A/N: Kurt, Sebastian, and their son Thomas are gathered in the living room, carving faces into their pumpkins. Humorous conversation and fluff ensues xD
Written for the Kurtoberfest prompt 'pumpkins'. Rated T for language.
A straight cut here. A curved slice there. A poke and a prod and a pluck. The entire Hummel-Smythe family, dog included, ruminates over their pumpkins as they create the trio of terrifying monsters that will adorn the front porch. Kurt, using a template that he found on the Internet, has decided to go with an image that is both aesthetically grotesque as well as psychologically horrifying – Donald Trump. He plans on placing it underneath the Hillary Clinton for President sign they've had up since the primaries, with a "bloody" hatchet sticking into its orange flesh at the top.
For flair, he told his husband when Sebastian raised an eyebrow at Kurt's idea.
Kurt also plans on keeping his pumpkin outside until it decays into a rotting, festering pile of moldy slop…and then set it on fire.
His own form of political protest.
Thomas hasn't revealed the identity of his pumpkin face yet, nor shown a single inch of it to his parents, only to his dog, consulting with the animal over eye placement and (from what Kurt can tell during a hushed conversation) the shape of the teeth. Otherwise, Thomas sits hunched over with his pumpkin propped between his legs, concentrating hard on the face emerging beneath the safety blade of his neon green pumpkin cutter. Sitting in a clumsy triangle, dad, dad, and son are all hard at work on their masterpieces. But in the quiet of their newspaper covered living room, Thomas can't shake the feeling that he's being watched.
They don't live in a creepy house. A big house, but not a creepy one. Thomas has never felt anything but completely safe living there with his dads. But still, he has an uncanny feeling, a cold tickle at the base of his neck that tells him that someone, or something, is paying a whole lot of attention to him right now.
He looks at his dog Hepburn, lying beside him on the floor, gaze aimed up the way it always is to keep an eye on his boy, but that's not the attention Thomas feels. He lifts his head slowly…slowly…eyes peeking up last in fear of what he may see…and jumps at two sets of eyes staring back at him.
"Ah! Daddy!" Thomas giggles. "Papa! You're not supposed to be peeking!"
"We can't help it!" Kurt says. "You've been so serious over there for the past half-an-hour. We're curious!"
"Yeah! Show us, Thomas!" Sebastian pipes in, tickling his son under the arms.
"Yes! Show us your scary pumpkin face!"
"Wait a second! Wait a second!" Thomas says, quickly putting the final touches on his pumpkin. "I'm not done with it yet!"
"Well, hurry up!" Sebastian urges. "We're impatient men!"
Thomas bounces up and down on his seat in his excitement. "Okay, okay! I'm done! On the count of three."
"One…" Kurt counts.
"Two…" Sebastian picks up.
"Three!" Thomas cheers, turning his pumpkin so his fathers can see. The roughly carved façade of a nondescript ghoulish face stares back at them. One side of the pumpkin is almost gone, the remaining 20% unequal eyes and mismatched teeth, a few stray slices left where they shouldn't be, but still the most gallant effort by a six-year-old that Kurt has ever seen (in his totally biased opinion).
"That is super scary!" Sebastian says, pretending to shiver when Thomas growls for added affect. "Good job, kiddo."
"You think so?" Thomas asks, growling again so his dads can make an informed decision.
"Absolutely. It's excellent." Kurt pulls the boy into his lap and gives him a squeeze. "You did an amazing job."
"Thank you, thank you," Thomas says with two little bows, and Sebastian grins. Thomas gets that from Kurt. Thomas smiles proudly from Kurt to Sebastian, then grimaces when his gaze falls on Sebastian's pumpkin.
"Uh…what are you making, Daddy?"
Kurt takes his first glance at Sebastian's pumpkin, scrunching his nose at the mangled gourd sitting in front of his husband. Kurt tilts his head one way, and the combination of cuts and chunks taken out seem to want to be a mummy…type thing. He tilts his head the opposite way, and it looks more like a bruised honeydew melon. "Yeah. What is your pumpkin face supposed to be, Bas?"
"Originally I wanted to do something traditional," Sebastian says, plucking out a perfectly crosshatched piece that Kurt is sure turned out that way by accident. "You know - triangle eyes, circle nose. The stereotypical Jack-O-Lantern. But then I got to thinking…" Sebastian pauses, framing his pumpkin's face with his hands as if he's carefully mapping out his next slice.
"Yes," Kurt says, knowing that his husband is stalling on purpose, "go on. What were you thinking?"
"Well, I was thinking how cool would it be if I didn't just carve the face of one monster, but all the monsters! You know, the ghost over the wolf man over a vampire and then over Frankenstein. You know, like a tur-duck-hen. That way, my pumpkin wouldn't just be one kind of scary. It would be all kinds of scary."
"Wow!" Thomas looks at his father's pumpkin with the wide eyes of ultimate awe. "That's so cool!"
"Thank you, Thomas," Sebastian says with a superior sniff. "I thought so, too."
"Why don't you go clean up and get ready for bed, Tom-Tom." Kurt stands the boy up and pats his bottom. "And when you get back, we'll find a candle for you pumpkin."
"Yes! Okay. Come on, Hepburn." Thomas grabs his dog's collar and tugs once to get him to stand. Then boy and dog run along to their bedroom.
Kurt waits till his son is out of earshot, then he scoots closer to his husband. He peeks over at Sebastian's pumpkin and smirks, the scent of bullshit from Sebastian's explanation lingering in the air. "You have no idea what you're making, do you?"
Sebastian makes another crude slice and tugs, popping a hard won piece out and unintentionally flipping pumpkin guts across the room. "No. No, I do not."