It was one in the morning and a dough smudged Taemin stood in the kitchen sending evil glares at the oven. Still ten minutes to wait. Then it would be decided who had won this battle.

-

Earlier that day:

Although their schedule was quite heavily loaded and Taemin had lots and lots of homework to manage he had set his mind on doing this;

Mission: bake cookies (chocolate-chip, mind you) for Onew Hyung.

So when all of them (except Onew who had slept ever since they had gotten home) had gone to sleep around 11 pm he had snuck out half an hour later (not without making sure everyone was sleeping soundly).

And after checking that the bedroom door and the door to the manager's room (aka Onew's quarantine) were closed tightly he had started towards the kitchen. Switching the light on he began working swiftly and as silently as possible.

The recipe for cookies lay on the kitchen counter, unstained and ready to be put to the test.

Taemin was a regarding any kind of cooking or baking yet he was hyper to try it for the first time.

With his mind set like this he took out all the needed ingredients: flour, sugar, milk, butter, eggs, vanilla extract, cocoa powder, baking soda and off course chocolate chips.

He started to preheat the oven to 175°C and put butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in large bowl and started beating it. "Beat until light and fluffy", he silently mumbled. How should he know that it was fluffy? Dough wasn't really supposed to be like this anyway. So he just beat the mush until his arm started hurting slightly. Afterwards he added the rest of the ingredients and beat it until everything seemed to have mixed well (this time he used his other arm to feign one- sided exercise).

Almost done he felt quite exhausted and started thinking about what exactly had driven him to do this. Strangely it was his care for their leader. The person that was farthest away from his age.

Seeing Onew sick like this (although he was lots better by now) was something Taemin felt really uncomfortable with and since he couldn't make him healthy he wanted to show him that he was loved and missed at least.

Newly motivated and a small smile dancing across his lips Taemin prepared for the last step:

"Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto increased cookie sheets and bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven."

"rounded teaspoonfuls....rounded teaspoonfuls....rounded teaspoonfuls? Where to find them?" he muttered searching for a spoon fitting the description. After ten minutes of searching he gave up. He would have to do this with an ordinary spoon.

What had started out as a promising first baking attempt turned into a huge mess at this point: the dough kept sticking to the spoon and sticking on Taemin's fingers and on his clothes and in the end he was covered all over.

He was close to tears when he stared at the remaining small glomp of dough in front of him when he decided to just put the whole thing in the oven and let it bake while he would shower.

It was three in the morning and he decided that this was the only way it was going to work out.

So Taemin let the "monster cookie" be and went to clean himself.

Exactly 3:10am he got out of the bath to take the humongous cookie out of the oven and let it cool for another 10 minutes. The longer he looked at it the more he was convinced that Onew would still appreciate his effort and be more than happy about it.

He carefully placed it on a plate and stealing himself into Onew's quarantine he gently placed it on the nightstand.

Needless to say, Taemin slept like stone as soon as he had hit his pillows.

(14.3.2010)