Chapter Text
A Spring Meeting
Spring is finally here.
Changbin sighs with relief as he feels the sun on his face. Warm enough that he can finally put up his outdoor clothesline without fear of his shirts growing ice crystals before they could dry.
No more wasted indoor space!
A tad tight in winter, a tad airy in summer, but never too cramped nor bare, Changbin finds his home to be just the right size for a gnome; he'd been sure of the measurements when he'd made it. He'd carved out the old tree stump nearly a decade ago, but the memory of it still makes his muscles ache.
Inside, he keeps a stove for cooking and to keep the house warm. To its left sit a table and a chair, and to its right, an armchair and reading lamp. Both kitchen and dining room boast sturdy shelves and cabinets affixed to their walls, and a tool chest waits in its spot by the back door. Across the room are Changbin's moss-filled bed, some hooks, and a wardrobe, and nearest the back door, a curtained-off tub for washing up.
Once up, the clothesline would be visible from the southern window, framed by the hickory trees and aspens beyond Changbin’s garden patch.
Changbin hums as he works. He finds branches for stakes amidst the remnants of old leaves and damp dirt. He’s not a man of pleasures — not like his neighbors the fairies — but he allows himself a deep noseful of the earthy smell of the recent thaw. It’s not frivolity, but a moment of appreciation for the new routine the fragrance heralds.
He’s halfway through his second, secure knot when he hears a banging from the other side of his house followed by — hiccups? Wiping his hands on the rag tucked into his rope belt, Changbin circles around to find someone pounding on his front door.
The visitor is tall and slender, with blond hair teasing the tops of his bare shoulders. The rest of his arms are clad in long, clinging sleeves, attached by mere threads to the rest of the tunic’s torso.
What kind of shirt has holes where the shoulders should be? Changbin scoffs. He doesn’t need to see the wings tucked neatly against the visitor’s back to know that it’s a fairy. Who else would wear something so absurd?
“Can I help you?” he grunts, hoping his tone conveys just how little interest he has in helping.
The fairy whirls around with a small “oh!” and Changbin takes in his red eyes and the wet streaks down his face. His full lips are red and swollen, like he’d been chewing them.
“Yes, please, I- this was the first home I could find after- after-” The breathy hiccups start again.
Changbin stiffens to stop his foot from tapping. The sooner the fairy spits out his problem, the sooner he can go back to his laundry.
“There was a badger, a-and it was st-stomping all around; it gave us such a fright. So we flew a b-bit away, b-but it- it-” — the fairy wails — “It trampled my home!”
Changbin clears his throat, trying to figure out what to possibly say to that.
Maybe that’s why you shouldn’t count on a damn flower for shelter is his first instinct, but the fairy might not be so receptive to that. Not mid-sob anyway.
You are aware that crying won’t build you another home? is his next thought. Somehow the fairies still haven’t figured out how useless all their emoting is. A dose of diligence and hard work would do wonders for them. Nevertheless, if they haven’t been rational the past three centuries, he can’t imagine they’d start now.
“Can’t you just stay with another fairy in their flower?” Changbin settles on, itching to get away from the tears and sniffles and wondering why he’s the one to be cursed with this situation.
The fairy’s face turns pink as a possum’s nose. “I can’t do that!”
“Why not?! Aren’t you fairies all about ‘love’ and ‘cuddles’ and woodrot like that?”
“But…!” There’s a swell of satisfaction in Changbin’s chest as he watches the fairy sputter. When the fairy finally does find the right words, they come out as a whisper. “The only time fairies share flowers is when they’re… pollinating.”
The possum-nose pink of his cheeks deepens to hawthorn-berry red, seeping from his neck to his hairline.
Oh.
Pollinating is not in Changbin’s repertoire of small talk. Or big talk. Or any talk at all.
“Just…” He scratches his neck and watches a sowbug emerge from the dirt and clamber over a twig. “Just make a new one then.”
“But… what if the badger comes back and tramples it again?” the fairy whimpers.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
“What if the badger comes and tramples us both right now?! Sticks in a peony pot, how do you all live like that?”
“Please, I don’t know where to find a good flower. The whole neighborhood is a wreck. I just need somewhere to stay until I can find a new home.” The fairy’s eyes are big and teary, his lower lip quivering as much as his voice. “Please.”
What Changbin expects to say is, you got yourself into this mess with those flimsy things you call homes, so you get yourself out of it. And no way am I sharing a roof with a fairy, not in this life or the next.
But instead he sighs, opens his front door, and waves the fairy in.
The poor thing really is too helpless. Naive to a fault, but can he even help it?
“I can stay? Really?” the fairy asks, trailing in after him and bringing in a fragrant cloud of sweet wisteria that Changbin hadn’t noticed outside.
“Just till tomorrow.”
“Thank you! Thank you, Mr. — ?”
“Changbin. Just Changbin. You can sleep there.” He motions to the armchair. “I don’t have another bed. Dinner is at sundown this time of year.”
“Oh! I’ve never had gnome food before! This is so exciting! And,” he says, smoothing down the petals of his tunic and his hair, “my name is Hyunjin.”
Hyunjin. Changbin won’t try too hard to remember.
“Um,” Hyunjin continues, sounding timid after Changbin’s nonresponse, “Is there somewhere I can freshen up a bit?”
“There,” Changbin indicates his curtained off washbasin. “Or if you know how to get to the stream from here, you can… just do that. I’ll be in the back, putting up the laundry.”
As Changbin clips pairs of trousers and linen shirts up on the line, he tries to wipe the fairy from his mind. If pretty faces and graceful figures have no purpose in the real world — which Changbin prides himself for being planted quite solidly in — surely they have even less of a purpose dancing across his imagination like dragonflies on a lake. Besides, Changbin doesn’t care for the little, rotten seed he feels in his heart when he thinks back to the fairy’s teary face. It’s like a prickly burr of sympathy, or maybe guilt, sticking stubbornly to him.
That, too, is as useless as the rest of them.
With each clothespin, Changbin lists one more thing he has planned for the week. After all, what better way to banish frivolity than with practicality? Never mind that he has the list memorized, written, repeated every year and every winter evening leading up to spring.
Changbin has always found comfort in planning and doing. It’s the gnome way.
“I have a question!”
Changbin jumps as Hyunjin’s head pops through two hanging pillowcases. Clothespins spill across the dirt.
“Oops. Let me-” Hyunjin leans to start gathering them.
“Just leave them,” Changbin grumbles sourly. “What?”
“It’s fine, I can help. I didn’t mean to-”
Already, all Changbin wants is his peace and quiet and solitude back.
“Please, Hyunjin,” he begs. “I’ll get them later. What do you need?”
“You remembered my name!” Hyunjin flutters, standing back up. “Now, where do you keep your mirrors? I washed my face, but I’m afraid I might still be puffy from crying earlier, or blotchy.”
Give me patience.
“I don’t have a mirror. Go use the lake or something.”
“Not even one?!” Hyunjin practically gasps. “You must have one.”
“Nope. See you at dinner.” Changbin starts collecting the fallen clothespins, inspecting each and brushing dirt off with his rag before putting it back.
“How do you manage without a single mirror? You don’t even look half like the swamp monster I met last summer!”
“Flattering.” A breeze rifles through the hanging garments, and Changbin almost wishes it would simply blow the fairy away like a dandelion seed and leave him to his normal life.
“Well, can you at least tell me then? If I’m still puffy or blotchy, or if I look okay again?”
Changbin wipes at a stubborn bit of mud and doesn’t look up. “You look fine.”
“You didn’t even look!”
“Because I really don’t care. And I don’t know why you do either.”
“A rock would be more helpful than you,” Hyunjin pouts, walking off to do whatever it is fairies waste their time with.
“I’d say giving you a meal and a roof over your head is pretty helpful!” he calls after him.
Ungrateful, self-centered daisy petal.
Changbin doesn’t see Hyunjin the rest of the afternoon. He wonders while chopping up a couple rehydrated morel mushrooms whether or not he’ll even show up for dinner, but sighs and pulls an extra two swallow eggs from the basket above the counter anyway.
“Hi, Changbin,” a soft voice says as the door creaks open. The sky is a deep periwinkle blue beyond it, though the last golden rays of sun beam through the small hatch-window from the opposite side of the house. Changbin sets down the last of the silverware and is surprised to find his mood quite stable.
Acceptance, at least, can tide him over till morning.
“These are for you,” Hyunjin says, extending a bundle of flowers and leaves towards him. “I’m sorry about earlier. And thank you for taking care of me.”
Changbin notices a dusting of sparkling freckles across Hyunjin’s nose and cheekbones. He must have spent a lot of time in the sun; they’d barely been visible earlier. Or maybe Changbin just hadn’t been looking.
“There aren’t so many things in bloom yet, but I tried to make it nice.” Hyunjin’s voice is taut, like he’s waiting for approval.
Changbin takes the bundle.
A couple sprigs with white-frosted leaves catch his eye.
“Aren’t these… poisonous?”
Honestly, you’d think they’d have gotten themselves all killed by now.
“What?” Hyunjin leans in to check, panic flashing across his face. He laughs. “Only if you eat them! They won’t hurt you in a bouquet! Honestly, don’t gnomes know anything about plants?”
Changbin prickles at the insulting implication. “Well, what else am I supposed to do with it?”
“What do you- you’re not serious, are you?” Hyunjin’s face falls at Changbin’s glare. “They’re for decoration. I spent ages finding the right plants to balance the colors and sizes and shapes. Why would I arrange them like that if they were for eating?”
Changbin eyes the cluster of green and purple and yellow and tries to figure out exactly what’s meant to be balancing what. And why.
“Uh, I guess I hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh.” Changbin catches a waver in Hyunjin’s voice and panics.
No more crying, please no more crying.
“Thank you!” he blurts out. He grips the stems awkwardly. “Can you show me what to do with them?”
Hyunjin sniffles. “Yeah. Do you have a vase? Never mind. Maybe a cup? A tall one?”
Changbin is mildly offended that Hyunjin assumes he doesn’t have a vase — even if he’s right, and even if Changbin isn’t even sure what a vase would look like — but he obediently withdraws a cup from the cupboard.
“You’ll want to put water in first. It’ll help the plants last longer. Then the bouquet goes in, and you can keep it anywhere. The table, your nightstand.”
If you want the plants to last longer, just leave them in the rooting ground, Changbin thinks. He feels like an absolute idiot as he sets the cup with water and clippings on the table beside the two place settings, but Hyunjin smiles (and most importantly, isn’t crying again), even as he adjusts it, fixing some detail Changbin still can’t see.
Hyunjin offers to help Changbin wash the dishes after their quiet meal, but Changbin politely turns him down. He heard fairies use broadleaves for plates, and isn’t ready to trust him to clean his stone nor wooden ones properly.
“Is there anything I can do to help? I don’t think the flowers are enough.”
“Just get settled and go to sleep. It’s fine.”
“Really, I want to do something for you! I can sweep, or- or give you a haircut! That must be hard without a mirror.”
Changbin resists the urge to feel the knot of hair tied at the back of his head with his dripping, sudsy hands. He isn’t due for a cut until a week and a half from Tuesday.
“I don’t need one.”
Hyunjin’s laugh fills the room. It cuts off abruptly when he catches the look on Changbin’s face.
“You mean you keep it like that on purpose?”
Changbin doesn’t know how many more times he can take being insulted by a fairy. He doesn’t even care what the fairy — or anyone — thinks of his hair, but nonetheless feels offended on principle.
“Please let me cut it. Just a trim, even it up a bit, you’ll see how much better it is! And I’m happy to do it!”
Changbin scrubs furiously. “I don’t want a haircut. Just go to sleep or something. You don’t need to owe me.”
“Fine, then…” Hyunjin sighs. “Good night, Changbin.”
Changbin rinses the last dish in the bucket of clean water and dries his hands. “We’ll find you a house first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Okay. Good night, Changbin,” Hyunjin says again, curling into the armchair.
Changbin strips off his shirt and trousers for the night and climbs into his own bed. “Can you put out the lamp?”
Hyunjin finds the extinguisher and the room goes dark. His voice sounds a lot smaller in the darkness. “Good night, Changbin.”
Changbin sighs, closes his eyes, and goes to sleep.