Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 44th cycle. Now cycle 45!

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** UPDATED WITH CYCLE 45 CHEAT SHEET ** Check it out to find out about shift days!

This is a shift day [see above]. There will be another upload this afternoon: A Dish Best Served Cold, chapter 14.

"Step Thirty-Seven, Compare & Contrast"
Brittany & Kurt, Brittana
Paper Heart series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

After reading her way through about twenty pages of the book Kurt had left for her, aloud to the baby still in her belly, she'd found her throat dry and moved to get something to drink. Coming back to her room, she had then thought she could go for a snack. So once again she climbed down the stairs, eating her apple as she walked back to her room, only… she had left the book downstairs. She groaned, looking back to the stairs. Maybe she was better off sitting in the living room. She climbed down the stairs once more, thinking if things kept up this way she might have to make a stop off at the bathroom before she could settle again.

When she did sit, the book balanced on her belly, she let out a breath, resting her head back. She squirmed against the cushions, trying to find the best position, finally letting her hand drop back over the edge of the couch. It was as she did this that her hand brushed the ground just under the couch and she frowned, feeling… paper? She leaned over and reached to pull out what was indeed a sheet of paper. She stared at it for a while before she remembered what it was, and she smiled.

Months ago, after Brittany had finally gone and told her parents about being pregnant, eventually the news had begun travelling through her extended family, as it would through Kurt's. It left most shocked, a few less pleasant than others… One afternoon after school, he had come to her house, and they had sat on that very couch, discussing these two families of theirs, about to be united in welcoming the child they had made and she now carried. Kurt would say it was a good thing to be informed about what they were dealing with.

He had torn a sheet from his notebook and begun tracing something she couldn't see at first. Whatever it was, it seemed to require him to think about things, as he'd pause, mumble something to himself, then resume his scribblings. Finally he had presented her with the sheet. "Is this a hit list?" she had blinked.

"It's my family tree, you know, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, all that."

"Oh, there you are, 'Kurt,'" she pointed when she saw his name there. Her finger traced to the side, seeing her name, and below a space open for the baby. She smiled to him before taking in the rest. Above Kurt there was his father with his side of the family, and on the other side there was his mother's family. "There's a lot more people on your father's side," she commented.

"These ones here, had some choice words when they found out I was gay, so you can imagine how the news about the baby went over," he pointed a section of the tree, aggravated, but looking back at her he could just see confusion. "Those are not your friends," he summarized.

"Who is then?" she'd asked. He looked back to the tree, pointed a couple of people here and there.

"Uncle Matt and Aunt Stacy and their kids, they're good, sometimes misguided, but always good," he promised, and she smiled. He surveyed the tree again, smiled and tapped a name parallel to his mother's. "Aunt Mary. She's my mother's sister, reminds me a lot of her. She lives in Colorado, so I don't get to see her as much, but we talk when we can." He kept scanning the tree, pointed out a great-grandmother, Burt's grandmother. "My dad says she'll outlive us all. I wouldn't put it past her," he told Brittany, making her smile.

"Can I show you mine?" she'd asked, and he had nodded, turning the sheet over and giving her that, the notebook for support, and his pen. The first part was easy, and he could see even without looking at the paper that her first step had been to write her name, his name, and then leave the space for the baby, just like on his side. "Now… my parents?" she asked, and he nodded, so she did that, along with her sister. "Aunts and uncles and cousins…" she told herself more than him, and she kept on scribbling. "And grandparents…"

"And great grandparents if you have them," Kurt added.

"Yeah, they're awesome. My grandpa Harlan, he…"

"No, Britt, great grandparents, as in your parents' grandparents."

"Oh… I don't have those."

"Then that about covers it, unless there's anyone else you want to add." At this her pen briefly paused, and he had never found out why. Eventually she had added her grandparents, and then she had presented him with her own tree. The lines weren't as clean, as she had miscalculated a bit of the spacing and had to curve some lines out of the way to make up for it, but he could still follow. "You were saying about your grandfather?"

"He's funny, he's got all this curly hair," she mimed over her head. "And when we told him, he was just asking how I was, not asking about who the father was, or what I was going to do," she explained, unable not to smile at the thought of him.

"So, friend," Kurt smiled back.

"Yes. And… not them," she frowned, indicating just about everyone on her father's side. She looked sort of disappointed and sad about it, so he hadn't dwelled on it. Still he would have said he was surprised, knowing how helpful Brittany's father had been already, and he was just glad Mr. Pierce had a different view from the rest of his family.

"What about those?" he pointed to his mother's side, under Harlan. Mrs. Pierce looked to have… "Five brothers?" he blinked.

"Yeah," Brittany laughed. "She's the only girl, but she's the oldest."

"This kind of explains a lot," Kurt told himself, though Brittany didn't hear or pay attention if she did. "So how are they about… everything?" he asked.

"They're okay, I guess. They were kind of concerned at first, but I told them all about you." He wasn't sure if that was a good thing, but he let her go on. "I told them you were a really good guy, and that you were taking care of me," she smiled, and he nodded – he was, and he would, through all of it.

Pulling the paper away from her eyes, seeing the roundness of her stomachs months later, what she had told her uncles was shown to be more than true. She let out a breath, running a hand over her belly, smoothing out her shirt. She looked back to the paper, thinking about when Kurt would come back after that first day of school, how she could show him the paper he hadn't seen in ages, just as she hadn't. And after all those months of growth and development, past hesitations were no longer that, not in her mind. She looked around, searching… Melinda always left some of her pencils around, if she could just… She spotted one on the coffee table, pulled herself back into a seated position so she could get a hold of the red pencil. She laid the sheet on her knee, looking at the tree she had drawn months ago. Next to her name, on the other side from Kurt's, she very carefully etched in one more: Santana Lopez.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!