Work Text:
Yoongi sits calmly, quietly, cross legged at the back of the shop. He's scribbling in his notebook, the pen pressing hard with each stroke as he copies lyrics over from a napkin.
He works from the floor with his lower back resting against the counter. From here, he has a full view of the shop floor and the front windows, and behind the pyramid of buckets in the center of the room he can see the people and the cars passing by outside. It's around rush hour, he suspects, but their loud voices and the harsh sounds of the engines are pleasantly muffled by the glass. He works to the sound of the outside, and of course to the occasional knocks and hums of Hoseok in the back room behind him.
It's been quiet in the florists today, a total of ten customers in a full seven hours, but rather than being concerned about business, Hoseok just seemed glad for a break. The busiest times for florists are usually Summer and the second week of February, funnily enough. But September brings with it foreshadowing of winter days, complete with early sunsets and a steady decrease in people who want to buy flowers.
Yoongi looks up and turns his head to the right when he hears Hoseok sigh from the other side of the counter.
“Hoseok?” He calls, wondering if it’s finally time to call it a day. Time to go home?
Instead of responding verbally, Hoseok sleepily makes his way around and collapses down beside Yoongi, head immediately finding its way onto his thigh. Similarly, Yoongi's hand is quick in moving to Hoseok's hair, fingers threading through the strands, particularly focusing on those at his nape.
"You know," Hoseok starts, in a tired voice. Yoongi can't see, but his eyes are closed. He looks relaxed, lying here. He looks at peace.
"There used to be this old woman who came into the shop.” He goes on. “Every day we saw her she had different flowers woven in her hair.” He speaks slowly, as if recounting this story is the only thing keeping him awake.
“She was a regular. Loved flowers, she did - even more than I do, probably. Been coming in here since before I started,” He pauses and puffs out a laugh, “so a long time.” Yoongi smiles.
"She loved flowers so much Yoongi.” Hoseok’s hand rests beside Yoongi’s knee and as his tone picks up he pats it twice - for emphasis. “Seriously! She knew all their names! And she used to describe them in the most beautiful way. I swear I could spend hours listening to her sometimes,” His tone is honest; passionate; nostalgic. “But she always had to leave before it got to that point."
“You could spend hours talking about flowers yourself.” Yoongi points out.
“Yeah, but most of what I talk about would be repeating what I’ve learned from her.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” He wastes but a single beat before continuing. It’s as if his tongue is talking for him.
“She taught me so much, you know?” He’s woken up a bit, thinking about flowers always gets him fired up like this. Yoongi suppresses a laugh, so it comes out through the raised corners of his lips instead.
“She knew all about what the different flowers could do for you. Like, which ones made nice tea, which ones bloomed between certain months and which ones lived for just a few weeks a year.” He had listed them on his fingers. “I always wanted to repay her for that, you know?”
Yoongi has never heard about this woman before. He’s sure this is the fatigue talking right now, banging about like a knocker-up in Hoseok’s head, bringing out everything it can so he doesn’t fall asleep, but it’s not like he wants him to stop. Yoongi’s favorite thing to do is listen to Hoseok talk about the things he holds close to his heart. Besides, he’s curious about this little old woman that seems to have meant so much.
“So anyway,” It seems that sleep will not take him yet. Good, Yoongi isn't done listening (and letting him fall asleep on the flower shop floor again wouldn’t be a good idea.) “It turns out that she didn't actually know much about flower language.”
“Oh yeah?” Yoongi’s fingers momentarily stop, he’s engrossed in the story.
“Yeah! Seriously! It really surprised me! I was so excited to tell her when I started learning it, thinking she'd tell me even more than the books ever could, but she just turned to me and said ‘Oh, that's lovely Hoseok, you should teach me about it some time.’”
Hoseok’s hair regains it’s comb, and Yoongi’s eyebrows raise as he questions “And did you?”
“Of course I did.” Of course he did. Yoongi smiles fondly.
“Every time she came in I'd tell her what the flowers in her hair meant. She was so fascinated Yoongi, she asked me so many questions.” The warmth from the shop’s little electric heater, coupled with Yoongi’s soft thigh and his gentle fingers, appear to be sending Hoseok back into sleep.
He slowly continues, though. After all, dedication lives in his core.
“Honestly, she was the only person who seemed genuinely interested.” He yawns. “You–” And again. “You remind me of her a bit sometimes.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Yoongi won’t admit it, but there was probably someone walking past who sees anyway - when his face breaks out in a gummy, earsplitting grin.
“She came in every month without fail for the first seven whole years I worked here.”
“Woah,”
“I know, right? But, last year–” Hoseok pauses. Yoongi can feel the muscles in his neck tense against his thigh.
“Mm?” Yoongi whispers encouragement with his hand, gently stroking it across Hoseok’s cheek. What is it, Hoseok?
“It was the first year she missed a month without a word.”
Suddenly, the light air around the subject seems to have dissipated. Yoongi can tell Hoseok’s weak, sleep-infused smile has dropped away too. He can tell because Hoseok definitely doesn’t speak with a smile when he says his next words.
“We didn't see her in here again after that."
Yoongi doesn’t really know what to say. His head is never quiet, but he’s not one for voicing words, not unless they’re poetically written and meant for music. Hoseok’s the one who explains his feelings through the helpful medium of language. (Like, you know, what language was invented for.)
He continues moving through Hoseok’s hair with his left hand, his right instinctively making its way to Hoseok’s shoulder. He gives it a squeeze and comfortingly strokes up and down a few times.
Yoongi’s never been good at outwardly expressing emotion, affection, or care, so he does it passively instead. Acting as the very trees in the earth, breathing oxygen into the air. Keeping you alive whilst you absentmindedly climb them; just happy to help.
“But you know what my favourite thing about her coming in here was?”
Ah, there it is. There he is. Hoseok has spoken again after a minute or two. Yoongi doesn’t know if he was sleeping or just thinking.
“What’s that?”
“She always came in a lot more in the winter.”
“Really?”
“Really. Every winter she'd come in the shop twice as much as usual, if not more.”
Yoongi is genuinely surprised. “Huh.”
Hoseok laughs. Yoongi can feel the corner of his lips pressing against his leg, and it makes the corners of his own tug themselves up too as he laughs through his exclamation.
“What? ”
Hoseok’s still giggling a bit as he shifts their bodies, making himself comfortable on Yoongi’s outstretched legs. He shuffles himself about before he continues, looking up into Yoongi’s doting smile.
“You know why?” He asks.
“Why?”
“I’ll never forget.” Hoseok closes his eyes and his lips pull themselves apart again. He’s softly grinning so that it reveals his teeth, and Yoongi thinks there should be a flower that encapsulates Hoseok’s smile. He’s never been good with a pencil, but he’d draw concept art for that flower if he can’t find a suitable one that already exists. (He assumes he probably won’t.)
“I asked her–” Hoseok moves his head as if he’s rephrasing. “Well–” Again. He opens his eyes. Yeah, Hoseok? What is it?
“The second year I'd been here,” He finally gets there. Yoongi hums, and Hoseok once again lets his eyelids slip shut to the feeling of Yoongi’s hand returning to his hair. “I noticed that business dipped a lot in the winter. You noticed that too right?”
“Yeah.”
“But she did the exact opposite! I said ‘Halmoni, how comes you're in here so much nowadays? People usually stop coming in the winter.’ And she looked at me and smiled like she was about to tell me something monumental, something that would change everything I knew about the world.”
Yoongi wants to laugh. And did she?
He wants to ask, but he doesn’t need to. He knows Hoseok will tell him.
“She beckoned me over and she really delicately took these little pink flowers from her hair." Hoseok briefly glances up at Yoongi. “She tugged my hands out so I was standing like this,” He shakes his legs out, and looks down at his hands as he brings them together. They’re positioned like he’s about to fill them with water.
“And she handed them to me and she said, ‘These, Hoseok, are Cyclamen.’” He moves his hands every time he mentions the flowers, looking up at Yoongi every now and then. “She told me ‘These flowers can start to bloom anywhere between December and March. You know what that means?’”
“No, I don’t know what that means.”
Hoseok gives a glare in jest.
“It means they’re winter flowers, Yoongi-ah.”
Yoongi teasingly Ahh’s like a child overcome with realisation. Hoseok rolls his eyes with a grin.
Then, he sighs.
“She sounded so sad, hyung, she went ‘People never appreciate the beauty of flowers as much when the sun isn't as bright.’ and I really felt for her, honestly.” He looks up with a strong pout on his lips and worry in his brow. His hands are still pressed together, as if the flowers are really there and if he moves them apart they’ll fall fatally to the floor.
Yoongi gives a sad pout in return, which appears to spur Hoseok on.
“But then she told me that her favourite flowers were Cyclamen, specifically these ones, they’re–” He ponders for a moment, “C– Uh, coum, I think? Cyclamen coum? Yeah. And you can always see them in late December, the height of winter. Sometimes, even, you can see them peeking through a layer of snow.”
Peeking. Yoongi repeats. I like that word.
“She said she admired flowers even more in the winter, because that was the time when people usually forgot about them.”
It was true, Yoongi had seen it with his own eyes. Been guilty of it himself, if he was honest. Flowers were summery, floral patterns signalled June, and people didn’t tend to their flower gardens in November. They wore darker clothes, and left their gardens to wither through the cold, justifying: ‘It’ll be fine, we’ll just start it up again next year.’
“Ever since then I’ve loved flowers even more in the winter. When there’s snow, when it’s raining, any time–” He pauses,
Any time the sun–
“–isn’t as bright.”
Yoongi smiles.
Hoseok’s hands lay limp and dormant on his lap now. Yoongi didn’t notice when they got there, and he wonders if Hoseok put the Cyclamen down before he dropped them.
It’s quiet for a while longer, and Hoseok is definitely going to nap on the train home.
“Cyclamen mean diffidence, Yoongi. Don’t you think that's the best meaning for them ever?”
Yoongi thinks about small, pink flowers, modestly peeking through the December snow. They blend with the tulips in March, but winter is their peak, when they emerge from under a blanket of ice blooming with– what? A misplaced confidence? An unexpected endurance?
“They go really well with snowdrops.” He says sleepily, a throwaway comment, but something important enough to say out loud, so Yoongi grabs onto it, ready to bring it home safe, like all the rest of Hoseok.
“What do snowdrops mean?” Yoongi finds himself asking, stroking Hoseok’s hair once again, a habit he’s picked up from that one time Hoseok said he liked it.
It takes a second or two for Hoseok’s sleep riddled brain to nudge the answer past his lips, but he makes it. Yoongi likes to think it’s encouraged by the delicate repetitions he gives in his head.
What do snowdrops mean? The cyclamen blooming with– what?
“Hope.”