Chapter Text
you’re lovely/secret love
This is how the story goes: the room is dark, and Viole’s mood is even fouler, a skinny sulking silhouette that stumbles around the room as he blindly looks for the light switch. He should be used to the creeping shadows by now, but it still takes him a while before he finds it.
A small noise of surprise escapes him as soon as the lights flicker open again.
He walks with slow and unsure steps, and hesitantly takes the gardenia flower atop his pillows. It’s a lovely, fragile thing, but Viole is more concerned about the breach of privacy than anything else.
He turns it over in his hands, carefully thumbing the delicate petals, and wonders. Did it come from Jinsung? He has lived with his master for over seven years now, and he has never done anything like this. Ha Jinsung has gifted Viole with clothes and shortcakes and the occasional expensive jewellery, but never flowers.
It would have been a step too far, he privately acknowledges, knowing about Hwa Ryun’s rare overprotective tendencies. It shows that she cares, which Viole is grateful for, but it’s still quite embarrassing for him. He doesn’t need Hwa Ryun to protect him from anyone.
Bringing the gardenia to eye level, Viole inspects the flower more closely, his curiosity overtaking his fear. Yeon Yihwa is slowly becoming okay in his presence, but not that okay, and none of his teammates were generally in the habit of indulging him.
Well, Viole wryly thinks to himself, all except one.
A loud knock resounds on his door, followed by an enthusiastic, “Yo! Viole!” and the brunet thinks he knows already.
“Huh,” he says out loud, and his voice echoes around the spacious bedroom. Wangnan-ssi must have taken that as an affirmative, as he happily bulldozes the door open.
The blond boy turns expectant eyes on him, and immediately blanches once he sees Viole’s raised eyebrow. In his slender hand is the lone gardenia he purchased a while ago.
“Is this yours?” Viole asks him in his usual soft voice. It makes Wangnan flush even harder.
“Y-yes, but it’s yours now,” the other man stammers, trying to subtly look around in case Jinsung was lurking and skulking around the corner. He relaxes once he sees that it’s only the two of them in their rented apartment, his shoulders finally losing its earlier tension. “Yeah, man, did you like it?”
Viole blinks. He peers at the flower carefully again, eyes wide. Does he like it? Better yet, is he allowed to like it? Slayer candidates shouldn’t be this teary-eyed over a flower.
Maybe.
“I-I think so,” the brunet looks at Wangnan under thick lashes. Flowers are such short-lived things, only allowed to remain beautiful for a day or week before they eventually wither away into nothingness. Viole can appreciate the impermanence, even if it makes him sad. “Yes, thank you so much, Wangnan-ssi.”
The blond is carefully looking away from him now, face having grown redder over time, but the smile on his face remains impossibly bright.
“Of course,” he immediately agrees. Wangnan fidgets for a bit, his hand clenched tight over his shirt, and Viole cannot help but find it endearing.
The brunet patiently waits for Wangnan to say or do something, to make the first move, and eventually the man acquiesces with a resigned sigh. The regular tries to hold his gaze as he awkwardly fumbles his way towards him, embarrassed but earnest yellow eyes meeting his own curious gold.
Wangnan grabs a thick astronomy book from his desk, and in a few moments the blond shyly sits himself beside Viole. The man gently holds his hand out, as if asking for permission, and Viole wordlessly hands him back the flower stalk.
“Here, Viole,” the regular’s voice is soothing as he randomly flips the book open. He presses the gardenia from before in between the pages, right above a fanciful depiction of a star, and the sight of it sends a small pang throughout Viole’s chest.
Rachel loved the stars so much that it eventually killed the night.
“See this?” Wangnan points a finger at the object in his hands. “This is one way to preserve your flower, Viole.”
“But why?” says Viole. Whisper is a better word for it, his already small voice becoming quieter in the face of this unknown experience.
Wangnan grins at him, the corner of his eyes crinkling. “It’s not foolproof of course, and it won’t necessarily remain preserved forever, but I still want you to have a reminder of the beautiful things in life. I don’t think it’s wrong to want that.”
“That sounds nice,” Viole tells him, and he means it. He’d gently press his friends in between book pages if he could keep them with him for a little while longer, but he doesn’t think there’s a big enough book that could accommodate everyone he cares about.
He tells this solemnly to Wangnan, because there’s something about the other man that makes him feel relaxed and at ease. Wangnan makes him feel like Bam again, but kind of different, if that makes sense. Viole has become just as intrinsic as the former parts of him, and instead of reverting back he feels like a well-loved well-stitched mishmash between these two identities.
“Wangnan-ssi?” Viole hesitantly peeks at the regular beside him, expecting a laugh, but the other boy only gives him a very kind look in return.
“You’re a nice person, Viole.” What did Wangnan see in him, for him to say that so sincerely? “I don’t regret meeting you.”
remembrance
This time the flower is more wild-looking, blues and purples peeking beneath the needle-like leaves.
Akraptor takes a big, long sniff.
“Is that rosemary?” He asks, gesturing to the flower in Viole’s hand, and ah.
So this was a rosemary plant.
“Yeah,” he tries to say this confidently, having only found out just now. Viole adjusts his hold on one of the florets. “This is rosemary.”
Akraptor curiously eyes the flower in his hand. “Any idea where it’s from?”
His first instinct is to say yes, because it’s true, but he feels immensely protective all of a sudden. This flower is his now, left behind for him to find by Wangnan-ssi. It’s a secret between them, not the others, so Viole just gives Akraptor a very small nod in reply.
The brunet grips the stem harder, taking care not to ruin the delicate stalk, and quickly shuffles his way to his bedroom. He needs to preserve the rosemary now before it withers, maybe build a home for it in between the pages of a well-loved cookbook.
Akraptor only laughs behind him. The other man has already gone through this routine with his old wife — danced the same dance, sang the same songs.
“It means remembrance!” Akraptor hollers at Viole’s back, only to laugh harder once he sees the flushed tips of his ears. Who knew a slayer candidate could be this cute. “I gifted the same flowers to my wife back then, I should know!”
there is sunshine in your smile
Yeon had looked very silly then, spaghetti noodles on her hair, in her bra (based on her screech), and Viole has never met a person this monumentally bad at cooking that he just — laughs, all bright smiles and loud guffaws that make his face go red.
Everyone stops to stare at him, and the quiet awe on Yeon’s face jolts Viole back to reality. Standing next to her is Wangnan, who looks just as dazed and bright-eyed.
Viole immediately feels self-conscious, and bites his lip to keep that brief expression of mirth at bay.
Come the following morning he sees a yellow tulip taped near the kitchen’s cupboard.
thoughts are occupied with love
And oh, oh, Viole knows about these ones.
These are purple violets. Symbols of innocence and modesty, as well as devotion and determination. He has purchased the occasional bouquet as a mourning for his old self, as a sort of quiet treat, but never the purple ones — which specifically promise a wholehearted love for another person.
It’s not a flower that could be given willy-nilly, least of all to someone like him.
Viole – Viola – Violet. It’s such an obvious and blatant gesture.
Does Wangnan-ssi feel no sense of shame or propriety?
With shaking hands Viole takes out that old astronomy book again, the same one where Wangnan dry-pressed that small gardenia over a carefully-drawn picture of the stars. Rachel would have been furious to see her dreams sullied like that, her stars smeared with pigments and bits of paper-thin petals.
But the sky has never gripped Viole with the same kind of obsessive affection. Whether it be under the ceiling of a rocky cave or an expensive apartment, Jue Viole Grace instead finds contentment in the present he shares with other people, no matter the place or location.
He lovingly places the purple violets a few pages away from the white gardenia.
From you’re so lovely to my mind is filled with love for you .
They get separated again.
It’s cold here, with Reflejo and Xia Xia, and the irregular is already homesick for something more pleasantly familiar. Viole aches to go back to the apartment he rented on floor twenty, not this dark and grim hiding spot that FUG prepared for him.
He sits with his hands gently tracing the book-pressed petals, and it is a nice distraction from his worries and anxieties — is Khun-ssi okay? Did he get away safely? Did Team Sweet and Sour miss him, too?
In his panicked state Viole doesn’t see Novick approach him, only for him to startle once he notices a warm and rugged body pressed tightly against his own.
“What’s this?” Khun’s teammate asks him. He shifts a bit, the space too cramped and small for him, but Novick takes great care not to crush Viole with his larger body.
He feels instead of sees Novick curiously peering at his book, with its various pages already ruined and stained by the leftover dyes. It smells subtly of spring — and it's kind of musty, too, mostly due to Viole’s clumsy attempts at flower-drying.
“Here,” Novick's voice makes him lightly shiver. His arms are big and muscular, but the soft pads of his fingers are painstakingly gentle when he touches the dried petals. It’s the gardenia, Viole thinks in a daze, and the rosemary, and all the other flowers that came after. It all comes back to you, doesn’t it?
“This is what keeps you going, right?” Viole cannot look away from Novick’s eyes, red and intense. “Let me help you.”
Back to his old friends, and to his new ones, and to whatever Ja Wangnan is to him.
“Thank you, Novick-ssi.”
And when the battle is over, when Viole and the others finally reunite at Wolhaiksong’s ship, the long-haired man leaves behind his own bouquet on Wangnan’s bedside. Valerian, bursts of pinks the only colour in the injured regular’s plain room.
strength/ready/I’m ready