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“You stole my seat.”
The sentence surprises Namjoon even as it’s coming out of his own mouth. He had no intention of saying that out loud and now he feels like an idiot, not least because—
“You know you can’t reserve seats in the stacks here, right.”
It’s not a question. The seat-stealer’s voice comes out in a low drawl, at a volume frankly much more suited to early Sunday morning in the library than Namjoon’s indignant squawk. The man turns his head languidly and fixes Namjoon with a stare.
The seat-stealer, it turns out, is beautiful. Small face, feline eyes, skin that makes Namjoon wonder if maybe Jimin has been right about the importance of skincare this whole time after all. It’s remarkable how derisive he manages to look without having any perceivable expression on his face. He seems utterly unamused by Namjoon’s entire existence, and fuck he wishes that wasn’t a turn on but it absolutely is. Namjoon feels his face heat and is thankful, for hardly the first time in his exceptionally mortifying life, that his skin doesn’t show blush easily.
A smart, socially competent Namjoon would take this opportunity to apologize like a gentleman and find somewhere else to sit. Even a stammered explanation and shuffling retreat would be acceptable. At the very least, he could run away before doing any more damage.
But, well, Namjoon has never claimed to be smart, he has certainly never claimed to be socially competent, and if he’s gotten anywhere in life thus far it’s mostly been by doubling down in arguments and wrestling with them like a terrier trying to shake a rope toy to death, not realizing it’s not the rodent it was hoping for.
There’s something deeply wrong with that metaphor, he knows, but he’s been up since 4am trying to finish this draft chapter he promised to his advisor by Friday, and even though it’s technically Sunday, it’s not like anyone reads things over the weekend anyway, so really all the time between Friday night and Monday morning is Friday and—
“Look, dude, there’s clearly a social contract here. I’ve been in that seat every day since the start of the semester, it’s just common decency. Plus, that’s my shelf.” He gestures to the shelf in question.
The seat-stealer crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow. He looks Namjoon up and down, slowly, obviously, somehow satirically.
“Your shelf.”
“Yes, my shelf. It has all my favorite call numbers. I reference those books, like, three times a day.”
The seat-stealer lets out a scoff, still somehow quiet enough to be polite to others who might be studying nearby.
“Look, dude,” he says with scathing emphasis. “Social contract theory is outdated, simplistic, and completely unsuited to analysis at the interactional scale. Find another place to sit.”
And with that he turns away from Namjoon and starts paging through the book he has open in front of him, propped up against a larger stack of books behind it.
Again, it must be emphasized that Namjoon is not operating at a hundred percent here. He’s tired, over-caffeinated, and has to teach in about twenty hours. So perhaps it should not be surprising that his next move is not exactly 3D chess-level.
“Fine,” he huffs, and then, deliberately and with great fanfare, plops himself down in the chair next to the seat-stealer.
Now, to whatever extent there is a social contract among library goers (and Namjoon knows it isn’t really a social contract, it’s a figure of speech, shrimpy, pedantic, stupidly gorgeous seat-stealing man), it definitely prohibits sitting at the same desk as someone else unless absolutely every other seat is taken. The presence of the second chair is merely decorative. But Namjoon is mostly acting out of instinctive stubbornness at this point, and this is what his internal terrier demands.
The seat-stealer shoots him an unimpressed look from the corner of his eye, and then returns to his reading, leaving Namjoon no choice but to take out his books, open his laptop, and start on his work. There’s no way he’s leaving now.
It turns out that the seat-stealer is just as stubborn as he is, because he doesn’t make a move to change spots, despite being disgruntled by the company. Once it becomes clear that neither of them are going to budge on this, it’s actually surprisingly easy to forget that the other man is there.
Of course, when Namjoon commits, he commits. He won’t let himself be the first to leave. So an hour passes, and then two, and his neighbor is still there. After three hours, when honestly he would normally decide he’d done well enough and could take a break, only to inevitably fail to return for the rest of the day, he stays instead, unwilling to be shown up by his rival. When normally he would get distracted and start fucking around on his phone or something, the awareness of his neighbor beside him keeps him focused. For some reason, it is very important to him to demonstrate his seriousness and dedication, as if that will somehow result in the other man relinquishing his claim on the desk. It ends up being a rather shockingly productive day, and when he finally leaves the stacks exactly five minutes after the seat-stealer had cleared out, though not without sending Namjoon a bemused look on his way, he almost forgives him for the initial infraction. Almost.
Namjoon assumes that it would be a one-time thing—now that he’s established his claim on the desk, surely the seat-stealer would just pick another desk next time he needed to be in the fourth floor stacks. So when Namjoon arrives at his spot after dinner on Monday evening to the now-familiar sight of the man’s broad shoulders in a big sweatshirt and his stack of books spread out across the desk, he can’t stop himself.
“Are you serious?” he blurts, once again heedless of library etiquette.
The seat-stealer jumps slightly as if startled. But when he turns to face Namjoon, there’s a smug smile on his lips. It makes him look stupidly attractive.
He raises a finger to his lips in lieu of a response, and that just gets Namjoon’s blood boiling even more. He stalks over and throws his bag to the ground next to the second chair, getting in close so the other man won’t miss any of his whisper-rant.
“What’s your excuse this time? Once was understandable, but you know this is my spot!” Namjoon hisses.
The seat-stealer blinks back at him, completely unfazed. “You weren’t here,” he says, and this time Namjoon notices his voice, a deep drawl, slightly accented in a way he can’t place. The little corner of Namjoon’s mind that seems intent on sexualizing this man can’t help but notice how attractive it sounds.
“Look, there are so many other desks open,” Namjoon argues. “Why can’t you just let me have it?”
The man raises an eyebrow at him, and Namjoon blushes as he realizes his own hypocrisy. But just because Namjoon is being irrational doesn’t mean this other guy is being rational.
“You know it’s my favorite desk. What’s so special about this one to you?” he says, refusing to admit how close his voice is to a whine, even to himself.
“This one,” he says, pointing out something carved into the wooden desk surface. “I like it.”
Is he fucking with me? Namjoon thinks to himself, but he looks at where the other man is sitting anyway. There in sloppy ballpoint handwriting, among the marks of generations of library-goers graffitied in pen, someone had written out “future’s gonna be okay”.
Namjoon wants to be unimpressed, but unfortunately he gets it. It’s kind of lovely actually, small words of encouragement from the faceless universe. He’s a little sad he never noticed it himself.
Of course, he can’t actually admit to that out loud, so instead he sighs dramatically as he gets his books out of his bag and mentally prepares himself for a protracted people’s war.
The next time, Namjoon beats him to it. It’s a little embarrassing, honestly, because the reason he pulls it off is because he’s rushing to prepare for a meeting with his advisor and he knows the only way it’s going to work out is if he gets to the library right when it opens at 8am. This is not the first time he’s felt frustrated that he couldn’t get in even earlier, but he'd learned from previous experience that waiting right outside the doors will only earn him annoyed looks from the library staff, so he waits on a bench across the street with his coffee for the first shift of librarians to come in and open everything up.
His meeting is at eleven, and he has absolutely forbidden himself from working on any of the billion things he could be doing that isn’t glossing this chunk of transcription and putting it together into a handout, dutifully ignoring the aging pile of student papers he owes and the grant whose deadline is only two weeks away.
He must get into a groove with it, because he nearly jumps out of his skin when the seat next to him is pulled back and he lets out a decidedly undignified yelp of surprise. He pulls his headphones off of his ears and blinks in astonishment. It’s the seat-stealer, of course.
“What are you doing here?” he asks. “It’s barely even—” he looks at the clock display on his laptop screen, “ten in the morning, surely there are other desks.”
The other man looks unbothered by Namjoon’s theatrics, just a little smirk tucked into the corner of his mouth. He’s wearing an oversized sweater in soft pastel blue over comfortable looking jeans, and it makes him look surprisingly cute, which was frankly not a character development Namjoon was prepared for. It was one thing when this stranger was looking disdainful and a little intimidating in all black; it’s far too much for Namjoon’s poor gay heart to see him looking like a puffy marshmallow less than twenty-four hours later.
As if to torture Namjoon further, the seat-stealer says, with something like fondness in his voice, “I like this one now. I’ve gotten rather attached.”
Again, Namjoon has to wonder if this short, perplexing man is trying to confuse him on purpose. He blinks once, twice, before remembering he is very seriously on a clock and turning back to his work.
Neither of them bring up the fact that Namjoon had chosen to sit in the seat on the right this time, leaving open the seat the other man has taken to sitting in recently.
Namjoon pushes until the last second, not stopping until he has just ten minutes to print out the handout and book it to his advisor’s office across campus. He closes his laptop with perhaps more force than is ideal and starts hurriedly packing everything away. He’s in such a rush that he almost misses the seat-stealer’s quiet “good luck” on his way out. It stops him in his tracks for just a second, as he turns back and looks at the man with wide eyes. But it’s a second longer than he has to spare, so he stammers out an awkward “thanks” and resumes his forward momentum. He just catches the way the stranger’s shoulders shake in silent laughter as he rounds the corner towards the stairs.
Namjoon is not known for being observant and put-together, and even at the best of times he has a tendency to lose things, important things: house keys, ID cards, and on not one but two memorable occasions, his passport. So it’s not precisely a surprise when he gets home later that night and realizes that his headphones are nowhere to be found. It’s not a surprise, but it is a bit of a problem. Those things are expensive, and unfortunately quite necessary for all the transcribing he needs to do. He’s already feeling like a wrung out husk after a grueling meeting with his advisor followed by two back to back discussion sections that he was woefully and obviously unprepared to teach, not to mention having to fend off complaints from students about why they hadn’t received their last papers yet, and he’s just settling in to do some low-effort transcription on the theory that it is both necessary and relatively mindless, only to discover that his headphones are missing. They’re big too, over-ears with their own black case (he’d given up on earbuds permanently after the number of times he’d lost or stepped on the little fuckers), so they should be easy to find, but it wouldn’t be the first time he had lost something that should be un-loseable.
Taehyung comes home to Namjoon mid-rampage as he attempts to remove every object in his bedroom in hopes of finding it.
“What is it this time, hyung?” he says, sounding somewhat resigned, but more amused than annoyed.
Namjoon pulls his head out from under his bed and sits back on his heels, sighing.
“My headphones,” he says dejectedly.
Taehyung winces in sympathy. “Oof that sucks. Have you checked in the fridge yet? Remember that time when—”
“Yes, Tae, I checked in the fridge,” Namjoon says wearily. He’s honestly past embarrassment at this point. “I’m pretty sure I left them on campus, I’ve looked everywhere here.”
“Hmm,” Tae replies. “Well look on the bright side! This way you have to take the night off.”
Namjoon chuckles humorlessly. “You know that’s not how this works. I should go back and ask at the lost and founds of all the buildings I was at today, sometimes people are nice and put things back,” he says, though he’s feeling a little pessimistic—those were nice headphones, and they’re not like cellphones where you’d need to jailbreak them, anyone could just pick them up and use them.
Tae frowns as he comes over and helps Namjoon up off the floor.
“No,” he says, point blank and demanding. “You need a break, hyung, you look like shit. Seriously, when’s the last time you took a night off? Besides, it’s past seven now, all the academic buildings will be closed.”
Namjoon lets out a long sigh. Taehyung is a good friend and a good roommate, but he doesn’t really get it. It’s not like his own life is carefree, working odd shifts at three different galleries across the city while he tries to break through with his own paintings, but it’s a very different kind of pressure than the deadlines breathing down Namjoon’s neck at all times.
Taehyung must sense that Namjoon is getting ready to protest, because he pulls out the big guns.
“Please hyung? We could order pizza and watch something! It’s been so long since we’ve had a roomie night together, please?” he says, and then he pouts, the devious motherfucker.
Namjoon has to work to keep his fond smile off his face as he gives another long-suffering sigh. “Fine, if you insist.”
“Yay!” Taehyung exclaims, clapping and doing a little jump of excitement. “I’ll order the pizza while you clean up that giant mess you made in the living room!”
Namjoon chuckles, feeling hopelessly endeared.
It’s when they’re sitting down in front of the tv, hands greasy with oil, that Taehyung ambushes him.
“Have you thought about getting laid?” he asks nonchalantly.
Namjoon splutters on his half-chewed bite of pizza and has to take a big gulp of beer to wash it down. “What?”
Taehyung looks completely unconcerned. “Just to de-stress, you know. Seriously, when’s the last time you had a good orgasm? Not that I don’t think you’re perfectly competent with your own hand—” Taehyung heads him off before he has a chance to protest, “but you know it’s different with someone else.”
Namjoon groans and runs a hand over his face, deeply regretting it when he realizes it’s still slick with pizza grease and now he has to go wash his face immediately or face dire consequences. He should really be used to this by now, he’s known Taehyung for years, but somehow he still manages to catch him by surprise. Truthfully, it has been a while, but he’s not about to admit that.
“I appreciate your concern, but how am I supposed to find someone to hook up with anyway? I barely have time to wipe my own ass, let alone go cruising.”
“First of all, gross. I know it’s a figure of speech, but gross. Second of all, Grindr is a thing,” Tae says.
Namjoon makes a face. “Not exactly my scene.” In general he prefers to fuck people he knows, but even if it’s just a one-night stand, he'd rather pick up at a club or a coffee shop or something. Vibes are important. Plus, he’s had some not great experiences with apps in the past and has zero interest in rolling the dice at the moment.
“Well, you know my offer is always on the table,” Taehyung says, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.
“Tae, I love you very much, but we’ve discussed this before, I have no interest in ‘being the second slice of bread in a Jiminie sandwich’.”
Taehyung pouts cutely in response. “But he’s so hot! It would totally help you relax. He does this thing with his tongue—”
“Okay, that’s enough! I’m sure he’s very hot, but I’m afraid your Jiminie sandwich will have to stay open-faced for now.”
Taehyung snickers goodnaturedly and pats him on the back as he gets up to wash up for bed. “Just know the offer’s always open, hyung! Gotta keep my favorite hyung from imploding from unreleased sexual tension and thesis stress!”
Namjoon waves him off, but he’d be lying if he said it didn’t make him feel a little lighter. It’s a good reminder that Taehyung cares, and even if he shows it in bizarre and oddly sexually charged ways, Namjoon knows he’s better off with him in his life.
By the time he gets to the library lost and found the next morning, Namjoon is so frantic about the missing headphones that he doesn’t have any room to be embarrassed that the people at the lost and found desk recognize him at this point. He’s already been to all the other academic buildings he visited yesterday without any luck, so when the girl behind the counter just shakes her head sadly when he describes what he’s looking for, he sees his last hope evaporate before him. He knows it’s really not worth getting this worked up over, it’s just a pair of headphones, and he can afford a new pair, he’s pretty sure, so long as he’s a little more careful with his leisure expenditures for the rest of the month, except that’s just a guess because he hasn’t actually looked at his budget in a good four months and oh god what if he’s wrong and he’s been horribly overspending because he’s too much of a mess to even pretend to be a responsible adult; and at the same time there’s this voice berating himself for freaking out about something not that important, and then a third voice scolding him for being so unkind to himself, and—
Needless to say, he’s not feeling especially observant or especially tolerant when he rolls up to his desk in the stacks and discovers that once again he’s not alone.
The sight pulls him up short. In the face of his already sour mood, he almost turns right around, unwilling to deal with anyone at the moment, and definitely not the frustratingly attractive seat-stealer. But Namjoon’s hefty sigh must catch the man's attention because he turns to him with a sly smile, like he had been waiting for Namjoon’s arrival.
“Looking for these?” he asks. In his extended hand are Namjoon’s headphones.
Namjoon feels a rush of relief, followed quickly by a surge of vindictive anger.
“You stole my headphones? What the fuck! You think this is funny? I need those!” he says in a whispered yell, snatching the case from the other man’s hands.
“Of course not, you ass,” he replies with an eye roll, seemingly more annoyed than angry. “You left them here yesterday so I kept them to give them back to you so no one would actually steal them. Obviously I don’t have any way to contact you, but you’re so stubborn about this desk I knew for sure you’d be back. So really you should be thanking me.”
“Oh,” Namjoon says. All of his anger dissipates at once, and with it whatever energy had been keeping him afloat. He collapses into his chair and hides his head in his hands, feeling like an idiot. “Thank you, I guess. Sorry,” he says into his palms.
When he looks up, the seat-stealer is looking at him sideways, a strange expression on his face. Is he…confused? Concerned?
“It’s okay,” he says with a shrug.
“No, seriously, I’ve been such a dick, you did something really nice for me and I accused you of stealing. Thank you, really—” Namjoon breaks off. “Sorry, what’s your name? I feel like I can’t keep calling you ‘seat-stealer’ in my head anymore.”
“Seat-stealer, huh?” the man says with an amused quirk of his lips. “I dunno, it’s got a nice ring to it.”
Luckily, he takes pity on Namjoon before he can start apologizing again. “It’s Yoongi,” he says. “Yoongi Min.”
“Oh! You’re Korean too?” Namjoon blurts out before he can stop himself. “I mean, Kim Namjoon, Namjoon Kim. Is me. Um. Thank you. Seriously. You really saved my ass.”
Yoongi waves him off and turns away, but not before Namjoon catches sight of what might be a pleased blush on his fair skin. “It was nothing,” he says. “But maybe try not to leave important things lying around anymore, hmm?”
Namjoon winces. “I wish I could say that I wouldn’t, but this has been a life-long struggle, I’m afraid.”
Yoongi graces him with a deep chuckle and Namjoon feels the strangest mix of embarrassed and thrilled, like being laughed at by this almost-mostly stranger is a huge personal achievement.
“Well, at least give me your number so I can text you before you lose your head next time.”
Yoongi holds his hand out expectantly. Namjoon just sits there staring at it for a second (it’s a very nice hand) before he startles and realizes he’s waiting for Namjoon to hand over his phone. Namjoon does so in a daze.
“What’s your poison?” Yoongi says as he types his info into Namjoon’s contact page. “Text, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal? KaTalk? IG messenger?”
That startles a laugh out of Namjoon and gets his brain working. “Um, text is fine, or WhatsApp.”
Yoongi nods, and when he hands Namjoon’s phone back to him, there’s a new chat open in WhatsApp, with "hi this is yoongi" in the sent box. A second later his phone vibrates and a new message pops up saying "hi this is yoongi". Namjoon responds with a random sticker and finds himself oddly charmed.
Later he realizes this would have been an excellent time to offer to take Yoongi out for coffee as a thanks and/or apology, but in the moment it doesn’t occur to him. Instead he just thanks him again and opens his laptop to get down to work.
The next morning, Namjoon is holding up the entire line in the student cafe as he stands at the register, frozen, and his mind whirls through the suddenly infinite coffee options in an attempt to work out which one would be the best to get Yoongi. Plain black coffee is safest, but light roast or dark roast? Or is it too safe? Would it make him seem boring? Would it make it seem like he thinks Yoongi is boring? He could get a chai latte, that’s always his go to drink when he’s treating himself, but maybe it’s too sweet and girly for Yoongi? But no, he couldn’t possibly have such regressive attitudes towards gendered consumption, right? That’s not the kind of vibe he gives off at all. So chai latte is back on the table. But maybe he just doesn’t like sweet things very much or—
“Dude,” the kid working the counter interrupts his train of thought, thus saving himself, Namjoon, and the entire line of people behind him. “I’m sure you’ve had a rough one but you gotta pick or I’m gonna pick for you. Otherwise we’ll have a riot on our hands,” he explains, not without sympathy.
“Ah shit,” Namjoon says. He chances a glance behind him only to be met with murderous stares. “Right, um. Too large americanos, iced.”
“Coming right up,” the kid says as he takes his money and the transaction is mercifully brought to a close.
Namjoon makes his way to his usual spot with the two drinks balanced in his hands. His hands shake and the ice sloshing in the cup exaggerates the motion in a way that makes him think he probably shouldn’t be drinking more caffeine. But it’s too late now. In fact, he’s starting to seriously second guess this whole endeavor. What if Yoongi isn’t even there today? He didn’t text because he wanted it to be a surprise, and also because there’s something a little magical in the serendipity of their encounters so far, the way nothing has been planned, something that warms a tiny flame in Namjoon’s romantic heart. But now he worries that that same stupid, romantic heart is getting ahead of himself, and not for the first time, either.
So it’s with no little relief that Namjoon approaches the desk (their desk, he thinks) to see Yoongi already there, bundled in a puffy jacket that he hasn’t bothered to remove and looking at his whatever is on his screen with just as much focus as ever. He doesn’t hear Namjoon at first, but he turns to greet him when he sets the cups down on the wooden desk in front of him.
“Hey, you’re early today,” he says, voice low in the whooshing white noise of the air conditioned stacks.
Namjoon just nods in response, inexplicably nervous, and silently pushes one of the coffees towards him.
Yoongi blinks several times in quick succession. “Is this for me?” he asks.
“Yeah. It’s an americano. I didn’t know what to get you so I just picked something random, I hope it’s okay that it’s iced…”
He trails off as Yoongi's big palm wraps around the cup and he brings it to his lips. It’s only because he's paying altogether too much attention to his mouth that he catches the tiniest hint of a smile as he takes a sip.
“Thanks, Namjoon,” he says. He doesn’t look at Namjoon when he says it, eyes trained on the lid of the coffee cup in front of him instead, but it falls on Namjoon like he whispered it in his ear: gentle, warm. That little glowing thing inside him brightens.
After that it's like a seal has been broken. Namjoon truly had intended it as a way of paying Yoongi back for the headphones and nothing more, but when he shows up the next day, there's an Americano waiting for him on his side of the desk. Namjoon sends him a whispered thanks and gets a nod of acknowledgement and one of those tiny Yoongi smiles in return. When he goes for his second cup a couple hours later, he asks if Yoongi wants anything, and is gratified when he accepts.
It becomes something of a routine from then on, bringing each other little caffeinated tokens of friendship whenever they meet in the stacks. If at first Namjoon had resented Yoongi's presence breaking his solitude, now he finds it strangely reassuring to know that he's not alone even in the library's scholarly silence.
When Namjoon's not doing transcriptions with his headphones on, he can hear him. Above the soft hum of the air switching on and the buzz of the fluorescent lights, he can hear Yoongi's steady breaths, his little sighs and hums of concentration, the faint scratching of his pen when he writes his notes longhand, which happens much more frequently than Namjoon would expect.
Maybe it's weird or creepy to be paying so much attention to his desk partner, but he finds these little noises strangely soothing. Sometimes Namjoon comes back to himself after spacing out to realize he's spent the better part of five minutes just listening to Yoongi's breathing. He should maybe be more concerned about that than he is.
Their schedules are pretty unpredictable, especially Namjoon's, and so before long they start texting, just to make sure the other will be there before the coffee gets cold. They don't text beyond coordinating drinks, but a simple "I won't be in until this afternoon, don't worry about picking something up for me" or a quick "when are you heading over?" is enough to make Namjoon smile stupidly at his phone.
Namjoon isn't entirely unaware of his growing attraction to Yoongi—he might be an idiot sometimes, but he's not so much of an idiot as to miss that. But their whole relationship feels so unreal, like it somehow blips into existence whenever he enters the fourth floor stacks and blips back out again when he leaves, that it honestly doesn't occur to him that he could actually do something about it.
Instead, he contents himself with seeing Yoongi most days but not every day, bringing offerings of hot and cold drinks in hopes of getting a smile in return, and being rewarded more often than not.
It's not until they've been peacefully coexisting and exchanging beverages for over a month that they finally break this pattern, and even then it's hardly premeditated. It's sixth week, and Namjoon is starting to lose track of his already pretty underwhelming meal schedule. He's running late to his study date with Yoongi, even though it's not official and it's not actually possible to be late to something that only one of you is aware has a timeline. He grabs a muffin from the student cafe on his way there just to get some calories, then adds a second to his order in a fit of inspiration. He's distracted as he climbs up the stairs to the fourth floor, munching on the muffin and replaying the last half hour of the seminar he just got out of, imagining all the things he should have said to that prick from the neuroscience department that would have made him really shut up, instead of what actually happened, which was that he looked vaguely confused and ignored everything Namjoon said.
When he arrives at the desk, he slings the pastry bag with down onto the desk beside Yoongi without preamble.
"Mpfm?" he offers, spewing a few crumbs and feeling sheepish when Yoongi gives him a disgusted look.
He swallows the rest of the mouthful and tries again. "Muffin? I got cranberry walnut, they're pretty good."
Yoongi looks incredulous and mildly offended, which Namjoon doesn't think he's earned—everyone likes cranberry walnut, right? Wait, Yoongi isn't allergic to nuts, is he?—when he raises his hand and gestures pointedly at the "No Food No Drinks" sign on the wall above the desk.
Namjoon rolls his eyes. "You can't possibly be serious right now," he whispers. He can probably count on one hand the times he's spoken in full voice to Yoongi, or heard anything over a whisper back from him. "We drink in here all the time!"
"In covered cups! It's different," he insists. "Food attracts pests."
Namjoon raises a bemused eyebrow at him but obediently places his remaining half a muffin back in the bag. He clocks Yoongi's longing gaze on the pastry as it disappears from view.
"So you're really not going to eat this delicious muffin I bought for you?" Namjoon says, egging him on just a little. "You're going to waste food?"
This time it's Yoongi who rolls his eyes. "There's no way you're not just going to eat the second one on your own," which is a fair assessment, but "But fine. Let's go," he says, and without further ado, he grabs his coffee and the bag of muffins and stands up.
Namjoon's brain stutters to halt momentarily. For some reason, Yoongi suggesting that they actually leave the library together is deeply unexpected. Yoongi turns around when he notices that Namjoon isn't following and nods his head to the door, holding up the bag of muffins as if to say, are you coming?
And that's how the two of them end up huddled together on one of the benches outside the library, sharing their muffins in the weak afternoon sun. It's not freezing yet, but it's not warm either, and Namjoon keeps looking at the way Yoongi's nose has gone pink from the cold.
It really doesn't take that long to eat a muffin, but now that they're out there Yoongi is taking his time, sipping at his coffee and pinching off little bits of muffin to place in his mouth. Namjoon finds it strangely endearing. Namjoon lets out a big sigh, stretching his legs into the sun and feeling his spine crack. "Ugh," he groans aloud.
Yoongi snorts a little laugh in response. "You too, huh?" he says.
Namjoon groans again, or maybe it's more of a whine. "I'm not even that old!" he complains.
"Yep, that's grad school for you," Yoongi says. It's nice hearing him at full volume like this, where they don't have to whisper and sneak out of respect for the sacred library rules. Namjoon likes his voice.
"Yeah, that's for sure," Namjoon says. He trails off for a second, feels the conversation dying between them, and decides he doesn't want it to. "How long have you been in?"
Yoongi chuckles again. "Six years, ABD. Sounds like next you'll be asking me what I got booked for." He raises a cheeky eyebrow and oh, Namjoon likes him.
"No, alas, I'm here of my own free will—there's no getting out on good behavior if you're the only one who's keeping you in here. And yeah, five years for me so far. Just me and the diss." Namjoon sighs heavily.
"What department are you in anyway?" Yoongi says. He sounds nonchalant in a way that Namjoon knows from his own life experience can only mean it's carefully calculated. It gives him an odd sense of relief to remember that Yoongi is also privy to the bizarre circumstances of their...friendship? Acquaintanceship? All evidence points to him being just as weird about it as Namjoon is.
Well. Mostly just as weird.
"Linguistics," Namjoon replies. "I'm working on this tiny Austronesian language, building a grammar and corpus, so like, three quarters of what you see me do is transcription."
Yoongi nods thoughtfully. "What's the other quarter, then?"
"Well, it should be reading papers, but more often it's procrastination of one flavor or another," Namjoon says wryly.
That gets Yoongi to crack a smile. "Ah, so you are human after all."
"What's that supposed to mean!" Namjoon says indignantly.
"You're so dedicated! I was starting to wonder if you were just a library-work machine dressed up in a gym-nerd body," he says.
"Oh no, absolutely not, the only reason I've been coming so much recently is because I know you'll be there," he says. He realizes what just came out of his mouth a beat too late and swallows heavily through the embarrassment. "I mean, to keep the rights to my desk," he says, trying to salvage the situation. His face feels hot.
"That right?" Yoongi says. A smug smile spreads across his mouth like pulled taffy, sweet and slow. "So it's just about the competition, huh?"
"Yep, that's definitely it," he says. His voice comes out all wrong, even though it's not a lie. If Namjoon thought he was embarrassed before, he's dying now. It was about the competition at first. At least mostly.
"Mmhmm," Yoongi says.
"What about you, what department are you in?" Namjoon asks, scrambling for a way to reroute the conversation. It's unfair—Yoongi is the one who said he had a "gym nerd body." But Namjoon is simply not quite brave enough to call him on that at this time. Better to deflect.
"Music," Yoongi says.
"Woah, that's so cool!" Namjoon says. He feels himself lighting up with enthusiasm, the kind that he used to feel far too self-conscious to let out, but now is like, forty percent of his personality. The fruits of adulthood, honestly. "What's your subdiscipline? Are you in composition? I had this period in like, fifth grade where I was convinced I was going to be an orchestra conductor."
Yoongi laughs at that, but not in a mean way. "Mostly music theory and music history, actually. Think like, literary studies but for music instead."
"Sick," Namjoon says, meaning it wholeheartedly.
Yoongi shrugs. "Yeah it's pretty cool. I do actually do some composition on the side, too."
He says it offhandedly, like everything else in this conversation, but there's something shy in the way he's looking for Namjoon's reaction in his periphery.
"Oh my god," Namjoon says, star-struck and unabashed about it. "You're like, the coolest person I've ever met."
"Nah, it's really nothing big," Yoongi says, but he blushes and runs a hand through his hair. Cute, Namjoon thinks to himself, cutecutecute.
"Can I hear your stuff sometime?" Namjoon asks.
"Uh, sure?" Yoongi says, seeming surprised. "Maybe? If it ever gets performed, I mean."
"Awesome," Namjoon says. His smile feels too big for his mouth but he can't tone it down.
Yoongi averts his eyes and chews at his lip for a second before continuing. "I thought about doing it more, like, officially, but I decided to keep it to my own time. I'd hate for it to feel like work, you know?"
"Ugh, yes," Namjoon commiserates. "Everyone talks about academia like it's this big labor of passion, and like, I like my research, I do! I even like writing sometimes! It's just—"
"Yeah, I get it," Yoongi says heavily. Namjoon watches his long fingers tear at the empty muffin wrapper.
"Yeah," Namjoon agrees with a gusty sigh.
They sit in silence for another minute or two, sipping at their coffees and looking out towards the empty sidewalk. It's not awkward but it is a little melancholy, maybe, each of them stewing in their own thoughts, until eventually they run out of both plausible deniability and stored body heat, and one of them suggests they go back inside.
Things are different after that. Not dramatically, but noticeably. No longer confined so strictly to their bibliographic meeting place, they start pulling each other outside for little snack breaks partway through their library sessions, or leaving together at night when they pack up. Sometimes those breaks are quiet, each of them keeping to their own thoughts, but sometimes they get talking and then half an hour or an hour can go by before one of them reluctantly brings up returning to their work, and even then sometimes it takes another twenty minutes for them to actually pull themselves away.
It turns out they have a lot in common after all. Complaints about academia and comparisons of their different departments are always good for an hour or two of conversation a week, and then they have a surprising amount to talk about when it comes to the content of their work as well. Even though Namjoon's research is a lot more technical these days, he's read enough of the social theory that Yoongi is drawing on for them to be able to chat about that, too, getting into little arguments over the value of applying the writing of French philosophers to wildly different social contexts, or the ethical responsibilities of humanistic inquiry in times of crisis. One particularly memorable afternoon has them going back and forth over the epistemological basis of Namjoon's entire field. It should be offensive, but instead it's just fun, more fun than he's had with ideas in ages. They might get heated with each other in the moment, but there's no actual competition between them, and so Namjoon doesn't feel afraid to admit when he disagrees with a prevailing idea, or to talk about what he finds difficult or disappointing about his work.
They discover they have a lot in common outside of school stuff, too, and if anything that's even more exciting. In addition to the orchestral and instrumental pieces that Yoongi writes, he has a shockingly in depth knowledge of nineties boombap hip hop, Korean rap groups, and Vietnamese bolero. "It's about the poetry," he says once about rap once, quiet but passionate in that way that Namjoon is becoming familiar with, and his heart clenches in his chest with the force of his feeling.
Perhaps counterintuitively, Namjoon is more productive in this period than he's been in maybe his entire life. Even with all the breaks and, more embarrassingly, all the time he loses to spacing out looking at Yoongi's hands, he's spending more time in the library than ever before, and it's paying off. At the same time he doesn't feel overworked, somehow. In fact, he feels better than he can remember feeling in a good long while. He just likes Yoongi, likes being in his presence even when they don't talk. In a word, he is utterly, hopelessly infatuated.
Maybe the stars in his eyes are what keep him from noticing sooner that things aren't going quite so well for Yoongi.
At first, it's not so obvious—after all, looking generally sleep-deprived is not uncommon for a graduate student. Namjoon barely notices the way the bags under Yoongi's eyes are getting progressively darker and darker, his yawns more and more frequent. He knows Yoongi has a stretch of several conferences coming up and is rushing to complete papers for them, so he doesn't comment overly much when Yoongi starts arriving earlier and earlier at the library and turns down Namjoon's invitations to leave before dinner time, just giving him a little frown of commiseration and leaving him to his own devices. He does start to notice when Yoongi stops coming out for their snack breaks and turns down Namjoon's offering of baked goods for maybe the first time ever with a mumbled "not hungry."
Still, even as Namjoon has to shake Yoongi awake from naps on his desk with increasing frequency, he doesn't intervene other than some light prodding to get more sleep and eat a meal, advice which, as far as Namjoon can tell, Yoongi completely ignores. It would be a lie to say he's not getting a little worried, but he's also excruciatingly aware that he has no standing here. He and Yoongi are friends, there's no use denying that, but theirs is a very specific kind of friendship within a precisely limited domain—a few cups of coffee in the library cafe, the evening walk back home to their respective apartments, lunch at the food court across the way once or twice. These aren't the kind of activities that would give Namjoon the right to question Yoongi's methods of self-care.
Then Yoongi gets sick. It's perhaps the least surprising outcome of this spate of overwork and to any sane person it would be a sign to slow down for a second. But, well, if either of them were sane they probably wouldn't be getting humanities PhDs.
When Namjoon arrives at their desk after lunch, Yoongi is surrounded by a pile of used tissues and seems to have commandeered his own personal box of Kleenex to support his habit. His cute little button nose (oh my god, stop it, Namjoon thinks to himself) is bright red and he looks absolutely miserable.
"Hyung-ah," Namjoon says in a low voice as he approaches the desk. "Why didn't you tell me you were sick?"
Yoongi turns to him and blinks sluggishly. Namjoon can almost see his slow-moving thoughts through the reddened whites of his eyes.
"Sorry Namjoon-ah," Yoongi replies. He winces when it comes out as a croak. "I should have warned you. I can clear all this up." He gestures to the detritus of illness piled around him.
Namjoon shakes his head and fishes an empty plastic bag leftover from his lunch out of his backpack, passing it over so that Yoongi can dispose of his army of tissues.
"Don't worry about it," he says, then frowns. "If you'd told me, I could have gotten you tea with honey instead of coffee."
Yoongi shakes his head. Even that movement looks exhausted.
"Coffee is good," he replies. "Need it to work."
Namjoon raises a skeptical eyebrow at him but passes it over nonetheless. Not your place, he reminds himself, staving off the desire to physically remove Yoongi from the library.
The afternoon passes mostly in silence, except for Yoongi's intermittent sniffles and dry, quiet coughs. Namjoon makes good on his offer and brings Yoongi back some tea after each of his breaks. Yoongi guzzles it happily, but doesn't relent in his dogged commitment to whatever he's working on.
Around six o'clock, Namjoon tries to convince him to leave for dinner, but Yoongi just smiles at him tiredly. "I'm sorry, Namjoon-ah. I don't think I'd be very good company."
Namjoon wants to correct him, to tell him that he doesn't need to be entertaining, he just wants to see him eat something warm and go to bed, but he isn't sure he's allowed to.
"C'mon Yoongi, you need rest. You can't be getting much done like this anyway."
This must have been the wrong thing to say, because Yoongi's face turns hard and he looks away from Namjoon so he can only see his profile.
When he speaks, his voice comes out hard, too. "Namjoon, please. I'm a big boy and I don't need your help. What I need to do is finish this, and I don't have the energy to argue with you on top of that. So please, just stop."
Namjoon's stomach plummets and his face heats. The rejection stings so much more than he expected, more than it probably should.
"Right, sorry," he mumbles as he packs his stuff up to flee. "I'll leave you alone."
Namjoon dawdles, hoping that Yoongi might have something more to say to him. But when he looks back one last time on his way out, he's still facing stubbornly away, shoulders hunched and tense.
Namjoon spends the whole walk home feeling like a sulky teenager. All he's missing is a can to kick by the side of the road. He feels like an idiot for letting it get to him like this, for even construing it as a rejection in the first place, for pushing when he knew he had no right. It shouldn't be a big deal—Yoongi was tired, Namjoon was pushy, and Yoongi got a little snappy at him. Completely understandable.
His reaction makes it hard to deny any longer that his initial attraction to Yoongi has blossomed into a full-blown crush. He's not sure he likes it. He knows some people really enjoy the feeling of a new crush (Hoseok comes to mind), but right now he just feels foolish and silly and young, none of which are things he particularly enjoys feeling. Sometimes he wonders if grad school has stunted his growth, if he's going to graduate and discover that he hasn't grown up at all, while everyone around him has developed into mature adults with families and regular laundry schedules and the ability to emotionally regulate when your crush shuts down your attempts to take care of him, ugh.
Taehyung takes one look at him when he walks in the door and immediately rushes over to pat his hair and hug him to within an inch of his life. He calls him a mopey puppy, which is rich coming from Kim Taehyung, king of moping and puppy eyes, and forces him to lie down on the couch with his head in Taehyung's lap and let his hair be pet while they wait for Jimin to come by with ice cream. Namjoon tries to tell him that nothing bad happened, he's just feeling a little down, but this explanation doesn't faze Taehyung in the least.
"You don't need something bad to happen to you for me to want to take care of you," Taehyung says in that matter-of-fact way he sometimes delivers profound sentiments. It all feels like a convoluted commentary on Yoongi pushing him away and it makes Namjoon's heart and head hurt in equal measure. It's too much for him right now, so he decides to stop fighting and just enjoy the attention while its being offered, free of pretense and obligation, as simple as rhythm of Taehyung's hand in his hair.
Namjoon wakes up in the morning with the full intention of moving beyond all this. He'll go into the library like normal, and if Yoongi is there he'll be friendly but not overly solicitous. Maybe try to step back a little bit, just to cool his heels on this crush that snuck up on him. He's constantly behind on his deadlines and the actual chapter he's supposed to be working on is languishing—maybe Yoongi was right and neither of them have the time for this to be anything more than a casual friendship.
Armed with this new conviction, Namjoon arrives at library early the next morning, not quite when the doors open, but not long after. It's mostly in hopes of getting in some actual writing time on the weekend and only a little bit because, for all his newfound commitment to giving Yoongi proper distance, he still wants to check in on him and make sure he's doing okay.
He is not prepared for the sight that greets him when he arrives at their spot. Yoongi is slumped face first on the desk, completely passed out and still wearing yesterday's clothes. It pulls Namjoon up short. All his good intentions about polite distance leave his head immediately. There's no two ways about it—Yoongi must have fallen asleep here overnight.
"Yoongi?" he says softly, trying not to startle him.
Yoongi doesn't stir, still dead asleep. Now that he's taken out his headphones, Namjoon can hear his snores, made louder by his stuffed nose. It's a good thing the stacks are still deserted this early on a Saturday, or someone else might have taken him to task for making so much noise. He looks miserably sick like this, skin pale and nose an irritated red. Namjoon's heart pangs at the sight.
Namjoon approaches gingerly and touches him on the shoulder. "Yoongi-hyung?"
The combination of contact and slightly higher volume finally does the trick—Yoongi blinks his crusted eyes open and peers blearily at him.
"Namjoon-ah?" he rasps and then immediately starts coughing. Namjoon rushes to grab a water bottle from his backpack and hands it over to Yoongi, rubbing broad circles on his back.
When the coughing subsides, Yoongi levels a confused look at him. "What are you doing here? I thought you went home?"
"It's morning, hyung," Namjoon says with a wince. "You must have slept through closing."
Yoongi groans and drops his head onto the desk with a thunk. "Shit. No wonder I feel like complete ass."
Namjoon smothers an inappropriate laugh, feeling borderline hysterical but horribly relieved that Yoongi hasn't pushed him away yet. He reaches a tentative hand up to feel Yoongi's forehead, more because that's what his mother does whenever he's sick than because he really understands how it's supposed to work. He lets out a little gasp, surprised by how hot the skin is.
"You're really burning up, hyung," Namjoon says. He pauses for a second, wrestling with himself over how much he should say, but ultimately gives in to his instincts. "I know you said yesterday that you didn't need my help, but you're really sick and I don't want to leave you alone right now. Can I take you back to your apartment? Or if you don't want that, is there someone I can call for you instead?"
Yoongi sighs, looking chagrined. "Oh Joon-ah, hyung is sorry for snapping at you yesterday. I know you only meant well." He coughs miserably, then grimaces before continuing. "And I think you'll have to take me home, I can't get there by myself in this state and my roommate won't be awake this early on a Saturday."
The knot in Namjoon's chest loosens, the combination of the apology and getting explicit permission to help making him feel almost giddy with relief.
"Don't worry about it," Namjoon says. "I've got you."
The apartment is far enough away that they decide to call a cab, and Yoongi promptly falls asleep as soon as the car starts moving. When the driver stops to let them out, Namjoon has to support Yoongi with an arm around his waist, carrying both of their backpacks on his back.
It’s not the first time he’s dragged a friend back to their place, but usually it’s because they’re drunk rather than sick, and usually it’s not happening in broad daylight where everyone going about their day can see them and give them weird looks. He’s not so confident in himself that it doesn’t make him uncomfortable, but each time he catches a side eye, he just pulls Yoongi closer to him and keeps moving.
Yoongi's building is on the older side, old enough that they're still using mechanical locks and there's no elevator. Namjoon takes Yoongi's keys from his limp hand to open the front door and they make their way slowly up the stairs with Namjoon supporting most of Yoongi's weight.
Namjoon struggles with the door to Yoongi’s unit for a minute, and it must be audible inside the apartment, because when the door finally swings open, there’s someone already standing there waiting for them. It must be the roommate, Seokjin—Namjoon had called him from Yoongi’s phone when they left the library, but as Yoongi predicted, he didn’t pick up. Now, he blinks at them, looking confused and groggy.
Seokjin's brow is furrowed with worry as he takes the both of them in. “What’s going on? Is Yoongi okay?” he asks, his voice rough from the morning. He's shockingly handsome, even clearly having just rolled out of bed, wearing a flannel pajama set in a soft baby blue. Old man chic with a face of classic beauty. Namjoon wishes it didn't make him feel intimidated but it absolutely does.
Yoongi squints and mumbles something unintelligible, so Namjoon takes over, introducing himself and explaining the situation.
"Namjoon-ssi, thank you for bringing Yoongi-ah back home. I'm glad to meet you, despite the circumstances," Seokjin says, meticulously polite, even adding a shallow bow once he understands the situation.
"Of course," Namjoon says. "He was already pretty sick last night and then when I got here this morning..." He trails off, unsure what he was trying to say in the first place, but Seokjin just nods encouragingly when Yoongi makes a muffled sound into Namjoon's shoulder.
Namjoon hands Yoongi off to Seokjin and stands awkwardly in the entryway as he guides Yoongi towards the bedroom, clucking and fussing over him at his state of dishevelment. Yoongi wrinkles his nose when Seokjin plops a blanket over his shoulders and pats his butt gently to push him into his bedroom, but Namjoon can see fondness hidden in the reaction. It’s clear that Seokjin isn’t just a roommate but a good friend, too—there's such intimacy about the two of them together that watching them feels almost like an intrusion. It makes something under Namjoon’s skin itch.
He’s still staring blankly at the door to the bedroom when Seokjin returns from getting Yoongi settled. He looks at Namjoon for an extended moment, and Namjoon gets the distinct impression he is being examined. Then Seokjin nods and beckons him further into the apartment with a charming smile.
“Come in for a second, I’m going to make some tea for Yoongi. You should have some too.”
“Oh, um, okay,” Namjoon says, not expecting the kindness and not sure how to respond. He thinks for a second about turning him down, but the sidelong gaze Seokjin casts from the kitchen makes it feel like more of an understated command than a suggestion. The gesture reminds him of Jimin for some reason, and he learned long ago never to try to stop Jimin when he's on a mission.
Having swapped his shoes for house slippers, Namjoon trails Seokjin into the kitchen, feeling out of place. He leans awkwardly against a counter as Seokjin busies himself with the kettle.
"This can't have been what you expected from your Saturday morning," Seokjin says as if reading his mind. "It was good of you to bring Yoongi-chi all the way here."
Namjoon's mind blips on the nickname for a second before he splutters out a response. "It's nothing, really. I couldn't just leave him there."
"Hmm," Seokjin says noncommittally. Something in his tone gives Namjoon the distinct impression he's being judged. "It was kind of you. But I suppose you and Yoongi are...friends?"
"I...yes?" Namjoon says, unsure how else to respond. "We met in the library a while ago, I guess I don't know whether Yoongi told you," he adds, when it becomes clear Jin is waiting for more information.
"Ah yes, he mentioned you accused him of stealing his seat, if I recall correctly," Seokjin says. Namjoon can't tell if he's being interrogated or teased and it's very confusing. "Referred to you as 'big book boy' for a while until he finally learned your name. An auspicious beginning to a relationship."
Namjoon feels his face heat. "Well, I'd like to think we're friends now. Definitely study buddies at least."
"Yes, yes," Seokjin waves away his defensiveness and hands him a steaming mug. "Yoongi speaks quite highly of you."
"He does?" Namjoon blurts out before he can stop himself. "I—uh, I mean, that's nice to hear."
"Mmhmm," Seokjin says, amused at his clumsy backtracking. His expression grows thoughtful as he continues. "In all seriousness, though, Yoongi doesn't let a lot of people take care of him. He's got this whole" Seokjin waves a hand around to demonstrate "stoic suffering artist thing about him, it's really quite annoying". Some of the pretense drops from his demeanor and he seems somehow both more and less serious like this than in his little faux-interrogator facade, but still fond, so fond.
"You care about him a lot, huh," Namjoon says without really meaning to.
"Of course I do! We're eternal roommates! Soulmates of a completely non-romantic and nonsexual variety! He goes fishing with me, do you understand how hard it is to find friends who will wake up at four in the morning to sit in silence and get bitten by lake bugs, Namjooni-ssi?"
Namjoon barks out a surprised laugh at Seokjin's overblown outrage and it earns him a pleased smile in return.
They exchange phone numbers and a few light pleasantries before Namjoon heads out again. The conversation was odd, a little unsettling but seemingly well-intentioned. But all Namjoon can think about on the walk home is how Seokjin apparently felt the need to explicitly specify that there is nothing romantic between him and Yoongi. What does it mean? Does Seokjin know something, or is he just being a loving if slightly eccentric hyung?
His mind is still swirling with it later that same evening when he arrives at Jimin's place for their regular movie night.
It's all four of them, Namjoon plus Taehyung, Jimin, and Jungkook—or as Namjoon sometimes calls them in his head, the terrible threesome. The name had started out as a simple commentary on their number, but Namjoon has a suspicion that Taehyung's proverbial Jimin sandwich is no longer going open-faced. He has yet to confirm that suspicion. He's not certain he wants to.
He should have just kept his mouth shut when Taehyung started prodding him about why he was being so quiet, but he keeps on playing back the interaction with Seokjin in his mind, trying to make sense of it. It's exactly the kind of pointless wondering that Namjoon can get himself stuck in for days and he just wants a second opinion, someone outside his own head to tell him whether he's being crazy.
Of course, once he describes how much time he and Yoongi have been spending together, their increasingly frequent coffee breaks and campus dinners, what he gets is ruthless teasing instead. Completely predictable. He should have known.
"So, remind me why you haven't asked him out yet?" Jimin asks as soon as he finishes telling the story.
"Shut up," Namjoon says, and it comes out as a muffled whine. He groans and lets his head thunk into his hands.
"Well at least you know you're being stupid," Jungkook mutters to himself pointedly.
"Look, we're not trying to give you a hard time," Jimin says magnanimously.
"Speak for yourself," Jungkook snorts. "I am absolutely trying to give him a hard time. He deserves it."
"Hey!" Namjoon protests, glaring at Jungkook through his fingers. Jungkook sticks his tongue out in retaliation. Brat.
Jimin swats him on the shoulder. "Be nice, Jungkookie."
"I'm always nice," he pouts. His puppy dog eyes are out in full force and he's looking for all the world as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.
"Of course you are, Kook-ah," Taehyung says indulgently. He's sitting behind Jungkook on the couch, legs wrapped around his waist, head hooked over his shoulder. He reaches out a hand to ruffle his hair.
"Well I'm not trying to give you a hard time," Jimin continues with an affectionate eye roll. "I'm just trying to understand. Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're just denying yourself something good out of a misplaced sense of obligation. Just because you're getting a PhD doesn't mean you have to be a monk."
“I know that!” Namjoon protests. But truthfully it does hit on something that's been bubbling up in the back of his mind. It isn't that he thinks of grad school as a monastery, but it is easy to feel like it has to be the most important thing in his life, if not the entirety of it. Not that he spends every waking moment working or anything, far from it. But the idea of starting something substantive outside of his research, and he's not fool enough to pretend that a relationship with Yoongi would be casual for him, fills him with a vague sense of guilt.
Jimin raises an eyebrow skeptically. “Fine then, if that’s not what’s going on then why don’t you just ask him out?”
And that’s the thing—Namjoon doesn’t know. It would be a lie to say that it’s because he isn’t sure whether Yoongi reciprocates. He isn’t sure of course, though he has an inkling, but even if he truly had no idea that wouldn’t necessarily be a reason not to ask someone out. He’s not a teenager anymore and it wouldn’t destroy his ego if Yoongi wasn’t interested in him that way. And if Yoongi is as wise and self-assured as Namjoon has come to know him as, then surely having to reject Namjoon once won’t destroy the quiet friendship they’re building.
It just seems impossible somehow, especially now that Yoongi has been working himself to death recently. How could he possibly make time to date Namjoon? Why would he want to, when he's so clearly dedicated to his work? Yoongi is dedicated in a way that Namjoon knows is unhealthy but can't help but envy anyway, the singular focus of genius in the making. Namjoon has never had the strength for it really—he cares about his work and he does what he needs to do, but that's about it. In Yoongi's place, he would have called off sick the moment he started to sniffle, probably would be overjoyed for an excuse to take a few days off. He knows it's a stupid thing to valorize, and when he sees it in Yoongi it's obvious it's not a good thing, but that doesn't stop him from wanting it, perversely, for himself.
Three weeks later, disaster strikes in the form of a workshop presentation gone horribly wrong.
Namjoon isn't sure why he goes to the library after. By all rights he should just limp home to lick his wounds in peace and maybe never talk to anyone ever again. Or maybe just no more linguists? No, it's probably best that he removes himself from humanity so as never to inflict his humiliating mediocrity on anyone ever again.
He's being overdramatic in his own head in hopes that the exaggeration will make the whole thing feel funny instead of crushing. It's not working.
Perhaps it's a sign that he truly has been spending too much time at the library that somehow in his shellshocked daze he ends up right back in the fourth floor stacks, staring at the same blank stretch of wall that has greeted him almost daily for months now. Yoongi isn't there but his stuff is, but it's such a familiar sight at this point that it doesn't even register to Namjoon. He pulls out his chair and slumps down into it, lets his head fall forward onto the hard wood of the desk in front of him. It makes such a satisfying sound that he does it again. He groans.
It's not long before he hears a soft, familiar voice behind him. "Namjoon-ah?"
Namjoon groans again in response. He feels a large, warm palm land on his back.
"Are you okay?" Yoongi asks.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Namjoon says miserably. His voice comes out raspy and oh god is he actually tearing up? How embarrassing.
Namjoon knows he doesn't exactly sound convincing, but Yoongi doesn't call him on it, just pats him on the back. Namjoon is pretty sure he'd mentioned the workshop in the days leading up to it and Yoongi is a smart guy, he has to have figured out what's going on. Namjoon is braced for the question, but it doesn't come. Instead, after a few more moments, Yoongi says, "C'mon, let's go get something to eat. Hyung's treat."
Namjoon nods his head limply against the desk in lieu of a verbal response, but he pulls himself together enough to gather up his stuff and follow Yoongi out the doors.
Namjoon sort of expects to be interrogated, but it quickly becomes clear that Yoongi is perfectly content to walk next to each other in silence. Namjoon is barely paying attention to where he's going, just following Yoongi's lead, until they end up at the local student dive bar.
"This okay?" Yoongi asks. "I thought a couple of drinks might not go amiss."
"Yeah, this is great, actually," Namjoon says, finding it to be true. Suddenly the idea of tearing through three or four of the cheapest cheeseburgers known to man and washing it down with shitty beer seems extremely appealing.
Yoongi gives him a pleased little smile at his response and enters the restaurant. It's so cute that it almost jolts Namjoon out of his doldrums.
Yoongi leads them to a two person table in a dark corner and a few minutes later they've placed their orders and are settled in to wait for the food to arrive. It's early enough in the evening that the place is pretty empty, but the gesture towards privacy is nice.
"So. Do you wanna talk about it?" Yoongi asks.
Namjoon blows a breath through his cheeks. It's been an hour or so since his presentation now, long enough with Yoongi as silent, steady company by his side that he's calmed down a lot, and yeah, he does want to talk about it.
"It's just really frustrating, you know?" he starts without preamble. "I've been working on this paper for months now, and every time I've asked for feedback from my advisor he just skims it and says it's fine, or he gives me some mostly useless suggestions on who to cite, probably just whoever he's obsessed with recently, and when I try to meet with him it always takes weeks to schedule. So I said fine, he says it's good, I'll just do my best and present it as is, and then I get to the workshop, and not only do these senior faculty absolutely rip it apart, but my own advisor decides that now is the time to rake me over the coals, publicly, after months of ignoring my requests for feedback. So of course I just totally freeze up, and I couldn't answer any of their questions, even ones I definitely know the answers to, because I was completely freaking out, and god it was just so humiliating, like why did he let me get up there and embarrass myself? Is he trying to prove a point? Like I know my analysis isn't perfect but I'm a student! He's supposed to teach me stuff! But instead it's like they expect me to already know everything already and if I don't it's because I'm a failure. And this was in front of basically the entire department, plus some visitors from nearby universities, and god, is this going to cost my entire career? Is no one going to hire me because he let me faceplant like this?"
"Joon-ah," Yoongi says in a steadying voice. He reaches out and covers Namjoon's hand with his own. Namjoon surprises himself by flipping his hand over and threading their fingers together without thinking about it. They're not usually touchy like this, but, perhaps conditioned by years of Taehyung's affections, Namjoon finds the physical closeness instinctually comforting. Yoongi doesn't seem to mind, just gives his fingers a light squeeze. Yoongi is so much smaller than Namjoon everywhere else, but his hand feels big and warm around his. They fit together just right.
"Sometimes I really hate him, you know?" Namjoon continues. "Like at the end of the day, he's a shitty advisor, and I know that, and like, who doesn't have shitty advisors, you know? It could be so much worse, too—he doesn't try to steal my work, he's not like, verbally abusive or anything—he's just kind of negligent. It shouldn't even bother me that much. It just sucks, because I know I need him, even though I wish I didn't, and I put all this time into chasing him down, and then something like today happens where he just completely leaves me in the lurch, and. Sometimes it's hard not to feel like it's because I'm not good enough, that if I were smarter or more exciting or had more potential as a scholar he would actually bother to, you know, advise me."
"Hmm," Yoongi frowns in disagreement but doesn't add more. He strokes a thumb along the back of Namjoon's hand, and Namjoon just keeps going.
"It feels like he doesn't even care enough to let me know that I suck. Like, I'm trying my hardest, and he can't even bother to look me in the eye and tell me I'm stupid until he's doing it in front of our entire fucking department." Namjoon squeezes his eyes shut, wills the tears not to fall. "It just really fucking sucks, you know?"
"Yeah, Namjoon-ah. I know," Yoongi says, and something about the heaviness in his voice tells Namjoon that he really does know, that it's not just something he's saying to placate him. "You know it's not your fault though, right?"
Namjoon shrugs but doesn't look up. "I know that intellectually, but like. Does it even matter if it's my fault or not? At the end of the day, I need help that I'm not getting. I don't know if I can do this on my own, you know? Like obviously my research is my own, but sometimes it feels like I got kicked off the boat and now I'm just out to sea, completely alone, trying to follow the wake in hopes of finding shore without any landmarks. Just waiting to get too tired to tread water anymore."
"Let's swim together, then."
"What?" Namjoon asks. At first he isn't sure he heard him right. He looks up and sees that Yoongi is blushing, looking off to the side rather than directly at him. But his face is determined, and his hand is warm and solid in his, and he doesn't back down.
"Sorry, that was a really cheesy overextension of that metaphor, wasn't it. All I mean is, I know how lonely it is, and to some extent there's no way around that. But I'm here too, you know? I can't be your advisor, but at least you don't have to feel alone."
"Like...like a swim buddy," Namjoon says absently as he tries to process the cascade of emotions that Yoongi's offer has set off in him.
Yoongi smiles a bit wryly. "Sure. Like a swim buddy. So neither of us gets eaten by sharks."
That gets a giggle out of Namjoon. It comes out airy and a bit manic, but it's still a release. His shoulders feel lighter, and he feels giddy like a little kid at the beach. He's going to have a buddy! He giggles again.
Yoongi chuckles and looks at Namjoon with bemused fondness while he gets this little giggle fit out of his system. It's enough to break the tension and the conversation leads in a more normal direction for a bit.
As they make their way through the first pitcher of beer, then the second, Namjoon feels himself growing looser. He's a big guy and it usually takes him quite a lot of alcohol to really feel it, but the emotional turmoil of the day has left him feeling wrung out and floppy.
"This guy in my cohort just got married, you know? Wild stuff."
They've been swapping stories about classmates and faculty, freed from propriety by the fact that their academic circles don't overlap much, when Namjoon blurts it out. It's not like they've been talking about dating or anything, so he really has no excuse, but it's been on his mind in that way where he doesn't even realize he's been thinking about it so much until its spilling out of him.
Yoongi nods sagely. He's holding his liquor pretty well but Namjoon can tell he isn't completely unaffected. "Yeah, there's a woman in the cohort above me who just had a kid. She entered the program pretty young too. I can't imagine it."
Namjoon's laugh feels too big for his mouth when it bursts out of him. "I know, right? I don't think I've even had a real date since I passed comps."
"Fuck, I can drink to that," Yoongi says.
They each take a swig of their beer. "My roommate, Taehyung, we've been friends for years now, but he's younger than me and he's basically married to his boyfriend, and now they seem to have found a third boyfriend, and here I am, single, haven't been on a date in five years, barely even have time to fuck around anymore, and it's like, I knew I was selling my soul when I entered the PhD, but I didn't realize it would eat my dick, too, ya know?"
Yoongi lets out a giggle at that, tiny teeth and pink gums showing over his perfect petal lip, eyes scrunching tight. Namjoon spaces out just a little watching his mouth.
Yoongi's response is surprisingly serious, though. "I haven't done a lot of dating since I entered either, but it's also not been a high priority for me, I think. But selling my soul...It feels like that sometimes, but it's also been really important to me to try to carve out some time for myself, for the bits of me that aren't my research. For me that's my composition, and my friends. For your classmate maybe it's his marriage, for my classmate I guess it's her family. But you gotta have something you know?"
Namjoon sighs long and hard. "How can you though? It feels like my entire brain is being taken up with my project all the time. It's intellectually, technically, and emotionally demanding. What would I even have to offer a potential partner when this is all I'm thinking about all the time?"
Yoongi doesn't respond to that immediately. Namjoon watches as he lifts his beer glass and swirls the remaining amber liquid at the bottom to create a frothy vortex.
"Do you really think of it like that?" Yoongi says after a bit.
"What?"
"Dating, relationships," Yoongi clarifies with a wave of his hand. "Do you really think of it like a transaction? What you have to offer, what they have to offer you?"
"Of course not," Namjoon responds without thinking and then immediately backtracks. "I mean maybe?"
Yoongi nods like this was precisely the answer he was looking for. "You don't choose your friends based on what they can give you, do you? So why would you expect a romantic relationship to be any different?"
There's something about what Yoongi's saying that feels strange to Namjoon, novel almost, even if on the surface it's nothing groundbreaking, and he has the feeling that if he were sober he would probably be arguing back more. But the bits and pieces of his logical processes aren't quite connecting at the moment, so he just blinks at Yoongi, feeling a little awed.
"Damn. How did you get so wise, dude?" he asks, feeling dumb but unable to stop the words from coming out of his mouth.
To Namjoon's surprise, Yoongi blushes and looks away, bashful. It strikes Namjoon as impossibly cute.
Yoongi clears his throat awkwardly. "Ah, Namjoon-ah, you shouldn't listen to me that much, who knows if I know what I'm talking about?"
Namjoon finds it impossible in the moment to be anything but earnest. "I think you do though, hyung. You can just tell sometimes, you know? You're like, an old soul, or something. You really get stuff. You really see stuff. I don't know anyone like you."
Yoongi's cheeks are flaming now and Namjoon has a vague sense that he will be horrified by this whole conversation in the morning, but right now he just feels overwhelmed by Yoongi, how good he is, how special.
Instead of saying that out loud and embarrassing himself even further, Namjoon asks the other question that's been on his mind ever since their conversation when they got to the bar.
"You really think we can get through this?" he asks.
Despite the lack of context or preamble, Yoongi understands him immediately.
"Yeah, I really do," he says simply. "We're good together. I can stop you from overthinking all the time, and you can stop me from accidentally working myself to death."
Namjoon feels an inexorable wave of happiness rise in him, golden and sweet, and he grins helplessly. "Swim buddies?" he asks.
Yoongi grins back at him in return, looking just as helpless. "Sure, Namjoon-ah. Swim buddies."
Over the next few weeks, Namjoon thinks about their conversation constantly.
He doesn't exactly regret it the morning after, but in the light of day some of the things he said feel so goddamned revealing. He takes a few days off from the library at Jimin's urging, but he still gets coffee with Yoongi on campus. They don't talk about the disastrous workshop presentation, and for a moment Namjoon wonders if Yoongi's going to pretend their conversation never happened. But before the two of them head their separate ways he asks, a little shyly, if Namjoon would like to talk about how they can both help each other out.
They end up settling on a slightly more formalized version of what they've been doing—regular study dates in the library, now with predetermined start and end times, a commitment to leaving together in the evening and to regular dinners, weekly check-ins on writing progress. It's nothing much, but the seriousness with which Yoongi treats their arrangement warms him. Being treated with care by this person whose regard he has come to crave above all else fills him with a steady stream of hopeful excitement. It makes him happy.
So he works on his research, on his own but, for the first time in a long time, not alone. He takes advantage of the end of the term, during which he paradoxically has a bit more time, since he's no longer running discussion sections, to write a lot of shitty drafts of his second dissertation chapter so that one day he can write a good one. He luxuriates in Yoongi's presence in his life, his quick mind, his bizarre sense of humor.
And at the same time, he thinks. He keeps turning what Yoongi said over and over in his head, about making time and space for himself, the parts of himself that aren't his work. Does he have those parts still? He must have had it, at some point, but his mind feels like a mess of tangled cables, hopelessly mixed up and unusable because of it. Questions he hasn't let himself ask for years, about what he wants from life, about whether this work can actually make him happy, bubble up to the surface. He would blame Yoongi for bringing it up, except that he knows he's right.
Some of these thoughts he shares with Yoongi, whose responses range from commiseration to thoughtful reflections, steeped in a wisdom that leaves Namjoon constantly in awe, though he's slightly more able to mask it when he's not three plus beers in.
"I've thought about this a lot," Yoongi nods when Namjoon asks him about continuing in academia. "I don't think any job can make you happy. And academia is just a job when it comes down to it. It's more like, can I live the life I want to live while working this job, and some of that is about the work itself—research and teaching and grants and whatever—and some of it is about your life outside of that. I'm still working it out for myself, but I think that's how I want to approach it."
Some of these thoughts he doesn’t share with Yoongi. Because, more than anything else, Namjoon thinks about what Yoongi said about dating and relationships, and if it could be true. If there might be a chance for him, for them, after all.
He tries to reconstruct the thought process that made him so sure that he didn't have time to date. "Married to the work" is the phrase that comes to mind. His research owns him, mind, body, and soul. His life is small, he has made his life small on purpose, small enough that he could cover and control it within his own tiny grasp.
But what has he gotten out of that, really? He is fragile, the flex and stretch of him atrophied, his heart brittle with disuse. All it took was this single misstep with his advisor to send him reeling, and it’s not even the first time. Truly, when he thinks about it, spending all this time with Yoongi recently has made him more productive, not less. Or at least that's how it feels. And if that's not true, what of it? Shouldn't his happiness matter to him for its own sake, not just for how it affects his output?
So he begins to wonder what it would be like to date Yoongi. In his fantasies, he imagines that it would be much like the relationship they already have—quiet and quotidian in some ways, but full of passion and energy at the same time. Except if they were together, he would finally get to kiss him, something he can now admit to himself that he's thought about many, many times. They could hold hands, like they did in the pub, but without having to wonder or second-guess about whether it's okay. Namjoon would be allowed to touch Yoongi everywhere he wants to, to feel his skin heat when he blushes, the vibrations of his low voice in his chest. Maybe Yoongi would fuck him, if he asked nicely. It's been so long since he's been properly fucked. Maybe he'd let Namjoon do the fucking, let him in to relish the warmth of him, let him hold and squeeze and thrust.
He gets dizzy with the imagination of it, but for once he doesn't tell himself off for fantasizing. Even if he'll never truly be able to have Yoongi that way, even if he doesn't want Namjoon in return, he tries to believe there's nothing wrong with wanting it. When did he start believing that it was wrong for him to want things in the first place?
It's a normal Saturday afternoon when Namjoon finally breaks. The term ended just a few days ago, and the stacks are truly deserted for the first time since the school year began. Normally, Namjoon would find the abandoned library creepy, if not a little sad, but with Yoongi here it feels sort of magical instead, like a secret hideout the two of them share. He's almost gotten used to how cheesy his own thoughts become when he's thinking about Yoongi.
Yoongi appears to be kicking it old school today, a massive hardcover lying on one side and notebook open on the other, twirling a pen absently as he rests his hand on the page. Namjoon gets a little lost looking at the deft movements of his fingers, the clear definition of his knuckles and veins.
"Go on a date with me." The words come out of his mouth, completely unpremeditated. He feels his cheeks heat.
Yoongi looks at him in surprise. Now that the question is out there, Namjoon finds he doesn't want to take it back. He swallows his embarrassment and doubles down. "Um. Please?"
"What?" Yoongi turns to him, looking bewildered.
"It's just, I'm sitting here thinking about how pretty your hands are, and whenever we're not hanging out I'm thinking about you and wondering what you're doing, and unless I'm really misreading something here you're not entirely unattracted to me, and I just. I think we could be really good together. I think we should try."
"Oh." Yoongi's mouth hangs open a bit in surprise. This had certainly not been planned on Namjoon's part, but even if it had been he would not have expected this reaction. Yoongi seems genuinely shocked.
Namjoon swallows back his disappointment. He'd promised himself he wouldn't be weird about it if Yoongi wasn't interested, and he’s going to make good on that promise.
"Uhh, but if I am reading things wrong that's also totally okay. I didn't mean to...make this... uncomfortable..." Namjoon trails off, trying and failing to understand the look on Yoongi's face.
"You...want to go on a date with me? You think we should date?" Yoongi asks, sounding incredulous.
"Umm. Yes? Is that really so hard to believe?" he asks, feeling oddly bitter about it. "I thought I was getting pretty obvious about it."
Yoongi shakes his head as if he's dismissing a particularly silly idea. "Of course I knew there was something there, I'm not an idiot. And luckily neither are you."
It takes a moment for the implications of what Yoongi's saying to hit him.
"So...I wasn't reading this wrong? You're into me too?"
"Of course I am," he huffs, and even though he's talking like it's a foregone conclusion, Namjoon sees his cheeks and ears start to turn pink. His heart does a stupid little fluttery thing in his chest.
"Wait, but. If you're into me and I'm into you and it's really obvious to everyone, why are you so surprised?"
"I just never thought that dating is something you'd be interested in," Yoongi says with a shrug.
"Why not? What's holding us back?"
"Well, we did have this whole conversation not two weeks ago about how you're too emotionally caught up in your dissertation to be in a relationship," Yoongi points out reasonably.
"Okay, yes, that is true. But I was being stupid and you were being a very smart and wise hyung and told me that that's bullshit."
Yoongi cracks a smile but quickly turns serious again, smile morphing into more of a grimace. "You weren't being stupid, Namjoon-ah. If that's how you feel, that's how you feel. I don't want you to jump into a relationship you don't want just because you know I'm interested."
"No, it's not that, hyung, I promise. After that conversation, I really thought about it, you know? Like, what am I doing here, what do I want out of my life other than this project? What kind of life do I want to lead? And I don't know the answer to all of those questions yet, nowhere close, but I do know that I like you. I think you're the best, and I want to know you as much as I can, and I want to be with you, in any way you'll let me." Namjoon is breathing heavily by the time he gets all of that out, but it feels good to have come out and said it.
"Oh," Yoongi says, sounding as breathless and Namjoon feels. "Well, in that case."
A disturbing thought occurs to Namjoon. "Are you sure? I don't want to like, pressure you or anything, just because I obviously want this a lot and—"
Yoongi interrupts him with an eye roll. "Of course I'm sure. It's just that I can never tell with you, you're so goddamned timid with me sometimes. It makes me feel like I'm pushing you around. What happens to spitfire academic debater Namjoon Kim when we talk about this kind of stuff, huh?"
Namjoon squirms in his chair, feeling called out, but it's all surface ripples over a deep current of rising excitement. Yoongi thinks he's attractive. Yoongi, the single coolest, smartest, prettiest, wisest person he's ever met, wants to go on a date with him.
"Okay so. Date?" Namjoon says, practically bouncing in his seat with excitement.
Yoongi rolls his eyes but Namjoon can see the genuine happiness underneath the put-upon act. It makes him so giddy himself that he can't stop himself from surging up from his chair and pressing his lips against Yoongi's in an overexcited peck.
For a split second Namjoon regrets his rashness. But then Yoongi leans forward to catch his lips again and they're kissing, kissing for real, wet and probably a little sloppier than necessary, but so so sweet.
Their position is awkward, Namjoon hunched over while Yoongi is still in his seat, and soon Namjoon wants more access than he can get through the arms of the library chairs. As if reading his mind, Yoongi rises to his feet, grasping at Namjoon’s shoulders and chest to get closer. Namjoon grabs him by the back of his legs and lifts him bodily to the desk, placing him down as gently as possible in a gap between towers of books.
"Is this okay?" Namjoon asks, his lips brushing Yoongi's as he speaks, cradling his jaw in the palm of one hand.
Yoongi brings their lips together forcefully for a second, then catches Namjoon's lower lip between his teeth and bites down, hard enough to make him gasp.
He pulls back with a huff. "Yes, it's okay, Joon-ah.”
"It's just, I know we're in public, and I just want to be, you know, respectful of your boundaries and stuff."
“That’s very sweet of you, Namjoonie. But maybe I want you to boss me around a little, did that ever occur to you?" Yoongi raises a challenging eyebrow at him and before he knows it Namjoon is gathering Yoongi’s wrists together in one hand and pressing them against the surface of the desk behind him. He steps in close between Yoongi's legs where they dangle over the edge, forcing them open.
"Like this?" he breathes. His mind has yet to catch up to the fact that he's about to start making out with Yoongi in the stacks but his body has certainly already gotten the memo, blood rushing south as his dick starts to fill.
"You think you can handle that?" Yoongi shoots back, his voice already going breathless, and Namjoon drops his hands to grab Yoongi's hips and grind their cocks together. Some long-dormant thing inside him thrills when Yoongi lets out a groan and doesn't move his hands.
"Yeah," Namjoon says against the shell of Yoongi's ear. He shivers against him. "I think I can handle you."
It's so easy, to be in charge like this. Yoongi is so easy for him. It may have been a while since he's done something like this, but with Yoongi's soft, warm body beneath his hands, Namjoon knows exactly how to touch him, how tight to hold him, how to guide the bend of his neck, the motion of his hips. Yoongi gives in and that’s easy too, pressing into Namjoon's hold, gracing him with deep hums and groans of pleasure.
It's the week after finals and the campus is mostly empty, let alone their corner of the stacks, but Namjoon loves the thrill of danger that comes from knowing that anyone could walk in at any time and see them. He'd never fancied himself an exhibitionist, but right now there's nothing he wants more than for people to see them and know Yoongi is his. He latches onto the side of Yoongi's neck and sucks a rough mark into his unblemished skin, gripping harder at his hips when Yoongi moans and arches into his mouth.
"So it's like that, huh?" Yoongi asks between pants, overwhelmed but apparently not so much that he can't be a smartass. "Marking your territory? Want everyone to look at me and know I'm yours?"
Namjoon straight up growls, which should be mortifying but he's far too horny to care. He bites into the meat of Yoongi's shoulder, hard, and Yoongi lets out a yell, soft but still definitely the loudest he's been so far. It pulls Namjoon out of it just long enough to look around him for any bystanders who might have been alerted to their presence. Once he's confirmed they're still alone, he returns to Yoongi's mouth, wrapping both hands around the back of his neck, stroking at the curve of his jaw with his thumbs. Yoongi surges forward into the kiss, sucks Namjoon’s tongue into his mouth. He feels it like there’s a direct line from his mouth to his dick.
Namjoon pulls away and rests his forehead against Yoongi's. "Fuck. I want that, you know,” he pants into his mouth.
Yoongi makes a questioning noise and it's so cute Namjoon has to kiss him again. Suddenly he can't stop himself from being horribly earnest, the veil of their little game dropping away to leave nothing but honest desire, a desire that stretches beyond this moment, an insatiable hunger for Yoongi and everything he is.
"I-I know this is just starting and technically we haven't even been on a date yet and this is way too fast, but I do want you to be mine. For real."
Yoongi looks back at him, dazed stars in his eyes. He nods. "Okay, Namjoon-ah. We can do that, I want that too."
Namjoon kisses him again, ravenous and searching, a terrible, grasping thing. He wants to swallow him whole, wants to crawl inside him and never come out.
"Wish I could fuck you for real," Namjoon says. "Just open you up and take you right on this fucking desk."
Yoongi seems to like that idea just as much as he does, because he hooks his ankles behind Namjoon's back and draws him in closer, rubbing their cocks together. Namjoon knows without a doubt that he could come that way, easy, but he wants more and revels in the wanting, the excess he's been denying himself for all too long.
He drops to his knees.
"God, fuck, Joon-ah," Yoongi groans, looking down at Namjoon between his legs. "You're so hot holy shit how did you get so hot."
Namjoon ignores him, quickly unzipping Yoongi's jeans and pulling out his hard cock. It's the perfect size in his hand, slim and pretty, and he wastes no time at all in swallowing it down.
It's been so long he'd almost forgotten how it feels to have a dick in his mouth. It's glorious. Luckily, he hasn't forgotten what to do with it once it's there. He licks and sucks exploratorily, getting it nice and wet before he starts up a rhythm, taking him deeper and deeper with each stroke until his nose presses to the wiry hair at the base. Yoongi threads his fingers through his hair, not tugging or guiding, just present, and Namjoon luxuriates in the feeling of being held.
It's not long before Yoongi tenses up, babbling out a warning that Namjoon ignores. Namjoon swallows eagerly around Yoongi’s cock as he comes down his throat. His only regret is that he can't see his face.
As soon as Yoongi starts to come down, Namjoon pulls off to shove a hand down his own pants and begins jerking his cock furiously, eyes on Yoongi the whole time. He's so unbelievably turned on that all it takes is a few seconds for him to fall over the edge, spilling hot and copious into his own hand.
Namjoon blinks his eyes open from his orgasm and sees Yoongi looking down at him, something like awe in his face. He pouts and makes grabby hands at him until Namjoon gets up from the ground, awkwardly looking around for something to do with his palmful of cum. Yoongi just beckons him closer and then looks up at Namjoon through his lashes as he licks his hand clean. It's so simultaneously gross and hot that Namjoon feels his spent dick twitch in the conditioned library air.
Yoongi licks his lips as if to get the last of it off and then pouts again. He doesn't seem genuinely upset, so Namjoon can't stop himself from pressing a peck to his bottom lip.
"What is it baby? Not good enough for you?" Namjoon teases—he has zero doubts that it was absolutely good enough for him, based on the healthy flush in his cheeks and the way he's still panting a little bit.
"I wanted a turn," Yoongi whines. "Do you know how long it's been since I've sucked dick? I'm so good at it too, you'll see."
Namjoon can't hold back the laugh that leaks out of him then. He makes up for it by covering Yoongi's face in little kisses, his smile so wide he can barely manage even that.
"I'm sure you are, baby," he says teasing but absolutely meaning it at the same time. He has no doubt that Yoongi would be incredible at anything he set his mind to.
Yoongi nods seriously and then bursts into laughter of his own. He draws Namjoon close with arms around his back and snuggles up under his chin. His body feels small and warm in Namjoon's arms and he can't resist squeezing tight until Yoongi complains and starts wriggling away. There's this rushing swell of affection and joy bubbling inside him and trying to get out. It's a miracle he doesn't spontaneously break into song or something.
"So...about this date," Yoongi says once they've cleaned themselves up some. Yoongi is fiddling with his stack of books, consolidating after their vigorous activities caused some disarray.
Namjoon makes an encouraging noise as he attends to his own stuff.
"How about now?" Yoongi asks. There’s a sly turn to his voice that catches Namjoon’s attention.
"What?" Namjoon asks before his meaning catches up to him. "I mean, sure, but I don't have anything planned. Do you have something in mind?"
"Of course I do," Yoongi says nonchalantly. "I've been thinking about this for a long time."
"Yeah?" Namjoon says, feeling giddy. "Me too."
Yoongi smiles at him, big and crinkly and sweet, and just like always it makes Namjoon want to kiss him. Except this time, he can.
So he does.