"God fucking damnit!" Kurt slams his fist down on the marble of kitchen counter, a dull bang cutting through the room. "It's always the same conversation, Blaine."
"Well then why don't you hire someone for Christ's sake?" shouts Blaine from across the kitchen. His face is a deep shade of red and the vein in his forehead ticked steadily. "It's not like we don't have the money Kurt. If it's that fucking important to you, just get it done!"
"It's the principle of the matter, and you know it. You've been saying for months that you'll save a weekend for this and you keep backing out of it like a goddamn-"
"You know what work is like right now!" Blaine cuts in, sounding just slightly hysterical. "You know that I'm-"
"Excuse me?" a new voice interrupts. Both men stop immediately and turn to the source. Six-year-old Amelia stands at the threshold of the kitchen watching them calmly, her pajamas wrinkled and her brown hair sleep tousled. Guilt overwhelms Kurt: they've succeeded once again in waking their daughter. A quick glance over to his husband and Kurt knows by the pained expression on his face and the chewing on his lip that the same thoughts are running through Blaine's mind.
Satisfied that she's caught their attention, Amelia continues, huffy and annoyed. "I just want to remind you that I have school in the morning and need my beauty rest."
Sometimes Kurt curses the fact that she's more perceptive than most at her age. When he was her age and heard his parents fighting at night, little Kurt cowered in his room, kept awake all night by their shouting. A child should never be so used to, so familiar with, their parents arguing that they feel the need to break it up. But here she is again to put him and Blaine in their place.
Blaine's the first to recover. "Sorry hun," he said, voice a tad hoarse from his shouting.
"Do you want us to put you back to bed?" Kurt asks her. They watch her consider it for a moment, practically able to see the wheels turning in her head.
Amelia shakes her head finally. "No, I can do it myself." She clutches her beat-up stuffed dog to her side; she'd had it since she was born and refused to sleep without it.
"Okay," Blaine says. "We're sorry we woke you up."
Kurt echoes the sentiment before watching Amelia shuffle up the stairs and back to her bedroom. There's a few moments of silence while both men wait for the familiar sound of her door clicking shut. When a faint snap is finally heard, the bubble of tension in the kitchen bursts.
Blaine slumps down into a chair at the table and buries his head in his hands. His face is ashy and a light sheen of sweat has formed on his brow. "At least we didn't wake up Aidan this time," he said, quietly and more to himself than his husband. The last time they had fought, they had woken their three-year-old son who proved harder to lull back to sleep than his older sister. Kurt rips his gaze away and turns to the sink. There are a few dishes leftover from dinner that couldn't fit in their dishwasher sitting at the bottom. He momentarily considers washing them; he needs something, anything, to distract him.
"I'm sorry," comes Blaine's quiet apology from across the room. His voice cracks a little bit on the tail end. "You were right- are right. I've been making excuses and-"
"Stop." There would have been a time in high school when he would have reveled in being told he was in the right. Hell, there would have been a time less than five years ago when he would have reveled in the same thing. But not now. "It's late," he sighs.
The lights are turned down low when Kurt finds himself shifting through the closet in the den for the spare blankets they keep inside.
Blaine was in earlier trying to convince Kurt to come to bed. It's very much their post-argument ritual: they fight, one of them would choose to sleep on the couch for the night, and the other would attempt to change the other's mind. Try as they may, it always ended the same way. It didn't matter what they were fighting about; they fought over everything now, hardly able to remember why they started in the first place.
But it hadn't always been this way. Married at twenty-one, they lived in relative bliss for years. Sure, they had their problems and their fights just like every couple, but in their minds they had already been through so much worse. The nights of television marathons, making pasta in their underwear, and the deep connection that they had fought for made their lives and their relationship worthwhile.
Finding the blankets and after depositing them on the couch, Kurt makes his way down the hall and into the half bathroom. He's just going to rinse his face off and then go straight to sleep; it's already well past three in the morning and he'll have to get up in a few hours for work. Really though, it's becoming all too common an occurrence.
Massaging the cool water into his skin, Kurt's fingers feel the lines beginning to form around his eyes. At thirty-one they're hardly terrible, but they're certainly present. Sixteen-year-old self be damned, Kurt doesn't actually mind aging all too much. He's certainly handling it better than Blaine is. Blaine who had found his first gray hair at the age of twenty-three and immediately rushed to the nearest pharmacy for a bottle of hair dye. Despite the physical changes, time actually had been quite good to them.
Road bumps notwithstanding, by the age of twenty-one, they knew it was time to settle down. Their friends constantly teased that the two were basically married anyway, so what was holding them back? Long engagements were nice, but the ultimate goal was always marriage. Three months after Kurt's birthday, they wed. Kurt and Blaine had opted for a much smaller wedding than they originally imagined. It was perfect: their friends and family that had scattered across the states came to New York for the weekend, the weather cooperated, and the bakery actually pulled through and delivered their cake on time.
The transition from boyfriends to husbands- husbands!- had been trying initially: combining bank accounts, the confusing legal matters to wade through, finally finding their own place- it was a lot to deal with on top of a wedding. There had been moments when they didn't think it was worth it; the arguments and the mounting stress threatened to pull them apart completely. Not to mention the transition between broken up, boyfriends, and then fiancés came in such rapid succession they hardly had any time to wrap their heads around it.
But the first night in their miniscule Alphabet City apartment as husbands, they knew it had been worth all the anxiety and headaches along the way. Sweat still drying on their skin, sheets pooled at their hips, Blaine's head tucked into the crook of his husband's neck, Kurt never felt more contented with his life than in that very moment.
Kurt shuts the light off in the bathroom and makes his way back to the den. He plops down on the couch and throws the blankets over his tired body. At least the couch is comfortable. He nestles his tired head back into the pillows, the dull pound of a headache throbbing behind his eyes. The rhythmic ticking of the wall clock fills the silence. He found that clock years ago, at a street fair in Brooklyn, and it was one of the few objects from the Bushwick loft that he still carries with him. It's a poor substitute for the steady beating of Blaine's heart that he'd grown so accustomed to, and to the quiet snuffling snore that Blaine always has when he sleeps.
Rolling over, Kurt presses his face into the back cushions and let the sounds of the city, far away as they were on the seventh floor, lull him to sleep.
The clinking of porcelain on marble gradually pulls Kurt out of his fitful sleep. The smell of brewing coffee washes over him, the faint hiss and pop of something cooking on the stove and the quiet murmuring of his husband's voice and their daughter's whispered replies bring him to sit up and rub sleep from his eyes. He's not ready to face Blaine just yet.
They've just gotten so used to this relentless process; after a night spent alone in bed, one of them would go out of their way with breakfast. There's really no reason for omelets and pancakes on a Tuesday morning, but it's the silent code of an apology that has become the new normal. Once Kurt's done washing his face, he's going to grab Aidan out of his room, and they'll all sit down and pretend that last night never happened.
As they all sit down at the table, they'll look like the picture-perfect family.
It's a lie.
But it's what to be expected now.
