*Taehyung PoV*

The silence in the car was stifling as Jungkook drove me home, and he was painfully aware of it, his hands shifting uncomfortably on the wheel as he drove.

I simply rolled the window down, and looked out for those few minutes. I had been enjoying myself at lunch, I really had. The time I'd spent with y/n was so enjoyable, I loved the way it felt to hold her hand within mine, I loved the way her face flushed for every small thing.

But then that stupid hotel guy just had to show up and screw things up. I knew it could be nothing, that they could just be being friendly, but from how good she was looking today, and how he was looking at her, I didn't want that.

I was being irrational, I know. But she did really mess up my head.

*** 

After a few hours, I had kind of calmed down a bit and was almost back to my usual self. Jungkook, bless him, was quite in tune with my emotions, seeing as he perked up as well.

"Hyung," he began, looking over at me. He was sitting on the couch behind me, and I was sitting on the floor, both of us drinking some banana milk that he had brought over to keep in my fridge.

"Yeah?"

"You know you could just do something about y/n."

I almost spat out my milk. "What?" I hadn't told him I liked her. Was I that obvious?

"You like her. I know you do, and the thing is that if you don't do anything about it someone else is going to get her. And I don't mean that in a way like she's a prize to be lost, because she's not, but I know she'd be happy with you."

"I-"

"And I've seen the way she looks at you, I really think you have a good chance."

"But-"

"But to be honest, I wouldn't complain if you don't make a move on her, I've been thinking about doing so myself."

At those words, my jaw clenched and my hands balled up into fists.

"Whoa, hyung! If I seriously didn't know you better and wasn't aware of the fact that I could survive if you tried to beat me up I'd be terrified right now. You seriously look like you're about to kill me. I was kidding!"

I relaxed and melted into the sofa, my face heating up. I had to get Jungkook back for that. "Well then, if you were to do that I guess I'd just hook up with Rina," I said, a grin growing on my face as I saw his jaw tighten and his face turn bright red as he struggled not to spit out his banana milk all over the couch.

"Wha- you know?"

"Wait you thought I didn't know?" I asked incredulously. "Dude! It's so obvious I can't even- it's so obvious!"

"Wait, how do I make it less obvious?"

"Well," I began, "you could start off with not looking at her like she's the only person in the worded when you're together-" I broke off as he threw one of the cushions on the couch at me.

"And also maybe talk to someone other than her when they're around as well, like, I dunno, your childhood best friend of more than twenty years now?" I leaned over, dodging another cushion that he threw at me, laughing.

"I get it, I get it," he said, finishing up the last of his milk. I still had some left, so I handed it over to him to have finish up.

"Nah, but for real, Rina looked really good today, and the way she was looking at you, I wish someone would look at me like that," I said.

"Right! She looked so cute, I love her art kid aesthetic, and ohmygosh y/n looked gorgeous! Hyung, she's seriously a good catch, don't give her up. She looked so pretty, jeez."

I bit my lip to keep myself from bursting out and fanboying over her. But he was right, she was gorgeous.

"Hm," is all I said. "Yeah," I tried to sound as uninterested as possible, but I was quite distracted, to be honest, thinking of her, thinking of how right it just felt when we were so close.

***

We hardly talked for three days. It was excruciating going so long without her, but I pulled through, wondering how I used to do it. I so wanted to see her, to hear her voice.

But I waited, because I didn't want to go too far too fast.

*** 

*Y/n PoV*

Walking back home from work, I tried my best to keep my eyes open and alert and not give away the fact that I was dying to take a nap, worried that my pockets would get picked.

Every time I realised that I was only halfway through the week I wanted to cry, I was just constantly so tired and sleepy.

I hadn't got much sleep on Sunday night, as I lay in bed just thinking about the lunch that afternoon. That, and I had taken a nap in the afternoon, so I just wasn't sleepy enough until about two or three am.

Then, on Monday morning, I walked to work, exhausted and cranky, when I was assigned to assist on a new project, some program to help high school intern students.

I know that I should have been glad that my boss trusted me with interns, but I felt like I was being taken advantage of because I was seen as a 'friendly' person. 

My boss thought that I was the least likely to lose my patience with the kids, which, as nice as the thought was, I wasn't sure I could live up to, seeing how tired I had been the past few days. I was constantly scared I would snap at one of the kids and scare them away.

Since my days were occupied with the kids, my usual work was shifted to the mornings before they came and the evenings after they left. Plus I had four research papers to finish reading, and my brother had just started working in a different lab for his PhD work, so I had to make him meals as well.

Even so, I would be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy working with the high school kids. They were so open and eager to learn and they weren't critical of everything I did, so I felt so comfortable around them.

There were four of them, all from the same school, two boys and two girls. They were currently on their spring break, so they could come at ten and they'd leave by around two thirty or three. Thankfully they were all friends, so there wasn't any of that high school drama and they were comfortable working with one another.

The four of them were very open with me too, treated me like a friend, which I really liked. I felt like a high schooler all over again, from the way they talked to me so frankly about their life, teasing each other about their crushes, and complaining about unrequited feelings and teachers who loaded them with homework.

They even sat with me, Ara, and my colleague Jiho at lunch, since they claimed they were too intimidated to go anywhere else and they didn't want to get lost.

Today was Wednesday, so I had to work something out for tomorrow and the day after for them to do. That was all for today, though, so I could take a nap and make something good for dinner, rather than the absolute minimum, like I had been the past two days.

Within about five minutes, I had reached my apartment, and after putting away my bag and washing my hands I first headed to the bathroom for a quick shower, changing into my pajamas.

Then, collapsing on the bed, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

*** 

"Y/n, wake up, otherwise you won't be able to sleep at night," my brother said, shaking my shoulder gently to wake me up.

"Hmmmm," I replied, rolling over to try and get away from him. "Leave me alone," I mumbled.

"Y/n," he said, a hint of irritation in his voice. I sat up as I heard that; he'd had a tiring day too, and it was inconsiderate of me to irritate him any further.

I rubbed my eyes and trudged over to the bathroom to brush my teeth once more. Then, tying my hair back, I sat down with my laptop to finish up planning for the students for tomorrow, which didn't take long. I had realised that they hadn't quite seen much of the boring technical work in the office, some of which I'd take them through tomorrow. Any then for friday, I guess I'd just do some closing party sort of thing for them. In the morning we would actually do some work and then I'd treat them for lunch.

Yes. Great. Now that this planning was done, I was pretty much free the rest of the evening. It was six twenty right now, and since I'd taken a nap I assumed I had till about midnight until I started feeling sleepy.

Not really thinking about what I was doing, I picked up my phone and dialed Tae's number. It had rung three times before I realised that I was calling him and I scrambled to end the call. But before I could, he picked up.

"Hello?" His voice rang through, loud and clear. I tried to ignore the effect that just his voice had on me.

"Hi, uh, Taehyung." I bit my cheek at how stupid I sounded.

"Y/n! Hi!" A smile broke out on my face just hearing his joyful tone, and I consciously forced the smile off my face.

"Hey," I didn't quite know what to say next. Thankfully, he took care of that for me.

"So, y/n, I was wondering, I know you said Rina may not like a party, but I really think it will be fun if I just invite people over and we could like play games and stuff. If she doesn't enjoy being the centre of attention then we can skip over a cake cutting and we won't put her on the spot, but we can still have fun by like, I don't know, playing games and stuff."

I thought through it quickly. It made sense, what he was saying, and I think Rina would enjoy that. "You know what," I said, "let me check with Rina. As long as we don't make her the center of attention too much, I think she'll enjoy herself. It's a really good idea actually," I continued. "Let me ask her and get back to you?"

"Yeah, sure! Let me know," he said.

I smiled. "Bye."

"Bye."

I ended the call and let the smile spread slowly over my face before dialling Rina's number.

***

"You promise that you won't do any of those birthday things?" She asked.

"Yes, Rina, I promise. Pinkie promise. If I break that promise you can cut my pinkie off."

"The heck?"

"That's what my brother told me a pinkie promise was for when we were small," I laughed.

"Huh, that's actually kinda smart. Anyways, that's fine with me. Thanks so much for asking. I have to go now, but I'll see you on Saturday?"

"Uh, yeah, we'll plan for Saturday then ."

"You can stay over and then we can spend the weekend together."

"What about your family?"

"They'll come home Sunday afternoon. So if we could do the meet at Taehyung's on Saturday, that'd work better."

"Okay! Sure. I'll let him know. Thanks Rina, bye!"

"Bye!"

I quickly opened my chat with Taehyung and messaged him that Rina said yes, we could all meet up on Saturday evening.

He replied with a quick thanks and asked if I wanted to call to plan everything out. I told him not now, since I wanted to make some dinner for my brother and I, but maybe later. He replied ok, we could call after I finished eating.

So, putting my phone away, I went to make us some food, which we ate sitting in front of the tv, both of us too tired to invest in a conversation.

My brother was in bed by nine and he was completely out by nine fifteen, in such a deep sleep that he didn't even stir when I accidentally knocked over the coffee table and made a ton of noise while putting it back up.

I was secretly glad for that, though, since it meant that I could talk to Taehyung for as long as I liked into the night.

Shutting my bedroom door, I ran over to my phone and dialed Tae's number.

"Hey," I said as he picked up, sounding breathless.

"Hi," he replied softly. "So what do you want to do?"

"So, we don't need to plan it out too much," I said, in bit the inside of my cheek. The whole point of this was to spend time with him. But I'd spit it out now, it would be weird if I back-pedalled. "I think it should just be a casual thing."

"Okay," he replied, "should I just order in, then? For food?"

"Sure. But Tae, all of this is on one condition."

"Huh?"

"We have to split the bill. I don't want you paying again."

He paused for a bit. "Okay. Sure."

I smiled once again, glad he couldn't see me right now. "Okay then, I guess we'll just do a lunch/ dinner thing on Saturday, is that good?"

"Yes, it's perfect. So I'll just keep some drinks and then we'll order food, right?"

"Yeah. Don't keep too many drinks though, because her parents are coming home on Sunday. We don't want a hangover."

"Okay. Thanks so much y/n."

"Thank you, Tae, I'll talk to you tomorrow,"

"Sure. Hey, you wanna just meet on friday afternoon? After work?"

"Huh?"

"Not for the party, just to hang out?"

"Oh, yeah. Sure," I smiled. "See you then."

"Yep." There was a small pause. "Bye," he said softly.

"Bye."

***

"Whoa! Y/n! Did you set all this up yourself?"

"You got us snacks!"

"Are these all for us?"

"Ohmygosh I love these!"

I could barely contain my grin as I brought the intern kids into the conference room, where I had set up a lunch and kept some snacks for them to take home.

It was friday afternoon, the last day of their program. At first when I had been assigned to work with them, I'd thought of it as a chore, but, truth be told, I was really gonna miss their company around the place. They were so lighthearted and fun, traits that were often missing at work.

"Yeah, these are all for you guys," I smiled. "Enjoy yourselves!"

But instead of rushing forward to all the food like I had expected them to, they stood there and looked at me.

"What about you?"

"Are you gonna eat too?"

I was taken aback by their sweetness and consideration.

"Yeah, I'll eat too, it's just that there's some stuff being delivered downstairs, I'm waiting for the courier guy to come, and I'll bring it upstairs. Then I'll eat."

I looked down at my phone. The delivery said less than a minute away. The boys peeked over my shoulder to look at the delivery order.

"Noona, why don't you eat. I'll go down and pick it up," the boys ushered me to sit down on one of the chairs.

"No, really guys, it's okay, these are cells, they need to be handled with care." I said, but I was cut off by an incoming call from the courier. They snatched my phone away before I could react and picked it up, telling the guy that they would come downstairs to pick it up.

"We'll be careful, don't worry!" One of the boys called back to me, handing me my phone again.

"You guys," I face palmed as they ran down eagerly, smiling though, because this was just so sweet of them. All four of them went out of the room to collect the package from downstairs, chatting loudly as they ran down the stairs.

I filled up a cup of water for myself and sipped some as I opened up my texts with my brother. There was a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I had something to do after work, but I couldn't quite place it. Huh. If I hadn't told my brother then it probably wasn't important.

"Shh, you're so obvious!" I heard some whispers echoing from the stairs, followed by some giggles. "If she didn't tell us, it must be for a reason!" One of the girls said, followed by some whispered arguments.

"Guys?" I called out. "Everything okay? You got the package?" I got up and walked towards the staircase, where they were walking up together, one of them holding the box.

I quickly took it from him and went into the office space to keep it in Jiho's spot.

I then went back to the conference room, planning to call Ara upstairs.

Again I expected the kids to be all over the food, but they seemed to still be waiting for me. I walked in like normal, but they were all staring at me, knowing smirks on their faces.

I squirmed under their stare, uncomfortable. "What?"

They didn't say anything.

"What?"

They all burst out at once.

"Noona, you told us you didn't have a boyfriend!"- "Unnie, he's cute! Why didn't you tell us about him?"-"What happened to 'I feel your singleness' huh!"- "You know how betrayed I feel right now? Why didn't you tell us?"

"Wait, what?" I ran my hand through my hair, confused. "What are you talking about?"

"There's a guy downstairs, noona. He's waiting for you, he said he's taking you out after this." The girls struggled to keep their smiles in check. He wiggled his eyebrows. "Is it the first date? He seemed nervous."

The heck? "Who is this?"

"He said his name's Taehyung."

A/n: hello lovelies! Happy late Valentine's Day! Hope you all have a great day or night wherever you are 💕💕