Kris bursts into the lab, “What is it now, Park? I’m busy. Do you honestly think the new Martian proteins are going to catalogue themselves?” Honestly, sometimes he feels like he works with a bunch of empty headed morons.

As much as he likes Chanyeol, he is also the one Kris swears has a head so empty it rattles when he shakes it.

“Um,” Chanyeol lowers his clipboard. He smiles.

Immediately, Kris recoils. He doesn’t like the look of Chanyeol’s smile. He usually doesn’t like any of Chanyeol’s smiles (he’s never worn braces or had a single cavity, how is that even possible), but this one makes him nervous. He looks Chanyeol over -- messy orange hair pulled back in a high ponytail, big frame glasses, white lab coat, twitchy fingers that look like spiders around his clipboard.

Chanyeol’s lab also looks normal too. He works sequencing newly discovered DNA in the astrobiology section of South Seoul labs. PCR machines, micro arrays, and various other instruments hum, some of their small lights like stars in the white room. There’s a newspaper face down on Chanyeol’s desk. His coat is on the back of his swinging chair and Kris thinks he sees skin on Chanyeol’s computer monitor.

“For goodness sake, man, are you watching in the la--”

Chanyeol laughs, cutting him off. “That’s. That’s classified information, Mr. Wu. Anyway, I didn’t bring you down here so you can creep on my, uh, work.” He clears his throat, looking a little flustered. “I...um...”

God, Kris is nervous just looking at him. Everything about Park Chanyeol makes Kris feel like he’s a few doses of cough medicine away from burning their entire building to hell.

“Spit it out,” says Kris, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s still looking around the room, trying to find out what has made Chanyeol twitchier than usual, when he sees it in the corner. A cage. His arms drop. “What the hell is that?”

Chanyeol turns, still smiling, to where Kris is looking and laughs again, “That’s what I wanted to show you! The, um, higher ups want you to handle this...specimen.”

“That really doesn’t look like a protein,” says Kris. His eyebrows come together in the middle.

The cage is covered by a black sheet so Kris can only see the lower bars; they run perpendicular to the floor. He has no idea what could possibly be in there when the thing inside moves and a black tail slips out through the bars. It wriggles a slow hello.

Kris steps back, “Chanyeol, what the hell? Is that a cat? You want me to take care of a cat? I hate cats!”

“You interned at a zoo once!” says Chanyeol. “You’re the only one with any animal experience! They just want you to take care of him and write down your observations for a few months--”

“I worked with chimpanzees,” and he had hated every minute of it. The zoo internship had been the only thing he could scrape at the last minute and he knew it be a painful experience, considering how well he and animals get along. It was literally painful when the dominant male rushed at him one day in the chimp house and Kris almost cracked his head on a rock trying to escape. Since then he has stayed the hell away from animals and now Chanyeol wants him to live with one of them. “You’re out of your mind.”

“Kris,” says Chanyeol, holding his hands up. “Please, just... look. We don’t know what he is. I’ve looked at his DNA so many times and I just don’t understand it. He looks entirely human except for the--”

“Tail?” Kris is still looking at it. It’s stopped moving by now and rests there.

“Also the ears,” Chanyeol sighs. “And he acts like a cat. We don’t know if there are more of him out there. He hasn’t spoken so I don’t know if he even understands when I speak to him. I would like to be the one to take care of him, but I’m too busy--”

“And I’m not?” Kris balks at the implication. “Do you know I have to a grant renewal coming up? I don’t have time to play babysitter for an alien.”

“You’ll get a raise. A big one. Huge. You can still come to work, but you have to keep him at home. We’ll pay for whatever you need, whatever he even eats.” Chanyeol takes a deep breath and sighs again. He pulls on his messy ponytail. “Please. Please Kris? For me. He’s not so bad, you’ll see. He’s actually kind of cute if you look beyond the alien thing. He’s not so different from you and me.”

Kris wants to argue that he’s very different, but he’s never seen Chanyeol look this worried before, this haggard. He doesn’t want to agree and he would rather tell Chanyeol to drop the thing off at a special zoo or something, but the raise offer is tempting. He would like to send home an extra fat Christmas envelope this year.

God, he’s going to regret this in the morning.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll do it, but I’m not happy.”

“Are you ever,” mutters Chanyeol and then his smile widens, as if a distraction, when he remembers Kris is standing right in front of him. “Alright! Pleasure to have you onboard. Let’s meet...” He glances at his clipboard. “We don’t really have a name for him yet. I call him ‘catboy’ and he seems to respond to that, but feel free to give him any name you want.”

He has to name it. This situation is already too painful for one evening. Kris wants a drink, a strong one, but the tail distracts him from his thoughts again. He watches as Chanyeol walks over to the cage, says something to the catboy that causes his tail to curl back into the cage, and takes the black sheet off.

Kris had been half right -- the lab isn’t burning, but it definitely feels as if Chanyeol has just sent him to hell.

yay for chapter one :D :D :D we see kitty kai in the next chapter, who's excited? ^^!!! thank you for reading!! please tell me what you think!!