Chapter Text
“You’re a fake Aquarius.”
Yuto sighs, very loudly. The older boy, on the other hand, chooses to ignore this reaction and rolls himself into a more comfortable position, holding up the magazine so that Yuto can see it’s battered and misused front page. He wonders- for a brief moment- why Changgu enjoyed reading horoscopes so much. The first time they’d met he’d incorrectly guessed him as an Aries- which he’d later realise was more insulting than funny. But Yuto doesn’t mind it when Changgu randomly tells him that he’s not a true Aquarius, he only minds it when he’s crashing his dorm room at three in the morning because he’s bored.
And Changgu bores easily.
Hence why he’s sprawled all over Yuto’s bed while he sits on the floor, sleep still carved deeply into his eyes. He’s struggling to keep himself awake and the only thing that’s helping is the fact that Changgu’s never stopped talking.
It’s been forty minutes.
Yuto adjusts his position, getting more comfortable because his ass was beginning to hurt and his feet were starting to go numb. He thinks he’s going to lose all sensation in them if he doesn’t at least get up (which wasn’t going to be possible at the rate this one-sided conversation is going).
Changgu shifts again, rolling over the sheets until he’s on his back, holding the abused print material over his face. The pages are soft like cloth and folded, creating white creases where colour used to be. Yuto almost hopes he loses grip and the magazine comes crash landing on his face.
Then again, he’d start screaming so Yuto changes his mind- he hopes Changgu miraculously falls asleep.
He wishes. Changgu looks like he’d gulped down four mugs of coffee in one go.
“Your character doesn’t match any of these Aquarius traits,” Changgu begins to explain, his voice travelling and bouncing back against the magazine so Yuto has to crane his neck to catch what he’s saying, “You should be a Virgo.”
“Okay,” Yuto finally groans with a pull of his brows, his tone dull like an overused knife, “and I care because?”
“Because,” Changgu pulls the word, stretching it like a rubber band before releasing it with a smack, “It’s interesting.”
Yuto scoffs. Interesting his ass.
Changgu is running.
And he guesses, because Yan An’s not returning to the dorms for the night.
It’s always loneliness that Changgu runs from. This isn’t the first time he’s come crashing into his dorm in the middle of the night, waking him up with a jolt and keeping him up for the rest of it. But Yuto is understanding because it’s all in Changgu’s eyes. The sadness, the desperation. The need to fill silence with stupid conversations. He’s lonely without Yan An and empty without him. They came together like a pair of socks or a heartbeat. They needed each other to survive, perhaps, one more than the other.
Changgu is desperately in love with his roommate but is too dumb to do anything about it.
He plays it off like a joke, though Yuto would take lovesick Changgu over heartbroken Changgu any day. (The latter had the tendency for the overdramatic and Yuto wasn’t in the mood to deal with that without Wooseok).
So Yuto bears with a numb ass and prickly feet and an achy back at three in the fucking morning.
“Hyung,” he says with a wide circular yawn, “I’m tired.”
“You are?” Changgu returns, rolling again so that his face is levelled with Yuto’s. His cheeks are stained pink, his lashes batting innocently as though he hadn’t purposely intended to crash the younger’s room at an ungodly hour. Yuto nods his head, lifting his fists to rub his eyes until he sees specks of vibrant colour bloom behind his eyelids.
“It’s almost been an hour,” he knows his voice is teetering on whiny but he can’t help it. He’s exhausted and all he wants to do is curl under his covers and fall asleep. If Wooseok were here he’d have pacified Changgu but Wooseok’s at the university library doing up last minute assignments because he has no concept of time management. (Damn him.)
“Oh,” Changgu’s lips pull and his gaze dips. Yuto catches the little shake in his wrists, “I didn’t realise.”
Sleepy Yuto is a little caustic so he almost says, Of course you didn’t, but he catches himself the last minute- also because he accidentally moved his prickly foot and the sudden jolt of pins and needles into his ass is making him feel very weird.
“I feel, like you’re here because you want something from me.” Yuto says instead, kicking his foot out and shaking it to dispel the discomfort. It started to click a little too late in his sleepy brain. Changgu comes to him to put out his loneliness, but he also came to him when he needed something because Yuto rarely ever said no to favours.
And this conversation about horoscopes is a repeated parrot. He’d heard this very same one several times before already.
Changgu blows out a breath a little too loudly, eyes shifting, “No.”
Yuto narrows his eyes at the other boy. Changgu’s lower lip pushes out and he’s looking at him with those damned puppy eyes, Yuto almost feels bad for not trusting him. Almost. Because Changgu confesses, “Okay so, like, I made a promise to someone to deliver something tomorrow but then I accidentally said yes to lunch with Yan An.” before he could second guess his intentions and write it off as just blatant mistrust.
Yuto blinks.
Accidentally his ass. The idiot probably jumped right out of his skin when Yan An asked.
He’s a lost cause. Staying up at three in the morning on a school night had been a waste of his time. Yuto is sleepy and cranky and the bloody pins and needles in his foot is making his butt feel prickly. He presses his palm into his face and groans.
“And I’m supposed to help you?”
Changgu whines, pushing himself into a sitting position so suddenly he bounces on the bed, “You’re the only one that’s free tomorrow!”
“Who said so?” God, he’d planned to make a trip to the art store and stock up on some pastels. His fingers were itching to use them after weeks of watercolour.
“Please.”
“No.” He stands up, knees cracking. Changgu’s gaze follows him with that same pout in place, his brows creasing together.
Really, damn him, because Yuto’s a bit soft for his friend. He can’t say no to him with conviction, not when he’s looking at him like that. People often assume Yuto to be cold and unfriendly- which was true depending on the situation- and in that moment he really freaking wished that that was true.
In actuality, he’s just too nice for his own good.
“Okay, fine.” He grunts, poking Changgu in the forehead. The older boy’s eyes brighten, like there’s a bulb lit from behind them. They’re sparkling and Yuto remembers why Changgu is extremely dangerous.
He’s never encountered an instance where Changgu didn’t get his way.
“I love you,” he says, throwing his arms around Yuto’s neck suddenly, almost causing the taller boy to lose balance and end up with a brain injury, “I’ll buy you those watercolours you’ve always wanted.”
Yuto only scoffs. Changgu probably couldn’t afford it- not with his meagre pay from making Subway sandwiches five times a week. Even so, Yuto pats his friend’s back because he can feel the excitement radiating off of him like intense heat.
It makes saying yes and staying up all night worth it.
“See,” Changgu laughs and it’s warm and sickly sweet and Yuto can’t help but smile, “told you that you’re a fake Aquarius.”
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Yuto is never and he means never going to agree to do favours for Yeo Changgu ever again. It’s one thing to hand over a shady looking package and another to send him all the way over to the strange garden beside campus with vague instructions to “Pass it to the uncle there.”
Yuto’s only ever walked by the place but he knew a lot of his classmates went there to reference flowers.
He’s never really enjoyed drawing nature so he stayed away from the garden, but he’s heard that it’s beautiful and run by a mysterious old man who never left the place.
Plus the sun’s at it’s peak and he can feel it sear into the side of his face- perhaps wearing a black t-shirt wasn’t the brightest decision he’s ever made but he enjoyed the colour too much to bother about changing it for the weather.
The package has weight to it. It’s firm in his hands and a little heavy. Changgu had made sure to wrap whatever was inside in multiple layers. Yuto can feel the bubble wrap and if he presses further, his fingers brush against something hard. There’s no name written on the package either, just brown paper and taped without much care for precision and aesthetics. It was a hideous looking parcel in Yuto’s not-so-humble opinion.
Just before he reaches the entrance of the garden his phone buzzes and he stops to fumble with his pockets to retrieve the device. He isn’t surprised to see that the caller’s the very person he’s going to curse out tonight.
“Yuto,” comes Changgu’s optimistic and bright voice. Yuto thinks his voice is like the colour yellow, there’s something summery about it- like there are flecks of golds and sunlight in it. When Changgu’s happy Yuto almost feels like his voice makes everyone around him warm and safe, “Are you on your way?”
He feels a bead of perspiration drip down between his shoulder blades, “Unfortunately, yes.”
“You know I love you right?”
Yuto rolls his eyes and then because Changgu can’t possibly see the action, he blows out a breath, elongating it for additional effect.
He’s smiling though, lips almost reaching his eyes because as much as he loved annoying the shit out of Changgu, he treasured him a lot more than he let on. He can already imagine the look on the older guy’s face- corners of his mouth pulled down and lower lip pressed up against his top one. “You know you owe me right?” Yuto mirrors, the antistasis of Changgu’s statement.
Yuto doesn’t actually expect anything from him. He knows how hard Changgu works just to be able to pay for university. He knows that behind his deep chocolate eyes is tiredness and emptiness and he will never let anyone find out.
Except at 3AM when the dorms got quiet and Yan An wasn’t in his room. Except at 3AM when only ghosts listened to his silent cries.
Except at 3AM when he crawls into Yuto’s room and passes off sadness for a need to remind Yuto that he’s the least Aquarius person he’s ever met.
“Anyway,” he starts walking again, adjusting the package so it’s clamped securely between his arm and body, “Let me go deliver this package.”
“Thank you,” Changgu’s voice is breathy and soft like the wings of a butterfly, “Seriously.”
Yuto pulls his lips into his mouth, bites down, releases, “See you later, hyung.”
The gardens come into view, there’s an iron fence running the perimeter and a very large plaque built between long grass that read THE ORIENTAL GARDENS. He eyes several blue butterflies fluttering between bushes and trees, he wouldn’t be able to name them but Changgu would. He’s sure that this package had something to do with his major- Horticulture.
Thank god Changgu wasn’t one of those people running around screaming about saving the bees because Yuto’s pretty sure he’d have cut off all ties with him if he did. He’d once met an Art major who claimed that capitalism was ruining artists’ creativity and so went on strike by not eating for a week.
His lecturer found the idiot passed out in the studio and had called for both an ambulance and a psychiatrist for an evaluation.
He steps into the gardens and he’s overcome with awe.
It’s fucking magnificent.
There are colours everywhere- flora he can’t name in blues and purples and reds and oranges. There were pure species and hybrids and butterflies and ladybugs and Yuto feels like the breath’s been knocked right out of his lungs. He can feel the twitch in his fingers, the pull of creativity and direction and within him, a part aches to pick up some pencils or charcoal and begin sketching. When his classmates told him about how beautiful and magical the gardens were he never believed them because Yuto found the most beauty in people. He loved the haunting inside humanity and he loved to draw that out with his work- but this garden tugged him in a very different way.
This garden made him want to capture it’s purity, it’s vibrancy and Yuto wants to answer this call. He stops for a moment, just stunned into silence at his surroundings.
When he reaches out to finger a leaf it’s velvety and firm and thick in his careful grasp. And he does something he doesn’t think he’d ever think he would do: he leans in to smell the flowers. They’re fragrant and sweet, its scent wrapping around him like a light scarf.
For the first time Yuto can see why Changgu loved nature so much, it could be absolutely stunning. And thinking of Changgu only reminded him that he needed to deliver a package to a questionable old man.
There’s more to the garden than flowers and ferns and trees. Yuto eyes a large pond and a small bridge leading to a pavilion and several areas for people to sit down and admire nature at. There’s also a nicely angled slope of grass overlooking the pond that he reckons people could picnic on.
But he’s also miserably lost. He’s sure that he has to find a small house deep within the place, but the board with the map of the entire garden wasn’t very helpful. He’d tried to figure out where to go from the little marker reading YOU ARE HERE, but the little drawings peppered across the map only confused him.
He figures that it was worth wandering around anyway. The garden seemed to fill him with new energy so he could spend some time admiring its beauty without feeling rushed (of course, unless the sky started to bleed indigo, then he would know that he’s screwed).
But there’s only so much walking he can do. Fifteen minutes later his feet are aching and his lungs are burning. It’s so hot his shirt is sticking to his body like second skin.
He’s also back to grumbling about never doing favours for Yeo Changgu ever again.
He thinks the gods have answered his prayers when he sees something amidst a patch of tall grass and when he squints to get a better look he’s very sure it’s a person.
Good, finally someone who can help his lost ass.
“Uh, excuse me?” he asks, and he knows he’s being gentle because he’s asking very uncertainly (as would anyone do when approaching a stranger) but the person jumps up, whirling around so quickly Yuto almost gets whiplash before losing his balance and landing inside the grass with a scream. Yuto’s so taken aback he can’t do anything but gawk at the person as the person stares back with wide eyes, his bangs blown away from his forehead and his chest rising and falling erratically.
They’re like this for a few breaths, both equally shocked and both equally rooted to their spots.
“I’m sorry,” he says quickly, his heart in his throat from the sudden shock, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The person doesn’t respond- at least not at first- because he’s still staring back at Yuto with that confused, almost baffled expression on his face. If the situation didn’t seem so ridiculous, Yuto would have probably run away. Times like these he almost wishes Changgu was here because he’d know exactly what to say. Yuto’s just tall, lanky and awkward. He wasn’t cut out for meeting new people and scaring the shit out of them unintentionally.
“Uh,” the person starts, his expression morphing to look at Yuto peculiarly, “You can see me?”
Yuto blinks, completely lost. He almost wants to say, of course I can see you, I have two functional eyeballs but he doesn’t think that that would help the current situation or thaw the sudden block of ice that’s come between them.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he repeats again, feeling heat rise into his cheeks. His face is bright red and he feels so lost and out of place.
“No, no it’s okay,” the person responds quickly, waving one hand about dismissively. Yuto’s eyes latch on to his delicate wrists, down to the curve of bone and then to long and slender fingers with perfectly clipped nails. There’s something almost ethereal about this person, a softness and hardness to his features. His thick brows should not work with his soft cheeks and his bright aura shouldn’t match with the severity of his jaw and his troubled gaze shouldn’t be making Yuto’s chest feel heavy and light at the same time. He would reach out and help him up but Yuto can’t seem to stop looking at the stranger’s face and his brain just won’t work.
“I was looking for my cat, Neko.” he admits abashedly, moving so that he was on his knees before rising up to his full height. He’s shorter than Yuto, but there was just something to him that made him seem bigger than all of the universe combined.
“You named your cat, Cat?” Yuto asks instinctively with a pull of his brows. It seemed to be the right thing to say because the thick glass wall between them shatters like he’d just crashed right into it and god, this guy’s smile seemed to light up every dark place in Yuto’s soul.
“Okay I’m not the most creative person in the world- oh,” he stops suddenly, his eyes widening, “Did you need something?”
Yuto thinks he’s looking at the personification of starlight and he really doesn’t know what to say suddenly.
“Are you delivering a package?” the person asks, gaze darting to the contents in Yuto’s arm and it’s the shadow that crosses his face that pulls Yuto out of his stupor. There’s something there, hidden behind his gaze that piques his curiosity.
“Yes actually,” he says, shifting the package so his grip on it is more comfortable, “I’m looking for the gardener?”
The person smiles, but his lips are tight and so is his gaze, “If you help me find my cat I’ll bring you to him.”
Yuto frowns.
“Trust me, it’s easier finding The Gardener than it is the smelly old cat.”
And for some strange reason, perhaps it was the summery day or the way the stranger’s eyes were looking at him like they could hold all of Yuto’s soul in it or the fact that when he spoke Yuto thought his voice was a creamy lavender, Yuto decides that he’ll help him.
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