold on to with all of the hate and violence and destruction going on in the world; watching people he'd admired, and the morals they'd claimed to hold dear, crumbling before his eyes.
"I know," Kurt whispers, as if Blaine had said all of that out loud. In a way, he had. He'd started sniffling, the pattern of his breathing stuttering, on the verge of tears without even realizing it. "It'll be okay. I promise. We'll get through this together."
Blaine nods. He winds his arms around his husband and squeezes tight, but he knows that soon he'll have to let go. There's nothing he'd rather do than stand with his husband like this all day, but there are things they have to take care of.
Things they have to prepare.
"We should still text Mercedes and warn her," Blaine suggests. "She's Tracy's mom. She should be a part of this."
"I agree."
"Who knows?" Blaine says, composing a text while Kurt grabs a pair of rubber gloves – his least favorites since he knows he'll have to chuck them after. "Maybe she'll jump on the grenade for us, tell Tracy before she brings her home."
"I hope not," Kurt admits. "I think it would be better coming from all of us."
"I guess you're right."
"I am right, because I'm brilliant, too." Rubber gloves on hands and trash bag open, he looks at his daughter's cat with a heavy heart. He wouldn't say he feels like crying, but he knows that'll change the second he sees Tracy. "I'm going to wrap up Professor Fluffers and put him on the patio. It's cold enough outside that he should keep. Then we can sit down on the sofa and decide exactly what we want to say to …"
The click of a key in the front door lock and the turn of a knob cements both men into place. Paralyzed by what they know is coming far too fast and far too soon, Kurt, in particular, finds himself stuck between doing nothing, and the prospect of yanking the dead feline by its tail and tossing it unceremoniously into the bag.
He doesn't get the chance. The speed of an overexcited elementary school child has no equal.
"Hey, Kurt! Hey, Blaine! We're back! Did you miss us?"
"Daddy! Papa! We're …"
Kurt hears a gasp. It's a sound he'd know anywhere. He's heard it after nightmares, after falls off bikes, when Mufasa died ...
He doesn't have to turn around to know his daughter is standing behind him, with a clear view of her cat between his parted legs.
He looks at his husband's furrowed brow and trembling lower lip, and knows: "It might be a little too late for that."