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It’s ridiculous. It’s terrible and ridiculous and Namjoon is an adult, he should be past these ridiculous things, but—
“Who,” is all he can get out of his mouth, wet-haired and salt-sticky and hiding inelegantly behind a pillar as if he’s an elementary school kid playing hide-and-seek rather than a man in his twenties with a full-time career and other responsibilities that he should be attending to at this current moment.
Taehyung raises an eyebrow at him, hands on his hips as he, unhidden by the pillar, glances back over his shoulder in the very direction that Namjoon is trying not to be seen from. He stares, for a moment, and then turns to Namjoon with a sly, knowing grin.
“Who what,” he teases. “Use your words, hyung.”
Namjoon thunks his head quietly against the pillar, groaning. “You know what I mean, Taehyung-ah.”
A shrug, a teasing waggle of thick brows. “I don’t, actually.”
“I’m your senior,” Namjoon grumbles.
“Technically, we don’t even work in the same department,” says Taehyung, shrugging.
Another groan. Namjoon fixes Taehyung with the harshest look he can while flustered and hiding behind a pole, which admittedly isn’t very harsh at all. “Fine,” he says. “Who is that?”
And this time he gestures, beyond the pillar and into the sunlit area beyond, where groups of children and parents crowd around the touch pool, manned by someone who Namjoon had never seen in his life before three minutes ago when he’d wandered into the area expecting Hoseok or Taehyung and seen, instead, this beautiful specimen with smiling eyes and short, blunt-cut hair sticking out from beneath a baseball cap.
Someone who Namjoon wouldn’t usually pay a terrible amount of attention to, beyond a cursory oh, he’s really cute, isn’t he sort of glance, until he’d honed in on the guy’s shirt, the aquarium polo, the very same shirt that he, and Taehyung, and Hoseok, and Yoongi, and tens of other employees are wearing. A shirt that Namjoon, as head aquarist, should know the name of everyone wearing, but apparently doesn’t, because Small, Smiley, and Handsome is a completely foreign face to him.
And frankly, he doesn’t know if he’s more bothered by the fact that not knowing feels like he’s slacking on the job, or that he doesn’t know who this guy is because he’s cute.
Which, again. Namjoon is an adult and not susceptible to these things at all, thanks. So clearly, he must just be disappointed in himself for not knowing the ins and outs of his job and his juniors like he’s paid to do.
Taehyung snorts. “Jimin just started this week. Marine science grad student volunteering for experience hours.”
“Huh,” Namjoon hums. That should feel a little bit better—he’s not always up to date on the volunteers who work outside of his usual stomping ground in the tanks and larger exhibits—but still, Namjoon feels like there’s oceanic pressure in his chest compressing his heart into a crumpled little ball.
Dramatic. He’s being dramatic. That usually means he’s stressed out, which means he needs to decompress, which generally means he heads out to the touch pools to soak his hands and let tiny little crab feet scuttle across the backs of them, but—
But there’s a cute boy standing by the touch pools and Namjoon is still mostly wet and definitely still smells like shrimp from the minke whales’ afternoon feeding that he hasn’t had time to shower off from because the husbandry wing locker room showers were full and he needed to destress because Bada, their newest rescue, wasn’t doing well with her injured dorsal fin this morning, and—
“Hyung.”
Taehyung has both hands on Namjoon’s shoulders now, staring him directly in the eyes. He’s been around Namjoon since they were bunking in a tiny apartment in post-grad, knows already that if he gets too into his head, the only way to snap him out of it is to let him play with tiny little sea creatures—back then, it had meant a field trip down to the COEX Aquarium touch pools to wade through the lines of people to run his fingers along the ridges of the sea pineapples and let the red garras nibble at his palms. Now, it means spending his breaks wandering to the much smaller touch pool of their little marine life rescue to pick up tiny crabs and to let whoever’s on duty talk to him about how the animals have been doing this week.
Except said person is usually Taehyung, or sometimes Hoseok, if he doesn’t have a volunteer on the schedule for the day—two people he’s known for years now, and not a veritable stranger. A hot stranger.
Not that this is about how hot the stranger is or anything.
“He’s nice,” Taehyung insists. The hands on Namjoon’s shoulders pry him from the pillar, and Taehyung takes careful steps backwards, gripping Namjoon’s polo tight so he moves with him.
“I…” Namjoon glances over his shoulders, at the new guy—at Jimin—crouching down to talk to a little girl with both of her hands submerged in the pool. “I’m sure he is. Hoseok doesn’t let volunteers in who aren’t.”
“Then go,” says Taehyung, and bodily nudges him out of the shade and into the bright sunlight of the touch pools.
It’s a pretty quiet day—a Tuesday with no school trips scheduled, so the only people littering the edges of the pools are a few sets of parents with children who haven’t quite hit school age yet, and a couple or two, flirting by flicking water at each other under Jimin’s intermittent scrutinizing gaze, making sure they’re not harming the life beneath.
Namjoon takes a seat on an empty stretch of the ledge around the pool, stripping off his watch and hooking it haphazardly through one of the belt loops in the back of his shorts. He dips a hand into the cool water cautiously, so as not to startle the creatures around him, and then slowly submerges it. There isn’t a lot of motion on this side of the pool, but he smiles to himself as he sees a grey blob come sailing in his direction and reaches his fingers to gently run across the rubbery skin.
There’s a quiet gasp from his side. The little girl who Jimin had been talking to before is staring wide-eyed at him from between her parents’ knees.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” she asks, incredulous. The water from her hands is dripping in twin puddles next to her sneakers, droplets flying in escape as she waves them around with each word.
Namjoon shakes his head, offering a small smile. “Haemuljeon’s not a dangerous stingray. He lives here at the rescue because he got hurt and his stinger doesn’t work anymore, so he can’t protect himself if he’s ever attacked.”
The girl snickers. “Haemuljeon?”
“Tell me he’s not a seafood pancake,” Namjoon laughs in return. “Want to try petting him?”
The girl glances up at her parents, who nod in approval, and then past Namjoon, where he assumes Jimin is watching as well, which. Yeah, that’s a thing. Good thing that if there’s one area of expertise he can keep his cool with when being stared at by a hot guy, it’s marine life.
Well, sort of.
The problem is that when the little girl has had her share of brushing her fingers across Haemuljeon’s slick, rough back, she tugs Namjoon’s wrist over to the center of the pool, where the sea stars cling to their rocks under the water, and Jimin follows from a close enough distance that Namjoon can feel eyes on the back of his neck.
But again, he’s an adult with a graduate degree and a career, so naturally a hot guy watching him shouldn’t affect his ability to be a good guide, even if this is usually Taehyung, or Hoseok, or said hot guy’s job.
The girl kneels on the ledge around the pool and points to a rock just out of her reach, where she can’t quite touch the starfish, but they’re right in her line of vision.
“What are their names, oppa?” she asks, even though their names are printed on a placard just next to her—and Namjoon realizes he’s not sure if she’s even reading age yet, and he has no idea what a child who is reading age actually looks like, and he clearly doesn’t spend as much time around the children who visit the rescue as he’d thought, always tucked behind the scenes and only resurfacing when the touch pools aren’t empty.
But still, determined, Namjoon points to the closest star to them, a vibrant purple with white speckles—“That’s Bora, she’s a Northern Pacific sea star”—to a bright red one with black horns—“Choco is a horned sea star, but we sometimes call them chocolate chip sea stars because their horns look like little chocolate chips. They’re not native to Korea, so when our researchers found him washed up on the rocks, they took him in to keep him and our waters safe”—and to another, the furthest away, cream-colored with purple, Bora’s inverse—“And that’s Byeol—”
The girl’s face twists into a pout, eyebrows furrowed.
Namjoon frowns. “Is something wrong?”
“You guys pick boring names,” she says, crossing her arms. “Bora for the purple one, Choco for the chocolate chip one, and Byeol—”
“I didn’t name them,” Namjoon defends with a shrug. Sure, he named Haemuljeon, but he accepts no constructive criticism about that one. And then he laughs at the girl’s small pout. “I think they’re clever, actually.”
The girl’s arms don’t uncross, but she does look past Namjoon for a moment, and past Jimin, to where her parents must still be standing in the shade, and then she breathes such a world-weary sigh for such a small kid.
“Thank you for telling me their names, oppa,” she says, and she might mean it, just a little bit, by the small smile on her face. “Even if they’re silly.”
And before Namjoon can reply, she hops down from the ledge and back over to the hand washing station, her father following dutifully, and her mother as well, after a quiet bow and a mouthed, “thank you,” to Namjoon, who feels a little undeserving of the praise when he’s just said a few names and stumbled his way through an explanation that Hoseok and Taehyung and Seokjin’s animal names aren’t that bad.
When she’s gone, scurried off with one of her parents’ hands in each of hers, Jimin stands next to the ledge Namjoon is still sitting on, a mirthful little smile on his face that makes his eyes glitter, and Namjoon—
Namjoon is fucked, actually. Fucked and very, very enthralled by Jimin’s smile lines and tiny little half-there dimples that are barely visible in the shade from the brim of his baseball cap.
“Wait until she finds out that the newborn mako shark’s name is literally Agi Sangeo,” he chuckles, readjusting the cap so it sits a little further from his face, and—oh, oh no, Oh No He’s Hot.
(Not that Namjoon didn’t already know that from the view from afar, but now that more of his face is on display and it looks like that, sharp eyes and thick lips and soft cheeks, Namjoon is sorely reminded of the fact that he likely still smells like shrimp.)
He half-sings a weak, “Dududududu,” as he stands up, dusting off his shorts. “Er, Kim Namjoon, head aquarist.”
“Park Jimin, volunteer.” Jimin takes his extended hand, smile growing into something wider, kinder, less teasing. “A very noble and high-powered job I’ve got, I’m sure.”
Namjoon frowns. “But it is, though? We’re just a small rescue, we couldn’t get nearly as much done around here without the help of vol—”
“I was joking,” says Jimin, a single eyebrow raised. He huffs a small laugh. “Nice to see that you’d defend my honor, though.”
Namjoon, to his credit, only makes the tiniest noise of despair. Only hesitates and coughs for a fraction of a second before stuttering, “Well, technically, it’s, uh, about all the volunteers’ honor? Everyone’s, like, valid. Every volunteer we get is important to the day to day functions of the rescue, and—”
Blessedly—a huge thank you to Jeon Jeongguk for his tendency to speak as loud as he can on the staff walkie talkies because, quote, “You’re all old and can’t hear me otherwise”—the walkie clipped to Namjoon’s pocket erupts in a cacophony of static and electronic squealing before Jeongguk’s voice comes through, saying, “Namjoon-hyung, it’s almost time for seal feeding, and your favorite child is asking for you. Over and out.”
As if on cue, Agwi brays a terrible bark-whine of a noise, and Namjoon groans, shoulders falling. He loves Agwi, he does—has been there since he was born premature from an older spotted seal they’d found washed up and stuck in the rocks along the coastline—but he’s also a terrible little gremlin who takes whatever kind of delight seals can get out of making Namjoon’s job a little harder.
Unclipping the walkie from his pocket, he makes brief eye contact with Jimin, whose brow is still raised, only now he appears to be physically biting down on a laugh. Namjoon isn’t sure if it’s with him or at him.
“Your favorite child awaits,” says Jimin, and yeah, definitely at him. Especially when Namjoon makes a series of surprised noises (at nearly being late for a feeding, at his inability to properly clip his walkie back to his shorts, at the ridiculous situation he’s in) on his way out of the touch pool area, and Jimin’s only response is, “Your boot is untied.”
Which it is, because again: no time to shower, even less time to get dressed properly. Kim Namjoon: Human Disaster, always running a thousand miles a minute. At the very least, his polo isn’t inside out (this time).
At the end of the day, Namjoon is exhausted. He’s got half an hour until he technically can go home, but he finished up the last of his to-do list, besides shooting off a few emails, an hour ago and is now lounging flat on his back on the walkway next to an empty tank outside of the seal room, staring up at the ceiling in relative silence, other than the occasional splash from Jeongguk, who’s swimming laps with the skimmer in hand, picking up debris. They’re still a couple of weeks out from getting an injured bottlenose dolphin from Seogwipo sent over for rehabilitation, but Jeongguk is Jeongguk, and he doesn’t like being still for too long, so—
“So,” says Jeongguk, surfacing with his arms propping himself up on the platform, skimmer floating in the pool water behind him. His hair is somehow both slick to his forehead with water and sticking up all over the place, and that combined with the faded cherry color sort of makes him look like the human embodiment of an anemone. Namjoon snorts involuntarily, and Jeongguk fakes a deep glare at him. “Fine, I won’t tell you what Hoseok-hyung told me.”
Namjoon lifts his head slightly. His hair is still wet, too, just enough to drip into his eyes as he does so—thankfully, he’s had time for a quick locker room shower since the unfortunate afternoon, so it smells like shampoo, rather than fish. “Sorry, you just looked funny. Continue with Hoseok’s sage advice.”
Jeongguk huffs. “It wasn’t advice. More like... gossip?”
Namjoon’s eyebrows furrow on their own volition. Jeongguk must take that as the insistence to go on that it sort of is, because he continues.
“Apparently a volunteer told him that someone who works here and was hanging around the touch pools had a nice ass.”
Namjoon promptly chokes on absolutely nothing, scrambling to sit up further, weight rested on his elbows so he can properly display his horrified shock to Jeongguk, who’s just smiling, eyes closed, a little serene, a lot shit-eating.
“That’s—” Namjoon splutters, “that’s—unprofessional—”
Jeongguk chuckles. “Jimin-hyung and Hoseok-hyung are old friends, it wasn’t, like, water cooler talk between strangers.”
“Oh.” Namjoon is suddenly very aware of his ass beneath him, pressed against the non-slip flooring. He’s always thought of it as modest, adequate, but he’s also been tagging along with some of his neighbors to their Pilates classes lately, so.
Jeongguk vaults himself into a backflip off of the edge of the tank, landing back into the water with a loud splash before Namjoon can say anything else on the topic, so he takes it as a sign that they’ve moved on.
Except Namjoon hasn’t, because he’s thinking about Jimin. Mostly about the fact that Jimin apparently thinks he has a nice ass, which is certainly a Thing That Is Happening.
He’s fairly sure that Jimin probably has a nice ass too. Not like he was looking, he just seems like the kind of person that would have a fitness routine that is at least in part specifically tailored to keeping his ass perky and round.
Namjoon’s really making a lot of assumptions about someone he’s had one stumbling, awkward forty-five second conversation with.
By the time he finally rejoins the land of the living, rather than staring at the ceiling and dissociating, Jeongguk has floated to the other end of the tank and is now upright and staring in the general direction of the room’s entrance, like someone’s there. Probably Seokjin, coming to yell at him for not responding to his emails yet, something like this entire establishment will Thanos snap into oblivion if you do not email the supplier for the new tank’s salinity monitor within the next ten minutes, Kim Namjoon, even though the supplier has been closed for the better part of an hour now and the salinity monitor is already in transit to the rescue, so.
Jeongguk isn’t looking at the intruder in the same way he usually looks at Seokjin, though—which is to say, absolutely feral and borderline inappropriate for public places—he’s looking at them with a different kind of fond ribbing on his face, the I know something you don’t look.
Except apparently the look is for Namjoon and not the other person who’s entered, because Jeongguk turns it on him instead, and Namjoon is ready to bolt when he hears a voice that freezes him to the spot.
“Not to intrude,” says the disembodied voice, light and breezy and the slightest touch gravelly, “and I’m fairly certain volunteers aren’t technically meant to be back here, but I believe this may be yours.”
And oh. Oh god. Striding up the steps to where Namjoon is sprawled, half-damp, on the ground are a pair of thick-soled shoes that lead his eyes up strong calves to a pair of even thicker thighs, and wow, the assumption that Jimin has a nice ass was pretty on the nose (On the ass? Anyway) when it’s right in Namjoon’s line of vision.
He’s dangling something black between his fingers, smirking, and it’s only when the overhead lights glint off of it and the water reflects off the screen that Namjoon realizes it’s his watch. The watch he’d tried to thread into the loop of his shorts so he didn’t kill it in the touch pool, but forgot about entirely between the little girl and Jimin. Right.
“You’re allowed back here,” he says, stupidly, because why would he respond to the thing Jimin actually came here for when Namjoon is a Certified, Grade-A Dumbass? “Jeongguk and I are here, and volunteers are allowed to be in staff areas as long as there’s a staff member around to superv—”
“Yes, that’s hyung’s watch,” Jeongguk says from the water, and behind Jimin’s leg, Namjoon can see him mouth… something. Wall key meow? Namjoon furrows his brows. WikiHow? Jeongguk huffs and tries again. Walk, and he mimes two fingers walking across the surface of the water, him, and the points at Jimin, who doesn’t seem to notice what he’s doing, out, and he yanks a thumb in the direction of the door Jimin had just come in. Dumbass hyung, he adds cheerfully, and Namjoon needs no clarification for that one.
Namjoon scrambles to his feet, acutely aware now of the fact that a. Jimin has discussed his ass with Hoseok, and b. he is wearing shorts that emphasize said ass today. Of all the days to pull out the little khaki shorts that just barely meet the dress code, it had to be this very one.
“Thank you,” he says, accepting the watch. Over Jimin’s shoulder, Jeongguk raises his eyebrows fervently, eyes widening to an even more impossible size, and Namjoon, somehow, manages to get out, “I can walk you back to the front office, if you’re done for the day? There’s a quicker way to it through the staff rooms.”
Jimin’s expression shifts, amusement to soft surprise, and Namjoon might die a little inside over the careful smile that rises to his face. One of his front teeth is crooked when he smiles and oh, that’s devastating.
“Sure,” says Jimin. “It’s really hot outside, so.”
Namjoon’s probably zoning out. He definitely is, by the way Jeongguk stares bug-eyed and threatening at him, for someone who’s actually too nice to ever be threatening. He blinks back to consciousness, fastening the watch back around his wrist, and says, “Right! The office is just a couple rooms away, so if you want…”
He steps closer to the room’s exit, not before Jeongguk shouts a loud, obnoxious “BYE, HYUNGS!” at their retreating backs, and Namjoon aims a special certain finger his way after ushering Jimin through the door.
It’s a quiet walk into the first room—nothing much to see, just screens and lights and meters and other mechanical, electrical things that are Yoongi’s forte, rather than Namjoon’s—and Namjoon is acutely aware of the awkward pattering of his sneakers on the hard flooring, in comparison to the sure, confident footfall of Jimin’s heavy shoes.
He wonders if Jimin can smell fear. Or maybe hear the way his heart is pounding, the way a shark can hear their prey’s.
Or maybe not, because Jimin is a human being and not a shark, even if being followed by him feels a lot like how he imagines a mackerel feels being trailed by a shark in the wild.
The next door, after a short hallway outside of the mechanic room, leads to a space unlit by any artificial source, but rather glowing from the thick glass pane that takes up most of the longest wall, sunlight filtering through deep water to bathe the room in natural—yet unnatural—blue light. It’s hard for Namjoon to see, myopic vision failing him as always, but he manages to catch the doorknob on the other side of the room on the third try, before realizing Jimin isn’t right behind him anymore, because he practically has his face pushed against the glass, mouth open in a small O and eyes so, so wide.
Unfair for him to be both cute and hot but like, whatever.
“Um,” says Namjoon, hand on the knob, “the office is two more doors down if you—”
“What?” Jimin starts, turning his face away from the tank and back to Namjoon. The teasing smile is back, and this is definitely unfair. “Not gonna give me a tour, hyung?”
Namjoon steps away from the door, into the blue light. Jimin’s baseball cap is gone, hung between two fingers, and his hair sticking up at odd angles in a way that almost looks intentional, artful, the messy ends of it turquoise in the light.
“Oh,” Namjoon says dumbly. “This is the observation room for the largest salt water tank. There’s not a lot going on in it right now—we only keep larger animals for as long as it takes to fully rehabilitate them after injuries. But if you look up, you can probably see Jin-hyung checking up on Bada.”
Jimin hums lightly, angling his long neck to look up, further into the tank. “Bada?”
“Minke whale,” says Namjoon. “We’ve had her for about three weeks, since some divers called Jin-hyung about her. We think a whale watching boat may have gotten too close and their propeller cut her dorsal fin pretty badly.”
Jimin frowns. He must see her, by the way his eyes go big, wide, sad. “Is she getting better, at least?”
Namjoon sighs. “Overall, yes. She has good days and bad days. Today was… not a good one.”
Another frown. Jimin turns back to Namjoon, and Namjoon thinks maybe he can sense the tension and worry that’s crept down his spine, stiffened his shoulders, because he smiles again, easy and soft.
“I see someone’s vying for Agwi’s spot as your favorite child,” he says, grinning.
It startles a laugh out of Namjoon, who leans next to the glass pane to look at Jimin properly. “Agwi,” he starts, voice put-upon, “is my terrible, smelly son who I love at the end of the day, like… like Jeongguk. Bada is my sweet darling daughter who’s never done anything wrong a day in her life, kind of like, I dunno, Hoseok?”
“So you’re saying Hoseok-hyung reminds you of an injured whale.”
Namjoon snorts. “Not in… so many words.”
Jimin laughs, and it’s a high, hiccuping sound that Namjoon can feel all the way down to his toes. He’s too gone for this boy right now. Oh god.
“Okay, I’m done teasing you. I really do need to get on the next bus out of here to go get some classwork done,” Jimin chuckles. Even in the dimness of the room, his smile is cute. Terrible, really. “Where’s the front office again?”
And so Namjoon takes him through one more room, the small staff cafeteria that’s less of a cafeteria and more of a small room with a table, refrigerator, microwave, and vending machine full of snacks, where Hoseok lifts his head from a stack of papers at the table and waves a warm goodbye on their way out.
The office is mostly empty, save for a couple of scattered people at their desks, finishing some last minute work before leaving for the day—which Namjoon should be doing, rather than lingering awkwardly at the edge of the counter while Jimin signs himself out for the day on the volunteer sheet. He doesn’t even have anything planned to say, really, other than a goodbye? It would be rude to just leave without saying anything, right? Jimin’s new here, even for a volunteer, and Namjoon doesn’t want to give off the impression that he’s unwelcome at the rescue, or—
Or Namjoon is just really, really attracted to him and wants an excuse to talk longer.
Jimin seems surprised that he’s still there after he’s finished signing out, but before Namjoon can worry about that fact, Jimin’s features melt into a kind smile.
“Thanks for showing me here, Namjoon-ssi,” he says, with a motion that’s somewhere between a bow and a curtsy and a knife between Namjoon’s ribs. “I’d be gross and sweaty from walking through the other way, probably.”
And then he furrows his brows like he didn’t mean to say that, and Namjoon feels mollified. Maybe he’s not the only human disaster here, if even terrifying, ethereal beings like Park Jimin get tongue-tied and say stupid shit.
“Anytime,” he says in return, and hopes Jimin knows that he actually means it, means literally any time you want to spend extra time with me on your way out, I will drop whatever I’m doing to soak up a few moments looking at you. He chances a soft, “You can call me hyung, by the way,” and Jimin grins, chuckles.
“See you later, hyung,” he says, slipping his hat back over his hair with a wink and waving on his way back out the front door.
“I should’ve known you’d be off task again,” comes a voice from behind Namjoon, and he turns to see Seokjin in the office doorway, a hand on his hip and a single eyebrow raised. “But flirting with a volunteer, Namjoon-ah, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Namjoon goes stony-faced. “I was not—”
“Your protests and the way you were quite literally leaning your chin in your hand like a lovestruck twelve-year-old tell two very different stories, Namjoonie,” says Seokjin, tickling under Namjoon’s chin while Namjoon scowls at him to hide his embarrassment at being caught. He breezes past on his way to his office, tossing over his shoulder a light, terrifyingly pleasant, “Now go send those emails before I quite literally sic a shark on you,” and Namjoon doesn’t need to be told twice.
For all their talk about seeing each other around, Namjoon doesn’t actually see Jimin around as often as he’d probably like to.
It makes sense—Jimin’s a student still, and a three-day-a-week volunteer rather than a full-time employee like the rest of them. And by the time the dolphin comes in from Seogwipo (Jeongguk calls her Opal and practically imprints on her like a baby duck), Namjoon spends a healthy chunk of his time between helping Opal get accustomed to the tank, supervising Bada as she builds up her fin strength again, and making sure Agwi doesn’t terrorize the rest of the seals too much.
Jimin isn’t always there when Namjoon does get to resurface, but it’s always a better day when he is. Namjoon’s managed to get him to remember all the names of the animals in the pool, even how to tell apart each of the different crabs and anemones. Jimin, in turn, regales him with stories about the people who have come to the pools, how much of a pain it is sometimes to make sure everyone’s cleaned their hands before and after dipping them into the pool to keep themselves and the animals safe. (“There was a couple who tried to change their baby’s diaper on the ledge around the pool, hyung,” he’d said one day, so horrified that he’d had to hide his face behind his hands. “Who does that?”)
He knows that Fridays are one of Jimin’s usual volunteer days, but on a particularly busy one at the tail end of the summer, he skips out, preferring the darkness and air conditioning of the husbandry wing to the oppressive sunlight and hordes of families crowding the rescue to soak up the last days of summer vacation. Namjoon loves people, but he’s pretty sure if he has to tell someone to please stop knocking on the animals’ tanks to try and get their attention, he’s going to tear his hair out follicle by follicle.
Which would be bad for several reasons, but topping the list right now is because of the fact that the second Namjoon gets off duty and runs to his apartment to clean up and change, he’s heading right back out to Seokjin’s apartment for his annual end of the season staff party, which he has on good authority that Jimin and the other volunteers are being invited to this year as a thanks for sticking with them through such an oppressively hot summer.
Namjoon arrives with alcohol in hand and no real intention to drink much of it, considering he’d biked over and Drunk Namjoon On A Bike is a situation that will never again happen in his life, and probably should have never happened in the first place. He’s past the point of needing a tour of the apartment, has been over enough to know the entire layout, but Seokjin still makes a hard point of pointing out that if any untimely throwing up should happen, to use the guest bathroom and not the master bath, because again, Drunk Namjoon was a mistake.
The way to the kitchen is a tunnel of greetings—Hoseok and Taehyung and Yoongi break from conversation to obnoxiously call out to Namjoon as he passes by, much to his chagrin, and two of his favorite husbandry wing volunteers from this year’s batch, Chaewon and Hyejoo, fist bump him as he crosses the threshold between the living room and kitchen.
And there, in the kitchen, because of course he is when Namjoon is least expecting him, is Jimin, who frowns at the intrusion into the otherwise empty kitchen, but smiles when he realizes who it is.
“Oh!” he says. “Hey, hyung.”
“Hey,” Namjoon greets, leaning against the closest wall. “Surprised you’re not out there,” and he nods to the rest of the party out in the living room.
“I was,” Jimin chuckles, “but being stuck between Jin-hyung and Jeongguk on the couch was like being sandwiched between two angry bulls in the wild and I needed an escape before they started charging at each other.”
A snort, and Namjoon takes a couple steps further into the kitchen. “That’s Jin-hyung and Jeongguk for you, just as horny for each other as the day they got together.”
Jimin pauses, brows furrowed in confusion. “Wait, they’re together?”
For half a second, Namjoon has the tiniest fear that it’s the together that’s bothering him, but then he remembers exactly who his friends and coworkers are and laughs a terrible sort of laugh. “They’ve been together for three…? Yeah, three years. Only reason they don’t live together yet is because Jeongguk’s roommate hasn’t found a new one and he doesn’t want to leave her paying the full rent.”
Jimin laughs, too, somewhere between confused and relieved. “Then literally what is up with the seemingly unresolved sexual tension between the two of them?”
“That’s their thing. Jin-hyung says it, quote, ‘spices up the relationship,’ Jeongguk just likes riling him up.”
“That’s… disgusting, actually.”
“Absolutely disgusting.”
Silence falls, just for a moment, before Jimin glances Namjoon’s way with a grin. “You’re allowed to actually come in, you know,” he chuckles, patting the empty stretch of counter to his side. “I only made that face when I first saw you because I thought you were going to be Jin-hyung. What’s the bottle?”
Namjoon places it on the counter with a thunk, stepping closer to Jimin who smells like sweet cologne and shampoo up close, when they’re not surrounded by tanks of sea creatures, who’s dressed in a loose flannel and sinfully tight black jeans when he’s not in a uniform polo. Jimin takes the bottle with a hum, examining the label while Namjoon watches his expression turn from polite to horrified.
“Is that,” he grimaces, “chocolate cake flavored vodka.”
It’s not even a question. He’s not asking. He looks like he’s about to accidentally throw it on Seokjin’s kitchen tiles.
“I have no alcohol knowledge except that citron is the superior soju flavor and dark beer gives me the hiccups,” is Namjoon’s excuse, which Jimin doesn’t hear because he’s already opening the bottle and tipping it right to his lips, which is… certainly a nice sight. Except when he immediately starts to cough and Namjoon has to guide the bottle back to the counter before Jimin’s flailing really does make it smash on the kitchen floor.
“That is terrible,” Jimin says when he’s finally regained the ability to speak, staring at Namjoon with the exact same look on his face that he’d had when relaying the story of the touch pool and the diaper. Like he’s been personally wronged. But then he narrows his eyes and grabs a cup and some more bottles and sets to work making… something. A carton gets pulled out of the refrigerator and a dark bottle of liqueur get upended into the cup.
Namjoon’s terrible attempt at sounding complimentary comes out as, “You look like you’re getting paid to do this,” and Jimin smirks, making eye contact that, yet again, has Namjoon feeling like Jimin is the shark and he is the prey.
“I do,” Jimin says. “Not at this exact party, but the only reason I can actually afford to spend three afternoons a week volunteering between classes is because I make good tips bartending on the weekends.”
“Oh,” says Namjoon. That… makes sense. The confidence, the easy conversation, the way he carries himself. Or maybe Namjoon is just making a lot of assumptions about bartenders, too.
Jimin hands over the cup after he’s poured at least three things into it. Namjoon eyes it warily after his glowing review of the vodka, but he takes a small sip and smiles, because it’s actually good—which is probably not saying much, because Namjoon has the sweet tooth of an eight-year-old and would like anything that tastes like chocolate and coffee and not much like terrible vodka at all.
Jimin sits on the counter next to where Namjoon’s standing, legs dangling dangerously close to his side, and cracks open a beer.
They sit for a while, the music and chatter from the living room filtering into the kitchen. A door closes somewhere in the distance, too far away to be someone arriving, and Namjoon hopes for Jimin’s—for his own, for everyone’s—sake that it’s Seokjin and Jeongguk finally getting a room.
Jimin places his beer bottle in the empty space between his knees so he can stretch backwards. Namjoon is now acutely aware of the fact that the first few buttons of Jimin’s shirt are undone, and the patch of his chest that peeks between the material is smooth and golden summer tan. He swallows maybe too much of his drink at once as Jimin speaks again.
“So,” he starts, a humming sort of tone that’s warm and sweet and a healthy dose of appealing, “how’s Bada doing?”
That, at least, is enough to distract Namjoon from this Boy and his Chest.
“She’s been great this week, actually!” he enthuses, setting his cup down at his side so he can gesture with his hands as he talks. “Her wound is all healed, now we’re just working with her on gaining strength again before she can go back home.”
That stings, a little. It always does, the realization that an animal Namjoon’s grown fond of needs to go back out into the wild. But he understands—is so proud of her, his tiny daughter who is three times his height and weighs as much as 75 of him.
Jimin, sensing his internal distress, maybe, places a soft hand on his shoulder, and it’s warm enough through his shirt that Namjoon swears he can feel it all the way down in his toes. Or maybe that’s the alcohol.
Either way, it’s Jimin-induced.
“Can I see her before she goes home?” Jimin asks, and his eyes are so big, so shiny, Namjoon would probably say yes to anything he’d asked, even if it wasn’t something he could do. The kind of eyes you’d break the law for.
“I mean,” he chuckles, “she’ll be in the same place she’s always been until then.”
“I know that,” says Jimin. “I mean through your Secret Special Staff Observation Room.”
And oh. Right. The place he’d taken Jimin the first day they’d met, where Jimin had glowed so pretty in the blue light of the water.
Namjoon grins sidelong at him. “I could probably make that happen for you,” he says, and if Jimin’s fingers squeezing his shoulder while he giggles, bright and bubbly, is the last thing that ever happens to Namjoon, he thinks he could be pretty satisfied.
With monsoon season comes a seemingly never-ending slew of rainstorms, and with rainstorms come slow days at the rescue. Hoseok keeps having to send volunteers who work more with the public home early, because there’s not much to do other than stand outside and catch your death in a sun shower. Namjoon sent both Hyejoo and Chaewon home after the afternoon feedings, and has been sitting idly at the edge of Opal’s tank for the last half an hour, watching Jeongguk excitedly cheer her on as she swims easy laps around the pool—she’ll be back home in no time, at the rate she’s healing.
Which brings his mind back to Jimin, and how it’s been two weeks since he asked to see Bada again at Seokjin’s party, and now she’s in her last week until she’s ready to be released back into the wild. And how he’s not sure if Jimin’s here or not, because the touch pool has been closed up for the day, the deck too wet in the rain.
His timing has always been suspiciously perfect, though, because before Namjoon can even think about breaking confidentiality rules to ask Hoseok to give him Jimin’s phone number, the sound of thick-soled shoes on the ground echoes quietly beneath the sound of splashing water and Jeongguk’s cheering.
Namjoon can feel his smile growing without him actually trying as Jimin strides easily up the steps to where he is. His hair is wet from the rain, dripping down the sides of his face and onto his shoulders, and the grin on his face matches Namjoon’s pretty perfectly.
“I don’t have anything of yours as an excuse to be intruding on employee only areas this time,” Jimin says, offering a hand to help Namjoon up. “But I do think you promised me a last look at a certain special whale, and I figured I’d take you up on that offer while it is raining buckets outside and I have no desire to take the normal way to the office.”
And so they set off again, through the exit while Jeongguk isn’t looking to bother them, through the mechanical room, where Yoongi is working on a computer in the corner and offers a simple wave of the hand without actually looking up, and down the small hallway that leads to the observation room.
Again, Jimin is glued to the glass from the moment they enter the room, only this time, Bada is in full view, gliding through the water in a way she wasn’t able to do just weeks ago. When Namjoon shuts the door and stands next to him, Jimin points almost frantically at the glass (without touching or poking it, because Jimin is good and god, Namjoon likes him too much).
“Hyung, she’s so strong!” Jimin cries out, practically bouncing foot-to-foot like a child, a stark change from the way Namjoon had been so intimidated by him their first couple of meetings. He clings to Namjoon’s jacket sleeve, and Namjoon makes no move to stop him. “She’s doing so good!”
“Next week, she’ll be free,” Namjoon says—the misty tone of his voice must be apparent, because Jimin turns to him, rather than the glass, frowning.
“She’ll miss you, I bet.”
“Don’t,” Namjoon whines, really, really trying his hardest not to get emotional. Jimin pinches his arm, leaning much further into his chest than Namjoon can actually handle at this moment.
“Cetaceans have excellent memory and their own languages,” Jimin insists, jabbing at Namjoon’s sternum. “She’s going to go home and tell all of her friends and family about the handsome human who fed her and was nice to her and cried when she left.”
“I’m not crying—”
“But you will,” laughs Jimin. His arms are entirely around Namjoon’s waist now—they’re definitely hugging, oh god. This close, in the dark blue of the observation room, Jimin’s eyes are just as pretty, his smile just as sweet. If they were in daylight, Namjoon could probably see each individual freckle that he knows litters the perimeter of Jimin’s round cheeks.
Namjoon averts his eyes—it’s too much, if he looks at Jimin like this for much longer, he’s going to lose his ever-loving mind—
But Jimin squeezes his around his waist, like he’s trying to get his attention back, and it’s his for the taking.
“Hyung,” he hums, hands fisted in the material covering Namjoon’s lower back. The moment might be a little quieter if Namjoon weren’t wearing a windbreaker, of all things. “Dumb question.”
“No such thing,” Namjoon breathes.
So Jimin closes his eyes, lets out a long breath, and says, “Can I kiss you?”
And Namjoon freezes. Goes entirely stiff. Might actually leave the mortal coil for a good seven seconds before he comes to, because the next thing he knows, Jimin’s arms are released from around him and he’s standing further back from the glass, shrouded in the shadow of the corner of the room, muttering, ”That was so presumptive, I’m so sorry. I thought maybe you? And I? Wow. I’m sorry, hyung, please feel free to make me go away, I—”
“You can,” Namjoon says, and now it’s Jimin’s turn to freeze.
“I can just go? Yeah, yeah, of course, I’m sorry, I’ll—”
Namjoon stops him before he can leave, a hand on his wrist that’s soft, not grabbing and barely even touching, really.
“That’s not what I meant,” he says, cracking a smile that makes the ghost of one slip onto Jimin’s cheeks. “I mean you can kiss me.”
“Oh,” breathes Jimin, not moving. “You’re sure? I didn’t want to pressure you, hyung, I just… was in the moment.”
“When I first saw you at the touch pool, I hid behind a pole for a solid three minutes before Taehyung had to fish me out from behind it and force me to go exist in the same space as you,” Namjoon says.
It startles a snort out of Jimin, who takes a step forward, back into the light. “Really?”
“You were intimidating? Honestly, until Jin-hyung’s party, I thought you were, like, part shark,” Namjoon admits, chuckling under his breath. “And I was the poor little mackerel that you were planning to swallow whole.”
“Oh god,” Jimin groans. He comes closer every time he speaks, and now, Namjoon could snag the edge of his sleeve between his fingers if he wanted to, so he does. “I was doing the Bartender Thing—don’t ever let anyone see you sweat, you know? It gets me good tips at work, maybe not so much when I’m trying to make a cute aquarist with a nice ass flirt with me.”
“I mean,” Namjoon smiles, pulling Jimin’s arms back around himself, relishing again in the warmth of the body pressed against his. “You succeeded, I’m just very bad at flirting.”
“Hm,” says Jimin, looking right into Namjoon’s eyes again, lips pursed. “I’m going to kiss you now.”
Namjoon can barely get the “cool” out of his mouth before it’s covered by Jimin’s smaller, softer one. Today, he smells like rain and the crisp air of early autumn—his wet hair brushes Namjoon’s cheek as he kisses back, angling Jimin’s face up with the gentlest pressure of his fingers, so the several centimeters between them don’t feel like quite so much.
He wonders, maybe, if he had taken the hint back when Jeongguk first told him about Jimin and Hoseok and the nice ass comment, if Jimin would have kissed him like this. And then, he thinks, no. No, because in the last couple of months, Namjoon’s learned that Jimin isn’t scary—isn’t a shark in a human’s body, isn’t trailing him like a predator trails its prey. He wouldn’t have learned yet that Jimin is nice—that he’s good with the kids at the touch pools, and he’s good with Namjoon’s friends, and he can make a killer cocktail and a friendly conversation.
It’s not a long kiss but it’s a warm, sweet one, and Jimin steals another, softer peck when they lean back. His arms fall from Namjoon’s waist again, only this time, he catches a hand in his instead.
“Hey,” he murmurs, so close to his lips that Namjoon, too, steals another kiss. “I think your daughter is watching us.”
As if on cue, Bada passes by the glass pane, picking up speed as if she really has been caught.
“Oh god,” Namjoon snorts. “She’s living up her last days here, huh.”
Jimin tugs on his hand, so they’re out of the light of the window. “In a terrible turn of events,” he says, “I have classwork to get to again.”
“Oh,” says Namjoon. “Right, we should get you out of here.”
“We should,” Jimin agrees, leaning on the doorknob. “But if you give me, like, three hours and your number, I know a really good mandu place that the bar staff goes to all the time that I’d really like to take you on a date to.”
He hands over his phone, and Namjoon does the same. When he gets it back, Jimin’s saved his contact as jimin 🐠🍸 😘, and he’s already got a text from it: hi cute aquarist with the nice ass xoxoxo. He sends back Hi, cute volunteer who should kiss me again, and Jimin doesn’t waste a second before diving right in.