“Participants in the Harvey Milk Elementary School Charity Pie Eating Contest, will you please take your seats. We’ll be starting in just a few minutes.”

“Thank you, Daddy! Thank you thank you thank you thank you!” Tracy chants as she leads her fathers to a long, covered table sitting on plastic at the front of the gymnasium. She pulls out the last chair and pats the seat for Blaine to sit in.

“It’s no problem, Bun-Bun.” Blaine looks from his adorable, bunheaded daughter, to the white folding chair she’s presenting proudly to him, his smile strained. “I know how much you want that first prize.”

“And you’re gonna win it!” Tracy beams. “I’ve seen you eat a whole cronut in one bite! You’re a shoe in!”

“I appreciate your faith in me,” Blaine says uncomfortably.

“Why don’t you go find your Aunt Rachel and watch Daddy from the audience, hmm?”

“Okay, Daddy.” Tracy rises up on her tiptoes to give Blaine a hug. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Blaine says, placing a kiss on the part in her hair.

“Now git!” Kurt gives her tush a swat and sends their giggling girl into the crowd of teachers, parents, and second graders, all waiting for the pie eating contest to start. He waits until he sees Tracy locate Rachel and leap into her arms before he turns back to his husband, sullenly fingering the plastic bib the organizers left for the participants. “Okay. Now that Bun-Bun’s gone, what’s wrong, Blaine?”

Blaine turns the bib over in his fingers and sighs. “Would it be lame to say that this is kind of triggering for me?”

“Not at all,” Kurt says, laying a hand on Blaine’s arm and giving it a squeeze. “You’ve had issues with food ever since college. It had a huge impact on you. That kind of thing doesn’t go away easily. Sometimes it doesn’t go away at all.”

“Yeah, well, I thought it had,” Blaine says, sighing in defeat and frustration.

A man wearing an apron and carrying a tray full of pies sets one down at Blaine’s spot. Other participants begin to fill the chairs, joking about the big bellies they’re going to go home with and how they’re going to need bigger pants. One gentleman watching the pies being doled out announces in a rather enthusiastic and bizarre impression of some character from the most recent Mad Max movie (and that’s all Kurt knows about that), “Oh, what a day! What a lovely day!”

Kurt watches his husband eye the baked goods and listen to their talk, a subconscious hand coming up to touch his waist.

“Sweetheart,” Kurt says, “we’re here to have fun. And you signed up for the pie eating contest because you thought it would be fun …”

“And tasty,” Blaine adds in an attempt at humor.

“And because your daughter wants you to win her a prize,” Kurt includes. “But if it doesn’t feel like fun anymore, you can totally back out.”

“What about Tracy?” Blaine asks softly, raising his eyes to look at their daughter sitting with Rachel, bouncing excitedly in her chair as she goes on and on about something. Whatever it is, she has Rachel’s complete attention, and Kurt is thankful for that.

It gives Blaine the freedom to be honest without feeling the need to put on a strong face for his daughter.

“Tracy will understand,” Kurt promises. “She’s a kind, compassionate little girl …”

“Well, she gets that from you,” Blaine says, echoing a sentiment Kurt’s father had shared with Blaine about his own son long ago.

“If you tell her that doing this will make you feel bad about yourself, she’ll understand.”

“Yeah, but she might feel guilty for asking me in the first place, and I don’t want that.”

Kurt sighs. Everyone told him that being a parent would be difficult – the hardest job he’d ever love - but Kurt always thought they meant the worrying about his child, the night after night spent awake with them while they vomit in the toilet, stumbling through math concepts he hadn’t studied in years in an attempt to help with homework, or nursing an aching heart after a bad breakup. It hadn’t crossed Kurt’s mind that it also meant the wear and tear on his soul, the moments of self-doubt, the negotiating with his comfort zones.

How often he’d feel like a failure.

That applied to Blaine, too - the man that Kurt thought would fall so easily into parenthood considering how often he mentioned wanting to work with kids, and whose fallback career (if he didn’t make it on Broadway) was preschool teacher.

“I know you want to do everything possible for your daughter. You’d bend over backwards to make her happy. But you also have to do what’s right for you. I know that winning a lunch date with her favorite teacher is a big deal for her, but if we slipped the PTA a few front row tickets to your next opening night for the raffle, I’m pretty sure Mrs. Perkins would be willing to find time to join us at Chuck E. Cheese’s one afternoon.”

Blaine nods. “Okay. I guess that’s something to think about. But, if I do go through with this, will you help me burn off the extra weight?”

“Absolutely,” Kurt says, giving Blaine a kiss on the cheek. “All one and a quarter pounds of it.”

“Will you go jogging with me?”

“Of course.”

“Will you lift weights with me?”

“Yes.”

“Will you go to the gym with me?”

“Whatever you want. In fact …” Kurt moves closer to Blaine’s right ear, not wanting to be overheard by the three parents who just sat down in their vicinity “… this isn’t a bribe but, if you go through with this, I’ll come up with a special exercise program just for you. You know, to help you shed the weight.”

Blaine turns to look at his husband, his curiosity piqued. “That sounds interesting. What kind of special exercise program?”

“I’m thinking a three-day weekend at that hot springs we went to in California. We’ll get Rach to watch Bun-Bun, rent that suite we had before with the Jacuzzi in the living room …”

“Ooo,” Blaine says, getting excited about his husband’s idea. “We can go hiking, biking, do that yoga in the heat you liked so much.”

“Or, we can, you know, spend all of our time in our room, coming up with an intimate little cardio routine of our own …”

Blaine stares in his husband’s eyes, trying to picture what in the world Kurt could be implying. Kurt bounces his eyebrows when he sees recognition dawn in Blaine’s eyes, lighting his smile.

Blaine grabs his plastic bib off the table and, forgoing the ties in the back, shoves it down the front of his shirt.

“Witness me!” he yells, taking his seat beside his competitors and burying his face in his pie on the table.

“Blaine!” Kurt yelps, taking a step back so he doesn’t get blueberry all over his Gucci jeans. “They haven’t even said go yet!”