“She’s still pretty tired, but you can sit with her if you want.” Blaine smiled at her and took a deep breath before going in. She smiled sleepily when she saw him.

“What time is it?”

“Why? Do you have somewhere to be?”

“Good point.”

“Weird day.” She nodded. “It was nice not being mad at you.”

“It was nice having you back. Holding your hand. I missed… your hands. I know I don’t have a right to miss anything, but I can’t help it. It’s weird, going from seeing you every other day to just… nothing.”

There was a long pause. Blaine wanted to scream ‘Well whose fault was that?’ but he held his tongue. It was pointless.

“You didn’t see his face, Becca, when I told him. Actually, I didn’t have to tell him. He knew. He took one look at me and he knew, because he’s seen that face before. He knew it was too good not to be taken away. His dad gave him that face when he was seven, and in a heartbeat he could read it on me and he collapsed. You don’t know what it’s like, to have to look at the one person you love more than anything and know how much pain they’re going to be in, and to be completely helpless. I sat there outside that hospital just holding him,” his voice cracked, his throat aching again. That pain hadn’t really left him all week. It was just a constant dull throb. He saw Becca close her eyes, tilting her head forwards as if the guilt was pressing on the back of her neck. “You’ve never had to do that to someone you love, Becca.” She hastily sucked a breath in; her voice was strangled and strained.

“Yes I have-”

“No. You chose to do it, Becca. You got your friend to lie to me, you lied to me. You didn’t have to do anything.” He hadn’t planned to do this. He was just going to sit and be polite and helpful, but the words kept pouring out.

“Blaine-”

“What? What can you possibly have to say to me? ‘See you in court’? Look, I’m sorry, I thought I could do this, I thought I could be near you again, but I can’t take it. It’s too much and I’m too tired.” He ran his hand from his forehead down to his eye to rub a tear away, down to his mouth as if he was trying to hold in everything he wanted to say to her. He stood up and walked to the door. His head was hanging low and his breathing was laboured, making it difficult even to stand up. He sluggishly grabbed at the handle, when he heard a sniff and a whimper.

“Blaine. Stop.” He stood still, not opening the door but not turning around either.

“What?” He didn’t snap. It was more of a sigh. He was too exhausted to be angry.

“Blaine, I- I want you to take him.”

That made him turn around.

“What did you say?”

She couldn’t look at him. She squeezed her eyes shut and wrung her hands anxiously.

“You and Kurt have to take him.”

“Becca, don’t mess with me-”

“I’m not. Blaine, believe me…” he let out a breath that was somewhere between a snort of derision and sigh of exasperation. He didn’t even need to ask how he was supposed to believe her now. She knew he was thinking it. “I thought if I could get away from you and Kurt that maybe I could forget. I wanted to start over with the baby and pretend to be normal, and I thought it was working. I was thinking about you less and less and it was almost getting easier, and it was good working here, and for some reason everybody just liked me because I was pregnant, and I just focused on that. I focused on him.

“But when I saw Kurt in that hallway, it all came back and smacked me in the face. I felt guilty and scared again, so I went into defence mode, and I hated myself even more than I did when I first left, and I hated that I’d made you hate me. You said that was just as bad right? You said you missed me as much as you missed him, and I’d lost both of you. And today when I had both of you with me again, holding my hands and smiling at me and I didn’t feel scared any more, I felt lighter. That’s when I realised I’d had this ache in my stomach since I moved. I’ve been weighed down by it. It’s been choking me.

“Blaine, I don’t know why I did what I did. All I know is… there’s no way I could look at that baby every day without seeing you. All I would ever see is your face when you thought he was gone, and I can’t… just… will you take him?”

Blaine’s breath hitched. He didn’t wipe the tear from his cheek. He walked back to the bed, slowly but firmly, and pulled her into a fierce hug. He wrapped himself around her, tucking her head under his, both of them shaking. She felt him nodding slightly as the tear ran from his face into her hair. He whispered ‘thank you, thank you, thank you,’ to her over and over as she curled up into his chest.

He finally pulled away to look at her face. She almost looked like the old Becca.

“Do you think you’re going to stay here?”

“Well, right now I don’t exactly have a choice.” He laughed. “No. I might go back to Boston, see my mom. I mean, if you can fix things with your dad-”

“Anything’s possible.” She nodded.

“I need to be somewhere else. I have to find a hospital where nobody thinks I have a kid. I’ll be OK. I’ve started over before; I’m pretty good at it. Just don’t hunt me down again.” He squeezed her hand. “You should go. Don’t want to keep your family waiting.” He sniffed and nodded, using his free hand to cup her cheek and reaching up to kiss her on the forehead. He held her there for at least half a minute, unable to tear himself away. They both knew this was it. They were never going back to how they used to be. No more dinner parties, no more drunken nights in together, no more inappropriate anatomy jokes or surgery horror stories, but even though she was the one who’d taken it away, she had just given him his family back. At least when she left before, he had some hope of seeing her again. He wished he could see her the way he used to, but she wasn’t his friend any more. At most, she was a kind stranger. That was easier than the woman who used to be something more.

“Thank you so much. For everything,” he whispered to her, resting his nose on her head. He might never get another chance to thank her for all she’d done for him before, for the times she’d held his hand, so he held hers one last time and walked away.

*

Kurt stood, staring at the baby, his head pressed against the glass. Alexander and Stephanie had just left, knowing they couldn’t convince him to move without Blaine. His arms were folded, and even though he wasn’t cold he was shivering. His eyes were heavy, but he couldn’t move. He’d never been so exhausted. The tension had been building in his shoulders, his back, and his legs all week, and now it was pressing down on him as he watched this child. He couldn’t bring himself to ask to pick him up. He didn’t want to touch him in case he fell any more in love with him and had to leave him here, even though he was already head over heels and all he wanted to do was feel those fingers wrapped around his and that tiny head against his cheek. He knew babies couldn’t focus that early, but he could’ve sworn he was looking back at him.

He felt hands press lightly against his waist, a chin on his shoulder and hot breath on his neck.

“We should probably go.”

Kurt took a deep breath in and out, fogging up the glass. It muffled his view of the baby, and was the only way he could bring himself to look away and turn to face Blaine. He took his hands.

“I know. Five more minutes?”

“Why?” Blaine grinned, “We’ve got the rest of our lives to stare at him.” Kurt’s jaw dropped, his eyes widened and he tightened his grip on Blaine’s hands. “Ow! You know you can’t hold him like that, right?” He barely finished his sentence before Kurt grabbed him, lifting him six inches off the ground. As soon as he put him down, before Blaine had even regained his balance, he put both hands on his face and kissed him, pouring all the tension into it as if the last nine months had been building up to it. Their lips parted, but their heads stayed connected as they looked into each other’s eyes.

“Really?” he whispered. Blaine nodded. Kurt tilted his head to look back at the baby, dragging Blaine’s head with him. They pulled apart, fingers still entwined, and crept in, scared of waking any of the other babies up. They went to stand either side of their son’s crib, looking back up at each other nervously before Kurt scooped him up, one hand supporting his head while his body was laid across his arm. He wriggled slowly and yawned, making Kurt and Blaine melt a little, and Kurt shifted him so the head was cradled in the crook of his elbow. Blaine walked around the crib to slide a hand under the baby’s head and bent down to kiss him, while his other hand found its natural place on Kurt’s arm. He straightened up again to look at him, his hand easing its way up to Kurt’s head to pull him down and kiss him on the head too.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, grinning and gently whispering ‘hi!’ to the baby with huge goofy smiles on their faces before a nurse walked in. She smiled as soon as she saw them.

“Well, don’t you look good together?” They smiled at each other then back down at the baby. “Don’t worry, she explained everything to me. I didn’t understand all of it, but I know he’s yours. I’m really sorry, but you can’t stay. It’s late.”

They both looked heartbroken for a second.

“Woah, it’s only for tonight. He’s doing so well, you can take him home tomorrow. But tonight you might want to go and get some sleep. Make the most of this fully trained babysitting service before this one’s keeping you up all night.”

“Are you kidding?” Blaine whispered, still not taking his eyes off the fingers wrapped around his thumb, “He’s been keeping us up for months.”

“I can only imagine. But we’ll take good care of him, and he’ll be waiting for you in the morning. If you come at nine, I’ll be on that desk ready to take care of all the paperwork so you can whisk him away. I’ll have to try not to miss those big blue eyes too much.” That made Blaine look up at Kurt’s eyes, which were still glued to the child in his arms. Exactly the same colour as the baby’s. And he thought he’d never get anyone pregnant. He turned back to the nurse.

“Five more minutes?” She laughed.

“Why do I get the feeling you’ll be saying that again in five minutes?”

She saw their pleading expressions and sighed.

“Fine. Five minutes. Maybe ten if you keep being so adorable. I’m a sucker, I know. Don’t take advantage of it. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She wandered off, pretending she had something to do even though it was silent. She wanted to give them some privacy; they’d obviously been through a lot recently.

“Blaine?”

“Mmm?”

“We need to buy baby stuff.”

“Yeah.”

“We need clean clothes.”

“Yep. Not that you don’t look great in scrubs.”

“Well, of course. You look like that Croatian guy from ER.”

“Except he was about ten feet tall.”

“True. Blaine.”

“Kurt.”

“We’re dads.”

“We are.”

“I like it.”

“Me too.”

They leaned forward and kissed, being careful not to squash the tiny thing in between them. They kept their faces close, noses and foreheads touching, their eyes closed, soaking up the moment they became a family.