Baby Duty (Jonathan)

[Paul Wilkerson]

One, Paul didn't play with dolls. Two, Paul didn't know the first thing about talking care of a baby. But that was the point of the project. To teach students what it takes to take care of a baby, and responsibility, and all that gobble gook. Paul looked at the baby doll in the baby carrier. The baby was currently "sleeping." Luckily, Paul wasn't in this alone. He had a partner in this project. Paul looked to the boy across the table from him.

"Good thing this is a weekend project so we don't have worry about classes. How are we going divide baby duty?" Paul used his head to point to the baby. "Do you live on campus? I live off campus. So, I don't know if that's going to make things harder. I guess I could get permission to stay on campus this weekend. If that makes things easier."

Paul watched the baby with wide eyes when it cooed. "It's awake," Paul said in a harsh whisper. He looked around the library at few other students. He turned his attention back to Jonathan. "It's not going to cry, is it? Do you anything about babies?" He whispered.

Paul was a 15 years old boy. He didn't have maternal instinct. Maybe when he got older his fatherly instinct would kick in. At this moment in time Paul had to take care of a baby doll with Jonathan.

[Jonathan Lee]

Good Lord, this class was ridiculously simple. Home Ec was one thing - the cooking, the sewing, the cleaning. It was an easy class, really, if you were already someone who knew how to cook, sew, and clean like Jonathan. Jonathan knew what he was doing when it came to those things, which is why he took the class in the first place. It was a guaranteed "A" grade for him as long as he did all the assignments and kept the teacher on his good side and worked his butt off during the class for the effort portion - a guaranteed A was his kind of class this year, considering Jonathan was trying to really focus on the processing and controlling of his stupid gender-shifting.

The only problem was this baby simulation project.

Jonathan's gender-shifting didn't give him any "mom senses" whatsoever, so this baby simulation thing was really going to suck ass. Basically, he was supposed to take care of a fake baby that was programmed to scream and cry and need feeding and wet itself and "sleep" and all kinds of stuff - it was supposed to be made as realistic as possible; it was basically meant to be a sort of birth control so that nobody ever wanted to impregnate another person again. That was the project that was currently assigned - thank God it was only for a weekend because he would probably literally die if it was any longer. Something Jonathan was thanking the sun, moon, and stars for was that he didn't have to go through this all by himself. He had a partner for the project; his name is Paul. He's not a bad guy, but Jonathan wasn't super familiar with his work ethic or his feelings about "sharing the burden."

Jonathan had taken Paul's cell phone number and, after several back and forth texts, decided that they would meet in the library whenever the baby wasn't crying hysterically, which meant the very short window of time the baby would be sleeping for. They now sat right across from each other, the carrier between them. Jonathan, the older of the two, was probably going to end up taking most of the responsibility for it; this wasn't just because of his age but also because he felt bad loading the brunt of the responsibility of projects on others. That was just who he was.

"Umm.. well, it all depends on where we live. I live on campus, so that's gonna be a little bit more difficult. However, I go into town on a pretty regular basis. We can meet up places to pass the baby back and forth like divorced parents, aha--" Jonathan's chuckle was cut short because of soft sounds of the baby "waking up." Oh fuck. ... Wow, did that sound like Oriel. Jonathan held his breath until he was certain the baby's sounds stopped.

"It might cry. But maybe if we're just really quiet.. it will stay quiet too," Jonathan whispered, tugging on his button down shirt collar, staring the baby down. The people nearby started giving them funny looks and Jonathan's discomfort swelled a bit. This was embarrassing. "I lived with a younger sister before I came here. So I kind of know what i'm doing, but I also really don't."