The Joys of Parenthood

Disclaimer: I'm not RIB, so I don't own Glee or any of the characters. If I did, I'd be rich and probably not writing fanfiction! This chapter has nothing to do with MPREG, but it does concern Daddy!Klaine so yay! Anyway, I own nothing. It's an earlier part of the daddy!Klaine verse that I posted (it's chapter one of this fic!)

"It's too quiet."

"What do you mean?"

"We put Annie down for a nap a half an hour ago. Usually she's not this quiet. It's strange." Kurt pushed his magazine to the side and reached over for the baby monitor that they kept sitting on the coffee table for these very moments. He clicked the on button, eyes widening when he noticed that the crib onscreen was completely empty, their daughter no where to be found. "Oh my god."

"What? Kurt, what is it?"

"Annie's not in her crib!"

"What?"

"Oh my god." Scrambling, Kurt dropped the monitor on the couch beside his discarded magazine, rushing down the hall with Blaine hot on his heels. He knew it was crazy to think it, but the fear that someone could've crawled into a partially open window in their apartment and stole their child right out of her crib was something that haunted Kurt daily. He knew it was practically impossible; they lived so far up as it was and the kidnapper would have to be a fucking superhero to get up that high, but he still thought it, especially since he'd heard enough about baby kidnappings over the last decade or so. "Annie? Honey, where are you?"

Silence met his ears and his stomach turned again, the fear racing through his veins prompting him to pick up the pace in his search for his missing daughter. Blaine was running through another part of the flat; his footfalls scattered as Kurt scoured the nursery for a hint of where Annie could've gone. He was in the midst of throwing open her closet door when a cackle of laughter burst from down the hall. "Blaine?! Honey, where are you?"

More choking laughter sounded, Blaine's voice struggling to form words as he kept on giggling, his voice strained from the action. "Kurt- oh god, Kurt- Annie! She's- god!"

Still terrified, Kurt rushed back down the hall towards their bedroom, skidding to a halt next to his doubled-over husband, Blaine hunched over as tears ran down his face from laughing too hard. There, sitting on the floor in the pink bunny pajama set Kurt had dressed her in over an hour ago, was Annie, her dark eyes staring up at them, crinkled in the corner as she scrunched her nose up in an adorable smile.

That wasn't what had Blaine laughing though; in fact, it was what she had in her hands and on her head that had Kurt's husband struggling to breathe through his chuckles. Annie was sitting before them, tiny hands deep in a (now empty) container of Vaseline, the jelly coating her arms all the way up to her elbows (how the hell she managed that Kurt would never know) and - the most horrifying of it all - her wavy dark hair was slicked back, shiny and wet with thick layers of petroleum goo spread through it.

"Oh my god, Annie, no."

"Annie cute! Annie dada!" She raised her gunked up hand, pointing a sticky finger at Blaine as her grin grew a mile wider.

"Oh for the love of god! Blaine! This is your fault!"

Blaine, who was in the process of wiping the tears away from his eyes, looked up, his already beaming smile growing as he shook his head and broke down again, his laughter filling the room along with Annie's as she giggled over the fact that her daddy was losing his mind over something she did.

"Annie cute!" She repeated, clapping her hands, sending small bits of jelly across the room and onto their bedroom carpet.

"Oh my god. Oh my god, how are we going to clean this up? Blaine, quit laughing!"

"Kurt-" Blaine started, wheezing through his giggles. "God, honey- how are you not laughing? Oh my god, this is priceless. You should go get your phone so we can send this to your dad! He'll cry." Kurt glared at him, really glared before a small smile broke out on his face as he looked at his husband's gelled down hair and then over at his daughter whose hairstyle now eerily matched her daddy's.

"You're a bad influence on our children. I swear to god, Blaine, you are going to clean this up."

"It's not my fault she wanted to style her hair like daddy's. Isn't it, sweetheart? It's not daddy's fault."

Annie looked up at the two, her dark eyes flicking between the two of them before she smiled again, showing off the tiny teeth she had coming in. At her smile, Kurt felt his slight anger over the goofy situation start to ebb away and he smiled too, disappearing from the room for a second to grab his phone before he came back to find Blaine kneeling on the floor with Annie slicking her Vaseline coated fingers through his hair too.

"Blaine!"

"What? My hair doesn't look as good as hers!"

"It's going to take us years to get that crap out of her hair - she used the whole jar, Blaine - and now we're gonna have to do yours too!" Rolling his eyes, Kurt snapped a few photos of his grinning loves to send to his dad, Carole, and whoever else he felt like amusing that day. Once that was done, he plopped down on the floor next to his husband and daughter, shaking his head in amusement as they both grinned up at him with jelly coated heads and matching goofy grins. "This is my life," he mused to himself, struggling not to grimace when Annie crawled across the floor and put her grimy hands on his clothes to stand up and give him a wet kiss on the cheek. Her goo covered fingers slapped against his cheek as she steadied herself against him and Blaine leaned in too, kissing the side of Kurt's head before he rested his cheek on Kurt's shoulder, his own slimy hair brushing against Kurt's jawline.

"This is the best life." Blaine whispered in response and Annie giggled when Kurt scrunched his nose, nodding in answer to Blaine's comment.

"That it is. It's crazy, but it's the best."

A/N: As a toddler, I thought gelling your hair consisted of finding whatever looked like gel and sticking it in your hair. One day my mom came in the bathroom and found me smearing a whole jar of Vaseline throughout my hair. It took several washes with liquid dishwashing detergent to get the blasted stuff out. I've never lived it down. Anyway, hanging out with my family this weekend brought this story back up and I decided to turn it into a Klaine fic. So here we are!