Archive of Our Own

“Oh, no,” Namjoon heard from behind him. “Oh, no.”

Namjoon rolled his chair partway into the aisle, looked around for any potential observers, and leaned into Yoongi’s space. “Hyung?”

Yoongi had his head in his hands. He said something, but it was so muffled Namjoon couldn’t make it out.

“You what?”

Yoongi moved his hands. “I printed a PDF,” he said in a stage whisper, and put his head back down.

“Oh, no,” Namjoon said.

The office printer had needed replacing for most of Namjoon’s tenure with the company. Management refused to replace it, arguing that a paperless office didn’t need to print that much anyway (while still mysteriously demanding reports on paper at unpredictable intervals). Jungkook had been babying it along for months, but even his IT magic could only go so far.

Its latest trick was to malfunction any time someone printed a PDF to it. It would get stuck and print the same page over and over and over again, not stopping until Jungkook cleared it from the print queue.

“Call Jungkook,” Namjoon said.

“Right. Right.” Yoongi picked up the phone and punched in Jungkook’s extension. Namjoon could hear it ringing over and over, and then Jungkook’s voicemail greeting started. Yoongi said something not office-appropriate under his breath.

“Keep trying,” Namjoon said. “Try Taehyung’s desk, you know he’s over there more than his own lately.”

Yoongi stood up. “I have to pull the paper out, though, if it prints too many pages management will freak out.”

“I’ll do that, you call JK,” Namjoon said, pushing Yoongi back down.

Yoongi gave Namjoon a dubious look.

Namjoon was, in fact, barred from touching the printer. He waved a hand anyway. “It’s just pulling the drawers out. I can handle the drawers.”

“Are you sure?” Yoongi asked, but he’d already picked the phone up.

Namjoon pushed his chair back towards his desk and hurried over to the printer.

The printer was several cubicle rows away and set back into a little space of its own, to minimize the noise for surrounding desks. The effect gave the printer more space than most employees, something that made Hoseok roll his eyes regularly from his position on the other side of the cube wall from the printer.

Namjoon stared at the printer warily. After the incident with his tie getting photocopied on top of Jimin’s payroll reports…and the incident where 150 copies of a post-it note had to be recycled…and the thing with the collating…Namjoon really, really wasn’t supposed to touch the printer.

“You can do this,” he told himself quietly.

He pulled out the top drawer and quickly scooped the paper out, setting it on top of the boxes of paper stacked next to the printer, and replaced the drawer. He did the same with the second tray.

Only two trays were left. The printer was still printing page 1 of “Construction in Progress Variance Broken Down by Quarter,” so one of the trays must be the active one. Namjoon pulled the third out carefully. The printer kept going. As he reached for the paper, he bumped the side of the tray and a screw wobbled loosely on the far side.

Namjoon froze.

The screw settled to a halt.

Namjoon breathed. Nothing happened.

“You can do this,” he told himself again. “If Yoongi hyung can steal highlighters for you, you can do this for--”

“I knew he was the one with the highlighters!” Hoseok exclaimed, sticking his head over the cubicle wall.

Namjoon startled and fell back, knocking into the printer tray again. The screw bounced loose, ricocheted off the side and bottom of the tray, and fell over the edge into the printer.

Namjoon panicked and slammed the tray back into place. He stared at it in dismay.

“Are you okay?” Hoseok asked. “What just happened?”

The printer made a screeching, grinding noise and stopped.

“Nothing,” Namjoon said. “I wasn't here.”

“Never saw you,” Hoseok said. He disappeared from sight and Namjoon hurried away.

***

Namjoon and Yoongi were at lunch the next day, eating gimbap and bumping their feet together under the table, when Jungkook walked in. “Funny story,” he announced to the room at large.

“Ooh, what?” Hoseok asked. Namjoon turned to glare at him, but Hoseok was gazing with perfect innocence at Jungkook.

“You know the printer in Accounting?” Jungkook asked. “The one that jams--”

“Yes,” the entire room replied with varying levels of disgust.

“It died yesterday afternoon. The printer tech said he’d never seen anything like it. It looks like someone hacked at the inside.”

“That’s weird,” Jimin said.

Yoongi shrugged. “Printers do weird things sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Jungkook said. “Anyway, the new one is coming on Monday. If you need to print before then, use the one in Sales.”

The room fell back into its usual low hum of conversation, and Namjoon took a deep breath.

Jungkook walked in the direction of the refrigerator, then paused at Namjoon’s table. “Oh, hey,” he said casually. “I found this on the floor somewhere. Can’t remember where.”

He handed Namjoon a highlighter - one of the green ones only Namjoon used (because only Yoongi would steal them for him).

“That printer was a huge time-suck for me,” Jungkook said conversationally. He winked at Namjoon. “Let’s hear it for inexplicable mechanical damage.”

Namjoon waited for Jungkook to walk away, then put his head down on the table, narrowly missing his drink. “I don’t know if I should laugh or cry,” he said.

Yoongi reached for Namjoon’s hand under the table. “I vote laugh,” he said, and Namjoon did.