Cross posted on my Tumblr and AO3, same username.
The biggest fight Kurt and Blaine have is about four months before their son is due.
It comes out of nowhere. Kurt is making dinner and Blaine is on his laptop looking up different cribs and car seats while avoiding his responsibilities. A few clicks of the mouse and he somehow accidentally comes across a delightfully geeky father/son matching outfit. It's a charming baby onesie that says "Best Son Ever" in whimsical and colorful block letters. Its counterpart is an adult t-shirt emblazoned with "Best Dad Ever" in the same format.
Blaine immediately breaks out into a smile, standing up and carrying his laptop into the kitchen to show his husband.
"That's adorable!" Kurt coos. "We should all get matching ones. Best Dad Ever, Best Son Ever, and Best Papa Ever."
"You will be the best Papa ever," Blaine sighs dreamily, still looking at his laptop screen and imagining what his little family will look like in T-minus four months. He's already mentally planning the birth announcement—these shirts will be worn. It will be very cute.
"I'm sorry. What?" Kurt asks. Not rudely, just confusedly.
"Huh?" Blaine murmurs, turning around and giving Kurt his full attention. He was too caught up envisioning the birth announcement cards to pay attention to what Kurt was saying.
"I thought you were going to be Papa," Kurt replies bluntly, eyebrows scrunched in confusion.
"I thought you were," Blaine counters dumbly.
"No," Kurt says roughly, head shaking back and forth in obvious opposition. "No. I am going to be Dad."
"But I want to be Dad," Blaine replies, and it takes him a second to catch up to what is going on—that Kurt is sort of basically shutting him down. It's the same tone Kurt uses when he tells Blaine that they are going out with friends instead of spending the night in. The same harsh stare he gives Blaine when he wants Blaine to get up and do something and help out around the house instead of just sitting down and doing nothing.
And it normally works. Blaine is so in tune to what Kurt wants, and he'll do almost anything to keep his husband happy. Nothing makes Blaine happier than being able to make Kurt happy.
A happy Kurt means a happy family.
But this. This is not something that Blaine can back down from. He doesn't want to go on the offensive, because Kurt does not respond well to that. Instead, he voices his thoughts firmly, yet soft in tone.
"I think that we need to sit down and talk about this," he says, laptop forgotten on the kitchen counter, along with the vegetables simmering on the stovetop.
"What exactly do we need to talk about?" Kurt asks, his posture ramrod straight and his eyes unblinking.
Blaine holds his breath for a second, and he knows that at this moment he either has to back down and let Kurt win this one, or he's in for a hell of a wild ride. He doesn't even have to think about his response.
"I'm going to be Dad, okay? I'm going to be his Dad."
When shit hits the fan, shit really hits the fan.
Blaine cries all night, Kurt gets angry and flings sarcastic insults, and Blaine actually considers sleeping on the couch.
Instead he waits until Kurt is asleep to crawl into bed, and he purposefully wakes up a half an hour early so he doesn't have to share a kitchen with his husband, who is normally a bit grumpy in the morning anyway, let alone the night after a huge blowout.
Blaine goes to work that day with the assumption that this whole thing will blow over soon. He doesn't quite know how, but he has faith that it will. He and Kurt are expert fighters, and they really know how to hold a grudge when they want to. But they love each other too much and care about each other too deeply to ever go back to their childish way of fighting.
At least, that's what Blaine thought.
He and Kurt talk. They do. They talk about their day, they kiss and watch TV together. They go out to dinner and hang out with friends. They just sort of...avoid the topic of names and parenthood. They buy some things for their son, awkwardly stepping around that giant elephant in the room. To the outside world, things between Kurt and Blaine couldn't be any better.
But to Blaine, he's sort of freaking out. Because their child is going to pop into this world in a little more than three months, and Blaine is starting to feel completely unprepared—on so many levels.
They still don't have a crib, he feels like they haven't bought enough diapers, the nursery hasn't been decorated yet, he and Kurt are still stuck on a name for their son, and oh! Right. They're still stuck on a name for each other.
Blaine's the one to bring it up again a week later, mainly because he feels like he can't keep it bottled inside anymore, and he doesn't want to continue sidestepping the issue like they have been.
"Can we please talk about this?" he begs one evening as they sit at the dinner table eating congenially.
"Talk about what?" Kurt asks, and Blaine doesn't even bother to respond. He just stares at Kurt with his wide open, puppy dog eyes and waits for Kurt to pick it up on his own. "Oh. That."
"Yeah. That," Blaine says, interlacing his own fingers on top of the table. "Please?"
"What about it?" Kurt asks stonily.
Blaine sighs dejectedly. This isn't how he wanted this conversation to go. He doesn't want Kurt on the defensive. He wants an open and honest conversation, because they're sort of almost down to the wire and this is something that they should probably figure out. Pronto.
"Kurt," he pleads. "Please."
Kurt exhales rather loudly and puts his fork down on the table.
"I don't know what you want me to say," he begins, surprisingly gently. "I have just always pictured myself being Dad."
He shrugs, as if it's the most simplistic thing in the world. And the problem is that it is. It is the simplest thing in the world. After all, it's what Blaine wants, too. Blaine wants to interject and tell Kurt this, but instead he bites his tongue and lets his husband finish talking.
"I can't imagine being anything else. Papa sounds so old. Not that I think you're old!" he rushes to say, eyes widening a bit in alarm. "It's just that…that's what I call my mom's father. My Pop. My Papa. I can't be a Papa—not at least for another half century," he tries to joke, quirking his mouth in a sad smile, but the joke falls flat. Kurt takes a steadying breath before continuing. "It's just…it's what I call my dad. And it's what I want my son to call me."
If Blaine could repeat everything Kurt just said then he would. The truth almost hurts him, because he feels the exact same way. And he doesn't want to take anything away from Kurt—he doesn't want Kurt to be miserable in parenthood. But he also doesn't want to be miserable himself.
Blaine gives Kurt everything. He's given Kurt his whole life. He's moved cities and taken jobs he didn't quite want, all so he can be with Kurt. He'd follow him to the moon and back, and Kurt knows that. But this is one thing that Blaine can't budge on.
He wants to tell Kurt this, but he needs a few moments to take in what Kurt just said. So instead he takes a calming breath and thanks Kurt for opening up to him.
The next day, when Kurt is out of the house, Blaine calls his father for some advice.
"I just don't know what to do," he says after the formalities have been concluded and Blaine briefly described the situation.
"Have you told him how you felt?" his dad asks.
Blaine groans. "No. Not yet."
"Why?"
"Because I haven't exactly figured it out yet myself. It's hard for me to vocalize," Blaine says, struggling to explain.
"How do you feel about it?" his father pushes ever so lightly.
"I can't be a Papa," Blaine spits out rather definitively. He's not with Kurt, so he doesn't feel the need to censor his feelings or his tone. "I don't want a half-assed name when I enter fatherhood. I see kids all the time. I see the way my friends' kids talk and act and fumble over words, and I don't want Papa to be the word they fumble over. I don't want to be known as Pa or Pop to my son. And," he says rather exaggeratedly, "I don't want my son to say, 'My Papa is picking me up from school today,' and have everyone thing it's his grandpa!" Blaine begins pacing the living room, trying not to run his hand through his hair because he gelled today.
"I think you're thinking a little far ahead now," his father replies, trying to rein him in.
"I think I have a right to, Dad. This is the name that's going to stick with me for the rest of my life."
His father swallows audibly and pauses. "Well, you have a point there."
"This is my legacy," Blaine moans.
"Blaine—stop being so dramatic."
"I'm not being dramatic!" Blaine yells back.
And yeah, he's totally being dramatic. He stops pacing and falls onto the couch, taking a few breaths to calm himself down.
"So being Dad is important to you," his father replies, and it's not a question. Just a statement.
The one thing that's been going through Blaine's head ever since their surrogate announced that the pregnancy had taken was what it means to be a father. It means so many things, and Blaine will never truly understand until he becomes one. He knows that. But there's one thing that has stuck with him for ten years. It's something his father told him one night on the highway when he was eighteen.
They were coming back from Christmas at his grandparents and it was eleven at night and they had been driving for a bit, but they still had over an hour left until they were home. Cooper and his mother were spending the weekend at his grandparents, but Blaine had a flight to catch back to NYC so he could spend New Year's there with friends.
When his father began talking, Blaine wasn't at all prepared for how sentimental it was going to be.
"We've made this trip a hundred times," he had said, probably just to fill the silence. "Your entire childhood. I remember making this drive all the time while you and Cooper slept in the back and your mom rested up front."
"Sounds boring," Blaine had lamented.
"Not boring," his father replied. "This is my job. This is what Dads do. Mom would always get you and Coop ready while I packed the car up, and at night when we were ready to go home, it was my job to make sure that I got everyone home safely. I'd carry you and Cooper to bed, and every time I was able to tuck you in I knew I did my job as a father. I got you home safely. You'll understand one day."
Blaine wanted to cry then, and thinking of that conversation now makes him want to cry again. He never told his father how much that two minute speech meant to him, but it stuck with him. He didn't realize that's how his father looked at life and his role as a parent. But Blaine's starting to understand it, even now when his son is in utero. It's his job to make sure his son gets home safe.
Blaine gathers his thoughts while he's sitting on the couch and replies to his father.
"Yeah. Being a Dad is important to me."
The rest of the conversation is filled with ways that Blaine can bring this all to Kurt, along with looking into alternate names for Dad. Mostly it's just Dad in other languages, and while none of them really mean anything to Blaine, he's hoping that at least one of them will speak to Kurt.
In the end it's Burt who actually solves the problem.
Turns out that Kurt has been talking behind the scenes with Burt, explaining his side of the story. Burt's simple, yet wise, solution?
"Why can't you both be Dad?"
Kurt brings that tidbit of wisdom to Blaine immediately after, storming into Blaine's office and proposing the idea.
"We can both be Dad!" he exclaims happily, yet warily, as if Blaine would turn that down.
"Huh?" Blaine responds, glasses slipping off his nose. It's nearly ten at night and he was just finishing up some work so he could leave work tomorrow early. They're planning on finally painting the nursery.
"I was talking to my dad," Kurt begins, taking a step closer to Blaine. "We were Skyping, and he suggested that we both just go by Dad. It was brilliant, if I do say so myself."
Blaine takes an actual, physical step back. Since he's in a rolling chair it ends up being a wheel back, and he bangs into his desk.
"Oh my god," he exhales. He cannot believe that he has been so thoughtless. "Yes!" he exclaims, standing up and jumping into Kurt's arms.
"We're so stupid," Kurt replies, squeezing Blaine tight.
"I can't believe we never thought of this!" Blaine says, kissing Kurt's cheek repeatedly, slowly moving towards Kurt's lips so he can place a few passionate pecks there.
It's the absolute most brilliant idea ever, and they both tell Burt that, thanking him profusely for helping them pull their heads out of their asses. It was only a week and a half of awkward standstill, but it's nice that those walls have been broken down.
They're entirely happy in their choice to both be Dad. A few of their friends question this and ask how their kid will be able to differentiate between the two, and to that Kurt always responds, "Well, Blaine's the short one and I'm the pretty one. I'm sure our son will be able to tell the difference."
Blaine answers more realistically, though, because he feels the need to justify himself, but also because he likes imagining the future.
"It's really not that hard to say 'Other Dad' or 'Daddy Blaine.' Our kids will figure it out."
And that's what happens. Two sons and a daughter, and they all call Kurt and Blaine Dad.
Well, except sometimes they call Blaine 'Warbler Blaine' instead of Daddy Blaine. But to be honest, that's a nickname he can get used to.