Kyuhyun should have known visiting the zoo with the resident Dr. Doolittle would be a very bad, unwise idea. Still, it wasn’t as if he could deny the evidence of utter glee on his partner’s face, each time they would spot a previously unviewed creature.

Alarmingly enough, Jongwoon had also appeared to be contemplating adoption for each and every one of the zoo’s tenants.

In Kyuhyun’s case, that had been nothing short of a threat - considering their own shared household had already consisted of – in addition to the both of them - three turtles and a shaggy black puppy Jongwoon had picked up one especially rainy evening, out of pity; as well as a few dozen shiny insect corpses framed on their corridor’s walls - as a reminder of Jongwoon’s rather nerdy, bug-collecting childhood.

Kyuhyun could positively swear the things had a life of their own, and would bat their small, translucent wings at him in accusation - each and every midnight trip to the bathroom. 

Some days, he wondered whether the affectionate Jongwoon had hung the bugs in there as part of a devious plan for Kyuhyun to seek comfort at the end of every such trip, requiring him to use the shorter guy as some sort of a warm, overprotective extra-blanket; as if they hadn’t cuddled enough as it was.

Still, more often than not, his boyfriend seemed way too oblivious for such inhumane cruelty, and Kyuhyun dreaded the inevitable day Jongwoon decides it’s time for them to adopt actual living, breathing, human children.

Partially because - since Jongwoon worked from home and he didn’t, Kyuhyun had very little doubt as to whom these hypothetical children would look up to. Having not one but a few clingy Jongwoons to come home to seemed like a terrifying prospect – he’d end up squished to death.

Mostly though, he feared for the children themselves – since regardless of living together for a whole of two months already, Jongwoon and his cooking skills had not yet progressed beyond cereal, instant noodles and the occasional take-out.

Today’s date had seemed like nothing special, unless you counted Jongwoon – despite supposedly being a responsible twenty-seven year old – bouncing up and down in front of the elephants in sheer excitement until one of the wise, magnificent animals had decided to wrap a trunk around his waist and try lifting him up above the barrier and into its own, bordered living space.

And that was how Kyuhyun had again been proven of how it wasn’t just Jongwoon who’d been on a mission to adopt every living creature at sight. The intentions were apparently mutual, and Kyuhyun had almost had to resist shouting at the shameless animal to lay its dirty trunk off his property. After all, he’d had first dibs.

The day had progressed in a similar manner, and by 17:34, less than half an hour before the zoo’s supposed closing time, Kyuhyun had decided he’d earned himself a well-deserved break.

 Locking himself inside a convenient bathroom stall at the back of the reptile pavilion, he’d left his boyfriend to his own business of poking at the various tanks, amused by the reactions of the lizards –so different compared to his turtles back at home.

Gullibly trusting Jongwoon to have enough common sense, Kyuhyun had left his Smartphone at the dispense of the forgetful elder – who had apparently left his own phone behind; connected to the charger in their bedroom. 

Kyuhyun was sitting cross-legged on the closed lid of the toilet, thoroughly absorbed in one of his pathetic, recurring fantasies of an idealistic world in which he wouldn’t have to – not unlike a knight - constantly battle all kinds of cold-blooded creatures for Jongwoon’s attention, when there was a knock on the stall’s plastic door.  

There was no need to hear Jongwoon’s voice in order for Kyuhyun to identify his sudden visitor – after all, he’d recognize those distinctive shabby sneakers in his sleep – however, the voice had sounded way too guilty to be bringing him anything but bad news.
“Kyuhyun-ah? I think we have a problem…”

“Of course we do,” Kyuhyun muttered, standing up to unlock the door unenthusiastically, “why’s it that you can’t - just once -  announce we’ve won the lottery or… wait, why it is so dark all of a sudden?!”

“I think they’ve closed for the night.” Jongwoon would have looked even guiltier, had that been possible. As in, finger-clutching, lip-biting, eyes firmly on the ground – avoiding you - type of guilty. The type that’s screaming I’m a grown man, but I bet you wanna pinch my cheeks.

Kyuhyun’s fingers were itching to do just that, but he’d managed to will the urge away for the time-being.

“You think? How could they close, aren’t they supposed to check for remaining visitors?”

“Maybe, but I was on the ground and that palm tree…” Jongwoon pointed to his left and sure enough – there was a palm tree. An artificial one, “well, you couldn’t see me from the entrance.”

“And the guard was what, too lazy to do an actual round around the place? What were you doing on the floor anyway; cooing at a lizard?!”

“Uh, yeah… about that,” add another gesture to the picture and Jongwoon would surely break the Guinness record for world’s guiltiest-looking boyfriend, “I should probably start from the beginning…”

Well, they were most definitely screwed.

Apparently, Jongwoon - once he had poked a bit around Kyuhyun’s phone - had rediscovered his favorite feature… the multi-mega-pixel camera, and had been shooting a book-worth of pictures of an especially vicious alligator snapping turtle, when he’d managed to somehow drop the device down past a medium-height railing and into the water pond below.

Kyuhyun’s only consolations had been the facts that a) his cellphone ended up on a lily pad, as opposed to in the water and b) it hadn’t been eaten – yet; but the huge, carnivorous reptile was guarding it very closely with its constant attention span. Out of all the turtle species in the world, they’d just had to end up stuck with the only one with no ability to blink.

Jongwoon had spent a great deal of time trying to reach the phone through the fence, but his arms had proven themselves too short. It hadn’t surprised Kyuhyun that his boyfriend’s fingers had remained intact – after all, turtles loved Jongwoon – even the monstrous, flesh-eating types.

Still, he was sure he’d experience no such luck. Thus he had outright refused to try and reach the phone with his own, slightly longer appendages.

Never mind he would surely end up as an amputee; Kyuhyun had an unexplainable, inconceivable, in-friggin-controllable fear of anything that was even remotely creepy or crawly.   He had only learnt to live with Jongwoon’s turtles because, each time he applied the “It’s either me or them pizza-eaters!” ultimatum, Jongwoon would give him the ‘how dare you kick my turtle?’ pout. A dozen times of trying this ineffective technique later, Kyuhyun had finally come to the depressing conclusion that his chances of winning against the little green rocks were slim to none.

 It wasn’t as if he’d been misinformed of what he was getting himself into, when his latest one-night-stand had transformed into a few casual dinners – no strings attached. Some really awkward confessions later, they’d decided to stop fooling themselves and call it actual dating, which had eventually resulted in Jongwoon and him sharing a tiny, overpopulated one-bedroom apartment located on the outskirts of Hell-Knows-Where, Seoul.

Kyuhyun had known from that very first morning on which he’d woken up with the terrifying knowledge of being in love that he would be required to – in addition to a life companion – take on a whole load of virtual extra baggage. A while of living together (and one particularly painful confrontation with an obsessive ex of Jongwoon’s), and Kyuhyun was pretty sure he was the only man his lover had his eyes on. Still, being the possessive person he was, Kyuhyun couldn’t help but feel a bit cheated at having to share him with animals.
 
o.0

And now Jongwoon is kneeling on the bathroom stall’s dirty, stained floor - in hope of unscrewing the long, loosely-held metal rod which is supposed to be sporting at least a few rolls of toilet paper, but is in reality just hanging there all rusty and forgotten, as if begging for somebody to come and take it out of its pitiful misery - by using it to nudge at random leaves. Unscrewing it – as in, with his bare hands.

 “Would you hurry up a