Monday

It turns out Jongin’s supposed acquiescence of the ‘pheromone incident’ was short-lived, because after Sehun gets out of the shower the following morning, he finds Jongin rolling back and forth on the bed - on top of the suit Sehun had laid out for work.

“Hey, hey, watch it - you’re messing up my clothes!”

Jongin juts out his chin as he looks up at him with defiance. “I’m just prepping them.”

“Prepping them for what, drycleaning?” Sehun asks as he tugs on Jongin’s arm to pull him away, saving his favorite grey suit from getting wrinkled any further.

“For work. Now you’ve got my scent all over you.”

Sehun holds the fabric pants up to his nose and sniffs. His suit still smells exactly the way he assumes his suits should smell. “It doesn’t smell any different though?”

Jongin rolls his eyes at him. “It’s more subtle than that. I hope your suitor gets the message.”

“Jongin, I really don’t think there’s anyone at work who’s marking me with his scent.”

“Or hers. Don’t forget about the women,” Jongin warns.

Sehun would be more annoyed about the wrinkles in his pants if he wasn’t so flattered by Jongin’s possessiveness.

*

Before Sehun leaves, Jongin pushes him up against the corridor’s wall and tries to leave a hickey on his neck. Sehun shoves him off because while he enjoys Jongin’s possessive streak, he’s afraid of what his colleagues would say if they found out about the pretty catboy crashing on Sehun’s couch.

*

At the office, things are no less hectic than they were the day before. Even Baekhyun is recruited to do some of the heavy lifting as new files are brought in in the wake of Samsung’s lawsuit, now that Kim Jongdae had officially been served.

Sehun is trying to make heads or tails from a few coffee-stained documents he found, a handwritten list of what thinks might be be order numbers.

Baekhyun drops a heavy box at Sehun’s feet, puffing and wiping sweat from his brow as he slides down the side of Sehun’s desk, his hitting the carpet with a dull thud.

“I’m just gonna hide out here for a while. Don’t let the slavedriver know I’m here.”

Sehun smirks. “Gotta work on your stamina, old man. Run around the block once in a while.”

Baekhyun punches Sehun’s thigh in retaliation. “Brat.”

Then he leans in closer and runs his fingers over Sehun's dress pants.

Sehun shifts in his seat. "What are you doi-"

"A-ha!" To Sehun's horror, Baekhyun triumphantly holds up a single cat hair - Sehun recognizes Jongin's trademark pattern, black bleeding into snow white tips.

“Oh Sehun, did you get a pet?”

*

Sehun wonders why he couldn’t just have said ‘no’. Or why he had felt the need to specify Jongin was not a pet. Or why he hadn’t steered away from the topic immediately. Sehun wonders about a lot of things, but he mostly wonders how long it will take for Baekhyun to get tired of teasing Sehun with his ‘secret catboy-lover’.

*

Sehun makes a beeline for the break room when he sees Tao walk in with the food around eleven. He’d rather have an early lunch then stay at his desk for one more minute listening to Baekhyun interrogating him and making crude innuendos about cat hybrids (“What’s his name? What’s he like? It’s a he, right? I heard the females are a real handful. Is he handsome? Oh yeah, you’d go for the fluffy choir boy type, probably. How tall is he? Small enough to fit in your lap as he takes a ride to O-town?”.)

Tao’s still unpacking the food as Sehun greets him and grabs a mug from the small kitchen cupboard and turns on the espresso machine. Everyone’s running on coffee and they’re constantly running out of fresh brew, so Sehun decides he could use something a little stronger.

“Long day ahead of you?” Tao asks.

“Probably. I think Chanyeol won’t let me see the light of day this week.” Sehun stretches his arms over his head until he hears a satisfying pop in his back. He turns to the table where Tao is putting all the sa