#ofl

Team photo day is not, technically, a humanitarian crisis.

You know this. Intellectually. In the same way you know that traffic jams aren’t actually designed to ruin your life and that the universe doesn’t have a personal vendetta against you specifically.

And yet.

Here you are.

Seven forty-three in the morning, standing in front of your wardrobe, staring at nothing, eating pikotas out of the bag because you forgot to eat an actual breakfast and this is fine. This is completely fine. You’re fine.

You are not fine.

Photo day at Valdebebas means the entire Real Madrid roster in one building for six consecutive hours while photographers and club PR staff run around like badly caffeinated border collies trying to herd twenty-two professional athletes who have, collectively, the attention span of a fly. 

It means chaos. It means noise. It means approximately forty-seven different egos ricocheting off the same walls.

And it means him.

You should be in university right now. You would be in university right now if the universe had any sense of justice or basic narrative fairness, but instead you’re standing here in your bedroom at seven forty-three in the morning because your dad got a text last week—last week, you’d been living in blessed ignorance for seven whole days—that said all staff families invited for unity shots.

You remember reading it over his shoulder.

You remember the exact quality of silence that followed.

Your dad’s face did this thing it does sometimes—that small, private kind of hopeful. Like he’d been handed something unexpected and was trying not to show how much he wanted it. 

He didn’t say anything. 

Just set his phone down and went back to his coffee and was very, very carefully not looking at you.

And that was it.

That was the whole argument.

His stupid hopeful face.

You hate that face. You love that face. You would walk into a burning building for that face, which is essentially what you’re doing right now, except the building is Valdebebas and the fire is Kim Taehyung’s continued existence in your general vicinity.

You pull on a jacket. Check your phone. Ignore the three texts from Sofia, one of which is just a photo of her crying because dinosaurs went extinct that she sent at midnight for reasons you can’t fully parse.

Thirty minutes later you’re in the car, your dad driving, and he’s telling you about some new taping technique he learned at a conference in Valencia and you’re nodding in the right places and looking out the window and thinking, with great specificity, about all the things Taehyung could theoretically have come down with in the last seven days that would justify his absence today.

The list is not short.

Food poisoning, obviously. Pulled hamstring. Mysterious rash. Some dignity-adjacent incident at one of those Marbella villas that requires him to stay indoors and reconsider his choices for a minimum of six to eight weeks. A sudden onset of good judgment. A personality transplant. An inconvenient restraining order from a woman with better self-preservation instincts than you.

You’d take any of it.

You’d honestly take all of it.

Your dad turns into the Valdebebas entrance and waves at the security booth, and the gate opens, and the facility swallows you like it always does—this sprawling, impeccable machine of professional football; clean lines and manicured grass and the kind of quiet institutional money that’s visible in every single surface.

You hate how impressive it is.

You’ve spent most of your life in training facilities and you still can’t do it—can’t fully make yourself unimpressed by places like this. 

Barça’s was better. Obviously.

But Valdebebas has its own kind of weight. The kind that comes from decades of titles and the particular arrogance of an institution that has never once doubted its own importance.

Your dad parks. Gets out. Straightens his jacket with that small professional pride he always has walking into work, this guy who spent twenty years at Barça and is somehow still excited to show up.

You follow him inside.

The main building is already busy in that specific controlled-chaos way that happens when a large number of people have been told to be somewhere at the same time. Staff in lanyards. Photographers setting up rigs. A PA with a clipboard and the haunted expression of someone who has already been on shift for two hours longer than the day technically started. Players filtering in by twos and threes, some in full kit, some mid-conversation, some still wearing the slightly glazed look of people who were definitely not in bed at a reasonable hour last night.

You recognize most of them by now.

That’s what happens when your dad works here. You learn faces, positions, which ones are approachable and which ones have a thirty-meter exclusion radius of ego that you should respect for your own wellbeing.

You already know which one falls in the second category.

Your dad spots someone from medical across the lobby and says something about finding you in ten minutes and then he’s gone, absorbed into the professional ecosystem, and you are standing alone in the main corridor with your tote bag and your pikotas and your complete lack of enthusiasm.

Right.

Elevator. Floor three. Find somewhere quiet and get through the next six hours without doing anything you’ll need to explain to HR.

The elevator banks are at the end of the corridor, past the trophy cases—which, fine, are impressive, you’re not dead, you can acknowledge that—and you walk toward them, hands in your jacket pockets, looking at your phone because looking at your phone is a universal signal that you do not want to be talked to and most adults in professional environments respect this.

You press the call button and wait. Check your messages. Sofia’s meme is a photo of a man walking directly into a lake with the caption ’me, going to anything I said I wouldn’t go to.’ You send back a thumbs up. She’ll understand.

The elevator dings.

The doors open.

You step in without looking up, reaching for the button panel, and then you register the presence of another body already inside the elevator and your eyes lift on reflex—

Kim Taehyung.

In full kit, looking like he walked out of a shoot that hasn’t happened yet. Hair done. Chain sitting right. That specific quality of effortless that takes an annoying amount of effort. Holding a Coke Zero like it’s a prop. 

And smirking.

That smirk.

The one that says ’well, well, look at this,’ like your presence here is a delightful twist of fate rather than a logistical inevitability that you’ve been dreading for seven days.

You stare at him.

He stares back.

The elevator doors slide closed behind you.

Right.

So. That’s where you are.

Trapped in an elevator with Kim Taehyung at seven fifty-eight in the morning before you’ve had coffee, and the universe is clearly operating at full capacity today, fully committed to its bit, no notes.

You turn back to the panel. Press three. Face forward.

“Gominola.”

He says it like he’s greeting an old friend. Like this is pleasant. Like you didn’t spend seven days quietly hoping he’d contract something non-life-threatening but career-interruptive.

You face the doors.

“Don’t talk to me.”

He doesn’t respond.

Good. Excellent. Signs of personal growth, possibly.

Three seconds of silence.

“Wonder if they’re doing individual shirtless shots this year,” he says, conversationally, out loud. Into the air. “The club kept that one from two seasons ago for like eighteen months, which—I mean. Can you blame them.”

You stare at the doors.

“I said don’t talk to me.”

“I’m not talking to you.” Completely unbothered. “I’m talking to myself.”

You have no response to that. Not because you don’t have one—you have several—but because giving him one proves he’s talking to you, which he technically isn’t, and he knows that, and he’s enjoying this.

He suddenly leans in, and your hand moves without fully consulting your brain.

It lands flat on his stomach—reflexive, stopping him—and the contact registers immediately. Cotton kit. Solid under your palm. Warm in a way that’s distinctly inconvenient.

He goes still.

“Mhm?”

One syllable. Pointed. Like he’s giving you time to prepare yourself.

“I was just going to press the button. You missed it.”

You turn your head just enough to glance at the panel.

Floor three.

Not lit.

You could’ve sworn you had pressed it?

He reaches past you with his free hand and presses 3.

The button lights up. Small. Red. Humiliating.

“There,” he murmurs. “Proud of us.”

You go to pull your hand back, but his fingers close around your wrist before you can, tight enough to keep your palm where it is, still flattened against his stomach through the thin training top, like this was all your idea and he’s simply honoring the decision.

You look down at his hand on your wrist.

Then up at him.

Then back at his hand, because maybe visual confirmation will make this feel less insane. 

It does not.

“Let go.”

He doesn’t.

Instead he turns just enough to lean his other forearm—the one holding the Coke Zero—against the wall beside your head, easy as anything, trapping space down to something stupidly narrow. 

His chain catches the overhead light. So do his piercings. Of course they do. Every part of this man behaves like it’s in a campaign.

He’s annoyingly close. You can smell the citrusy scent of his, landing somewhere behind your ribs, where it has no business being. 

“What?” he says, glancing down at your hand on his abs and then back up. “Surprised?”

You blink at him.

He tilts his head, smugness in HD.

“Thought you’d already seen them.” His mouth twitches. “In your dad’s office. In the pool.”

“Yeah,” you say. “And they’re not impressive.”

There it is.

That reaction.

Tiny. Immediate. His teeth catch his lower lip and his whole expression shifts in a way that should probably be illegal before eight in the morning. 

Not offended. Worse. Delighted. 

Like you just tossed a match at a man made entirely of lighter fluid and ego.

“They’re not?” His voice drops a fraction. “You’ve spent an awful lot of time looking at them.”

You stare at him.

Do men like this come factory defective or is it environmental?

“Do you wake up and decide ‘yes, today I will be delusional,’” you ask, “or does it come naturally to you?”

His thumb strokes once over the inside of your wrist.

Your pulse, because your body is a traitor with no loyalty to the cause, kicks directly against it.

He notices. Obviously.

“Bit of both,” he says. “Depends how much attention I get before breakfast.”

“Incredible.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“Everything you say to me is a compliment.” 

He leans a fraction closer and the citrus hits harder—not cologne, not product, just him, that sharp clean lemon scent that clings to his skin like it was engineered in a lab specifically to piss you off. 

“Even the insults. Especially the insults.”

Your jaw tightens. “You need medication.”

“Probably.” He’s not even pretending to disagree. “But right now I’m in an elevator with the prettiest girl in the building and she’s touching my abs, so. Priorities.”

You ignore the prettiest girl part. You ignore it completely. You file it in the trash folder of your brain where all of his compliments go, the one labeled ‘performative bullshit—do not engage.’

“Maybe if you drank less soda you’d have something worth looking at, Coke.”

His eyebrows go up.

“Oh.” He leans in a touch more, pleased in a deeply irritating way. “I got promoted?”

You frown. “Hm?”

“From Coke-boy to Coke.” His mouth curves. “Wow. We’re stripping me of gender now? I’m just an object now. A concept. A beverage.”

You deadpan at him. "If you want, I can make it simpler."

"Please do."

You hold his gaze when you say it. "Zero."

That really does something. Not visibly, not in any way a normal person would catch, but you're not a normal person when it comes to him. Unfortunately.  

The tiny flare in his eyes. The way his tongue presses once against the inside of his cheek. The little almost-smile he has to bite back because apparently being insulted is his favorite hobby after staring at himself in reflective surfaces.

Seriously. Medical journals should be lining up outside his house.

“Zero,” he repeats.

“Mhm.”

“Because of the drink?” he asks.

“Partly.”

“And the other part?”

You hold his gaze. “Use your imagination.”

“Oh, I do.” His voice goes rough around the edges. “Constantly, actually.”

You ignore that with the dignity of a woman refusing to acknowledge a public indecency.

“It suits you,” you say. “Coke Zero. Zero nutritional value. Zero restraint. Zero redeeming qualities.”

He almost laughs. You can see him trying not to.

Instead he says, quietly amused, “Zero? Seriously, Gomi? That’s mean.”

“You sound insulted.”

“I am.”

He’s not.

He's absolutely not.

That's not what insulted looks like. That's what horny looks like, and you know the difference, and he knows you know the difference, and the whole thing is deeply, profoundly stupid.

His grip on your wrist shifts.

Your hand—still on his stomach, still pressed against that warm cotton—starts to move. Downward. Slow.

"Really, genuinely insulted."

Lower.

Past the hem of his kit. Past the elastic.

"Keep moving that hand," you say, very calm, very level, "and see what happens."

He goes still.

Then his eyes drop.

To your mouth.

"You know that makes me wanna do it more, right?"

He says it like he's sharing a fun fact. Like this is trivia night and he's contributing.

"So being pushy is your whole thing," you say. "Good to know. Something you should probably discuss with a psychologist."

"Psychologists are fake."

"That's not—"

"Made up. Whole field. Scam."

"You can't just—"

"Moving on."

Suddenly his grip on your wrist tightens and he pulls your palm down and presses it flat against his crotch—

And he's hard.

Fully hard. Zero ambiguity about what you're feeling—the thick, obvious shape of his cock straining against fabric, hot under your palm, and your brain processes this information in approximately point-three seconds before your body reacts on pure animal instinct.

You yank your hand back like you've touched a burner.

And shove him.

Both palms, flat against his chest, hard enough that he staggers backward two full steps, his shoulder blades hitting the elevator wall with a thud that makes the Coke Zero slosh in the can.

"Are you insane?"

Your voice comes out sharper than you intended. Pitched higher. Not flustered—you do not get flustered—but something adjacent to it that you refuse to name and will be taking to your grave.

Taehyung doesn't look sorry.

Taehyung looks like Christmas came early and brought him personally wrapped gifts.

He's laughing. This low, rough chuckle that sounds like it's being dragged out of him against his better judgment—if he had better judgment, which he doesn't, which has been firmly established.

"What?" He's still grinning, rubbing the spot on his chest where you shoved him with his free hand, not remotely bothered. "You've felt it against your pussy once already. Figured we were past the formalities."

Your mouth opens.

Closes.

Opens again.

Nothing comes out.

Because what do you say to that?

What is the appropriate verbal response to a man referencing the time he ground his erection against you in your father's treatment room while you're trapped in a moving elevator in a professional football facility at eight in the morning?!

Emily Post didn't write a chapter on this.

The elevator dings.

Floor three.

The doors slide open and reality floods back in—fluorescent lighting, corridor noise, the distant sound of someone yelling about lighting setups—and you stand there, pulse hammering, while the world outside the elevator continues to exist as if the last ninety seconds didn't just happen.

Taehyung straightens up. Adjusts his kit. Takes a sip of his Coke Zero with the calm of a man who did not just place your hand on his dick in a shared vertical transit space.

He steps out.

Pauses.

Turns.

And throws you the V sign.

Two fingers. Lazy. That same gesture from the party, the one that started all of this, and his tongue presses against the inside of his cheek as he does it, and his eyes hold yours for exactly long enough to make his point before he turns and walks down the corridor like nothing happened.

You stare at the closed doors.

Blink once.

Twice.

"What the fuck," you say, to no one, in an empty elevator, at eight in the morning.

Your hand smells like his kit.

You wipe it on your jacket.

It doesn't help.

You’ve been here eleven minutes. 

You know this because you’ve been counting, the way you count everything when you’re stuck somewhere you don’t want to be—minutes, ceiling tiles, the number of times the PR coordinator says ‘team’ (four so far).

You’re keeping a tally in the margin of your notebook next to your actual notes, which are sparse and getting sparser because this whole thing is a glorified logistics briefing disguised as a team bonding exercise and you are not on this team.

You’re the physio’s daughter.

You’re here because ‘staff families invited for unity shots’ apparently translates to ‘sit in a room for an hour while someone explains lighting arrangements like it’s a NATO summit.’

There are about fifteen people in here. Players scattered across the sectional couches and chairs, a few WAGs, some PR staff, two photographers who keep checking their light meters like nervous pilots. 

Your dad’s somewhere on the other side of the room talking to the head coach’s assistant about rotator cuff protocols, because he is constitutionally incapable of not working even when he’s technically off-duty.

You’ve got a seat at the end of the long couch, notebook open, pen moving, foot tapping a rhythm against the floor that’s half concentration and half residual irritation from the elevator incident that you are not thinking about.

You are not thinking about it.

You are taking notes.

Professional, organized, here-for-her-dad notes about photo scheduling and where staff families are supposed to stand during the group shots and—

A body drops onto the couch next to you.

Not across the room, where there are at least four empty seats. Not on the chair by the window, which is free and far away and would’ve been the choice of any person with functioning spatial awareness and a basic respect for personal boundaries.

Next to you.

Right next to you.

His thigh settles approximately two millimeters from yours. 

You don’t look up.

Don’t react.

Just keep writing.

The PR coordinator is explaining something about backdrop options for the individual portraits—white versus grey, apparently this is a debate that requires committee input—and you are focused on that. Entirely focused. One hundred percent of your attention on backdrop discourse.

Something crinkles.

You glance sideways—reflex, not choice—and watch Taehyung reach into the pocket of his training jacket and pull out a small bag of pikotas.

Your pikotas.

Not your literal pikotas. But your candy. Your thing. The sour-sweet cherry gummies that you keep in your tote and your nightstand and your jacket pockets because they’re yours, they’ve been yours since you were twelve, and now this man is sitting next to you in a professional meeting eating them like they’re his.

He pops one into his mouth. Chews. Doesn’t look at you.

“Where did you get those.”

It comes out before you can help it. Flat, but with an edge of genuine confusion, because pikotas aren’t exactly standard vending machine fare and you’ve never once seen them in the Valdebebas canteen.

He finally glances at you. Chewing. Taking his time about it. Extracting every possible second of enjoyment from both the candy and your face.

“You’d be surprised,” he says, “the kind of contacts Madrid players have.”

“Contacts.”

“Mm.” Another pikota. He makes a small show of examining the bag, turning it over like he’s reading the nutritional information. “Smuggling around kids’ candy. Whole underground network. Very serious operation.”

“Must be one hell of a job. Your braincells survive the mission?”

“I’m a man of many talents, Gomi.” He sucks the sugar off his thumb. Casual. Not looking at you. “Some of them are even legal.”

“Name one.”

“I just located and acquired your favorite candy within a fifteen-kilometer radius of a high-security football facility using nothing but my charm and a phone call.” He tilts the bag toward you. Offering. “That’s basically espionage.”

“That’s basically sad.”

“And yet.” He pulls the bag back, pops another one, and faces forward again. “You’re still talking to me about it.”

You turn back to your notebook.

Write nothing.

The meeting continues. Backdrop: grey wins. Schedule: roster goes first, staff families after lunch. Individual shots: alphabetical by surname, so Taehyung’s somewhere in the middle, which means he’ll be hanging around the facility for hours with nothing to do, which means he’ll be hanging around you for hours with nothing to do, which means today is going to be the longest day of your life and you haven’t even had coffee yet.

His knee taps yours.

Light. Brief. Could be accidental.

You shift your leg away.

Thirty seconds pass.

Tap.

You clench your jaw. Move your leg again.

Twenty seconds.

Tap.

This time it lingers—his knee pressing against the side of yours, holding contact for a full beat before pulling back.

You stare at your notebook. The words on the page have stopped meaning anything. You’re looking at your own handwriting and seeing hieroglyphics because your entire cognitive capacity has been rerouted to the single point of contact where his knee keeps finding yours like a homing missile with a personal grudge.

Tap.

Is he braindead?

Tap.

Is he actually, clinically, medically braindead? Because that’s the only explanation. Some kind of neurological event has occurred and the part of his brain responsible for reading social cues and understanding the concept of ’stop’ has been permanently deactivated.

Tap.

You could choke him. Right here. In this room. In front of fifteen people and a PR coordinator and two photographers. You could put your hands around his throat and squeeze and you’d feel nothing—no guilt, no remorse, just the deep, abiding satisfaction of a woman who has reached her absolute limit with a man who thinks his proximity is a gift.

Tap.

Who does he think he is? Genuinely. Is this the approach? Touch the girl, annoy the girl, be so relentlessly, suffocatingly present that eventually she breaks from sheer exhaustion? Is this what works on other women? Does he tap their knees in meetings and they just—what? Swoon? Melt? Decide that yes, being subtly harassed during a photo day logistics briefing is the romantic overture they’ve been waiting for?

Tap.

God. God, Kim Taehyung is a test. A full-blown, divinely orchestrated trial of patience. God really said ’men are insufferable and here’s one to prove it. Here’s the thesis statement with abs and a Coke Zero habit and zero—literally zero—understanding of the word no.’

What did you do in your previous life? 

It must’ve been bad. You must’ve burned down a convent or kicked a dog or committed some deeply specific sin that the universe decided could only be atoned for through repeated, sustained exposure to this man’s right kneecap.

Tap.

Karma. That’s what this is. Cosmic, targeted, inescapable karma.

Tap.

Fucking stupid attention-seeking—

“Stop.”

You say it through your teeth. Quiet. Just for him.

He doesn’t stop.

Tap.

His face is pointed at the front of the room. Attentive. Invested. Like he’s absorbing every single word about photo resolution requirements and has never been more intellectually stimulated.

Tap.

Fine.

You swing your knee sideways and crack it into his.

Hard.

Not a tap. Not a nudge. A full, mean, retaliatory strike that connects with the side of his kneecap with enough force that his whole leg jolts.

He snorts.

Tries to cover it—badly—pressing his fist against his mouth, shoulders shaking, this strangled sound escaping through his fingers that’s somewhere between a laugh and a cough.

Heads turn. Half the room glances over.

Taehyung clears his throat, fist still against his mouth, and nods at nobody in particular. 

“Sorry. Cough. Just a—” He thumps his chest once. “—tickle in the throat. Carry on.”

The PR coordinator blinks, adjusts her glasses, and continues talking about file format preferences.

Heads turn back.

You want to dissolve into the couch cushions and cease to exist.

He’s eating another pikota. Chewing with that self-satisfied rhythm of a man who just won a round and knows it.

Silence.

Blessed, temporary silence.

Forty-five seconds of peace in which you try to re-engage with the meeting, try to remember why you’re here, try to reconnect with the version of yourself that walked into this building this morning with functional blood pressure and the will to live.

Then he starts bouncing his knee.

Not the tapping. The bouncing. That full-leg rhythmic jitter that some people do when they’re restless, except he’s doing it at a frequency that vibrates through the couch cushion and directly into your thigh and it’s like sitting next to a human jackhammer.

Your pen stops moving.

You look at his leg.

Look at him.

He’s staring straight ahead. Chewing a pikota. Bouncing. Completely at peace with himself and the chaos he’s introducing into your nervous system.

You don’t think about it.

Your hand drops to his thigh and you dig your nails in.

Four fingers and a thumb, pressing into the muscle hard enough to anchor his leg to the couch and stop the vibration dead.

The effect is immediate.

His breath catches—audible, quick, a sound that has no business existing in a meeting room—and his head tips back. His arms go up, stretching overhead, spine arching slightly, and the groan that comes out of him is disguised as a stretch noise but it’s not a stretch noise and you know it’s not a stretch noise and he knows you know.

Every single head in the room turns again.

“Just—” His voice is rougher than it should be. He rolls his shoulders, committing to the bit. “Tight. From training. Sorry.”

The PR coordinator looks like she’s reconsidering her career choices.

You remove your hand from his thigh like it’s radioactive.

He looks at you.

That grin.

That absolute shit-eating, fully unrepentant, ‘I-just-made-a-noise-in-a-meeting-room-because-you-hurt-me-and-I-liked-it’ grin.

Your face is hot. Your ears are hot. Your entire body has decided to betray you by turning the exact shade of the pikotas he keeps eating, and you grip your pen so hard the plastic creaks.

He pops another pikota into his mouth.

Winks.

You are going to kill him. You are going to kill him and plead temporary insanity and every woman on the jury will acquit you.

The meeting wraps up approximately nine years later.

People start standing, gathering bags, fragmenting into side conversations. The PR coordinator distributes printed schedules. Someone mentions lunch. Normal, functional, human behavior happening all around you while you sit rigid on the couch thinking about the thirty-six different ways you could commit a crime and get away with it.

Taehyung shifts next to you. Doesn’t stand. Tilts his body toward yours, dropping his voice low enough that the words are just for you.

“I’m gonna be honest with you, Gomi.” Barely above a breath. “I didn’t hear a single word of that briefing.”

You stare at him.

“I have zero idea what’s happening for the photos. No clue. None. My entire blood supply was—” He makes a vague gesture downward. “—elsewhere. The whole time.”

“That sounds like a you problem.”

“It is a me problem.” He nods. Solemn. Completely unbothered. “A really pressing me problem.”

“Then go figure it out.”

“I was hoping my favorite physio’s daughter would brief me.”

“Briefly: no.”

“Gomi—”

You stand up. Grab your bag. Your schedule. The remains of your composure, which are admittedly scattered across the floor of this briefing room like debris.

“Your mess. Your cleanup. I’m not your personal assistant.”

“You’re really gonna leave me here?” He tips his head back against the couch, looking up at you with an expression of a kicked puppy. “Confused and alone?”

“Thriving and unbothered, actually.”

You’ve taken exactly two steps toward the door when Namjoon appears.

He’s holding a coffee—actual coffee, from the good machine on the second floor—and he’s got that easy, slightly disheveled energy he always has, glasses slightly askew, turtleneck doing its turtleneck thing. 

He smiles when he sees you.

“Hey. How was—”

“Don’t ask.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

He chuckles, and you’re about to ask him if he wants to grab food after the family shots when—

“Is that your boyfriend?”

You stop walking.

Turn around slowly.

Taehyung’s still on the couch, sprawled, one arm stretched across the backrest, looking at Namjoon with an expression that’s technically neutral and functionally anything but.

You open your mouth to tell him that’s none of his business, that he doesn’t get to ask you that, that the concept of your personal life should be as inaccessible to him as basic human decency apparently is—

“And what if I am?”

Namjoon’s voice. Calm. Even. Standing right beside you with his coffee and his turtleneck and an expression you’ve never seen on him before—steady and unbothered and looking directly at Taehyung like he’s got all day.

Taehyung simply looks at Namjoon from the couch, that sprawled-out posture, and there’s a beat—two, three seconds—where they just hold each other’s gaze. Weighing. Measuring.

Then Taehyung raises both hands. Palms out. That universal gesture of surrender that means nothing when it comes from him.

“My bad, dude.” Easy. Disarming. A smile that shows too many teeth. “Didn’t know.”

Namjoon doesn’t respond. Just holds the look for another second. Then turns to you.

“Ready?”

You pick up your tote strap, adjust it on your shoulder. “Let’s go.”

You make it three steps toward the door.

“Yo, dude!”

Both hands cupped around his mouth. Full volume. The kind of voice projection you use in stadiums, not conference rooms.

You both half turn, looking over shoulders.

“You better watch her.”

The smile that follows is the kind that could mean anything and definitely means something, and you grab Namjoon’s arm and pull him through the door before your face can give him any reaction at all.

The photo shoot is a circus and no one brought a tent.

You’re watching from behind the lighting rigs, tucked into one of those folding chairs they set up for families and staff, doing an excellent impression of someone who belongs here while internally calculating how many minutes until you can leave.

The roster shots are happening on the main pitch backdrop—that massive club crest banner they’ve rolled out like a red carpet for egos—and the photographer, a tiny woman with a headset, is trying to organize twenty-two professional athletes into neat rows.

It’s going about as well as you’d expect.

“Marco. Marco—I need you in the second row.”

“The second row?” Marco says it like she just asked him to stand in the car park. “Bro, my jawline doesn’t hit right from the second row. There’s a shadow thing. It’s an Italian bone structure issue.”

“It’s a height issue,” the photographer says flatly. “You’re five-eleven. Second row.”

“Five-eleven and three quarters—”

“Second row, Mr. Santelli.”

Leo, who’s already been placed in the second row, looks unreasonably pleased about this development. “Welcome to my world.”

“Shut up, Leo.”

“I’m just saying—”

“I said shut up.”

“The second row’s not that bad—”

“Leo, if you finish that sentence, I will tell Sofia what you said about her cooking last Tuesday.”

Leo shuts up.

The photographer repositions. Adjusts angles. Asks the first row to square their shoulders. Asks the third row to stop slouching. Asks Gabriel to please—please—take the AirPods out.

“Sorry, sorry—” Gabriel yanks them out, grinning that impossible grin that makes everyone forgive him immediately. “I was listening to something.”

“During the team photo?”

“It was a good song.” He says it like that’s a perfectly valid excuse. 

To be fair, for Gabriel, it probably is.

Sergio, standing front and center because he’s the captain and that’s his spot and nobody has ever once questioned this, pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Can we just—” He gestures at the group with the resigned authority of a man who’s done this forty times and it never gets easier. “Can we just take the photo. Please. One photo. Without anyone talking.”

“Bold of you to assume we know how to be quiet,” Marco says.

“I’m not assuming. I’m begging.”

“That’s sad, captain.”

“Your existence is sad, Marco. Smile.”

The photographer counts down. Three, two—

Taehyung bumps Marco’s shoulder. Hard enough to knock him sideways half a step.

Marco bumps him back.

Taehyung catches himself on Leo, who wasn’t involved but is now stumbling into Matías, who turns around with the expression of a man contemplating violence.

“¡Eh!” Matías shoves Leo back upright. “¿Qué coño hacéis?” (What the fuck are you doing?)

“It wasn’t me—”

“It’s never you—”

“Can we PLEASE—” The photographer’s voice has reached a frequency that could shatter crystal. “—take ONE photo where EVERYONE is looking at the camera and NOBODY is assaulting each other?”

Silence.

Twenty-two players stare forward.

Click.

“Thank god,” the photographer mutters.

“That’s gonna be a good one,” Marco announces to nobody. “I felt it in my bones.”

“You felt my elbow in your bones,” Taehyung says.

“Same thing.”

The photographer waves them off for a break while she checks the shots, and the formation dissolves immediately into chaos—players scattering, grabbing water, checking phones.

Leo drifts toward Marco and Taehyung like a satellite pulled by gravity, and within thirty seconds they’re clustered near the lighting rig to your left, close enough that you can hear every word whether you want to or not.

You do not want to.

You hear them anyway.

“—I’m just saying, the grey backdrop washes me out,” Marco’s saying, scrolling through his phone. “They should’ve gone with black. Black makes everyone look ten percent hotter. That’s science.”

“That’s not science,” Leo says.

“It is. I read it somewhere.”

“You don’t read.”

“I read captions, Leo. Captions count.”

Taehyung’s leaning against the rig, arms crossed, looking bored in the way he always looks bored when he’s actually paying attention to everything. His eyes drift across the room—casual, unhurried—and you know the exact moment they land on you because you feel it the way you feel a change in air pressure.

You don’t look up.

Keep reading your schedule.

“Alright, individual portraits next!” The photographer’s assistant—the PA with the clipboard and the thousand-yard stare—starts calling names. “Alphabetical by surname. We’re starting with—”

“Excuse me.” Xavi’s voice cuts through the noise. Not loud. Never loud. Just that specific frequency that makes every player in a thirty-meter radius instinctively straighten up. “Before individuals—can we address the team photo situation?”

He’s looking at the Chaos Coalition.

All three of them.

That look. You’ve seen your dad give it—the one that doesn’t need words because the disappointment is doing all the heavy lifting.

“The team photo,” Xavi repeats, “is the image the club uses for the entire season. It goes on the website. On posters. On merchandise. And you three—” He gestures with a water bottle. “—turned it into a playground fight.”

“It was a nudge,” Marco says.

“It was unprofessional.”

“Xavi—”

“This represents the club.” Xavi’s voice doesn’t rise. It doesn’t need to. He’s got that Andalusian calm that makes everything sound both reasonable and devastating. “The club that pays your salaries. That gave you a platform. The least you can do is stand still for eight seconds.”

Silence.

Marco blinks.

Leo stares at his shoes.

Taehyung tongues the inside of his cheek, jaw shifting, not saying a word.

Xavi holds the look for another two seconds—just to make sure it lands—then nods once and walks back toward the photographer, water bottle in hand, posture perfect, the absolute picture of professionalism.

The moment his back is turned, all three of them huddle closer.

“Look at him,” Marco mutters, barely moving his lips. “Being all… Xavi-like.”

“I mean,” Leo whispers back, “he is Xavi.”

“Yes but when I say Xavi-like I mean it as an insult, Leo. Focus.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Taehyung glances over his shoulder—checks Xavi’s position—then turns back. “Did you hear him? ‘The club that pays your salaries.’ Like I don’t know who pays my salary. I’m very aware of who pays my salary. My salary is excellent.”

“I’m so done with the salary lecture.” Marco shakes his head, solemn. “Top three worst moves. Right behind the ‘you represent something bigger than yourselves’ speech.”

“Oh god,” Leo groans. “That one’s the worst.”

“It’s so bad.”

“‘Something bigger than yourselves,’” Taehyung mimics, dropping his voice into Xavi’s measured cadence, chin lifted, an invisible water bottle in hand. “‘Every action you take reflects on this institution.’”

Marco snorts. Covers his mouth.

“‘The crest on your chest isn’t decoration,’” Marco adds, doing his own Xavi impression—slower, one hand pressed to his heart. “‘It’s a responsibility. A privilege. A—’”

“’—a legacy,’” Leo finishes, and all three of them mouth the word at the same time, like they’ve heard it four hundred times, which they probably have.

“At least the salary one’s short,” Taehyung concedes. “In, out, done. The ‘bigger than yourselves’ thing? That one’s got layers. He builds to it. There’s a crescendo.”

“There’s eye contact,” Marco adds, haunted. “He makes eye contact with every single person in the room.”

“Individually.”

“Individually.”

“Seriously, he’s all like—” Marco straightens up slightly, adjusts an imaginary collar. “‘Look at me. I’m Xavi. I’m morally superior because I’ve been in a relationship with someone who actually loves me for eight years and we just got engaged and I’ve never once thought about another woman because I’m built different’—”

“That one feels personal,” Leo says.

“It is personal.” Marco frowns. “Imagine being in love with the same person. Forever. Voluntarily.”

He shudders. Full body. Like the concept of monogamy is a physical affliction.

“Some people like that,” Leo says, carefully.

“Some people like eating plain rice, Leo. Doesn’t make it a personality.”

Taehyung snorts.

“Like, bro, the wedding?” Marco continues, eyes widening. “Have you seen the Pinterest board? Elena showed Isabella. There are mood boards. Plural. One for table settings. One for flowers. One for—get this—napkin folds.”

“Napkin folds,” Taehyung repeats.

“Specific napkin folds. There are apparently seven kinds and Elena has opinions about all of them.”

“And the water bottle thing too,” Leo mutters. “Like even his hydration is morally superior.”

“For real,” Taehyung says. “It’s like watching a documentary about discipline.”

“He’d make a great priest,” Leo offers.

“He’d make a great principal.”

“He’d make a great my-dad-when-I-got-bad-grades—”

Xavi looks over from across the room. Just a glance. Just a flicker of those dark eyes in their direction, chin lifting slightly, the way a lion turns its head when it hears rustling in the grass.

All three of them snap forward simultaneously.

Marco grabs his water bottle and drinks with aggressive innocence. Leo suddenly finds the ceiling fascinating. Taehyung pulls out his phone and stares at a blank screen with the focus of a man reading breaking news.

Nobody speaks.

Nobody breathes.

Xavi holds the look for three full seconds.

Then turns back to his conversation with Rafael.

Marco exhales through his teeth. “Close one.”

“He’s got eyes everywhere,” Leo whispers. “It’s like he can hear us thinking.”

“It’s the goalkeeper training,” Taehyung says, still fake-scrolling. “Peripheral vision. They see everything.”

“We should spread out,” Leo suggests. “Look natural.”

“We are natural—”

“We look like we’re planning a heist—”

“Okay, next please!” The photographer’s voice cuts across the room. 

Alexandre peels himself off the wall with the enthusiasm of a man walking to his own execution, and the room reshuffles again.

You’ve been watching all of this.

You didn’t mean to, but it’s impossible—genuinely, physically impossible—not to watch three grown men who earn more in a week than most people earn in a year act like twelve-year-olds who got told off by a substitute teacher.

The Xavi impression was good, though.

You’re not going to admit that to anyone.

The next hour passes in a blur of flash photography and fragile egos. Players cycle through individual shots—some take thirty seconds, some take fifteen minutes because they keep asking to see the screen and requesting different angles. Marco insists on a reshoot because his ‘jawline wasn’t catching the light.’ Taehyung, predictably, nails his in one take and walks away like he couldn’t care less. 

You saw him check the preview screen twice, though. 

He cared.

Your dad appears around noon, coffee in hand, looking pleased in that quiet way he gets when work is going well.

“Fotos de familia ahora, cariño.” (Family photos now, sweetheart.) He squeezes your shoulder. “Solo un par. Rápido.” (Just a couple. Quick.)

You close your notebook. Stand. Smooth down your jacket.

This is the part you’ve been dreading. Not the photos themselves—you can survive standing next to your dad and smiling for a camera. You’ve done it a thousand times, at a thousand Barça events, in a thousand corridors that smelled like medical tape and belonging.

It’s the context.

Staff families means you’re part of the Madrid machine now. Officially. Documented. Filed away in some PR folder as evidence of team unity and institutional warmth.

The photographer’s set up a new backdrop—warmer lighting, softer focus, the kind of setup designed to make everyone look approachable and human. Staff members are filing in with partners, kids, the occasional bemused-looking teenager who clearly got dragged here against their will.

You know the feeling.

Your dad steers you toward the cluster forming near the backdrop, his hand on your shoulder, already talking to one of the assistant coaches about someone’s hamstring.

The photographer’s assistant is arranging people into loose groupings. Staff on the left. Families on the right. Players who are part of the ‘unity shots’ scattered in between for that curated we’re-all-one-big-family aesthetic that clubs love and nobody believes.

You end up near the edge of the group. Reasonable. Safe. Far enough from the center that you’re visible but not prominent. Your dad’s beside you, already in position, radiating that calm professional warmth that makes everyone around him stand a little straighter.

This is fine.

You adjust your jacket. Fix your hair. Prepare the face—neutral, pleasant, the expression of a person who is here by choice and not because her father’s career depends on institutional goodwill.

And then—someone stepping into the space to your left where nobody was standing three seconds ago.

You feel it before you register it. 

That faint edge of citrus that your nose has started recognizing against your will.

His hand touches your lower back.

Light. Brief. Fingertips pressing through the fabric of your jacket, just below your shoulder blade, the kind of contact that could be dismissed as guidance. Positioning. Moving you into frame the way anyone might move anyone during a group photo.

Except his fingers linger.

One beat too long.

Two.

His palm flattens. Settles against the curve of your spine.

And stays.

“Chin up, Gomi,” he murmurs, voice low enough that only you hear it. “You look like you’re at a funeral.”

You don’t turn your head. Don’t look at him. Just face the camera with your expression locked in place and your back burning where his hand sits.

The photographer raises her camera.

“Everyone—smile!”

You do.

It’s late when the whole nightmare is finally over. 

The light through the hallway is going amber, that low-angle afternoon thing that happens when a day’s been going on too long and the building itself seems tired of hosting people. 

Most of the photo shoot chaos has been packed up. The photographer left an hour ago. Staff families filtered out after that, then the WAGs, then the players in staggered groups—some to the gym, some to their cars, some to whatever shiny nightlife commitment makes them feel alive after eight hours of being professionally agreeable.

You’re still here because your dad’s still here. Because your dad is always still here, because Jesús does not leave a facility until every piece of equipment is accounted for and every clipboard is initialed and every surface has been wiped down to his personal standard of medical-grade cleanliness.

Which means you’re in the closet.

Not metaphorically. Literally in the storage room off the main physio corridor, reaching for the electrode cables your dad asked you to grab from the top shelf because they migrated during the chaos of today and now they’re wedged behind a box of resistance bands that someone shoved up there with the spatial awareness of a drunk giraffe.

Your fingers graze the edge of the box. Miss the cables by about four centimeters.

You stretch higher. Your jacket rides up. Your shoulder protests.

Seriously. This shelf is just unreasonably placed, designed by someone who assumed that everyone who uses this room is three meters tall and plays professional football.

You stretch again. Fingertips brush plastic. Almost—

A hand reaches past you.

Long arm. Over your shoulder. Fingers closing around the cable bundle and pulling it down with zero effort, like the shelf is at eye level and not somewhere near the ceiling.

The smell hits you before the identity does.

Lemons.

That specific scent that isn’t cologne, isn’t soap, isn’t anything you can pin to a product—it’s just Kim Taehyung. The way his skin smells after a full day. Bright and tangy and warm in a way that makes your throat do something inconvenient.

He always smells like lemons, doesn’t he?

You’re not a citrus girl. Never have been. You don’t squeeze lemon into your water or order limoncello or buy those yellow cleaning products that smell like summer kitchens.

But right now, standing in a storage closet with his arm still extended past your head and his chest approximately four inches from your back, the lemon thing is—

Present.

Very present.

He drops the cables into your hand.

“Here.”

You take them. Step sideways, putting distance between you and whatever just happened in your olfactory system.

“Thanks.”

He shrugs. Moves back. Leans against the opposite shelf with that particular brand of engineered casualness that he does—arms folded, one ankle crossed over the other, like he ended up here by accident and not because he walked into a storage closet that he has absolutely no reason to be in.

You look at him.

He looks at you.

The silence sits there for a second, the same way that happens at the end of a very long day when everyone’s used up all their performance energy and there’s nothing left but the actual person underneath.

“You look tired,” he says.

“Wow.” You don’t miss a beat. “Charming.”

“I mean—” He pauses. His jaw works slightly, like he’s chewing on the next word before releasing it. “This kind of day is exhausting. The performing.”

You don’t respond immediately.

Because that’s—

That’s not a line. 

That’s not a setup for something. 

There’s no smirk chasing the sentence, no innuendo tucked into the pause, no gleam in his eye that says gotcha. 

He’s just standing there, looking at you, and his voice sounds different. Flatter. Stripped of the usual coating.

Tired, actually.

He looks tired too. Not the kind of tired that makes people ugly—because the universe wouldn’t grant you that mercy—but the kind that shows in the looseness of his posture. 

The way his shoulders sit lower than usual. 

The faint shadow under his eyes that his bone structure almost hides but not quite.

“You’d know,” you say. Quieter than you intended.

“Yeah.” He holds your gaze. “I would.”

Something passes between you. Brief. Unnamed. The kind of thing that happens when two people who spend all their time performing accidentally stop at the same time and realize they’re both just standing there without a script.

Then—

“So you perform too.”

His mouth shifts. Not a grin. Something smaller. More knowing.

“Thought you were above that.”

The sincerity evaporates like a puddle in July.

“Meaning?” Your defenses snap back online. Immediate. Automatic.

“Meaning—” He tilts his head, that half-interested expression settling over his features. “—I put my hand on your back during the photos. Right there. Full palm.” He makes a vague gesture. “And you just… stood there.”

“Because we were being photographed.”

“Because you were performing.” He says it like he’s delighted by the discovery. “After the meeting—after the—” 

He mimes clawing fingers.

Nails digging into a thigh. 

Your nails. His thigh. 

“—that whole thing, I was expecting you to turn around and stomp on my foot. Elbow to the ribs. Something.”

“I didn’t want to cause a scene.”

“You always want to cause a scene. You charged fifteen grand to my card at a party.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“That was revenge. The photo was just logistics.”

“Logistics.” He repeats the word like it’s amusing. Like it’s a candy he’s rolling around his mouth. “Right. My hand on your back was logistics.”

“It was.”

“And you letting it stay there?”

“Tolerance.”

“Tolerance,” he echoes. His eyes narrow. “See, Gomi, I don’t buy that.”

“I don’t care what you buy.”

“Because I think—” He pushes off the shelf. Doesn’t step closer. Just shifts his weight forward in a way that makes the room feel smaller. “—you liked it.”

“I tolerated it.”

“You tolerated my hand on your back but tried to puncture my femoral artery with your fingernails forty-five minutes earlier?”

“Yes.”

“Those are mixed signals.”

“Those are boundaries. One was a briefing room where you were being insufferable. The other was a photo where pulling away would’ve looked weird.”

“Mm.” He’s almost smiling now. Containing it. Barely. “So you didn’t pull away because of optics.”

“Correct.”

“Not because my hand felt good.”

“Your hand felt like a hand. Congratulations on having one.”

He bites back whatever’s threatening to break across his face. 

You can see it—the way his jaw locks, the way his cheek hollows slightly with the effort of not grinning.

“Okay,” he says. “Fair. But the nails thing.”

“What about it.”

“I liked that.”

You stare at him. “You liked that you almost got caught making sex noises in a briefing.”

“I liked the nails thing, Gomgom.”

No lead-up. No cushioning. 

He just drops it into the air between you like it’s a reasonable contribution to a conversation between two people standing in a storage closet.

“Good for you.”

“I mean—I’m used to scratches.” He tilts his head, rolling one shoulder back like he’s remembering something specific, something physical. “My back’s basically a canvas at this point. Comes with the territory.”

“Disgusting.”

“So like, not news.” He doesn’t even register the insult. Just keeps going, the way a train keeps going when someone throws a pebble at it. “Girls scratch. It happens. Standard operating procedure. But you—” 

He points at you. One finger. 

"—you scratched me like you were actually trying to get to the bone.”

“Because I was trying to get to the bone.”

“—and that was so hot, Gomi.” His voice drops, rough, as if the memory’s doing something to him in real time. “Like, fuck. That’s all I could think about for the rest of that meeting.”

“Explains why you got nothing out of it.”

“Exactly! See?” He spreads his hands. Beaming. “We get each other.”

“We absolutely do not get each other.”

“You’re right.” He nods, solemn, like he’s reconsidering his position and arriving at a new conclusion. “I think we should get to know each other. In my room. My bed, specifically. So you can add those scratches to my back. For real this time.”

There it is.

The proposition. Delivered with all the subtlety of a billboard on the M-30 and twice the confidence.

In a normal setting—on a normal day—with a normal amount of patience left in your reserves, you’d say ’I don’t want to know’ or ‘what the fuck is wrong with you’ or even a mere ‘boy, whatever’ and walk out and that would be the end of it. Clean exit. Dignity intact. The mature response of a woman who does not engage with men who proposition her in storage closets after photo days.

But it’s not a normal day.

And Taehyung is not a normal person. 

And it’s been a twelve-hour day of performing and tolerating and sitting next to his stupid bouncing knee and feeling his stupid hand on your stupid back and smelling his stupid lemon smell and you are fed up. 

Past fed up. Beyond it. 

Somewhere in the territory where irritation curdles into recklessness and your mouth stops consulting your brain before opening.

“You wouldn’t last long enough,” you say, “to get me to scratch you.”

The room goes very still.

Taehyung’s face does something you’ve never seen it do.

It goes blank.

Completely, totally blank—every expression wiped clean for a full second, like his operating system just crashed and is rebooting. 

His mouth is slightly open. 

His eyes are fixed on you with the intensity of a man who just heard something in a language he didn’t know he spoke.

Then the reboot completes.

And the grin that spreads across his face is predatory.

Not his usual smirk. Not the cocky, performative thing he wears like a uniform. 

This one’s slower. Meaner. All teeth and something behind the teeth that makes the air in the closet feel like it dropped ten degrees and heated up simultaneously.

“Wanna bet?”

Two words, low enough that you feel them more than hear them. 

His tongue presses against the inside of his cheek, and his whole posture shifts—pushing off the shelf, not moving toward you but orienting toward you, his body language suddenly very awake for a man who looked exhausted thirty seconds ago.

Something about the way he says it sounds like a door opening onto a room you shouldn’t walk into.

You step back.

“I’m leaving.”

“Gomi—”

“Goodbye.” 

You tuck the cables under your arm, grip the shelf with your free hand for balance as you step around him—giving him the widest possible berth in a closet that doesn’t offer much berth to give—and head for the door, flipping him off. 

“Oi!”

His voice bounces off the corridor walls, too loud, too pleased.

“That’s the first time you’ve flipped me off!”

You keep walking.

“That’s a milestone, Gomi! We should mark the date!”

You round the corner.

His voice follows, fading but warm.

“I’m putting it in my calendar!”

The lemon smell stays on the cables the whole walk back.

You don’t notice.

You absolutely, categorically don’t notice.

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