Bargain (Not Met) (JungHope)

Interlude - Encounter(s)

So the question was, what the hell did his manager want to talk to the boss about?

Panic flared inside Hoseok's body at the thought that the manager was going to talk the boss into firing him. Selfish, yes. But the guy was unpredictable and sadistic, so Hoseok's guesses about him were never too far off. But he also did once think that he was going to set the blueprints of a project on fire, so nobody, not even himself, can be one hundred percent sure about what's going through the manager's mind.

"You gonna stand there all day or what?"

Hoseok snapped out of his frenzied thoughts and turned to where his manager was pointing and found that the elevator's doors had long since opened and that his manager was pressing down the "keep open" button.

"Uh, s-sorry," Hoseok muttered, adjusting his bag's straps along his shoulders and stepping off the elevator. "Have a nice day, sir."

"You too, Jung Hoseok," his manager replied.

Hoseok froze just outside the elevator's doors and whirled around, turning around just in time to watch a cruel smile that had broken out across his manager's lips disappear behind the elevator's closing doors.

Shaken up by his manager's behavior, Hoseok all but sprinted down to the end of the hallway--where his office was located.

Once in front of the glass door that separated the infamous depressing floor that was his office from the rest of the company building, Hoseok made quick work of the button that had been placed near the door to notify the front desk that someone was coming in. He knew that Seokjin, the unfortunate lad who had to deal with his panicky actions at the moment, would probably tell him to stop spamming the doorbell and play his infuriating waiting game until Hoseok complied. But, well, he was desperate to be secured in the comfort of his secluded cubicle, so Seokjin's patience be damned.

Luckily, and apparently, Seokjin wasn't in the mood to play any games that morning because not even after two seconds of spamming the doorbell, the lock on the door let loose, and an audible click informed Hoseok that he was able to enter. With a thankful sigh, he threw open the office door and swiftly stepped inside, twisting back to shut the door before facing forward once more.

But the moment Hoseok did, he was already dreading the lecture that he knew was to come, judging from the look on Seokjin's face.

"Hyung--"

"Don't," Seokjin groaned, interrupting Hoseok's feeble excuse, hand firmly covering his eyes. "Just--don't."

Hoseok gnawed on his bottom lip and downcasted his eyes toward the floor, heart clenching at the thought that Seokjin was too upset with him to even lecture him. (And he always lectured him.)

Another moment of tense silence passed between the two before Seokjin uttered, "Namjoon-ah came down because we needed someone to cover for you, but now you can go and inform him that he can go back to his own office."

He allowed his hand to fall from his face and a shiver ran down Hoseok's spine when he saw just how tired Seokjin looked. But suddenly the tired look was gone and was quickly replaced with wide eyes and parted lips.

"Holy shit, what the hell happened to you?" Seokjin queried, quickly walking out from behind his desk and approaching Hoseok, who felt as bewildered as Seokjin looked.

"Um," Hoseok spoke, flinching away from the invasive hands on his face, "I literally just woke up fifteen minutes ago but only got five hours of sleep, so..."

Seokjin scrunched his face up and shook his head, smacking Hoseok's cheek gently. "No, no. I get that you're living off of pure anxiety right now, but I'm not talking about that; I'm talking about these."

And he's suddenly tugging down the collar of Hoseok's shirt and pressing down on the very area of his neck where his pulse would be.

Gasping at the memory of the faint mark he had spotted in the elevator's doors, Hoseok pushed away from Seokjin's hold and whirled around toward the glass door, further tugging down his shirt and taking a closer look at his reflection on the glass. He squinted his eyes and searched the expanse of his neck, curious to find what Seokjin was making a fuss about.

And then he noticed a bruise.

Well, two bruises; they were both an angry, swollen red mark that stood out startlingly so against the expanse of his tanned skin, and if Hoseok squinted just hard enough he could see a faint black liquid ooze out the side of the larger one of the two.

"What the hell..." he muttered, slowly backing away from the glass door. He turned back toward Seokjin, who now held a sort of knowing look in his eye, which only served to make Hoseok even more confused. "I--hyung, I seriously have no idea how I got these. Maybe I got bit by a bug while walking down the street, or-or I got jabbed in the neck by my shitty couch while sleeping on it, or--"

"You got laid?" Seokjin offered, halting Hoseok in the middle of his frenzied explanation.

Hoseok's mouth gaped open as he stared at his coworker in mild disgust and complete disbelief. "The fuck?" A constrained snort escaped Seokjin. "No! Hyung, I--we don't have time for things like--hyung, stop laughing!"

If looks could kill, Hoseok's scathing glare would have slain Seokjin's trembling body on the spot. The asshole of a coworker was leaning against his desk and letting out that obnoxiously loud laugh of his, tears leaking out the corner of his eyes. Hoseok trembled before Seokjin, a hot blush laying heavily upon his cheeks, absolutely seething with rage for his impossibly immature coworker.

"Hyung," Hoseok muttered through clenched teeth, "just tell me where Namjoon is so I can do my work." A strained smile. "Please?"

Seokjin, gasping for air as he continued to try and restrain his laughter, lifted a trembling arm and pointed shakily toward the back of the office floor. Giving him a curt nod in thanks, Hoseok briskly walked past Seokjin and ventured on toward the part of the office that held one of the few windows on their section of the building.

"Yo, Namjoon," Hoseok called out as he rounded the corner of the cramped aisle, "you can go back to your office--"

A shout, shrill and short, escaped the flailing man in front of him, desperately attempting to stop the steady flow of ink that escaped the printer.

"--now." Hoseok punctuated his sentence with a deep sigh and covered his eyes with his hand, supporting his now significantly weak body against the concrete wall. "We've talked about this, Joonie: you're not allowed to use our printer anymore."

Namjoon whimpered at the exhausted tone of Hoseok's voice and continued fumbling about with the machine, which seemed to be broken beyond repair.

Groaning, Hoseok lifted his weight off from against the wall and approached the panicked man. He placed a firm hand on Namjoon's shoulder and gently moved him aside, shushing the quiet muttering that escaped his coworker with a grunt.

"Don't worry, Joon," Hoseok mumbled offhandedly, twisting a few knobs on the sides of the printer and repeatedly pressing the "power" button in an attempt to get the finicky machine to work again. "Just go back to your office; I can handle this."

Namjoon stuck around a few moments more, peering around Hoseok's shoulders to try and see what he was doing, before getting shooed off by him. Whispering a hasty, "sorry, Hoseokie," the man clambered around the various abandoned objects that laid scattered in the middle of the aisle and promptly exited the office.

Another sigh weaved itself out of Hoseok's throat, slightly out of relief for having a moment to himself, something he hadn't had for the past forty-eight hours (for obvious reasons), but mostly because he was really fucking tired and didn't have the actual energy to produce a full-blown yawn.

Yeah, he wasn't gonna last very long.

A/N - Oof. Something more interesting than this next chapter, I promise.