Kurt glanced up from his laptop as Blaine walked through the door. "You're late, again," he said, with a hint of anger in his voice.
"Sorry," Blaine replied as he took off his coat and hung it on the stand next to the door. "The guys and I got caught up and lost track of the time." He sat down on the couch across from Kurt, his eyes still shining brightly with the light of a post-performance high. "The crowd was just so awesome, though. They loved us, Kurt. When I started singing-"
They always love you, Kurt thought bitterly. "Great. That's great, Blaine," Kurt interrupted, closing his laptop and setting it on the table. "Well, now that you're home, I'm going to bed." Kurt stood and walked toward the small hallway that led to the bedrooms.
Blaine's face fell. "Kurt—" Kurt paused in the doorway and looked back. Blaine was making one of his eager, adorable puppy faces, which Kurt always found hard to resist. "Come on, can't we talk for a little while? I feel like I never get to see you anymore."
"Well, maybe if you started getting home before 2 AM, we could spend more time together. But unlike you, I have a regular job, and I'd like to try to get at least a little sleep before work. The baby monitor's in the corner."
Blaine sighed as Kurt left the room, then reached for the baby monitor to turn down the volume. Kurt always kept it so high in case he dozed off. A few months earlier, Blaine had woken to the sounds of their daughter's soft cries, and had easily rocked Olivia back to sleep. When he mentioned it to Kurt the next morning, Kurt had been horrified that he had slept through it, and since then had refused to go to bed until Blaine, the lighter sleeper, got home.
Blaine was too awake to go to bed yet. Performing with his band always gave him too much energy. He used to work it off with Kurt when he got home, but lately there hadn't been any of that. Tucking the baby monitor in his pocket, he walked down the hallway. The door to the master bedroom was cracked open, but Blaine could see that the light was already off. Blaine instead turned into the door to his left, where their daughter was peacefully sleeping in her crib. A shaft of moonlight coming through the small window illuminated her face, which looked angelic in sleep. Blaine leaned down and kissed their daughter gently on the cheek, then sat down in the small rocking chair in front of the window.
As he rocked gently and listened to the quiet, steady breathing of their sleeping daughter, Blaine's eyes wandered the room, catching on the framed picture on the dresser. In it, he and Kurt beamed at the camera, while their newly adopted daughter slept in Kurt's arms. Had it really been only six months ago that Rachel had taken that picture of them bringing home their newborn baby from the hospital? It seemed like years had passed. Six months ago, Blaine had just gotten a big break in a tiny, independent off-Broadway production, and Kurt, who was working as a high school drama teacher at a nearby prep school, had just finished his first musical and was planning on finding an agent to send it to production companies. Since then, the little production had run out of funding and the play had been cancelled, so Blaine was back to just working occasional gigs with his band, while Kurt hadn't even been able to find an agent who was willing to read his musical.
Blaine could tell Kurt was unhappy. This wasn't what either of them had dreamed of back in Ohio. By age 30, both of them were going to be wildly successful artists, performing on the stage every night and living the lives of stars. Instead, they were living in a tiny apartment, on a fairly tight budget, just two more struggling artists in a city full of people just like them, with big dreams and small chances.
Blaine sighed and looked back at his sleeping daughter. They had saved for years to get to this point, and finally they had felt they were ready to adopt. Although he wasn't making waves in the performance world, Blaine was satisfied with his life. At the end of the day, his husband and his daughter were all he needed to be happy. If only he could get Kurt to open up to him…