XVII. Gardenias

The flower lays on his bed, white like a sin spat, as the crime, his heart has committed. It’s beautiful and untainted and precious, just like the feelings he owns and that are for him alone. Attached to the pure white of the gardenia, whose fragrance spread across the room, sweet and strong and gentle, staining the purity of it all, red splashes are ruining the set of a sea of snowfields.

Jinwoo contemplates it, all the petals that are crumbled inside his fist; he throws them up and they fall graciously, like fog and rain, landing on his feet – Rei jumps around to catch them as if freeing the butterflies cached in his core, the ones revolving like flowers under a storm whenever that Seunghoon is next to him, and he laughs at it, entertained, enthralled.

He has been in love for so long that it feels impossible to count the days or the hours. It’s impossible because his feelings for him are incommensurable, deeply buried and taking all of him. They have seed his blood with little flowers that he is now gardening carefully; Jinwoo doesn’t care about the meaning after it, he is well aware that Seunghoon is out of his reach (that he has been since the beginning). It doesn’t hurt now (it has never hurt, how could love be painful?) but the petals that climb up from his throat to die in his lips are painted in red more often than not and his chest aches when he coughs, spitting sputum of red.

Seunghoon looks at Jinwoo and it is love all that he can see written over the surface of his skin. It is love and he wants to give his sentiments back to him, to reciprocate them the way he does (he tries to fall for him and it’s so easy, he thinks, watching as he waits for him under the rain. His umbrella spins on top of his head and drops falling down as if diamonds; he looks alluring, the sunshine from above caressing his cheeks and twinkling his eyes as if stars lingered in them). He runs to him. He runs to him and his heart skips a beat. And then another one and his hands find a way to hold him, resting in his shoulders that are taken aback, surprised. He smiles and he finds his world engraved inside his pupils that sheen, made of water and the deeps of an infinite love.

Under the umbrella, Jinwoo bends in a punch of coughs. From his lips, petals fall like tears, white and pure and their smell drowns Seunghoon. He stares at it captivated. He stares at them swirling in the air fascinated.

“They are gardenias,” Jinwoo provides him, a full flower captured between his fingers. He comes closer even, so close that his side touches Jinwoo’s, so close that his hair revolves on his own skin. He observes the flower, curious, and then it hits him.

Jinwoo has been growing flowers for him. They are his feelings, the embodiment of his love (and it’s beautiful). He smiles at him tenderly and, suddenly, the flower in his hand turns into dust, dull and dreary, dried to death. Jinwoo coughs again and, this time, from his parted lips, agonizing, what fall are roots and steams and all the petals that were white now come up as ashes; they rush to the wind, spreading the perishing perfume to the sky. The pit-a-pat sweeps the streets and clings over them as if weeping for something dying.

When Jinwoo looks up at him, Seunghoon has taken the umbrella, covering them from any passer-by, lowering the fabric (the rain falls over them like a shower). He knows what to do because his heart is screaming for it. He knows what to do because it's all he wants to do, because Jinwoo is the star he orbits around, because Jinwoo is the gravity that keeps him in bay, alive (he realises while looking at him, expectantly, giving away his pride and his chest, all his feelings belonging to him).

Jinwoo’s lips taste like blood and painful memories but, under Seunghoon’s he feels good.

When he checks the meaning of the flowers later, with Jinwoo pressed against his chest, he smirks at what they stand for: trust, love, purity; all the things that Jinwoo is to Seunghoon.

Jinwoo coughs some later on, but they are only the bits left behind, rotten and forgotten while his love flourishes and blooms for real this time; Seunghoon kisses his temple after another painful moment of throwing up and wipes the blood staining the corner of his lips with his tongue, relishing in the iron flavour and the fragrant notes of gardenias blending there like one of that flowery tea he drinks in the morning.

He smiles at the shadow under his embrace, letting Jinwoo clings by his side, enjoying the joy that it is his company (enjoying the fact that he is able to love him back, that Jinwoo is not going anywhere but in between his arms).