Kurt swipes his hand over another sketch, smearing the graphite an ugly grey across the page, and tosses the crumpled paper ball towards the bin, running his hands through his hair and staring down at the taunting blank pages of the sketchbook in his lap. He has a deadline a month from now, and he can't even begin to create the final design, one he hopes will be the centrepiece of the show. He can't conceive of shapes or colours, and each touch of his pencil to the paper ends in disaster, something scrawled and hasty that could never catch an eye from anyone.

He looks up into the park, where he'd come while home for a long weekend, in the hopes the fresh air, greenery and bright primary colours of the children's playground could inspire his sluggish mind, and sees the families there. Men in their T-shirts and jeans, pushing young children on the swings, women talking with apple-cheeked babies on their knees, and the little ones running and shrieking and falling over themselves, filled with an innocent joy that adults could never hope to recapture.

He can't help the small smile that slips onto his face, watching a particular little boy, chasing his father around the park, laughing and grinning even when he stumbles. He can see himself, maybe, one day, chasing a boy like that, a child with his eyes, another man waiting for them with a smile on his face.

With a sigh, Kurt shuts his notebook and slots it back into his satchel, running a hand through his hair and trying to distract himself from the feeling that has nagged at him for close to three years now, since he began establishing himself a good career, and started thinking about marriage and children. He's been broody since hitting twenty-five, and is still yet to find someone to have a baby with and raise children and live in the generic two-story house with the white picket fence and the regimented flowers and the dog leaping at their heels.

He knows of the clinics, and he knows of the one closest to his childhood home, the Ohio Regional Carrier Centre, and he always knew that, being gay, he'd have to resort to one of them one day, to be able to have children with a man he loved. But, the thing is, for a year now he's been thinking about simply going to one of the centres, choosing a worker there and having a baby by himself. He has the space, the means to raise a child, a job with flexible hours and he wants to be a father so badly his being aches with it.

It's perhaps his most impulsive side that leads him to sitting in a blue-cushioned chair in the reception, a consultation form in his hands and the receptionist humming to herself as he waits for one of the white-clothed nurses to take him through to the room where they'll quiz him and offer him files of their workers based on what he says.

"It's very nice to meet you, Mr. Hummel," the auburn-haired nurse says sweetly, shaking his hand as he sits down nervously, expecting her to gaze on him with pity or condescension, but not this gentle joy and understanding. "I've heard of your designs, I was wearing a gown you designed the night my husband asked me to marry him. The red one from the 2012 winter collection. It was the inspiration for our wedding song." Kurt smiles, flattered, and runs his eye over the fragile woman, the design-focused section of his mind already imagining her in long sleeves and floor-length hems, medieval style. "Shall we get down to business? Are you here with a partner, or alone? I'll also need your age, orientation, current place of residence and your reason for wanting a child."

"I'm here alone, there isn't currently any partner to speak of," Kurt begins to answer with a wry smile. "I'm twenty-eight, gay, I currently live in a two-bedroom-one-bathroom apartment in Manhattan and I want a baby because I have always wanted kids. I never had any siblings, until my stepbrother when I was seventeen, but I've always loved being with younger children and helping them, and it's that time in my life, I think. I haven't found my one and only yet, but I want a baby, desperately, and I have the space and the financial means to happily raise a child without needing another man by my side. At the moment, imagining a little girl or boy looking up at me with my eyes, and calling me 'Daddy', is what wakes me up in the morning with a smile on my face."

"I think I have just the person for you," the nurse says with a secretive smile, opening a drawer in front of her and extracting a file marked withANDERSON, BLAINE DEVONin heavy black ink. "He's currently seven months pregnant, but that doesn't stop you from being able to meet him and sign a contract, and come in to do the deed, as it were, in five months when he's had the baby and been given the requisite three months of recovery time."

Kurt takes the file, opens it and skims the contents, seeing that this worker is a mere twenty-one years old and one of the most popular ones in the place. Young, fertile, healthy, about to birth a fifth baby after three other pregnancies, one set of multiples and an early-term miscarriage, and, from the picture in the file, very pretty. Bright, laughing eyes, untamed dark curls and a smile that could light up a dark room. Blaine Devon Anderson, the possible carrier of his child. "May I meet him today?" he asks of the nurse, looking up from the file with a hopeful smile crossing his face, unbidden.

The nurse smiles widely and ushers him out of the office and down the corridor, to where it begins to seem more like a hospital or a school or any corporate building, the names of each worker embossed in silver plaques on their doors. Kurt catches glimpses of workers, some talking to nurses, some to obvious clients, and some heavily pregnant and shuffling through the corridors. One, a pretty Asian girl with a small but obvious bump beneath her shirt, catches his eye as the nurse guiding him pauses outside Blaine Devon Anderson's room, and gives him a grin and a wink.

"Blaine, I've brought along a client to meet you," the nurse says, opening the door and ushering Kurt inside, to see that radiant smile in person, on a man who carefully eases himself off the bed to cross the room and shake Kurt's hand. "Blaine, meet Kurt Hummel. Kurt, meet Blaine Anderson."

"Kurt Hummel, the designer?" Blaine guesses with a lifted eyebrow. Kurt flushes slightly and nods happily, and Blaine's eyes light up. "I honestly worship your work, sir. I love your use of bowties to add colour to otherwise dark ensembles, I own several of your patterned designs myself, for when I'm not pregnant and swollen everywhere." Kurt's eyes fall to the swell of Blaine's belly beneath the clinging fabric of his shirt. It's amazing, seeing that this man isn't ashamed of his bump, isn't ashamed of himself for being able to carry children, but proud, and showing off the baby growing within him, his belly button pushing against the dark fabric.

"There's no need to call me 'sir', Blaine, I'm just a normal human being who happened to get lucky with a fabulous internship straight out of school," Kurt says with a blush playing around his cheeks. "I have a feeling I'm going to like you."