Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

one.

in which the CEO's son arrives, and kim seokjin walks into a doorframe

— ✦ —

There is a particular kind of person who makes a room feel more like itself.

Kim Seokjin is that kind of person.

It is not a quality that can be manufactured, though many have tried. The head of finance—Choi Sunghoon, for instance, has a laugh he deploys at meetings—too large, arriving a half-second after the joke  and everyone in the building knows the difference. Knows the sound of performance. But Seokjin walks into a room and the room settles, the way light settles on water in the late afternoon, and it is not because he is loud or because he is charming, though he is both of these things, sometimes at the same time. It is because he is present. Entirely. As though there is nowhere else he would rather be, no inbox piling up behind his eyes, no clock counting down inside his chest.

There had been that meeting, for instance—the one people still referenced in lowered voices, like it had acquired the weight of myth.

The client had arrived already irritated and only grown worse with every passing minute. By the time Jungkook was back at his desk, word had spread enough that the entire marketing floor felt like it was holding its breath. Jungkook, who had been tasked with “just sitting in” to take notes, was now staring at his screen like it had personally betrayed him. His notes, if anyone were to look, had devolved somewhere between “client dissatisfied” and “we might all lose our jobs.”

At one point, he had typed “this is it for me. i will go back home and open a café.” and then, after a pause, added “i don’t know how the difference between latte and cappuccino.”

Jimin had leaned over the partition, taken one look at Jungkook’s expression, and quietly slid him a chocolate bar like one might offer comfort to someone in the middle of a natural disaster.

From inside the conference room, the client’s voice had carried—sharp, cutting. Someone from design had actually closed their laptop halfway, as if bracing for impact.

And then the door had opened.

Seokjin stepped out first, not hurried, not strained—just as he always was. Composed, but not in that brittle way people sometimes are after surviving something unpleasant. The client followed a step behind him, still talking, but the tone had shifted. Softer. Measured. Almost (and impossibly) pleased.

Jungkook had blinked at them like he’d just witnessed a minor miracle.

“—exactly the direction we needed,” the client was saying, nodding, like each word Seokjin had offered had been something rare and precise. “I think we’ve been approaching this the wrong way. Your framework makes much more sense.”

Jimin, still half-crouched behind Jungkook’s desk, had slowly straightened, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Did… did he hypnotise him?”

Jungkook hadn’t answered. He was still staring at Seokjin like the man had just walked out of a burning building completely unscathed, carrying everyone else with him.

Seokjin, for his part, only smiled—small, polite, entirely unbothered and said, “I’m glad we could align.”

Later, in the break area, when the story had already begun its transformation into legend, Choi Sunghoon had clapped Seokjin on the back with a laugh.

“It’s the young people these days,” he’d said, loud enough for half the room to hear. “Pretty face and charm. Clients love that.”

It had been said lightly, jokingly. The kind of comment that passes without consequence most of the time.

But Jimin, standing just close enough, had seen it. The brief, almost imperceptible tension in Seokjin’s shoulders. It was gone as quickly as it appeared, but it had beenthere.

And yes, Seokjin boasted about his looks. Frequently. Unapologetically. Entire team meetings had, at times, been derailed by his insistence that he was “objectively very handsome” and that this was “relevant to the brand image.”

But everyone knew, everyone knew, that was not why the client had walked out like that.

It was the way Seokjin listened. The way he never interrupted, never rushed, never made a person feel like they were something to be managed instead of understood. It was his work ethic, the quiet thoroughness behind the ease. It was his manners, his timing, the strange, precise calibration of warmth and clarity that made people trust him before they realised they were doing it.

It was—

Stop, Jimin told himself abruptly, dragging his thoughts to a halt. Park Jimin, you are now sounding like you have a crush on Seokjin-hyung.

He blinked, shook his head once, and reached for his coffee with unnecessary determination.

Anyway.

The marketing floor has a quality that other floors whisper about. Something about the air up there, the way projects move, the way ideas arrive and are taken seriously and leave looking more like themselves than when they came in. The head of product once stood in the elevator with Seokjin for fourteen floors and came away with the uncomfortable sense that he had, somehow, been seen. Not evaluated. Seen. He went back to his team and reorganised the quarterly roadmap. He has never been able to fully explain why.

Seokjin is, in the language of performance reviews, consistently exceptional.

In the language of his team, he is hyung, and when he laughs at his own jokes—which is always, because he finds himself very funny, and there is something about a person who finds themselves genuinely funny that makes everyone around them laugh harder—the whole floor hears it, and the floor is better for it.

The marketing floor will argue, at any given opportunity and with very little provocation, that they are the best floor in the building.

Not the most efficient though they will claim that too, loudly, over lunch. Not the most important though they have, on multiple occasions, attempted to prove this with colour-coded slides and what Jimin once described as “aggressive enthusiasm.”

No, their favourite argument is simpler.

They are the happiest.

This is also,  objectively, not always true.

There are days when deadlines stack up like something architectural, when briefs change three times before noon, when half the team is running on caffeine and stubbornness alone. There are days when Jungkook stares at his screen like it has personally offended him, when Jimin threatens to quit every hour on the hour, when someone inevitably says, “I cannot do this anymore,” and then, five minutes later, continues doing exactly that.

But even then, especially then, they are miserable together.

Which, as it turns out, is a very different thing from being miserable alone.

There is always someone leaning over a desk, offering commentary that is entirely unhelpful but deeply necessary. Someone passing around snacks like a form of emotional regulation. Someone laughing at the worst possible moment and making it better anyway.

It works out, in the end, not because the work is easy, or because they are particularly well-adjusted, but because the weight of it never belongs to just one person for very long.

And at the centre of it, more often than not, is Seokjin—present as ever, steady in that quiet, unteachable way, making the room feel, again and again, like itself.

— ✦ —

Park Jimin has sat three desks from Kim Seokjin for two years and seven months.

He has, in that time, learned to read him the way a sailor reads weather—in small signs, advance warnings, the particular angle of a shoulder. He knows the difference between Seokjin preparing a presentation and Seokjin has already mentally finished the presentation and is now thinking about dinner. He knows the exact pitch of the laugh that means this is genuinely funny versus I am going to destroy you for saying that and I want you to see it coming.

He also knows the quieter things.

The nights Seokjin stays too long, long after most of the floor has emptied out, tie loosened, sleeves rolled, the glow of his screen the only light left in that section. The way he insists he’s “just wrapping up one last thing,” three last things ago. The careful way he stretches his shoulders when he thinks no one is looking.

The days after holidays, too. After Chuseok, especially. He comes back just slightly off-balance, not enough for anyone who doesn’t know him to notice, but enough that Jimin does. A little sharper around the edges. A little quieter between sentences. Still smiling, still joking, but with something underneath it, something that doesn’t quite settle. Jimin has never asked. It does not feel like something meant to be asked about. Only something to be… accounted for.

His highs, his lows—all of it catalogued, not deliberately, but inevitably, like weather patterns you learn because your life depends on it.

He knows, without looking up from his monitor, when Seokjin has entered a room versus when Seokjin has entered a room and something is off.

This is how Jimin knows, the moment Seokjin comes back from the third-floor meeting, that something has happened.

It is not anything dramatic. It is, in fact, the absence of drama that tips him off. Seokjin walks in as if he is concentrating very hard on walking normally. He is steady and careful in a way you are steady and careful when the thing happening inside your chest is large enough that you cannot afford to let any of it reach your face.

He sits down at his desk. He opens his laptop. He stares at it.

He does not say anything.

Jimin puts down his pen.

Across the office, Taehyung, who has the spatial awareness of a very tall Labrador and the observational instincts, when it counts, of something significantly more predatory, looks up from his sketchbook. He and Jimin exchange a look. A full conversation happens in it.

Do you see this?

I see this.

This is bad.

This is very bad.

If soulmates were real, Jimin thinks distantly, this is what it would be like.

Hoseok, who has been on a call, removes one earbud. He looks at Seokjin. He looks at Jimin. He removes the other earbud. The call is, apparently, over.

"Hyung," Jimin says, carefully. He’s being careful because if he isn’t, Seokjin-hyung might bolt, like he always does when feelings are involved. "How was the meeting?"

Seokjin blinks. Looks up. Something crosses his face—fast, unreadable, gone before Jimin can name it—and then he smiles, the I am fine smile, which is almost identical to the real smile except that it arrives a fraction too quickly. It feels like a reflex rather than a feeling.

"Fine," he says. "Standard introduction thing. The CEO is—"

He pauses. Clears his throat, like the word caught on the way out.

"There were some announcements."

"Announcements," Taehyung repeats.

"About the son," Seokjin says. And then, as though the sentence has already gone further than intended, he stops for half a second, presses his lips together, and looks back at his screen. "He's back from abroad. He'll be doing rounds through the departments. Getting a feel for things before the handover."

A beat.

"And," Seokjin adds, a little too quickly, like he is trying to get ahead of something, "which means he’ll be in close contact with us for about a week. Maybe more. So I’m just—" he gestures vaguely at his laptop, at the air, at the concept of preparation itself, "figuring out how to present us as a functioning unit."

Taehyung snorts.

"We are a functioning unit," Hoseok says, offended.

"We are a highly functioning unit," Seokjin corrects, straight-faced. "I just need to decide which version of that to show him. The competent, streamlined one, or the one where half of you are held together by iced coffee and denial."

"That is still competent," Jimin says.

"It is," Seokjin agrees solemnly. "But it lacks brand polish."

Jimin watches him as he says it. The ease, the timing, the way he folds tension into humour until it looks like it was never tension at all.

And still, something is off.

Jimin processes this.

Hoseok processes this.

Taehyung says, "I saw him this morning."

Everyone looks at Taehyung.

"In the lobby," Taehyung says. "He told me my tie was crooked."

A beat.

"He just—said that?" Hoseok says.

"I had just walked in the door," Taehyung says. There is something in his expression that suggests this detail still offends him on a personal level. "I hadn't even put my bag down. And he just looked at me and said, your tie is crooked."

"Did he fix it?" Jimin asks.

"No."

Jungkook, from two desks over, looks up immediately. “That would’ve been worse,” he says, with conviction. “I’m glad he didn’t fix your tie.”

Taehyung frowns. “I had files and coffee in my hands,” he says. “I wish he had fixed it. What was the point of pointing it out then?”

“He just said it,” Hoseok repeats, incredulous.

“He just said it,” Taehyung confirms.

Jimin looks at Seokjin, who is very intently reading something on his screen, which Jimin can see from this angle is his own desktop background.

“So,” Hoseok says, with the careful tone of a man building a hypothesis in real time. “The CEO’s son shows up this morning, tells Taehyung his tie is crooked—”

“—without offering to fix it,” Taehyung interjects.

“—without offering to fix it,” Hoseok agrees, nodding once, “or even introducing himself, and then ten minutes into your meeting with the board you come back looking like—” he gestures, vaguely, at all of Seokjin—“that.”

"I don't look like anything," Seokjin says.

"Hyung," Jimin says. "You look like you saw a ghost and the ghost was also somehow your fault."

Seokjin's mouth opens. Closes. He turns back to his screen.

"He wasn't rude," he says finally, and his voice has a quality Jimin cannot quite place—something pressed flat, something that wants to be larger. "He was—it's fine. He's just very—" Another pause. "Decisive. He's very decisive."

Hoseok stares at him.

"You met him once," he says slowly. "For what, ten minutes? And you’ve already decided he’s decisive?"

There is a pause.

Seokjin does not answer immediately.

And that, more than anything else so far, is what makes Jimin’s stomach drop, just slightly, somewhere he cannot quite explain.

"It wasn't—guys." And here Seokjin does look up, and there is something almost helpless in his face, which is so unlike him that it makes Jimin's chest tighten with something between concern and fascination. "Can we just—it's fine. I'm fine. Can we please just look at the Hyundai deck before the four o'clock?"

They look at the Hyundai deck.

Jimin, though, does not stop watching him.

Because the thing about Kim Seokjin, the thing Jimin has spent two years and seven months learning, is that fine and I am fine are different sentences, and the second one always has something underneath it, something being held below the waterline with both hands, and Jimin has never in his life been able to leave a thing alone.

His phone is already in his hand.

— ✦ —

What Jimin does not know—cannot know, from his desk three seats over—is this:

The phone in Seokjin’s hand has one conversation open. One thread. The most recent message in it is from two days ago.

It is ordinary, on the surface. Almost disappointingly so.

And then nothing.

But if he scrolls up—and he has, more times than he will ever admit, thumb hovering just a second too long before giving in—there is another stretch of conversation, four months back, that sits differently. They had been practical about it.

That is what Seokjin tells himself, anyway.

Things had been said without accusation, without urgency. The kind of conversation that sounds, to anyone listening, like two people being reasonable. Mature and sensible.

He remembers the exact wording because he had read it enough times to memorise the shape of it.

It’s not like we’re ending anything, Yoongi had written. Just… pausing it properly.

And then, after a moment—I don’t want to do this halfway, hyung.

Seokjin had stared at that message for a long time.

Okay, he had replied.

Because what else was there to say to that?

Because it made sense.

Because it was the kind of decision you make when you are trying to do things right.

Waiting, it turns out, is not a passive thing.

It is active. Intentional. A series of small, consistent choices not to reach for something you could. Not to collapse the distance just because it is inconvenient. Seokjin has been good at that, not because it comes naturally, but because once he decides something, he commits to it fully. Even when it is uncomfortable. Even when it lingers.

He has not made a spectacle of it. Has not turned it into something grand or tragic. He has simply continued. Let time do what time does. Trusted, in a quiet, unspoken way, that it would lead somewhere that made sense again.

And then this morning, a conference room door opened, and Min Yoongi was sitting at that table.

Seokjin had walked into the doorframe with his shoulder because his body, briefly, had forgotten how doors worked.

It had not been subtle.

There had been a sound—a solid, humiliating thunk—and for a fraction of a second, the entire room had turned.

Seokjin, who does not lose composure easily, had felt it slip just enough to register.

And then—

Yoongi had looked at him.

From across the room, like nothing about the situation was unusual. Like he had always been there. Like this was expected.

The corner of his mouth had done that thing it does—barely a movement, more a shift in quality than an expression. Not quite a smile, not quite anything definable. Just enough.

And Seokjin had thought, very clearly:

You’re here.

With a feeling that landed somewhere between dropping and arriving. Disorienting in the way those two things can feel the same, if they happen fast enough.

He had spent the next forty-five minutes being professionally immaculate.

He had spoken when needed, listened when required, responded with the exact level of clarity and composure expected of him. If anything, he had been sharper. More precise. As if all the energy he refused to let surface had been redirected into performance.

No one in that room would have guessed.

He has spent the last hour fighting the urge to text.

His thumb hovers over the screen.

He picks up his phone.

He puts it down.

He picks it up again.

He scrolls up, just a little. Stops himself. Scrolls back down.

He locks the screen.

Unlocks it.

From three desks away, Jimin watches all of this and narrows his eyes.

— ✦ —

Jimin watches Seokjin's smile happen in real time.

It is not the I am fine smile. It is not even the regular smile. It is something Jimin has no category for. Something that starts small and private and then seems to remember where it is and tries, unsuccessfully, to become smaller again. Like a lamp someone put a cloth over that is warm enough to glow through it anyway.

Seokjin's eyes flick to the hallway window.

He looks back at his phone.

He puts it face-down on his desk, very deliberately, and straightens his keyboard, and does not smile, very hard, for approximately four seconds.

Then he smiles again.

"Hyung," Jimin says.

"I'm working," Seokjin says.

"Right," Jimin says.

He opens the group chat.

two.

in which min yoongi fixes a collar, and park jimin nearly combusts

Yoongi arrives on the marketing floor on a Tuesday.

He arrives at 8:47 in the morning, which is earlier than anyone expected, which is—Jimin will later come to understand—entirely deliberate. Yoongi is, it turns out, a person who does most things deliberately. The tie comment to Taehyung was deliberate. The not introducing himself was deliberate. The arriving early is deliberate in a way that says: I am not here to be observed. I am here to observe.

He has Namjoon with him. Namjoon, who is Yoongi's assistant in the way that a very tall, very earnest golden retriever might be someone's assistant—meaning he does the job excellently and also sometimes knocks things over and apologises to the things. He introduces himself immediately, shakes everyone's hands, tells Jungkook he has great energy and tells Hoseok he loves his desk plant with a sincerity that makes Hoseok immediately sit up straighter in his chair.

Jimin likes Namjoon-hyung.

This is not a new development. Jimin has worked with him once before—a week on a cross-team project that remains, to this day, the most efficient week of Jimin’s professional life. No chaos, no last-minute disasters, no existential spirals over whether a campaign had “soul.” Just clean timelines, clear communication, and a brain so frighteningly organised that Jimin had, at one point, simply stared at Namjoon across a meeting table and thought, with genuine admiration: that is a very sexy brain.

The only downside and Jimin uses the term loosely, had been Jungkook.

Jungkook, who had spent a full five minutes after that first meeting whispering, hyung, did you see his thighs, like he had discovered something groundbreaking about the human condition. Jimin had chosen, at the time, to ignore it. He chooses, now, to ignore the way Jungkook is very pointedly not making eye contact with Namjoon, bent over his desk with the intense focus of someone pretending to work while absolutely listening to every word being said.

If Yoongi were not present, Jimin is fairly certain Jungkook would have already found an excuse to hover.

As it is, Jungkook remains seated. Suspiciously well-behaved. It is unnatural.

Seokjin is not yet in.

Jimin notices that Yoongi notices this. A brief scan of the floor, a micro-adjustment of posture. Something that could be, if you were watching very carefully—and Jimin is always watching very carefully—the shape of a person recalibrating.

At 9:02, Seokjin arrives.

There is a moment—small, almost nothing—where the air on the floor shifts. Jimin feels it more than sees it. Seokjin steps in, shrugging off his coat, already halfway into a sentence directed at no one in particular, and then—

He sees Yoongi.

It is not dramatic. It is, in fact, very controlled. But Jimin watches the exact second Seokjin’s expression stills, the fraction of a beat where something lands. He steps forward, and Yoongi stand—smooth, unhurried—like this, too, has been accounted for.

"Min Yoongi," he says, offering his hand.

"Kim Seokjin."

Their hands meet. It is a normal handshake. Entirely professional. Jimin narrows his eyes.

"Looking forward to working with your team," Yoongi says, voice even, measured. It is the kind of politeness that doesn’t give anything away and somehow still feels deliberate.

He doesn’t let go of Seokjin’s hand immediately.

Just long enough to register.

Then, as if nothing in that moment held any weight at all, he turns slightly. "This is—"

"I know Namjoon-ssi," Seokjin cuts in, a touch too quick, a touch too smooth like he’s already anticipated the introduction, like he needs to move past it.

Namjoon blinks, then breaks into an easy grin. "Pleased to be working with you again, Hyung.”

"He’s one of our best," Seokjin says to Yoongi, gesturing lightly toward Namjoon.

Yoongi looks at him.

Something in the look that Jimin cannot name—like hearing two notes and not knowing yet if they will resolve into harmony or something sharper.

"Is that so," Yoongi says.

"He ran the Lotte brief independently last quarter," Seokjin continues, voice even. "Top result in the company. We were very lucky to work with him."

"Mm." Yoongi tilts his head, just slightly. "Are you saying I should be impressed?"

Seokjin blinks. Just once. "I’m saying Namjoon-ssi is an excellent professional."

"And you want me to know that."

"I want you to know the team you’ll be working with this week."

There is something in the way he says team—a little too precise, a little too deliberate—and Jimin, watching, notices the faint flush creeping up the tips of Seokjin’s ears.

Oh.

Jimin narrows his eyes further.

Seokjin turns, clapping his hands once, brisk and bright. "Right, team," he says, like he has not just said the word team as if it personally offended him. "Let’s not stand around. We have work to do."

"Right," Yoongi says.

And there—again—that almost-smile. That thing at the corner of his mouth, like light slipping through blinds.

"The team."

Three desks away, Namjoon processes this exchange and several more throughout the day with the expression of a man watching a tennis match he doesn’t fully understand. He leans slightly toward Jimin.

"Is that how they will always talk to each other?" he murmurs.

Jimin does not look away from Seokjin, who is now very intently explaining something to Hoseok while not looking in Yoongi’s direction at all.

"I’m not sure," Jimin murmurs back. "I’m still collecting data."

"It seems tense."

"Does it," Jimin says, and does not look away from Seokjin's face, which is doing something complex and interesting and not at all tense.

— ✦ —

The hallway moment happens at 2:15 PM.

Jimin will later describe it as the hallway moment because it requires a noun and that is the most neutral one available. What it is, more precisely, is this: Jimin goes to the printer, which requires passing the hallway, and in the hallway he finds Seokjin and Yoongi, and they are arguing.

This is not unusual in itself. Jimin has seen Seokjin argue with the head of finance about Q3 budgets for forty minutes and come out looking energised. Seokjin is a man who enjoys a good argument the way some people enjoy a good meal—fully, appreciatively, with the comfortable knowledge that it will end well.  He is also, crucially, a man who does not hesitate to speak when something is unfair, inefficient, or just fundamentally wrong.

Which means, for exactly half a second, Jimin feels a small, vindicated spark of satisfaction.

Yes, he thinks. Good. Someone should argue with him.

(“Him,” in this case, being Min Yoongi, 8:47 AM arrival, unsettling eye contact, and a professional aura that suggests he has never once been inconvenienced in his life.)

The satisfaction lasts precisely until Yoongi responds.

Because what is unusual is how Yoongi argues back.

Most people, when Seokjin disagrees with them, do one of two things: they fold, because he is very convincing and also very tall and sometimes the combination is overwhelming, or they dig in defensively and make it adversarial. Yoongi does neither. He holds his ground with the ease of someone who has held it before, who knows the exact shape of this particular ground. He pushes back with one line. Seokjin fires back with three. Yoongi raises an eyebrow and says four words that make Seokjin stop mid-sentence.

Then Seokjin laughs.

Not the performance laugh, not the I am being polite laugh, not even the full Seokjin laugh that makes the whole floor look up. A smaller one, surprised out of him, and he shakes his head, and the argument is over, and it is over in the way that arguments are only over when both people feel they were heard.

Jimin stands very still by the printer.

They are bickering now, quieter, something about a slide deck and Seokjin's collar is crooked from where he's been tugging at it all afternoon—he always does this, Jimin has noticed, when he's been in back-to-back meetings, like he's slowly deconstructing his own professionalism and then Yoongi's hand comes up.

It is not dramatic. There is no pausing, no asking permission. It is the movement of someone doing something they have done a hundred times—fingers catching the lapel, straightening it, smoothing the collar flat, and then—this is the part that stops Jimin's breath—Yoongi's hand rests there for one second, at the base of Seokjin's collar, and doesn't move.

Seokjin has stopped talking.

Yoongi looks at him. Not at the collar. At him.

The hallway is very quiet.

Then Yoongi's hand drops.

“Help me understand something,” he says, tone even, almost casual like the last five seconds did not just happen, like Jimin is not about to pass out next to a malfunctioning printer. “I think I’m missing how you want that transition to land. Can you walk me through it?”

And then he turns and walks back toward the floor.

Like nothing happened.

Seokjin stays where he is.

One second.

Two.

Three.

Then he exhales—small, controlled—visibly gathers himself, adjusts the now perfectly straight collar like he needs something to do with his hands, and follows.

Jimin does not move.

The printer beeps at him.

Jimin leaves without his printed pages.

He is already typing.

— ✦ —

What happens later—at 6:47 PM, after everyone has gone home except Seokjin, who is always last, and Yoongi, who has apparently decided to also be last—is not witnessed by anyone on the marketing floor.

What happens is this:

The floor is quiet and mostly dark, the city glowing orange through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The hum of the air conditioning sounds louder without voices to soften it. Seokjin is at his desk, sleeves rolled, tie loosened, staring at a slide he has not changed in the last five minutes.

Yoongi comes to stand in the doorway.

He doesn’t knock. He just stands there.

Seokjin looks up.

And something in his face does what it has been threatening to do all day—that specific softening, like a held breath finally let out.

“Everyone’s gone,” Yoongi says.

“I can see that,” Seokjin replies, glancing pointedly at the empty floor.

“So you can stop doing the voice.”

“What voice.”

“The one where you sound like I’m just a colleague.”

Seokjin huffs, leaning back in his chair. “I am extremely professional.”

“You are extremely annoying.”

“And yet,” Seokjin says, tilting his head, “you came all the way here.”

Yoongi steps into the office properly now, slow, unhurried, like he has nowhere else to be. “Yeah,” he says. “Terrible decision. Regretting it already.”

“Leave, then.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not.”

Yoongi stops in front of the desk. Looks at him.

A beat.

“Missed you.”

Seokjin’s mouth twitches. He tries, very visibly, not to smile.

“You saw me this morning.”

“Mm.”

“You watched me make a fool of myself in front of my friends”

“Don’t worry, you were very professional.”

Seokjin presses his lips together, failing now, the smile breaking through anyway. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I know.”

A pause. Softer, but still threaded with that same lightness:

“You have so many faces,” Yoongi adds, studying him. “That one, especially. The one where you’re trying not to react.”

“I don’t have a face.”

“You have many faces. I love all of them so much”

Seokjin narrows his eyes. “Min Yoongi, I didn’t know you could be this corny.”

“That’s what you love about me.”

Seokjin actually scrunches his nose at that, a full, unguarded expression. “I am reconsidering everything.”

Yoongi laughs—quiet, a little breathy, and there’s the faintest hint of a blush at his cheeks that he does not acknowledge.

Seokjin notices anyway.

Of course he does.

He stands up.

They’re close now—close enough that the space between them feels like something intentional rather than incidental. Close enough that all the hours of the day—the careful distance, the measured tone, the not-looking-too-long—feel a little ridiculous in retrospect.

Yoongi lifts his hand.

Not to fix anything this time.

Just to rest it against the side of Seokjin’s face.

Seokjin leans into it without thinking, turning his cheek into Yoongi’s palm like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

There’s a strange, quiet shift in the room then—not heavy, not overwhelming, just new. Or maybe not new. Maybe just returned.

Because this is the part no one tells you about long distance. The unlearning. The way you teach yourself not to reach, not to expect, not to fill the empty space beside you.

And then suddenly, you don’t have to do that anymore.

And you don’t quite know what to do with your hands.

Or your time.

Or the fact that the person you’ve been missing is standing right in front of you, close enough to touch and you can.

“You’re really here,” Seokjin says, softer now.

Yoongi hums. “Mm.”

Seokjin exhales a quiet laugh, shaking his head a little. “I think I forgot what to do with you when you’re in the same room.”

Yoongi’s thumb brushes lightly along his cheek. “You’re doing fine.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“It is.”

A beat.

Seokjin glances at his mouth. Back up.

“You’re very calm about this.”

“I’m not calm,” Yoongi says. “I’ve been waiting all day to do this properly.”

“Oh,” Seokjin says, and then—because he is Kim Seokjin and incapable of not pushing just a little—“That sounds serious.”

“It is.”

“Should I be concerned?”

“Probably.”

Seokjin smiles, slow and bright. “Okay.”

And then Yoongi kisses him. Certainly. Without rush. Like picking something back up and finding it exactly where you left it.

Seokjin makes a soft sound against his mouth—surprised, maybe, or just relieved—and his hands come up automatically, catching at Yoongi’s shirt, holding on like he’s been meaning to do that for months.

When they pull back, it’s only just enough to breathe.

Seokjin laughs—the real one, full and warm and echoing a little in the empty office and drops his forehead briefly against Yoongi’s shoulder.

“Okay,” he says. “Right. That’s what we do.”

“Yeah,” Yoongi murmurs.

“Good system.”

“Very efficient.”

Seokjin lifts his head, still smiling, eyes soft in a way he never lets them be during the day and Yoongi smiles, not the barely-there one, the real one, the one he saves, and for a moment the office is not an office at all.  It is just two people who have been waiting a very long time to be in the same room.

three.

in which there is coffee, and the team's theory undergoes significant revision

On Wednesday, Min Yoongi arrives with coffee.

This is, on its face, a normal thing. People bring coffee. The office has a very good machine on the fourth floor and a mediocre one on the third and a truly criminal situation on the second that no one has addressed in four years. Bringing coffee for a team you're rotating through is, arguably, a professional courtesy.

What is not a professional courtesy is this: the specific coffee in the specific cup holder that Yoongi sets on Seokjin's desk.

Jungkook notices first, because Jungkook sits closest to Seokjin's desk and he has excellent eyes and zero filter between observation and speech. He also, Jimin notes with growing irritation, has in the last twenty-four hours developed a fondness for “Yoongi-hyung” that feels both premature and deeply traitorous.

“Hyung!” Jungkook had said earlier that morning, bright and delighted, like he hadn’t spent the entirety of yesterday whispering conspiracy theories across desks. “You came early again?”

A little traitor, Jimin had thought. A betrayer. An absolute—

—and now:

“That’s the order from the place on Cheongdam,” Jungkook says, leaning forward in his chair, squinting at the cup like it has personally offended him.

Yoongi looks at him. "Mm."

"That's Seokjin-hyung's order specifically. From the place on Cheongdam. Which is not near here."

"Mm," Yoongi says again, and goes to sit at the spare desk, and opens his laptop, and is apparently done with this conversation.

Seokjin comes in at 9:04—he's been running two minutes later each day, which Jimin suspects is because something on his morning commute keeps delaying him, possibly a phone call he cannot end—picks up the coffee without looking at it, takes a sip, and then stops. Looks at the cup. Looks at Yoongi, who is reading something on his screen and appears fully unaware of the room.

"Where did this come from?" Seokjin says.

"Coffee place," Yoongi says.

"The one on Cheongdam."

"Is there another one?"

Seokjin looks at the cup for another second. Then he sits down, carefully, and takes another sip, and from across the room Jimin can see the way his shoulders settle—that particular release, the exhale of someone who has been handed something they needed before they said they needed it.

"Thank you," he says.

"Mm," says Yoongi.

Hoseok has not moved from the moment the coffee appeared. He looks like a man whose entire worldview has just had a very specific crack run through it.

"Jimin," he says, very quietly.

"I know," Jimin says.

"He got his coffee. From Cheongdam."

"I know."

"How does he know the order."

"I am actively investigating."

— ✦ —

The further updates follow at 3:30 PM.

What prompts them: Seokjin is presenting the Hyundai deck in the glass-walled conference room visible from the main floor, and Yoongi is in there—observing, officially—and Jimin, Taehyung, Hoseok, and Jungkook have absolutely no shame about the fact that they are all watching from their desks.

"He's been watching hyung's hands," Taehyung reports.

"His hands?" Jungkook says.

“He gestures when he presents,” Taehyung says, voice low but urgent in the way of a man who has discovered something he believes is academically significant. “Yoongi-ssi keeps watching his hands.”

“That’s—” Hoseok starts, then stops, turning slowly toward him. “Why are you watching hyung’s hands?”

Taehyung blinks, like this is an unreasonable question. “Because look at them.”

“That is not an answer.”

“No, seriously,” Taehyung insists, gesturing vaguely toward the front of the conference room where Seokjin is currently mid-slide, entirely unaware that his hands have become a topic of debate. “Hyung has very nice hands.”

Hoseok stares at him. “Are you—what are you saying right now.”

“I’m saying,” Taehyung says, patient now, like he’s explaining something simple to a child, “that they’re aesthetically pleasing. Proportionate. Expressive. Good bone structure.”

“Good—” Hoseok presses his fingers to his temple. “We are in a meeting.”

Jungkook leans in from the other side immediately. “Who said hyung doesn’t have nice hands?”

“I didn’t say he doesn’t—”

“Because he does,” Jungkook continues, committed now. “Like objectively. If we’re ranking—”

“We are not ranking—”

“We could rank,” Taehyung offers.

“We are not ranking hands in the middle of a client presentation—”

“I think mine are underrated,” Jungkook says, holding his own hand up for inspection.

“No one asked,” Hoseok snaps.

Jimin closes his eyes.

Just briefly.

Opens them again.

Across the table, Seokjin shifts slides, his hand moving in a small, precise arc as he explains a transition point.

And—

There.

Jimin sees it.

Yoongi, seated two chairs down, not looking at the screen.

Looking at Seokjin.

More specifically—

His hands.

“Tell me that’s normal,” Jungkook whispers, scandalized now.

Nobody tells him it’s normal.

At 3:47, something happens in the deck that apparently merits feedback, because Yoongi says something, and the rest of the room turns to look at him, and Seokjin goes still in the way he goes still when someone says something that catches him, and then he nods slowly. Once. Twice. And then he smiles, the real one, and says something back, and Yoongi tilts his chin up in a way that somehow communicates both acknowledgement and satisfaction, and the meeting continues.

"They work well together," Hoseok says. He sounds slightly dazed.

"Terrifyingly well," Jimin agrees.

"Like they've worked together before," Taehyung says, and then pauses, and then says, more slowly: "Maybe they are ex-lovers. "

Silence falls over the four of them.

"Oh," says Jungkook.

four.

in which there is flirting in plain sight, and kim namjoon remains beautifully oblivious

Namjoon has, in the four days he has spent on the marketing floor, developed what can only be described as sincere professional admiration for Kim Seokjin.

This is normal. Most people who spend four days in Seokjin's vicinity develop sincere professional admiration for Kim Seokjin. It is essentially unavoidable. Seokjin runs his team the way a good conductor runs an orchestra—not by controlling every note, but by knowing which instruments need space and which need direction, and trusting all of them entirely when it counts.

What is slightly more unusual is that Namjoon cannot figure out, for the life of him, what Yoongi's problem is.

"He's not doing anything," Namjoon says, during a break on Thursday, standing by the fourth floor coffee machine with Jimin, who has very graciously offered to show him where the good coffee is. "He just—watches him. And makes those comments. What are the comments."

"Which comments," Jimin says, who knows exactly which comments.

Namjoon gestures helplessly with his cup. "The ones where he sounds like he's criticising something but Seokjin-ssi keeps looking like he's won an argument." He frowns, thinking it through. "And the collar thing. I saw the collar thing."

"Everyone saw the collar thing," Jimin says.

He takes a slow sip of his coffee.

Then, because he is a rational man forced into irrational circumstances, he adds, "Sometimes I still see the collar thing."

Namjoon blinks. "What."

"I'll be at my desk," Jimin says, very calmly, "minding my own business, and Seokjin-hyung will walk past with his collar slightly crooked—which, by the way, is not unusual, he does that when he's stressed, we've established this—and for a moment I think—"

He pauses.

"I think it's about to happen again."

Namjoon stares at him.

"Like a hallucination," Jimin clarifies. "A phantom event. My brain is now anticipating the correction."

"You are anticipating my boss fixing your team lead's collar," Namjoon repeats.

"Yes."

"In a professional setting."

"Yes."

Namjoon considers this. Takes a long, slow sip of his coffee.

"I don't think that's normal," he says.

"No," Jimin agrees. "No, I don't think it is either."

A beat.

Across the floor, Seokjin laughs at something—real, bright, unguarded—and Yoongi doesn’t look up from the document in front of him, but the corner of his mouth does that thing. That barely-there shift. That light-through-a-blind expression Jimin has now begun to catalogue under concerning.

"I don't understand him," Namjoon says, with the genuine bewilderment of someone who prides himself on understanding people. "I thought it might be a rivalry thing. Like, professional friction. They disagree a lot."

"They do disagree a lot," Jimin agrees.

"But it doesn't feel like friction. It feels more like—" Namjoon stops. Considers. "You know when two people are so used to arguing with each other that the arguing has become a kind of—"

"Shorthand," Jimin says.

"Yes." Namjoon stares at the coffee machine. "Which implies they have some kind of history."

"Mm," says Jimin.

"Do they have history?"

"I couldn't say," says Jimin.

"You're smiling."

"I have a naturally pleasant face."

— ✦ —

The Thursday afternoon meeting is a team check-in on the Q4 strategy, and everyone is there, including Yoongi, because he is doing his rounds very thoroughly and has now attended every internal meeting of the week. Including the one on Tuesday where Taehyung accidentally played thirty seconds of the wrong audio file and the entire room was treated to a dramatic orchestral swell at completely the wrong moment. Yoongi had not laughed. He had watched Taehyung with the patient attention of someone who finds the world consistently interesting, and Jimin had noted this, as he notes everything, and filed it under things that do not fit the spoiled-entitled-CEO's-son theory they briefly held.

The meeting is fine. The meeting is good, actually—Seokjin has a gift for making meetings feel like something other than meetings, like conversations where people come away from feeling useful rather than drained. The Q4 numbers are strong. Hoseok presents the influencer metrics and does a small victorious gesture at the chart. Jungkook explains the digital campaign with the focused energy of someone who genuinely loves this, which he does, which Jimin loves about him.

And then Seokjin mentions the overseas partnership brief, and Yoongi says, without looking up from the pad he's been making notes on: "You're underselling the Japan angle."

Seokjin turns to look at him.

"The domestic framing is strong," Yoongi continues, "but the brief has regional legs. You're not using them."

"We're constrained by the client brief," Seokjin says.

"The client brief has room in section four. You didn't touch section four."

Seokjin is quiet for a moment. The room is slightly collectively holding its breath, because Seokjin does not often get told he missed something, and when he does he handles it with grace, but it is a specific kind of grace that involves a very brief internal calculation.

"You read the client brief," Seokjin says.

"I read everything before I rotate in," Yoongi says, and there is nothing in his voice that says this is unusual, it is simply what he does, and Seokjin blinks, and then something in his expression shifts—that private thing again, the one Jimin has no category for.

"Section four," Seokjin says.

"Has room."

Seokjin writes something down. "I'll look at it tonight."

"Don't do it tonight," Yoongi says, and his voice has dropped a register, and the meeting is very quiet, and Jimin is pretty sure he is the only one in the room who is cataloguing this with the intensity that it merits. "You've been here until seven every night this week."

"Some of us have demanding jobs," Seokjin says, sweetly.

"Some of us are running ourselves into the ground because they don't know how to go home," Yoongi says, and it could be biting, it has the shape of something biting, but it isn't. It is something else. Something that sounds, if you are listening carefully, and Jimin is always listening carefully, like concern wearing the costume of critique.

Seokjin looks at him for a long moment.

"I'll look at it tomorrow," he says. Quietly. Like a concession.

"Good," Yoongi says, and looks back down at his notes.

Namjoon, who has been watching this exchange with the earnest concentration of someone trying to solve a puzzle, leans toward Jimin again under the table.

"See," he whispers. "That. What was that."

"That," Jimin whispers back, "was two people doing a very bad job of hiding something."

"Hiding what? The rivalry?"

Jimin turns to look at him. Namjoon has a very sincere face—one of those faces that is constitutionally incapable of guile, which is probably why he's so good at what he does, and also why he has apparently not noticed what the rest of the marketing floor has been noting in increasingly frantic group chat messages for four days.

"Namjoon-ssi," Jimin says, very gently. "I like you. I think you're very smart."

"Thank you," Namjoon says.

"But I am not going to explain this to you."

Namjoon looks wounded. "Why not?"

"Because," Jimin says, "I think you need to arrive at it yourself. The journey is important."

"The journey—"

"Also," Jimin says, "it's much funnier this way."

five.

in which jeon jungkook is offered up as sacrifice, and immediately regrets everything

The plan is Jimin's. This will be important later, when Jungkook is explaining to HR why he accidentally agreed to go on a date with his boss.

It is Friday morning, the last day of Yoongi's rotation through the marketing floor, and the team has convened in the break room at 8:15 AM—before Seokjin arrives, before Yoongi arrives, in the narrow window of time when they can speak freely—and Jimin has the expression he gets when he has thought something through very carefully and arrived at a conclusion that is both elegant and terrible.

"We need to confirm the theory," Jimin says.

"We have significant supporting evidence," Hoseok says.

"Supporting evidence is not confirmation." Jimin sets down his coffee with the gravity of someone about to commit a small crime. "We need a controlled test."

"What kind of controlled test," Jungkook says, and the fact that he is asking this question at all will haunt him for the rest of the day.

Jimin looks at him. Then at Taehyung. Then back at Jungkook.

Something in the look makes the back of Jungkook's neck prickle.

"No," Jungkook says immediately.

"You don't even know what I'm going to say."

"I know the face," Jungkook says. "That's the face where I end up doing something."

"All I'm suggesting," Jimin says, with the reasonable tone of a man suggesting something completely unreasonable, "is that someone on this team asks Seokjin-hyung on a date."

Silence.

"If nothing is going on between him and Yoongi-ssi," Jimin continues, "he'll say yes or he'll say no and we'll know we were wrong. If something is going on—"

"He'll say no," Taehyung finishes.

"Exactly."

"Who," Hoseok says, already sounding tired, "are we sending in?"

Jimin looks at Jungkook.

Taehyung looks at Jungkook.

Hoseok, after a brief pause, also looks at Jungkook.

"Absolutely not," Jungkook says.

"You're the most convincing," Jimin says.

"Taehyung is literally more handsome—"

"Taehyung cannot lie with a straight face," Taehyung says, nodding. "I will confess midway."

"Hoseok—"

"Hyung would know immediately," Hoseok says. "He knows my face too well."

"So does he know mine!"

"You're the youngest," Jimin says. "He has a soft spot."

Jungkook stares at him in betrayal.

"Need I remind you," Jimin adds, calm and devastating, "he likes you more than he likes the rest of us combined."

"That is not—" Jungkook splutters. "That's not a qualification, that's emotional manipulation!"

"It is an asset."

"It's a liability! If he thinks I actually have a crush—"

"You just go in, you ask if he wants to get dinner, he says no, we confirm the theory, everyone goes home."

"And if he says yes?"

Jimin blinks. "He won't."

"But if he does," Jungkook presses, voice rising, "that doesn't confirm anything! What if he just says no because he doesn't like me and not because he's secretly in a relationship? What if he says yes because he pities me? What if—"

He turns, desperate, to Hoseok.

Hoseok is suddenly very interested in his coffee.

Jungkook turns to Taehyung. "Hyung, I need your help"

Taehyung considers this for exactly one second.

"I think it would be interesting data," he says.

"You're all insane," Jungkook says.

"Jungkook," Jimin cuts in, stepping forward and placing both hands firmly on Jungkook's shoulders.

There is something deeply unsettling about how calm he looks.

"He will not say yes," Jimin says. "You have my word."

— ✦ —

Kim Seokjin says yes.

He says it the way he says most things—warmly, directly, without hesitation—and Jungkook stands in the doorway of his office holding a document he only brought as a prop and experiences something that can only be described as a complete systems failure.

"Sorry?" he manages.

"Dinner," Seokjin says. He is smiling, which is not helping. "Sure, Jungkook-ah. It'll be nice. We haven't gone out as a group in a while."

Jungkook's mouth opens.

Closes.

"As a—" he starts, and then, because he is unfortunately a man of integrity even under extreme duress, he forces himself to continue, "—actually, hyung, I meant… just us. Dinner. You and me."

He watches it happen.

It is subtle, because Seokjin is very good at his job and even better at his face, but Jungkook is looking directly at him and Jungkook has excellent eyes.

The moment lands.

Seokjin blinks once.

Twice.

There is a very brief, very human flicker of something like oh—followed immediately by what can only be described as internal recalibration at high speed.

Jungkook, still mid-panic, registers this with a strange, distant sense of relief.

Good, some traitorous part of his brain thinks. It’s not just me dying here.

Seokjin straightens slightly, composure sliding back into place like a well-practiced habit.

"I see," he says, perfectly normal, which is how Jungkook knows this is not normal at all.

A pause.

Then, still not quite looking at Jungkook, Seokjin asks, lightly, "When were you thinking? This week might be a little packed, but we could find time. Or—" he adds, almost as an afterthought, "if you'd rather, hyung can cook for you."

Jungkook stops breathing.

Jungkook makes a sound that has never before been produced by a human throat.

"I— I have a meeting," he says, to absolutely no one’s question, and then turns and leaves at a speed that could be classified as a public safety concern.

Three faces look up at him with expectation.

"He said yes," Jungkook says.

Jimin goes pale. "What."

"He said yes."

"That's not—Jungkook, what exactly did you say."

"I said 'hyung, would you want to get dinner,'" Jungkook says, his voice taking on the distant, echoing quality of a man narrating his own downfall, "and then I clarified that I meant just the two of us."

Silence.

Taehyung slowly lowers his coffee.

"You— what," Hoseok says.

"He offered to cook for me," Jungkook adds faintly.

Jimin closes his eyes.

"This is fine," Jimin says, and he does not look fine. "This is— we can work with this. You go, we strategically arrive later, we convert it into a group setting—"

"Jimin-hyung," Jungkook says.

"—or we intercept beforehand, or we—"

"Iimin-hyung."

"What."

"What if he actually thinks I asked him on a date?"

Jimin opens his mouth.

"He's my boss," Jungkook continues, voice rising. "He is going to think I have feelings for him. He is going to be so nice about it and it is going to be terrible. I can never come back to work. I'll have to resign. I'll have to leave the country."

"Jungkook—"

"What if he takes it seriously? What if he feels bad about it? I'll have to comfort him and then confess that I don't have feelings for him which means telling him why I asked which means telling him about the group chat—"

"Jungkook—"

"We'll have to get married."

Hoseok chokes on his coffee.

"We won't," Jimin says weakly.

"He might feel obligated!" Jungkook says, fully spiralling now. "He's so nice! We'll have to get married and have children and get a house and I'll have to tell my parents and we'll have to do holidays together—"

"You can't have children," Taehyung says, helpfully.

"We'll adopt," Jungkook says, sitting down heavily. "I have planned a whole life I don't want. I'm going to name the dog Bam 2 because I miss Bam and I haven't even finished my current project—"

There is a sound behind them.

A very soft, very deliberate clearing of a throat.

All four of them turn.

Seokjin is standing in the doorway.

No one knows how long he has been there.

There is a moment—a suspended, fragile, absolutely catastrophic moment—where they all just look at each other.

Seokjin smiles.

It is the most polite, composed, entirely professional smile any of them have ever seen.

"I'll… let you get back to work," he says.

And then he steps back.

And disappears.

Jungkook makes a noise of pure distress and immediately folds into Hoseok, burying his face into his shoulder like this might erase the last thirty seconds from existence.

"I have to quit," he says into Hoseok’s shirt. "I have to disappear. I have to change my name."

Hoseok pats his back, still a little shaken himself. "It's okay. It's okay. We can fix this."

Jungkook lifts his head just enough to glare at Jimin.

"You suggested this plan," he says. "I am going to remember that forever."

He turns to Taehyung. "You too."

"In my defence," Jimin says, very carefully, "he was not supposed to say yes."

— ✦ —

It reaches Yoongi at 11:15 AM via Namjoon, who mentions it with the offhanded casualness of someone who has absolutely no idea he is dropping a lit match into an already very flammable situation.

"Apparently the youngest on the marketing team asked Seokjin-ssi to dinner," Namjoon says, glancing at his phone. "Hoseok just texted asking if I wanted to join. As a group thing, I think?"

Yoongi looks up from his laptop.

Slowly.

Namjoon, encouraged by what he mistakenly interprets as confusion rather than the early stages of something far worse, keeps going. "Which I don’t entirely understand, because if Jungkook asked him to dinner, that’s— that’s a date, right? Unless it’s not a date. Maybe it’s not a date. Maybe it’s because dating isn’t allowed under company policy? Or because he’s technically his superior and that’s… ethically questionable? Or—"

He trails off.

Because every single possibility he is listing is, in fact, true.

And every single one of them is making Yoongi’s expression tighten in a way that is… not encouraging.

"Jungkook," Namjoon says, mistaking Yoongi’s expression for confusion. "Jeon Jungkook. He's been here three years, very talented, he did the digital campaign—"

"I know who he is," Yoongi says.

Something in his voice makes Namjoon lower his phone.

"Is everything okay?"

"Fine," Yoongi says, already looking back at his screen, except he is no longer typing.

His cursor blinks. Unattended.

His expression is doing something very specific.

Namjoon watches it happen in real time—the minute shift at the corner of his mouth, the way his eyes narrow just slightly—and, despite not having Jimin’s frankly concerning level of Seokjin-related observational expertise, he has spent years working beside Yoongi.

He recognises this.

Yoongi is trying not to frown.

"Yoongi-hyung," Namjoon says slowly, "what is happening."

"Nothing."

"You look like something is happening."

"I look like a person working."

"You look like a person who is—" Namjoon stops mid-sentence.

Because something is clicking into place.

Pieces rearranging themselves.

Connections forming.

His eyes widen, just a little. "You know him. Don’t you. Seokjin-ssi. You knew him before this rotation."

Yoongi says nothing.

Namjoon’s gaze sharpens further. "The collar," he says. "The coffee from Cheongdam. You knew his order."

Yoongi leans back in his chair like he can physically distance himself from the accusation. "It was just coffee," he says. "Not a big deal. I got coffee for everyone."

Namjoon stares at him.

"Hyung," he says carefully, "the guys think it was a very big deal."

Namjoon presses his lips together, visibly fighting something.

Losing.

"And Jungkook just asked him to dinner," he says, voice rising slightly, "and you—" He stops again, staring at Yoongi’s face.

At the way that almost-frown is still there.

Hovering.

Wrong.

"...are you," Namjoon says, very cautiously, "jealous?"

"I'm going to need you," Yoongi says, very calmly, "to not finish that sentence."

"Oh my god," Namjoon breathes.

"Namjoon."

"Oh my god."

"I'm going to go talk to him," Yoongi says, already standing.

Namjoon lunges forward and grabs his arm. "You cannot just walk in there."

"I'm the CEO’s son," Yoongi says. "I can walk in anywhere."

Namjoon stares at him like he has just witnessed a fundamental collapse of logic. "That is quite literally the stupidest thing you have ever said to me."

"It's fine," Yoongi says, brushing his hand off. "I'm going to be professional about it."

Namjoon looks at him—really looks at him—at the set of his shoulders, the intent in his stride, the very obvious not-professional energy radiating off him in waves.

"Nothing about this," Namjoon says weakly to his retreating back, "has been professional."

Yoongi doesn’t even slow down.

Namjoon watches him cross the floor toward Seokjin’s office, then drags a hand down his face.

— ✦ —

What happens in Seokjin's office is this:

Yoongi closes the door. Seokjin looks up—and whatever flicker of earlier panic had lived there is gone now, replaced by something far more composed. Amused, even. Like he’s had just enough time to piece everything together and decide it’s ridiculous.

Because it is.

And because, apparently, this is how their lives are going now.

Yoongi doesn’t say anything for a second. Then he walks forward, like he belongs here—like he always has—and perches on the edge of Seokjin’s desk.

“I heard you have a dinner date.”

Seokjin tips his head back and laughs. He sounds genuinely entertained.

“It’s not a date,” he says.

“Jungkook asked you to dinner.”

“He asked me to dinner,” Seokjin agrees, pushing his chair back as he stands, “and I said yes because I thought he meant as a group thing—”

He starts pacing, one hand dragging through his hair—then abruptly stops, glances toward the glass wall, and with a decisive motion, strides over and yanks the blinds shut.

The office dims instantly. Privacy secured.

“—and then,” he continues, turning back to Yoongi, “he very carefully clarified that he meant just the two of us, and then stood there like he’d just made the worst decision of his life.”

Yoongi raises an eyebrow. “And you still didn’t say no.”

“Are you insane?” Seokjin stares at him. “Say no to Jungkook? Jeon Jungkook? Have you seen him?”

Yoongi just looks at him.

Seokjin gestures emphatically, already moving toward him. “The eyes, Yoongi. The eyes.”

“The—his eyes—”

“They go huge when he’s even slightly upset,” Seokjin insists, stopping right in front of him. “Like a startled deer. Like—like something with enormous emotional vulnerability. I can’t handle that kind of responsibility.”

He exhales sharply and then, without warning, drops forward, resting his forehead against Yoongi’s shoulder.

“I panicked,” he admits into the fabric. “Okay? I panicked. He’s so sweet. What if he actually does have a crush on me? I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”

Yoongi huffs quietly. “So your solution was to say yes and let him spiral.”

“He’s not spiralling.”

They both pause.

Then, almost in sync, glance toward the glass wall where, even with the blinds drawn, Jungkook’s general energy feels catastrophically unstable.

Yoongi clicks his tongue. “When I walked in, he looked like he was planning his resignation letter in his head, hyung.”

Seokjin sighs, straightening and already reaching for his phone. “I’ll fix it. I’ll just text the group chat and turn it into a team dinner somehow.”

“You have a group chat with your team,” Yoongi says.

“Of course I have a group chat,” Seokjin replies, unlocking his phone. “We use it to coordinate. And occasionally to—”

He pauses. Glances up.

Yoongi narrows his eyes. “To what.”

Seokjin smiles, entirely unrepentant. “Gossip.”

Yoongi makes a soft, betrayed sound.

“You mean your team has been gossiping about me in that group chat the entire week I’ve been here,” Yoongi says, narrowing his eyes, “and you didn’t bother to tell me?”

Seokjin’s expression goes carefully, meticulously neutral.

Which is answer enough.

“Seokjin-hyung,” Yoongi whines, scandalized now, voice pitching just a little.

Seokjin just laughs, soft and pleasant, and reaches out to cup his cheeks, squishing them together. “You’re cute when you’re paranoid.”

Yoongi swats his hands away. “Stop. I have a reputation.”

“That’s why I closed the curtains, Yoongichi.”

There’s a beat.

Yoongi stills—just slightly—at the nickname, something quiet and pleased flickering across his face before he can stop it.

Seokjin, meanwhile, has already gone back to his phone. “Also, for the record, they’re currently texting me asking why I pulled the blinds down, so I’m fairly certain there’s a separate group chat about us.”

“Have they figured it out.”

“I think Jimin has a working theory.”

“And Jungkook asking you to dinner was a test.”

Seokjin tilts his head. “…Probably.”

Then, after a second, his mouth curves.

“Why,” he adds lightly, stepping closer again, “are you jealous?”

Yoongi goes very still.

Just for a second.

Then the corner of his mouth does that thing.

“Your team,” he says instead, “is terrifying.”

“They’re very good at their jobs,” Seokjin replies immediately, proud.

“And nosy.”

“Observant.”

“They set traps.”

“Strategic thinking.”

Yoongi exhales, shaking his head—but he’s smiling now, properly. “You said we wouldn’t be able to keep this quiet, and I knew you were right—I just… wanted a little time where you were only mine. A secret office romance sounded far more thrilling in my head.”

Seokjin’s expression softens.

He steps closer, until there’s barely any space left between them.

“I know,” he says. “I’ve been watching you all week.”

Yoongi meets his gaze. “I know,” he says back. “I’ve been watching you watching me.”

A pause.

Then Yoongi turns, walking back toward the glass wall.

He reaches out and pulls the blinds up.

Light floods back in.

Outside, four people immediately pretend to be extremely busy.

One of them—very obviously—bumps into a stack of files.

Yoongi watches them for a second.

Then turns back, coming to sit beside Seokjin on the edge of the desk.

“What do you think,” he murmurs, low, “we end the secret with a bang?”

Seokjin huffs, amused. “This?” he says, threading their fingers together. “This is your idea of a bang?”

Yoongi glances down at their joined hands. Then, without warning, reaches up, hooks a hand at the back of Seokjin’s neck, and pulls him in.

The kiss lands firm and deliberate—no hesitation, no testing—like a decision being made in real time.

Seokjin makes a soft, startled sound against his mouth, but it dissolves almost instantly as he leans into it, grip tightening in Yoongi’s sleeve. Yoongi tilts his head, deepening it just enough to make it unmistakable—slow, certain, and very, very visible through the glass walls they’ve just exposed again.

It lingers.

Long enough to make a point and long enough to ruin any plausible deniability.

Outside something clatters loudly to the floor. Followed by what is almost certainly Taehyung choking.

Inside, Yoongi only pulls back when he has to, close enough that their foreheads nearly touch.

“Better?” he murmurs.

Seokjin blinks at him.

Then laughs, a little breathless, a little red.

“…Yeah,” he says but he doesn’t let Yoongi pull back.

His hand comes up instead, settling warm and certain at Yoongi’s waist, like he’s already made up his mind.

Taking the deal.

Closing the distance.

Seokjin leans in, soft but sure, and presses his lips to Yoongi’s before he can say anything else.

Something enormous is assembling itself in Namjoon's brain.

Unfortunately, his legs are also assembling themselves into motion at the same time.

By the time the pieces click—collar, coffee, the way Yoongi had looked like he was barely holding it together—Namjoon is already halfway across the floor.

He arrives too fast.

Jimin looks up, startled. “How did you get here so fast—”

Namjoon doesn’t answer.

Because across the glass—

Yoongi and Seokjin are still standing too close, still very much something, and—

Oh.

Oh.

Namjoon blinks.

Once.

Twice.

“Are you,” he starts.

“Yes,” Jimin says immediately.

“Are they—”

“Yes.”

“But—since—how—” It’s all slotting into place now, rapid-fire. “Have they been—”

“Long distance,” Jimin supplies helpfully. “We think. For a while.”

“A while,” Namjoon echoes faintly.

From three desks over, Jungkook watches with open satisfaction. “He’s getting there.”

“I know,” Jimin murmurs. “Give him a second.”

Namjoon stares at the office. His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.

“Are you saying—” he starts, louder than intended.

Inside the glass office, both Yoongi and Seokjin look up.

“Say it,” Jimin says, delighted. “Joonie. Say it.”

“They’re—” Namjoon lowers his voice, then immediately forgets to keep it lowered. “Have you two been— the whole— during the entire rotation—”

“Say it,” Jungkook calls serenely, not even looking up from his desk. “Use your words, hyung.”

Namjoon inhales sharply, then—

He marches to the door, pushes it open, and steps inside like a man about to file a formal complaint.

“So you two are together?” he demands.

Yoongi, who has still not fully stepped away from Seokjin, blinks at him. “Good afternoon to you too.”

“I knew it,” Namjoon continues, pointing vaguely between them. “The coffee—who just knows someone’s coffee order from Cheongdam? No one. That’s not normal. And the collar—don’t think I didn’t notice the collar—”

“It was one time,” Yoongi mutters.

“It was not one time,” Namjoon says. “And the way you walked in here like—like—” he gestures helplessly, “like this was a domestic situation—”

Outside, Jimin leans sideways toward Hoseok. “I feel a little bad for him.”

Hoseok doesn’t look away from the glass. “Do you?”

“…No,” Jimin admits.

Inside—

“For how long?” Namjoon demands, now fully committed. “Since when? During the entire—”

“Yes,” Seokjin says calmly.

Namjoon stops.

“…Yes what?”

“Yes,” Seokjin repeats, smiling.

Namjoon stares at him.

"Namjoon-ah," Yoongi says, and his voice is gentle in that specific, rare way, "I'm sorry. I should have told you."

"You should have told me," Namjoon says, and he sounds wounded—which is fair—and also like he’s about to start laughing—which is also fair. "I thought you had a professional rivalry. I defended you to multiple people. I said the tension was normal corporate friction—"

"To be fair," Seokjin says, "we do have professional friction sometimes."

Outside the glass, Jimin goes very still.

Then, slowly, he leans sideways toward Jungkook and mouths, professional friction.

Jungkook blinks at him.

Jimin tilts his head, just slightly.

Something clicks.

Jungkook’s lips press together hard, eyes going wide—then he ducks his head, a quiet, disbelieving giggle escaping him.

Jungkook glances at the office—at Seokjin, who is absolutely wearing that insufferable, self-satisfied grin, at Yoongi, who looks just a little sheepish and entirely unsurprised.

+ one.

The great reveal—the moment the marketing floor of Min Industries learns that their beloved head of department and the incoming CEO have been together long enough that one of them knows the other's exact coffee order from a place in Cheongdam—does not involve a scheme, or a controlled test, or Jungkook sacrificing himself to the altar of Park Jimin’s increasingly unhinged theories.

It happens like most true things do: all at once, and then, almost immediately, it settles.

Because, frankly, it takes them less time than anyone would have expected to get used to it.

To them.

To Yoongi and Seokjin—not as two forces in orbit around each other, not as tension to be analysed or decoded, but as something already decided.

The shift is subtle at first, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Yoongi still moves through the floor the same way, quiet, deliberate, saying only what needs to be said but now there’s a looseness to him, an absence of that careful distance he used to maintain. He lingers. He leans. He lets himself be seen looking.

And Seokjin stops pretending.

The sharpness is still there, the precision, the way he runs the department like a well-calibrated system. But threaded through it now is something warmer, something unguarded. He doesn’t edit himself as quickly when Yoongi is around. Doesn’t flatten the edges of his reactions.

Sometimes, he smiles before he can stop himself.

Sometimes, he doesn’t try to stop at all.

And the thing is—it recontextualises everything.

All those moments from the week before.

The collar thing. The coffee. The way Yoongi would say something that sounded like a critique and Seokjin would look like he’d just been handed exactly what he wanted.

It hadn’t been tension.

It had been fluency.

Watching them now is like watching a conversation that started a long time ago and never really paused—just continued, across distance, across time, across whatever it was that kept them apart long enough for this to feel like a return instead of a beginning.

They don’t perform it. That’s the strangest part.

There’s no announcement, no adjustment for the audience of an entire marketing team that had, until recently, been running active group chats about them.

They just…are.

From then on , what happens is this:

It is the last Monday after Yoongi's rotation, and Yoongi has moved on to the finance floor, where Namjoon says he is methodically dismantling everyone's assumptions about efficiency in a way that is going to be very good for the company and very humbling for some people with very large egos. Seokjin is in his office. The team is at their desks. It is a normal morning.

And then Yoongi walks in.

Not because of the rotation—the rotation is over. He walks in the way a person walks into a place they've decided to be, no briefcase, no Namjoon, just himself and a coffee from Cheongdam and the absolute unself-conscious confidence of someone who does not feel the need to explain their presence anywhere.

He walks to Seokjin's office.

He does not knock.

He opens the door, and Seokjin looks up from his screen, and before either of them can do anything professionally sensible, Seokjin says, with a warmth he apparently has forgotten to moderate: "You're early."

"Finance meeting got moved," Yoongi says, setting the coffee on the desk. "Had an hour."

"You could have texted."

"I could have." Yoongi sits down across from him. "Would you have preferred I text?"

"No," Seokjin says immediately.

Outside, the marketing team is not looking. They are very specifically, with great focus and professionalism, not looking at the glass-walled office where their boss just told the CEO's son that he preferred him turning up unannounced.

The watching is not voyeuristic. It is not even, at this point, investigative. It is simply the watching you do when you see something true, the same way you watch good light or hear a piece of music that arrives at exactly the right moment. You watch because it is worth watching.

Hoseok has his chin in his hand. He is smiling.

Jungkook is thinking about Bam 2, the hypothetical dog who will not exist, and feels something unclenching in his chest, and decides this is worth the crisis he went through, and that he will tell Jimin he forgives him, probably, eventually.

Jimin watches Kim Seokjin in his glass-walled office, talking to the person he has apparently been waiting for for a very long time, and thinks: there it is. That's what I was looking for. That's the thing that didn't have a category.

It is, he thinks, the simplest thing.

It is two people who know each other—really know, the way that only time and distance and choosing each other anyway makes possible and are not trying, for the first time all week, to be anything other than that.

In the group chat, the messages are coming in faster than they can be read.

— ✦ —

That evening, after the building has gone quiet the way buildings do at the end of a week that has been larger than expected, Seokjin finds a bag on his desk from the place on Cheongdam with a note.

Jimin’s handwriting, immediate and unmistakable:

hyung,
we would like to formally apologise for being deeply unprofessional, extremely nosy, and also completely correct.
in our defense, you were both acting suspicious in a way that demanded investigation.

Below that, in a second hand—rounder, slightly pressed into the paper like the pen had been held too tightly—Jungkook has added:

for the record hyung i did NOT want to go on a date with you
but you can cook for me anytime if you feel bad about it
like anything. i am not picky.

There’s a small drawing off to the side—two stick figures inside a box with very dramatic hearts around them and what appears to be blinds aggressively being opened. Taehyung. Unmistakable.

Under it, Hoseok has written, in bright, emphatic strokes:

WE SUPPORT LOVE !!!

Three separate exclamation points. Each larger than the last.

And at the bottom, in careful, precise print that looks like it belongs in a report more than a note:

I have reviewed the relevant HR policies and identified several potential loopholes that may be useful if required.
Please feel free to consult me when the time comes.

— Namjoon

Seokjin reads it twice. Sits with it for a moment.

Then he takes a photo of it and sends it to one person.

Seokjin reads this.

He reads it again.

Then he picks up the bag from the place on Cheongdam, and the notes and he turns off his office light and goes downstairs.

The lobby is empty except for Yoongi, who is standing by the glass doors with his hands in his pockets looking out at the city, all orange and indifferent, and he turns when he hears the elevator and there is nothing diplomatic in his face, nothing managed or moderated.

"You didn’t have to wait, I would have met you at home anyways," Seokjin says.

"I know," Yoongi says.

"You still need to cook dinner for today"

"I know." He doesn't apologise. He reaches out and takes the bag from Seokjin's hand and looks at it and then looks at him. "Let’s go home?"

Seokjin doesn’t answer immediately—just hums, low in his throat, like he’s thinking about it even though they both know he isn’t.

Instead, he reaches for Yoongi’s hand again, fitting their fingers together more firmly this time, holding on a little tighter.

It’s colder outside than it looked from the lobby. The evening air slips in through the glass doors every time they open, brushing against their skin, sharp enough to make Seokjin lean in without thinking.

They step out together.

For a moment, they walk side by side like that—quiet, unhurried—but then Seokjin drifts closer, his shoulder bumping lightly against Yoongi’s arm, like the space between them is something he’s already decided doesn’t need to exist.

Their hands stay linked. Their steps fall into rhythm.

“I don’t know why I’m getting like this,” Seokjin says after a second, a soft, almost embarrassed laugh under the words, “but I’m really, really glad you’re here.”

Yoongi doesn’t answer.

He just turns his hand where it’s holding Seokjin’s—palm up, the same way he did in the office, simple, without ceremony—and holds on.

And they keep walking.

Out through the glass doors, into the city and the city holds them the way cities hold people who have found each other in them, which is to say: easily, indifferently, and completely.

— fin —