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“Daddy?”
“Mmph…”
“Daddy, wake up.”
Blaine is awake. He woke at the first whispered syllable, which is just what his body does at the sound of his four-year-old daughter’s voice. But he keeps his eyes closed, because it’s early—Jesus Christ, it is early, his body can feel how early it is, and it’s Saturday, why is she—?
“DADDY, WAKE UP NOW.”
And then one of Blaine’s eyes opens and he has nothing to do with it; Stella’s little fingers are pushing his right eyelid up, forcing Blaine to look at the worried, yet adorably stern expression on her face. Her dark brown waves of hair are sleep-messy and her green nightgown is rumpled, but the hand on her hip, the determined, pursed pout, and that blue-eyed glare can’t be mistaken for anything other than authoritative.
“Daddy, Papa is sick and you have’ta get up RIGHT NOW.”
Stella lets go of Blaine’s eyelid once she sees that he’s awake, then pulls the covers off him as much as she can; it’s a rare thought, but Blaine is suddenly thankful that he and Kurt didn’t fool around last night before they went to sleep. And the only reason they didn’t is because Kurt was really tired and nursing a bad headache…
Blaine sighs, silently chastising himself for not noticing that Kurt was coming down with something. He sits up immediately, the rush of concern setting his body on edge even faster once he registers that Kurt’s side of the bed is cold. “I’m up, I’m up. Where’s Papa?”
“In the bathroom, come on! He threw up, it’s gross.” Stella runs into the hallway, where Blaine can see the light coming from the open bathroom door, and Blaine jogs after her. Now that she doesn’t have to get Blaine out of bed, her attitude leaves her; her voice goes soft again as she asks, “Papa?”
Blaine winces when he reaches the bathroom. Kurt looks like death warmed up, his face pale and sweaty and his lank hair falling over his forehead as he sits on his knees next to the toilet. He leans against the sink cabinet and musters a tiny smile for Stella as she inches closer. “Sorry if I woke you up, sweetheart. No, don’t come in here, it’s gross. I don’t want to get you sick.”
She backs up, wrapping her arms around Blaine’s legs as Blaine reflexively runs a hand over her hair to comfort her.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll be alright. It’s not that bad.”
“Papa, you have to eat soup to get better.”
“Are you going to make me some soup?” Kurt gives her a lopsided grin and glances up at Blaine, but then his laugh turns into a hacking cough, and Kurt squeezes his eyes shut as he leans over and spits into the toilet.
“I can’t touch the stove, Papa!”
Stella sounds so distressed about it—as if she would have started a pot already if it weren’t for that crucial flaw in her plan, as if Kurt should have known that was a silly question before he suggested it—that Blaine kneels down to her eye-level and pulls her towards him. “It’s okay, baby, you can help me make Papa some soup. We’ll take care of him together, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, looking determined.
“Can you wait for me in the kitchen while I get Papa back to bed?” Blaine glances over Stella’s shoulder, where Kurt is now shuddering and dry-heaving into the toilet again.
Stella nods and runs off, her bare feet pounding across the carpet.
Blaine walks on his knees into the bathroom just as Kurt finally sits on the floor, panting with his back against the wall and a hand over his face.
“I feel like complete fucking shit,” Kurt mutters, pouting at his husband. He’s woozy in that way that only the flu can make him, both sweaty and chilly, with his stomach in knots and his limbs weak with sickness. “Fucking flu or something is going around at work. I tried so hard not to get sick. I’m sorry I woke her up, I know I just snuck out of bed, but—”
“Shhh, hey. Don’t worry about it, okay? It’s a good thing you woke her up; she came and got me, right? You were just going to let me sleep through it while you were miserable and puking.”
“Sorry. I could feel it yesterday, but—”
“But you were in denial, the way you always are when you get sick.” Blaine kisses his warm forehead, testing the fever, and asks, “How’s your stomach? Are you okay to get up?”
Kurt nods, exhausted, and lets Blaine help him up off the floor. Blaine opens the medicine cabinet and pulls out a tube of toothpaste, but Kurt puts a hand on his forearm and groans, “Mm-mmm. Mouthwash. If I stick my toothbrush in my mouth, I’ll throw up again.”
“You’d think your gag reflex would just go away after nine years of marriage,” Blaine muses, waggling his eyebrows at Kurt over his shoulder and switching the toothpaste for the bottle of Listerine.
Kurt groans again, though he’s smiling this time. “Our four-year-old is going to worry herself sick, and you’re making blowjob jokes.”
“I repeat: It’s a good thing you woke her up,” Blaine smirks, pecking Kurt on the cheek.
*****
It’s too warm underneath the covers, but Kurt really doesn’t have the energy to keep pushing them off and then pulling them back on again when he gets cold two minutes later. He’s on his side in bed, staring at the wall because he’s coughing too often to drift back into much-needed sleep. The errands he had planned to run today keep rotating through his mind, lists of lists attempting to rearrange themselves in his head until he realizes he’s too out of it for this to be productive.
God, he hates being sick.
“Papa?”
Kurt lifts his head and looks towards the door. Stella is standing in the doorway with her hands—protected by a plush towel—cradling a steaming bowl of soup. Blaine is behind her, carrying a tray piled with a number of items that Kurt can’t see from his prone position on the bed. “My heroes,” he sighs, rolling onto his back and sitting up a little so that his shoulders are against the pillow and headboard. “Did you really make me soup, sweetheart?”
“Yeah!” Stella’s proud smile stretches bright across her face, and she moves as quickly as she can towards the bed without running. “Daddy helped,” she adds as an afterthought, placing the bowl on the nightstand as Kurt shifts the mug of tea and a water bottle over to make room. Then she pushes herself up onto the bed and crawls over Kurt so she can sit on Blaine’s empty side.
“Stella, no. I don’t want to get you sick.”
“I don’t care! I have to help take care of you. Daddy said I could.”
“Stella.”
“Papa.”
Blaine joins her, sitting on his side of the bed with the tray that seems to contain the entire contents of their medicine cabinet, and grins as he watches the two of them, because this is just Kurt arguing with his four-year-old self if Blaine’s ever seen it.
Kurt glares at him, and Blaine knows that look, that’s the You are wrapped around her little finger look, the You are not helping look. Blaine wouldn’t refute it. Their little star is the best of Kurt and Rachel and the worst of Kurt and Rachel, and the more obvious it becomes, the more Blaine loves her, even if that feels impossible with how much he loves her already.
Besides, Kurt’s wrapped around her finger just as badly, because from Kurt’s point of view, she’s just like Blaine.
“Kurt, honey, just let her. It makes her feel better.”
Kurt looks back at their daughter and sighs, settling back in his blankets. She’s as stubborn as either of them and he knows he scared her this morning with how sick he got. “Thank you for making me soup, baby. Looks like you got a lot of stuff to help me get better, though, what’s all this?”
Stella lights up again and turns towards the tray. “Daddy let me pick—“
“Of course he did,” Kurt mutters, rolling his eyes affectionately as Blaine winks back at him.
“—so I got all the medicine I could, and a-akka set-ser,” she says, struggling over the words Alka Seltzer but barreling on, “and a thermomma-thingy so we can check your temp’rature —oh! Daddy, where’s the medicine you said helps his fever?”
Blaine opens the jar of ibuprofen and taps two into Kurt’s hand. “Thank you for reminding me, you are such a great help,” he says, pulling Stella into a hug and squeezing her tight. “Papa’s going to feel better in no time.”
“Papa, if you—hey, take the medicine.”
“Oh, right, okay, taking it now.” Kurt takes a swig from the water bottle and downs the pills.
“Good,” Stella nods, more to herself than to him, and continues, “Papa, if you feel better by dinnertime, can we watch Brave?”
Ah. Her recent obsession. Kurt and Blaine have both watched that movie with her five times in the past two weeks.
“Of course we can, sweetheart.”
Stella’s big blue eyes stray towards the nightstand, and her eyebrows flatten as she says, as seriously as she can, “You can only watch it too if you eat your soup, okay?”
Kurt shakes his head, laughing. “Okay. I’ll eat it right now. It looks so good, I’ll eat all of it in one gulp.”
He makes a big chomping noise, and Stella giggles—Kurt’s favorite sound—and crawls on top of him, flopping down on top of his blankets and wrapping her arms around his neck to hug him.
Kurt doesn’t push her away, instead choosing to lift his arms, still under the blankets, and wrap her up in them like a little burrito. He still feels awful, of course, but she’s already been in his sickly presence longer than he wanted her to be, and he can’t help it this time. He needs to hug his beautiful little girl, who is every bit her daddy’s daughter. “You made me feel so much better already,” he whispers, looking up at Blaine as he rests his cheek on Stella’s head.
Blaine just smiles at the both of them and leans down to give Kurt another kiss on the forehead.
“Love you, Papa,” Stella says, giggling again when she notices her voice is muffled in the blankets. She lifts her head a little to say, “I won’t get sick.”
As it turns out, she’s right; it’s Blaine who ends up heaving on the bathroom floor three days later. And though he’s as serious about not getting her sick as Kurt was, Stella’s just as dedicated to getting her daddy healthy as she was for her papa.