Stigma Love's Algorithm [ A BTS x Reader Poly ]

Chapter 77: Everything and Nothing

Jin was careful. Cautious.

He lived his life surrounded by walls-ones he had built himself, ones his family had reinforced with cold, brutal expectations.

But little by little, I found the cracks.

And through them, the real Jin began to shine.

At first, it was unspoken.
He started showing up more.
Not just at my office, but everywhere.

"Jin, why are you here?" I asked one evening, raising an eyebrow as he leaned against my desk, sleeves rolled up, looking criminally good.

He shrugged. "I was in the area."

I narrowed my eyes. "You work thirty minutes from here."

Jin clicked his tongue. "God, you're so needy for me, Joon."

I threw a pen at him.
He caught it without looking.
And smirked.

Somewhere along the way, the nights got longer.

The spaces between meetings blurred into shared meals, into whispered conversations over cheap takeout, into Jin falling asleep on my couch because he was too tired to go home-even though we both knew that wasn't the real reason.

We were becoming something.
But neither of us said it.
Not yet.

Because if we said it-if we gave it a name-then it became real.

And real things could be taken away.

One night, he came over after a particularly bad day in court.

He was exhausted, still in his crisp black suit, but his tie was loose, his hair disheveled like he had run his fingers through it too many times.

He slumped onto my couch without a word.

I sat beside him, close but not touching.

"You okay?" I asked quietly.

Jin exhaled. "Yeah."

A lie.
But I didn't push.
Instead, I handed him a carton of noodles.

We sat there, eating in silence, the space between us filled with something thicker than air.

And then-after minutes of nothing but the hum of the city outside-he murmured,

"I like this."

I turned to him.
He wasn't looking at me.

Just staring at the floor, his fingers wrapped loosely around the chopsticks, voice softer than I'd ever heard it.

I swallowed. "Like what?"

Jin's lips parted-like he was going to deny it, like he was going to lie.
But then-he just sighed.

"This," he said. "You."

Somewhere along the way, we stopped pretending.

Stopped making excuses for why we always found ourselves in the same space.

Stopped pretending we weren't everything to each other.

Jin was mine.
And I was his.

It started subtly.

At first, I was just staying over more.
A weekend here. A few nights there.

Then my things started migrating.

First, a toothbrush.
Then a spare set of clothes.

Then-before I knew it-I had an entire drawer at Jin's penthouse.