“Hey, Mr. Jung! Did you know that Mr. Park has a crush on you?”

Hoseok startles from where he was sat behind his desk, focused intently on grading the essays lying in front of him. "Mr. Park?"

There are two Mr. Parks in the high school that Hoseok has been teaching at for the past three years. One is an old man who is the unofficial head of their small history department. The other is a new teacher, a year younger than Hoseok, who teaches an advanced form of math and has all the kids in Hoseok's language arts classes buzzing about with his name in their mouths.

Hoseok really hopes that Taehyung doesn't mean the old man.

Taehyung rises on his tiptoes and beams at him, his rectangular grin spread wide across his face. "The calculus teacher! You know which Mr. Park I'm talking about, Mr. Jung. You have a crush on him too!"

"What?" Hoseok sputters, his face feeling much too warm as he ducks his gaze back to the essays in front of him. "No, I don't."

Taehyung deflates a little and frowns, his brow furrowed. "But I already told him that you did! Now I'll have to tell him that I was wrong."

"You did WHAT?" Hoseok screeches, standing so suddenly that he bangs his knee on his desk. "OW!"

Taehyung watches him hop around and rub his knee, face blank now with his mouth hanging open. His bangs flop into his face when he shakes his head and then he comes around the desk with his hands open as if Hoseok is a scared cat that has been cornered. Hoseok is too busy making sure that his leg is not about to give out to notice that fact until Taehyung is grabbing his arms and guiding him back into his seat.

"Sorry, Mr. Jung," Taehyung apologizes as he steps back, his hands still held up in a placating manner. "Should I go and tell Mr. Park that you don't have a crush on him then?"

Hoseok takes a deep breath and wills himself to not jump up so suddenly again. "I— No, Taehyung. That's okay, please do not say anything anymore. Please."

Taehyung exaggerates the action of zipping his mouth closed and throwing away the key, his signature grin taking up his face as soon as he has finished. Hoseok shakes his head at him and sighs, shooing him away when Taehyung takes a step closer.

"Go on and have your lunch, Taehyung. I still have papers to grade," Hoseok murmurs from behind the hand that covers his face, only looking up when Taehyung has turned around and began walking away to his relief.

But just as Taehyung has made it to the door, he looks over his shoulder and winks at Hoseok. "Glad I didn't lie to Mr. Park. Bye, Mr. Jung! See you tomorrow for class!"

Hoseok almost stands up again but Taehyung has already pranced out the door and now he is left alone with his ungraded essays again, wondering why exactly his heart is beating a mile a minute. He sighs and rubs his knee as he settles back behind his desk and picks up his grading where he left off.

He very carefully tucks away all thoughts about Taehyung and what he said today into the back of his mind and decides that is a problem for future Hoseok instead.

    And a problem for Hoseok it does become because the next day Mr. Park knocks on his door with a timid look on his face.

(Hoseok knows that his name is Jimin, that he is young and that this is only his first year teaching here, but for the sake of his sanity, he will refer to his coworker as Mr. Park for the time being.)

"Um, yes? Did you need something?" Hoseok asks sheepishly, not sure whether he should invite Mr. Park to come in or to merely stay standing in the doorway.

Mr. Park decides for him though and strides confidently into Hoseok's classroom, a shaky smile on his lips that does not match the way he moves. Hoseok watches him from behind his desk, only his lunch and a few lesson plan ideas laid out in front of him today. Mr. Park stops a few feet away from his desk and flushes a pretty pink that makes Hoseok want to reach out and pinch his cheeks for being so cute, but they are at work and Hoseok is not going to be weird about this.

He vaguely remembers what Taehyung told him the day before, but right now, Hoseok is focusing on the way Jimin's smile makes his eyes crinkle until they too are smiling with him.

Cute really does not begin to cover it.

"So, a student told me something really interesting yesterday..." Mr. Park trails off there, his brows raised as he stares at Hoseok, willing him to say something.

Hoseok freezes and barely remembers to blink before his conversation with Taehyung from the day before breezes into his mind with perfect clarity. "Oh. Kim Taehyung?"

Mr. Park nods and his face flushes a darker pink as he ducks his head before he looks back up again to stare at Hoseok once more. "The very same."

"I'm sorry if what he said made you uncomfortable," Hoseok starts to say, his own face feeling much too warm as he blunders forward. "I've known him since he was a freshman and he has always had a way of being a bit too blunt for many to be okay with. You can just pretend that he never told you anything if you like. It's fine."

"Oh," Mr. Park murmurs, his face even pinker than before. "Um, well this is awkward now."

Hoseok blinks at him, not sure what to say so he merely tilts his head up even further and lifts a brow up in a silent question.

Mr. Park toes at the ground and twists his fingers together in front of him. "I, um, was kind of hoping that he was, uh..."

Inside his head, Hoseok is screaming, but what actually comes out of his mouth instead is, "You were hoping that he was telling the truth?"

Mr. Park nods, his face flaming, and Hoseok decides then and there that he should probably start calling him by his first name now.

Jimin ducks his head again and does not say anything, leaving the rest of this for Hoseok to take on. As much as Hoseok doesn't actually want to start dating someone from work, he also cannot deny that when Jimin first started working here, he immediately caught his eye. That was a mere two months ago and Hoseok has of course spoken with him before and discussed a few of their favorite students with one another at staff functions and the like, but when it came to personal things — when it came to the way Jimin always managed to make Hoseok's heart race after each conversation — Hoseok avoided it like the plague.

"It's okay if it wasn't though," Jimin says, his voice so soft that Hoseok could pretend that he didn't even hear him.

Of course, he won't do that so he lets out a heavy breath and smiles up at Jimin, hoping that it is comforting enough to make the younger teacher relax even the tiniest bit. "Well, I don't think he was wrong."

"Really?" Jimin asks with the tone of his voice so incredibly hopeful that Hoseok feels like someone has gripped his heart in their icy cold fist and started squeezing it.

Hoseok should probably take this chance now to back out and pretend that Taehyung was all wrong, that Jimin got his own hopes up for nothing, but that would be cruel wouldn't it be? Cruelty is not in Hoseok's vocabulary after all and it is not like Hoseok is being forced into this anyway.

Sometimes, he and Jimin will have lunch together because they are the youngest of the teachers here so they get along a lot better than they do with others, but Jimin is a pretty nice guy too. From what Hoseok has seen, he is kind and intelligent and incredibly patient as well. The students like him as well and Hoseok knows how hard it is to gain the approval of so many young adults that are not all alike.

Other times, Hoseok will purposefully retreat and back away from Jimin because he is afraid of what their blossoming friendship could turn into, but those instances are slight and Hoseok never turns down anyone without a good reason.

And right now, the only reason Hoseok can conjure up is that they are co-workers and if they do happen to not work out, that might make work incredibly awkward and difficult for them both.

Jimin is sweet though and Hoseok has known Taehyung for three years and he knows that the young boy does not interfere with personal matters unless he is certain that things will turn out okay in the end. As a teacher, shouldn't Hoseok put some faith into what his students do?

So he leans his head on his head and grins up at Jimin, his heart racing in his chest as he says, "Really."