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Bertholdt pokes the burnt piece of French bread pizza on the plate in front of him. It looks disgusting and he doesn’t want to put it anywhere near his mouth, but he doesn’t have a choice if he doesn’t want to starve throughout the afternoon. He’s really, really going to need to start bringing in his own lunch because lately the food has been inedible. And if he started bringing in his own lunch then he could spend his lunchtimes tucked away in a corner table in the library, sneakily eating and spending extra time with ____. He’s grown quite a fondness for the library since that day five months ago when they were working on their biology project and things had kind of… revealed themselves to him. Plus, he doesn’t really get to see ____ much at school outside of their shared classes, because he didn’t want to be that guy who ditched his single friends for his girlfriend and so he spends lunches listening to Reiner and Annie talking about whatever random subject they’re on that day. Well. Reiner at least. He feels like Annie probably wants to be there listening as much as he does.
He wonders if he and ______ are going to do something after school, it’s Friday after all and they usually hang out at her house, but he knows that her father hasn’t been feeling well that week and was talking about taking some time off work to recover. He’s guessing that if her father is going to be there then Bertholdt won’t be welcome in the house. It’s not that ______’s parents don’t like Bertholdt… he’s pretty sure they do, they’re always feeding him… it’s just that last Friday when the two of them had been alone together, they’d taken their relationship to a somewhat… higher level. It hadn’t been the first time they’d fooled around together, there’d been some groping involved before… but one minute they’d been working on homework and the next they’d be making out and then they’d wound up on her bed with his jeans pushed down and her skirt up and their bodies moving in tandem. It hadn’t been all the way, but it had been pretty close and it had been a pretty… amazing experience. He swallowed, his cheeks flushing at the memory.
“You okay there?” Annie’s voice asked him and Bertholdt chose not to look up, just in case his face gave him away or something and instead chose to shrug, still staring down at the pizza. Yeah… last Friday had been a good day… He reached out and prodded the pizza, contemplating actually picking it up and putting it in his mouth so he had something else to focus on other than his dirty thoughts and Reiner’s talk about whatever the hell he was going on about now, when he felt a pair of arms wrap themselves around him from behind. He froze up for a second, before he felt a pair of soft lips press against his cheek and he smiled. “Hey ______.”
“Hey!” ______’s voice replied as she let go of her boyfriend and slipped into the chair next to him as she greeted Reiner and Annie, her friend Sasha sliding into the one next to her. “I missed you, I wanted to see you. Plus, I guess I really need to talk to you about something.” She shrugged.
Sasha snickered from her position. “Yeah, ______’s got some really big news for you!”
Big… News? Bertholdt couldn’t think of anything that ______ could possibly have to tell him, usually she didn’t keep secrets from him. Part of him clenched up, terrified that maybe she was going to tell him that the past five months had been some sort of social experiment and in actual fact she didn’t love him like she’d told him many times in the past few months, but instead their whole relationship and the whole lab partner thing had been apart of a social experiment to see if she could get a loser like him to think he could score with someone as pretty as her.
Then again… Last Friday.
“Okay…? So… talk to me.”
“You’re going to be a Daddy!” Sasha’s voice chimed in, gleefully.
Wait.
What?
Bertholdt’s stomach clenched, all the colour drained from his face, his whole body felt cold and he thought that he might throw up. How was this even possible? They hadn’t… except… could something have happened because of last Friday? Would she even know that quickly if it had been because of last Friday? How was this even happening? Sure, if she wanted to keep it he’d support her but what the hell was he going to tell…
“Sasha!” ______’s voice scolded, but she couldn’t help but giggle. “Turtle, you’ve gone completely pale.” He was so scared that he didn’t even have time to register her using the ridiculous nickname she usually only called him in private when she was trying to be cute in front of Reiner. “I’m not pregnant, Sasha’s just an idiot.”
“I’m not an idiot!” Sasha’s voice snapped back at her. “Oh and hey, are you going to eat that pizza?”
Bertholdt pushed his uneaten pizza in Sasha’s direction, not taking his eyes off his girlfriend. “______.” He said, through clenched teeth. “What’s going on?”
She giggled nervously. “Well, Sasha and I had Health earlier on and we’re doing that stupid dumb project with the electronic baby and so… I thought that maybe we could do it together…?” she trailed off. “It’d probably get you out of having to do it in the future and last time we worked on a project together we got a pretty good grade and so… what do you think? Do you want to parent with me?”
Bertholdt let out a deep breath, closing his eyes for a minute. ______ and Sasha definitely were not as amusing as they thought they were, because that had legitimately scared him. He’d pretty much been prepared to drop out of school and get a job to support his girlfriend and the non-existent baby if that’s what it was going to take. “Okay, I’ll help you, on one condition.”
“Yeah?”
“That you never, ever do anything like that again.” Bertholdt scolded, still unsure if he was about to have some sort of heart attack from the shock. “Ever.”
“What if you do get her pregnant, though?” Sasha enquired, her mouth full of burnt pizza.
“Well then she can tell me she’s pregnant, if she’s got a bunch of tests and a letter from a doctor.” Bertholdt growled.
“Deal.” ______ giggled, leaning over to kiss him. “So, come and meet me at the end of the day and we’ll go pick the baby up and head back to mine okay?” she leant in for a quick peck on the lips and rose from her seat, to head to her next class, Sasha following behind her. “Love you!” she said with a wave in Annie and Reiner’s direction.
“So.” Bertholdt looked up to Reiner smirking at him and… hell… the usually emotionless Annie was too. “Exactly how long have you and ______ been banging… Turtle?”
Dammit.
***
“Why won’t it shut up?!” ______ wailed, looking down at the screaming electro-baby in her arms. She and Bertholdt had managed to get the baby back to her house without too much fuss and commotion, but as soon as they’d got her inside, it had started screaming the place down. They’d tried feeding her, changing her, rocking her, nothing was helping her. It was like the baby, which they’d christened Mia Grace Fubar, was possessed or something.
And it hadn’t helped that the first time she’d handed her to Bertholdt, he’d promptly lost his grip on her, dropping her and hitting her head on the floor. The screaming then had been worse than it was now.
And it probably hadn’t helped that the first time ______ had attempted to change her diaper, she’d asked Bertholdt to pass her the ‘clean’ one out of the bag of accessories that had come with it and in his haste he’d tripped over the bag on the floor and pushed Baby Mia off the table. And then dropped her on her head again after he’d picked her up, apologizing to her profusely.
Or when ______’s parents had arrived home from work (her Dad had gone after all) and found the two of them practically tearing their hair out and begging for help and instead, ______’s Dad had yelled at the pair of them to get upstairs in her room and close the door because he didn’t want to have to hear that all evening.
Bertholdt was pretty sure that was something he was never going to hear ______’s Dad say again. But then again, he was pretty sure ______’s Dad could see how stressed out he was by the whole ordeal and was probably thinking that this was going to turn Bertholdt off ever being intimate with his daughter.
It probably wasn’t.
They’d managed to get her to sleep for about half an hour, which was when ______ had disappeared to beg her parents to let Bertholdt sleep over because there was no way she was going to look after Baby Mia by herself. Bertholdt was very surprised when they’d agreed to it, especially when it had stopped screaming. But no, when he’d gone downstairs to try and explain to his Mom why he needed his Dad to drive some stuff over to ______’s so he could stay there, she’d appeared with Baby Mia and plopped her into his lap so she could go to the bathroom without having to hold her all the time and – of course – Mia had slipped straight off and hit her head on the floor again.
Bertholdt was pretty sure it had died and become a demon some time ago, part of him actually kind of hoped it would die so he could get some sleep, because here he was, sitting on a sleeping bag on ______’s bedroom floor at 3AM watching her slowly lose her mind as she tried to nurse the thing that had been screaming for at least eleven of the twelve hours they’d had it. He was pretty sure ______ was going to burst into tears at any moment now. And he was pretty sure her Dad was going to appear and yell at him to get it to shut up. For the third time in the last three hours.
“I can’t hold this thing anymore!” ______ suddenly growled up, thrusting Baby Mia (who’s head, of course, snapped back again increasing the crying) “I’m going to get a hammer and then I’m going to get my Dad to write a cheque and then I’m going to make an appointment to get my tubes tied!” She stood up, storming out of the room.
Bertholdt wondered if she was really going to come back with a hammer, but knowing ______ she was probably going to cry in frustration where he couldn’t see her. He knew he should probably follow her, but he didn’t want to leave Baby Mia by herself because he was sure it had some sensor in it to show it was being neglected and they were already failing the shit out of this project, so… He stood up, climbing up onto the bed so he could prop himself up more comfortably and held Baby Mia to his chest. “Please shut up.” He told it. But it ignored him and continued to wail. He sighed, holding its head carefully. “You know, your Mommy is probably going to murder you if you don’t calm down soon. Or her Dad is going to murder me.” He shifted, so he was lying on the bed propping it’s head.” Come on Mia, Mommy and Daddy are trying there… why do you hate us so much? We love you, we picked you out because you were the cutest. We’re trying to keep you alive… babies are hard. And kind of evil. I think you’ve made me hate babies.” He paused for a second, registering that there was a strange noise in the air… Or… no noise at all. Baby Mia was quiet.
He told her he hated babies… and she stopped?
Bertholdt shook his head, of course she was going to start screaming again in a few minutes so he should just enjoy those couple of minutes… he closed his eyes, still clutching the electro-baby to his chest and yawned.
***
Fifteen minutes later, after she’d calmed herself down and popped some aspirin, ______ climbed up the stairs clutching a bottle of water for her boyfriend and pushed open her bedroom door in confusion… what? Why was there no noise? Had Bertholdt finally lost it and thrown Baby Mia out of the window…?
No. No he hadn’t.
Because he was there, on her bed, curled up and clutching Baby Mia to his chest, fast asleep. It was kind of… adorable? She crept over to her bedside table, stepping over the now unused sleeping bag and picked up her iPhone, taking a picture of her adorable boyfriend and the child that they thankfully had to swing by the school (on a Saturday!) so it could be handed over to Sasha (and hopefully, Connie) tomorrow. She half expected it to start screaming at the flash from her iPhone but didn’t.
She yawned, carefully climbing up onto the bed so that she wouldn’t disturb Bertholdt, or set the baby off again and snuggled into him, her own eyelids drooping. “Love you Turtle.” She muttered, even though she knew he was too deep in sleep to hear her, and let a well-deserved sleep wash over her.