It was nearly seven when the front door clicked open. Kyuhyun happened to be in his room, looking up tricks for on taking care of the baby and didn’t hear anyone come in. With the doll beside him, he was focused solely on his computer screen. Needless to say, he nearly flipped out of his seat when someone grasped him from behind.

“Kyuhyun, it’s me! Ryeowook!” His boyfriend leaped back with a shriek. Hands held up in surrender, the poor boy looked terrified. And it wasn’t because Kyuhyun was reaching for the nearest bat or anything.

“Oh Ryeowook, you came back,” Kyuhyun sagged, releasing the bat. “God, you scared me.”

“I scared you? I try to give my boyfriend a hug and he turns a bat on me! How many of those do you even have?”

“Four,” He replied easily. “One for the front door, one for the living room, and two in the bedrooms. Don’t give me that look; you know I’m paranoid about break-ins,” He snapped. Ryeowook just huffed and crossed his arms. Kyuhyun sighed.

Pushing himself out of the chair, he walked over to give his boyfriend the greeting he'd wanted and deserved.

“I’m sorry for scaring you.” He mumbled, wrapping his arms around him.

Ryeowook sighed and relaxed in his embrace. “It’s fine. I know how you get in the dark.”

Kyuhyun smiled, “One of the many things I appreciate about you.”

“You’d better. Not many guys would tolerate getting swung at with a blunt instrument.”

“At least I looked before I swung this time.”

“Yeah, good thing too. Who knows if your aim still .”

Kyuhyun pulled back with a chuckle. Finding no traces of annoyance in his boyfriend’s face, Kyuhyun found it safe to look Ryeowook in the eye. “Thanks for coming back.”

Ryeowook smiled disarmingly, “I always come back. And besides,” He walked over to the baby, “I couldn’t leave you with this all alone. You’d probably fail the night and I’d have to hear you complain about your B-plus for the rest of the year. And we wouldn’t want that now would we?” He said the last part to the doll through baby-talk.

In spite of himself, Kyuhyun smiled warmly. Ryeowook was always sweet and caring but it did him good to remember just how much the older would do for him. It was also nice seeing a goofy side, even if it was kind of creepy. 

“Oh and Kyuhyun,” He blinked out of his thoughts to see Ryeowook picking up the baby. “There’s Greek takeout in the kitchen. Without your mom here, I knew you would probably forget about dinner or just ignore it altogether.”

Kyuhyun gaped for a second before beaming, “You are the greatest boyfriend ever!”

“I know,” Ryeowook smiled confidently. With the mechanical baby in his arms, he briefly glanced down at the Kyuhyun’s open laptop.  Before Kyuhyun could drag him away, Ryeowook read the website name and frowned.

“Wait, what’s this website for tips on caring for the baby -?”

And Kyuhyun was out of the room before Ryeowook could finish his question. It was moments later when Kyuhyun was getting out the dishes when Ryeowook’s realization bounced down the hall: “Kyuhyun, you cheater, you!”

Ryeowook’s reaction to the whole thing was just a bit comical. Pacing around the room, baby in hand, he fumed as Kyuhyun set up for dinner.

Kyuhyun didn’t really view finding loopholes on the internet as a form of cheating per se, but he got a ten minute lecture on it anyways. Something about the point of the assignment and not being able to turn off actual babies.

Finally, Kyuhyun had to shush him with a finger to the lips.

“It’s time to eat.” He guided boyfriend towards kitchen table. 

Reluctantly, Ryeowook set the doll down into its car seat before joining him. Kyuhyun couldn’t help but smile when the older slid into his chair. It’d been a while since they’d had dinner together.

“I’ll never get used to you setting up the table for takeout,” He commented as Kyuhyun moved salad from the plastic bowl the ceramic one.

“It makes it taste better doesn’t it? When the food doesn’t come from a paper box?” He began pouring apple juice into their glasses. “And besides, this setting makes up for the fact that I can’t afford to take you to an actual restaurant.”

“So, you’re paying me back in ambience?”

“Pretty much.”

Kyuhyun glanced up to see his boyfriend watching him with a soft smile. With every light on in the apartment, the mood wasn’t exactly that of a restaurant’s. Though there were some cool lamps. Tossing the now empty takeout containers, Kyuhyun then seated himself across Ryeowook and they began to dig in.

The food was decent. The meat was a little salty but Kyuhyun could ignore that as long as Ryeowook was talking. And boy was he talking. A lot of people though Wookie was shy or quiet but in reality, once Ryeowook found himself liking someone, he would never shut up. And Kyuhyun loved that.

Near the end of their dinner, Ryeowook returned to the topic of the baby doll.

“You have to hold the baby while you feed it or else it will scream. And don’t forget to burp it. You can burp and rock at the same time if you don’t know which one it wants.”

“Mhhm,” Kyuhyun nodded as he cleared the table. Apparently Ryeowook was trying to discourage him from “cheating” by giving him legitimate tips on fake baby care.

“And always check the diaper first. If it wants the diaper change you can get an immediate coo.”

“A coo?”

“A happy noise,” Ryeowook informed him, “The baby makes a cooing sound when you’ve completed the care.”

“Coos…” Kyuhyun said thoughtfully. Then he started imitating bird sounds and Ryeowook threw something at his head. He missed, and the baby’s blanket fell to the floor.

“I’m not picking that up,” Kyuhyun said, laughing.

Ryeowook scoffed but went to retrieve it anyways. This time, he didn’t miss.

After the dishes were done, the couple crashed on the couch. Takeout wasn’t the only thing Ryeowook brought as the older sat scribbling out his math homework. Kyuhyun would’ve been more upset except for having plenty of schoolwork himself.

Leaning on opposite ends of the couch, Kyuhyun sat with Ryeowook’s legs in his lap. The baby was sat in the brown recliner. The chair looked huge when compared to the 20 inch doll inside.

 “Hey Wookie, what’s a third theme of Harrison Bergeron? I’ve got the idiocy of equality and the idiocy of blind praising.”

Ryeowook frowned for a second and tapped his lips with the pencil. He paused, “The idiocy of capitalism?” 

Kyuhyun beamed, “That’s perfect! I'm done!” He shouted, slamming his laptop shut. “No more writing for me this weekend!”

Ryeowook laughed, “Are you forgetting about your baby journal?”

“My what?” Kyuhyun frowned.

Ryeowook cocked his head at him, “Your baby journal? You have to answer questions each day about taking care of the baby?”

Kyuhyun stared dumbfounded.

“It’s in the blue packet?” Ryeowook reminded desperately.

Cursing, he quickly untangled himself and went for the baby packet which he had carelessly tossed aside. Flipping through the pages, Kyuhyun nearly choked when he reached the pages of writing he was expected to do.

“Eight pages of baby journaling? And a pricing activity!? What the hell is this!?”

Flinging the packet onto the coffee table, Kyuhyun groaned in complete frustration. The assignment just kept getting more and more ridiculous. Who kept a baby journal, let alone a fake baby journal?

“Hey, it’s not so bad,” Ryeowook tried reassuring him. But Kyuhyun just threw himself onto the couch and refused to look up. His boyfriend grabbed the packet and started flipping through it himself. Kyuhyun could hear him chuckling every few seconds. Of course it seemed amusing when he wasn't the one doing it. 

“Kyuhyun, really? It’s eight pages of writing about the baby. You’ve whined enough in the last hour to fill twenty pages and you just finished all your other homework this weekend.”

“I said I finished writing,” Kyuhyun complained, “I still have a load of APUSH and Calc projects, not to mention studying.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” He looked up, exasperated. “Why on earth did you tell me to take this class?”

Ryeowook shrugged, “Easy credits?”

Kyuhyun groaned, burying his head in his hands. Now that the baby manual was turning out to be the baby activity book, he would very likely have to reschedule his work time. Not that the baby would allow a legitimate schedule anyways. Kyuhyun got up and began pacing around the room. Ryeowook watched with worried eyes.

“Kyu, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d have so many classes this year. You know I wouldn't have suggested this class if I did." Kyuhyun just kept pacing. Ryeowook his lips, "You know what? I’ll stay and help you out the whole weekend.”

Kyuhyun turned around. “Really?”

“Yeah, my parent thinks I’m at Sungmin’s right now so I can even stay the nights. And as long as you chime in I can help with the caretaker stuff. But you still have to do some of the work.” He added like an afterthought. 

“But you’ll be around the whole weekend?” Kyuhyun said almost hopefully.

Ryeowook nodded happily but then cringed. Obviously not. He must’ve noticed the change in Kyuhyun’s expression because he quickly offered an explanation.

“It’s only tomorrow morning. I volunteered at the music center but I’ll come back by noon. With food,” He added.

Looking at his pleading face, Kyuhyun nodded just a bit hesitantly.

Ryeowook smiled relieved. Happy again, the petite patted the cushion beside him. “Come on baby daddy; let’s start on this first journal while she's still sleeping.”

Kyuhyun scoffed, “Never call me that again.” But he sauntered over to the smaller anyways and plopped himself on the couch. Ryeowook scooted himself onto him and made sure Kyuhyun didn’t get too sarcastic while writing. That was always a possibility when Kyuhyun disliked an assignment. However, with the smaller in his lap, Kyuhyun did the work with surprisingly little complaint.

***

How did you feel when the baby needed its first care? How did you handle it? Were you successful?

How do you think I felt? The clock strikes four and this possessed doll starts screaming like a banshee. No, not a like banshee. It is a banshee.Those were not the recorded cries of a human baby. It was banshee I tell you. And it really didn’t help that that thing kept getting louder by the minute. You know, I might leave this class with some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder? That’s how loud that thing screams.

I feel as if I handled it fairly well. When the baby started to wail, like a good little daddy, I picked it up (despite not knowing how to hold an eight-pound piece of plastic and silicon) and tried to feed it. When that didn’t do anything, I tried a diaper. Nothing again. I must admit, at that point, I was getting just a little bit annoyed. But like I learned in class, I did not throw that thing out the window. Instead I rocked it for thirty minutes straight. While patting it on the back. I’m a little surprised my arm is still connected to my body right now.

I admit that I failed this first need. I called for help and while it only took around ten seconds for my backup to stop the crying (it needed to be burped) it seems ludicrous that I spent over half an hour calming a set of speakers wrapped in synthetic material. Which by the way doesn’t even feel like a real baby; that thing was like a chunk of wood in my arms.  

What I don’t understand is, what was I meant to gain from this lesson? That babies take forty minutes to make a burp? I find that highly unrealistic. Not only do I feel traumatized from this first afternoon, I also feel cheated by this assignment. I do not look forward to the next two days.

9:28pm

This was supposed to be longer but the scenes weren't meshing. So, maybe this story will just have shorter chapters. 

On the other hand, I found this cartoon which seemed fitting for the story. =D