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Near the tail end of every week, Taehyung finds his way to a small, tucked-away shop by the riverside on bike and makes his presence a whole thing. It’s a Friday, so he is once again inserting himself into Kim Seokjin’s place of business and trying to snag his attention in all the ways he knows how. Taehyung doesn’t do subtle. He crashes through the doors of Daisy Dose with the errant energy of a surprise thunderstorm, bamboo wind chimes singing in his aftermath.
“Missed me?” Taehyung calls into the vegetation that crowds around him. A vine snakes out from his left side and curls around his ankle, playful.
“You wish,” comes Seokjin’s voice from the back of the store.
“I was talking to the plants,” Taehyung shoots back reflexively.
To make his point, he flits around and greets all of them one by one, from the hanging ferns to the tiny sprigs of baby’s breath. He lingers at each of them, tracing the path of their emerald veins and the curvature of their petals.
“And how are we doing today, little ones? Getting enough of that Vitamin D?” Taehyung coos to the acacias by the windowsills, spritzing water into the pots with the spray bottle he’s brandishing. It’s a mellow afternoon, the sun tilting through the windows and scattering the walls with bands of gold.
The whole place is alive, in motion. Taehyung knows the plants in this shop are speaking in a frequency just out of his reach, a steady hum of chatter below the surface, and there are days Taehyung wants to stay here with them, drenched in sunlight, for the rest of his life.
“All right, all right, you’ve spoiled them enough already. Ugh, such terrible parenting practices. I’m the one who needs attention back here,” Seokjin calls again, his voice coming through muffled.
“Don't be jealous just 'cause I’m their favorite dad,” Taehyung says, but drops the spray bottle next to the vintage cash register Seokjin kept around for, quote, “the aesthetic”, despite being barely functional at best.
“Pretty sure the lawyer said I’m the one with sole custody.”
Taehyung picks his way around the tangled golden pothos and brushes past huge monstera leaves. "Hold on a sec, I thought we had a fifty-fifty arrangement going on— ” he starts to answer, before coming to a sudden stop at the sight of Seokjin sitting cross-legged on the ground, attempting to put together the most complicated bouquet Taehyung has ever laid his eyeballs on. Rolls of silk ribbon and flowers are pooled on the floor next to him.
“Who is this even for,” Taehyung says, once he’s pried his jaw from off the ground. “Just don’t tell me someone’s shitty husband ordered this as an apology gift, I’ll actually die.”
“Yah, just who the hell do you think I am,” Seokjin says while Taehyung sits down across from him and picks at the clipped flowers scattered around him, moonflowers and red carnations and bundles of sweetpea. “I would never put this much effort into something like that. Mark your calendar, this bitchin' work of art is for our Min Yoongi-ssi.” He raises his eyebrows meaningfully.
“Oh,” Taehyung says. Two seconds later, it hits him. The broken stem he’d been rolling absently between his fingers drops to the ground. “Oh. Oh my god, really? I literally can’t believe this, are you kidding me. Namjoon-hyung? Wow wow wow wow. Can I take a picture? This needs to go down in the annals of history. This deserves headlines.”
Seokjin laughs. “I know, I really thought I was gonna have to lock them into my broom closet until they sorted their shit. Namjoon actually asked me, 'what if he doesn't want me?' As if Yoongi hasn't wanted to jump his bones every time he saw those dimples. What are all those IQ points even good for if us non-geniuses can put it together faster than he can, gods.”
“Yeah, but it also means he doesn’t do anything halfway, either.”
Namjoon and Yoongi are the witches who’ve basically spent the last several years annoying Seokjin halfway to an aneurysm circling around each other ad infinitum. When Taehyung had met them he finally understood why: there’d been something soul-deep about the way they were around each other, a piece of them shared. Their magic was in music, and this thing between them came out even in the intense, citrus splashes of their angry beats or in the seafoam-delicate notes of their saddest songs.
He’d promptly made it his personal mission to meddle as much as possible for the greater good, because there were only so many pining sad songs you could listen to before you developed an urge to spontaneously combust. There’d been a couple of not-dates he may or may not have arranged on the sly. Payoff is so, so sweet.
Taehyung stares at the arrangement taking shape. The choices are unusual but they all somehow managed to scream Namjoon — the largest blooms are moonflowers, creamy white ones that glowed like lines of a poem. It’s a love letter, penned in his handwriting, translated without words. Taehyung touches a finger to a petal, going silent with wonder.
“So what do you think?”
“It’s beautiful,” Taehyung says, softly. “Ah hyung, you’ve outdone yourself.”
Seokjin grins, his entire face breaking into a sunrise. Taehyung doesn't think he'll ever get tired of seeing it.
“Oh, but we haven’t even gotten to the best part,” Seokjin says. He plucks two flowers from behind him and tucks them into the center, completing the arrangement. Taehyung’s breath hitches in his throat. They’re pale blue buds, tinged with shades of lavender at the edges, with petals still tightly sealed. They are the most familiar sight in the world to Taehyung at this point but their sudden appearance here catches him off guard, and he finds himself choking on thin air like he's swallowed a drink the wrong way.
“Do you really think, uh— you really think smeraldos are necessary? I mean, I feel like the rest should speak for itself, right?”
“Please,” Seokjin says. “This is worth it. Even if they’re a complete pain in the ass to grow, they’re basically perfect for scenarios like this. Those pining fools probably have racked up like, a billion untold truths between them at this point. And I am fucking committed to making this confession drama worthy.”
“Yeah,” Taehyung says faintly. “A billion. Haha, Yoongi-hyung is probably gonna cry.”
“Oh for sure,” Seokjin agrees. “His squishy-ass heart won’t be able to keep that poker face up for more than thirty seconds, max.”
“So, uh,” Taehyung begins saying, a complete non-sequitur and he damn well knew it. “Have you ever, ya know.”
Seokjin looks at him questioningly. “Have I ever what?”
“Have you ever had anyone use smeraldos,” Taehyung clarifies, finally just commiting to the cause. He really doesn't do subtle. “To confess.”
Taehyung holds his breath. There’s a long pause as Seokjin looks at him with an unreadable expression, blinking once with a sweep of his lashes. It takes another second before he opens his mouth, and Taehyung feels all his blood rush to his head at once, going dizzy with anticipation—
“—wasn’t on purpose, oh my gods, how was I supposed to know he was gonna be standing right there—” interrupts a familiar voice from the full-length mirror behind them, its reflection rippling like a lake surface.
“Are you kidding me, how did you not notice, everyone knows he comes to the mid-semester evaluations—”
“I had a very long week!” Jungkook splutters, emerging fully from the mirror, followed closely by Jimin. They're both still decked head-to-toe in singed-looking standard Academy shielding uniforms. They smell burnt.
Both Taehyung and Seokjin abruptly turn towards the two combat mages exiting through the mirror portal in unison, and Seokjin gives an undignified squawk. The moment from seconds before drops to the floor and crumbles into fine dust. Taehyung lets out a breath, willing his heart rate to settle. Later. It can wait until later.
“What did I say about coming through the front door during my work hours, there are humans around here, and the audacity to come in here still smelling like a failed cooking experiment— fuck, at least have the courtesy to change. Gods, I get no respect around here,” Seokjin says in despair. Tragically, an estimated zero people in the room take any of his complaints seriously. He’s already halfway into the storage closet, rummaging for his spare joggers and t-shirts.
Both having heard variations of this particular lecture a million and a half times, Jungkook and Jimin ignore the first half and each take a seat at the barstools while trailing soot everywhere, and begin to rattle off with gusto exactly how they ended up vaguely resembling pieces of over-toasted bread.
“Listen, hyung, we had evaluations in Tactical Defense today, and you would not believe what Jungkookie, legendary prodigy, did today—” Jimin is saying with barely contained glee, eyes crinkling up so hard they are disappearing already.
“—Shut up, shut up, shut up—” Jungkook says, his ears a furious shade of red.
“Got a little ambitious with his Class Five lightning summoning, and guess who lost his eyebrows,” Jimin continues, grinning.
“Like you weren’t going to try the same thing,” Jungkook hisses.
“The esteemed Headmaster Bang himself,” Jimin barely finishes before abruptly dissolving into full body hysteria. “His—his face, oh my gods, I thought Professor Dohyung was going to pass out on the spot—”
“JK,” Seokjin says, approvingly. He reaches his hand out for a high five, and Jungkook perks up slightly as he slaps it. “Tactically questionable, but nice.”
Jimin turns to Taehyung with unholy glee. “Wait, but there’s more— he knocked out half the Academy power grid too, shit took the whole afternoon to get back up, so we’re running like, two periods behind on evaluations now.”
Taehyung swings himself over the counter with both legs and slots himself between the two, still astride the table, and nudges Jimin with his toes.
“Pics or it didn’t happen,” Taehyung says, offering his knuckles for a fist bump. “Also, nice.”
“You two are such enablers,” Jimin snorts. “How come I never get high fives for fucking up exams?”
“Maknae privileges, sorry,” Taehyung answers primly. “Come back when you get two years younger and grow adorable bunny teeth.”
“What happened to soulmate privileges, huh? Traitor.”
“Burn off the rest of Hitman Bang’s hair and then we’ll talk.”
“You think I won’t?”
“Oh, I know you won’t.”
Seokjin pinches the bridge of his nose, watching the way their surroundings are getting progressively smudged black with ash and soot, and wordlessly tosses them fresh laundry. He jabs a thumb down the hallway.
“Before any of you continue your plans to make Bang Si-hyuk bald, which I am fully in support of, by the way, please do me a favor and stop contaminating everything like the grubby gremlins you are. I just cleaned this entire area yesterday, and let me tell you, cleaning runes this localized are actually very tricky to draw up. It is an art, you hear me? Not that you two muscle-brains can appreciate that.”
“Yes, hyung,” chorus the two gremlins who don’t even make an effort to sound apologetic, and they vanish upstairs to make themselves presentable.
Seokjin turns to Taehyung, one of his eyebrows raised meaningfully.
“And you. Since when did you have a vested interest in burning off Headmaster Bang’s hair?”
Since he had the audacity to tell you that you weren’t good enough, Taehyung thinks viciously. Out loud, he says, “I always have a vested interest in seeing authority figures suffer.”
Seokjin seems to understand well enough, anyways. His mouth curls into that soft smile that Taehyung always chases like a flash of gold in a river.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but I would also appreciate not giving those two any more ideas. I don’t want to have to tend to the care and feeding of two overpowered combat mages if they get kicked out of the Academy on the basis of ‘using unauthorized magic to fuck with the Headmaster.’”
Taehyung huffs. “It’s not like he doesn’t deserve it. Hair grows back, anyway.”
“Honestly, those two are a terrible influence,” Seokjin says in tones of dramatic woe, but he's still smiling that soft smile. No teeth, just gentle curves. His eyes are warm, and it’s almost unbearable to look at them directly. “It’s clearly too late; you're a lost cause. You’ve become the third maknae around here. Nothing but trouble.”
And Taehyung, god help him, can’t help his mouth, can’t help but fire back—
“Yeah, but I’m your trouble." Low voice. Eyelash flutter.
Because well. Seokjin flirts, outrageously. He throws hand kisses at every customer that comes through his shop— girls, boys, wizened witches, middle-aged fathers toting toddlers, vampires, and the occasional inanimate object. He tells a million terrible, terrible dad jokes that make everyone in the room want to throttle him while they pretend not to find them funny, because that would make them equally terrible. Almost every Elder witch in a ten (or is it twenty?) block radius showers him in discounts and offers to introduce him to their pretty, eligible granddaughters. But whenever someone so much as flutters an eyelash in his direction, Seokjin’s ears turn red all the way to the tips and you can almost hear a high pitched tea kettle whine as he scrambles to recover.
It’s absolutely precious, so Taehyung has started to pounce on these opportunities to turn tables. He wants to see the delicate pink flush that tapers down Seokjin’s neck and hear the nervous warble of his laughter.
But Seokjin doesn’t react today. He doesn’t even deign to give an embarrassed huff or to avert his eyes. He looks Taehyung dead in the eye, and—
“If you want to be,” Seokjin says, so softly that Taehyung has to strain a little to pick out the words. When he does, they settle like silt into the bottom of his heart, while a whitewater river current rushes over him. There is so much he wants; he just doesn’t know if Seokjin wants the same things he does.
Well. He’s going to find out soon, anyway.
—
Taehyung, on some days, has no idea how he even ended up here: a part-time fixture of an actual, real-life magic shop when just a little over a year ago the only magic he’d ever known was the kind that happened in between the hours of 3 AM and 5 AM where reality lost its borders to caffeine-fueled superhuman productivity. It was the kind of magic that produced five-page essays overnight, but not the kind that made flowers bloom out of season.
But this was the sort of space that was like that, anyway; a place you wander into without the faintest idea why, with only a bone-deep sense that there was something inside calling to you.
It was here that Taehyung learned there were many ways to bloom.
—
Here were a few things that Taehyung had not known just over a year ago:
- Witches were real. Witches were real.
- Kim Seokjin was a real life, full-blooded witch. (“Not a very powerful one, for the record, so don’t worry about getting cursed or anything,” he’d clarified dryly). He specialized in plant magic and took a lot of pride in it, despite all the old traditions dictating it as a female witch specialization.
- He ran a magic shop called Daisy Dose and yes, he named it himself, and no, it was not his worst pun.
- The shop didn’t just deal in flowers; Seokjin was apparently a connoisseur of potions, elixirs and salves, the kinds that went for a pretty penny on the supernatural market. This definitely explained why there were all kinds of stoppered bottles sitting on the barnwood shelves, hand labeled, with things like “Wolfsbane” and “Snake Venom Antidote”, but also “Hangover Cure That Actually Works'' and “Very Convincing Fake Blood (in case you need to fake your own death™)”.
At the time, amid what should have been an earth-shattering revelation that magic existed in the world, Taehyung hadn’t felt like his entire worldview had slipped off its orderly axis. It made sense, in the strangest way. He’d always felt like there had to be more layers underneath the visible world, unexplainable things that dwelled in the pockets of the universe that people hurried past everyday. Humans didn’t even know what 85% of the cosmos was actually made of. Taehyung had spent most of his college education digging for hidden truths like clams on a shoreline, anyway, and this felt like getting entrusted with a perfect, iridescent pearl.
—
To be perfectly clear, Taehyung himself was a very normal, very un-magical college student. A year ago, he’d been— well, stressed was putting it lightly. He’d describe it as a slow-motion process of watching himself stretch until there was no give left, leaving no other option but to fracture. And then he’d refused to let any of the cracks show. In all fairness, there really hadn’t been much room left in his brain outside of an infinite loop of class-work-project-midnight editing spree-class-repeat for good decision making. The worst part was that he knew he was wearing himself out into shreds, because it was being made perfectly obvious by the third time he’d passed out in the middle of Digital Editing Techniques II to be shaken awake after lecture by Professor Yoo staring down at him judgmentally.
Yeah. It was just that he couldn’t bring himself to stop.
It was so hard to stop, when so many people were counting on him to be on top of it all, and Taehyung never could bear even the idea of letting someone down. His parents had never gone to college; they’d always wanted to, but the years slipped by until all they could do was pass on that particular aspiration to their only kid. They never outright said anything, obviously, but Taehyung still remembered how misty his mom’s eyes got when they read his acceptance letter to SNU, his dad’s quiet pride as he ordered the SNU mug he drank his coffee out of everyday. There was how hard they worked just to be able to afford the best school possible: years of saving and skipped vacations, driving their ancient bucket of a Honda Civic to work, far too many overtime nights at the office.
So. Taehyung felt the weight of that bearing down on him even when no one else was watching. It followed him as he took on his Journalism major and then enough credits to fulfill both a Photography and a Graphic Design minor, trailed on his heels as he became head TA for Journalism Photography I, and then doggedly chased him into his tenure as the head editor of SNU Weekly, which every editor on staff funneled endless hours into every weekend. This somehow had culminated in Taehyung becoming a minor celebrity in the department, the go-to sunbae for advice or edits or just plain emotional support. For a while, he thrived on it; he loved the sense of purpose, relished in being a source of stability for his adorable if somewhat chaotic hoobaes. And Taehyung did love all of them with his whole heart, even when Soobin tried to slip k-pop memes into his column or Yeonjun texted him SOS!!! at 2 AM in the morning right before his Political Science midterm.
But. Taehyung was really just one person, after all. As much as he acted like nothing got to him, the pressure felt like it was going to squash him into a human-shaped pancake. There were nights he laid awake staring into the pooling darkness, cold anxiety clamping its steel teeth into his bones, wondering how he was supposed to breathe under all that weight. Wondering how something he loved could turn into something he dreaded.
It all came to a head when he accidentally killed his roommate’s mint plant. The key word was accidentally— Taehyung had been on plant-sitting duty for spring break because he’d been too swamped to make the trip back to Daegu, deadlines looming in the distance like tidal waves during monsoon season. He’d been treading water all semester, and after a while his entire body felt sandbag-heavy, threatening to get pulled under if he let himself stay still for even a single moment. He’d barely eaten anything other than endless cups of ramyeon and seaweed crackers for weeks, white rice with dollops of spam if he was feeling really fancy, and his blood was probably more caffeine than water despite the fact he hated coffee. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d showered or done his laundry. He was practically living in his ratty freshman hoodie and sweats.
Point being: Taehyung had barely been in a state of mind to take care of himself, let alone another tiny living being that required things like sun and daily hydration (two things he clearly hadn't been getting). The next thing he knew, the little green sprout Hyunsik had left in his care had withered into a crispy brown and Taehyung might've maybe panicked. Just a little. It seemed like an omen. A sign that Taehyung was going to disappoint everybody in his life, that things were only going to go downhill from there. (In hindsight, he’d obviously been catastrophizing, but he wasn’t really in the right frame of mind to see any of that.)
He’d run to the first plant shop he’d found on Naver, cradling the pot between his hands. He'd asked if there was anything he could do to save it, and the poor girl he’d thrust the plant to had said gently, apologetically, “Sorry, I don’t think there’s anything we can do for that here. Would you like to purchase a new one?”
That was the proverbial last straw. Taehyung was, embarrassingly, going to lose his shit in the middle of a public area over a potted mint plant he’d neglected so much it had died.
His own fault. All his fault. He felt his chest caving in, a saltwater sting in his eyes. Monsoon rain, waves crashing to shore. Slipping underneath the surface. He didn’t know what to do anymore, when he couldn’t even do this one thing.
“Hey,” said a voice above him, and a hand had curled around his shoulder, steadying him. “Hey, breathe. It’s gonna be okay. Deep breaths, come on, inhale. Exhale.”
Despite everything, Taehyung drew in a shuddering breath, and then another. He felt his waterlogged lungs take in air, breaking the surface. He blinked away the tears that had been threatening to appear. The hand on his shoulder stayed there, bracing him upright. Slowly, in increments, he felt the world slide back into focus.
He looked up. A stranger was standing in front of him, his eyebrows knitted in concern.
“Hey,” the man said again, in a careful tone. “Do you want to sit down? If you need me to call someone, just nod, okay?”
Taehyung’s face flooded with heat; this whole situation was a nightmare. He gave a minute shake of his head.
“I just need to fix this,” he said, and he was almost shocked at how small he sounded. Taehyung was usually the loudest person in any given room, so it had been pretty unprecedented.
“Okay. Can I see that little guy you’re holding for a minute?”
Taehyung blankly processed that for a second and he handed over the mint plant. The man turned it in his palms 360 degrees, scanning the whole thing over with a doctor’s precision.
“Good news,” he announced. “I can definitely save this one. You, on the other hand, look like you need to nap for at least a decade. I feel like a strong breeze is going to bowl you right over. Didn’t anyone ever tell you all-nighters are terrible for your skin? You’re far too handsome to be pulling dumb shit like that.”
Taehyung blinked. His brain took some time to catch up. “Sorry?”
“Here’s the deal, kid,” the man continued, unperturbed as a still pond. “I’m going to be taking your little friend here and I’ll be getting him back into shape. You’re going to go home, take a shower, and get some sleep. And drink at least two glasses of water. And then, when you feel like a human being again, you can come by my store and get your mint plant. But no earlier than that. Capisce?”
“Um,” said Taehyung. “I—”
“This isn’t a negotiation, this is a hostage situation.”
“...Understood,” Taehyung finished meekly.
So that had been that; he found himself with a whole ass receipt with some directions scribbled on it, along with strict orders to get at least eight hours of shut-eye. He’d caught a yellow cab home, scrubbed the grease and layers of print ink from his skin, downed a whole bottle of water for good measure, and passed out in his sheets. For some reason, his dreams that night were of vivid splashes of green and spots of sun glowing against his skin.
—
After being effectively comatose for ten hours, Taehyung woke up on Saturday entirely more hinged than he had been for the whole of spring break. It was scary how much of a difference it made. He could think in full sentences. His limbs felt light. He actually made his bed and ate real breakfast, with real eggs.
The deadlines were still pulling at him like tides, but he felt suddenly like he might make it. He could stand in the shallows and not drown.
Also, he was 95% sure that the bizarre interaction at the plant shop downtown had been a fever dream. It had to be. He did a load of laundry and took out the trash and tried to organize the crossed wires in his brain. But still, he had all those distinct memories of a gentle hand that had kept him from being swept away and a voice like silver.
The nagging feeling in his brain eventually made him check his nightstand, and right there, pinned underneath his phone, was a wrinkled receipt with sharpie Hangul scribbled all over it. Okay... so it hadn’t been a fever dream. All right. Cool. Cool. He could roll with that.
There were very detailed instructions along with the address on it, and then he remembered that the man who’d given it to him had kidnapped Hyunsik’s mint. It was being held for ransom by the Mint Kidnapper. A benign kidnapper, but a kidnapper all the same.
He didn’t have much of a choice, so he followed the directions to a spot overlooking the river, tucked into an alleyway paved with cobblestones. The side of the building was crawling with ropy vines of kudzu, and there were no plaques, no blazing neon sign that indicated a place of business. This had been unusual, especially in a world where anybody trying to sell something clamored for a piece of your attention. This place felt like it was only meant to be noticed if you were really looking.
Maybe someone smarter might’ve felt more apprehensive about the whole walking into a shady alley thing, but Taehyung was an intrepid idiot who chased down every lead. And this had felt like he had an open invitation to some hidden folklore or secret entryway. So without another thought, he opened the door, stepped inside, and had promptly been transported into a forest first and a shop second. The entire place was sunlit and spilling over with green, some wild biosphere in the middle of a city assembled entirely in geometric, straight lines. It didn't feel like anything he'd seen before, not even back home; it felt like perpetual spring. Wind chimes rustled above him, signalling his presence.
“Well, well, well,” said a very familiar voice from behind a curtain of leaves. “You’re here sooner than expected. Have you met the conditions of the deal? They were very explicit, as I recall.”
How did he—
You know what? Never mind.
“Come see for yourself,” Taehyung answered, feeling a hum of anticipation running through him like a power line. He heard footsteps drawing close, and the hum grew louder still. And then, a man ducked out from under the waterfall of plants and Taehyung’s heart flip-flopped like a rabbit behind his ribcage.
“I better like what I see,” Mint Kidnapper said, his gaze falling on Taehyung. He dragged his eyes up and down and Taehyung felt a heat creep all the way up to his collar, volcanic.
Somehow, in the middle of his crisis, he had apparently missed that his Mint Kidnapper was literally the most beautiful person alive. His hair was a soft shade of lavender. He was tall and willowy and had a gentle face, but the kind that belonged on the front cover of Vogue. Words that worked their way up Taehyung’s throat died on the spot when the man smiled, and it opened up on his face, an apple-cheeked bloom.
“You get a pass. Did you know you look so much better now without those dark circles under your eyes? I mean, I don’t even think I could pull off raccoon chic,” he said. “But wow, you’re actually really handsome. Huh. Maybe I should take up crisis intervention on a professional basis.”
Taehyung had not been blushing. Really, he hadn’t. He’d been called handsome a million times in his life, often by complete strangers, and it had never felt like this before. He didn’t know if this was considered flirting, because the most objectively beautiful man he had ever seen was calling him handsome.
“I don’t even know your name,” he said weakly. “Do you just go around kidnapping innocent people’s plants all the time and forcing them to sleep? Is this vigilantism?”
“Hey, if I’m guilty of kidnapping you’re guilty of attempted murder. But you’re right, I owe you a name— Kim Seokjin. I’d say I was sorry for the circumstances under which this meeting is taking place, but I don’t even feel that bad. I wasn’t really sure if you would even come, given that I basically threatened you into showing up.”
Seokjin. Seokjin. It suited him. Taehyung had felt like underneath all the bravado, Seokjin couldn’t really be threatening if he tried.
“...Kim Taehyung,” said Taehyung. He blinked, and rallied. He could banter with the weird, handsome plant shop owner. He had game. Kind of. “Wait, hold up, is this some weird way to sell me something? I’ve paid the ransom, so are you going to release the hostage or am I going to have to take it by force?”
Seokjin laughed out loud. “Fortunately, I don’t advertise like that, so no. I’ve got your little mint friend all better actually. Poor thing was almost a goner. Hold on a sec.”
He disappeared behind the foliage and returned after a minute, holding a tiny clay pot with a mint plant in it that was a vibrant, jade green. The last time Taehyung had seen Hyunsik’s plant, it had been parched bone-dry, struggling to stay upright. It seemed physically impossible that it had been revived overnight.
Taehyung stared at it suspiciously. “Did you swap it out? Because it did not look like that yesterday.”
“Yah! What do you take me for! Of course it’s the same plant, I worked very hard bringing this little guy back to life,” Seokjin said indignantly. “I don’t want to hear judgement from the guy who almost killed it. It was very sad, you know. It’d been waiting for you to water it for days.”
Taehyung felt a tug of guilt in his stomach.
“For what it’s worth, I really am sorry,” he said, rolling with it, and he wasn't sure if he was talking to Seokjin or the plant. “I had been up for a while and my brain was totally fried. Zero out of ten stars, super would not recommend.”
“I swear to the gods, college students can be the dumbest creatures on this planet,” Seokjin sighed, sounding exasperated but fond. “Be honest, how many hours were you up? Someday you’re just going to have to learn to say ‘fuck this shit, I’m out.’”
He sang the last part.
Oh, beautiful and quoted memes. Taehyung was definitely going to die here.
Taehyung coughed, flushing again. “Uhhhhh...definitely not more than forty hours? I just had like, back to back papers due after break and then a midterm that I definitely haven’t even started studying for, and my GPA can’t really afford any more hits. My professor also dropped a fifty page reading that was single-spaced and double freaking sided. Who even uses single space these days? And also my freshmen have no concept of turning things on time. So. I might have overdone it on the fifth cup of coffee. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking, I don’t even like coffee.” He was definitely rambling. Why was he rambling?
Seokjin sighed again, but it sounded more like an amused breath. “That is peak college. Don’t you know people can die from sleep deprivation? I might be able to save dead plants, but honestly, a dead human might be beyond me.”
The conversation had gotten weirder and weirder still.
“First a plant kidnapper and now an aspiring necromancer,” Taehyung quipped before he could stop himself.
Seokjin wrinkled his nose. “Oh gods no, I don’t have a license for that so the Council would be on my ass before you could even say the word ‘zombie’. Not to mention, my affinity for death magic is questionable at best.”
Taehyung blinked once, twice, and said faintly, “Uh, I was just kidding?”
And then Seokjin responded, “Well, the more you learn.”
—
Here were a few things that Taehyung had actually ended up walking away with, things that seemed far more important than discovering the existence of magic:
- Kim Seokjin laughed with his whole body, and his laughter sounded like squeaking windshield wipers on a rainy day. It was ridiculous. It was ridiculously charming. Taehyung was ensnared by it immediately.
- He knew every single plant species in his shop, from the tiniest succulent to the towering fig leafs.
- Kim Seokjin was beautiful, a fact that he was going to be unfortunately reminded of every time he remembered this place and its owner, surrounded by flowers like some sort of Renaissance painting come to life.
- Seokjin definitely felt like magic. It had felt that way since the beginning, and it only made sense that he was. It lived in his bones, something old and real and burning like firelight.
- Taehyung had just barely begun to know him, but he already felt like a heliotrope chasing the sun. He wanted to know more about this person who cared about strangers and talked to plants. He wanted to know everything.
—
So that was the beginning, and it could have stopped there. But Taehyung kept going back, a little moon caught in its orbit.
It was scary how easy it was to grow into Daisy Dose the way roots took hold in fertile soil; maybe because without realizing it, Taehyung’s soil had been sapped of something vital. He didn’t realize that as much as he cared about his work, about SNU, his days had started becoming tinted in shades of blue and grey, streaks of storm-cloud sky. There was something to be said about living life always on the edge of the next thing, the next item on an endless checklist. An inextricable part of living in Seoul was the hustle, movements timed to subway departures and minute-to-minute deadlines, because it was always more and never enough. His days were spent reading line upon line until the back of his eyelids were branded with inverted black-and-white text.
Taehyung spent most of his time around language. He could bend it to tell a story, to push a narrative. There was a lot of power to words, and Taehyung had to consider each and every one when he worked. Nothing was— could be— wasted. But coming back to Daisy Dose felt like he was learning a whole new language. It was a place where things lived just to breathe. It was one where moments grew from the earth, spontaneous.
—
A beginning in the shape of a daffodil: Taehyung showing up on the doorstep of Daisy Dose with a little thank you card he’d hand-written. He’d drawn a little mint plant waving hi in the corner and a big anthropomorphic heart with noodly arms.
Seokjin looked up from the budding tiger lily he was coaxing into the sunlight, and he’d blinked at him in mild surprise. It felt— well, good to surprise the guy who’s surprised Taehyung at every turn.
“You’re back already,” Seokjin said, and it might have been his imagination but Taehyung thought he sounded pleased. Then his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Don’t tell me you killed another plant. I am not above resorting to petty theft again.”
“Nope,” said Taehyung cheerfully. “I am pleased to inform you Hyunsik’s mint is not only surviving but thriving. It is doing all the photosynthesis-ey things.”
“Photosynthesis-ey things, I see,” Seokjin echoed, amused. “Glad to hear that about the mint, but what about you? How’s keeping yourself alive working out?”
“I’ll have you know I slept at like, 11:30 yesterday. That’s practically a grandpa bedtime.”
“Yah! That's a perfectly respectable bedtime!”
“So you're admitting to being a grandpa?”
“Wow, did getting adequate sleep also knock the manners out of you too?” Seokjin huffed, but the corners of his mouth were creased upwards and his eyes were laughing. Taehyung felt all his thoughts scatter like petals in the wind. He swallowed, throat drying.
“Actually, I just came here to give you this,” he said, handing over his little card. He suddenly felt that maybe the big heart hadn't been such a great idea. He felt his cheeks warming even though Taehyung’s been told he had no shame whatsoever. “It’s uh, it’s a thank you card. You know. For keeping the mint alive, and stuff. And also me, but I’m like a cactus so I probably would've been fine, if barely.”
Seokjin took the card in his fingers. He stared at it for a moment and when he looked up he was full-on smiling, a bright sun beaming thing.
“I love it,” he said, soft. “It’s adorable.”
“Ah, ha— I'm happy to hear that. I worked really hard on it,” Taehyung said, relief swooping in. “Well, yep. That's all I got, I'll get out of your hair now.” Which was not smooth, but he’d kind of already burnt that bridge.
He began turning towards the doorway again.
“But hey,” Seokjin called out, and Taehyung stopped. “You know, cacti also need to be taken care of too. They need water and sunlight just like the rest of us.”
“Oh,” said Taehyung. “Ha— well, I've always had a black thumb. Wouldn't know how to keep a plant alive even if my life depended on it.”
Seokjin looked at him then, his gaze soft and considering. Taehyung needed to learn how to withstand that look, like yesterday.
“Well,” Seokjin said finally. “Would you like to learn?”
—
The next time Taehyung showed up, the card was pinned on the wall behind the cash register.
“I was going to frame it, but a barrier spell did the trick,” Seokjin explained.
—
All things begin in the earth, the very foundation of life. So that's where Taehyung started. The basics. Hands wrist-deep in wet soil, dirt under his fingernails, knees smudged with muddy prints; his very first lesson was to learn how to lay seeds into the ground to sprout, to repot plants that had overgrown their pots.
Taehyung was crouched low on the ground, a bag of soil to one side and a stack of pots to the other. The smell of fertilizer and overturned earth clung to his skin, and he was damp with a thin sheen of sweat from the direct sunlight pouring through the ceiling windows. Still, he felt alive, wide awake after weeks on weeks of accumulated stress peeled off, bit by tiny bit, with each simple act of scooping budding seedlings from their cradle and into bigger, better places.
“When you re-pot, you don’t want to just carelessly throw them in a bigger container. They get overwhelmed when the change is too big,” Seokjin had explained. “You want to move up one size so they have a chance to adjust.”
“They’re like little kids,” Taehyung said, a delighted laugh escaping him. He hadn't thought about it before. How much care keeping a living thing as simple as a plant—well, alive— required. How much careful attention and time they needed. He thought about all the ways he never thought about slowing down enough to notice when they were telling him something.
“Exactly.”
Taehyung gingerly cupped the roots of a snake plant and packed it into its new home, the very last one for the day, and looked up proudly at Seokjin and found him already looking back. His expression was as soft as a slip of silk, there and gone.
“Wow, you were good with them. They like you,” Seokjin commented.
Taehyung couldn't help it; he beamed, his rabbit heart kicking in his chest. “Really? You mean it?”
“I mean it.”
Taehyung flopped backwards right onto the ground, not caring about the dirt getting all over his shirt, grinning wide. He felt airborne. He felt like he could do anything. He wanted to do this again.
“Ahhh, that's great. That's really really great. Tell them I like them too, I’d love to see them again. Do you think they can understand me?”
Seokjin didn't answer, and crouched down to his level, looking amused.
“You’ve got dirt on your face,” he said instead, brushing the pad of his thumb across Taehyung’s cheek. It burned like the sun through a magnifying glass.
(Later, when he walked past the mirror, he found the brown streak smudged all the way across his face, and heard Seokjin’s squeaking laughter echoing from across the shop like a dolphin’s chatter.)
—
Meeting Jungkook and Jimin was a blooming yellow rose, the warmest burst of color. After finding out magic existed, it seemed only natural to find out there were magic schools. Taehyung found this out one day when two boys showed up at the shop, smelling of ozone after a storm. They carried lightning at their fingertips, but apparently, at the end of the day, a student was still a student even if they could do impossible things. They’d all managed to somehow connect on account of the fact that higher education was a living hell, magical or not. After that, they all got on like a house on fire.
“So you’re telling me,” Taehyung said, “even magic school can suck.”
“It more than sucks,” Jungkook groaned. “It is the literal worst.”
“It’s not that bad,” Jimin said, reasonably. “Challenging, definitely.”
“Oh my gods, of course you’d say that, freakin’ class president,” Jungkook muttered, head konking over his spellbook.
“This was a mistake,” Seokjin declared later, when he found all three of them had completely commandeered his coffee table, papers spilled across the entire surface. “I never should’ve introduced you punks. Can’t you take this sad party to the library or something? The combined stress in here is giving me hives.”
“No,” they all said in tandem.
But still, hours later, when they’d all drifted onto each other on the couch, Taehyung pillowed against Jungkook’s arm, Jimin draped across Taehyung’s thigh, he quietly turned off the lights and put a knitted afghan blanket over them, and only woke them up for dinner. Seokjin broke out a bottle of fairy wine and the rest of the night was spent over shared plates of pad thai and arguing over Jungkook’s completely basic Top 40 playlist he’d started blasting with the volume slider turned all the way up. It felt like carving a space, just right, between all the rushed minutes.
In this common ground, Taehyung hoped a sturdy pear blossom tree could be planted, take root, and grow.
—
Spring was supposed to feel like new beginnings, the first blush of a changing season. For Taehyung it was a boggy swamp, his feet sinking into the muddy grip of finals and the paper ramping up its production to wrap up the school year. Taehyung wanted to find the professor who thought it was a good idea to assign two (2) whole final papers and have a long talk about priorities. In the middle of it all, cherry blossoms drew tourists into the heart of Seoul, flurries of couples standing under the clouds of powder pink and children streaking across the sidewalks in waves, oblivious to the suffering of several thousand unhinged college students.
It was in SNU Weekly’s tradition to get a shot of the cherry blossoms and slap it on the front page, and that year the responsibility had fallen square onto Taehyung’s lap after the photo editor tapped out. The word was his girlfriend had dumped him over text and the last thing he wanted was to take pictures of newborn couples all over each other, which was. Well. Understandable. But also like, really inconvenient. Taehyung had his own problems, too; he was barely keeping his head above water as it was, and admittedly as picturesque the whole event was, it got old after you’ve waded your way through sixty couples all trying to get a selfie at exactly the same angle.
For some reason, all Taehyung could think about was maybe, possibly at least getting something out of the whole mess. So this resulted in Taehyung blocking the front door of Daisy Dose, doing his best to convince Seokjin to close up shop so he could come with him, because where was the fun in seeing the cherry blossoms all by himself?
“Come on, hyung,” wheedled Taehyung, his camera slung over his neck. “It’s spring. Don’t you want to see the view down at Seokchon Lake this year?”
“Listen, cherry blossoms are the single most overrated flower in the world,” Seokjin said. “They think they’re hot shit because they come out once a year for a single week and everyone goes insane. I hate listening to them preen.”
“Hmph, for someone who runs a magic flower shop you really don’t have a romantic bone in your body,” Taehyung complained, and pouted for effect. He was learning this technique was startlingly effective on Seokjin, courtesy of Jeon Jungkook deploying it on a semi-regular basis.
“It’s a magic botanics shop, brat.”
“Semantics.”
Anyway, it worked.
Seokjin squinted at him for a moment before relenting.
“Fine. But only if you promise you’re going to go home afterwards and take a nap or something. You’re starting to get a little too raccoon-ey for me. Also, if you're gonna romanticize those stupid flowers, do it properly. No shop talk.”
(This happened a lot, Seokjin’s continued reminder for Taehyung to pause. Breathe. Try to take care of himself when no one else was going to.)
They ended up at the edge of the duck-blue lake, drifting into the throngs of visitors that crowded the walkways with their Nikons and baby strollers. The weather was balmy and mild, the kind that made people want to lie out in the grass in the midday sun and forget all about their responsibilities. The sky was one long strip overhead, its clouds a soft-serve scoop of white. It was, in effect, idyllic in exactly the way the front page wanted. It was date weather, but Taehyung was not thinking about that, nope. Instead, he decided to take a deep lungful of the warm air and feel the sun soak into his face, and found that it was— good. It felt good to be outside, enjoying the weather, and not in the deepest corner of the university library trawling through Wikipedia for sources. To be letting the sunshine steep right down to his bones.
The two of them meandered the perimeter of the lake lazily while Taehyung attempted to grab the most scenic photos he could. Silence between them was usually cottoned by the knowledge that sometimes, just existing was all right. But still, by the sixth consecutive shot of the lake nestled between the ring of trees, Taehyung was bored out of his skull by the compositions, and slanting sideways glances at Seokjin between the camera clicks. He nudged Seokjin with his elbow.
“Ah, hyung, let me take your picture,” he said, grinning at Seokjin. “I’ll make you look good, promise.”
“Yah, bold of you to imply I could not look good,” Seokjin answered mildly. But it didn't take long before his eyes were gleaming with the spark of some half-formed idea. He promptly vanished behind a tree trunk and when he reappeared, his hair had transformed into a delicate rose-pink, a nearly metallic shimmer to it in the sunlight. He cupped his hands under his chin and smiled cherubically.
“Well? What do you think? Aren’t I the prettiest flower here?” Seokjin asked before bursting into peals of squeaky laughter, and Taehyung had to make a concerted effort not to trip in the middle of the sidewalk in front of a hundred potential witnesses. By the time he got home and dumped the contents of his SD card into his laptop to sort the photos, 75% of them were unusable. And he wasn’t going to delete a single one of them.
Because caught in every frame was Seokjin under the slow rainfall of cherry blossoms, head tilted up to the sunlight like a mythical thing, rooted into the earth itself. Shining shining shining. Impossible to look away from. Impossible to fully capture. Realization was the freefall of a petal, quick and spiraling: Oh, Taehyung thought. Oh no.
—
First love was the purple of a lilac, unfurling soft and hesitant from the ground.
—
Summer swelled into a sun-ripened fruit, hanging low from a branch until it dropped and burst open, spilling out its sweet insides. Taehyung only had marginally more time during those sweltering months between semesters while he interned as a junior staff writer, but he was learning to give himself breathing room to face each day of work, and relearning how to love his craft again. This included spending time shuttling himself all the way from downtown to the shop so he could wrangle Seokjin out into the city after work, and also maybe keep learning how not to kill every plant he’s ever touched.
June
Taehyung brought Seokjin to the market, to show him all his favorite local eats and introduce him to the aunties who took him under their wing that very first year he moved to Seoul, the ones who showed him the best places to get snacks, tteokbokki and eomuk and mandu, and slipped him tupperware containers full of side dishes to take back to the dorm after chiding that he’d gotten too skinny. As they wandered the stalls it became obvious that woefully, predictably, Seokjin was like catnip to anybody above the age of forty.
The last straw came when Mrs. Han, the beekeeper who always told Taehyung she wanted her grandson to grow up just as handsome as him, actually giggled at Seokjin’s latest pun (“Your bees-ness is as lovely as you”) and said, “Omo, for you, my most handsome customer, I’ll throw in some extra samples to take home. Do you have a girlfriend by any chance?”
“I thought I was your most handsome customer,” Taehyung said, outraged, while Seokjin laughed himself sick.
July
Taehyung watched eagerly as Seokjin popped open a nondescript cardboard box to peer at its contents. He let out a little gasp as he saw what was inside.
“These are beautiful,” Seokjin breathed. “Where in the world did you get these? I’ve never been able to grow anything as big as this.”
“My grandparents have a strawberry patch in their garden,” Taehyung said proudly. “They send me their biggest ones every year in the mail. Go on, try one. I bet you won’t be disappointed.”
Seokjin set out two dishes, poured some wildflower honey (courtesy of Mrs. Han) onto them, and dipped a jewel red berry into it. He popped it into his mouth whole and immediately made a reverent noise of appreciation, his eyelids fluttering shut. Taehyung waited until he was finished eating and had opened his eyes to deliver his next line with the smuggest, boxiest smile he could manage:
“Well? Aren’t you so berry glad you met me?”
Seokjin’s answering, surprised laughter was sweeter than any honey-dipped strawberry.
August
The dog days of summer rolled by, sauna-hot, and when he wasn’t at the office Taehyung was attached to the greenhouse of the shop, sweating through his t-shirts until he looked like he’d been hosed with a sprinkler. There was so much to be done, pruning and repotting and watering, that whole afternoons went by slippery-quick before Taehyung could even so much as blink. Seokjin would periodically drag him away to a shaded lawn chair where they ate icy watermelon cubes or Melona bars, panting raggedly until they stopped losing all the water in their body.
While they sat, Seokjin would tell him what the plants were saying. Translated their chatter in that voice of his, soft as peach skin.
The goldenrods are aching for rain today.
Chrysanthemums are such show-offs, you shouldn't give them too much attention or else they'll be unbearable.
The sunflowers think you're funny, Taehyung-ah. You should talk to them more often. They miss you when you're not around.
It was nearing the end of summer, as the evenings cooled into something manageable, when Taehyung caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror: skin tanned mocha and eyes luminous, an earth-soaked thing, and almost didn’t recognize himself. His eyes swept around and took in the fertilized soil and rows of sunflowers that he’d tended to until they towered over him, felt the ground solid and steady under his feet even when the deadlines closed in, and thought: huh. So this is what it feels like to grow.
—
There were harder lessons to learn after that, of course; it was understanding how complicated even flowers could be, that they could mean more than words made of spun sugar. Taehyung built the vocabulary to put a name to harder things, things that added weight to the soul; flowers grew gentle but they could also carry resentment, anger—
“—they want us to print a retraction and an apology or they’ll block our funding. Soobin didn’t do anything wrong, how dare they try to pull that shit on us. We’re an independent publication, not the university’s lapdog—” was a violet petunia, a sharp coil of fury—
—but they were also the bruised purple-blue of hyacinths, a pang of sorrow that ran in the veins of a sleepless city running full tilt into exhaustion—
“Hyung, do you ever feel like we’re all just pots with holes at the bottom living in this city? That we’re just filling ourselves up only to end up drained again?”
“Hm,” was the answer. “Maybe the whole point is to keep trying to fill the pot up with better things.”
—
Maybe filling the pot also meant bundling flowers and catching glimpses of the lives outside of his little academic bubble, a kaleidoscope of glimmering, crystalline moments whirring across his vision. Bubblegum-sweet tulips for a sixteen year old boy’s first date. Peonies and pink carnations for a new baby. Classic cream and red roses on a tenth anniversary. Pale-white lilies tinted with new-death grief. Blue and grey washed with color.
—
Fall swept in with a shower of golden gingko leaves, and then frosted into a bare white winter, and then thawed into spring again.
As the trees bloomed and withered it became increasingly obvious that Taehyung was neck deep, headfirst into a crush that was not going to wilt anytime in the foreseeable future. How could it, when Seokjin allowed him to elbow his way into his shop with his textbooks and laptop every week, let him sit for hours while he wrote his papers, and asked about his classes and his baby newspaper ducklings (by name) with every sign of genuine interest. He became accustomed to having a mug of warm tea (always something different— jasmine one day, chamomile the next, and sometimes a fragrant lychee tea with a drizzle of honey) getting set next to his elbow while he typed away. He also got used to listening to Seokjin hum under his breath as he restocked shelves or brewed potions, a lovely sound. Seokjin favored old ballads, Autumn Outside the Post Office and Eomma, and occasionally snatches of a wistful little tune that didn’t seem to have a name but ached like a pressed bruise.
Seokjin sometimes clipped out Taehyung’s photos in the SNU Weekly and would pin them to his cork board by the door, right next to all the scattered advertisements and business cards other witches liked to stick there, so next to papers proclaiming ‘Hope’s Seer Services: Your Guide for the Future’ or ‘Affordable Spellbooks for the Modern Mage’ there were black-and-white photographs of SNU students frozen in a frisbee game or laughing with all their teeth, caught in some fleeting moment of joy. Seokjin always kept the credits, so underneath in fine print would always be: ‘Photographer: Kim Taehyung.’ Seokjin said he liked having snapshots of Taehyung’s world to look at, but it made Taehyung feel like he belonged in this world too, the one with spells and fairy tale things.
There was also the way Seokjin cared; it was constant, in the arm curled around Jungkook’s shoulders when he’d come in, bitter and shaking, after some jealous classmate had torn into him at the Academy. The way he would loudly arm wrestle with him afterwards until Jungkook was shouting at him for cheating, the fire reignited in his eyes. The compliments he’d shower onto Jimin when his insecurities started to spear through his surface and all his confidence started splintering. He was, in fact, exactly the type of person to see a stranger panicking in a plant shop and extend a lifeline.
It was in the little things: the fact that Seokjin remembered the very first time Taehyung couldn't eat spicy food, so he'd always make kimchi fried rice with a milder portion set aside just for him. He also took note of Taehyung’s exact Gongcha boba order, grapefruit green tea with aloe, down to 50% sugar. He’d text “fighting!! you're gonna kill it!! ♡ ～('▽^人)” before midterms and presentations without being prompted, and Taehyung tried not to have a heart attack about it. If he screencapped the ones with heart emojis specifically, no one had to know. It went downhill from there: Seokjin sent TikTok videos of pomeranians after Taehyung had mentioned he’d always wanted one. He would randomly send the worst puns he’d found on the internet. He made liberal use of the shocked Pikachu face meme whenever Taehyung aced an exam, which was honestly the worst.
And then. And then. It was the Friday nights they talked until after the blue hour, the sun slipping below the horizon until the sky went from cotton candy to a coal-black, and Seokjin would ask if Taehyung wanted to just stay on the extra futon. And Taehyung always would. (The first time he stayed over, Hyunsik had spammed his phone with a dozen text messages that were some variation of “yeah!!!! go get some!!!!” sprinkled with six hot pepper emojis, an eggplant emoji, and a tongue emoji, and Taehyung had almost blocked him entirely on principle.)
Sometimes they would just order late night fried chicken for takeout and then wrestle to the death over who would get the wings versus the drumsticks. Taehyung almost always won, because he had years worth of duking it out with his roommates. If Seokjin got too close to winning, Taehyung found pretending to try and lick him was inexplicably effective.
After they ate, Seokjin always complained that his face would get too puffy from the sodium the next morning, and Taehyung would always have to inform him for perhaps the hundredth time that it wouldn’t detract from his beauty by even a fraction of a percent. He’d say it and try not to get caught staring down the column of Seokjin’s throat, the line of it, or the sheen on his lips, made red with heat.
It was the kind of atmosphere where neither of them actually bothered with appearances; they put on sheet masks and lay on opposite sides of Seokjin’s queen bed, drifting in stillwater silence, and sometimes that was all there was. And sometimes, it was talking well after midnight, passing questions about every topic under the sun back and forth until Taehyung’s lids went sleep-heavy.
On movie nights, which were decided on completely at random, Seokjin turned on a rickety old projector that might as well have come from a different century— the images it cast would always come out ghost-like and flickering, the colors casting a halogen lamp glow against their faces. Taehyung at some point had asked why he didn’t just order a new one, but Seokjin said he kept it for “the vibes.” Some of those nights they put on old movies; there was Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Sound of Music, heartfelt love stories that always made Taehyung’s eyes water while he’d pretend he was perfectly stoic. Eventually they’d both just be nerds about it and agree to binge a whole season of Attack on Titan at once.
Taehyung was a naturally tactile person— he was always slinging arms over people’s shoulders and giving spontaneous hugs, but he’d been hesitant with Seokjin, at first. He didn’t know how far he could push before Seokjin would retreat. As much as Seokjin freely handed out affection like candy, he always seemed unsure on how to receive it. In many ways he was solid earth but also desert sand, slipping between the fingers.
So Taehyung waded into it experimentally, a toe into the water to check if it was safe for a plunge. He started with a playful nudge against Seokjin’s arm, progressed to a clap on the back, and then escalated to hip-checks and an arm wrapped around Seokjin’s shoulder, drawing him close. When Seokjin seemed to lean into it, giving permission to enter his space like that, it only made him bolder. He would go ahead and surprise him with back hugs. Sometimes, when they were out and Taehyung wanted to show him something he got distracted by, he’d just go ahead and grab Seokjin’s hand and lead him to it. He got as close as Seokjin would allow, to catch him in fine-grain detail.
So all of this meant that sometimes they would end up on the couch like this: sides pressed together with not a hair’s width between them. Taehyung somehow found a way to put his head on Seokjin’s shoulder until it was natural just to drop into it whenever he felt like it, and he slid an arm around the curve of his waist. Seokjin’s hands drifted around his back and he was running his fingernails absently down the plane of his side, his hands hot through the thin cotton shirt, and Taehyung had to suppress a shiver.
This was far more than he expected already. This was close enough to feel the beat of Seokjin’s heart as if it were his own. But.
Taehyung looked up and got too absorbed in staring at the warm, pearl pink of Seokjin’s mouth, wondering what it would be like to reach out and touch it. To taste. He wanted to press his lips against the groove where his shoulder met his neck and feel the pulse under the skin, put his hands all over the length of his back. He didn’t know what to do with all of these river-wild wants, so he watched from underneath his eyelashes and tried not to get caught thinking about it.
Sometimes the only words left running through his mind were the ones that were as vivid as a red camellia: Hyung, I think I really like you. Like, a lot. You might be my favorite person. Is it okay for me to like you this much?
Hyung, I really wanna kiss you. Would you let me kiss you, if I asked?
—
See, the thing was. The thing was. He never really intended on his feelings ever actually going anywhere. He didn't think they would root themselves so deep that there would be almost no way to tear them out. Instead, they ran wild, an ecosystem that needed ever more room to grow. Even still, there were too many reasons for him not to do anything about them to count; Taehyung was a fourth-year college student with maybe six thousand won to his name, with a diet that consisted of 90% sodium some days. He talked too much, sometimes, and people told him all the time they didn’t quite understand how his brain worked, when all his words came out tangled up and out of order. Seokjin never seemed to find him too hard to comprehend, and if he did he’d wait and ask questions until the sentences untied themselves like shoelaces. But he still called Taehyung kid affectionately, which probably meant he saw Taehyung like a little brother or something close to it.
Taehyung had some things going for him. He knew he was good looking in the way he knew how to do basic math: people had jammed this into his head often enough it became another fact. But he didn’t really think that meant anything, not when Seokjin was the prettiest person he’d ever seen.
Most fundamental of all was the fact that Taehyung wasn’t magic. He didn’t have a magical bone in his body, and witches bonded when they chose each other. They tied their magical essences together and became something more. It was almost sacred, something much bigger than a court document or an expensive ring, and Taehyung couldn’t give that to him.
Still, none of this stopped him from wanting to catch onto that hand and those crooked, gentle fingers so badly it hurt. A good hurt, like a used muscle or the heartache of letting go.
He never wanted to push, to take more than Seokjin was willing to give. He was fine with the way they were, an odd pair that fit like warm gloves. But then Min Yoongi, resident straight shooter and savage pseudo-grandpa, decided to corner, and he means literally corner, him into a room one day and drawl:
“So are you gonna do anything about the fact that you’re in love with Jin-hyung?”
Taehyung was so shocked he’d nearly careened straight into a wall, narrowly swerving at the last minute.
“Um,” he said. “Sorry, what?”
“Don’t play dumb,” Yoongi sniffed. “It’s gross. You two are really gross about it.”
“I— I’m not— I mean, Seokjin-hyung doesn’t— we’re not like that,” Taehyung countered weakly.
“Listen kid,” Yoongi said. “I’ve known that guy for years. He’s a massive flirt about pretty much everything because he thinks no one will actually wanna bite. When they do, he runs for the hills, ’cause at some point someone taught him that love was conditional, which is some bullshit. All that ‘I’m handsome’ shit he does is because he had to learn how to love himself first. I’ve never seen him actually let anyone get all up in his space the way you do.”
“That is not true, he literally fist-fights and then cuddles Jungkookie all the time.”
“He basically raised Jungkook, he doesn’t count,” Yoongi answered. “And that’s not what I mean. I mean the way he lets you do whatever you want even when you can literally see the panic in his eyes. Never seen him just take it like that.”
“What does that even mean,” Taehyung wailed. “Am I just annoying him to death?”
“It means, kiddo, for you he’s willing to try.”
—
Then there was that one night that changed everything and maybe nothing at all.
Taehyung left most of his wilder partying days behind in freshman year, back when he was still caught up in the head rush of being far from home for the first time with no curfews or bedtimes. Now, he really only showed up for parties when his hoobaes needed him to grease the social wheels or his friends had sufficiently hassled him into being in a sticky basement lit with neon strip lights and thumping with EDM. Anyway, there was that one night it had been Baekhyun’s birthday and Taehyung found himself at a house party with what felt like half the school (because Baekhyun was friends with fucking everybody), balancing his Macbook on one knee trying to fix the grammar on some freshman’s first article. He’d been halfway through a paragraph entirely devoid of Oxford commas and also, somehow, any periods, when the entire thing was wrenched away from him unceremoniously.
“Shit, Tae-Tae, you’ve got to be kidding me,” whined Hansoo, who was definitely sloshed. “Don’t tell me you came here just to do homework, the fuck?”
“Yeah, Tae, what the hell happened to you that got you so boring, Jesus,” Jaemin chimed in waspishly. “You used to be more fun than this.”
That stung. It was an echo of sentiments from classmates who thought he'd gotten quiet. Taehyung knew he had changed over the years, the wild edges of his personality slowly mellowing out, but he tried very hard not to think of it as a bad thing. It was just growing up, shedding old skin. They were almost about to graduate and soon they would all be dumped into the world of adulthood, so priorities were shifting at a quicksand pace. He still had fun— it was just the shape of it that had changed, when a whole future was yawning wide open in front of him, all its variables still unmapped. But it hurt to hear that he was somehow worse, made more inadequate by not being the person he once was. It was stupid how easily that got to him.
It was weird being so close to graduation: you were at the end and the beginning at the same time. How do you know that everything you've been doing all this time has brought you to the right place? How do you know if the person you are is the person you were meant to become? Who do you become after it all? It felt like the last lurch before the drop off a rollercoaster, and Taehyung felt the uncertainty he’d been trying to keep at bay suddenly pouring into him.
So, anyway. That was how he was suckered into downing several shots of sticky sweet peach soju, spun cloudy by an entire pack of Yakult, then getting wasted by accident because his tolerance had absolutely tanked after going sober for a year. It hadn’t even been that high to begin with.
The strip lights turned into pulsing splotches of color at the corner of his vision, making his stomach churn, and the bass in the background was thunderous. At some point, Kyungsoo handed him a glass of water and offered to call a cab, but Taehyung shoved him back into the party and told him not to worry, he was fine.
Somehow, despite being barely coherent, he wound up dialing Seokjin through a haze. He managed to slur out a “Hyuuuuuung, I’m so drunk, heh, maybe I’m gonna need some of that magic hangover potion stuff you make,” into the phone before lilting sideways into the couch, a wave of nausea overcoming him.
His next memories after that were alcohol-smeared and fuzzy, but: Seokjin actually showed up. He’d somehow made the trip to campus and pushed his way through a horde of drunk, rowdy college students and found Taehyung. He’d found him.
“Hyung!” Taehyung shouted, buoyant with the thrill of it. “You came!”
He was smiling, he could feel his face stretched into a beam wide enough to ache. And then he threw himself all over Seokjin. As he landed with a solid thunk, he felt Seokjin’s arms encircling him automatically, and they both fell onto the overstuffed couch with a hollow whump. Taehyung had leaned into him, ducking into the crook of his neck. Seokjin always smelled like fresh petals, the scent of a spring meadow and the solid earth, and Taehyung wanted to lay in it. They were sort of half-snuggled together on a battered, questionably hygienic sofa with a bunch of freshmen playing beer pong five feet away, but Taehyung had felt the low-grade pounding in his skull finally fade into quiet.
Seokjin had petted the top of his head a little awkwardly, a little stiff and out of place among the crowd of buzzed students who would occasionally throw them curious glances. But he’d been impossibly gentle, his fingers barely grazing Taehyung’s scalp. It felt so nice. He was warm from soju and drunk on more than just alcohol, going boneless against Seokjin. Time became a slow-running drip of honey.
Naturally, he had been more than a little disappointed when Seokjin finally patted him on the back and gently pulled away.
“Okay, one-shot wonder. Let’s get out of here, hm?”
Taehyung wasn’t proud of it, but he made a whine of protest. “Hyung, five more minutes?”
He felt a fan of warm breath when Seokjin chuckled. “I’d do almost anything for you, including hiding a body, but I draw the line at staying on this germy couch for another five minutes.”
After that he peeled Taehyung off the couch, walked him to the door, and handed him some fizzing, murky brown liquid that tasted absolutely vile but abruptly made the world stop spinning. They stepped outside and the night air nipped at them, still carrying leftover winter bite even though they were well into spring. Taehyung was sober, but he still felt heady, watching Seokjin under the tangerine glow of the street lamps.
Taehyung stole glances until he had enough courage to finally say something.
“Thanks for coming out tonight,” he said, injecting some false brightness into his voice. This was going to topple their first meeting right off its throne for most embarrassing moments Seokjin’s found him in, which sucked. “That potion really knocked some higher brain function back into me. Kinda tasted like raw sewage though, have you thought about other flavor options? Orange, maybe?”
Seokjin snorted inelegantly. “You know what, I was thinking about launching the pumpkin spice line in the fall.”
Then, he reached over and whacked Taehyung on the back of the head.
“Yah, dummy, don’t you know your own limits? What were you thinking?” Seokjin asked, something bordering on reprimanding in his voice, making Taehyung wince. While Seokjin badgered him about getting eight hours of sleep and hydrating, he was rarely ever truly judgemental about the choices he made; most of his scoldings were really gentle nudges in disguise. Taehyung felt a sting of shame prick into him.
“’m sorry,” Taehyung mumbled, staring straight down at his shoes. “Won’t do it again. Just wasn’t thinking straight.”
Seokjin looked at him then, really looked at him, and he frowned. He leaned over and put his fingers under Taehyung’s chin, lifting his face up so they were eye-to-eye.
“Hey,” Seokjin said, the familiar syllable resting gentle on his tongue. “What’s going on with you?”
Behind them, a wave of whoops swelled, and the music turned up higher, a bone-shaking bass. It thumped to the rhythm in Taehyung’s ears: boring. Boring. Boring.
What the hell happened to you?
Taehyung looked away, eyes stinging. “Nothing. Can we just get out of here?”
Seokjin looked like he wanted to ask, but he silently nodded. They walked to where he’d parked his car, an old pickup truck that always felt like it was on the verge of falling apart. (At some point Taehyung had commented, “I always thought witches would ride brooms.” And Seokjin had laughed in his face. “Taehyung-ah, think about how uncomfortable that would be.”)
Taehyung hopped in, and Seokjin started the car, its engine roaring to life.
“So, where to now?” Seokjin asked after they’d buckled in. “Home?”
Taehyung shook his head. “Not home. Not here, either.”
“Hm,” was all Seokjin said as he shifted into reverse and smoothly pulled out of the parking lot. They drove out into the city in careful silence, and as the house slipped out of sight, Taehyung squished his cheek against the cool, mist-damp glass of the windows. Seoul streaked by them in dizzy motion, electric beams of sodium yellow and phosphene blue flaring in the dark. They drove and drove and Taehyung shut his eyes to the sway-bump of the truck, a steady rhythm that reminded him of a rocking ship. He thought it would be okay if he just stayed here in the passenger seat and Seokjin could take him anywhere in the world.
But Seoul wasn’t the ocean and had its limits so eventually, they pulled up to the inky curve of the Han river and Seokjin killed the engines. The headlights went dim and the night rushed in around them. Taehyung blinked at the sudden darkness.
“Hyung?” he asked, inquisitive.
“Time to get some air,” Seokjin replied. “My potion isn’t exactly a cure-all. It’ll be good for you, promise.”
Getting air apparently meant climbing into the bed of the truck and laying down on what felt like a bed of moss, staring up at the starless sky. For a while, all he heard was the light sound of Seokjin breathing next to him and the quiet orchestra of crickets. A tender kind of quiet. Taehyung let out a long breath he didn’t know he’d been holding in.
“Do you ever wonder,” Taehyung finally started, and at the corner of his vision he saw Seokjin turn toward him, waiting for him to continue. He took another moment to rearrange the sentences in his mind. “About the future. If we’re doing the right things. Making the right decisions. Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just fast forward and see what’s at the end, just so we know we’re gonna be okay? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do that?”
“You’d be surprised about that actually,” Seokjin answered. “Reading the future is less of a science and more of an art. And the art is the weird abstract bullshit they throw up in the bougie rich people galleries. Trust me, the best seer I know still has the vaguest visions I’ve ever heard.”
“Useful,” Taehyung groaned, pressing the heels of his palms to his face. “So why the advertisement on your board?”
“Oh, that’s just Hobi’s way of reminding me that he’s still the best in the business even though he’s off doing who-knows-what in the middle of Japan right now. I mean, he’s not wrong.”
“So your friend is a seer and you’re telling me you’ve never been curious? Not even a little bit?”
At that, Seokjin went quiet. After a mysterious pause, he said, “Well. Just once.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Taehyung asked.
“I wonder,” Seokjin said, infuriatingly cryptic again. “Anyways, what’s up with this line of questioning? You’re being strange today. Stranger than usual, I mean.”
At that, Taehyung felt the bottom of his stomach drop out again. Ah. He wondered if it was okay just to let the words out, make a mess of it. There were only so many days left where he could, anyway: it seemed that as soon as you stepped into the real world, things seemed to get a whole lot less forgiving.
“I’m just,” he began haltingly. “I don’t know if I’ve been doing things right this whole time. I’ve spent four years working and trying my best and I’m still not sure if they were all the right things, you know?” Said out loud, the words sound childish and nonsensical, a meaningless jumble of worry.
“Do they have to be?” Seokjin asked.
Taehyung paused at the question.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t really think anyone does everything right all the time, because isn’t that in itself kind of wrong? Every single mistake and wrong turn we make becomes a building block of who we are. We’re works in progress, all the time, until the very end.”
“I feel like you’re so confident all the time, hyung, it's really hard to picture you fucking up,” Taehyung muttered.
Seokjin laughed, a short, almost incredulous staccato of a sound. “Are you kidding? Do you know how hard it was to get here? All right, let me ask you this: do you feel like what you’re doing right now suits you?”
Taehyung stared up at the cloudless, dusky sky again. He’d thought about this question a million times before, and he always found the answer was already there. As stressful as journalism and the paper and wrangling his kids got sometimes, he felt like at the end of it all was something he wanted. He wanted to have a voice, and to give other people a voice. He wanted to tell stories, the kinds that reached out into the world and made people want to reach back. It was worth giving up some sleep for.
So he breathed out, his heart folding, settling back into shape. “Yeah. I think it does.”
Seokjin hummed a little thoughtfully and shifted himself so he was turned towards Taehyung, so Taehyung did the same until they were lying on their sides looking at each other in the barely-there light of the moon, arranged like koi in a pond. The corner of Seokjin’s mouth lifted into the barest twitch of a sardonic smile. Taehyung wanted to reach out and swipe the bitterness away.
“Can't say the same for myself. I spent three years at the Academy, did you know? My family’s old magic. Generations of Academy graduates, and power means almost everything in the circles they run in. So that was three whole years spent trying to be something I just... wasn’t. I don’t know what happened, but I clearly wasn’t born with much talent for magic, especially combat magic. Even Headmaster Bang said it wasn't my color.”
“That’s bullshit, your magic’s the best,” Taehyung immediately snapped, irrationally annoyed at people he’d never met. There was another part of him that was very very aware of the significance of this moment. Seokjin almost never showed the soft-bellied parts of himself, the parts that meant baring himself at the world whole. The fact that he was voluntarily disclosing this information meant something. Taehyung didn’t know what, but it did.
Seokjin’s lips cracked into a more genuine smile. “I appreciate that, but it’s true. But I don’t have to have the flashiest magic to make a difference. It took me a long time to realize that. Three years, and I woke up one day and said, fuck this. Fuck every single one of you for making me feel like I’m broken. And then I dropped out.”
The knowledge that Seokjin had spent so long trying to be a version of himself that was stifling all the best parts made Taehyung hurt all the way through to his marrow. “And then what?”
Seokjin’s eyes went a little unfocused for a moment and then he reeled himself back in. “And then I had to figure everything out from the beginning. Start over from scratch. My family never really— well, they’ve never really completely forgiven me for that one, honestly. I'm not exactly a point of pride for them, ha. But sometimes... the things you lose are worth it for the things you gain.”
An echo of Yoongi’s words— at some point someone taught him that love was conditional, which is some bullshit— rippled in his head, and Taehyung’s heart ached. It ached, it ached, it ached.
“So there you have it. Kim Seokjin one-hundred-percent did not have his shit together. For years, in fact. Still don't, in a lot of ways, if we're being honest,” Seokjin concluded. He looked at Taehyung, his eyes so pretty and dark under the moonlight, and the safest person he’d ever met, his favorite person, told Taehyung: “So don't be so hard on yourself, 'kay? You're allowed to not have everything figured out. Whatever you think you’ve done, any fuck ups, they’ve brought you here and for that I’m thankful.”
Oh. Oh. A lump formed in Taehyung’s throat, knotted tight. He had to blink hard through the mist suddenly forming in his eyes. No one’s ever said something like that to him before— you’re here and I’m thankful. It expanded inside him, a rising hot air balloon, lifting him away. He brushed a hand towards Seokjin’s fingers, traced a finger through the green-blue veins, and held it there, a single anchor point, skin against skin.
“I’m really, really glad you could find yourself, hyung,” Taehyung said, barely above a whisper, “because that means I was able to find you too.” An expression flickered in Seokjin’s face like a ghost image, a whole spectrum of emotions at once, and he reached over to give Taehyung’s fingers a wordless squeeze.
They laid in that truck bed with their hands just barely brushing, just like that, until the first peach of dawn began to bleed into the city sky and the moon started to fade into a silver scar.
It felt like it was happening again and again: his world expanding, shifting its fundamental structure to make way for whole new things, and somewhere inside the center was Kim Seokjin. This witch who listened to the earth when it talked to him, and just as patiently to Taehyung when he did too. This wasn’t a crush, he knew then; it was an evergreen forest— acres and acres of it, taking up more space than he knew he had room for. Unchanging through the seasons. A permanent kind of love.
—
So Taehyung decided he would try. He spent twenty-one whole years on the planet not knowing the first thing about plants and on the twenty-second, he decided to grow smeraldos.
They were a complete pain in the ass. Their growth cycles were timed to the phases of the moon, and they were thirsty all the damn time. He even had to drag Jungkook out of bed in the middle of the night on a full moon to feed his magic to the flowers, hungry for the sparks of a witch and not Taehyung’s very ordinary fertilizer.
“I’ll make it up to you, Kookie, I promise. I’ll buy you boba for the rest of the month. Year,” Taehyung said as Jungkook poured some of his magic into the pot, turning it burnished gold for a flickering moment.
“I already told you it’s fine,” Jungkook grumbled.
“No, really, I owe you a massive favor. Ginormous. Tell me how I can make it up to you.”
“Ugh, just make Jin-hyung happy and we’ll call it even, okay?”
Taehyung turned to stare at Jeon Jungkook, maknae, the magical world’s golden boy, Kim Seokjin’s favorite dongsaeng, looking fixedly into the pot through the half-light spilling from his room, his cheeks puffed to one side, looking every inch like the little brother he’s never had.
“Seriously, does everyone know about this?” Taehyung whined.
“Uh, if you actually think you've been subtle, I've got some news for you.”
—
Taehyung graduates, finally, on a spring morning that feels like it's right on the cusp of summer, all the trees tipped with green, with a class of four thousand strong. His entire family takes the train up from Daegu, packing into the stadium with all the hundreds of parents, shimmery-eyed and radiating excitement.
When his name gets called, Kim Taehyung, he walks across the stage to the podium and a rip-roar of whoops and cheers erupts from one section of the audience. He turns around and almost stumbles right in front of a few thousand onlookers because right there, smack dab in the middle of the stadium, are his baby ducklings with a giant banner with his face printed on it, screaming like they’re at a concert and he’s their favorite k-pop idol. It’s so embarrassing. They’re dead meat. He’s going to strangle them. Then he’s gonna give them all hugs and plant big fat kisses on their foreheads because he loves them all so much.
He doesn’t trip, though, and ends up making it right up to the podium and gets handed his diploma: that hefty paper filled with the beginning, middle, and end of four whole years, all its good days and bad days and forgettable days paved into one long unforgettable road, and it’s the most bittersweet feeling in the world.
His dad cries, a little. Maybe a lot. He doesn’t know because he also cries, tears streaming down his face uncontrollably like he’s chopped several onions, but it’s the good tears, the best kind of tears.
He feels like he’s superman, orbiting the planet, flying high above the world. He’s tackled consecutively by Soobin, Yeonjun, Taehyun, Beomgyu, and Kai until he’s struggling to breathe under their combined weight, gasping for air as he laughs.
“Sunbae, Taehyung-sunbae,” Soobin finally says after five whole minutes of being dogpiled. “There were some guys looking for you a while ago, they really liked the banner, by the way, you’re welcome. One of them knew my name, and he was so good looking I thought he was a celebrity. Wait, is he a celebrity? Why does he know my name? Can we get his autograph? Anyways, they’re by the main gate, so you might wanna—”
“You’re telling me this now?” Taehyung half shouts.
“Erm, yes?”
Taehyung grabs all five of them into one last round of a bear hug before making a run for the main gates. He finds Jungkook, Jimin, and Seokjin standing in a semicircle, where they all look up and see him at exactly the same time like a well-choreographed boy band. It would be funny if he wasn’t so overwhelmed, his heart already so, so full. Taehyung makes a beeline for them and Jimin and Jungkook run toward him at exactly the same time, and they meet in the middle in an excellent rendition of a dramatic movie montage.
“Congrats Tae-Tae!” Jimin cries, his arms wrapped all the way around Taehyung, squeezing him with all the bone-crushing strength packed into his tiny frame. “I’m so, so proud of you, you did it, you’re amazing.”
“You should’ve seen the look on your face when your friends started waving the banner around, it was hilarious. Like, viral meme material,” Jungkook tells him, which is so, so bratty but he’s grinning full bunny-toothed when he pulls Taehyung into a hug too.
“I thought you guys had exams at the Academy this week, how are you guys here—”
“—well, you see, Jungkookie here started another ‘accident’ and would ya look at that, we’re running behind again—”
“—asshole, you’re really exposing me just like that again, huh—”
“It’s for the greater good, Kookie, your sacrifices must be honored.”
“Jeon Jungkook, you’re really something else, huh,” Taehyung says, so fond. He’s now officially a messy puddle of gooey emotions. “Ahhh, I love you guys.”
They let him go after another round of squeezes, hair ruffles, and a sloppy kiss on the cheek from Jimin, and allow Seokjin through to Taehyung. Taehyung’s eyes land on him and, ah. He’s beautiful. He’s in a long duster and he’s holding a dainty bouquet in his left arm, standing under a tree getting dappled by the sunlight. His eyes are two crinkled moons. There should be a rule about outshining the guy who’s graduating, but. Whatever.
“Congratulations, Taehyung-ah,” Seokjin says, taking a step closer. “You’ve worked hard.”
It shouldn’t be possible for a few words to make him feel this seen, but it is, and he beams like a lighthouse, rabbit heart going a million miles a minute.
“Ah hyung, you really shouldn’t have,” Taehyung says. “Thanks for coming out today, this means a lot.”
“Don’t be silly, I wouldn’t miss this for a lifetime subscription of free jajangmyeon,” Seokjin answers. “The banner really was a nice touch, I wonder if your friend Soobin has any more copies?”
“Oh my god, no,” Taehyung says in horror while Seokjin squeaky-laughs at his face, and then they’re both just smiling at each other under the canopy of green, spots of gold dancing on their skin.
Seokjin finally hands over the bouquet resting in his arms to Taehyung, gently tucking it into Taehyung’s hands and their fingers brush, feather light. Seokjin holds onto the cluster of flowers for just a few seconds longer than necessary to make the exchange, an odd light to his eyes.
“I spent all night making that, so you better keep them fresh as long as possible, brat,” Seokjin says, and lets his hands go.
Taehyung holds the bouquet in his arms and scans over the flowers, delicate blooms that are put together with Seokjin’s characteristic precision. It’s a watercolor wash of hues, and the star pieces are the sunflowers Taehyung had raised all last summer, warm and vibrant and playful. There are a few fragrant sprigs of basil tucked in wishing him success, yellow buttercups blessing him with wealth, and baby’s breath celebrating youth, all coming together to congratulate him. In the center of it all is a tiny teddy bear wearing a graduation cap.
Taehyung loves all of it. It’s sweet. It’s everything. He opens his mouth to say another heartfelt thank you, and that’s when he finally notices it. It’s easy to miss, with all the brighter flowers clamoring for attention, but it’s there. Right in front of him, tucked in one corner, is a single smeraldo, unbloomed.
Time screeches to a dead halt.
Stops there.
Restarts.
Everything rushes into him all at once, lightning to a rod— shock, disbelief, wonder, and then a surge of untethered wild hope eclipsing all the rest. He jerks his head up to look at Seokjin and he meets his gaze steadily, a tilt to his lips and his eyes cautious and a little guarded, but also— if Taehyung isn’t completely mistaken— a little hopeful. Maybe a lot. Taehyung might be projecting, he doesn’t know, all he knows is the sound of his own heart beating, a rabbit landing on the moon, a year of his love blooming like a garden, his evergreen forest emerging from a winter.
Taehyung gives up all rational thought in less than a millisecond. There’s nothing left for him to say, because what is there to say? There’s no script for this. None whatsoever. School definitely didn’t prepare him.
“Agh, hyung— I had this whole plan, it was gonna be a whole thing, and you just—ugh. You’re just so— so—”
Taehyung can’t take it anymore. He reaches forward and grabs Seokjin by the lapel of his coat, pulls him downwards, and kisses him. The angle of it is awkward; Seokjin clearly isn’t expecting it when they meet, his lips parted in surprise. Taehyung presses his lips to his mouth and oh— it’s as soft as he thought it was gonna be— and thinks he might still be dreaming when Seokjin kisses back, because it’s still so unreal even in all its imperfection. It’s as shy as a flower poking its head from the earth for the first time, but Taehyung’s heart is every cherry blossom tree on the continent in full bloom, a shining spectacle of a thing for the world to see. He’s as light as spring rain. He’s a comet streaking through the atmosphere, incandescent. He can feel Seokjin’s hands settle themselves on his shoulders, his thumbs resting lightly at Taehyung’s collarbones, and it sears where their skin touches. Taehyung’s one free hand is still fisted into his coat, so he lets go and lets it travel up to cup the curve of Seokjin’s jaw, his thumb pressed against Seokjin’s pulse point, and his heart’s beating faster than Taehyung’s ever felt it before.
Ah, he thinks, clear as a bell. Ah. It’s the same beat.
Taehyung wants to keep doing this, stand here and feel the sun against the back of his neck and Seokjin’s breath against his until he’s out of air, but he can hear murmurs in the crowd around him as they pass through. Someone wolf whistles, and Taehyung’s pretty sure Jimin started filming this whole thing a while ago. He's becoming abruptly, keenly aware of the fact that they're still out in public, and that he's about two steps away from becoming a viral TikTok video. Taehyung wants so much it’s flooding through his dams, but time and place and occasion are three horrible nouns, so he reluctantly lets go and gets rewarded with the way Seokjin’s dazed expression, caught off balance and breathless, looks on him.
Taehyung gives a peck to his cheek, quick as a hummingbird, and pulls away just a tiny bit.
“Later, hyung,” he murmurs. He hears Seokjin suck in a breath then let it out just as quick.
“Hm,” he murmurs back. “Tomorrow.”
—
It’s almost sunset the next day when Taehyung arrives back on the doorstep of Daisy Dose, overfull with his celebration dinner and buzzing with nervous energy, the honeybee kind and not the angry wasp kind, his head filled with words and his heart filled with wishes. In his arms he’s cradling a much bigger pot, and in a strange mirror of the day he first stumbled into Daisy Dose, he steps through the door, not knowing exactly what he's going to find on the other side. The wind chimes above gently sway, announcing his presence.
“Taehyung-ah,” Seokjin says immediately, just a voice coming from a curtain of vines. “You’re here.”
“I’m here,” Taehyung answers, and Seokjin ducks out from underneath the plants and smiles at him, summer-warm. Taehyung wonders if he’s always looked at him this way, and then how he’s managed to withstand it for so long. Seokjin’s eyes fall onto the pot he’s holding between his hands and the flowers growing within it, and his lips part open in surprise.
“Are those—?”
“Yeah, you were totally right about them being a pain in the ass to grow,” Taehyung says, a little too fast, and has to pull himself back. “They’re for you.”
“You mean you grew those… for me?”
Seokjin sounds hushed, voice thick with some emotion Taehyung can’t quite pin, his eyes moon-round on his face. And because Taehyung has learned to be a contrary little shit from way too much time around Jeon Jungkook, his first response is, “I mean, I originally grew them for Yoongi-hyung but he’s spoken for now, so.”
This is so not how he planned for this to go.
Immediately, Seokjin’s eyes narrow and he presses his lips together to hold back laughter.
“I’m sure Yoongi-chi will be thrilled to know he’s such a hot commodity these days,” he answers coolly.
“He really won't.”
Taehyung stares at Seokjin. He stares back. They both engage in a silent sudden death match, and predictably, Taehyung is the one who breaks first. He’s never not known how to yield to Seokjin, to still at his slightest touch.
“Oh my god of course I grew them for you,” Taehyung says. “Seokjin-hyung. I grew these for you, because I want you to know how I feel. But then you stole my thunder. You reverse-unoed me.”
Seokjin takes a step closer to him, and then closer still, until there’s no space left between them except for the width of the pot, and Seokjin reaches up and cradles his palm around Taehyung’s cheek, his thumb brushing at his cheekbones. Taehyung instinctively leans into it, chasing its warmth.
“Sorry,” Seokjin whispers. “I didn’t know.”
Taehyung swallows, once. “I’m not exactly low-key, hyung.”
“You’re not,” Seokjin agrees, “but that applies to a lot of things.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t know.”
“Know what?” Seokjin says, gently, and it’s not really a question. “What do I not know, Taehyung-ah?”
Taehyung sucks in a sharp breath. His palms are getting slippery and his heart’s so loud in his ears he wonders if they can hear it all the way in outer space, the sound of his big, dumb love. This evergreen forest that can cover a whole mountain. He's finally going to be letting it out into the open. Setting it free.
One beat. Two.
“Seokjin-hyung, I’m in love with you,” he says. As the words fall from his mouth, one of the smeraldos glows faintly, trembles, and tumbles open in full bloom. Real magic, and Taehyung’s the one who created it. “I’ve been in love with you for a really long time.”
A hand comes up and covers one of his hands that’s been holding the pot, and Taehyung realizes he’s shaking. It stays there, cupped against the back of his hand and curled around his wrist, resting.
“Taehyung-ah, can you look at me?”
Taehyung lifts his head up and looks into Seokjin’s face, and what he finds is incredible— there’s a red flush all the way up to his ears, and he looks somehow younger and so— so— happy. He looks lit from within, glowing like the moon at its fullest, all his magic cascading through him like a flood. He presses their foreheads together, and Taehyung can feel it— the magic that feels so much like life, like spring, like beginnings, running through Seokjin’s veins pouring into his own body, the gentlest kind of fire.
“Ah,” Seokjin says. “What a coincidence. Me too.” Between them, another smeraldo blooms. A moon-blue.
This is for real, Taehyung realizes, a little wildly. This is happening, and it’s real.
“But,” Taehyung can’t help but choke out, all the words in his head rushing up to clog his throat, “I’m not— I’m not magic. I thought— don’t you want someone who's magic, too?”
“Taehyung,” Seokjin says, and god, Taehyung always loved the way his name made a home in Seokjin’s voice, built just for him. “You’re so good. You came in and it was like a second sun rose in here. My plants love you, can’t you see the way they turn towards you? You’re one of the best people I know, the kind of person who loves the world so much it can’t help but love back. That’s magic that you’ve always had all on your own. How can I not want you?”
“Oh,” Taehyung says stupidly, feeling like all the air has been knocked out of him. He feels dizzy, punch-drunk, lost and found. “You...you really mean it. You also—”
“—love you?” Seokjin finishes. “Have for a while now, actually.”
Then, he lifts the clay pot of smeraldos, each and every one of them in full bloom, shining faintly like distant stars, and floats them gently down by the vintage cash register. They settle, and Seokjin turns to Taehyung again, and this time there’s nothing in between them. Taehyung steps forward and cups both his hands around Seokjin’s face, close at last.
He draws their foreheads together and breathes Seokjin in: all the earth-scent still clinging to him, feeling like a ship finally docking to shore.
“Hyung, can I—”
“Do what you want,” Seokjin says before he finishes, and Taehyung kisses him, pulling him forward until his hands are wrapped around the nape of his neck and his lips warm and wet against his, pliant and willing, and they’re kissing for real this time, the shape of it breathless and hungry. Taehyung pushes his entire weight against Seokjin, trying to get as close as he can, closing all the distance at once. It scares him a little, the vastness of this hunger inside him; he’s never known how much he can want, and wanting Seokjin is so easy. He wants to slide his hands around the dainty taper of his waist, swallow a laugh right from his mouth. He can, and he does. He angles himself so he can get better access to Seokjin's lips, and they kiss messier, after that, and it's so good. Better than good. Then he runs his tongue lightly over the seam of Seokjin’s lips and without thinking, gives them a small bite. Seokjin startles into a laugh and pulls away a fraction.
“You’re so—” Seokjin says, stops, and huffs out a laugh, squeaky even when it’s so breathy. “You’re always so unexpected. Always.”
Seokjin's ears are so red, and his lips are all pink and heat-flushed because Taehyung did that, he made him this way, he wants to keep doing it.
“Hyung,” Taehyung whines, impatient.
Seokjin huffs another laugh, running a hand down Taehyung’s side until it’s resting on his waist, his thumb stroking slow circles into it, and it feels amazing. “We don’t have to rush, Taehyung. We’ve got time.”
“Okay,” Taehyung says, catching his breath. “Okay. We can take our time.”
They go slower. Seokjin learns Taehyung methodically, learns the whole of him, roots and all, pressing soft kisses on his forehead, the side of his neck, and ghosting across the shell of his ear until he shivers, full body, and they do that until the sun sinks halfway below the horizon and the sky outside is gilded navy-gold, the bluest hour.
And it’s enough, for now.
—
A Little Bonus
Taehyung is playing with Seokjin’s fingers, threading them in between his own and flattening their palms together when Seokjin gives his hands a squeeze.
“Hey,” he says, in the tone of voice he uses right before he’s about to deliver a terrible dad joke.
“Mmhm,” Taehyung answers back cautiously.
“While we’re here making confessions, I have another one to make.”
“We’re out of smeraldos,” Taehyung says absently, plucking at the bend of his fingers one by one. He’s in the circle of Seokjin’s arms, leaning against the plane of his chest, warm and a little sleepy. “But go for it.”
“So you know how we met at a random plant shop downtown when you were about to pass out from sleep deprivation,” Seokjin says, then pauses. “That wasn’t so random.”
“You mean when you forcibly kidnapped my roommate’s mint,” Taehyung corrects before the last part catches up. “Wait, what—”
“The day before Hobi left for Japan, he stressed, for some godforsaken reason, that it was really important that I go pick up my stock of geranium seeds at a human shop. He didn’t even know why. It’s not everyday I just wander into those, you know.”
“So you mean—”
“The only vague-ass advice I’ve ever decided to take from a seer led me to you.”
—
Six Months Later
Taehyung is six paragraphs deep into copy-editing the worst written guest article of his life (he wants to find the original author, lock him up in the editor’s office, and interrogate him on where he learned to form sentences) when he glances at the clock for the first time in 3 hours, and all the blood drains from his face at once.
“Shit, why didn’t any of you say something? Jesus Christ I gotta run, see you all tomorrow— my boyfriend made food on his own birthday and I cannot be late—” he yelps as he gathers his laptop and notebook into his leather shoulder bag, shoving his arms through the sleeves of his coat at supersonic speeds.
“We get it, your boyfriend is perfect, fuck you too,” Sooyoung yells as he sprints for the door, and because every new hire at the firm is literally three years old, Taehyung turns around quickly to blow a raspberry at her.
He drops into the subway station and when his train arrives exactly on time, he sends a silent thanks to Seoul’s freakishly efficient urban transit system, because it gets him to Daisy Dose one minute to seven, on the dot. He pushes his way inside to find the natural order of things: Jungkook having an overly-intense arm-wrestling match with Seokjin at the counter. Seokjin looks up to see Taehyung coming through the door, falters for a fatal second, and Jungkook takes the opening to dunk his arm into the counter.
“Yah, you muscle-pig, these hands are insured,” Seokjin complains as Taehyung weaves around the plants to give him a peck on the cheek.
“Happy birthday, hyung,” Taehyung says. “Want me to kiss it better?”
“My gift was winning that round in under two minutes instead of one,” Jungkook supplies, and gives Taehyung a high-five.
“That’s it, both of you are uninvited from this birthday. The exit is that way,” Seokjin grouches.
Taehyung grins and laughs at the way Seokjin’s eyes are sparkling with amusement when he pouts, his hamster cheeks puffing out red and rosy. He sidles up and grabs Seokjin’s hand, brushing a feathery kiss across his knuckles. Then he slides the paper gift bag he’d been holding onto into his hands and ducks away.
“Don’t be mad,” Taehyung says, honeycomb sweet. “There’s your first birthday present. You can open it now, if you want.”
Seokjin narrows his eyes a little and examines the bag carefully, and then gingerly pulls it open to look inside. A heartbeat passes, then two, then three, and when he looks up at Taehyung again, the expression on his face is softening in increments like melting butter.
“Taehyung-ah,” he says, laughter bubbling in his voice. “You got me a cactus?”