An old friend comes back into Kurt and Sebastian's lives. It turns into both a blessing and a curse.
Notes: A lot of people had wondered when we'd be seeing Blaine Anderson. Well, here he is ... Also, I wrote a similar story for another pairing. There are a lot of differences between the two, I promise :)
"Daddy! Papa! I have something I need to show you!" Thomas races full tilt thru the living room and into the kitchen, sliding across the linoleum in socked feet with Hepburn scrambling behind, stopping mere inches from his two dads preparing breakfast at the stove.
Well, Kurt is preparing breakfast. Sebastian is stealing bacon every time he thinks Kurt isn't paying attention.
Little does he realize Kurt has been keeping a mental tally, and has every intention of making his husband repay him for the pilfered pieces.
"Ten points!" Sebastian cheers between chews, offering his son a high-five.
"Sebastian! Don't encourage him!" Kurt scolds, stacking pancakes one by one onto a large serving plate. "Thomas! 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, Tom-Tom?" Sebastian asks while Kurt, cracking eggs into a bowl for scrambling, shudders. The last time Thomas said those words, he came bounding into their bedroom covered in head-to-toe mud, carrying something Kurt could only describe as furry, squeaky, and highly unamused.
Luckily, it wasn't rabid. In fact, it was microchipped, and belonged to their neighbor a few houses down.
"An EVP!" he announces proudly, holding up a silver digital recorder. "I was right! I told you! Our house is haunted!"
Eggs forgotten for the moment, Sebastian and Kurt turn to one another and share a look – Sebastian's of pure amusement, Kurt's of mild terror.
"Are you sure?" Sebastian asks.
"Oh, absolutely!" Thomas 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 new Uncle Blaine messaged me!"
"New Uncle Blaine," Kurt grumbles, and Sebastian snorts, almost shooting a piece of unchewed pork out his nose.
Blaine's return to their lives has been an interesting development. After Kurt and Sebastian's run-in at Vogue with Kurt's now ex-intern, Sebastian hopped on his cell phone and spent the remainder of that afternoon talking to Blaine Anderson for the first time in years. Apologies were made from Sebastian to Blaine, and then from Blaine to Kurt, and after an hour long cry session, they invited Blaine out for the weekend to bury the hatchet yet again and meet Thomas. It was strange, and mildly surreal, how he was able to fit into the life that Sebastian and Kurt have made for themselves. Kurt always thought reuniting with Blaine would be awkward, even painful, but it's been none of that. He's the same boy Kurt first met at Dalton, more so now with his flourishing career as a recording artist, but with none of the hang ups he had after they broke up. It's been nice having this new/retro version of Blaine around. It makes both Kurt and Sebastian feel like teenagers again.
Save for one thing …
When Blaine met Thomas, they hit it off immediately, probably because he brought chocolate chip cookies and regaled him with all the stories about his parents as teenagers that they had yet to divulge. While the three adults caught up, Kurt mentioned their recent summer vacay to the sunny California coast, and Blaine told a tale of how he recently recorded a video at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose – reportedly one of the most haunted houses in America.
Kurt had considered putting a kibosh on that conversation, considering how much anxiety Thomas had surrounding the subject of ghosts and death. Kurt's biggest fear was that it would churn up memories of Thomas's mother, and that he wouldn't sleep at night.
Oh, how naïve he was.
Thomas was far from frightened. He was fascinated.
And Blaine, the consummate performer, loved having a captivated audience.
He indulged, telling Thomas how, during his teenage years, he thought that their school, Dalton Academy, might have been haunted.
"I remember that!" Sebastian had leapt in unhelpfully. "Didn't people say there were cold spots in the common room at night?"
"A-ha," Blaine had said. "Lights flickered on and off, doors shut on their own, kids had feelings of dread in the AP Chem lab ..."
"That's probably because most kids couldn't pass AP Chem," Kurt had said, rolling his eyes.
"The teachers, too."
"Yeah, well, how would you feel teaching a bunch of kids who kept failing your class?"
Kurt is a skeptic. He feels everything people claim as evidence of hauntings 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 that a house – or a school - is haunted, no matter how old the place is.
Of course, three headmasters had died at Dalton. And Dalton Academy did burn down under suspicious circumstances. They rebuilt it after a full investigation, but they never could nail down the cause of the fire.
But from that moment on, Thomas was hooked, determined to find out whether or not their own house – one that had been around since the turn of the century – was haunted.
Sebastian puts a hand on his husband's shoulder and massages, but it's cold comfort.
He blames him just as much for Thomas's newest obsession as he does Blaine.
"Do you think maybe you can jump on this one?" Kurt asks while their son stands between them, arm outstretched, begging with poignant facial expressions for someone to ask him to press play. With any luck, he just recorded himself snoring, or talking in his sleep, something that would be easy to explain in a way that would neither frighten nor disappoint their inquisitive son. Kurt isn't a big fan of the whole ghost hunting thing, but he doesn't want to discourage his creative 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."
Sebastian 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 boy won't detect. But Sebastian can tell from the tone in Kurt's voice that the next time they see Blaine, he's in for an earful.
"Al-righty, then." Sebastian takes his son by the shoulder and steers him towards the living room. "Come along, Tom-Tom. Let's go have a listen."
"Yay!"
Kurt watches the two wander off into the living room. Once the door closes behind them, Kurt can't hear anything over the crackling of bacon (what's left of it). Good, he assures himself. Because he's absolutely not curious. If Thomas did find evidence of some long-dead prior owner's ghost in their house, and he doesn't believe for one minute he 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 Sebastian's renovated den-turned-rec room 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, Sebastian 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, he definitely caught something."
"W-was it Hepburn farting?" Kurt swallows hard. "Because I think his new diet might not be agreeing with him."
"No," Sebastian says somberly. "It's definitely not that. But it's thought provoking, to say the least."
The top of Kurt's 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 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 don't want to deal with ghosts, Sebastian! 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! Not with my history on the subject, and definitely not his!"
"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! 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 Aunt Annie roaming around the halls at night, cursing me to eternal damnation for not putting raisins in my rice pudding since everyone over the age of fifty thinks they belong there, and for violating the bed where her twelve blessed children were born with our heathenous ways?"
"Raisins? Heathenous? Wha-Kurt …" Sebastian snickers "… who the heck is Aunt Annie?"
"I don't know! It just sounded old tyme to me."
"Kurt, honey" - Sebastian 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 less complicated than you think."
"Wh-what … what do you mean less complicated? What happened in the living room!?"
"I listened to what he recorded, and I agreed it sounded ominous. Then I gave him $20 for it, and promised him an additional $20 if he 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 Sebastian 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, Sebastian swears he hears a snap. "Why would I want to listen to it!? I'm asking you specifically because I don't want to …!"
Sebastian 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 Thomas heard starts at over two hours in. Thomas goes to bed at 8, so that would make this around 10 something. Kurt and Sebastian would have still been up. But Kurt doesn't remember hearing anything.
The loudest noise on the recording is the soft inhale-exhale of their son sleeping, followed by rhythmic snuffling from Hepburn. 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 bucks well spent?" Sebastian asks, grinning like a goblin.
"Yes." Kurt clears 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," Sebastian growls, grabbing a healthy handful of his husband's left ass cheek and squeezing. "I think your noises are damn sexy. Besides, everyone thinks they sound weird when they hear themselves on tape."
"Did he happen to catch you on there?"
"Oh, yeah."
"And …?"
"Oh me?" Sebastian chuckles, snagging a plate for himself, and one for Thomas, camped out in the living room, waiting for his breakfast and imagining how he's going to spend his newfound wealth. "I sound amazing!"
"You know, if you tell Blaine about this, I'm going to kick you where the sun don't shine."
Sebastian laughs out loud. "Steel-plated chonies it is," he says, side stepping Kurt's foot and jogging the rest of the way.