Chapter Text
“Alright, you charming young nincompoops, listen up,” Mr. Bielschmidt—their relatively new health-class teacher (and Ludwig’s older brother, as everyone soon found out)—said, “You knew this day was coming. You all knew. It’s been on the syllabus since day one. In fact, it’s been on the syllabus for decades. And for good reason; nobody wants to see deadbeat, useless dads in this generation, ja?” The students held their breaths, collectively wondering whether Mr. Bielschmidt would overshare yet again about his and Ludwig’s emotionally dysfunctional family. Thankfully, he did not. Instead he bent underneath his desk and dragged out a rather large cardboard box. “Any last words?”
Lovino buried his face in his arms. He hated most teachers about an equal amount, but today, he hated Mr. Bielschmidt a little more. When he had been hired earlier in the year, the whole class had expected him to scrap the dreaded ‘baby’ assignment, because he was generally a cool guy, more concerned with smoking weed behind the dumpsters after school than giving his students an ethical backbone. Alas, even he was prone to tradition. At the thought, the resentment in Lovino’s heart grew further.
Pathetically enough, the ‘baby’ assignment really had been on the Weston Academy syllabus for decades. It had been rather unconventional, especially when it first showed up in their curriculum, because they were an all-boys school, and a sizable amount of conservative parents had complained about how ‘queer’ it all was. The principle at the time had insisted, however, that it would only promote strong moral character. Eventually his reasoning had won out, and the academy went forth with assigning ‘partners’ a baby to take care of. Not a real baby, of course. A plastic one, which would cry unless you took proper care of it. It was supposed to instill some fatherly sense of virtue in all the students. And that’s all Lovino really remembered from Mr. Bielschmidt’s bullshit explanation of this class’ history.
“Need me to explain the instructions again?” Mr. Bielschmidt asked, lifting the heavy box onto his desk. He pulled out a baby and held it up. It was missing an arm. “Remember, don’t worry about the damage that already exists. Just make sure you don’t do anything additionally harmful.”
“Gilbert,” an obnoxious voice called out from the back of the class, and Lovino winced. Only Alfred Jones was enough of a jackass to call his teachers by their first names. “I don’t really see the point of this, man. And I feel like no one’s going to notice if you just don’t assign it?”
“Au contraire, mon cher,” Mr. Bielschmidt replied in a terrible imitation of French, which was a testament to how much he hung around Mr. Bonnefoy, “They will notice. This assignment is tradition, and I will not be the one to break it! Not to mention, in this generation of Google-y phones and smart apples, it’s probably good for you to take care of something incapable of looking at a screen.” Lovino rolled his eyes and the rest of the class groaned collectively.
“Yes, well I don’t feel comfortable being partnered in this way with another student,” their Chinese exchange student, Yao Wang, interrupted. “My father would not be pleased with implication—“
“That’s homophobic!!” someone interrupted, and the whole class erupted in argument. Lovino, as a closeted gay man and an open Catholic, always tried to keep his head down during these discussions. They came up surprisingly often for a health class.
“SETTLE DOWN!” Mr. Bielschmidt roared and, miraculously, the class quieted. Yao shuffled a little uncomfortably in his seat, “Jesus, can we just get through this?! It’s the last period of the fu—of the gosh-darned day, and it’s almost over—I don’t want to stay here longer than we have to! Yao,” he said, turning to address the Chinese boy, “I know it’s a little different here than where you’re from, but just tell your family that this is a pretty sizeable chunk of your grade, they should cut you some slack, okay?” With some reluctance, Yao nodded, and Mr. Bielschmidt clapped his hands together in sarcastic delight.
“Alright then,” he began, with an exasperated voice, “Here’s the rules, one more time. You will each be partnered up. Try your best not to get sick these next few days, because your partner will have to pick up your slack, and that is no bueno,” he turned back to his desk and picked up another baby, this one dark skinned with no legs, “Each partnership will receive a baby. Even the ones with the missing limbs work, so don’t try to pull any bullshi—anything, okay? They are ALL functional.” He dropped the baby back into the box. “Your objective is to take care of this baby. Treat it like you would your own child. Feed it, change it, etc. It has some sensitive technology, so it will NOT stop crying until you properly take care of it. If I find you’ve tampered with the baby in any way, you’ll receive an automatic zero.” Lovino saw some of the know-it-alls in the class pale in panic. He almost snickered at their faces. “It’s up to you guys to divide the work however you want, that’s part of the assignment. Any questions?” he turned around, back to the class, conveniently missing the various hands that had gone up. “Great. In that case, I’m calling out partners now. No, you cannot switch partners, no exceptions.” Lovino perked up at this part. Though he wasn’t a try-hard like his brother’s friend Kiku or His-Majesty-President-of-the-Student-Council Arthur Kirkland, he nevertheless needed a good grade on this to pass the health class. No one could say Mr. Bielschmidt was an easy grader.
“Remember, these are totally random. First off, Ludwig and Feliciano.”
These were absolutely not random. Lovino glared intensely at Mr. Bielschmidt’s retreating back. He knew how much Lovino hated Ludwig, and now the potato-bastard would have a reason to hang around Lovino and Feliciano’s house all day! It was infuriating! And Lovino could swear he saw Mr. Bielschmidt send a nasty smirk his way.
“Next up, Alfred and Arthur.” At this announcement, the whole class jeered, including Lovino (he could get caught up in the moment too, okay?!), and Arthur and Alfred looked confusedly at each other. The two were arguably the most popular students at their school, though they somehow ran in completely different social circles. Lovino himself was a lot closer to Arthur, though that wasn’t saying much, as Arthur wasn’t particularly “close” to anyone. He had a lot of friends (tryhards Lovino would scoff as yet another boy asked Arthur just how he managed to keep his accent so authentic) but he didn’t particularly seem to like any of them. Essentially, he was a douchebag. But Alfred Jones was an even bigger one, and they deserved each other.
(At least they didn’t have the problem that Lovino did. Both boys were heterosexual to a fault, serially dating just about every girl from Weston’s sister school across town. This project for them would be just that—a project. Lovino, meanwhile, had at one time or another had a crush on every boy in this health class -including both Alfred and Arthur and, mortifyingly, Mr. Bielschmidt - so no matter who he was paired with, it would be a tremendously awkward affair.)
“Guys, can we be adults for five seconds,” Mr. Bielschmidt groaned as he handed off one of the more functional looking babies to Arthur, “Too much to ask for? Great. Anyway, next is Yao and Ivan.”
A few boys jeered again, and Lovino observed Yao’s horror-struck face as he looked back at Ivan Braginsky, who was leaning back in his chair at the back of the classroom, creepily alert as usual. There weren’t many people who Lovino felt sorry for, but he supposed that now Yao was counted among them.
“Right,” Mr. Bielschmidt continued, “Here you go Yao, sorry it’s missing an ear, I don’t know how they managed to do that last year. Actually…Arthur?” He turned to the boy in question, who was already embracing his plastic fake baby like a real child, “Wasn’t your brother the one who had this baby last year?”
“Yes,” Arthur grunted, and everyone in the class laughed, as if he had bestowed upon them some witty joke. Amazing.
“Anyway, next up…Lovino and Antonio?” Lovino scrunched his eyes together, and ignored the various cackles that sounded through the classroom. Antonio wasn’t the worst partner to have (that honor would go to Ludwig), but he certainly wasn’t the best. Especially because he’d been his go-to crush for Lovino’s entire high school career. He was in every daydream, every fantasy, every…whatever. He was certainly in every wet-dream. Lovino recalled a particularly memorable one, where some sort of orgy was set to occur (it seemed like it anyway, there were many men there and they were all naked) and Arthur Kirkland and Alfred Jones were both shirtless and looking rather randy (Lovino hadn’t been able to look at them in the eyes for weeks), but then Antonio had appeared out of nowhere and whisked Lovino away to have his dirty way with him in a beautiful cottage in the middle of Spain. It was all very fruity and mushy and embarrassing and Lovino had been having dreams like that ever since.
And now he needed to take care of a baby with the bastard?!
Thankfully, Antonio was absent from class that day, so Lovino was spared his over the top declarations of love for children and babies (and boy did Antonio love children - his biggest ambition in life was to be a father which was…sweet, in a way, Lovino supposed), but it would still be awful and horrible when Lovino DID eventually tell the Spaniard that they’d have to raise a child together for a week.
He tuned out for the rest of class, vaguely registering some protests and some more jeers are partnerships were announced. He wanted to bury his head in the ground and never come out. Especially when he remembered Ludwig would be inside his home for part of the week.
---
Ludwig was, quite honestly, feeling some serious resentment towards his brother at the moment.
It wasn’t enough that Gilbert had embarrassed him every chance he got when Ludwig was little, shoving him into cakes and into furniture, and on one very memorable occasion convincing an entire room of people that Ludwig behaved inappropriately with the family dogs (it had taken him WEEKS to convince his friends that Gilbert was just fucking around, and yet, he could have sworn Matthew Williams still gave him odd looks from time to time…).
Now, Gilbert was embarrassing him as a teenager IN SCHOOL. When he’d announced that he would be a teacher at Weston, Ludwig had begged his parents to let him transfer. Of course, as usual, his request was denied, and he was forced to endure Gilbert’s theatrics every day in the dreaded health class. Gilbert CONSTANTLY made references to Bielschmidt family drama, as well as to his harrowed relationship with a Hungarian bank executive, both of which were very inappropriate things to bring up in an educational environment. He was also openly a stoner, and why he wasn’t fired yet, Ludwig didn’t know. The icing on the cake was this baby assignment, which Ludwig now realized Gilbert had used as a torture mechanism.
It was clear in every partnership he announced. Yao was terrified of Ivan, and now they needed to raise a baby. Lovino hated Antonio, and now they needed to raise a baby. Alfred and Arthur were pigheaded idiots, which meant that Alfred would spend a lot of time complaining about Arthur to Ludwig, who made the unfortunate mistake of being Alfred’s best friend...and now THEY needed to raise a baby. And so on.
And as for Feliciano…
“First of all, you know Lovino hates me,“ Ludwig said as they all made their way to the practice football field, doing his best to hold his plastic baby and his gear at the same time, “you know he hates me, remember last year?”
“Nope,” Alfred replied, popping the ‘p’ obnoxiously, “I don’t really remember things that happened more than a week ago.”
“Great,” Ludwig muttered, “Whatever, all you need to know is that one, Lovino hates me. TWO, Feliciano’s grandpa hates me. He thinks I’m uptight and need to get laid.”
“Well…”
“THREE,” Ludwig continued, trying to drown out Alfred’s snickering, “Feliciano has been…kind of weird around me. You remember what I told you about that, ja?”
“Hmm…” Alfred hummed, nodding sagely, “Gay crisis, weird clinginess, got you. Maybe he’s just an affectionate person?”
“I don’t know…” they finally made it to the locker room, and Ludwig was finally able to drop all the things he was carrying. A little too late, he remembered the baby was among them, and he heard a sickening ‘thud’ before the loud shrieking exploded from the doll.
“Scheisse!” Ludwig shouted, dropping down to pick up the probably damaged baby, “Scheisse, how does it stop crying?!” Alfred was laughing too hysterically to help, and Ludwig glowered at him, forcefully rocking his baby from side to side, “Thanks for your contribution! Where’s your bundle of joy, hm? In the garbage already?”
Alfred wiped his eyes (he had laughed so hard he was crying, Ludwig could just punch him), and took a steadying breath, “I convinced Kirkland to take it for the afternoon. We have to meet up after practice though, and sort everything out.” Ludwig grunted, thanking his lucky stars that even a brutal fall, his baby quieted relatively easily. “Speaking of which…do you know anything about him? Kirkland, I mean?”
Ludwig shrugged, putting his plastic baby down carefully on the bench, “I’m honestly surprised you two don’t know each other. You have so many friends in common.”
“I mean, we’ve spoken,” Alfred said, beginning to undress in that lazy inefficient way of his, “I think we’ve even been to a lot of the same parties. I don’t know, somehow we just never befriended one another. Do you know him?”
“A little,” Ludwig admitted, a little put out that they’d moved so quickly from his issues to Alfred’s, “he’s friends with Feliciano. He seems kind of pissed off most of the time, and I’ve heard he’s air-headed. You’ll have to watch out for that if you want a good grade on this thing.”
“Air-headed?” Alfred scoffed in disbelief, “Uh, I don’t think you get to be air-headed and the President of the school, right?”
“I don’t know Alfred, that’s what Feliciano said,” Ludwig said, tucking his shirt in carefully. He turned to look at the other boy and groaned. Of course, he didn’t even have his pants on yet. “Alfred, come on, are you serious? Hurry the fuck up!”
“Jeez, don’t get all riled up with me man, save it for your baby...and your LOVER!!” At Alfred’s loud taunting, Ludwig’s baby did indeed begin whining again, and Ludwig rued the day Alfred F. Jones was ever born.