A/N: Here's a little Burt and Carol time. I just love them both!
Enjoy and let me know what you think :)
The next day Carol was off from work, so I decided to come home during lunch to surprise her. I opened the front door and walked into the living room. I was met with the sound of sniffling. I found Carol on the couch with a glass of wine and the photo albums from last night.
"What's wrong babe?" I asked her while sitting down next to her on the couch. When I saw the wine bottle was almost empty, I took the glass out of her hand and moved it to the coffee table.
"Our babies are all grown up and are going to be leaving us soon…" She said through tears, while hugging a stack of photos to her chest. "All three of my babies are going to leave me!"
I looked more closely at the pictures she was holding. She had a few pictures of Finn as a baby, a few of both Kurt and Blaine as little kids, and the silver frame she had gotten for Christmas that said 'Mom' and had all three of them in. I was amazed she was crying over all three of them and not just Finn. I know she's a great mom and treated them all equally, but now I really knew that she saw all three of them as her sons, equally.
Normally, Carol wasn't a crier, which is one of the many things I love about her, but after an entire bottle of wine the waterworks started. On a few other occasions, Carol had a bit too much to drink and got a little weepy, but this was by far the worst. I guess after those home videos yesterday, today she was a little more emotional.
"How about I make you some coffee and we can watch some more home movies before the boys get home?" I asked her as I got up to head to the kitchen to make some coffee. If Carol didn't sober up, the boys would get home from school to find a drunken Carol in the middle of the afternoon. Once the coffee was finished I brought two cups in and handed one to Carol. I put in a video of Finn from when he was little. She was still crying, but at least now she was slightly calmer. One video was of Finn singing in his bedroom while dressed as a cowboy, which complemented his cowboy wall paper perfectly.
"Finn cried and cried until I got that cowboy wallpaper." Carol said through her tears. "He actually threw a tantrum right in the middle of the store. I finally bought it just so he would calm down. He didn't ask for much over the years, so I figured something nice once in a while would be ok. It took hours to hang. And I didn't even realize one of the panels was upside down until it was finished. We just left it like that." Finally, she was starting to laugh a little.
"Well we had a similar fight over the color of Kurt's room when he was little. First he wanted pink with a unicorn boarder. He cried and cried, but I kept trying to talk him out of the pink. He didn't talk to me for a week straight. I finally talked him into blue, but he needed a very specific color. We had to bring a doll and a movie poster with us so we could match the exact blue of Prince Eric's eyes from The Little Mermaid. Once I finished painting his room and Elizabeth finished decorating it with different Disney movie posters, Kurt thanked me for painting his pretty room. Then he told me he was going to marry Prince Eric one day, so it was good his room was already painted to match his eyes." I said.
"Oh my god! That's too funny!" Carol said as she started to get up. She walked over to the shelves of DVDs and pulled out The Little Mermaid. She handed me the case before speaking again. "Take a good look at Prince Eric. Who do you see?"
I looked at the cover for a minute before it finally clicked. The eyes were the only thing throwing me off.
"Whoa! He was right! He is going to marry Prince Eric!" With the exception of hazel instead of blue eyes, Blaine was a dead ringer for Prince Eric. Even down to the gelled back hair. We spent the next ten minutes laughing hysterically until we could finally talk again. I put the pictures and videos away while Carol went into the kitchen to bake some cookies for when the boys got home from school. The cookies were just coming out of the oven when the boys walked in the door. Blaine and Finn went right to the cookie sheets that were cooling on top of the oven. There were suddenly equal yells as they simultaneously burned their hands on the hot cookies. Blaine ran to the sink to run his hand under cold water while Finn opened the freezer and stuck his hand inside. Meanwhile, Kurt grabbed a cookie off the tray and ate it. He wasn't big on sweets (since "they go right to your hips"), but he really enjoyed taunting both Finn and Blaine.
"How can you just pick up that cookie? They are boiling hot!" Blaine said while grabbing an ice pack from the freezer for his burned hand.
"I have asbestos fingers." Kurt responded calmly, while doing 'jazz hands'. "From cooking so much. Maybe if you two actually cooked when it was your turn, you'd be able to have a cookie now!" There was a chore chart and each boy had one night a week that they were responsible for dinner. Both Finn and Blaine tended to pawn their cooking nights off on Kurt. He usually didn't mind since he liked cooking. I know that Finn always traded Kurt cooking and laundry duties for outdoor jobs. Kurt refused to shovel snow or mow the grass. Conveniently enough Finn loved those jobs almost as much as he hated cooking and laundry. After the first few nights of "Blaine Surprise", Kurt learned not to let Blaine cook. "Blaine Surprise" was basically any ingredients or leftovers that were in the fridge all thrown together. We suffered through the first night to save his feelings, but the second and third time we gave up and ordered pizza or Chinese. Since then, Kurt had always cooked on Blaine's night. Blaine didn't get any extra chores from Kurt, but I didn't ask what he traded because, honestly, I was afraid of the answer. But I was pretty sure there was some sort of illegal sex trade going on in my house.
I wanted to change the subject before a fight broke out, since it was bound to happen whenever chores were discussed.
"So! Who has plans for tomorrow night?" Carol asked in an excited voice as she clapped he hands together.
"What's tomorrow night?" Finn and Blaine both asked me at the same time. Kurt smacked the back of Blaine's head, and then stormed out of the room with a glare on his face. Blaine had a dumbstruck look on his face, which matched Finn's pretty well. Carol took pity on them and decided to tell them so they could try and make a last ditch attempt at salvaging the evening.
"Tomorrow is Valentine's Day." She said.
"Oh shit!" Blaine shouted, while smacking his head against the wall repeatedly.
"Language!" Carol said while she smacked him on top of the head with the spatula she was still holding from the cookies.
"Why don't you call around and try to see if any restaurants have any reservations left? But before you do that, stop hitting my wall with your head. If you want to damage your brain, go use the sidewalk. I just painted that wall; I don't need you getting gel all over it." I told Blaine while handing him the phone to call some restaurants. Blaine went upstairs to his room and closed the door so he could attempt to salvage Valentine's Day.
"So Finn, who's the lucky lady you'll be taking out tomorrow evening?" I purposely didn't say 'lucky ladies' since I overheard Santana verbally castrate Finn when he asked her about the threesome.
"I was supposed to be with Rachel. We got back together the day after the camping trip. But then she saw a hickey on my neck and started yelling at me since she thought that meant Quinn went on the camping trip with us. I told her it was from Blaine, but she just called me a liar and kicked me out." He said. I had almost forgotten about that fiasco during the camping trip.
"Why don't you invite her over to join us tonight for dinner? I can tell her you were telling the truth." Carol offered. I was impressed. I know she wasn't a fan of Rachel Berry, but after Quinn, she probably would have accepted anyone Finn brought home.
"You should also make plans for tomorrow night. I don't care if it's with Rachel, Quinn or even Puck, I want all three of you boys out of the house until at least 11pm. It's a Friday, so feel free to sleep over somewhere." I said, staking my claim on the house. Between hectic work schedules and three boys, Carol and I hardly got time alone. Today we should have had some time, but Carol spent it drinking and crying over baby pictures. "Why don't you go upstairs and find somewhere you can take someone. Let Blaine know that they have to be out of the house tomorrow night too."
When I finished talking, Finn stalked upstairs. I heard him stop in Blaine's room, then go to his own to try and find a date and a place to bring her.
Later on that night we were enjoying vegetarian lasagna and garlic bread, all prepared by Kurt. Rachel agreed to come to dinner (hence the depressing lack of meat in my lasagna), and after both Carol and I told her about the incident with Blaine, she finally believed us. All it took was one comment about the hickey for Blaine to excuse himself, grab an extra serving of dinner and run up to his room for the rest of the meal. No matter how embarrassed he was, he wasn't willing to miss out on Kurt's cooking. Speaking of our chef, Kurt was still mad that Blaine forget tomorrow was Valentine's Day. He finally told me he had made reservations months ago. He wasn't worried about that, what he was mad about was that Blaine had completely forgotten.
Once Rachel left, after agreeing to going out with Finn tomorrow, I went up to tell Blaine he didn't have to worry about making plans. He was glad, since he called a bunch of restaurants without finding a single one with an open table. He did manage to plan something fun. He wanted to run it by me first, but I was more than happy to agree to it. He had convinced Brittany to host a glee club Valentine's party. After all the couples went to their individual dates, they would meet at Brittany's house for a sleepover. This fit my plans perfectly, since it meant all three boys would be gone until Saturday morning, and Carol and I would have the house to ourselves.
"OK Blaine, I have one ground rule for you. I don't care what you two get up to, but whatever you do, do NOT get kicked out. If you do, you're sleeping in your car. I'm locking the door and not letting any of you boys back until the morning. Got it?" I said. He nodded his head, clearly a little to nervous to speak. I may have yelled the last part there…
Luckily, my plan worked. I threatened everyone just enough to keep them from getting into too much trouble. Carol and I were able to have a relaxing dinner at home, followed by a movie we really didn't watch and an evening of uninterrupted alone time.
The next day, the boys returned around lunch time. Kurt and Blaine were talking once again, and Finn had made it through the night without making Rachel mad. This time he actually seemed pretty happy with her. All in all, I'd say we survived yet another holiday.