He glanced back into the blackness, still unable to figure out what he was running from, only hearing it grunting and snarling, and he kept running and the flashes from his feet got fainter, and he was straining harder and harder to suck in each breath, his heart pounding, until he ran into something soft and warm. He threw his arms around the thing in front of him, hoping it would provide some, any kind of safety. After a few seconds of burying his face in the folds of soft fabric, he looked up to see Kurt smiling down on him. Blaine was hugging his legs.

“Kurt, I’m scared. It’s dark.” His voice was higher than it was supposed to be, but if he really was six it was probably about right.

“I know. But you don’t have to be any more. Not while I’m here.”

Kurt bent down to pick him up but as he lifted him, his legs stretched as if by magic and he became himself again, the grown up version, walking hand in hand with Kurt, their path delicately lit by moonlight. But that feeling of being safely wrapped up in strong arms lingered. He held on tight and breathed a sigh of relief as the growling faded away. He breathed deeply and easily, inhaling Kurt, the gentle, familiar, light smell of his hair and his neck, and he didn’t feel like running any more.

He slid back into consciousness, his face buried in the neck of the man looking at him worriedly. He could hear crying coming from the next room.

“Are you OK? You sounded scared. Bad dream?”

Blaine blinked hard, wiping the film of sweat from his brow and smiling dozily.

“Oh… yeah. At first. But it got better.” He reached up to plant a messy kiss on Kurt’s cheek, still half asleep. Kurt had obviously been awake for a while and he sat up, pulling the covers off, settled into the routine of waking up when the baby did. Blaine put a hand on his back. “Hey, let me. It’s my turn.”

“No, you should go back to sleep. Especially if that dream was just getting good.”

“Nope. This dream is much better anyway.” Kurt wanted to roll his eyes, but he just smiled and blinked sleepily. “You can go back to sleep and stop hogging the baby.” Kurt was too tired to put up a fight and flopped back down onto the bed, still smiling. Blaine kissed him on the head and slipped out of bed, wandering to the baby’s room without turning on the light. He’d memorised the journey so he wouldn’t have to wake Kurt up.

The baby stopped crying within seconds of being picked up, but kept squirming in Blaine’s arms. He rocked him gently, staring down at the light blue eyes that gazed back at him, somehow visible despite the darkness. He could tell he wasn’t hungry, and he didn’t need changing; he just seemed upset somehow. Blaine frowned for a second before he knew exactly what to do.

He kept rocking the baby gently with one arm as he scribbled a note to Kurt. He whispered to the baby as he padded back to the bedroom to place it next to Kurt’s head.

“Hey, grumpy. You see him? That’s your dad. We need to make sure he doesn’t worry about us while we go out, because if he woke up and we were both gone, he’d be really sad. Because he loves us so much, and we’ve gone through so much to get you. You make me look easy. He could get another me in a heartbeat, but not you. You’re perfect.”

He knew he was talking crap to someone who couldn’t speak yet; he knew he did it all the time and he knew Kurt would laugh if he saw him, but he didn’t care. He loved talking to him. Somehow it felt like he was listening, responding in thoughtful blinks and gurgles, and anyway, people who couldn’t talk were probably the perfect people to spout nonsense at. They couldn’t tell you to shut up.

Blaine stood for a second, looking from the baby to Kurt. He couldn’t have imagined two more perfect people if he’d tried. He leaned down carefully, holding the tiny body close to his chest, and pressed a kiss to Kurt’s cheek. He wrapped the baby up warm, pulled on his own coat and scarf and crept out, tickling the baby and pulling open-mouthed, wide-eyed faces at him as he did so.

He sat with the tiny, vulnerable lump in his arms, on their bench, under their tree, his legs crossed under him, acting as a perfect secondary cradle, as if his whole body was a thick blanket wrapped around the baby. He kept whispering to him, knowing nobody could hear. He would have kept whispering if the park had been heaving, but even in the middle of the day this spot always felt empty. Nothing outside their family mattered in that space.

“Hear that? That’s a nightingale. They only sing at night. It’s perfect, because there’s nothing there to drown them out. Right now there’s just you and me, the dew forming on the grass, the flowers sleeping, and the nightingales.”

The baby looked up at him, seemingly uninterested, but Blaine decided that he just didn’t know how to express amazement yet. He blinked, his eyes full of the tears he hadn’t cried yet, and Blaine almost cried as he saw the moon reflecting in them.

“The moon and the stars, too, you only see them at night. That’s why everything’s a different colour now, all silver and magical, and it’s just for us. Can you even see colours yet? It doesn’t matter; you will. There are millions of colours, animals, plants, pictures for you to see, and you’ve got your whole life to see them. I can’t wait.”

“Now who’s hogging the baby?”

Blaine turned to see Kurt, his long, slim, grey coat thrown on over his pyjamas. If it had been possible, Blaine’s smile would have widened.

“How did you know where we’d be?”

“Where else would you have gone? Anyway, there was a note.” He held out the note, which simply said ‘Daddy, I’m taking him to the park so he’ll settle down. Won’t be long; don’t worry. Lots of love, the baby x’. “At least one of you is responsible, even if he doesn’t have a name to sign with yet.”

“I nearly wrote Oliver. I still like it.”

“I like it too, but… I don’t know. So was there a reason you brought him here?”

“OK, this might sound weird, but I had a feeling it might have been the dark that was freaking him out. I just remembered being really scared of it when I was a kid.”

Kurt tilted his head and sat next to Blaine, snuggling up to him and staring down at the bundle in his lap.

“I didn’t know you were scared of the dark.”

“Well, I’m not any more-”

Kurt clutched more tightly at his arm, nuzzling into his shoulder.

“Hey, don’t worry. It’s adorable.”

“OK, well I was. Ever since I was little. I don’t think it really went away until I met you. I mean, moving to Dalton helped, obviously, but when you were there it felt like nothing could be that scary. Everything just seemed kind of… beautiful when you were in it. I didn’t want him to have to wait to find someone to show him how special this is. I thought maybe this way he could associate the night with happiness and family and us instead of being scared… and now that I’m saying it out loud, it sounds ridiculous-”

“Blaine, look at him.” He did. Kurt reached down to stroke the baby’s cheek with the back of his finger. His eyes were still sparkling, but instead of unshed tears they looked like they were full of stars. “I think it’s working.”

“I hope so.”

“Blaine, I’ve been thinking. About the name.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmm. I thought it would be realy nice if we named him after somebody. Somebody special.”

“I think you’re forgetting. Oliver is someone special.”

Kurt grinned.

“Of course, but what about someone closer? Someone who helped us get him in the first place. Someone who you’ve only got back because of him.” Blaine paused.

“Really?” Was he going where Blaine thought he was going? “Alex?”

“I know, everyone will think it’s because of Alexander McQueen, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a factor… but what about it?”

Blaine lifted the baby up. He was still too young to hold his own head up, but he seemed to be paying attention despite being nestled in his father’s arms.

“Well, what do you think? Alex. Alexander Anderson-Hummel.”

The baby blinked twice and his mouth opened, turning up at the corners.

“Blaine, is he-”

“I think so.”

“He’s never done that before.”

“Nope.”

“I think he likes it.”

“Well that settles him. If it can make him smile, who am I to argue? Right, Alex?” Alex opened and closed his mouth, making a cluster of bubbles. That seemed liked a definitive ‘yes’. “This feels very Lion King. It’s like I’m presenting him to all the other animals.” Kurt laughed.

“Blaine, there’s nobody else here.”

“There’s a squirrel over there. He looks excited for us.”

“I don’t think one squirrel makes you Mufasa.”

“You’re right,” he paused, “I’m Rafiki. Mufasa didn’t have hands, silly.” Kurt nudged him, but kept laughing.

“How about Alexander Oliver? It sounds noble. Strong.”

“Sounds brave.”

“Blaine, he’s ours. Of course he’s going to be brave.” There was another pause. “Blaine?”

“Yeah?” he asked, still mooning helplessly over the baby.

“I don’t want him to be… I just… I hope he doesn’t have to be brave.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want it to be different for him. There’s just so much… There’s too much to be scared of. What if he gets bullied? What if someone hurts him, or makes him feel bad for being himself, or breaks his heart? We’ve both been through enough of that without him having to face it too. I don’t want any of that for him.”

Blaine wanted to wrap an arm around him, but his hands were full. Instead, he kissed the top of the head that was leaning on his shoulder and rested his cheek against it.

“I know. I want it all to be easy for him, but he won’t need it to be. Look at you, Kurt. You’ve had it so much harder than most people, not even counting the last few months, but it’s made you who you are. If you hadn’t had to fight for so much and work so hard, you might not be the strong, amazing man I fell in love with. Isn’t it the hardest stuff that taught you the most?”

Kurt sniffed and nodded.

“I guess.”

“I know. I mean, the day after we found out what Becca had done, who jumped on top of me with an action plan? And looking back, what if you hadn’t been bullied? Maybe it would have been easier, but maybe you wouldn’t have transferred to Dalton. Maybe we wouldn’t be together.”

Kurt lifted his head up to look at Blaine. Both of their eyes were watering slightly, just as they’d stopped Alex from crying.

“I know it hurt at the time, but would you change it? I mean, if one part of that was different, maybe we wouldn’t have this. I think every moment, even the awful ones, they all led us here, and this moment right now? Nothing could make me give this up.”

Kurt looked down at Alex. It already felt like that had always been his name. Kurt took his hand between his thumb and forefinger, still awestruck at how a person so tiny could mean so much to him, and he turned back to Blaine.
Without opening his mouth, he said ‘thank you’, ‘you’re right’ and ‘I love you’. They sat together in their spot, holding their baby, and kissed just as earnestly and softly as the first time, over ten years ago. They’d been a family since they could remember. Now it was just a bit bigger.