Tests and Truths

Chris sat in the car for a long time afterward. The A/C blew cold air across his face, but his skin was hot, and sweat beaded at his temple. He had gotten into a public bathroom to take the pregnancy tests and was now staring at the results. Six tests. Six identical windows showing the same unmistakable verdict. He kept picking up the instructions, reading the same sentence again and again, as if grammar might give him a way to escape the truth.

“Two lines indicate pregnancy,” he silently read in one. “A plus sign indicates pregnancy,” he read in another. “Digital readout: “PREGNANT.” He checked each device in turn, moving his lips as if cross-examining a witness. Two lines. Plus. PREGNANT. Again. Again. Again.

He suddenly felt his breathing shortening, and his throat felt as if air was too thick to get through it. He pressed a hand against his chest, feeling it rise and fall in desperation, then moved his hand lower over the subtle curve on his abdomen as though he could erase the truth with touch. “It’s impossible,” he whispered to the empty car. “I’m a man. Men don’t…” He began, but the last word dissolved because the list of signs and symptoms didn’t leave space for doubt. He remembered the nausea, how smells turned traitor, the ache in his lower belly, and how his suits felt tighter by the day. The evidence was there, making even the lawyer in him stop arguing.

He took a moment to calm himself down and almost laughed at the ridiculous situation. Despite his former wonder at the idea of having Ryan’s baby, now he couldn’t help but sigh as the feeling collided with fear. He saw the beauty and absurdity in the arc of his life. He thought of Renee’s hands on his face and Rory’s chubby fist grasping his finger, remembering the precious moment when the child had been born. Having kids had always been their dream, but now that it was Chris carrying a kid who didn’t belong to her, things were different.

These thoughts led him to wonder how to tell Renee. She would definitely feel betrayed twice over by the act and the consequence. Knowing she was mad at him was bad enough, and expecting her to see him pregnant with someone else’s child was a whole different story. However, the risks extended beyond that. He had no idea how he would walk into court with a belly that would someday announce itself before he did. He couldn’t face all the neighbors knowing that Ryan’s baby was growing inside him. He didn’t even know how to explain it to himself.

Chris rubbed his abdomen, feeling the firm bump below his navel, and let out a long, disbelieving sigh that felt as if his soul wanted to escape his body. However, his lips instinctively—and against his will—curved into a smile at the ridiculous fact of it all.

“How did I get myself into this mess?” He said, and the memories of the camping trip immediately flooded his mind, replaying the scene where Ryan’s cock stretched him so nicely. “Okay, right. I know how it happened,” he added, trying to cover his dread with humor.

When he arrived home a while later, he found the hallway lamp on and the living room rearranged as a silent announcement that Renee was still angry. There was a folded pair of pajama pants on the couch’s arm, a neatly stacked pile of sheets, and a pillow waiting beside them. The message was clear, and Chris stood there for a moment, taking a deep breath and accepting the consequences of his actions. He knew he couldn’t expect a better reaction.

Chris changed into the pajama pants and made the couch as comfortable as it would allow. He slid beneath the sheet with his hand resting over his belly as if it were the only true thing in the room. He tried to focus on something else, but facts devastated him. It was his fault, and he didn’t mean to cause this mess. However, he couldn’t honestly deny that he had loved the camping trip that had started it all. It was a fact.

*

Chris and Renee functioned like the practiced team they had always been as the days passed. They worked together to get the bottles warmed, diapers folded, and the laundry relay run without dropped batons, but words between them were thinner around the edges. She answered what needed answering; he kept to briefings about dinner and schedules. The house was quiet the rest of the time, hurting them, but things worked well enough to avoid fights.

Despite the strain, they didn’t want to let everybody know the issues between them. So, on Halloween, they strung paper bats and a friendly ghost across the porch, set a bowl of candy on a little table, and smiled for pirates, princesses, and a dinosaur that refused to leave without three lollipops. Chris praised the costumes with Rory in his arms, and Renee handed out the candies. Their hands accidentally brushed together a couple of times, and both preferred to ignore it.

“I’m going up,” Renee said coldly once the kids stopped coming. Chris only nodded and looked at the couch waiting for him another night.

Things were tense in the house, but the enormity of the situation followed him everywhere. He’d be writing a motion and realize his thumb had been on his middle, tracing slow circles over his shirt for a full minute. In the elevator, he felt a wave of dizziness peak and pass, making him cup his belly as if to steady both of them. His mindset had instinctively changed to show more protective manners toward his belly.

During a partner’s briefing, he flinched when the smell of someone’s cinnamon tea hit him wrong, and a coworker couldn’t help but lean in to check on him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Chris responded, unruffling his tie. “I didn’t sleep. Newborn, you know.”

The coworker smiled kindly at him, and he smiled back, then stared down at his notepad, where he’d absentmindedly written PREGNANT in the margin with lawyerly block letters and underlined it twice before blacking it out. He blushed and covered the word to avoid others from seeing where his mind was at.

At home, random touches multiplied. He’d be rinsing bottles and realize his hand had drifted low. He’d be on the floor beside Rory’s play mat and notice the subtle way his middle pushed against his T-shirt. He would look around, half‑guilty, half‑protective, and then keep playing with Rory as his mind thought about having another baby in the house. Despite everything, Chris couldn’t help but think that having Ryan’s kid was cool.

*

Across the street, Ryan tried to outrun his reflection. He woke each day a little thicker, in ways only he could track: the waistband dug deeper into his waist, the denim had started to protest over his hips, and the odd fullness and tenderness in his chest made him wince constantly. He told himself it was stress, salt, or Autumn’s slower pace. However, every morning, he found a new challenge to prove it was something else.

He turned sideways in the mirror, pressed his hand to the faint but undeniable curve that had replaced his abs, and felt the tender weight below his navel. He sighed, noticing the subtle changes everywhere: a tightness in the area where his pants met his hips; his ass that had always been prominent now felt heavier and broader in how the fabric fit; and thighs that had a new thickness on them. None of it was dramatic, but it was impossible to ignore.

In addition, his odd symptoms persisted, only not as violently as before. Smells could still blindside him, and he still had to run to throw up some mornings. He could be starving to death one minute and too tired to eat anything the next. It was a rollercoaster where he never knew what each day would bring for him.

Tammy watched him with love, trying her best to make him feel comfortable—toast instead of eggs, mint tea instead of coffee, a hand at his back when he paused mid‑hallway to breathe. She hadn’t been happy about him having sex with Chris, but she trusted it had only been a one-time thing—better to leave it in the past. She was still hurt and mad, but after several years of marriage, she knew better than to make Ryan feel worse about it all.

Meanwhile, their boys kept Ryan active. Josh wanted his dad to play with him in the backyard until dusk, shouting for the man to come and catch him. Jeremy wanted to be a backpack and clung to Ryan’s torso, laughing against his neck. Ryan complied, slower, steadier, and sweating sooner, but smiling anyway. Even when his back twinged or his stomach ached, he refused to disappoint them, kneeling so they could climb over him, building Lego towers or tracing shapes on his belly as if it were a new game. He was tired to the bone, but his love for them made him smile when everything else in his life felt like it was crumbling.

Work was getting worse by the day. Tool belts dug into the softening curve of his middle until he had to loosen them mid‑day. When he bent to measure or lift, the snug fabric of his work jeans cut into his waist, and he found himself grunting, standing a little slower, and pretending to be okay. His T-shirt rode up when he reached overhead, exposing a crescent of skin and the new curve, drawing a few smirks from the crew that made his ears burn. He bought larger sizes and pretended it was a brand change, insisting the supplier had altered the cut.

His once‑smooth movements on scaffolds turned more careful because balance felt different with the weight at his middle shifting unexpectedly. Climbing ladders took more effort, and his thighs brushed together in a way they never used to. He moved more slowly through the site, delegating the ladder work with a joke about “management weight.” The crew noticed, but they said nothing beyond the usual teasing on a job site—comments about heavier lunches or winter weight—but he could feel their eyes on him when he leaned or stretched.

*

Chris’s symptoms finally eased by mid-November. The nausea receded, but his mind stayed on full alert at any sign of it coming back. He was more energetic and careful than a cat, finishing his filings, arguing a motion despite having two hours less sleep than ideal, and realizing afterward he had not once gripped the edge of the podium over dizziness. He could only smile at simple but meaningful events like eating bacon for breakfast without consequence.

However, despite those tiny victories, he still felt a massive burden on his shoulders: he needed to speak to Renee about the pregnancy tests. They had wanted a big family, but getting pregnant with Rory had been hard, even with fertility treatments. He wanted to believe that the news about them welcoming a baby into their family in a few months would make Renee happy. But three weeks on the couch had taught him that hope without honesty is only a softer name for delay. He could not hand her this truth in a wrapped box with a sign: “I’m pregnant, isn’t it wonderful?” without first owning the fracture that preceded it.

It meant that there was one person who could look him in the eye and understand without judging him. So, on November 20, he called Ryan. They picked a grocery store lot that emptied after dinner to meet without raising unnecessary but expected suspicions in their wives. When both men arrived, they stayed in their cars for a while, fighting their own thoughts and inevitably remembering their passionate night together. Then, they got out and faced each other across two feet that felt like a mile.

“Hey, how are you?” Chris said.

“Hey,” Ryan responded, sliding his hands into his pockets. “I’ve been fine. Working and being with the family. Things were tense for a while after you opened your mouth about the camping trip,” he added, rolling his eyes to emphasize his exasperation.

“Oh. I’m sorry about that. I honestly couldn’t hide it anymore,” Chris said, taking a deep breath and shrugging. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve been sleeping on the couch for the last few weeks. I don’t think you’re having it as rough as I do. Renee’s… mad, to say the least.”

Ryan laughed and relaxed. “It does make me feel better. You and your big mouth deserve the punishment. But I’m not having it easy. Tammy’s driving me crazy. She thinks I’m on some sympathy… whatever.” He snorted. “She says I’m acting like I did when she was pregnant. Which would be hilarious if it wasn’t—”

“Yeah, about that,” Chris interrupted and stared at the painted line between stalls. “Renee said the same. And I—” He swallowed. “I took some tests.”

Ryan arched his brow in shock. “What? Why would you do that? Please tell me you’re not buying their nonsense,” he said, sharper than he meant.

“I couldn’t breathe without knowing,” Chris said, blushing in shame. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pregnancy test, and the screen still showed the word “PREGNANT.” He held it out. “They’re all like this. Six of them. Positive, again and again.”

Ryan didn’t take it at first. He stared as if it might go off. When he finally accepted the plastic wand, his fingers were careful, clearly terrified. The word there—PREGNANT—felt like a truth he refused to accept. “These things are wrong all the time,” he said, not even blinking.

“Not all of them, not six in a row,” Chris answered. He turned and reached for the passenger seat, bringing out a pharmacy bag. “I got you some in case you want to prove me wrong. Or right. I don’t know which is worse.”

Ryan stared at the bag as if it were a snake. “You and Tammy,” he said, furrowing his brows and blushing in a mix of anger and panic. “You’re both out of your minds.” He took the bag anyway, opening it to find six boxes in it. “This is insane.”

“I know,” Chris said. “But give it a try. If they come back negative, then you’ll have nothing to worry about,” he said, shrugging and biting his lower lip. He wanted to say, “I’m scared, and I’m also weirdly happy about your kid, and I don’t know how to be a father and a pregnant man at once,” but he preferred to keep those words to himself.

Ryan nodded, turning around in silence and quickly getting into his truck as Chris watched him go. Chris moved his hand over his lower middle, unaware that Ryan was doing the same on his way back home.

The next day at lunch, Ryan’s mind couldn’t focus on his crew’s stories. He stood at the edge of the site trailer carrying the pharmacy bag Chris had given him, laughing at himself as he went to the small bathroom on site. He stared at the boxes for a while, nervously opening them all and reading the instructions as if they were a foreign language. He tried to laugh, imagining himself calling Chris to tell him the universe had played a trick on his hormones, but he could not make the picture hold.

He clumsily took the first, second, and third tests, trying to convince himself that it was ridiculous. The fourth, fifth, and sixth times were more careful. Then, as the seconds passed, he stared at the tile grout, at his boots, and at the small window above. When he looked back, the answer was there. Six tests, all showing the same results: positive. His eyes widened as he picked up one of the tests, staring at it in shock.

He looked down at his belly pushing against the T‑shirt and couldn’t help but place his hand there. He didn’t know how to feel. Part of him was scared, but something within him was relieved to learn the truth. He lined the six tests up on a paper towel like evidence, with shaky hands, and took a photo to send to Chris with no words.

A minute later, his phone buzzed with a message. “I told you. What do we do?”

Ryan stared at the question, not knowing how to respond. He turned off the screen and slid the phone into his pocket.

Two days later, on November 22, he went to the same clinic he had gone to a few weeks before, quickly getting into the doctor’s office with deep concerns and confusion about his body.

“Doc, I need you to listen,” Ryan said, sitting forward and squeezing his knees. He explained everything—the nausea, the smells, the fatigue, the ache low in his abdomen, and how his clothes had stopped fitting. He hesitated and then added, “I took six pregnancy tests, and they all came back positive.”

The doctor’s expression showed skepticism, kindness, and curiosity all at once. “Those tests are sensitive, but they’re not perfect,” he said carefully. “There are rare situations—certain tumors, lab errors, hormone cross‑reactivity—that can cause false positives.”

“Six?” Ryan asked, firmly but not combatively. “All the same?”

The doctor exhaled and nodded. “We’ll run a quantitative blood test for hCG, and we’ll see.” The clinic was quiet on Saturday, so ten minutes later the doctor came back with the results. “It’s positive,” he said, rereading the page as if it might correct itself if given a second chance. “And not just barely.” He stopped, lifting his face as if discovering a secret. “Let me check something.” He clicked through the chart, found the labs from weeks prior, and gasped in evident shock. “I dismissed these results back then because they didn’t make sense. But it makes sense now.” He rubbed his temple and looked at Ryan. “There’s only one way to be sure what we’re dealing with. Follow me.”

They went to a nearby room, and Ryan looked around in confusion as the doctor talked. “Normally, a tech would do this, but we don’t have time to wait for him,” the doctor said, wheeling the ultrasound machine over and squeezing gel onto a probe.

Ryan lay back, lifting his shirt to expose the firm curve that had replaced his chiseled abdomen. It wasn’t large, not compared to photographs he’d seen of later months, but on his body it was prominent enough. He winced when the cool gel touched his skin, and the doctor whispered an apology before setting the probe down.

The doctor turned the screen on, and black and white shapes appeared immediately. His face shifted as he moved, pressed, and adjusted the angle to explore Ryan’s insides. Then, his mouth opened, his eyes blinked, and his whole face turned pale. “No way!”

“What?” Ryan demanded, panicking. “Doc—what?”

“Give me a second,” the doctor said, clearly having a hard time comprehending what his eyes saw. He swallowed, clicked the freeze frame, then the measuring tool, and finally turned the monitor slightly so Ryan could see the screen. “You are pregnant, Ryan,” he said without warning. “You are very pregnant. I count six babies, about 10 weeks along.” He hit a button, and six marks appeared on the screen. “You are pregnant with sextuplets.”

The world thinned to a whistle in Ryan’s ears. He stared at the screen where he saw the distinctive shapes. He had been to Tammy’s every ultrasound during both pregnancies, so he knew a baby when he saw one. “Six,” he repeated, but the word didn’t fit in his mouth. “Sextuplets?” He laughed once, sounding like a disbelieving bark that turned into something raw. “That’s not—I can’t—.”

The doctor didn’t know what to respond as Ryan’s vision blurred, and the last thing he felt was the cold gel over his middle and his own voice repeating the word as if repetition could change it: “Sextuplets.” Then the room went black, clean and complete.

...

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PN: Thanks to my dear friend woodywood101 for generating these pics to illustrate the scenes. (Go check out his Patreon content. You'll love it). He's been helping me with the plot for this story, so get ready for crazy stuff in the coming parts.