The gym echoed with the thundering footsteps of twenty-five 18 year olds and the deafening, megaphone-enhanced shouts of Coach Sue Sylvester urging them through laps in eighth period gym class.  “C'mon you pudgy, misshapen, Dorito-eating, internet-addicted babies!  Pick up those feet before your rear ends convert completely to butter-flavored Crisco!”  

Kurt's breath was already coming in heaving, strained gasps, and they were only half-way through the class.  The physical education budget had been cut, again, and gym class therefore consisted of only activities that required little or no equipment.  He'd been grateful that at least today, it wasn't climbing the rope or worse yet, dodgeball, but running laps was turning out to be getting harder and harder these days.  He'd weighed himself in the locker room before starting class and was shocked to see he'd gained another three pounds since last week.  He doggedly kept forcing himself through the paces, but it was so hard.  He was so tired - -  

“Lady Hummel!  You call that running? And invest in a sports bra, will you?  Nobody wants to see your man-boobs bouncing all over the place!” Sue screamed.

Kurt was already flushed with the exertion of running, or he probably would have turned bright red with humiliation.  He plodded forward, but couldn't seem to pick up the pace … the other students kept steadily passing him on the right one by one.   Feeling Sue's eyes on him, he tried to stave off another verbal attack by surging forward a little faster, but as he did, a wave of dizziness hit him and he staggered, crashing into Becky and landing in a tangled heap.

“Watch where you are going, fat ass,” Becky shouted, shoving him off.  Most of the rest of the class kept circling the gym, drilled by Sue to keep running no matter what, but Quinn paused to help Kurt up and lead him, shaken, over to the bleachers next to her gym bag.  She sat him down and murmured, “Head between the knees. Slow, even breaths.”  She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a Gatorade.  “Take a sip of this.”

He followed her advice, and soon the dizziness subsided, leaving only the bone-crushing fatigue he'd been battling for weeks now.  “Thanks, Quinn.”

“Don't mention it.”  She rubbed his back in gentle circles and he shut his eyes, just for a moment, head in his hands.   “Not to change the subject, but how's Blaine today?”

“Uh… well, they don't know.  Not sure,” Kurt said, studying the floor and avoiding her gaze.  Blaine really didn't need the whole world knowing about what was wrong, but he wasn't sure what to tell people about his condition.  Looking back at Quinn, he said, “they're just treating those symptoms he was having, you know.  Keeping him hydrated and nourished, all that.”

“Weird that you've both been kind of sick at the same time.”

He looked quizzically at Quinn.  “What are you talking about?  I'm not sick!  My appetite is great!  I feel fine most of the time, just a little tired.”

She quirked an eyebrow.  “A little tired? You fell asleep in Schuester's class three times this week, Kurt.”

“That's because it was boring.  He doesn't know any more about history than he did about Spanish.  All he does is read from the textbook.”

“You've also been too tired to participate in any of the challenges in Glee for weeks.”

Kurt sighed.  “That's because they were also boring.  Mr. Schue means well, but he ran out of good ideas in our first year in Glee Club.”  He turned the Gatorade over in his hands, then sighed again.  “That's not really it.  I'm just … not sleeping well, worrying about NYADA and Blaine.”

“It could be worse, I suppose.  You could be Blaine, expecting a baby and not getting much support from your boyfriend.”

Kurt's head snapped up.  “What - - what are you talking about? What - - Blaine told you?”

She shrugged gracefully, reaching a slender hand to brush a piece of lint from her gym sock.  “He said he needed to talk about it with someone who'd been there, accidentally pregnant, and decided to go through with it even if nobody was on their side.”

“That's nice, but last time I checked, you haven't been where Blaine is right now.  You weren't exactly a freak of medical science.  And he's not  - -” Kurt lowered his voice and looked around.  “He's not pregnant.  It's all just a big mess and pretty soon he's going to get proof of that.  The high-risk pregnancy doctor was here yesterday, and she did an amniocentesis.:  Kurt shuddered at the memory of the long needle plunging into Blaine's abdomen as Blaine clutched his hand and stared at the ultrasound image on the screen, showing the fetus and the needle beside it, drawing a small amount of fluid from the sac.  The results were expected in a few days.  ”That's going to prove once and for all, this isn't Blaine's baby.”

“High risk pregnancy doctor.  Amniocentesis. I don't know.  That all sounds like a pregnancy to me.  Blaine showed me all the printouts from his 3D ultrasounds.  It looks like a baby to me too.  If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck.  Which means Blaine is pregnant.”  

“Okay, then. Explain who's the father if Blaine is the mother?  And Blaine doesn't have female sex organs, so where'd he get the egg?   It's all so … so stupid, I can't believe Blaine can't see this is impossible.”

Quinn looked sideways at him.  “It's not impossible.  It's there.  You're the one who can't face the truth.  Blaine's mom had a lot of research sent over from Cyprus … apparently there were a lot of ancient texts from the island, about men in labor associated with those statues.  All of them went into labor at the same time, during the feast of Ariadne-Athena - - and translating that into the modern calendar, that's exactly when Blaine would be full-term.  Is that a coincidence?”

“Yes.  That is the exact definition of a coincidence.  I really hope you're not encouraging him, Quinn.”

“I'm supporting him.  Like you should be.  He's frightened but he's determined to go through with this, and I admire him for it.”

Kurt paused.  With all his efforts at swaying Blaine, he hadn't really ever pursued the answer to an important question.  Why on earth did Blaine want to have a baby?  He was a teenage boy.  He wasn't financially independent, or even out of high school.  To say it would be difficult for Blaine and the baby would be the understatement of the century. He raised his eyes to Quinn's. “Did he say why he thinks he wants to have a baby?”

She smiled kindly at him.  “You should hear that from him, I think. Ask him.” She patted him on the knee and bounded back to join the line of running high schoolers circling the gym at full speed and going nowhere, as Kurt sat moodily lost in thought.