A/N: Hi! I'm sorry it's been a while, but I have seriously problems with long-lasting writer's block, and…yeah, I don't have any other excuses. Sorry. I'm writing this while eating a ham and tomato toastie and watching Torchwood, so expect inspiration!
Warnings for a couple of homophobic slurs, which I hated writing, but I needed them for the story.
I don't own Glee, and please review! Or, you know, PM me. Even if you just want a chat, I don't have much going on, so I'd be happy to talk about whatever. Xx
"Something's wrong with Lucy." I was up and out of my seat a second after Kurt saying that, searching his face for signs of worry.
"What, what is it?" I asked, trying not to shake him by the shoulders to get him to spill. He took a step back, his face still not looking upset.
"I didn't mean it like that, I promise." He said soothingly. "I only meant she needs some new clothes." I gaped at him.
"You can't do that, Kurt! I was completely freaking out there!" I protested. Lucy was upstairs having a nap, and I hadn't heard anything on the baby monitor, but that didn't mean I wasn't suddenly worried shitless about her.
"I'm sorry." He answered, and did look a bit guilty, so I didn't press him.
"What's wrong, then?" I asked, sitting back down. He sighed dramatically, and I realised that this was a Kurt-problem, not a normal problem. A Kurt-problem usually involved fashion. And sure enough-
"It's her clothes." He said, flopping down on the sofa next to me. I rolled my eyes.
"What about them?" I asked, not really paying attention and looking back at the sports pages I was reading.
"They don't fit her, Finn." He said, sounding exasperated (thank you word-of-the-day toilet paper). I looked at him, and thought back to that morning, when I had been getting her dressed. It had been pretty difficult to get her legs into her onsie that morning.
"Oh." I said, frowning. "Ok, well what do we do about it?" He just looked at me, and then I dawned on me. "We have to go shopping, don't we?" I gulped, and he nodded.
"Yep!" He said happily, and I groaned. Normally I wouldn't have a problem, but shopping with Kurt was much more of a big deal. He had plans, and helpers, and strategies. It was like going into battle with the Gap.
When I said Kurt had 'helpers', I meant it. Two days later, the entire of New Directions met up at the mall, me and Kurt with Lucy. As we pulled up in the car park, I asked him a question.
"Why did you invite everyone here?" I asked as we got out of the car and I went around to unbuckle Lucy from her car seat. He rolled his eyes, again, as if he'd said it before. Which he probably had, but he talked a lot, and sometimes it was difficult to remember everything.
"Because we want some of them to be involved with her life for quite a while, right?" He said and I nodded. We'd even thought about making some of them godparents. "Well, then they should be involved in some of the stuff we do with her, even the little things." That made sense, I thought, then smiled as he added "plus, I need the girls' advice on what to get her. No niece of mine is ever going to be badly dressed."
We met up with the others in the food court, and decided to have lunch before we did anything else. At first when I'd had Lucy with me whenever we hung out, I'd been worried that my friends would get sick of her, but she had all of us wrapped around her adorable little fingers in no time. And not just me, Kurt and the girls: Puck had formed some sort of bond with her. She loved him, and whenever she was around, she didn't want to sit with anyone else.
"So, where are we going to go first?" I heard Kurt ask, and looked over to my right where he was sitting, notepad and pen in hand.
"The Gap has a great baby range." Tina said, and Kurt glared at her.
"The day I dress my niece in clothes from the Gap, will be the day when Puck turns up to school in a dress." He said, and I laughed, before frowning.
"But Kurt, the Gap is cheap; we can't buy her Mick Jacobs stuff. I don't even know where you get it all." I said reasonably. Kurt sighed.
"I suppose not. And it's Mark Jacobs, Finn." Kurt said. I noticed that he hadn't answered the question of where he had got his expensive clothes, and I thought that maybe it was one of those questions that you didn't want to know the answer to. Like 'why do you smell weird?' or 'what's menopause?' I definitely regretted asking that.
As I dug through the bag with all of Lucy's things in it to look for her bottle, I saw three men walking towards us. They looked like they were in about their thirties, and I wouldn't have noticed them except that they were all looking at us. Actually, they were all looking at Kurt, who had taken Lucy from Puck so that he could put her bib on before she had her bottle. I nudged him.
"Hey, do you know those guys?" I asked and he glanced over. His face lost the happy smile he usually had when he was around Lucy, and he looked worried instead.
"Uh, yeah." He said quietly. "They work at Collins's." I frowned, but before I could ask him what was wrong, the guys had reached our table and were looking scornfully down at Lucy and Kurt.
"Well, well, well." Said the one in the middle, who was taller and musclier than the others. "Look who we have here." Kurt closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, before handing me Lucy and standing up to face them.
"Can I help you guys?" He said in the tone I knew he always used when he was talking to his bullies at school. I hated how familiar it was.
"We were just wondering if your friends here" the big one said "knew that they were talking to a fairy. They might want to leave you alone to be disgusting, so they don't catch the gay." I jumped up out of my seat so fast that my chair skidded back and hit the table behind us. A few others did the same.
"Excuse me?" Mercedes gasped.
"You can't talk to him like that." Santana moved to stand next to Kurt and doing her 'I'm from Lima Heights, fear me' voice. I took a step forwards too.
"You need to leave." I said quietly, right up in the ringleader's face. "Otherwise this could get very ugly." They just laughed. I supposed that with my baby, baby sling and sick-up stained t-shirt, it would be difficult to take me seriously. I handed Lucy to Mercedes and moved towards them, but Kurt grabbed my shoulder and stood in front of me.
"Can you guys just leave us alone, please?" He said to the men, but they just laughed.
"I think they'll be the ones that want to be left alone, now they know your dirty little secret." The one in the middle said, and the men backing him up laughed like a pair of jocks at school.
"For you information, we already know Kurt is gay." Santana said angrily, stepping up beside Kurt and resting a hand on his shoulder. "And we seriously don't care. Now you had better go away and take your ignorant opinions with you, afore I ends you." She had gone full out Lima Heights by then, and they looked slightly scared (which did nothing for my ego).
"Alright." The man held up his hands and laughed a bit. He sounded nervous. "We'll leave you. Be careful, though. All that faggy influence could make that baby even uglier than it already is." Everyone gasped, and Santana spluttered, for once lost for words. But I saw red, and pushed everyone out of the way, launching myself at the man who just insulted my brother and my baby in one sentence, making me more angry than I had been in I don't know how long.
"You don't talk about my family like that." I yelled, tackling him to the ground and beginning to punch him, pinning one of his arms to the ground. The other one waved above him, trying to fend me off, but my anger was pumping me full of adrenaline and I barely even noticed. Several of the girls screamed, and I heard Kurt telling me to stop, it wasn't worth it. But I didn't care, he had to pay for what he'd just said. I hit the jerk over and over again, before I felt myself being lifted off him by a security guard. As much as I'd wanted to hurt him properly, the guy really was huge, so I didn't think he'd have more than a black eye and some bruised ribs. The guy ran away before anything could be said, and I was dragged away by the security guards who had run over when they heard shouting. Lucy began to cry behind me, but I didn't say anything, didn't look at my friends as I was taken off, even though I was dying to turn around and hold her. I knew Kurt would handle it. It embarrassed me at how easily I'd flown off the handle: I was a father, I should have more self-control.
After I'd been in the cell (which looked exactly like they did on TV) for about ten minutes, next to a boy of about the same age as me who didn't say anything and looked high, Kurt came in. He was pushing Lucy in her buggy, and she'd fallen asleep clutching a light pink bunny rabbit toy that Rachel had surprised us with when we got there. I got up gratefully as he spoke to the security guard who was on duty; meaning he watched a small TV on the wall with his feet up on the desk and eating pizza.
"I'm here for Finn Hudson, I'm his brother." He said and the man sighed, getting up and opening the door to let me out after Kurt had handed him a wad of money he'd had to drive home to get.
"Thank you." Kurt said and the man grunted, going back to his TV and pizza. Kurt led me out of the mall jail, not saying a word and I noticed that our friends had left the table we were at before. Once we were outside, he sat down on a bench, gently lifting up Lucy (who had begun to sniffle) and giving her to me along with her bottle.
"Hey, baby girl." I said quietly, rocking her from side to side and tipping her bottle up so she could drink. She calmed down and sucked happily, her eyes looking up at me with a look that made me think she knew I had been in trouble. Kurt turned to me with a serious face.
"Finn, we need to talk about this." He said seriously, but I just shrugged.
"There's nothing to talk about." I replied. "He insulted my family, I reacted. Simple." Kurt frowned.
"You can't just launch yourself at everyone who insults me or Lucy. You're a slightly chubby-"
"Hey!" I protested.
"It's just the truth." He shrugged. "Anyway, you're a slightly chubby seventeen year old boy, with a very obviously gay brother and a baby. You're going to get insulted, you're going to get people judging you, and you need to accept that and learn not to react." I gaped at him.
"It's not that easy." I said in an attempt to defend myself. "I can't just sit back and let those things be said, I have to do something. Otherwise they'll just do it again."
"The only way to get them to stop is to ignore them and pretend that it doesn't get to you." Kurt reasoned, fiddling with Lucy's bag, which was hanging off the side of the buggy.
"And how's that worked for you so far?" I asked harshly. He looked away, biting his lip, and I immediately felt guilty.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that." I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I promise I'll try, ok?" He shrugged me off, and stood up, pushing Lucy's buggy to the car. Once we were about to set off for home, I remembered something.
"Wait, you said those thugs were from Collins's?" I asked him as I started the engine. He nodded slightly, twiddling the tuning dials to find a good radio station. "They don't act like that when you're at work, do they?" He stiffened at my question, and paused before nodding again. "That's awful!" I exclaimed, before lowering my voice so I didn't wake Lucy up again. "I'm pretty sure we could sue, or something."
"I doubt it; they haven't physically hurt me. It's just not a big deal; you need to let it go, please." He muttered.
"No!" I was shocked. How could he be acting so calmly?
"Kurt, I don't understand why you're being this way, why do you want to stay at a place where people insult you?" I pushed for an answer.
"Because we need the money!" He exclaimed. "Lucy is more important than me, and I'll be damned if she's going to want for anything in her life, just because I can't take an insult!" I gazed at him, before a car behind us hooted and I set off again. I drove for almost a full minute without saying anything, until there was a turning which I took and pulled over. I turned off the engine and turned to face him.
"Kurt, you cannot go on working there." I said firmly. "I don't care how much we need the money for Lucy; as long as she's got a roof over her head and people who love her, she's fine. And we have all that without you being harassed unnecessarily at work. You are going to quit that job, and find somewhere else to work, because you are my brother and I love you too much to let you get hurt." Kurt stared at me for ages after I said that, then dropped his head and muttered "all right." I sighed in relief, then set off again.
When we got back to the house, Mom and Burt were waiting to yell at me. Apparently, Kurt had run in, yelled "Finn got arrested", grabbed his dad's wallet and left again. It took us almost twenty minutes to calm them down enough to explain what had happened, and then they spent another fifteen telling me off for losing my cool. They said "there is never an excuse for violence" and "you need to set a good example to Lucy". I sat and listened and nodded, and when they said that I was grounded for anything that didn't involve Lucy, I agreed and accepted my punishment. Soon they let me go upstairs to where Kurt had taken Lucy to get away from the yelling, and I walked in just as Kurt was hanging up the phone.
"Well, I did it." He said with a sigh.
"Did what?" I asked, sitting down on the floor where Lucy was gurgling and batting at a mobile that hung above the sheepskin blanket she was lying on.
"Quit my job." Kurt replied. I grinned at that, pulling him into a hug.
"That's great!" I said as he pulled away, fussing with his hair- which I totally didn't deliberately mess up.
"Is it, though?" He asked, looking sadly down at where Lucy was playing.
"Yes, it is." I said seriously, and when he shook his head, I grabbed his arm and made him look at me. "Please don't think for a moment that you are any less important than Lucy. I know you love her, and I am so, so glad she has someone as brilliant as you to be there for her, but you have to remember that you don't have to sacrifice everything for her like I do. She doesn't need an uncle who doesn't stand up for himself; she needs and uncle who will show her that's ok to be whoever, and how to wear that with pride." He stared at me for ages- again- and then hugged me.
"You would make a wonderful motivational speaker, Finn." He said and I grinned.
"Pep talks kind of come hand in hand with being quarterback." I said.
"Are you going to remain the quarterback when we get back to school?" He asked, and I frowned.
"I guess it's going to be kind of hard to keep up with school, glee and football, now I've got Lucy." I said, absently reaching over and tickling Lucy's tummy, making her giggle adorably. "I hadn't really thought about it." Kurt shrugged.
"I'm sure you'll find a way of making it work." He said, and I smiled happy to see he was trying to boost my spirits.
That evening at dinner, before Kurt had the opportunity to mention that he had quit, Burt sat down and fixed the table with an angry expression.
"What's wrong?" Mom asked him. He muttered something. "What?" She asked, rubbing his shoulders.
"I had to fire one of the part-time mechanics, he was stealing from us." He said angrily, and we all gasped.
"Seriously?" I said, glancing over at Kurt. I think we were thinking the same thing: Kurt could take that job.
"Yeah. And I've got no idea where I'm going to find someone to replace him; he had a pretty skilled job." Burt sighed, taking grateful sip of the beer Mom gave him. "Shame you took that Collins' job, Kurt, or you could have been working for your old man!" He chuckled to himself, but I cleared my throat.
"Actually, Burt…" I said, then let Kurt continue. It was his job after all.
Once Kurt had told his father what had happened, he looked a bit nervous. "So, can I come and work for you?" There was quiet while Burt thought.
"Why didn't you tell us what was going on at work, Kurt?" He asked eventually, looking sad.
"Because I needed to get the money for Lucy." He said with a shrug.
"Kurt-" Burt started.
"It's ok, Dad, Finn already gave me that talk." He said. There was more quiet, until Burt sighed and nodded.
"Why not? You'll have to do the usual tests to make sure you're up to it, but we all know you are." Burt said, and I cheered while Kurt got up to hug him.
A/N: Thanks for reading, and don't forget to review! Xx
