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“Look at you,” Kurt sing-songed as he lifted the lady of the house above his head. “Clean and dry and smelling…” he nosed her pudgy belly “…nom, nom, nom, good enough to eat.” The aforementioned lady squealed her giggle when her Papa blew a raspberry against her skin before sitting her on the sofa and plucking her pyjamas from where they’d been warming on the radiator. “Arms up please.” He slipped the starry print top, a gift from Auntie Rachel, past Elise’s ears then went fishing down the sleeves for her hands, kissing each palm as it reappeared and taking her into his arms when she reached up for a hug.
“Gampa!” He didn’t have to turn around to know that Blaine was making another home movie. They’d been asking her to wave to Grampa Burt since before she could talk and now their clever little girl had started talking to his dad through the camera without prompting. Blaine may have encouraged her to call her uncle ‘Pooper’ but the evidence was circumstantial and Cooper’s face when she’d said it, for the first time, while pointing at him had been an absolute picture. They had that on video too.
“You couldn’t have let me fix my hair first?” Bathing Elise had taken its toll on his coif, she was a splasher. There was a warm chuckle next to his ear and a warmer hand low on his back.
“Kurt, you are the most handsome man alive or dead, but believe me when I say nobody watching this will be giving you a second glance.” Blaine took in Kurt’s imperiously raised eyebrow and collapsing hair then looked away. Kurt followed his gaze to Elise, whose chestnut brown hair was dry and tangle free if not actually styled, because he wasn’t one of those parents, whose pout had everybody eating out of her hand and whose eyes legitimately looked photo-shopped.
“Point taken.”
“Swap with me? I want cuddles.” The camera was set aside for a moment as Kurt handed Elise over, though he managed to record Blaine peppering her cheek with noisy kisses then scrunching his face up and rubbing their noses together. Little hands grabbed at Blaine’s cheeks and Kurt was thrust back into a time when he wasn’t sure that he’d have a dad to send countless family movies to, and further back into a time when the prospect of having his own family was no more than the desperate hope of a lonely boy.
It wasn’t that he didn’t think he was lucky, but sometimes there was a moment when he realised he was really, really lucky.
“Song or story?” Blaine was talking to Elise but the question was really for Kurt.
“Song.” After recording Elise being carried to her room and tucked in, Kurt pointed the camera at himself. “Night dad, night Carole.” He closed the camera and joined Blaine in singing Baby Mine, singing it in the round until Elise fell asleep, making a mental note to email the video to Carole so she and his dad could coo over it before they went to bed.