#softlysalted

“Taemin?” Yunho breathed out. “Taemin? Taemin! This isn’t funny, Taemin, answer me. Taemin!”

He cried for Jaejoong to drive faster, but by the time they got back to the house, the front door was still swung open and there was no trace of anyone inside the house.

“Taemin?” Yunho yelled as he ran inside. “Taemin! Taemin, where are you?”

Taemin’s laptop still sat on the coffee table blaring his Grease playlist, his video game character kept dying and respawning on the TV, and his friends were yelling over the headset that was left abandoned on the couch next to the game remote. Yunho ran throughout the entire house, opening doors and closets and pushing back shower curtains when the cops showed up. He screamed for Taemin to stop hiding, but Taemin’s door had been kicked in, and his closet door was open with clothes spilling out of it, and his cellphone was lying cracked on the floor of his bedroom.

“Taemin?” Yunho cried, sifting through the clothes and looking under the bed. “Taemin, where are you?”

“Yunho,” Jaejoong said softly as he tried to pull him off the floor. “Yunho, he’s not here. You have to come talk to the police.”

“Where is he?” Yunho asked, his voice cracking. “Jaejoong, where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Jaejoong whispered. “That’s why we have to tell the police what happened, and you need to tell them everything he told you when he called you.”

After telling the cops who showed up everything that happened, he had to listen to how his neighbors saw Taemin being shoved, kicking and screaming, into his sister and brother-in-law’s car and didn’t do anything to try and help him. He found himself breaking down on his front lawn while Jaejoong held him close and tried to tell him that everything would be okay, that he had to hold himself together so he could help find Taemin.

“I just had to listen to my nephew, my Godson, scream and cry and beg for me to help him while he was being kidnapped from my own house,” Yunho cried. “How am I supposed to be okay after that?”

Yunho stayed on his front lawn, crying as Jaejoong held onto him, and he repeated over and over how he shouldn’t have left Taemin home alone, how he should have stayed home with him, how he should have gotten there faster when Taemin called him, how they shouldn’t have stopped for the happy meal and if they hadn’t, they would have been able to stop what had happened.

He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep until Taemin was home with him again.

He tried calling his sister so many times he lost count. She sent it to voicemail every time. He left her a voicemail every time, begging her to bring Taemin back, to let him talk to him, to just let him know that they hadn’t killed him.

When he got the video of Taemin talking back to his parents, he laughed at first. Taemin had a little attitude sometimes, and he had been glad that he was still as snappy as he usually was, because at least he was acting normally. He was alive, and he didn’t look anymore hurt than he had been when Yunho last saw him, and Yunho was so thankful for that.

But then his brother-in-law stopped the car and got out, and Taemin started freaking out, and Yunho felt like he was going to be sick. His brother-in-law said something about putting Taemin back in the trunk, and he had to watch Taemin scream and freak out and beg his parents not to put him back in there.

He broke down again, and he kept replaying the video until Jaejoong took the phone for him and said he had called the police.

“They shoved him in the trunk,” Yunho cried, hiding his face in his hands. “They kept him in the trunk, Jaejoong, he knocked him out and just stuffed him in there.”

All Jaejoong could do was hold him tight.

“I promised him I would always save him,” Yunho whispered. “I promised him that when he was little, and look what’s happened.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I’m a teacher,” Yunho cried. “I’m trained to figure out when kids are being abused, and I couldn’t even help my own nephew!”

“Some people are good at hiding it,” Jaejoong whispered. “Taemin didn’t want anyone to know, so he hid it. He didn’t want you to know. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“He would say terrible things about them,” Yunho said. “That they didn’t love each other, that his dad would yell and get mad, so many things, and I never did anything.”

“You can’t get upset over things you can’t fix,” Jaejoong told him. “There’s nothing you can do about it now but be there for him when he comes home.”

That only made Yunho cry harder.

What if Taemin didn’t make it back home?

The second Yunho was told where Taemin was and what hospital he was being taken to three states away, he got in the car and drove straight there. The only times he and Jaejoong stopped were for gas; he didn’t even stop to go to the bathroom, instead waiting until they got gas next.

When they got to the hospital Taemin was at, he was asleep in his room with a cop standing outside his door. His foot was in a cast instead of a boot like it had been, and there was also a cast on his left arm as well as a sling. The skin on his lips was torn up, there were bruises peeking out from beneath the neckline of the hospital gown he was wearing, his jaw was bruised and swollen, and he had an IV in his right arm.

To put it simply, he was a wreck, so Yunho pulled a chair up to the right side of his bed and held onto his hand, rubbing his thumb over the back of it while his other hand brushed his hair out of his face. When Taemin’s face scrunched up and his eyes started to blink open, he turned his head towards Yunho, but his face remained blank.

“Hey, pup,” Yunho whispered, trying to not to cry. “I missed you.”

Yunho had to watch as Taemin sucked his lips into his mouth and bit them while his eyes started tearing up. 

“It’s okay,” Yunho told him, leaning forward and gently cupping Taemin’s cheek. “I’m right here, it’s okay.”

Yunho held onto Taemin as tightly yet as gently as he could when he started crying. He helped Taemin sit up, and he held the boy’s head under his chin and whispered to him as he rubbed his back and hugged him.

“They were gonna kill me,” Taemin whispered, letting out a strangled sob. “They tried to kill me.”

“But they didn’t,” Yunho whispered back to him, holding him tight. “They didn’t, you’re right here, and you’re not dead.”

Taemin, however, has always been the most neglected just because of the fact that he’s the middle child, and therefore he didn’t need to be constantly looked after like the little ones, but he wasn’t doing such big things like the older ones. For shit’s sake, they left him in an airport, and once they realize just how much that negatively effected Taemin, they try to do everything they can to fix it.

Taemin is still very weary about being around his family, though, so he still doesn’t go home very often. It’s practically a year before he goes back home after his nose is broken, but he has seen his family outside of the home. 

At one point, the little twins practically beg Taemin to come to their birthday dinner, so Taemin goes. All of the siblings are there, but Taemin isn’t the last one to show up, so at least he only gets 10 sets of eyes staring at him instead of 13. He goes right over to the twins, hugs them really tight, and gives them each a gift that Kibum may or may not have helped him wrap. They’re both very happy that Taemin is actually able to tell them apart, and he gives the correct gifts to each of them.

The twins want Taemin to sit next to them, so he sits in the empty chair to the right of them. 

“How’s your Hello Baby show going?” one of his older sisters asks.

“It’s fine,” Taemin says quietly. “We’re almost done filming.”

“Do you like taking care of a little kid?” another sister asks.

“It’s alright,” Taemin mumbles. 

“Your nose looks good,” one of the girl twins says.

“Thanks,” Taemin hisses, turning to glare at her.

Leave it to one of the nerd-freaks to bring up his very necessary nose job.