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Hoseok’s not drunk. He knows that if someone prefaces something with ‘I’m not drunk’ they probably are drunk and should be ignored, but Hoseok is in his fourth grade classroom grading essays on personal heroes and trying to prepare for the looming parent-teacher conferences. He is most definitely not drunk. He wishes he was, but he’s not.
The reason he’s currently repeating that he is not fucking drunk oh my god is because he is staring at what looks like a tiny boy lurking in his students’ class vegetable garden. And by little boy he doesn’t mean one of his kids accidentally got locked in the building. He means like the little boy is the size of his fucking thumb and he isn’t drunk.
He ignored the small rustles he had heard at first, thinking that one of the windows had been left open, until he heard the distinct sound of a small sneeze and looked up to realize that all of the windows were steadfastly closed. He had followed the quiet rustles and small sneezes to the vegetable garden set up on top of the low bookshelves by the windows - little squares of potatoes, tomatoes and squash labelled in too-big messy writing. He poked through the tiny leaves of what greenery there was, fully expecting a bug, maybe a mouse, but instead what he poked gave a distinct shout. With words. That he could understand.
“Hey, watch it asshole.”
Which is how Hoseok ended up here, running his hands through his hair for the upteenth time, stammering about the state of his sobriety while staring at a thumb sized person sitting on a fucking zucchini leaf.
“Yeah, I get it. You’re not drunk,” the tiny voice pipes up with a bored drawl.
“I-I’m not,” Hoseok stammers again. “I’m definitely not.”
“So you can stop repeating yourself,” the voice snaps.
“Very, very, sober I am.”
“And you can stop talking like fucking Yoda.”
“Like Yoda talking I am not,” Hoseok immediately says, and his lips definitely do not quirk up at the small sound of an irritated groan.
“Oh my god, can you just shut up and chill out? You act like you’ve never seen a small person before.”
“Um, I haven’t,” Hoseok says, eyes still wide. “I mean, children, yeah. But not someone - thumb sized.”
“Hey,” the little boy snaps, and Hoseok sees him cross his arms over his chest and his face turn into a scowl. “I’m not thumb sized. I’m probably as tall as your middle finger.”
Hoseok isn’t drunk, but he is also not thinking straight, which is why he immediately sticks up his middle finger and plants it next to the tiny human, huffing out a small chuckle at the way the boy’s face reddens at the fact that he is, in fact, shorter than Hoseok’s finger.
“Okay, your index finger,” he grumbles, and when Hoseok switches fingers he concludes that the boy is right. Definitely index finger sized.
“So, uh,” Hoseok says awkwardly, taking his hand back. “Have you uh, always lived in my students’ vegetable garden?”
The boy’s scowl deepens, and if he was normal-sized he would probably look intimidating. But as it is he just looks like an adorable angry kitten. Only smaller. And not feline.
“No, I ‘have not always lived in your students fucking vegetable garden,’” he mocks, and Hoseok resists the urge to laugh.
“You have a filthy mouth.”
“And you have an ugly face,” the boy immediately snaps, and it is so something one of his fourth graders would shout that Hoseok can’t take him seriously, can’t help the grin that blooms on his face.
“I’m aware,” Hoseok says lightly. “S’why I’m still single.”
He could be mistaken, but he swears he sees the boy’s face redden at that, sees him look away, awkwardly shift his feet.
“I- I didn’t mean. You’re not actually ugly,” he says, and Hoseok’s heart definitely doesn’t stutter in his chest.
“I’m Jung Hoseok,” Hoseok says, and the small boy flashes him a smile, a quick quirk of the lips that is gone so fast Hoseok wonders if he imagined it.
“I know,” he says. Hoseok waits for the small human, (garden gnome?) to return the gesture and share his name, but instead he walks back into the small jungle of greenery leaving Hoseok crouched on the floor wondering if he just had a very vivid hallucination.
“If you haven’t always lived here why are you here now,” Hoseok asks against his better judgement, prepared of the silence to inform him that yes, he is in fact crazy. He’s so prepared to hear nothing that the squeaky voice makes him jump.
“I’m talking.”
“What?” Hoseok stands and peers over the garden from the top, the arial view allowing him to follow the tiny boy’s movements as he goes from plant stalk to plant stalk.
“I’m talking to them.”
Hoseok blinks. “To my plants.”
The boy looks up at him, trademark scowl back in place. “Yeah. Haven’t you?”
“Um,” Hoseok doesn’t know why he feels like an idiot, even though it’s common knowledge in this universe that plants don’t talk. “No?”
The boy sighs and looks down, shakes his small, small pink-haired head. “That’s probably why you killed your sunflowers,” he says softly, almost sadly, looking toward the square of dirt where nothing had sprouted, and Hoseok feels bad, like he actually murdered something.
“W-well, what do they say?”
The small human shrugs, continues his trek through the garden. “Nothing much. They don’t like being poked. And you’re under-watering your potatoes. They’re kind of pissed about that.”
Hoseok’s head is swimming. He must have fallen asleep at his desk because there is no way he’s getting messages from his potatoes via a tiny fuckin…potato fairy.
“We water them the same amount as the others,” he says, and the boy snorts.
“But they’re not the same as your other plants. These are potatoes.” He points to another square of dirt. “Those are zucchinis. Not. The. Same.”
Hoseok doesn’t really appreciate being talked to like a dumb child from a human the size of his index finger, but he still has no idea what said human is talking about so he guesses maybe he deserves it.
“It’s like,” the boy continues with a small sigh, “feeding you and your students the exact same amount. It doesn’t make sense, right? You’re different people. You have different needs.”
“Well yeah,” Hoseok says slowly, running his hands through his dark hair. “They’re kids.”
The boy huffs out a laugh and Hoseok catches a glimpse of a gummy smile. “Okay, fine. Do you eat the exact same as your adult friends?”
Hoseok thinks about that a moment, chewing the inside of his lips as he does so. Put like that, the point revolving around watering his potatoes seems painfully obvious. “No. I don’t.”
The boy smiles wider. “There you go. Stop under-watering your potatoes, dumbass.”
Hoseok nods, his own grin growing to match the small human’s. “Right. Stop killing my potatoes, I can do that.”
“And move your radishes out of the fucking sun. Do you not see their leaves browning?”
Hoseok doesn’t get his papers graded. He follows the small human around his trek through the vegetable garden, listening to plant facts and getting berated for sucking at being a gardener. He falls asleep at one of his students desks and wakes up with a crick in his neck and fuzzy teeth and a desire to end all things. When he peers into the vegetable garden there is no small human, only vegetables. He chalks the potato fairy up to over-exhaustion and leaves it at that.
He still moves the radishes out of the sun.
“Are you okay?” Kim Seokjin, the other fourth grade teacher down the hall asks him at recess while their students run around like wild animals on the playground. “You seem really out of it. And are those the same clothes from yesterday?”
Hoseok groans and instinctively pulls at his sweater, the old blue yarn pilling from years of use. “I didn’t go home last night,” he admits, and Seokjin wriggles his eyebrows.
“Did you have a hot date,” he asks, and Hoseok barks out a laugh.
“Hyung, when was the last time I went on a date?” Hoseok shakes his head while Seokjin sputters something like ‘now is the time’ ‘seize the day’ (‘seize the bum!’) ‘get it while it’s hot!’ “I mean I slept here last night.”
Seokjin’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead in a way that is almost comical. “Why did you do that?”
Hoseok shrugs. “I didn’t intend do. I just… found something. Or someone. Or something.”
Seokjin laughs, the loud windshield wiper sound attracting the attention of some of their students for a brief moment. “Someone or something? Should I be concerned?”
Hoseok debates for all of five seconds before he blurts out: “have you seen a fairy in your vegetable garden?”
Seokjin’s smile falters and Hoseok feels his stomach sink. “What?”
“Um…like, a small person? In your vegetable garden?”
“Like Thumbilina?” Hoseok nods and Seokjin’s brows furrow. “Hoseok, are you feeling alright?”
Hoseok forces a smile. “Fine. I think I just had a really vivid dream.”
Seokjin pats him on the shoulder reassuringly. “You need a break,” he says softly. “You know I can cover your class if you need.”
Hoseok nods, but he knows that’s not what he needs. He knows that everyone assumes he can’t take care of himself since his wife left, and sure it hurt at first, but it’s been six months and he’s a grown ass man. He doesn’t need ‘a break.’ He needs to find his small human. Needs his potato fairy. Needs to know that he’s not clinically insane.
It’s the flash of pink that catches his eye, the unusual hair colour standing out among the students, teachers and parents all with natural browns and blacks (and occasional, very rare blondes). It’s parent day and they’re ending the afternoon with a school wide festival on the green, lawn games and face painting and pot-luck style food taking up the entire field of the school. Hoseok pats Wheein on the head while nodding is goodbye to her mother before he pushes through the throngs of parents, eyes glued to the pink mop of hair on the outskirts of the crowd.
“Hey,” he says, just a bit too loud, and when the guy turns Hoseok’s breath catches in his throat. There, right in fucking front of him, is the full-sized version of his potato fairy from three weeks ago, dressed in grass-stained jeans and an oversized grey sweater.
“Yeah,” the guy practically growls, but Hoseok can see his eyes darting, searching for a way out like he’s terrified.
“You’re my potato fairy,” Hoseok blurts, and the guy’s pale cheeks flush.
“I am not your fucking potato fairy,” he hisses, and Hoseok is dimly aware of a group of parents staring.
“You were in my kids’ vegetable garden,” Hoseok presses, and the guy’s face reddens to the point where he looks like he might actually explode. He steps forward quickly, too quickly for Hoseok to make a run for it, and grips his wrist hard.
“Can you shut the fuck up please,” the guy whispers right into his ear, “before you get me fired because parents think I’m a goddamn pedophile lurking in their children’s classroom?”
Hoseok nods, wide eyed, and the guy gives a curt nod in response before letting Hoseok go and pushing back through the crowd towards the front of the school. Hoseok takes a moment to compose himself before he follows, getting distracted by chubby hands and excited parents along the way, wondering what the guy meant by fired when Hoseok has never seen him anywhere but in the small vegetable garden. He’s not surprised to find no trace of the guy when he finally breaks through the crowds of people - at this point he’s not surprised by anything - but he does wonder, yet again, if he imagined the whole thing.
“Maybe I need to get a date,” Hoseok grumbles into his hand as he corrects another misspelled ‘beatifull’.
“Maybe you do,” a small voice replies, and Hoseok definitely does not scream and nearly fall out of his chair. Definitely doesn’t bang his knee on the underside of his desk either.
“Not fucking funny,” he grits out towards the high pitched giggles coming from his vegetable garden.
“I think it’s hilarious,” the small voice drawls, and Hoseok limps over to the garden to see the small boy leaning against the stalk of his zucchini plant. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Hoseok says, blinking a few times because this is really happening. It's 20:00 on a Thursday; there’s no way he could have hallucinated the same man in two different sizes three times. He plops down onto the floor so that he’s face to face with his potato fairy, garden gnome, whatever. “Okay, did I or did I not see a normal-sized you at parent’s day?”
The boy rolls his eyes to the side like he’s debating answering before he hums and nods his head. “You did.”
“So why are you,” Hoseok gestures wildly towards the boy, who snickers in response. “Are you just a part time potato fairy?”
The boy’s face turns bright red. “I already told you I’m not a fucking potato fairy. Stop calling me that.”
“Then what are you,” Hoseok snaps back. He’s not insane, or maybe he is, but if he’s not this small human is going to make him insane - and he’s managed to fend off insanity in a job where he works with hyper nine year olds all day.
“I’m a witch,” the boy says simply, and Hoseok can’t help the laugh that barks out of him.
“You’re a witch?”
The boy shrugs his shoulders jerkily. “Yeah. Is that a problem?”
“No way you’re a witch,” Hoseok says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Witches aren’t real.”
The boy snorts. “And potato fairies are?”
Hoseok shrugs, bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. “Well, you’re small and cute like a fairy, and you're so a-peel-ing," the boy sputters at this so Hoseok talks over him, "and you like to talk to my potatoes-“
“I don’t like to talk to them,” the boy snaps. “Just that you’re fucking starving them and they’re always fucking screaming at me.” The boy’s pitch rises the more he talks until his last words are almost nothing more than a high buzzing whine and Hoseok resists the urge to coo.
“If you’re not a fairy maybe a gnome-“
“Not a goddamn gnome.”
“I dunno,” Hoseok hums, “you seem pretty gnome-like to me.”
“Have you ever seen a fucking gnome?” the boy nearly growls. He unfolds his arms and stalks towards the edge of the garden, face red and hands in fists. “They’re short, fat, and stupid. And they don’t even like plants. They dig holes for no reason!”
Hoseok’s laugh bursts out of him loud and lilting, waves of giggles that shake his entire frame. He rests his elbows on his knees and leans his head back and laughs, laughs more than he has in a long while, laughs in a way he hasn’t laughed since his wife left. When he finally calms down, eyes wet and on the verge of getting the hiccups, the small boy is watching him with a confused expression.
“So,” Hoseok says as he wipes his eyes. “What do my plants have to say tonight?”
The boy almost startles, looks even more confused. “You - you wanna know?”
Hoseok scoots forward on his butt until his knees bump the small bookcase. “Yeah. It’s why you come here, right? Cos they've got something to say? I wanna know.”
It could be the pink tint from the lights outside of the window or the small boy could be blushing, but Hoseok swears his cheeks are bright pink. He kicks at the dirt with a tiny foot, and if he was big sized Hoseok would pull him into a hug without a second thought. As it is he nudges the small boy with his pinky.
“Or you could tell me your name, lil potato fairy?”
That makes the boy smirk, a small tilt of his pouty lips that is endearing as much as it is dangerous. “Nah,” he says lightly, then moves away from Hoseok’s pinky to begin the tour of the small garden.
“You’re doing better with the potatoes but now you need to hill them.” Hoseok raises his eyebrows and the boy gives him a gentle smile. “It’s when you take the soil and push it up around the stems. Like, you make a hill?” The boy pushes against the soil with his whole body and Hoseok instinctively reaches in to help, using his finger tips to move soil around the stem of one of the plants. It feels so much like playing in the sandbox, like being a kid, that Hoseok almost feels guilty at how easy it is for him compared to the little garden fairy.
“Like this,” the boy continues breathlessly, gesturing at their handiwork. “It gives the potato, the tuber - you know, the potato you actually eat, more room to grow. And then if you water in these pockets,” he kicks at the dent where they had pulled the soil up, “you can deep water them the right way.”
Hoseok rests his chin against the wood of the garden box. “Won't that just water them too much?”
The boy rolls his eyes but he’s smiling wide. “Deep watering means watering deep into the soil, not deep watering like drowning them. Potatoes are root vegetables cos it’s the root of a plant. ’s what needs the water.”
Hoseok nods. He had started the garden at the beginning of the year with Seokjin, both of them wanting to provide a long term project for their students that didn’t involve animals. A garden seemed brilliant - messy enough to be alluring for children and easy enough to maintain (and explaining the death of a plant was much easier than explaining the death of an animal). However, neither of them knew anything about gardening; it was honestly a surprise Hoseok’s classroom had any surviving plants at all.
“What else,” he murmurs tiredly, and the boy moves away from the potatoes to sit on the edge of the wooden frame by Hoseok’s face.
“Well, um, your fava beans are starting to crowd, so you may need to repot some, maybe move them to a bigger plot? Your zucchinis are gonna bud soon. Uhm, your radishes really like being in the shade.” The boy stares down at his feet and his cheeks are bright red, almost like he’s embarrassed. “And all the plants think you should try again with the flowers,” he mumbles.
Hoseok chuckles. “What?”
The boy shrugs, but Hoseok can see his lips quirk slightly. “The sunflowers. It’s not the season for them anymore, but your veg think it would be nice to have some flowers.”
“Yeah,” Hoseok hums quietly. “I think so too.”
“Holy fuck,” Hoseok blurts, nearly dropping his hot chocolate.
“What? What?” Seokjin nearly screams beside him, looking around for a natural disaster or some bodily harm done to Hoseok’s person. “Did you burn yourself?”
“Seokjinnie do you see that guy?” Hoseok practically manhandles Seokjin’s head so he’s looking at the flower shop across the street. “Pink hair? Looks like an angry cat? Please tell me you see him.”
“What the hell Hoseok?” Seokjin breaks out of his hold and adjusts his perfectly coiffed brunette locks. “Yeah, I see him. What’s your deal?”
Hoseok nearly deflates in relief. He hasn’t seen his potato fairy since nearly a month earlier, hasn’t seen him human-sized since parent’s day two months ago in September. He doesn’t answer Seokjin; he takes a gulp of his hot chocolate like it's liquid courage and marches across the street with Seokjin trailing behind him.
“Hey,” Hoseok says when he’s close enough to confirm that the pink-haired boy is, in fact, the same one that’s been visiting his vegetable garden. The guy looks up, his cheeks immediately flushing and his mouth dropping open in a surprised ‘o’. “How’s my potato fairy?”
The guy’s cheeks flush darker and his eyes flick between Seokjin and Hoseok. He adjusts his green apron over his over-sized black sweater and ripped black jeans, shoves his shears into his pocket. “Still not a fucking potato fairy, dude,” he says, but it’s much less aggressive compared to the last time he spoke to human-sized potato fairy.
"I dunno, I'm getting a tuber in my pants just looking at you," Hoseok says without thinking, then immediately groans and blushes while trying to ignore Seokjin cackling beside him. "Oh god, that sounded so much better in my head."
“Um, who is this,” Seokjin whispers excitedly.
“This is the fairy that was in my vegetable garden,” Hoseok explains through his mortified pick-up line embarrassment, not missing the smug way the pink-haired boy crosses his arms and rolls his eyes with a wry smile.
“Hobi,” Seokjin sighs. “If this man was in your garden, like physically in it, you’d have no garden.”
Hobi is about to explain the whole thing when a small woman pokes her head out of the front door of the shop, the high tinkle of the bell really putting the idea of fairies in Hoseok’s head.
“Yoongi-ah,” she says, and her voice is deeper than Hoseok expects but is smooth and melodic, like every word she says is part of a song. “Are these men looking for something in particular?”
“No ma,” the guy, Yoongi, says without looking over. “Just someone I know.”
“Jung Hoseok,” Hoseok says brightly. “I’m a friend of Yoongi’s.” He says the boy’s name pointedly, directs it right at his blushing face with a wicked grin.
“Jung Hoseok?” The woman squeaks. “The teacher?”
That catches Hoseok off guard. “Um, yes?”
“Oh!” The woman bursts out of the door and Hoseok has to blink at how short she is, barely four feet tall with pale skin and silver hair braided into a neat plait around her head. She also looks like a fairy, and when Hoseok glances between her and Yoongi he can definitely see the similarities: the button nose, the pouty lips, the wide eyes. “It’s so nice to actually meet you. I didn’t know Yoongi invited you, I would have prepared something.” At this she pouts at Yoongi, and the boy’s resulting burning blush would have been laughably cute if Hoseok wasn’t so confused.
“I didn’t invite him ma, now please go inside.” Yoongi’s voice is thin and reedy in his desperation, and like all mothers his mother ignores him trying to shove her back inside.
“Yoongi has told me so much about you,” she gushes, and this makes Hoseok blush about as hard as Yoongi.
“D-did he now?”
Seokjin steps in right before Yoongi’s mother can add anything else, offering his charming smile and unnaturally handsome profile. “Ma’am, I actually am looking for a flower arrangement. I’ve got an anniversary coming up.”
The small woman gets even more excited, more energetic in a way that Hoseok didn’t even think was possible. She pulls Seokjin back into the shop talking a mile a minute, and Hoseok pretends he doesn’t see Seokjin mouth ‘you owe me’ before the door shuts behind him.
“So,” Hoseok says after a pause that’s only mildly uncomfortable. “Your mum’s a fairy too?”
Yoongi snorts and nods towards a small love seat on the side of the building. “We’re not fairies, I told you. We’re witches.” Hoseok sits beside Yoongi on the love seat, mildly surprised to feel warmth emanating from Yoongi’s thigh against his own. It’s weird actually being next to big Yoongi, to feel him as a solid presence instead of a figment of something he was sure that he had made up.
“I’m listening,” Hoseok prompts when it’s clear Yoongi isn’t going to continue on his own. He prods Yoongi’s arm with the bottom of his cup, and Yoongi takes it without a second glance and takes a gulp of the warm drink.
“My ma’s a garden witch. She’s also part imp, which is why she’s so small,” Yoongi says after a moment. “We talk to plants. Got super green thumbs. Can make things bloom, manipulate harvests, make sure people don’t starve, make sure people do starve…that sort of thing.”
“Come into teachers rooms and hang out in their vegetable gardens,” Hoseok teases, and Yoongi’s lips quirk.
“Yeah. That too. To be fair, I was walking outside and your potatoes were screaming. Literally screaming. So I couldn’t not go in.”
Hoseok laughs, head thrown back against the wall of the flower shop, and Yoongi chuckles beside him stealing more sips of his hot chocolate.
“So why are you so tall,” Hoseok asks after his laughter has calmed. “I mean. Now. Not when you’re a dwarf.”
Yoongi smacks lightly at Hoseok’s arm. “Not a fucking dwarf,” he complains and Hoseok grins lazily in response. “And my dad’s a human. That’s why. I’m half and half.”
“’S that why you get all small sometimes?”
Yoongi shakes his head, takes another sip of the drink. “Nah, my ma does too. I think that’s just a witch thing. Or an imp thing. It happens on the full moon. Too much sugar.” Yoongi hands the cup back, and Hoseok shakes it, not surprised to find it empty.
“So…you’re a were-fairy,” Hoseok asks with wide eyes, laughing at the sharp glare Yoongi throws at him.
“You…” Yoongi shakes his head, and Hoseok can’t help but notice the way his nose is pink and slightly runny from the cold, how his pale skin looks extra bright against the cold grey of the coming winter, how his lips are chapped but still so kissable. “Are insufferable.”
“Yeah, I've been told,” Hoseok says quietly, pulling his gaze away so he can stare at the busy street. “So, why were you walking by my class in the first place?”
Yoongi shrugs, the action causing him to shift a bit closer to Hoseok. “I work on the school grounds sometimes.”
“Really? How come I’ve never seen you?”
Yoongi shrugs again, and Hoseok can see him chewing the dried skin off of his bottom lip. “No one ever notices the gardener.”
Something in Hoseok twists at that. He reaches out to run a hand down Yoongi’s cheek, to tuck a strand of pink hair behind his ear, to pull him close, to kiss him, to tell him that he notices him, sees him but the tinkle of the bell makes him pause and he stares at Seokjin with his hand awkwardly poised in the air.
“C’mon,” Seokjin says with a smile, holding a flower arrangement almost as big as he is. “I wanna get this home to Kook.”
This time Hoseok is prepared for the rustling noises that come from the tiny garden. He adjusts his position on his beanbag chair and grins brightly when a small pink head pokes through the leaves.
“Hi,” he says quietly, and the small blush that colours Yoongi’s cheeks makes his stomach do flipflops.
“Hi,” Yoongi says back. “Your potatoes look good. You can harvest them soon.”
“Does it hurt them? Like, when we pick them or cut flowers?”
Yoongi grins at that, that bright gummy smile that Hoseok has grown strangely attached to. “No. They’re plants. They’re not even conscious - when I say I can talk to them it’s more like…I can be on their wavelength, you know?”
Hoseok doesn’t know, but he nods anyway. “I missed you,” he says, and he laughs brightly at the squeak he gets in reply.
“You know where I work,” Yoongi grumbles, kicking at the small rocks in the soil.
“I can visit you?”
Yoongi rolls his eyes. “Well duh. You’ve got legs, haven’t you?”
Ah, there he is, Hoseok thinks mildly. There’s his tiny, angry potato fairy.
“I see you planted some flowers,” Yoongi says after a moment, wandering over to the empty square of dirt that held the sunflowers Hoseok killed.
“Yeah. How are they doing?”
Yoongi shrugs, but the look on his face is soft, like a mother when she’s looking down at her baby for the first time. “It’s still early,” he says. “They’re just whispering. Like they’re figuring themselves out. How they wanna grow up, you know?” He glances up with a small smile, and it hits Hoseok that he might be in love with this small potato gnome fairy witch boy thing. “I think they’ll be fine though.”
Hoseok sincerely hopes so.
It’s February, the worst month of the year in Hoseok’s opinion. It’s cold and wet and grey and the snow that had fallen all winter is now a dirty brown mulch of people’s footsteps and dog piss and car oil. Hoseok can only imagine how Yoongi feels going through the month where most nothing grows.
Yoongi is outside when he gets to the flower shop, bundled in a fluffy coat with a cat-eared knit beanie covering his pink hair. He is trimming the poinsettias on display, fingers moving the shears deftly from one sprig to the next, talking lightly under his breath in a language that Hoseok has since learned he will never understand.
“Hey potato fairy,” he says lightly by way of greeting, and nearly laughs out loud at the scowl Yoongi gives him.
“One of these days I’m going to cut your tongue out with these fucking shears,” he spits, but when Hoseok sticks his tongue out Yoongi just laughs.
“You know I only have eyes for you,” Hoseok says as greasily as possible, chuckling when Yoongi rolls his eyes and goes back to trimming the flowers.
“Hey,” Hoseok tries again, “you must be the Columbus to my potato cos you show me a whole new world.”
Yoongi’s face reddens and he groans. “Oh my god please stop.”
Hoseok crouches beside the giant pot where Yoongi is working. “Sure,” he says with a slight shrug, ignoring the withering gaze Yoongi shoots him. “But first I gotta tell you that you’re like a French fry cos I’m always wanting to ketchup with you.”
Yoongi throws the shears down with no actual force and turns to face Hoseok with such fury that it would be scary if Hoseok didn’t know any better. “Jung Hoseok I swear to fucking god -“
Hoseok shoves the flowers he’d been hiding out in front of him, whites, purples, and pinks, colouring lily-pad shaped petals on brown stems. Cyclamen from his own student garden. Yoongi’s eyes widen and he takes the flowers gingerly in his gloved hands.
“They’re beautiful Seok,” he breathes, and when he looks up at him with round brown eyes Hoseok’s heart jumps into his throat. “You did a great job. They’re so happy.”
Hoseok wants to say something. Wants to say I love you, fucking crazy potato flower gnome fairy boy that snuck into my classroom, I’m so in love with you I don’t know what to do with myself, but he can’t. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and he shifts awkwardly in his squatted position. Yoongi raises an eyebrow at him and Hoseok feels like he’s going insane.
“Are you alri-“
Yoongi’s lips are rough and chapped and he kind of tastes like snot from his runny nose, but the inside of his mouth is warm and tastes like chocolate and cinnamon and he smells like green grass even though it’s February and they’re in the middle of the city and Hoseok is so, so in love.
When he pulls away Yoongi stares up at him with glazed eyes and a small smile. “You could have given me a warning, asshole,” he gripes. “I would have wiped my fucking nose first.”
Hoseok laughs, and when he kisses Yoongi this time their teeth clack because of their smiles and Hoseok is pretty sure that he can hear faint singing coming from the direction of the flowers in Yoongi’s hand.
Or maybe he’s just insane.
Definitely insane.