Heartbeat

Tuesday afternoon…

            Ryeowook giggled as Leeteuk squirted the blue gel onto his exposed stomach.  “It’s cold, hyung!”

            “I’m sorry,” Leeteuk said, beginning to roll the small handheld device over Ryeowook’s stomach.  “It will warm up once I start moving it around a bit.  It just takes a moment.”

            Kyuhyun leaned over the bed, trying to get a glimpse of the screen.  “Is that our baby?  It doesn’t look like a baby…kinda looks like an alien.”

            Ryeowook smacked his boyfriend’s arm.  “It’s not an alien!”

            Leeteuk laughed and pointed at the screen.  “That’s your baby, but it’s not easy to see much this early on if you’re not a professional.  We won’t be able to tell if it’s a boy or a girl yet.  But that’s the head and that’s the rest of the body.  You can’t see the arms well from this angle, but those are the legs.  I can move it in a moment and you might be able to see the profile view a bit.”

            Ryeowook squinted his eyes, but even he was having trouble distinguishing the parts Leeteuk had pointed out. 

            “What’s that weird noise the machine is making?” Kyuhyun asked.

            “That swooshing sound?” Leeteuk asked.

            “Yeah.”

            “That’s your baby’s heartbeat,” he answered.

            Kyuhyun suddenly grew quiet and his hand clamped down on Ryeowook’s wrist as he listened carefully to the sound.  Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.  It steadily sounded off, over and over.  Ryeowook stared up at Kyuhyun and noticed his eyes glaze over with unshed tears as he listened to the sound of their child’s heartbeat. 

            “Here, if I angle it around a little, you can actually see it as well,” Leeteuk said. 

            They both looked over at the screen and there it was: a little section of the screen that pumped in time to the noise.  It didn’t look like a heart and the baby didn’t look much like a baby yet, but they could clearly see that the child was growing and alive inside him.  Ryeowook smiled wide. 

            “Is my baby healthy, hyung?”

            “Very.  And he or she is growing normally.  I still want to do some bloodwork on you to make sure that you don’t have any vitamin deficiencies yourself, but other than that, I think things are progressing well.  You were initially losing weight, which worried me, but now you’ve started to gain a little.”

            Kyuhyun suddenly bent down and kissed Ryeowook.  “I love you.”

            “I love you, too,” Ryeowook said, kissing him back. 

            Leeteuk just grinned, watching them.  “I’m glad that you’ve decided to have the baby, Wook.”     Ryeowook looked down at his stomach.  “The funny part is, my stomach isn’t any bigger yet.”

            “That’s because this is your first baby.  You probably won’t show for a couple more weeks, especially since you had morning sickness.  The baby is really tiny still.  Don’t worry though, you’ll start complaining about your clothes not fitting in no time.  And they don’t make maternity clothes for men, so you’ll either have to have stuff specially made or buy very gender neutral maternity clothes.”

            Kyuhyun snickered beside him and he looked up at his lover.  “You’re entertained by this?”

            “I’m sorry.  I was just picturing you in women’s maternity clothes and I thought you might actually be able to pull it off.”

            Leeteuk nodded.  “If anyone could, it would be you.  And a dress would probably be more comfortable to wear when you’re eight or nine months along, Wook.”

            Ryeowook grumbled to himself.  He was doubtless going to be on the receiving end of jokes like this until after he had the baby.  Maybe longer.  Having babies was considered a woman’s job, after all.  He was going to have to set up a time to sit down with Donghae and have a heart to heart to ask him a bunch of questions, ranging from ‘how did you handle the strangers staring at you’ to ‘where did you go for clothes’ to ‘what does it feel like when you’re further along’.   

            “We are going to want to monitor you more closely than we would a woman at this point, Wook.  We have to make sure that the baby’s developing at a safe pace and that you’re healthy.  So I’d like to see you again in two weeks.  This time, I’m going to bring Heechul with as well.”

            “What?  Why?” Ryeowook said, suddenly angry.

            “If I’m not around or available and something should happen, Heechul is the other doctor in charge of your care.  He’s the only other doctor who has any experience with the male reproductive system and could deliver a baby if I can’t,” Leeteuk informed him.  “So he’ll have to be around for some of the prenatal appointments.”

            “I’m very eager to see Heechul again.  We met very briefly at a party at Kangin’s house, if I’m not mistaken,” Kyuhyun said.

            “I hope you’re eager to meet him because you want to kick his for what he did to your boyfriend,” Ryeowook told him.

            Kyuhyun grasped his hand and leaned down.  “I have very conflicting views on Heechul at the moment.  Yes, what he did was very wrong.  But if he hadn’t done it, we wouldn’t be having a baby right now.  How can I possibly stay mad at him?  I never dreamed that I would have my own child!”

            Ryeowook closed his eyes and shook his head.  “I am not going to forgive him so quickly.”

            “Of course not.  You’re pregnant.  Before you were knocked up you weren’t known for your overly forgiving nature.  We didn’t think that was going to improve once you were pregnant,” Leeteuk pointed out.  “Do you want some pictures?”

            “Yes,” Kyuhyun said.  “My mother will want to see them…and my father probably won’t believe our story without them.”

            “Heading to the parents’ house after this?” Leeteuk asked.

            “Must we do this today, Kyu?  What if they’re upset?”

            Kyuhyun smiled down at him.  “They won’t be upset.  They’ve been bugging Ahra for grandchildren for years and pointing out the one evil of being gay to me was that I couldn’t provide them with grandchildren that way.  You’re about to become their favorite person.  My mother is probably going to start calling you daily to check on you though.”

            “What?”

            “Sorry,” Kyuhyun said, shrugging his shoulders. 

            “Are you going to tell your own parents, Wook?” Leeteuk asked.

            “They don’t speak to me already,” Ryeowook answered.

            “You don’t think they’d take any interest in their grandchild?”

            “Not if I’m the one giving birth,” Ryeowook explained.

            Leeteuk nodded and removed he device from Ryeowook’s lower abdomen.  Then he wiped up the gel with a damp towel.  “Well, I’m going to send you over to the lab for bloodwork, then you can be on your way.  I’ll call you if I’m worried about any of it.  In the meantime, I want you to keep taking the vitamins I gave you and to get plenty of rest.”

            “I have a question,” Kyuhyun said.

            “Yes?”

            “Are we still allowed to have ?”

            Leeteuk smiled, but answered the question.  “As long as the expecting parent is not too tired and as long as the ual act isn’t too strenuous or abnormal, then yes.  If anything becomes painful, you need to stop.  If there’s any bleeding, please come in to have it checked out.  Understood?”

            Kyuhyun nodded. 

            Ryeowook smacked him in the chest. 

            “What?” 

            “Was it really necessary to ask that?”

            “I wanted to make sure you weren’t wrong.  I enjoy making love to you, but I can refrain from it if it means that the baby will be healthier.”

            “Your boyfriend will get much crabbier if he isn’t getting any,” Ryeowook pointed out, zipping up his jeans and pulling down his shirt.  Then he swung his legs over the table and Kyuhyun helped him to his feet. 

            “You’re already moody,” Kyuhyun . 

            “I will warn you though,” Leeteuk said.  “You may have to refrain from in the last trimester, since it can cause premature labor to start.  Depending on how mom and baby are doing, we may not want to risk the baby coming early.”

            Ryeowook glared at Leeteuk.  “I AM NOT A MOM!”

            Leeteuk calmly turned off his machine and began to clean up.  “I hate to point this out to you, but you are currently pregnant.”

            “That is not the meaning of mother.  A mother is simply a female parent and I’m not a female.  I want to be referred to as a father as well!” Ryeowook demanded. 

            Leeteuk rolled his eyes.  “Fine.  We’ll refer to you as the birthing parent then.”

            Ryeowook nodded.  “That’s better.”

            “Are you ready?” Kyuhyun asked, giving Leeteuk a sympathetic look.  “Should we get your bloodwork done so we can go?”

            Ryeowook nodded and headed out the door. 

            Kyuhyun began to follow him when Leeteuk called out his name.  He stopped in the doorway and turned to face the doctor.  “Did you need me for something, Doctor Park?”

            Leeteuk smiled at this.  “You can just call me hyung like Ryeowook does.  I just wanted you to know that Ryeowook looks much happier now than when he first heard the news.  I think he was a little concerned with how you’d react to the news.  I’m glad things are working out well between the two of you.”

            “So am I, hyung.  Thank you for taking such good care of him,” Kyuhyun said, nodding to him.  Then he headed out the door, hurrying after Ryeowook before he was missed.  He walked in just as the nurse was inserting a needle into Ryeowook’s arm and suddenly felt lightheaded and had to grip the doorway and close his eyes.  “Oh, God!  Blood!”

            “Great.  You’re going to pass out in the delivery room!” Ryeowook complained.  “You’ll probably miss the birth.”

            “I was planning on recording it,” Kyuhyun said, squeezing his eyes tight as the dizziness subsided.

            “Over my dead body.  You can take all the pictures you want after the baby’s born, but you aren’t taking any of me while I’m having the baby,” Ryeowook informed him.

            “But it’s not a l birth,” Kyuhyun objected.  “Everything important will be covered up.”

            “I’m only going to say this one last time: NO!” Ryeowook said, smacking Kyuhyun’s . 

            “You’re done already?” Kyuhyun asked, peaking over at his pregnant lover who was unrolling his shirt sleeve. 

            “Cesareans don’t take much longer than that either, so if you pass out from the blood, you’ll miss the whole birth,” Ryeowook informed him.  “So you might want to desensitize yourself to it a little in the next six months.”

            Kyuhyun scrunched his face up in disgust.

            Ryeowook just shook his head as Kyuhyun helped him on with his coat.  “It’s a good thing that I’m having this baby and not you.  I can’t imagine what a wimp you’d be about it.”

            “I could totally handle it,” Kyuhyun confidently said. 

            “Oh yeah?  So, after this baby, should we test that theory and give you some of Heechul’s pills to try instead?” Ryeowook asked. 

            Kyuhyun frowned.  “You know I don’t like to bottom.”

            “Trust me,” Ryeowook told him.  “You’d do anything to get laid while on those pills.  Anything.”

            “And you don’t think you would have come over to my apartment that night and slept with me had you not been under the influence of Heechul’s fertility pills?” Kyuhyun asked.

            Ryeowook shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I knew you had plans with Changmin.”

            “You know I was eager to spend time with you instead of him.  I told you so.”

            “You don’t understand where I’m coming from.  I was afraid that if I came over when I wasn’t expected, it would make me look needy.  I thought that would make you less attracted to me.  So I was careful about not intruding in your life too heavily in the beginning,” Ryeowook explained.  “Had it not been for Heechul’s pill, I probably wouldn’t have come over because I wouldn’t want you to think I was clingy or didn’t have friends of my own to spend time with.  There were things that bothered some of my ex-boyfriends and I assumed that they would bother you as well.”

            Kyuhyun reached down to grasp Ryeowook’s hand and gently squeezed it.  “Ryeonggu…I don’t think your exes could have possibly loved you as much as I do.  I miss you when you’re gone.”

            Kyuhyun looked over at his little lover, whose cheeks suddenly turned pink.  It was cold out, but Kyuhyun knew that it wasn’t from the winter temperatures and smiled to himself. 

            “If it were now…after we’ve talked more…I know I would have come over.  I just doubt I would have had the confidence to do it then, had it not been for Heechul’s pill.  I even felt a little shy about it at the time, but my need to get laid outweighed