Chapter Text
By eight-thirty, the entire office smelled like coffee and irritation.
Nobody had gone home.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead while keyboards clicked in uneven rhythms across the finance floor. The deadline sat over everyone’s heads like a loaded gun, one wrong move away from blowing the entire project apart. Somewhere several floors above them, the CEO waited for results while being waited on hand and foot by assistants who’d probably never touched a spreadsheet in their lives.
Something was wrong.
Liam stared at his monitor hard enough for the numbers to blur together, eyes burning from hours under artificial light. His tie hung loose around his neck now, sleeves rolled messily to his elbows. He rubbed at his face with a tired groan, blinking hard when his eyes threatened to shut.
Paper hit the desk sharply enough to jolt him awake.
Liam looked up.
Narin stood beside his desk, illuminated by the pale office lights. His expression was tight, jaw clenched so hard it looked painful. The scent of coffee and sweet cream lingered around him stronger than usual, clinging to his clothes after hours trapped in the office. “You’re off by one.”
.
.
.
Narin’s eye twitched slightly behind his glasses, fingers gripping the stack of papers hard enough to wrinkle the edges.
“The entire report was built off your numbers,” he said, voice sharp and controlled in the way that meant he was seconds from snapping. “Did you seriously not notice?”
Liam stared at the report before quickly turning back to his monitor, exhaustion draining from his face almost instantly. His eyes widened slightly at the discrepancy buried between the rows of numbers.
One number…
That was all it took for everything to go to hell.
For a moment, he said nothing, jaw tightening as he reread the line over and over again like it might change the fact that it was wrong. “Didn’t you see where you made the damn mistake?” Narin snapped, stabbing a finger against the paper hard enough to crumble it. “It’s literally right here.” A vein stood out against his forehead now, the control in his voice starting to crack under the hours of stress and frustration.
“We spent five fucking hours working off your numbers,” he hissed. “Now everyone has to redo everything because you couldn’t catch one mistake. This must be some shitty joke! You know what, I would be the one doing all the work since I work with lazy bums.”
Liam’s brows furrow immediately. “It was just one number,” he shot back, finally pushing himself upright in his chair. “Stop acting like I blew up the entire damn building.”
“One number that affected the entire fucking report that I have to redo because of you—! Are you dense? Stupid? An idiot? Or all three?”
“Oh my god, I get it.”
“No, you clearly don’t get it at all.” Narin laughed bitterly, dragging a hand through his hair. “You keep pulling this sort of bullshit then I’m the one cleaning up your mess. Nobody here says anything except for me since I’m not scared of your damn authority.”
Liam’s expression darkened instantly, his chair creaking as he leaned back to stare at Narin like he was already sick of hearing him talk. “Are you going to keep standing there bitching at me all night about this? Or will you fix this?”
Narin stifled a laugh, pushing up his glasses, body aching from having to sit in that uncomfortable chair for hours, picking up the work of his colleagues that would be better as hobos than work beside him. “Help you? You must be out of your damn mind!” A chuckle left his mouth, tired and exhausted. “It’s like I’m the only one who can fix it. That just means I’ll have to stay in this hellhole for another like three hours? That’s just an estimation though.”
“Like I said, it was just one fucking number! Why are you still complaining?”
“And somehow that one fucking number I’m complaining ruined the entire report.” Narin dropped the papers onto the desk, scattering them all over, not a single care in the world about the organization that Liam had put so much work into. He had to hold himself back, hands forming into tight fists. “Do you even look over your work because from what I’m seeing… You don’t. I pick up the shit you drop and then you get all the fucking credit.”
Liam’s jaw tightened further, teeth clenching from the anger building up inside of him, wondering why Narin was talking to him like this. “Jesus christ— You’re acting like I killed someone! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“There’s nothing wrong. I'm just waiting for the moment where you make a mistake I can’t fix for you.”
That took the words out of Liam’s mouth, leaving him utterly speechless, a stab in his heart from hearing those cruel words. The office around them went silent, awkwardly trying to work through their bickering, wanting to keep to themselves yet it was so loud to ignore. The clashing had been going on since Narin had come to the office, always budding heads, never a day without them fighting.
Liam was the first to look away, rubbing a hand down his face before laughing quietly under his breath, exasperated more than amused. “You really love talking to me like I’m stupid…” The thought was hilarious to him, heartbreaking yet somehow it still brought him to laughter.
Narin scoffed, “Then stop being stupid, simple as that.”
The second those words left his mouth, Liam’s head snapped back to him, holding back the urge to punch this fucker. “See? There it fucking is!” He said, pointing at Narin, “That shit. You always do that.”
“What?”
“You act like you’re better than everyone.”
Narin went still for a second. His brows pulled together tightly behind his glasses as he stared at Liam like he genuinely couldn’t believe what had to just come out of his mouth. The muscles in his jaw flexed once before he looked away, sucking in a slow breath through his nose like he was trying very hard to not say something worse.
“Fuck you,” he muttered, finally in a voice low and sharp.
Before Liam could respond, Narin snatched the papers off the desk hard enough to bend the corners and turned on his heel, stomping back towards his desk with a kind of step that screamed that he was seconds away from having a tantrum.
———————————
By the time the clock hit midnight, the office floor was completely empty.
The bright noise from earlier had died, ringing of phones dead for hours, no running accountants going back and forth between departments, nobody panicking over deadlines. There was simply just silence now except the soft clicking at Narin’s desk, listening to the buzz of the fluorescent lights above his head, tapping at his keys to continue to fix the mess that was left on his back.
Narin was hunched over his computer, one hand pressed against his forehead while the other dragged the numbers around the spreadsheet for what felt like the thousandth time this night, feeling a cramp grow at the base of his finger.
Everyone had piled their work onto him, just as they usually do.
Once the mistake had settled in the cracks, people started to disappear one by one, fake apologies, excuses, begging Narin to finish the rest for them. His anger that grew within him dulled out, sighing loudly, eyes burning hard enough to water from staring at his screen. His movements were slower, a lot less intense than this morning, less sharp around the edges.
His vision blurred worse than before, letting out a groan, muttering a curse under his breath before leaning back slightly, rubbing harshly at his eyes beneath his glasses. He furrowed his eyebrows, turning his head around, the feeling of someone staring at him intensified by the time he finished working, catching Liam staring at him.
The glass walls reflected pale monitor light across his face as he stared directly at Narin from behind his desk, one arm resting lazily against the chair while his other arm tapped at his desk, more focused on the accountant outside. His office lights were off besides the soft monitor glow, making him look strangely shadowed compared to the rest of the floor.
Nothing was spoken between the two, Narin furrowed his eyebrows further, rolling his eyes, mouthing ‘what’ to the man. Liam looked away for a moment, expecting not to get caught by him before getting up from his chair. A bit later, his office door was pulled open.
Narin watched him walk through the rows of empty desks, too exhausted to argue anymore, simply wanting to lay in his bed now.
“You’re still fixing it?” Liam asked quietly once he stopped at Narin’s desk, his gaze oddly soft, making the accountant look away.
“Yeah, just finished fixing your bullshit.”
Liam chose to ignore the attitude that seeped into every word that left his mouth, rolling his eyes, his gaze drifting to the amount of writing on each report, scribbles, math equations. He was working for hours. “You’ve been here for hours.”
“So are you.”
Narin clicked through the last of his tabs, eyes skimming through every number, every result, making sure everything was right before finally saving the report. The monitor dimmed for a second afterwards, reflecting his tired expression back at him through the dark screen, turning his gaze to Liam.
His shoulders loosened for the first time all night, letting out a soft breath, leaning back in his chair. Every part of him was sore from sitting at a desk for hours fixing a mistake that wasn’t even his. If he was in charge, he would’ve gotten rid of whoever made it.
“Why are you still here anyway?” He muttered tiredly, meeting Liam’s eyes, seeing him act a bit awkward around him, causing a weird ick to spread through his body. “You have your own office. Go pass out in there or something.”
Liam let out a snort, his eyes going over the accountant’s features, trying to make it seem subtle but god knows that’s impossible for someone like him, letting out a sigh. “I tried..” His gaze finally went back to Narin’s eyes. “It’s hard to fix over a hundred reports with the same mistake everywhere.”
“Wow, that sounds sooo terrible.”
“It is.”
Narin glared at him as Liam seemed to inch closer to him. He looked exhausted too, his hair down, strands everywhere, tie loosened with his shirt unbuttoned to be more comfortable.
Then a silence…. Awkward, tense, and not even close to comfortable before Liam cleared his throat to end this weird tension.
“I actually wanted to ask you something.”
Narin groaned, “No. Don’t bother asking me…”
“You don’t even know what it is.”
“I don’t want to know.”
Liam rolled his eyes before leaning in closer, trying not to invade his space, staring at him. “Can you just be serious for a minute? Please?”
Narin stared at him tiredly over the rim of his glasses, debating in his mind whether or not he should help this asshole that only knows how to make his life miserable. “Fine— What is it?”
Liam hesitated for a second which oddly felt out of place for him, thinking if he was drunk or something related.
“I want you to help me review reports before they’re finalized.”
Narin blinked once.
This was his opportunity to go far and beyond above this fuckers head! To steal his position for himself and get the praise he was worthy of in the first place. This was just a gateway he opened up for him without even knowing. How stupid was he?
“You’re asking me to check your work now, huh?” It was painfully obvious of the smugness in his tone, making Liam cringe from having to admit that was the exact reason and for something else.
“I’m asking because you catch mistakes nobody else notices,” Liam looked away briefly before adding, a bit more quietly this time. “And clearly, I really need that.”
The honesty caught Narin more off guard than the request itself. Liam looked genuinely irritated at having to admit it, jaw tight, fingers tapping against the desk once again. Normally Narin would’ve made fun of him for it immediately. Normally, he would’ve dragged out the argument to just be difficult but he was exhausted, and for the first time that night, Liam didn’t sound defensive or arrogant.
Narin let out a slow breath through his nose before shoving his glasses back onto his face. “…”
A moment of silence.
“Fine…”