But Taehyung doesn’t get better. Or at least in the way that Jimin had planned on.

In a way, Taehyung more than just recovered. With nothing repressed inside, nothing left to hide, he sleeps easier and soon away from Jimin, in the small sierra-colored house next door. And with the encouragement of all the other townspeople, he finds himself a place in the community, in the kitchens near Seokjin's vegetable gardens.

Jimin drifts off for almost sixteen hours the day Taehyung moves out while he is sorting stray flowers. Namjoon finds him fast asleep, arms folded on the rim of the metal tub in the flax plant room. They keep loose flowers sometimes in bottles in the metallic container until they can be replanted, or taken care of.

Namjoon can’t help the quiet sigh and shaking of his head before crouching down to lift Jimin up from beneath the legs. He carries Jimin to the nearby mediation room, careful not to wake him. However, with his cheek pressed against Namjoon’s shoulder, Jimin seems to drift into a deeper and more comfortable sleep, with his soft breath fluttering hot, even against the humidity and Namjoon’s tan collarbones.

He tries not think about how light the younger is, or how easily Jimin’s body slots into all the right spaces, and tries to focus on not tripping.

There is a patient leaving as he approaches. Suran’s content expression flits quickly to recognition then to worry when she catches sight of them. Passing by the door she holds open, Namjoon grins, thanking her, and says that Jimin has just been working himself too hard lately. The almost exasperated exhale she makes in reply makes him realize how much Jimin is loved, and by how many others apart from himself.

When he settles Jimin against the pale blue sheets and pillow, he stays kneeled for a while. But then he glances away as if he might wake Jimin if he stared too long, and instead focuses on the fingers resting on the fabric by Jimin’s slightly parted lips.

Namjoon remembers how unsure he had felt when Jimin had asked to be his assistant. It had always just been him, just him. Not that he didn’t want to share, but it was more that he didn’t know how. His work and also himself.

To him, it was the same thing.

But then any other worries and protests he could have conjured disappeared when Jimin picked up and tied a string around the bouquet of gloxinia in Namjoon’s hand. Their skin had brushed as Jimin’s fingers worked efficiently and it was a kind of gentle that tells him everything.

Now, Namjoon pulls the light blanket over Jimin’s shoulders and closes the door after him, but not before throwing one more lingering look then turning the small sign from OPEN to CLOSED.

Jimin’s hands, he’s known since then, are made to handle fragile things.

The new rhythm paddles its way through the town, once Jimin has made up all his sleep and returns to the comfort of the greenhouse, to the relief of everyone who knows him.

But Namjoon remembers what Jimin says about leaving, and as the days go by, he can see Jimin’s azaleas furling and unfurling their petals anxiously. So, he makes sure to let Jimin visit and help Taehyung in the kitchens often.

It’s about a month after Taehyung had first arrived when Jimin finally confronts him.

After giving Hyosang the dishes of cooked peppers and tomatoes collected from Seokjin’s garden for him for distribution, they settle into the tall stools on one side of the kitchen island. They split the basket of fresh strawberries, with Jimin plucking the leaves while Taehyung slicing them onto a plate. He hasn’t decided what to do with them yet.

Taehyung’s hands pause when Jimin asks when they are leaving, but he speaks without breaking pace.

“You know those unbloomed flowers outside my kitchen?” He says, resuming his cutting. The strawberry juice has already stained his fingers dark pink. “The ones that we wondered what they would bloom into?”

Jimin nods, not quite understanding.

“They’re red tulips.” Taehyung sets down his knife and leans an arm against the counter. “I woke up yesterday and they had bloomed overnight. They’re the same color of Jungkook’s hair.” He smiles, though it’s still leagues from his eyes. “I think he would have loved them.”

The small fruit drops from Jimin’s hands and rolls to bump against Taehyung. Even though he has no words to reply, his mind is traveling miles per minute. He remembers with a tightening of his chest, the small note he himself had written in the margins of Namjoon’s encyclopedia not long ago,

Red tulips, it means “Believe me.” It’s a declaration of love.

“I’m happy here,” Taehyung continues, pulling the tuft of leaves, “and I think he would have wanted me to move on.”

“But–”

Shaking his head and making more yellow dandelion petals drift onto the counter, Taehyung replies, “They don’t need me out there, not anymore. But they need you.” He scans Jimin over, with a head tilt. “You have your voice back, and you look like you can dance again.”

Jimin flushes and grabs a fistful of the blue apron on his lap. “But I don’t have anything out there either–”

“That’s not true.”

Biting his lips, Jimin focuses instead on worrying with an overripe strawberry piece from the bottom of the basket between his fingers.

Taehyung watches him fidget. When he does speak after the food becomes mush in Jimin’s hand, his voice is low and gentle.

“Namjoon would understand.”

Jerking his head up, Jimin scrambles to say, “I-it’s not about him–”

But Taehyung just takes Jimin’s hands in his then and leans down to press their forehead together. All other words wither in Jimin’s throat at this and he closes his eyes.

They stand together for a few moments before Taehyung pulls back.

“I think I’m going to make strawberry jam,” he says. “What do you think, Jimin?” He says it like he’s probing for something from the older, and he smiles when a few new blooms of azalea sway in an unfelt breeze.

They find their answer in Jimin’s silence.

Namjoon’s private study is a small room built off from the main one. It used to be a shed that he had connected to the greenhouse, separated by a door and curtain, for when he needs time alone.

When he was renovating the place, he had replaced the tilted roof with glass like the greenhouse, filled in clerestory windows, and installed shelves that overhang wooden counters. They carry pots of miscellaneous succulents and plants, and containers of various flowers that Namjoon is studying at the moment.  

A cluttered desk extends now from one end of the bench, and a narrow bed leans against the furthest wall, just long enough to fit him. Namjoon thinks he spends more time in this bed than the one he has at his house.

But then again, this place has always been more home to him than in the cottage down the lane.

It’s past midnight when he senses Jimin come in. He always knows it’s Jimin, less from the way he hears the click of opening door, and more from the scent that follows in his wake.

Unlike his pink azaleas, Jimin smells light blue-purple – gentle, smooth, but still just as warm.

"Couldn’t sleep," Jimin says as a greeting when he steps into the low lamplight. He’s wearing an overlarge long sleeve shirt that only allows his fingers to show. He avoids Namjoon’s gaze and runs his hand down a bundle of dried carnations hanging down from the ceiling, its faded red petals now drifting onto the ground and onto Jimin’s collarbones that peek out.

Namjoon takes all this in over the bridge of his glasses and finishes the last note in his notebook before closing it and patting the spot next to him on the bed covers.

He stills as Jimin settles in beside him, lets Jimin lean his shoulder against his, before opening his notebook again.

Chrysanthemum, White.

Light – bright indirect light. Temperature – moderate. Water – only top wet, drain access…

“Who were you before you became this?”

Namjoon doesn’t respond right away, at least verbally. He just takes off his glasses and closes his notebook again. But this time he tosses it and the pen gently onto the desk just out of arm’s reach.

He thinks it’s ironic that they’re having this conversation now, after almost a year of knowing each other – working, eating, and just being with each other. Though, he understands, from both his work and personal experience, time spent in each other’s spaces doesn’t always indicate actual closeness.

“I was a writer,” he says, carefully and