Archive of Our Own

It was the kind of rain that people living in Seoul were grateful for: the kind that sprung up in the early dregs of winter, soft and nearly cold, which washed away the last traces of autumn, dark and sticky, and brought a certain chill to the air, clearing it temporarily of pollutants and dust. Kyungsoo wasn’t a fan of the rain: he nearly hated it, the way it clung to his jacket, soaking through the thin lining and clinging excitedly to the soft cotton of his sweater, inching closer and closer to the skin underneath. He hated the feeling of being wet, of having that damp cold covering his body like a shadow, urging out the warmth for a cool quiver of darkness. He hated the shiver that threatened at the base of his spine, ready to scale the bones there and lodge itself between his shoulder blades.

And yet, the thought of finding solace in a cafe made Kyungsoo cringe even more than the rain did: the idea of all those hot, damp bodies together, circled around small tables with cups of warm coffee, steaming into the face of glasses and carefully styled hair, creating a thick atmosphere that permeated the otherwise calm serene of a cafe where no one bothered anyone and everyone could sit, undisturbed, in worlds of their own making. Perhaps it was only Kyungsoo who thought of things that way: who could find solace in the solitary of being alone with his own thoughts. It wasn’t as though he hated company—he preferred it, in some situations—but with the first sprinkles of winter rain clouding up the forefront of his mind, Kyungsoo decided that an overly stuffed cafe wouldn’t bring him the warmth and dryness, or peace of mind, he was searching for.

Somehow, without much direction, Kyungsoo’s loafers brought him to a stop in front of a flower shop, stuffed carefully between a large Starbucks on the corner and a laundromat, one shop down from a rice cake shop and a few other places that Kyungsoo squinted to see, but couldn’t make out. Despite his poor vision, Kyungsoo rarely wore his glasses out in public, given that they made him feel more exposed than usual. People seemed to stare more when he had them on, although that could be purely his paranoia speaking, rather than anything truly relevant. In some ways, he wondered if his vision clarity, with glasses on, simply made it easier for him to notice, and instead preferred to see the world through a soft haze, the blur of unfocused lenses. A combination of his gaze and the rain that dribbled along the bridge of his nose made him step closer to the door, squinting at the name of the shop.

With its stylized font, it was hard to tell—sniffing faintly, Kyungsoo could detect the small tendrils of wild things, plants and herbs and flowers, wafting from the slight gap between the door and its frame. Kyungsoo loved the scent of flowers, the heady weight of dirt and roots in the air—perhaps it was what had drawn him in this direction, to a lonely shop in the middle of so many others, quiet and dark and green inside. There weren’t many who would seek sanctuary from the rain this way, and Kyungsoo placed his hands on the latch, pushing forward firmly.

The sound of bells, a golden clanging, bristled through the air just as the vines from the ceiling brushed at Kyungsoo’s short hair, and startled, he looked up. Plants weaved between each other, hiding the dark tile of the ceiling behind the illusion of a jungle, something that made Kyungsoo’s mouth part in surprise. The walls were lined with metal racks of flowers, and a few tables were set up in the back, stark metal with two chairs each: Kyungsoo figured it must be a shop that also served a select amount of coffee, and as he turned on his heels, he saw the counter, nestled in next to a wall made of ivy. Behind it, a long table was laid out with a mess of little leaves and ribbons and colored cellophane, and it made Kyungsoo smile, a little. Everything was present except for the staff—mildly disconcerting, but they were probably somewhere in the back, and the door had made such a racket when he went through it that there was no way his presence would go completely unnoticed. Shaking out his jacket some, Kyungsoo pushed his hands down into the pockets of his jeans, seeking the warmth of them as he crept closer to look at the rows and rows of carefully cut flowers, angled out of their metal vases as if seeking his attention.

His nose found the roses first, soft reds and pinks, and the yellows up higher, too far for him to bury into. Closing his eyes, he leaned in and took a breath, exhaling slowly, as if worried that his intrusion might disturb the flowers, or damage their petals. The musky floral tendrils crept into his nose, reminding Kyungsoo of spending time at his mother’s house, where every space had a different kind of thick, flowery scent, where the exploration of the rooms felt more like wandering through a garden than a place where people lived. With both Kyungsoo and his older brother living on their own, now, he imagined his mother just took the opportunity to fill the house with as much as possible, and she’d always been fond of flowers. Oddly, he found himself smiling as he settled back, away from the roses, and turned his gaze to the next row of flowers almost longingly. He wanted to smell them, but they were too high, and Kyungsoo’s slight height was unforgiving in such situations. Still, determined, he arched up on the toes of his loafers, reaching forward for something to hold onto—but there was nothing but the slight metal rails of the various flower buckets, and a sound startled him, back at the counter, enough that Kyungsoo’s balance faltered, his hands slipped, and the entire width of the metal shelf shook dangerously as he stumbled back onto his heels.

The fumble was embarrassing enough, on his own, but he noticed with some despair that the roses, having been so close to the lip of their bucket, had lost some leaves in his struggle, crumpled and broken on the floor. Behind him, there was another sound at the counter: the sound of a door opening and closing, the rustle of cellophane. Kyungsoo could feel his face start to heat, a dangerous, dark red that, ironically enough, could have let him melt into the roses if he had any room to do so. The heat spread to his ears, making the tips of them tingle with embarrassment, and rather than turn around to address the staff member who, quite honestly, probably wondered if Kyungsoo were trying to create a bouquet himself by being so close to the flowers, he bent down, crouching to try to scoop up the dead leaves on his own.

A hand interrupted him, covering his palm, and Kyungsoo realized, much to his dismay, that the staff member had made his way around the counter and had, in rather swift movements, come to crouch down next to him, silencing him with the oddly comforting weight of his larger hand. Embarrassed, Kyungsoo could feel his fingers tremble beneath them, enough that he nearly dropped the foliage back onto the floor, but the staff member—who Kyungsoo still couldn’t look at, face to face—used long, angled fingers to pinch up the leaves from his palm and then, in continued silence, picked up what was left from the floor. By the shape of the sneakers crouched next to him—black hightops, scuffed around the white of the toe and heel—Kyungsoo ascertained that the staff member was, in fact, male, which made Kyungsoo’s embarrassment trickle down to a more manageable level. He was bad with people in general, mostly, but found it harder to be around women; his awkwardness, and his lack of charisma or tangible charm, made him feel uneasy around women, who he felt expected him to sweep them off their feet. Usually he just laughed a lot, and looked at the floor.

“I’ll pay for them,” Kyungsoo found himself saying, although he had no idea how many roses he had damaged, or how badly he had disturbed them. There had to be over a dozen there, lying flat along the incline of the bucket, and feeling the first bead of hot sweat start at his temple, Kyungsoo pushed a few fingers off the floor and stood to his full height. Roses were rather expensive, especially so close to winter; he imagined a cost of at least fifty thousand won, if not more, which made the sweat call upon more sweat, and Kyungsoo felt sheepish about the lack of cash in his wallet. Perhaps he could duck out of the shop and make a quick trip to the ATM, although he hadn’t seen any banks on his short walk—a convenience store would work just as well, wouldn’t it? Kyungsoo’s hands slipped back into his pockets like a nervous habit, fingernails itching at the worn denim inside, as if wanting to pull threads loose, bury themselves beneath the fray.

To his surprise, Kyungsoo found himself waiting abnormally long for an answer. The staff member had also risen to meet him, but he was so tall that Kyungsoo, in his continued embarrassment, found his head craning back to even catch a glimpse of his face. He wore a soft white apron, tied almost fashionably at his hips, and black pants to match the black high tops. His shirt was a button-down, smart and well-tailored, so much so that Kyungsoo wondered just how much money the shop could be pulling in for an employee to make enough money for something designer for work.

Perhaps he hadn’t heard the offer, as Kyungsoo was prone to mumbling, speaking in soft, low tones so as not to disturb the atmosphere of places. It was more than that, really, and he knew it just as well as his close friends knew it—a response to internalized teasing from his younger days, when the other boys on the playground would tease him for his full lips, his round eyes, his soft complexion. It was a way to make himself feel more at home in his skin, short and not quite as roguishly handsome as he might have wished to be.

“I don’t mind paying for them,” Kyungsoo repeated, and the staff member finally seemed to regard him—with, Kyungsoo realized incredulously: laughter, silent behind his pursed lips. Had he said something funny? Kyungsoo found his own lips pulled down into a near frown, the embarrassment reaching painfully hot levels behind his cheeks. Without much movement, one of Kyungsoo’s hands slid out of his jeans and moved to the pocket of his damp jacket, fumbling into it to confirm the very slight weight of his wallet there, in the fabric.

The staff member shook his head. Kyungsoo was immediately on the offense.

“Please, I’m sure I must have done...something damaging...”

But the words fell out of his mouth like a trail of dead leaves, wilting and falling without meaning to the ground. The staff of the shop had already moved back towards the counter—Kyungsoo spared one look behind him, surreptitious, as though he could count the roses in the bucket with such a quick glance—and followed after him. The counter rose between them, and Kyungsoo pressed his palms to the top of it, as if such a movement could be demanding despite his urge to shrink back away from the space between them.

The other man had already disposed of the leaves and other bits that had fallen onto the floor, and returned instead to the table behind the counter, where a bundle of flowers waited, clumped together as though they had been held in a grip and then, when gently released of it, managed to spread themselves out along the soft peach of the cellophane. Kyungsoo couldn’t tell if he was being absolved or just ignored, but he leaned forward more, weight pressed into his palms and the hard, cool marble of the solid counter. It made him feel nervous—situations where he couldn’t read the correct social normality gave him that distinct feeling of anxiety, like the bottom dropping out of his stomach on a roller coaster.

“Excuse me?” he said, softly, and the staff member turned around to face him. He had some baby’s breath in one hand, as though he had been fussing with their placement when Kyungsoo had interrupted him, and his expression was almost playfully exasperated, his mouth set into a line. Without a word, he used the flower end of the baby’s breath to tap at the front of his shirt, where there was a neat pocket sewn it at the breast, and what appeared to be a silver name tag pinned to it. Kyungsoo felt his neck grow hot now, as though his cheeks couldn’t possible keep all of the embarrassment contained there at once. Should he have addressed him by name, was that the problem? He quickly scanned the tag.

The heat drained out of Kyungsoo’s body, sudden, leaving him with the sort of chill a body gets when a fever breaks, or when the water turns off suddenly in the shower.

The tag had the name of the flower shop artistically stamped in bold English lettering across the top, and beneath it, the staff member’s name: Sehun, which was common enough that Kyungsoo figured it must be his real name, and not a pseudonym for work. Beneath that was a small line of neatly typed Korean, shrouded by a small speech bubble that appeared to be coming out of a friendly looking flower, drawn along the side.

‘I am unable to speak, so please be patient with me while I write things down!’

Was there enough room under one of those cafe tables for Kyungsoo to hide?

His eyes had surely rounded enough to be comical, because the staff member’s—Sehun’s—shoulders shook and his eyes curved, and Kyungsoo felt like he would be reliving this moment in his nightmares for many nights to come. His hands slipped off the counter, and he folded them in front of himself, nodding his head faintly to accompany the raspy apology that made it past his lips.

“I’m sorry, I...” he started, and then had no idea how to finish the rest of the sentence. His hand escaped his jacket pocket and rubbed at the back of his neck, furiously, as if the movement might help stir up some kind of something in his head, make the sparks fly enough to rocket a smart idea up into his mind, but nothing came, and so he let his breath trail off, lamely, the silence stretched between them.

To his surprise, Sehun reached across the counter to get his attention, waving a hand at him vaguely.

Kyungsoo glanced up, and Sehun was grinning—the kind of grin a little brother wears when they’ve bested their older sibling at something, the kind that was bright, and full of mischief. Kyungsoo found himself smiling back, presumably out of a lack of anything else to do in such a ridiculous situation.

“Argh,” Kyungsoo said out loud, and brought both of his hands up to cover his face, a brief respite, before he let them flop back down to his sides. “I’m really having a stupid day, I’m sorry.”

Sehun had turned back around to the table, Kyungsoo noticed—to put down the baby’s breath and leave the bouquet there still half finished, tied loosely now with a bit of ribbon. He palmed his hands down against his thighs, covered by the apron, and slipped through the thin space between the counter and the wall of ivy, leaving one of his clean hands on Kyungsoo’s shoulder briefly while he passed, as if to ask him to wait. Kyungsoo half turned, wanting to watch where Sehun went without trailing behind him, and he swallowed at the recognition—Sehun was moving closer to the bucket of roses he’d tumbled over, and Kyungsoo began his mental calculations again, brain thick with the fog of worry.

It was somewhere between his idealistic calculation of the tax plus withdrawal charges that his gaze pulled into focus, sharpened in on the figure suddenly in front of him. Wide, his eyes looked up at Sehun, narrowing faintly as though to take in the details of his expression—and, Kyungsoo realized, with a tiny flicker of shame, that he was looking down the line of Sehun’s neck, along his shoulders and to the front of his throat as if to discern exactly what had made him unable to speak: looking for some sign of a wound, or trauma, or something that would explain it to him without having to ask.

There was nothing visible beyond the crisp collar of Sehun’s shirt, which was unbuttoned and loose around his neck. Rather, there was no indication that there was anything wrong with the other man. He was smiling, warm and relaxed, without the shadow of unfortunate circumstance or the weight of injury, and Kyungsoo wanted to apologize, despite the fact that he was certain his brief scrutiny had not been felt by the other. It wasn’t like him to be so interested in the misery of another—it wasn’t like him to not immediately mind his own business. Perhaps it was the interest he held, as small as the first flame upon a candle, flickering and brief before pulsing higher, bigger, and overtaking the room with light; an interest that he stubbornly snuffed out just as quickly as it sparked to life.

Sehun wasn’t holding out a receipt, or a piece of paper with a tally, or anything of the sort to indicate monetary compensation. Instead, between his long fingers, Sehun held one of the red roses, the stem neatly clipped at the end, lengthy and thorned.

Dumbfounded, Kyungsoo found himself reaching for it, taking it with one hand.

Sehun wanted to laugh again, he could tell; his nose wrinkled and his lips pursed and he looked down at the space between them. Kyungsoo wanted to laugh, too, but wasn’t entirely sure where the impulse had come from. He opened his mouth to speak, and then thought better of it, closing his lips together with a soft grunt in the back of his throat. Sehun just smiled at him and then, as if remembering, gave Kyungsoo a short gesture with both of his hands—‘shoo’, he was saying, and Kyungsoo was playfully incensed by it. What if he wanted a coffee, or wanted to linger longer? In truth, he did, but the luck that had helped him escape a potentially mortifying situation wouldn’t last forever, and Kyungsoo nodded faintly, lips curling up into a smile. It felt like it had been so long since he’d smiled this freely, without worrying about what others would see or think at the sight of him, and it helped unravel a knot of tension at the apex of his shoulders.

Sehun had already turned on his heels, returning back to the space behind the counter, presumably to finish up the bouquet he’d been working on. With Sehun’s back turned, Kyungsoo reached for the end of the counter, fingers nimble for the brief moment it took to snag one of the business cards sitting in the plastic holder there and stuff it into his pocket.

The bells jingled again, as Kyungsoo stepped back out of the shop, though the rain outside had stopped and Kyungsoo found, in its place, an uncomfortable sort of warmth that settled beneath the weight of his jacket and through his sweater. He looked back down at the rose in his hand, then back out to the street before him. Nothing had changed, but something was different.

It took him another week to get up the nerve to visit the shop again, after a particularly difficult day at work. The weather was cold, the kind of chill just before winter came in full force, though there was no rain—a small miracle, Kyungsoo believed, because he already couldn’t feel his feet in his loafers. He wasn’t sure what he’d hoped to find once he got there: and some small, masochistic part of him hoped the shop would be closed so that he could just go home, instead, and avoid another awkward encounter. But his feet were more stubborn than the rest of him, never faltering, and when his hand pushed through the door, the bells felt louder than before, jingling excitedly, as if announcing—that guy who stared at you like you were an alien and ruined your expensive flowers, he’s back!

But Kyungsoo wasn’t alone in the shop, this time. Perhaps because it was a Friday night, perhaps because the weather was cold, but clear, perhaps because the the lights shining from somewhere amidst the jungle ceiling felt warm and welcoming, the kind of light that wrapped around a person rather than glaring down at them, hot and annoyed. A few couples lingered within the neatly stocked walls, smelling the flowers, exclaiming at others, and there was even a group of girls seated at the cafe tables, sipping gratefully from round-lipped mugs full of hot liquid. Normally, such a dense group of strangers would have startled Kyungsoo’s anxiety, made him feel hot and uncomfortable, but tonight, it felt like the easy company of friends who didn’t have to speak words to another, the kind of quiet murmuring that made a lonely person feel at home. There was another staff member behind the counter, speaking to a woman while wrapping up her flowers, and oddly, Kyungsoo’s stomach sank some with disappointment.

Sehun must have had the day off—and Kyungsoo’s stomach sank further, because why was he so eager to see the other man? Did he hope to make friends? It was ridiculous, even for him. What could they possibly have in common?

Kyungsoo pushed his hands into his jacket pockets and took a step forward, angling towards a mostly forgotten corner where a few buckets of pale yellow flowers waited for attention. He inhaled; the scent was dry but sweet, like the lingering floral left behind by washing machine detergent or a cleaning spray. A few steps sideways took him to more of the same, and then some off-white flowers that had wider petals, making him smile. They looked welcoming and happy, as if encouraging him further into the shop: the middle of the flower spread out like a grin, little antenna-like bulbs leaning this way and that.

He considered buying some; they made him feel at ease, and he leaned forward to try to catch their scent, but a heavy weight at his shoulders threatened to make him lose his balance and he let out a low sound full of surprise and dismay.

The weight belonged to a large hand, then a long arm, and Kyungsoo found himself staring up at Sehun’s beaming face and that kind of exasperating grin that Kyungsoo couldn’t be annoyed with—not after a moment to compose himself, anyway, straightening up and squaring his shoulders in answer. It was ridiculous, but he felt his chest sag with relief; the sight of Sehun was familiar, despite it being only their second meeting.

Yet the reprieve was short-lived: he hadn’t worked out what he was going to say to Sehun, or what he could start talking about, even, except, quite lamely—

“These are pretty,” he said, and gestured towards the white flowers that stretched out towards both of them, as if beaming giddily at their meeting.

Sehun snickered, a soft sound in his nose that surprised Kyungsoo, but he pursed his lips. Slowly, Sehun shook his head, and his brows furrowed, looking away from the flowers and from Kyungsoo and around the shop, instead. Kyungsoo tried to follow his gaze, but it seemed to be scrolling almost methodically around every other customer, jumping from metal bucket to metal bucket, and so he found himself watching Sehun’s profile, instead, enjoying the way determination played out across his features.

Kyungsoo realized, somewhat embarrassingly, that he maybe had a bit of a crush on Sehun.

He’d heard of love at first sight, but surely there were such things as crushes that came on almost immediately, right? Sort of like measles, or chickenpox? One exposure, and a sudden rash? The spread of warm little freckles that encouraged more, and more, until they were itchy, impossible and unable to be ignored?

The back of Kyungsoo’s neck felt warm, and he cleared his throat. Sehun looked back at him then, and gave him a wide grin—Kyungsoo had only known Sehun for the equivalent of a few hours and yet he could already tell that it meant something was brewing in the other man’s head, looping together into a tight ball of lively intention. He flattened his lips in answer, as if warning him not to shove him into the flowers again; he wasn’t sure his ego could take it.

Instead, Sehun reached for his arm and gave it a soft squeeze, the feeling soaking through his jacket like a sudden influx of heat, sharp at the contact point and then radiating out in short waves through his arm, up across his shoulders, creeping along the back of his neck. Kyungsoo willed his face to control it—stubbornly, his cheeks pushed the feeling down until it settled, somewhat despairingly, into the middle of Kyungsoo’s chest.

Sehun had produced his cellphone from the pocket of his apron, and the message he showed Kyungsoo had been typed in a rather loopy, bubbly font on his screen.

‘Let me pick something out for you.’

Kyungsoo gave Sehun a dubious look, his thick brows lifted to his forehead—and he must have looked ridiculous, because Sehun’s lips flattened together and he swallowed, like he was resisting the urge to laugh at him again. It made Kyungsoo feel good, the sickeningly sweet taste of pride thick in his throat; it was a foreign flavor to his tongue, which was more used to the bitter notes of shame and loneliness. It felt good to be the reason that Sehun—who, Kyungsoo assumed, rarely had the chance to laugh when strangers and customers alike surely assumed him incapable of the act—felt amusement, even if it was, in the end, at his own expense.

Kyungsoo tilted his head; rows of pink and red caught his eye, perhaps because he was certain that despite the heat pulsing in his chest, his face had surely caught the bug by now.

“But you don’t know what I like,” Kyungsoo finally pointed out, lips twitching with the effort to stay neutral.

Sehun actually scowled at him—and Kyungsoo laughed, outright.

The message shown to Kyungsoo was pushed a little too close to his nose, and he felt his eyes crossing at the effort to read it. He tilted back, some.

‘It’s not about what you like. It’s about the meaning.’

The meaning of what? Kyungsoo’s lips parted with a breath, opening before he had the chance to find the words to say. Sehun had one hand on his hip, the other still holding his phone: his posture seemed to demand compliance, and Kyungsoo wasn’t the type to argue when it came to things like this. He gave a good-natured shrug and gestured, small, towards the rest of the shop.

“Find me my meaning, then,” Kyungsoo agreed, and instantly regretted it: Sehun’s face lit up with a smile so wide that he had to look away, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck almost ruefully. He wondered if he would ever outgrow this boyish sort of bashfulness, then realized he was already too old for it to go away overnight. Sehun seemed to notice, and it appeared to please him, making his posture relax, his phone nestled back down into his apron.

He held up both hands, wide palms towards Kyungsoo: a gesture of ‘stop’ but more likely ‘wait’ that Kyungsoo agreed to without another word. He was gentle in a way that Kyungsoo wouldn’t have expected from his broad shoulders, from his long legs that looked impossibly longer in the slacks he wore. He swerved through the shop with the comfort of one accustomed to the movement, hands brushing by couples who looked at him only briefly before away, again, and Kyungsoo realized he should do the same, and stop staring. He glanced back to the flowers before him, appreciative of their presence, as if they were the encouragement he needed to keep from leaving the shop at once, silent but warm in a way that only living things could be. His eyes admired the petals the way that his hands ached to, as if touching the flowers would bring him closer, ridiculously, to the person who cut them—which was in no way guaranteed to be Sehun, and the thought made him squint at himself in exasperation.

When Sehun returned, it was with not a bouquet of flowers but one single stem, wrapped artfully with clear cellophane and tied off with a yellow ribbon. Kyungsoo didn’t know much about flowers—he couldn’t even recognize the name of the ones before him, the ones with the laundry-smell petals—but he could tell the flower that Sehun held out to him was a kind of lily, broad in the same way Sehun was, white petals curved and outstretched to show off the sparse yellow center.

Kyungsoo must have looked confused, because Sehun gave another gesture with his hands: he was miming tapping on some kind of screen, then a humorous sort of typing, and it took Kyungsoo a beat too long to realize he meant, quite literally, look it up, you idiot.

“You’re not going to tell me?” Kyungsoo murmured, playfully affronted, and the cellophane crinkled when he took it between his fingers, turning the flower this way and that.

Sehun grinned at him, and shook his head.

“How much is it?” Kyungsoo continued, shifting the flower to one hand in order to reach for his wallet with the other, but Sehun reached out to stop him with both hands.

He shook his head slowly, exaggeratedly, from one side to the next as he frowned.

“A gift,” Kyungsoo said just as slowly, and Sehun nodded. One corner of Kyungsoo’s mouth started to turn upward in a grin. The moment felt long, too long, as though they’d escaped from time’s periphery into a forgotten corner of the present where they could stay, curious, to lean back and forth into each other’s company, learning the balance.

A couple brushed past them to the door, and Kyungsoo remembered, somewhat belatedly, that Sehun was surely supposed to be working, but no one had troubled him for help yet, and the employee behind the counter hadn’t called for him, either. “I’ll come back,” Kyungsoo decided, and Sehun moved a hand up to push his hair out of his eyes. The movement made him realize he hadn’t even introduced himself, but Sehun had already shifted to his familiar gesture from earlier: his hands pushing back and forth through the air, his eyes curved in amusement—shoo, shoo.

Kyungsoo bit at his tongue and smiled, but it was small and a little clipped. He’d have to remember for next time.

On Saturday, Kyungsoo looked online in a bit of research, but the only thing he could seem to find was the prevalence of white lilies used in funerals.

He couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be some kind of joke, or if Sehun was trying to tell him something, but he couldn’t read between the lines to understand it.

The next time Kyungsoo came, he went into the shop without the hesitation of his previous visit. Sehun was there, along with another employee, who greeted him kindly. Sehun had already prepared something for him: an actual bouquet, tied with different colored ribbon, spiraled into funny little curls.

Kyungsoo didn’t recognize these flowers, but they were blue and bright, curled up into themselves. Kyungsoo liked them because he felt an affinity to them, the way that they seemed too shy to explore outside of themselves, and he could tell by Sehun’s expression that he felt the same way about them, handling them carefully, with the touch of a florist who truly enjoyed their flowers and gave them the same consideration a person might give to their pets.

After spending a little time in the shop—making small talk with the back of Sehun’s head, nods or shakes—Kyungsoo left to go home without paying, again. Sehun shooed him off, again. Kyungsoo was grinning when he stepped outside, again.

The internet told him the flowers were irises.

Further exploration told him that the blue ones spoke of hope, and faith, things that Kyungsoo wasn’t sure he fully understood. The meaning that Sehun had behind them was truly lost on him, unless they were supposed to be the physical embodiment of Kyungsoo himself, pressed into the awkwardly out-folding petals.

He thought over it for awhile, even after he put his laptop away, after dinner and a movie and a glass of wine. He wanted to think he was trying to work out the mystery behind the flowers, but really, he knew the truth: he was trying to work out the mystery of Sehun, the meaning behind it all instead.

"Do you change the water often?” Kyungsoo persisted, following Sehun around the shop. There had been a few customers, but it was a rare afternoon that Kyungsoo had gotten off work early, and so he had stopped by to see if Sehun was working, and the excitement in his throat felt almost like heartburn. He wondered if he should have eaten a late lunch, first.

They had shifted into a comfortable rhythm: Kyungsoo would ask him a lot of questions that could be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and for the more difficult questions, Sehun used his phone to answer. Kyungsoo never asked him about his disability, and Sehun never asked Kyungsoo about his personal life. It was a comfortable sort of friendship that was pressed to the edges by Kyungsoo’s now undeniable crush, which sat in his chest like a moth, batting and knocking around his heart whenever the light of Sehun’s affection came close. But he had the feeling that even Sehun didn’t mind the way that Kyungsoo dropped by when he was working, or the patient conversation he wheedled out of him each time, slow and well-paced. There were moments of comfortable silence, when Sehun went to the back to restock the espresso or worked on the bouquet table, and Kyungsoo found his heart relaxing, little by little. It wasn’t the type of awkward silence that stretched between two people with nothing in common—nor was the conversation the type that was forced to avoid such things.

Kyungsoo was at ease, when Sehun was there.

The answer, it turned out, was a resounding ‘no’. Kyungsoo nodded with a soft hum of acknowledgement, and followed Sehun back to the counter. He reached for his phone, tugging it out of his apron pocket: Kyungsoo now knew that Sehun kept quite a few things in there, ribbon and tape and clippers, a small packet of band-aids and a watch he’d broken the face of.

‘I have another one for you,’ the phone screen said.

Sehun didn’t always give him special flowers to take home—mostly because Kyungsoo had refused to take another without paying, something that had stubbornly made Sehun refuse, too, and had left Kyungsoo flowerless since the irises; though he had purchased a few sets for his house the other times he had come, from Sehun’s coworkers while Sehun had been in the restroom.

Kyungsoo smiled, wide and relaxed.

“How much?” he asked, expectantly, as he leaned his elbows onto the counter. His jacket was on the back of one of the cafe chairs, a stark black to the stiff silver metal, and his plaid shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, flattened under the weight of his arms.

Sehun scowled at him, again. Kyungsoo continued to smile.

Sehun held up three fingers, pushing them in at Kyungsoo’s nose.

“30,000,” Kyungsoo said calmly, and reached for his wallet, but Sehun stopped him with a sudden, firm squeeze at his elbow. Kyungsoo’s eyes went round, and he looked up, but Sehun was sticking his lower lip out at him and Kyungsoo couldn’t help it—he laughed.

“Alright,” he consented, and Sehun’s face relaxed into that comfortable sort of pleasure, like a cat who’d just lapped up cream. “3,000. I understand.”

Kyungsoo had never seen this sort of flower before, and it puzzled him even more than the irises had. Small bunches of white and red petals, grouped together, were tied neatly with what Kyungsoo had come to realize was Sehun’s signature wrapping. They were called ‘kalmia’—and it had taken Kyungsoo a very long time to sift through all of the flowers on the website he had innocuously bookmarked earlier to find them. They didn’t seem to be very common, and Kyungsoo couldn’t really recall having seen them in the shop, so he wondered where Sehun had gotten them from. Then again, he had never really asked where all the flowers in the shop came from originally, and he noted that down, in his head of memos, to ask about it later.

The idea of Sehun actually growing anything—gently coaxing plants to life with his soft hands and slow smiles—made Kyungsoo feel warm, up from his toes and down out through his fingers.

The clouds overhead were dark without being foreboding, as if they were apologetic, hanging their heads with the remorse of being certain of rain, later, and Kyungsoo had brought an umbrella, just in case, to lessen their burden. The shop was darker than usual, because Kyungsoo had arrived later than usual, and he realized with a brief glance at his watch that they would be closing, soon, and that he probably could only stop in for a bit of conversation and maybe a coffee.

Sehun made awful coffee, mostly because he didn’t understand how to brew the espresso correctly, and never listened to Kyungsoo try to explain it to him. Kyungsoo often preferred to have his to-go cup brewed by one of the other staff members, but he never refused when Sehun pushed a tumbler into his hand with a wide grin and raised brows as if to say, go ahead, I actually tried this time, it’s delicious.

It turned out that Sehun was the only person closing, tonight, and Kyungsoo could already feel the bitter curl of burnt coffee on his tongue. He took a seat in the back, carefully perching on one of the chairs there while Sehun finished sweeping up, and his palms pressed against the cold metal, taking pleasure in the way it sent a chill up his arms, only to be chased back down by the padded warmth of his jacket.

Sehun came back to him, after the broom had been put away and after the trash had been emptied, to take a seat in the chair opposite him, his long legs straddling the slim seat. Kyungsoo looked up at him with wide eyes. His lips started to curl up into a smile—and then stopped, midway, when he realized he was giving himself away far too easily, and fell back down. Sehun surely noticed that Kyungsoo never stopped smiling when he was around. It was as though his lips were hooked at the edges, tied to string, and Sehun had the ends to tug and twist as he pleased. Kyungsoo was far too attached.

‘This is the last one,’ Sehun’s phone screen said to him.

Kyungsoo’s gaze flickered from it to Sehun’s face, and his throat started to feel tight, as though the buttons of his shirt were done up too close. A million questions flashed through his mind, and he thumbed through them, hoping to find one that sounded casual enough to be spoken aloud. He didn’t. His hands shifted, one on top of the other, and his thumbnail dug into the skin it found underneath it.

“What is it?” he asked, softly.

Sehun smiled—both of his hands dipped down, rustling through the over-sized pocket of his apron, and he carefully produced one single, magenta flower, untied and without ribbon, that he put on the table between them like some kind of offering. Kyungsoo, as usual, had never seen anything like it. The petals were thin, seeming to effortlessly fall away from the raised, orange center, which looked fuzzy but rough, like the surface of a cat’s tongue. He forced his hand away, arm sliding along the cool edge of the table to take the flower’s stem and slowly pull it back towards him in order to have a better look.

Sehun’s expression was one of anticipation, when he looked back up at him—after he had brought the flower up to his nose, the bud drooping this way and that as he turned the stem and finally, with some effort, got a good sniff of it. His brows lifted up to his forehead; he couldn’t decipher the look, and he stared back down at the flower, but he didn’t recognize it any more than he had minutes ago, when Sehun had originally placed it on the table.

Tapping, and then—

‘Do you understand now?’

Kyungsoo’s brows pushed together. He would surely get wrinkles there early, by the time he was thirty.

“I don’t understand at all,” he admitted, and put the flower back on the table. That feeling of anxiety he had never felt again with Sehun since their first meeting began to trickle back in, like a glass with a superficial crack in the side, droplets turning into skinny little streams of liquid that were eager to escape. He swallowed, and dared a look back at Sehun again, but Sehun was typing, and Kyungsoo wondered if he could get past him, clear the other table, make it to the door without tripping over himself.

‘Lilies,’ Sehun’s screen said. ‘In English: L.’

It was simply bad luck: English had never really been his strongest subject in school, although he enjoyed a lot of English music, and sang it a lot to himself while he cooked. Nodding although he didn’t understand, Kyungsoo looked from the screen back to Sehun, and the earnestness on his face made Kyungsoo’s chest tighten, as though his heart had become a ball of rubber bands; one more loop and they would snap, one by one, to the center.

Sehun held up two fingers, this time, and set his phone down.

“Two?” Kyungsoo said. “The second one? The irises?”

A beat longer—“I,” he guessed. “In English?”

Sehun was grinning at him. Kyungsoo wondered if Sehun had been good at speaking English, once, or if he just enjoyed language. It would be the perfect kind of quirk that Kyungsoo would love about him, something unexpected and strange.

The third one would be next, Kyungsoo reasoned, his tongue running along the outside of his teeth as he thought.

“Kalmia?” he said out loud. The debate between letters made him look helplessly at Sehun, who seemed as though he wanted to laugh. “K.”

The flower was on the table before them, but Kyungsoo still had no idea, and he didn’t want to pull out his phone to search for it. Sehun seemed impatient, and picked up his own device to start typing on it, his brows pushed into that look of determination that Kyungsoo saw a lot.

‘E,’ his memo said, with a little angry emoticon next to the letter, and then, following it: ‘Echinacea.’

“L, I, K, E,” Kyungsoo sounded out—once, then twice, and then, after a few moments of silence, a third time. Sehun reached across the table and gripped one of his arms, shaking it impatiently, and when Kyungsoo looked back at him blankly, Sehun’s mouth opened.

And he laughed, out loud, husky and low and in the exact voice that Kyungsoo had pictured for him, enough to give him goosebumps, to make his shoulders go firm, to make his lips pull up, to make him forget about his anxiety and the worries of work and all the other things that they never talked about because they didn’t matter, because Sehun had laughed, because Kyungsoo laughed, too, and because the comfortable warmth between them was more important than the reasons why Kyungsoo hated his job or why Sehun had become a mute in the first place.

“I,” Kyungsoo said, in English, and Sehun’s fingers had curled around the wool of Kyungsoo’s jacket sleeve, creasing it in his grip, “...like... you.”

The flowers were Sehun’s confession. Kyungsoo had merely given them a voice.