Miraculously, Jongin ended up getting hired. While his job was a good thing, it was rather time consuming. He was working as a nurse at their city's hospital, and his schedule was completely unreliable. He often got stuck working odd hours on the night shift, and he didn't always know when he'd be off, since he didn't have a concrete schedule. This far, about a month or so in, he was still managing to keep up with it, but he felt like he'd barely even seen Taemin the entire time. And now that he finally had a day off for the first time in about a week, all he wanted to do was sleep. He was so absolutely exhausted, but he was determined to actually spend time with his boyfriend. He had to. 

Jongin finished his shift around two-thirty in the morning, and arrived home at two-forty, glad he had an entire day off ahead of him. Carefully, he climbed into bed next to Taemin, trying to make as little noise as possible. Taemin shifted, rolling to face him while mumbling something incoherent. Jongin froze. 

"Go back to sleep, Tae." Jongin whispered, slipping an arm around Taemin's waist. He didn't know if Taemin was actually awake, and he didn't even wait long enough to find out, falling asleep the very moment he closed his eyes. 

*****

"Jongin."

There was a hand prodding him in the side.

"Jongin..." Taemin's voice was close to a whine as he said it. Jongin grunted, shifting slightly.

"Come on, wake up." The sheets were slowly being tugged back, leaving Jongin open to the cold. He made a sound of refusal, then felt around for the sheets, pulling them back over him. There was a quiet laugh beside him. Full lips brushed his forehead, and he cracked open his eyes for a second, just long enough to see Taemin looking straight at him as he pulled away. 

"I saw that," Taemin giggled. Jongin pulled the covers over his head, and was almost sure Taemin had given up, when suddenly there was a weight on top of him, smothering him. 

"Why?" Jongin groaned, trying to push his boyfriend off to absolutely no avail. 

"Get up," Taemin whined in response. "It's your day off, let's do something."

""I have an idea, let's go back to sleep." 

The weight on top of Jongin disappeared, and he could hear Taemin laughing somewhere nearby. Not wanting to know what his boyfriend was planning to do now, Jongin gave in. 

"Fine, I'm up, I'm up." He sat up, holding his hands up as if in surrender. 

Taemin was standing at the foot of the bed, beaming.

"Come on, I'm hungry. Let's go out for breakfast, my treat." He offered. Jongin nodded in agreement, rubbing his face with his hands. 

"Sounds good to me." 

*****

They wandered about for a while after finishing breakfast, sometimes going into random stores and lingering for a bit until they became disinterested. It was relaxing for Jongin, being able to just spend time with Taemin, not doing anything in particular. He loved it. 

"If you didn't have such a busy job we could do this all the time." Taemin commented wistfully. 

"Yeah, well, I can't really help that I have a busy job."  

"You could always quit, if you wanted." Taemin's voice was quiet. 

"Why would you even suggest that? Are you crazy?" Jongin was shocked. How could he just say that?

Taemin didn't answer, he just shrugged before turning to something that had oh-so conveniently caught his interest. Jongin rolled his eyes in mild irritation, choosing not to ask for an answer. 

As the day continued, however, Taemin continued to say similar things, and it was seriously getting on Jongin's nerves. He finally snapped halfway through their walk home, when Taemin brought up the subject once again. 

"Would you stop? I'm not quitting my ing job, okay?" He was done. 

Taemin stopped walking, detaching himself from Jongin's arm. Jongin turned to face him. 

"Jongin, it's really not as bad as you think it would be," Taemin said, voice calm. "If you would just hear me out-"

"I don't need to hear you out on this. I like my job. I didn't go to college just to get a good job and then quit after a month. I don't get why you're so insistent on me quitting." 

"You'll understand if you just listen, please. Why can't you even do that? I know that you like your job and that you went to college for this, but you're so busy all the time. There's gotta be some other job or something that you can do where you have more time, this is crazy! I feel like I've barely even seen you this past month, and we live together. There has to be some sort of solution, and this is the only one I see."

"It's really not that crazy, Taemin. This is normal for someone just starting work, I get stuck with all the bad shifts and I can't say anything about it because I'm still the newest employee. It'll get better with time, but apparently you can't wait for things to calm down, no, you want me to leave." Jongin's voice was rising without his realizing, and people on the street were starting to glance over at the bristling couple. "We don't have an endless supply of money, you know. You don't even work! You don't have a job, you didn't go to college, and yet you still think you can yell at me about my job. Do you want us to be homeless on the streets?" He wished he could take his words back the instant they left his mouth.

Taemin's wore an expression of sheer anger, but the tears welling in his eyes betrayed the pain Jongin had inflicted. 

"You just had to go there, didn't you? Why would you..." 

"Tae, I-" Jongin didn't have a chance to finish, as Taemin was already furiously walking away, brushing past Jongin without a single word more. 

With a heavy sigh, Jongin hung his head in regret, ignoring the staring passerby. He'd really ed up this time. 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A/N

OMG THIS TOOK SUCH A LONG TIME TO UPDATE I AM SO SO SO SO SO SO SORRY

School was absolutely killer this past month, and finals and everything and ugh. Again, I'm so sorry for not updating,,

I'm going to try to be completely back on schedule within the next two weekends or so? Because I'm out of school now so I have a lot more time. But yeah, regular updates coming soon, and until then I'll be updating at random times just so that I'm caught back up with where I was supposed to be by now. (I think I need to do four more chapters??? That sounds about right, right???)

Anyways, thank y'all so much for sticking with me through my unofficial hiatus of sorts, again, I'm really sorry about that. Thanks to all my readers and subscribers, you guys are seriously the BEST <3

Thanks for reading! <3 <3

-H