Of Hospital Beds and Annoying Friends.

Taemin has come to find that hospitals are very strict and very, very boring. He knows that now, as he lies tied down to his flat hospital bed and looking up only to see his own slung up foot and the blank walls of his private room.

He doesn’t know how it ended up like this. Well, at least doesn’t know why he had to end up like this. He knows very well how he ended up with a sprained ankle, three broken ribs and seven crushed phalanges. He also knows now that walking across the street with half a carton of banana milk in his mouth and a tendency of not looking both ways before crossing is not a very smart thing to be doing on a Tuesday afternoon.

But that was before and this was now. He couldn’t turn back time no matter how many times he tried, and he was stuck to the hospital bed permanently, or at least until the surgery on his ribs healed over.

The doctor, Mr. Kim Junmyeon, told him he was too restless to be discharged so quickly, and that he didn’t think he could stay still for even a couple seconds. Junmyeon was right. The doctor’s had found him trying to send a picture of his bruises to his followers on Instagram, all while crying because, as Taemin had also come to learn recently, broken ribs are very painful. 

That’s also how Taemin also ended up with itchy fabric straps tying him down to the bed.                                                                                                                                                         

It had been exactly been one night since he’d been stuck in the hospital. It was uncomfortable, painful, nerve wracking and a little boring, to say the least, but at least it was a little relaxing.

There was suddenly a knock on the door breaking Taemin out of his peace. He leaned his head forward (as best as he could) to see his nurse, Minho, standing by the doorway.

“Uh, Taemin,” he mumbled, rubbing awkwardly at the back of his head, “You have a visitor. I-I don’t really know who he was. He didn’t give me his name and he kind of demanded to see you, so …”

“Taemin!” A wobbly voice shrieked off of the hospital walls. “I can’t believe you! How can you even get hit by a car in the middle of the day?! I was so worried!”

Taemin recognized the voice almost immediately, the boy who had been best friend since they had been in diapers, Jongin. The boy stormed in past Minho with a pout and plopped himself down onto the bed. Minho let himself out.

“Hi Jongin. It’s nice to see you too,” Taemin said, sighing a little as Jongin wrapped himself around him in a tight hug. “I wouldn’t suggest squeezing me so hard though, my ribs aren’t really healed. Are those tears I see?” he added, teasing him.

“No,” Jongin lied, sniffles getting louder, “There’s hospital chemicals in my eyes.”

“Yeah, sure you big softie.” Taemin said with a smile.

 “Anyways, what have you’ve been doing? Living fine without me?” Taemin asked, and Jongin’s eyes lit up excitedly. Taemin immediately regretted asking. Nothing ever went well when Jongin’s eyes light up like that. It only happened when he danced, ate really good food or -

A tiny bark squeaked from the inside of Jongin’s sweater. Taemin froze.

- when he saw dogs.

“Jongin, I swear on my life, if you brought an animal into his hospital …” Taemin hissed out.

“No, no, no, Taemin, of course I didn’t bring any ordinary animal.” Jongin spoke out happily. “Look at this!”

He reached down into the depths of his sweater and pulled out a tiny, small pup, no bigger than his hand, with curly hair and a cute nub for a tail. He looked up at him with dark chocolate eyes.

“It’s a puppy!” Jongin announced proudly, lifting it up as if it was Simba being dangled over the ledge of Pride Rock. “It’s so cute! Look at how tiny it is. I think I’m going to name him Kai. He has your eyes.”

“Jongin, you can’t bring dogs inside of a hospital!” Taemin almost yelled at him.

Jongin defensively covered up the puppy’s little ears, “Don’t yell in front of Kai, it’ll hurt his feelings!”

“Don’t you realize that there are some people in the hospital because of dog allergies?” Taemin sighed out. Jongin blinked a little.

“Oh, that makes sense.” Jongin said. “I was wondering why that one guy I passed was coughing so much …”

“Go, go! Get out! Shoo! You’re gonna get me in trouble!” Taemin told him angrily, squirming around in the bed. “Take your little dog too!”

“B-But Taemin, I just got here!” Jongin whined, “Look, Kai just wants to say hi.”

Jongin placed Kai onto the bed sheet right beside him. Kai looked down at Taemin, and sniffed at him with his wet pink nose, nudging gently at his cheek. Taemin smiled a little in satisfaction. If his ribs weren’t aching so badly and there wasn’t the possibly of being permanently kicked out, he could have actually been enjoying himself.

Then, Kai lifted up his leg. Taemin didn’t really process the action.

Then, Taemin saw little streaks of gold hitting the tip of his nose. Peeing. The dog was peeing on him.

Taemin had never screeched louder. He yelled on the top of his lungs, ripping himself free of the straps that had him bonded to the bed and flipping over everything on his bed, including Jongin and his puppy, and sending them flying across the room.

The doctor and his nurse quickly slammed the door open seconds later.

“W-What’s wrong?! What happened?” Junmyeon asked him worriedly.

“****! DOG **** ON MY FACE! MY FACE! I NEED WATER! I NEED SOAP!” Taemin stuttered frantically, searching all of the drawers for any form of sanitization. The pain of all of his movement finally hit him all at once, and soon, he was curled back in the bed, shaking, and gripping painfully onto his sides. “O-Oh … right, my ribs.”

“Dogs? I-I can’t—achoo!” Junmyeon sneezed out. “I’m – achoo – allergic to – achoo! – dog hair, I can’t do this …” he sniffled, running out of the room.

Minho and Jongin were left in silence, and Jongin looked up at the nurse, letting out a sheepish smile with Kai planted nicely on top of his head.

“So … when are visiting hours over?” Jongin asked innocently.

Minho grumbled, taking Jongin and throwing his over his shoulder. “Let’s go, puppy boy.”

Taemin couldn’t tell if Kai or Jongin were whimpering louder.

“You’re back again?” Taemin grumbled seeing Jongin happily planted in front of him as he woke up after his afternoon nap a couple of days later. Apparently, ever since the last encounter with his friend, he had further injured his ribs, which meant he had to stay in the hospital for even longer.

Needless to say, he hadn’t been happy since.

“You’ve been so alone in the hospital? Didn’t you miss me?” Jongin asked with a bait of his eyelashes.

“No,” Taemin deadpanned, “Not even a little. Go away.”

Jongin pouted, crossing his arms stubbornly. “I’ve been waiting for you to get up in forever. By the way, you’ve starting snoring in your sleep. Rather loudly, might I add.”

“Geez, not creepy at all. Thanks for that.” Taemin grumbled. “Fine, you can stay. As long as you didn’t bring me anymore gifts.”

Jongin laughed nervously, a cold sweat breaking out onto his skin. “Y-Yeah, no more gifts …”

Taemin narrowed his eyes, scanning the room for anything suspicious. It couldn’t be another puppy, his shirt was too tight for him to be hiding anything down it, and he was sure Jongin couldn’t have found any other cute animals to smuggle into the hospital, so he sighed a little in relief. All that was there was the huge duffel bag he used to carry around his dance material.

“So … you sure you aren’t hiding anything?” Taemin asked, glaring Jongin down.

Jongin slightly shook his head. “N-No … of course not, ha ha.”

Taemin leaned back onto the pillow of his hospital bed. “Fine, if you say so. Anyways, I have to ask you something- ”

Both Jongin and Taemin froze as a shuffling from the duffel bag interrupted his sentence, continued by a loud child like yawning emitting from within it.

Taemin gritted his teeth, “Jongin, I swear to god if there are more dogs in that freaking bag of yours I won’t be the only one with broken bones.”

“No, it’s not Kai, I swear. I left him at home this time,” Jongin said, sighing as he continued. “But, if you really want to know what’s in this bag …”

Jongin leaned down, zipping down the duffel bag, reached in and pulled out a half-asleep child wearing nothing but green dinosaur pyjamas.

“Jongin … you brought a child?” Taemin hissed out.

“Oh, no, of course not,” Jongin said, leaning back down to pull out another child, almost the exact same as the last but in blue instead of green. “I brought two children.”

Jongin set them down on the bed beside Taemin as they began to stir awake. Taemin recognized them as Jonghyun and Dongwoo, the troublesome twins that lived next door to them.

“Jongin, how could you bring random CHILDREN to a hospital? How’d you even get these kids? Never mind that, why were they in bags?!” Taemin yelled at him.

“I thought you liked children?” Jongin said earnestly. “They’re easier to carry around in bags, yeah? It makes my life much simpler. I’m getting paid to babysit them for tonight.”

“What the hell are children supposed to do in a hospital, huh? Help the doctors? Catch a disease?” Taemin complained. Jongin only hushed him.

“Language Taemin,” Jongin said, pointing to the now awake children.

Taemin gritted his teeth and twisted his mouth into somewhat of a smile, trying his best not to strangle Jongin right then and there. He decided it would be better to leave him for later so he would have a clear shot of his neck.

The twins looked directly over at Taemin with huge, innocent and unblinking eyes.

“You’re not Nini.” they stated in unison. “Where did Nini go?”

“He’s over there,” Taemin said, pointing in his direction, and both twins looked over to see Jongin, who was over enthusiastically waving over at them. They cutely pursed their lips in the form of an ‘oh.’

“Are we in a hospital?” Dongwoo asked, eyes darting around. “Are you sick?”

“No, I was just … being dumb.” Taemin replied, ruffling both of the twin’s hair in a caring manner. “I got into an accident.” 

“That’s okay,” Jonghyun said, trying to nuzzle into his palm, “Our mom says we’re accidents too.”

“What?”

“Anyways,” Jongin interrupted, picking Dongwoo and Jonghyun off of the bed in one swift motion, “You too can go over there and play around with something. Me and Taemin have to talk.”

“Talk about what?” Dongwoo asked curiously.

“About stuff.” Jongin said, bringing them over to the corner of the room.

“Are you dating? Are you gonna kiss? Can we see?” Jonghyun also asked, very innocently.

“No, nope and definitely not.” Jongin told them, plopping them into the corner. “Now, wait here until me and Taemin finish talking, okay?”

Jongin was quickly back at Taemin’s side, smiling happily, while his best friend glared at him.

“I don’t know why I’m friends with you.” Taemin spoke bitterly, eyes narrowing.

“You know you love me.” Jongin said, leaning down and putting his head down on the pillow beside him. “Anyways, what was that thing you were going to tell me?”

“Right. I was going to ask if you - ”

“Nini! Min!” One of the twins called, catching both of their attentions. “Look what we found!”

They turned to see Jonghyun holding up a tiny remote control and Dongwoo holding up a bottle of multi-coloured pills. “A magic wand and candy!”

Dongwoo tried to twist the lid off of the top of the bottle, and Jongin yelped, running over to grab the pills out of his hand. “Don’t touch those! Your mom will kill me!”

Taemin also let out a similar yelp as he saw the tiny remote in his hand. It was the remote to his adjustable bed. “Don’t touch that Jonghyun! Please!”

“Huh?” Jonghyun said as he smashed all of the buttons together at once.

Taemin sighed out a little as he saw that nothing happened.

Then, exactly four seconds later, the bed quickly folded itself in half, and Taemin let out an ear-piercing scream. He swore his lungs were touching his stomach.

“Taemin!” Jongin cried, rushing over with Dongwoo in one hand and the pills in the other.

Junmyeon, as usual, slammed open the door a couple of seconds later with a distressed looking expression on his face and speaking frantically, “W-What’s happening now?!”

“He’s being crushed!” Jongin said as he tried to pull one of the sides of the bed over. Junmyeon dropped his things on the floor beside him and tried to help Jongin in pulling over the bed.

“Excuse me … ” Jonghyun asked, tugging on Junmyeon’s pants legs.

Junmyeon looked down, surprised, “Huh? Oh. Yes little one?”

“What is this?” Jonghyun asked, holding up a clear syringe.

Junmyeon yelped, snatching it out of his hand. “D-Don’t touch that! That’s too dangerous to be playing around with. I had two. Where’d the other one go?”

Jonghyun’s showed off his guilty, sad looking puppy eyes as his mouth curled into an ‘oh’ for the second time. He pointed down to the other side of Junmyeon’s body, and the doctor looked down to find the syringe sticking out of his left thigh. “Oopsie.”

Junmyeon swayed a little, pulling the needle out of his thigh and sighing. “I really need a vacation from this job.”

Dongwoo, who was now more than comfortably sitting on top of Jongin’s shoulders, had taken the pill bottle back and had now finally gotten the lid off, showing them off proudly. “Nini! Look what I did!”

Jongin looked up, mouth slightly open, and Dongwoo took it as an invitation, using his pudgy fingers to shove a purple coloured pill inside of his mouth. Jongin, surprised, choked it down.

“D-Dongwoo!” Jongin said, taking the bottle away from him. “What was that?”

“It’s a sedative.” Junmyeon said from where he lay down on the floor, words slurring together, “It’ll probably start working in a couple of seconds, you’re kind of thin for your age. I really need to move to a new unit …”

Junmyeon was knocked out a couple moments later, snores filtering out in his lab coat.

Jongin yawned, eyes dropping as the effects of the medication started to kick in. “Taemin’s really going to kill me after this … “

Dongwoo and Jonghyun both looked down as Jongin fell asleep, just like the doctor had predicted, and then looked up at Taemin, who was still screeching in his place on the bed. They looked at each other, and shrugged.

Minho wandered in a couple of moments later after seeing Junmyeon had gone missing. He pushed open the door only to see Jongin and Junmyeon curled up asleep on the floor, Taemin struggling underneath the weight of his bed, and the twins running around, dragging long lines of bandages behind them.

Minho sighed, rubbing at his temples. “I don’t get paid enough.”

One whole month.

It had been a whole whopping month since the hospital had banned people from visiting him, more specifically, from Jongin visiting him. The ban ruled for at least two months.

He didn’t know when he was going to be discharged, or if he was ever going to be discharged, but at least the doctor was nice enough to stop tying him down, and now, he could sit up without any excruciating pain attacking his chest.

As much as he hated to admit it, it was lonely without Jongin. He missed him being around and the dumb little puppy, and the annoying little twins. He missed it all.

A knock on the door broke him out of his thoughts, and before he could even respond, the door flung open.

“Jongin?” Taemin asked in disbelief.

“Hush!” Jongin shushed him, closing the door secretively behind him. “You can’t mention my name! The nurses will find out. I’m like an outlaw or something in this hospital.” He more than happily bounced over to his best friend lying on the bed and enveloped him in a hug, nuzzling his neck.

“You’re lucky I haven’t strangled you yet. The bed incident almost re-broke my ribs.” Taemin hissed.

“I missed you.” Jongin said with a smile on his face, squeezing him tighter.

Taemin sighed, hugging him back. “I missed you too.”

Jongin pulled away, seemingly satisfied with himself, and pulled out his duffel bag.

“I lied. I didn’t miss you at all. I hate you. I’m going to end up in a body cast with whatever you’re hiding in that bag now.” Taemin said, kicking Jongin in an attempt to get him off the bed. “Go away. Leave.”

“Relax, it’s nothing to worry about,” Jongin said, still shuffling around in his bag.

“It’s not another cute animal?” Taemin asked with suspicion laced heavily in his voice.

“Nope.” Jongin said simply.

Taemin frowned. “No kid? Or twins? Or triplets? Or quadruplets? A dog child hybrid?”

“Nada.” Jongin confirmed, continuing to search around in his bag until finally he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a purple party horn. “This is what I brought!”

“Huh? Why would you bring …” Taemin let his sentence trail off as he saw the excited look in his eyes. “Oh god, Jongin, what did you do know?”

Jongin blew into the party horn, and chaos endured.

People poured in through the door, loud and cheering. Taemin looked over the room with his mouth agape. There was music blaring from speakers that were now on his dresser, a case of drinks in the corner of the room and streamers being thrown at him from every direction. Someone had even shut off the lighting brought in strobe lights (how that got past security, Taemin couldn’t even begin to think.)

“W-What the heck is this?” Taemin said, still recovering from shock.

“Congrats! You’re being discharged!” One of his friends, Sehun, told him as leaned up onto the frame beside his bed. “You won’t be rotting in this smelly hospital bed any longer.”  

“Yeah, not that I think they’d want to have you here any longer,” Kibum, another one of his friend’s, told him, “I’ve heard you’ve been causing trouble and giving the poor doctor heart issues.”

Taemin narrowed his eyes, “Where the heck have you two been? I swear you two haven’t visited me once while I was here.”

“Oh, well, I was busy.” Kibum said plainly.

“Busy with what?” Taemin asked him.

“Wow, geez, what was that? I think Khuhyun and Krystal are calling me, I have to go.” Kibum said quickly, rushing away into the midst of the crowd.

Taemin looked over at Sehun, “What’s your excuse?”

Sehun shrugged. “I’m too lazy. I’m on school break right now. I need to use it to my advantage.”

“Yeah, and he was also busy flirting with his math tutor!” Someone yelled from across the room.

Sehun whipped his head around, “Shut the hell up Baekhyun!”

“Come over here and make me!” He taunted from across the room.

Sehun stormed off in the voice’s direction, leaving Jongin and Taemin to themselves.

“Well, ignoring that … aren’t you excited? You’re leaving today!” He shouted excited cheerily, bouncing up from where he stood on the bed

“Well, this is great and all, but I think that you’re forgetting the fact that … this is a hospital, not a club!” Taemin yelled, grabbing him by the collar, “Are you trying to get me kicked out forever?!”

“Well, yeah, that’s the point. You can go home today!” Jongin said, smile not wavering.

Taemin sighed. “Well, yeah, I’m going to give it 3, 2 and … ”

Just on time, Minho and Junmyeon swung open the door, and everyone froze.

The look on Junmyeon’s face was something between a disappointed mother and a kitten abandoned in the rain. He paled, looking like he was about to faint.

“One month, all I just wanted one month of peace …” Junmyeon said shakily, covering his face with his hands.

Minho frowned. “Alright, everyone clear out. I’m not dragging anyone out again.”

“Awh, can’t you allow us an hour of party time? You can party with us.” Kibum asked Minho, rather flirty in his tone.

Junmyeon looked up from his hands, looking far from impressed. “No.”

“How bout half an hour Mr. Kim?” Sehun pleaded.  

“No.” Junmyeon said.

“A couple minutes?” Khuhyun asked.

“No.” He said again, “No, no, no. I have work to do, so if you guys could just- ” He was stopped by a small tug on his lab coat from Minho, and turned to face him. “Hmm?”

Minho whispered something into his ear, and Junmyeon’s slightly pouted. “But it’s against regulations, and I need to give him one last physical before he leaves, and it could be disturbing the other patients.”

“But Junmyeon, you were complaining about your stress all week. This could be a little stress reliever for you, right?” Minho said, looking at him with big, puppy eyes. “C’mon, just a little fun, right? Please?”

Junmyeon pouted, stubbornly crossing his arm across his chest, before finally, he released it, “Fine. You win. I’ll give you two hours at max, but then, the party has to go.”

Everyone sighed out a little in relief, and Jongin’s smile soon returned to his face.

“See?” He said happily. “Nothing to worry about. It’s all good.”

“You’re really dumb sometimes, you know that right?” Taemin told his best friend who was now bopping his head along to the music. He couldn’t help but to let a smile creep onto his face.

“Oh, hush. You know I love you.” Jongin said.

Taemin reached his hand up to mess around his hair. “Yeah, I know.” He said, and secretly, he thought about how thankful he was to have such a great person in his life.

“Hey,” Jongin asked nervously a couple moments later, pulling out the tiny remote for his bed, “Does this happen to be the same remote as last time? Because I might have accidently sat on it. And all of the buttons are pressed in.”

Taemin’s thoughts quickly changed to how quickly he was going to kill Jongin as he saw the edge of the bed closing in on him.

“God dammit Jongin.” 

----

a/n: 

Yay! You made it to the end! 

I haven't really checked it over properly, so I'm sorry for any mistakes ... " 

This is probably really bad, so I apologize to whoever's reading it ... 

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed it either way! Thanks for reading! 

(bonus cute 2ho being cute.)