Notes: This au assumes that Mercedes was Tracy's surrogate mom and not Rachel.
"Daddy! Papa! I have something I need to show you!" Tracy takes the stairs down from her bedroom two at a time, racing full tilt thru the living room and into the kitchen. She slides across the linoleum in socked feet, stopping mere inches from her two dads preparing breakfast at the stove.
"Ten points!" Blaine cheers, offering her a high-five.
"Blaine, don't encourage her!" Kurt scolds, stacking pancakes one by one onto a large serving plate. "Tracy! What have I told you about running in the house?"
"I'm sorry, Papa! But I had to come tell you … I got one! I really got one!"
"Got one what, Bunny?" Blaine asks while Kurt, cracking eggs into a bowl for scrambling, shudders. The last time Tracy said those words, she came bounding into their bedroom covered in head-to-toe mud, carrying something Kurt could only describe as furry, squeaky, and highly annoyed.
Luckily, it wasn't rabid.
"An EVP!" she announces proudly, holding up a silver digital recorder. "I was right! I told you! Our house is haunted!"
Eggs forgotten for the moment, Blaine and Kurt turn to one another and share a look – Blaine's of pure amusement, Kurt's of mild terror.
"Are you sure?" Blaine asks.
"Oh, absolutely!" Tracy says, beaming with confidence. "I listened to it five times! It's definitely an EVP! It sounds exactly like the ones I heard on the YouTube videos Uncle Sam messaged me!"
"Sam," Kurt grumbles, shaking his head. Blaine puts a hand on his husband's shoulder and massages, but it's cold comfort.
This is all Sam's fault.
When Sam and Mercedes accompanied Tracy on a school field trip to the New York Public Library in Manhattan, he thought it would be a good idea to look up the history of his and Mercedes's apartment, then Kurt and Blaine's house. The apartment turned out to be a bust – a speakeasy back in the day, but most buildings were. But as it turned out, the Ander-Hummel house had been the setting of an infamous mob-related massacre back in the 20s. According to newspaper clippings only available on microfiche, twelve members of the Pirelli crime family were gunned down in cold blood while they slept, but only two of them were hit men. The rest were innocent bystanders – including five children.
Prior owners had reported experiencing cold spots, feelings of dread, lights flickering on and off, doors shutting on their own – things Kurt feels are easily explainable outside the realm of the supernatural. He did spend the better part of his formative years bunking in a renovated basement after all. From creaking floorboards to improperly installed doors and the occasional electrical fault, Kurt has seen it all, so he's immune to the idea of a door slamming unexpectedly being proof his house is haunted.
Kurt's biggest fear when this began was that Tracy might be so frightened by these stories, she wouldn't sleep at night.
Oh, how naïve he was.
Tracy was far from frightened. She was fascinated.
When she found multiple witness accounts of shadows walking down the stairs, moaning in memoriam of their mortal agony, she became hooked. She's been obsessed with hunting down the supposed ghosts inhabiting their house ever since.
"Do you think maybe you can jump on this one?" Kurt asks while their daughter stands between them, arm outstretched, begging with poignant facial expressions for someone to ask her to press play. With any luck, she just recorded herself snoring, or talking in her sleep, something that would be easy to explain in a way that would neither frighten nor disappoint an inquisitive ten-year-old. Kurt isn't a big fan of the whole ghost hunting thing, but he doesn't want to discourage her inquisitive mind.
"Why?"
"Because if our house is haunted, I don't want to know about it. I mean, we've lived here for over a decade. If there are disembodied spirits among us, obviously they're happy with us seeing as we've never seen or heard a peep from them. I don't want to ruin that relationship."
Blaine stares in awe at the skill of his husband, able to present a logical argument laced with sarcasm in a way that their precocious little girl won't detect. But Blaine can tell from the tone in Kurt's voice that the next time they see Sam, he's in for an earful.
"Al-righty, then." Blaine takes his daughter by the shoulder and steers her towards the living room. "Come along, Bunny. Let's go have a listen."
"Yay!"
Kurt watches the two wander off into the living room. They plop down on the sofa, which he can see from the stove, but he can't hear anything over the crackling of turkey bacon. Good, he assures himself. Because he's absolutely not curious. If Tracy did find evidence of some long-dead mobster's ghost in their house, and he doesn't believe for one minute she did, he doesn't need to know about it. He doesn't believe it anyway, so why is this a question? It's not. It has no bearing on his life whatsoever. And it doesn't matter one inch that when they first moved in, he used to get chills in the oddest places – like the completely insulated coat closet in the hall, or the windowless shower with the scalding hot water running; or the fact that he avoided Blaine's bedroom-turned-studio for weeks before he had it completely re-done because walking in there just made him … sad.
He stands by what he said.
Though he might start dressing underneath a towel, just because.
Not too long after the pair leaves, Blaine returns carrying the recorder and wearing an indecipherable look on his face. Kurt watches him anxiously, waiting for an explanation, but his infuriating husband doesn't give him one. Instead, the grin on his face widens steadily, it seems, in correlation to the size Kurt's eyes become.
"Well?" Kurt says, even though, again, he doesn't want to know. He's just been making breakfast – scrambling eggs and buttering toast, not at all overanalyzing every minute he's spent alone in their house when he's had to rationalize something that's happened that he couldn't outright explain.
"Well, she definitely caught something."
Kurt swallows hard. The top of his head goes cold. His hands begin to shake, the beating of his heart vibrating his entire body. But he fights for calm because if there's one thing Kurt doesn't believe in it's ghosts. Or God. Or life after death of any kind. If he had, it would have made his entire life from eight to eighteen much easier to bear. And that's one of the reasons he can't believe now. If he listens to that recording and it happens to be real, then what does that mean for his entire life view? His take on the universe and his place in it? "Oh?"
"Yup. And it's … thought provoking."
"Oh God!" Kurt groans, forgetting about breakfast and putting his hands over his eyes. "No!"
"What's wrong?"
"Of all the things I don't need to worry about! I mean, she's ten! Puberty's coming up, menstruation, acne! I don't want to deal with ghosts, Blaine! I can't!"
"Kurt …"
"Because talking about ghosts leads to talking about death, and talking about death leads to talking about God and heaven, and these are concepts I'm just not comfortable coming to terms with right now!"
"Kurt …"
"Besides, think of what living in a haunted house would involve! You saw The Amityville Horror! The Conjuring! The Woman in Black! Between the investigators and the séances and the television interviews - I really really don't have the time for that!"
"Kurt!" Blaine snickers. "I don't think we'll have to worry about that."
"Really?" Kurt's hands slide down his face. "So you're okay with us living here with the ghost of Ham Hands the Enforcer roaming our halls? Or some poor little kid crying out for his mommy?"
"Kurt, honey" - Blaine wraps an arm around his agitated husband's waist - "I didn't realize how uncomfortable this might be for you. But if it makes you feel any better, the solution to this might be a little less complicated than you think."
"Wh-what … what do you mean less complicated? What do you mean? What happened in the living room!?"
"I listened to what she recorded, and I agreed it sounded ominous. Then I gave her $20 for it, and promised her an additional $20 if she swore to let this go and never try to record an EVP again."
"Wha-why? Is it that bad?" Kurt asks, imagining screeching and wailing and blood thirsty howls, things that he and Blaine might not have heard because, ironically, they sleep like the dead.
"Why don't you listen for yourself?"
Kurt's eyes pop open at such a phenomenal speed, Blaine swears he hears a snap. "Why would I want to listen to it!? I'm asking you specifically because I don't want to …!"
Blaine presses play without waiting for Kurt to finish, and for all of Kurt's arguing to the contrary, he goes quiet so he can listen. According to the counter on the recorder's display, whatever Tracy heard starts at over two hours in. Tracy goes to bed at 8, so that would make this around 10 something. Kurt and Blaine would have still been up. But Kurt doesn't remember hearing anything.
The loudest noise in the room is the soft inhale-exhale of their daughter sleeping. But not long after, another noise starts. It's muffled, intermittent. To the untrained ear (and through several walls and closed doors) it does sound very ominous, like the notes of a sustained and painful cry rising up from the depths of hell below.
But to someone who knows exactly what they're listening to, it's clear, and Kurt blushes bright red to the roots of his highlights.
It's the sound of him moaning in the farthest thing from pain.
"So, would you say that's twenty dollars well spent?" Blaine asks, grinning like a goblin.
"Yes," Kurt says, clearing his throat, reaching out to turn the recorder off before he hears something that makes his face ignite. "Good call."
"Thank you."
"In other news, I am now very self-conscious of my sex noises."
"Don't be. I think your noises are damn sexy." Blaine chuckles. "Besides, you didn't listen long enough to hear mine."