Klaine Week 2012: Day 7: Domestic/Daddy!Klaine

Panic. Pure, unadulterated panic. Adrenaline and fear coursed through his veins as he tore through the house, screaming his daughter's name over and over and over again. He upended the furniture in every room, each passing second adding another terrifying image to his mental torture chamber. He knew he should call someone, should check with all the neighbors, should summon the police—but he couldn't seem to stop himself from ripping through the townhouse, just in case she was hiding.

A key scratched in the lock of the front door, and he bolted downstairs. The second it opened, he launched himself at Kurt, sobbing unintelligibly. Wide-eyed, Kurt led the hysterical Blaine to the couch, where he rubbed his back soothingly until he could calm down enough to choke out, "Elizabeth's missing."

Time stood still. For an endless moment, Kurt searched the watery hazel eyes in front of him, determined to find some flicker of humor, some indication that this was all a big joke, that he could walk right upstairs and find El, his El, tucked away in a corner of her bedroom, giggling quietly to herself.

But he didn't.

He just saw pain.

He leapt up and grabbed the phone from the cradle.

Half an hour later, the townhouse was swarming with police, and the street out front was swarming with media. The former was obviously intended, and the latter was not unexpected; when the daughter of Blaine Anderson, Broadway star and music producer, and Kurt Hummel, Broadway star and fashion designer, goes missing, all news sources come to a stand-still to watch. The police questioned Blaine first, since he was the one with Elizabeth when she went missing.

"Mr. Anderson—"

"Anderson-Hummel," Blaine interrupted dully. "We go by our singular last names for our careers only."

"Right." The cop, a Detective Panetta, smiled gently. "Mr. Anderson-Hummel, when did you notice your daughter was missing?"

Blaine swallowed thickly, squeezing the hand of his husband beside him. "I put her down for her nap at two. I came out here to write some music, and I...fell asleep. When I woke up, it was nearing five o'clock, and normally El would have woken up and called for me by then, but she—she didn't, so I went upstairs to check on her, and she...she was..." He broke off, choking back a sob. Kurt tugged him further into his arms, tears streaming down his own face.

"So, Elizabeth disappeared somewhere between two and five this afternoon?"

Blaine shook his head. "No, I got at least a good hour and a half's worth of work in before I fell asleep, so I'd say between three-thirty and five."

Detective Panetta smiled again. "That's good, Mr. Anderson-Hummel. The smaller our time frame, the better chance we have of predicting where she might have gone, and how to get her back."

"Do you think someone took her?" This was the first time Kurt spoke since hanging up with the 911 operator, and his voice was hoarse and cracked.

The detective exchanged a heavy glance with a uniformed cop on the other side of the room. He then looked back to the husbands. "There was forced entry on the window, and footprints on the fire escape. Kidnap is the most probable explanation for your daughter's disappearance, yes."

Kurt nodded, unable to say any more.

"Good evening. My name is Detective Jesse Panetta, and I'm with the New York City Police Department. As many of you are aware, this little girl, Elizabeth Cooper Anderson-Hummel, went missing today between the hours of three-thirty and five o'clock PM. She is four years, four months old. Elizabeth is three feet, four inches tall and approximately thirty-five pounds. She has black curly hair that reaches her shoulders and hazel eyes, and a pale heart-shaped birthmark on her left shoulder. She was taken from her parents' home through her bedroom window. If anyone sees or hears anything that may be pertinent to the discovery of this girl, please, call our tip line at one-eight-hundred-five-seven-seven-TIPS to report it. This little girl is scared and away from her family. Please help us bring her home safely.

"Now, are there any questions?"

Rachel was the first one to come by. She had to leave almost as soon as she got there, because it was getting late and she couldn't leave her two-year-old boy with the babysitter much longer. She hugged and cried and gave them comforting words, but they knew it all meant nothing when their baby was somewhere with someone doing something they didn't want to think what.

Soon after Rachel left, Santana arrived. Her drive to Manhattan from Brooklyn was farther from Rachel's, which was only a few city miles long. She sat with the distraught husbands as they waited, waited, waited, swallowing her own tears in her determination to stay strong for her best friends. That little girl meant a great deal to Santana, who helped the Anderson-Hummels balance a baby and their careers for a short while after she was born. It was suffice to say that she had fallen in love with the bundle of pink in no time at all.

It was Santana who forced the media to keep far from the townhouse. It was Santana who compelled Blaine to swallow down some soup when he refused to eat. It was Santana who caught Kurt retching in the bathroom, hiding his unbearable pain from his husband. It was Santana who answered the phone when Burt called, both of them breaking down to each other.

It was Santana who answered the ransom call.

"Hello?"

"I want to speak to Blaine or Kurt Anderson-Hummel."

The voice was distorted, and Santana knew immediately that she was speaking to the man who kidnapped her honorary niece. She quickly waved Detective Panetta forward, who at once switched on a recording device. "Why should I let you?"

"Because I have their precious daughter in my car right now, and if they want her back, they'll speak to me."

Detective Panetta nodded, and Santana handed the phone to Kurt, who seemed to be slightly more composed than Blaine. Shakily, the man held the phone to his ear. "Hello?"

"Kurt Anderson-Hummel, you have twenty-four hours to wire fifty thousand dollars to a bank account. If you do not do so, you will never see your daughter alive again. I know the cops are listening in on this, so I only have to say this once: you cannot trace this call, so do not waste your time trying to find me. Get the money together. I will call back in twenty-three hours with the bank routing number. That will be my last communication with you."

"Please let me talk to her," Kurt begged, not caring that he just interrupted his child's kidnapper.

"No." Click.

Kurt broke down, collapsing onto Blaine and sobbing uncontrollably. Blaine could only grip him tightly and cry with him.

The police, who were granted access to the Anderson-Hummels' bank accounts, work simultaneously on collecting the fifty thousand demanded by the kidnapper and finding a way to electronically trace it once it was sent. Detective Panetta had a good feeling that they would have to do the latter discreetly, because the offender would notice some of the more obvious methods of tracking.

"Jesse." The detective looked to his partner, who was just hanging up his cell phone. "They couldn't get a trace on the call. It kept moving between towers, right on the fringes."

"You think he was moving?"

"It's a possibility."

Panetta replayed the ransom tape for what had to be the fiftieth time. This time, however, he used a sound-enhancement program to alter the pitch and speed. When he did so, he heard something distinctive in the background.

"They're in a car."

When miracles happen, they often pass unnoticed, too innocuous and commonplace to even be counted as miracles. They're often taken for granted, counted as everyday "good luck" instead of favors from the universe. They commonly get eclipsed by the "big" miracles, the "real" miracles, that seem much more extreme, much less likely, than the regular miracles that happen to the average person all the time.

Elizabeth Cooper Anderson-Hummel's return to her fathers was not one of those small miracles. It was a compilation of huge ones.

Like El managing to slip out of the rope tying her hands. Like El being able to pull on the emergency lever on the inside of the trunk. Like the car moving slow enough for El to jump out without being seriously hurt. Like the car being on a street that was only a few minutes' walk from Rachel's townhouse, a place El had been many times before. Like Rachel being home to open the door for her crying goddaughter. Like the traffic around that part of town being relatively light that day.

Rachel grabbed Elizabeth and her son, Elliot, cursing her husband for being on a business trip, and hopped in her car, punching her best friends' number into her cell as she drove madly. The police had already created a wide berth for her vehicle by the time she got there, so she didn't even park against the curb when she came to a halt. She didn't even have time to push open the door before Blaine and Kurt descended upon it, wrenching open the back door and pulling their daughter into their arms. Cameras flashed, policemen surrounded them, and the world seemed to explode in their ears, but none of that mattered as they hugged their little girl and sobbed. After a minute, Blaine leaned over their baby's head and kissed his husband soundly.

They can't touch us or what we have.

Thus endeth Klaine Week 2012. I am very grateful to those of you who stuck with me these past seven days and who rode on the rollercoaster of WTF!Klaine with me. I appreciate every single favorite and subscription, and you all mean a lot of me.

Quick note: if you read The Moments We Remember, you will see this chapter again, because I'm going to use it there as well, because I, as I've already made quite plain, am a lazy fuck.

Adios, fair readers!