Taekwoon stretched, enjoying the way each of his vertebrae popped with ease.  It had been a rough couple of months at the bureau; a serial killer obsessed with the little toes on a victim’s foot.  Poor guy just couldn’t understand why when he cut them off his victim the toes lost their appeal.

                It was sad that they took so long to bring the guy in too.  He was sloppy, leaving trails of himself all over every crime scene.  But every time their team had thought they got close to him, the idiot managed to dance his way around them.

                A loud ring made its way through Taekwoon’s apartment, a quick assessment of his room showed that he had left a trail of clothes on his way in.  With every move of a man with a hangover, Taekwoon made his way out to his living room, kicking aside stray socks and shirts as he went.  He found his pants in a wrinkled heap on the floor, his pocket vibrating so violently that it seemed the tiny device would tear through.

                “Taekwoon?”  His nose scrunched in annoyance.  He had worked hard on this last case, countless overtime and man hours, he had been told to go home for a few days and rest.  Why wasn’t he allotted time away from his nosy team leader too?  “Taekwoon, if that’s you nod once!” 

                ‘Correction, Idiotic nosy team lead,’ Taekwoon could feel the collective sigh of the world.

                “Did you nod?  Taekwoon?  Hey!  Are you there?”

                “Are you insane?  Of course you won’t hear him nod!  Would you just video call him like I told you to now?”

                ‘Oh?  It’s nice to know that the idiot isn’t alone…shouldn’t leave him too long by himself…lots of sharp objects.’

                “Oh,” A pause, “You’re right Wonshik!  How silly of me!”  There was a beep of the call ending and Taekwoon smiled slightly to himself.  Leave it to Hakyeon to be an idiot when he’s not working.  Any other time the man was a genius.

                Thirty seconds went by and Taekwoon was contemplating getting dressed when his phone trilled for the video call.

                “Taekwoon!  There you are!”  Hakyeon was much too cheery for having been working for the last five days on little to no sleep. 

                Taekwoon glared at his phone screen, waiting for whatever reason the idiot called him for to happen.

                “Oh?  Are you Taekwoon?”  Hakyeon grinned into his camera like a fox.  “Did you find yourself a girl?”  A pale hand popped on screen to smack Hakyeon in the back of the head.

                “You’re a dunce, you know that?”  Came Wonshik’s muffled voice.

                “What the hell was that for?”  Hakyeon yelled at his partner.

                Taekwoon rolled his eyes as the two started to bicker….sometimes both popping in and out of the screen. 

                ‘Might as well get dressed.’  He thought to himself, shuffling back into his bed room and tossing his phone on the bed.  They would call for him when they remembered; after all, it was the bureaus phone, it wasn’t like he was paying for the bill.

`~`~

                Taekwoon sat on his bed and stared at his phone screen.  It had been thirty minutes, thirty minutes of listening to these two bickering and fighting, heading from one extreme to another.  Ending most sentences with threats of kicking each other out of the car the next time they were at work, or making them walk from one far point to another.  A continuous never ending cycle.  He had clapped his hands, tapped on his speaker, even tried playing music to get them to realize the stupidity they were still displaying for him to hear.  But nothing, he was now sitting against his pillows, fully showered, dressed and ready for the day; and debating on just hanging up and turning his phone off for the next few hours.

                “Oh!  Taekwoon!  I forgot, we wanted to know if you wanted to go to the zoo with us today?”  Haekyeon said, his now mussed head coming into the view of the camera.

                ‘Half an hour for this?  Really?’  Taekwoon shook his head.

                “Aw, why not?  Is there something else you were going to do today, or were you just gonna mope about at home?”  Haekyeon eyed his camera…quite literally put the camera up to his eye.  Taekwoon scrunched his nose and unfolded himself from his bed.

                “Hey!  Don’t you walk away from me!  Get back here!”  Taekwoon let out a silent huff as he moved into his kitchen to cook himself breakfast.  “So help me Taekwoon I will come over and ram your door down!” 

                ‘What kind of power does he have to echo through the hall like that?’  Taekwoon wondered as he pulled out a pan to cook in.  ‘Poor Wonshik.  It must be difficult for him, all the echoes that he must have to endure, and then to live with the guy too.  It must be horrible.’  Still in thought Taekwoon opened his fridge to pull out something worth making into a meal.  It had only been open a fraction of a second before he slammed it closed, gagging on air that was filled with a rancid smell.

                When he had finally caught his breath he stared at the fridge and then counted down on his fingers.  2…4…five weeks, five weeks since he had been home.  Five weeks of old takeout and milk rotting in his fridge.  ‘Damn it.’  He stalked back to his phone and looked straight at the screen where Haekyeon was still going on about all the things he would do to get access into Taekwoon’s apartment.

                “I’ll slip a dollar bill under your door and lure you out like the cartoon character you are!”  Taekwoon rolled his eyes, and ended the call.  He pulled up his messages and sent a quick one to the team leader. 

                TO: Lead

                I’ll go if you take me to breakfast.

                TO: Mr. Mute

                YAY!

Taekwoon rolled his eyes and looked back out into the hallway, his nose still burning with the smell from the fridge. 

                ‘I guess it won’t do any good to leave it that way.’  He changed his shirt from his cable knit sweater to a torn work out shirt and moved to the kitchen for the cleaning supplies.  ‘I’ll just clean before they get here.’

~V~

                Two hours later Taekwoon was walking out of a restaurant with Wonshik chatting, while a sad Haekyeon was looking into his empty wallet.

                “You two are monsters, you know that.  You can’t be humans; you ate twice the amount of food.”

                “Oh hush, you’re pulling us out and to the zoo on our day off.  The least you can do is buy us food.”

                Taekwoon nodded and raised his eyebrows, daring Haekyeon to say something against it.

                Haekyeon scrunched his nose, “Fine, but you two will buy your own stupid food at the zoo!”  With that he stomped away.

                “He’s lucky I put up with him.”  Wonshik snorted.

                Taekwoon clicked his tongue at him.

                “Okay, okay, he’s lucky I love him.  Better?”

                Taekwoon looked at him blankly and gave a small nod, and walked off.  Wonshik snickered and followed him.  “You know; we should find you a person.”  Wonshik elbowed him, “You know you could do with a warm bed in that lonely apartment.”  Taekwoon didn’t even pause in his steps as the slapped the back of Wonshik’s head.

~V~

                Haekyeon was already bouncing around excited about a poster he saw for a new show in the zoo.  They had just stepped into line to purchase their tickets.  Wonshik was doing his best to keep the leader under control, but far from having an iron pan to smack him in the head with, he wasn’t really doing anything.

                “They poster said it was supposed to start later in the day.  I hope we’ll be able to see it.” 

                Taekwoon’s eyes widened a fracture.  ‘Later in the day, like we are going to be here all day?’  He rubbed his temple.  That was eight hours he hadn’t wanted to spend outside at all.

                “Yo, Taekwoon!  What’s got you in a glum?”  A hand patted the middle of his back in greeting and Taekwoon turned to give a pointed look to his partner Hyuk before giving another more pointed stare to Haekyeon.

                “What Taekwoon?  What?  You can’t tell me you don’t want to see the cute things too!”  Haekyeon yelled, pointing at a poster to the side displaying cute baby animals.  Taekwoon only rolled his eyes at him.

                “I’m sure he just meant that he wanted you to calm down and stop yelling.  He probably hasn’t had enough coffee yet leader!”  Hyuk was always quick to his rescue, that’s what made him a great partner. 

                “He drank twelve cups at breakfast!”  Haekyeon whined.

                ‘And I’ll need another twelve to deal with you on my day off.’  Taekwoon thought with an eyebrow raised.

                “It’ll be okay, we’ll get him coffee when we get inside and then go look at the animals.”  Hyuk said with a small hop.  Taekwoon eyed him.  “Sorry, I’m a little excited to hang out with you guys outside the office too.  Sorry can’t help it.”  Hyuk smiled, a wide grin and then hopped towards the team lead so they could giggle and gaggle together.

                “You know it means a lot to him.  Thanks for coming.”  Wonshik smiled.  Taekwoon rolled his eyes, but nodded anyway.  Soon they were next in line where they flashed their badges and gained their discounted tickets, even paying extra for the new show.