#taemtaem

Before Jonghyun even gets to his front door he can see Roo peeping at him from the window. He smiles, feeling warm and welcomed home already. When he gets to his porch and fumbles with his keys in his pocket he can hear her little feeties pattering on the floor and when he pushes the door open she’s there, whole body wagging, nosing at his shins.

“Hello, my tiny princess, ooh,” he coos, crouching down to pick her up. He drops his bag next to the door and shrugs his jacket off one arm at a time as she snuffles on his shoulder and gives his neck tiny licks. “You’re so cute and lovely, mwah mwah mwah.” He gives her neck little kissies too and chuckles when she whines at him to stop. “Okay, fine,” he mumbles. One day. One day she’s gonna let him.

“It was such a day at work, honey,” he says instead. He tugs the door shut behind him and carries his favorite girl to the kitchen. He deposits Roo gently on the puppy side of the counter so she can be tall and moves to the food side so he can make himself a little sandwich. It was such a fucking day. Being the repair babe for a bunch of ego-heavy science nerds was bad enough before they started getting into cloning shit. He’s so tired of stepping around weird DNA goo puddles to fix blown fuses and rewire circuitry while they argue with each other in the background.

“Everyone’s nutting themselves because they managed to get one monkey today out of like seventeen, but do they take a minute to thank me or any of the janitors for fixing their messes? No,” he grumbles as he slaps some jelly onto a slice of bread and spreads it around. “I miss when they were just experimenting with resizing stuff,” he mumbles. When they were just resizing stuff then they’d accidentally make things too big and burst their machines open. That was easier to repair.

He smooshes a peanut butter covered slice of bread on top of his jelly one, then sets his sandwich aside to put some food and fresh water in Roo’s bowls on the counter. She sits and wiggles until he sits down and picks up his pb&j before she starts to eat and he smiles. She’s such a good pup. He holds his sandwich with one hand and scritches her cute little head with his other. He loves being able to come home and relax with--

His phone vibrates in his hoodie pocket, interrupting his thoughts with his sandwich halfway to his mouth. He hesitates, then sighs and reaches to grab it. Only his work phone is set to vibrate. Pulling it out, he grimaces when he sees that it’s not just some scientist he can comfortably ignore, but the big scientist boss. Fuck. He hates with every fiber of his being.

“Yes?” he says, as sweetly and politely as possible, when he answers the call.

“Jongiehyun, hey, uh,” the voice on the other line says, and it’s breathy and slightly panicked and not the boss at all. He scrunches his face, confused. It sounds like-- “I need, uh, your help, my dude.”

“Taemin?” Jonghyun asks blankly. What the fuck. This isn’t his boss, it’s his boss’s secretary. “What are you--what did you do?” He doesn’t mean to sound accusing, but he thinks it comes across that way anyway. It’s not entirely unwarranted; he knows Taemin is a nosy little gremlin with clumsy hands.

“Uhh,” Taemin says nervously. Jonghyun hears him swallow, and then hears a hissed “shh!” before Taemin speaks again. “Listen, I think, just, it would be better, um, if you came to see, uh, yourself. Please.”

“Taem--” Jonghyun cuts himself off with a sigh, half a growl, putting his forehead into his hand. “I just got home,” he snaps.

“Please,” Taemin whines. “It’s really--I’ll--” He stammers off and Jonghyun hears another panicked whisper. “With what mon--” Taemin starts quietly, and then, after a pause, “Jonghyun, I’ll buy you dinner,” he says confidently. Jonghyun stays silent, frowning at his counter and his uneaten sandwich in front of him, and sighs loudly. Dinner is nice and free dinner is nicer.

“Fine,” he huffs. “Don’t break anything else before I get there.” He hangs up grumpily before Taemin can reply, sticks his phone in his pocket, and sighs again, propping his cheek in his hand and looking at Roo. She’d been eating the whole time, but she still sniffs at his hand and whines softly as if to ask why he isn’t also. Jonghyun sighs again and stands up. “Wanna come to work with me, sweetheart?” he asks. He can’t leave her home all alone again so soon. She perks up at the question and then goes back to scarfing down her food much quicker than before.

“You’re gonna get a tummy ache,” he mumbles, but heads back to the front door to grab his jacket and bag again anyway. Coming back to the kitchen, he grabs his pb&j and munches it while he waits for Roo to finish. He knows Taemin sounded panicked but he didn’t mention anything about hurrying, so. He’s not hurrying.

They finish their food and Jonghyun takes Roo to his little front yard for her to do her puppy bathroom business under the tangerine tree, which he also doesn't hurry her through, and then he tucks her safely under his arm and carries her to the car. Making sure she's nestled safely in her little puppy bed in the back seat, he sits right back in the front seat and then takes a minute to rub his hands over his face and sigh loudly. He just got home. 

Shaking his head, he starts up the car and backs out onto the road to head back into work. The entire way there he grumbles to himself, and to Roo, and Roo grumbles back, sharing his annoyance to be doing something that isn't a part of their usual routine.

When he gets back to the building and into his usual parking spot, he grabs Roo and tries to set her on the ground so she can walk, but she whines at him, so he caves without any resistance and just holds her in his arms as he heads up to the main entrance.

“Forgot something,” he mumbles with a sheepish little smile at the secretary as a way of explaining why he's back here already less than an hour later. He jogs his way to the elevator, jabs the sixth floor button, pets and pampers and smooches Roo all the way up, and then sighs as the elevator dings and lets him out onto the experimental cloning floor.

Immediately, he's annoyed because Taemin isn't even at the secretary desk where he usually is. Is Jonghyun just supposed to wander around until he finds him? Awful. Grumbling into Roo's fur, he walks past the secretary desk and holds up his employee card to the glass door of the lab to let himself in.

It's dark and creepy; with everyone gone, only a few of the overhead lights are on and set to their lowest brightness. It's almost silent but in a weird way that he doesn't like at all because all of the big and loud machines are off but some of the smaller ones are still on, so that the constant quiet whirring he hears is different and more muffled than usual.

“Taem,” he says into the silence of the room. He huffs impatiently at the fact that he even has to call out for him. He sounded upset and panicked enough on the phone that Jonghyun assumed he would be all over him from the moment he walked out of the elevator. “You better not be like, unconscious in a puddle of mystery slime or anything,” he says. That's happened more times than he's ever wanted to deal with in this lab and he definitely doesn't want to deal with it on his own.

Suddenly, Roo perks up, her ears lifting slightly as she looks at the cloning machines. After a moment's pause, Jonghyun agrees: he hears it, too. Heavy, labored breathing coming from behind the out port of the biggest cloning machine. Not inside, but behind, in the area of space between the machine and the wall. Hesitantly now, and mildly worried — he was joking when he said that thing about being unconscious in a puddle of mystery slime — Jonghyun creeps forward and peeps around the machine.

What he finds isn't actually Taemin unconscious in a slime puddle; what he finds is arguably much worse. It's Taemin, sitting sprawled out on the floor against the wall, someone else in his lap, his hand on their booty, their mouths locked together in a very messy kiss, and both of their dicks very much out and very much being jerked off.

“Alright, Taemin, what the fuck,” Jonghyun says loudly. “What the fuck.” He covers Roo's eyes with his hand, curling her protectively to his chest as he backs up a step. Taemin and the person in his lap jump; Taemin looks up at him with wide, guilty eyes. The person in his lap whips around to to give him the same look — the same exact look. Jonghyun stares down at Taemin, and at Taemin in Taemin’s lap, eyes wide, for a very long, quiet moment. 

“I can explain,” Taemin says, at the same time the other Taemin says, “we can explain.”

Jonghyun continues to just stand there, heart beating so fast in his chest that he can feel his pulse throughout his whole body, in complete and utter disbelief. Then, all at once, his mood snaps right to anger. 

“Are you fucking serious right now Taemin?” he hisses. Roo whines and wiggles in his arms; he puts her down before he squeezes her even harder and both Taemins fumble to do up their pants and untangle themselves from each other. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jonghyun continues. “Why would you— what the fuck were you— I don't—” words leave him completely as both Taemins stand up and face him, identical down to the acne on their cheeks and each tiny little wrinkle between their eyebrows as they bite their lips guiltily.

“It was an accident,” both of them say desperately at the same time. Jonghyun backs up another step, running his fingers through his hair. The one on his left starts to say something else but Jonghyun makes loud, inarticulate noises and points accusingly at their nose.

“Shut. Your fucking mouth,” he snaps. “You can't just—” he hesitates, pulling his finger back a little bit and looking between the both of them. “Which one of you is the original?” he demands. He wants to make sure that he yells at the right one. The Taemins shuffle their feet anxiously. 

“Yeah, um, that's kind of part of the problem,” the left one says.

“We don't remember,” the right one says. Jonghyun looks between both of them, anger and annoyance and the slightest hint of dread creeping all through his veins. Roo steps up to both of them, sniffs them each, and then whines, sitting on the floor and looking back at Jonghyun with confusion. Taking a deep, not as calming as he was hoping breath, Jonghyun rubs his hands over his face. They are so all going to get fired.