Under the Influence

            Ryeowook woke to the sound of a phone ringing.  In his groggy state, it took him a moment to realize that the ringtone wasn’t his.  He felt the mattress shift behind him and then a bare arm reach over him to grab a cellphone on the nightstand.  A second later, the ringing stopped and Ryeowook was suddenly being pressed into a warm back as that same arm wrapped around his body and held him tight.

            “Who was that?” Ryeowook curiously asked.

            “Just my mother,” Kyuhyun mumbled, his voice even lower and ier after just waking up.  “I’ll call her back.  Sorry it woke you.”

            Ryeowook ran his fingers up and down Kyuhyun’s arm.  “I must have been tired…I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” 

            They’d been seeing each other for four months—sleeping with each other a little more than three—but Ryeowook always left after they had .  He never stayed until morning.  Being in a new relationship, after a couple failed ones and a stretch of being single, made him feel a little uneasy about being with someone again.  He was just waiting until something bad happened.  But it hadn’t, so far.  Kyuhyun seemed genuinely devoted to him.  He was smart, very funny, good-looking, and appeared to have no interest in anyone but him. 

            Kyuhyun wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination.  He couldn’t cook to save his life.  Kyuhyun usually ate out with friends after work or just picked up something on the way home.  He was awed by Ryeowook’s ability to cook dinner, which Ryeowook didn’t think was that impressive, but he would gladly accept as a selling point if it meant he could lure in men like Cho Kyuhyun.  The other detail about Kyuhyun was he was kind of a nerd.  Ryeowook had never dated someone who spent as much of their downtime playing video games, but that also meant he wasn’t out on the prowl looking to hook up with someone else either when they weren’t together.  Ryeowook was still trying to figure out what was going on between them.

            Kyuhyun nuzzled against his neck and kissed him repeatedly.  “I like waking up to you in my arms.”

            So did Ryeowook.  He just didn’t want to get too used to being there, in case it didn’t work out.  He didn’t want to get his heart set on being with Kyuhyun, only to have it crushed again.  So he tried to keep a little distance.  He tried to keep himself from falling completely.  But it was starting to become a losing battle.  Kyuhyun hadn’t done a single thing to make him think he wasn’t good for him or that he wasn’t dedicated to just him.

            Ryeowook turned around to face his lover.  “I confess, I could get used to this,” he said, leaning in to press his lips against Kyuhyun’s.  He felt his lover’s arms tighten around him and moaned into the kiss.

            After a long make out session, Kyuhyun finally broke his lips away from Ryeowook’s and gazed at him, his eyes only partly open.  Even still half asleep, his eyes raked over Ryeowook passionately.  “You should stay more often…you could just lie in bed with me the whole weekend.”

            Ryeowook smiled at this, loving the idea of it, even if he knew he couldn’t.  “I already told you I had plans for the night with one of my friends.”

            Kyuhyun sighed heavily.  “I know, I know…and I have made plans with my best friend as well, but I would drop him in a heartbeat if you changed your mind…just in case.”

            “I’ll keep that in mind,” Ryeowook said, kissing him again, “just in case.”

            The problem with being best friends with a mad scientist—and there was no contesting the fact that Heechul was mad, he was nearly stripped of his medical licensure a couple times for questionable practices—was that sometimes he simply forgot you were there in the lab.  If he became too focused on what he was doing, he would forget that someone had come to visit him and would have to be reminded that he wasn’t alone.

            Leeteuk cleared his throat.  “As you were saying, Heenim…nearly ten minutes ago.”

            Heechul looked up from his microscope, clearly startled.  “What was I saying?”

            “You said something to the effect of, ‘Although the male pregnancy pill seemed to work well for Eunhyuk and Donghae when they wanted to conceive a child, the four failures that followed will make it hard to prove that the pill is effective at all unless it works at least a portion of the time.’  Something to that effect.  Correct?”

            Heechul leaned back in his seat and nodded.  He grabbed the cup beside him and brought it too his lips, about to drink from it, when he realized that it was the sample he was investigating under the microscope and not his coffee.  He quickly set it down and picked up his coffee mug instead, no longer warm from being neglected so long.  Leeteuk tried his hardest not to smile at his friend’s folly, knowing the mad scientist’s explosive temper.

            “Right.  Just because the pill worked to get Donghae pregnant is not enough proof that it works and that it should be mass produced.  I need more than one success story or no drug manufacturer will take a second look at me.  But I’ve tried this pill on four other male couples, multiple times, with no luck.  Only one conceived and then miscarried within a month and a half.”

            “Donghae was in excellent physical shape,” Leeteuk pointed out.  “Is it possible that he was simply the healthiest in the group?”

            “They’re gay!  They’re all obsessed with their looks and working out!” Heechul argued.

            “You’re stereotyping,” Leeteuk pointed out, laughing.

            “They were as bad as you,” he said, pointing to his friend.

            “Fine,” Leeteuk conceded, nodding as he drank from his own coffee.  “Perhaps this pill just doesn’t work for everyone, just like fertility treatments for heteroual couples.  Sometimes it’s a hit and miss.  You’ll have to try it out on more couples to know for sure.”

            “But I’m running out of people to ask.  You’re single,” he pointed out.

            “And I wasn’t planning on children at the moment,” he reminded Heechul, “especially since I’m not with anyone at the moment.”

            Heechul frowned.  “But I don’t want to advertise the fact that I might have found a fertility treatment to make men pregnant.  I’d be hunted down for the damn thing and killed!”

            Leeteuk’s brows rose.

            “This pill will be worth a fortune!” Heechul told him.  “Once I can prove it works at least half the time.  I just need to get it to work a couple more times and then I can start trying to sell the damn thing and make my fortune!”

            Leeteuk finished off his coffee and stood up.  “I will casually ask around and see if I can find anyone else that is trying to adopt or talks about having a family.  If I find anyone, I’ll give them your number.”

            Heechul nodded, walking his friend to the door.  Just as Leeteuk was putting on his coat and saying his good-byes, Ryeowook was walking down the hall to the doctor’s lab.  “Ah, Ryeowook!  What brings you to the university on your day off?”

            “I had scheduled some afternoon lessons with a couple of my students who are behind in the semester,” Ryeowook informed him, nodding to Leeteuk as he passed and walking into the lab with a box in his hands. 

            “Did you bring me something?” Heechul asked, eyeing the box.

            Ryeowook nodded and handed over the box.  “I baked some cookies this morning.”

            Heechul kissed Ryeowook’s cheek and snatched the box from him, opening it immediately and greedily grabbing three of the cookies out.  “I love you!”

            Ryeowook laughed as he took off his coat and hung it up.  “You would have had more, but I baked them this morning at Kyuhyun’s apartment and he insisted I leave half of them there.  They’re probably already gone.”

            Heechul stopped eating.  “Who’s Kyuhyun?” he asked, crumbs flying out of his mouth as he spoke. 

            “You know, the guy I’m seeing.  Maybe I should actually call him my boyfriend now.  It has been four months.  He introduced me as his boyfriend when we ate with his friends the other night,” Ryeowook said, rambling as he walked along the counter.  “Are one of these machines the coffee maker?”

            Heechul quickly set down his coffee.  “I’ll pour your coffee, Wook.  Wouldn’t want you to accidentally drink something toxic.”

            Ryeowook smiled wide and walked over to look at what Heechul was working on instead.  “What are you working on at the moment?”

            “Still working on fertility.  The male mice have been multiplying like crazy, of course, so I was viewing some cells under the microscope.  You can look if you’d like,” he said, getting down a clean coffee mug from the cupboard. 

            As instructed, Ryeowook leaned down to peer in the microscope.  “What cells are these?”

            “Fertilized eggs that are starting to grow.  Who is Kyuhyun again?  Have I met him?”

            “Yeah,” Ryeowook said, staring into the lens.  “He was at my dinner party, last month.  You remarked on how tall he was for being so much younger than you.”

            “Ah, yes,” Heechul mused, pouring some coffee into the mug.  “And he’s rather attractive, if I remember correctly.”

            “Very,” Ryeowook said, grinning.

            “Good