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“Papa, will you help me with my homework?” Josh asked plopping down with a sigh at the kitchen table. “Last time I asked Daddy ‘bout my Language Arts homework, he told me that verbs and adverbs are the same thing.” Josh turned in his chair to cast a glare at Blaine who was seated on the floor, building a tower out of blocks with the twins.
“What?” Blaine said, shrugging. “I thought they were! It’s been a long time since I was in third grade!”
Kurt rolled his eyes. “Yes. I’ll help you. Your daddy can add numbers and remember science terms, but he’s hopeless with English. I had to edit all of his papers in high school.” He smiled when all the kids giggled at their daddy’s sad face.
Blaine pouted, “No fair making fun of me.”
“Oh, honey,” Kurt said, making a detour to give his husband a sound kiss. “I’m not making fun of you. I think it’s cute.”
“Everybody laughed at me.”
“They love you, too,” Kurt said, taking a seat at the table beside Josh. “Don’t you, kids?”
“Love you, Daddy!” they all chorused. Liza even wrapped Blaine in a tight hug, snuggling into his chest.
“Thanks,” Blaine said. “Should we keep building, Jasper? Liza?”
“Yeah!” they yelled, quickly turning their attention back to their blocks.
Kurt took this as his cue to finally look at Josh’s homework. “What are we working on?” he asked.
“See, I gotta find the simple subject and the simple predicate. I gotta circle and underline, see?” Josh said, pointing to the directions. “Then, my teacher wants us to highlight the nouns in the sentence. You gotta highlighter, Papa?”
“I think so,” Kurt said. “I’ll look in a little bit. Let’s start with the subject and predicate stuff.” He watched carefully as Josh began circling and underlining the requested items in each sentence. He only had to correct his son a few times. Then, it was time for the highlighter. Josh easily breezed through that as well, turning to Kurt with a wide grin.
“Thank you, Papa!” he said. “That’s so easy when you help!”
“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” Kurt said. “What else do you have to do?”
Josh sighed at that. “Now, I gotta write a paragraph.”
“Oh, that won’t be so bad. What about?”
“My favorite memory of our family.”
“Well, that should be easy! You’ve got lots to choose from. Your ‘Gotcha Day,’ your first Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa, the talent show…”
“How do I pick, though?” Josh whined. “Plus, I hate writing…”
“Writing is fun!” Kurt protested. “I used to do it a lot.”
“Like, for fun?”
“Yeah! I wrote poetry and...other stuff.” Fanfiction , Kurt thought. But I’ll never tell the kids that.
“Can you show me?” Josh asked. “Maybe I can get ‘nspired by you, Papa.”
Kurt considered saying no. He hadn’t looked at his old writing in a very long time. It was probably embarrassingly juvenile. However, it was hard for him to say no to his kids. His legacy was their legacy, and if it would help his son with his homework, well… “I’ll go get it,” Kurt said. “You try to start on your paragraph.”
“‘Kay, Papa,” Josh said, turning to face his paper and tap his pencil eraser against his chin.
Kurt headed into his and Blaine’s bedroom, searching through a box of papers at the top of his closet for the folder marked, “Kurt’s writing.” He leafed through its contents for a moment before deciding to just take the whole folder out. He continued to shuffle as he walked, quickly pulling his hand away with a gasp. “Ow!”
Blaine’s head snapped up. “What happened?”
“Aww...I cut my finger...” Kurt muttered, more to himself than anyone else.
Suddenly, Blaine was on his feet. “Wheee ooooo, wheee ooooo, wheee ooooo!” he yelled, racing through the apartment at top speed.
The twins looked utterly confused. But, nonetheless, they rose to their feet and followed after him. “Daddy, whatcha doin’?” they chorused, staring at him while he dug through their first aid kit.
Blaine didn’t answer. He just turned around and scurried out of the room, still wheee-ooooo-ing at the top of his lungs. He stopped short in front of his dazed husband, taking a moment to catch his breath.
Kurt was just as confused as the twins who had followed their daddy out of the bedroom and were watching him with giant eyes. “What?” he asked.
Silently, Blaine grabbed Kurt’s injured finger and applied a bandage to the microscopic wound. Funnily enough, the bandage featured a tiny cartoon character that Blaine was sure they had purchased for the kids. For the life of him, he couldn’t name who it was, but it was cute and purple which complimented Kurt’s skin tone. This time, as Blaine went to run away, he felt tiny hands on his hips. Turning to look behind him, he realized all three of the kids were making a train behind him. He grinned. This should be fun. “Wheee ooooo, wheee ooooo!” he hollered, being echoed by his kids as they made their way into the kitchen to toss the bandage wrapper away.
Returning to his seat, Kurt watched as his husband and kids made their way back out of the kitchen, giggling and smiling at each other. He still wasn’t quite sure what had just happened, but he was certain that it was silly.
“Did you see us, Papa?” Liza asked, skipping over to him. “We makeded a am’blance train!”
“I did see! Did you have fun?” He looked at Josh, noting the sudden hint of excitement on his son’s face.
“Yeah!” Liza yelled, hopping up and down.
“Daddy, blocks!” Jasper insisted, taking back his seat on the floor in front of the tower. Apparently, his excitement was short-lived.
“Coming,” Blaine said, leaning in to peck Kurt on the lips before heading back to the living room, Liza right on his heels.
“Papa?” Josh asked, sliding back into his chair, “can I write about that in my paragraph?”
“Of course!” Kurt said. “You can write about whatever you want. Did you still want to look at my poetry?”
“Later?” Josh asked. “I wanna write this down while I’m ‘nspired.”
“Sure,” Kurt agreed, smiling to himself.
“Yes!” Josh fist-pumped, grabbing his pencil and beginning to scratch a few words onto the page.
Kurt couldn’t help but chuckle. He was glad his son was feeling inspired; that was all he’d really wanted. It didn’t happen quite as he’d imagined, but he was glad it had happened anyway. He only hoped that his papercut wouldn’t be in vain.