The door opened and Jimin’s distinctive laughter rang throughout the shop, a recording of his mirth that had been slowly becoming more frequent again lately, despite him still mourning the death of Kongju. It was a warm and lovely way to welcome people into the shop, in Yoongi’s opinion, but it wasn’t as amusing as the more jarring sounds they’d been using to spook incoming customers lately.

Yoongi looked up at the young boy who entered to the sound of laughter, noting his wide eyes and slightly disheveled look, as well as the tan boots that marked his every step. He slowly meandered over to the roses, and didn’t seem to be in any hurry, so Yoongi turned back to arranging his next bulk order at the computer. The slight rustle of beads just behind him signaled Jin’s entrance, followed by an energetic tap at his shoulder.

“What do you think?” Jin asked, holding out a tray piled high with soft sugar cookies, frosted in light pinks, whites and reds. There were a few with little pink sakura petal shaped sprinkles, but most of them were left plain for the time being.

“Use the sprinkles a little more liberally, like this,” Yoongi took hold of the tiny pair of chopsticks Jin had brought to decorate with, carefully laying out 8-10 sprinkles on each individual cookie, taking great care with their placement. Jin watched him quietly, his lips pursed in either impatience or concentration; Yoongi wasn’t sure which.

“Like that,” he said again after the fifth one, holding out the chopsticks for Jin to take. Jin nodded, taking the tray back into the preparation room to continue decorating them.f

Jimin’s laugh rang out again, warm and welcoming. Yoongi was surprised when he glanced up to meet eyes with Namjoon, back again so soon.

“Hey,” Yoongi called out. “You look like a man on a mission.” 

“Yeah,” Namjoon bit at his lip for a moment. “Last time I got kind of distracted, and it was pretty busy and all.”

“You don’t have to give me your reasons,” Yoongi said with a little smile. “You didn‘t just want flowers though, did you?”

Namjoon’s ears were already turned a slight pink, either from embarrassment or from not wearing that ugly- ushanka hat he had been practically living in lately. It had been an uncharacteristically cold afternoon.

“Well, actually...I was wanting to ask you something. Kind of personal.”

Yoongi raised an eyebrow, now a little concerned. Jin hadn’t been confiding in his brothers about Imani, had he? Surely Jin understood that no amount of Kim family nagging was going to fix something already that broken.

“What’s it about, Namjoon?” 

“Well...I was wondering about Kiara. Is she-” Namjoon his lips again before finishing, “Is she seeing anyone? Do you know?”

Yoongi stared a little numbly at Namjoon, mostly out of relief but also out of amusement. “Not that I know of.” His expression fell. “But I suspect she’s had her eye on someone.”

“Who?”

In lieu of answering, Yoongi looked over his shoulder towards the bead curtain leading into the preparation room. From beyond they could hear Jin’s distinct nasal voice singing out a soft love song he didn’t know could be heard by anyone, drifting gently across the back of the shop and contrasting the saxophone jazz solo playing over the speakers.Yoongi looked back wordlessly at Namjoon, who looked more than a little crestfallen.

At the expression on his face, Yoongi amended, “I don’t know for sure, of course.”

“I can’t even compete, though. And I can’t even be mad at him,” Namjoon said in the saddest tone. “And it’s not just because he’s my brother.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think he’s interested in the slightest.” Yoongi offered in consolation.

“No, not really.” Namjoon gave a tiny smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “If he’s the one she likes… You know?”

“Mm.” Yoongi wasn’t sure how to help, so he found himself adding, “She just seems comfortable talking to him, you know? It’s really just a feeling.”

“I know,” Namjoon said. He was still smiling, physically speaking, but he looked as if he had already given up, and Yoongi felt a stab of guilt. He could almost hear the reasoning in Namjoon’s head. ‘ I don’t want to make things awkward. I probably misunderstood. She’s nice to lots of people. Why would she like me?’

He kind of wanted to violently shake hope into Namjoon, but not as much as he wanted to violently shake that same kind of hope into himself.

The door opened and Jimin’s laughter rang out again, this time signaling the entrance of Taehyung, who had a broad grin on his face and seemed embarrassed and proud at the same time. He raised his thumb to his lips, nibbling a little at his thumbnail as he came up to the counter. “Hey,” he greeted, and they echoed in kind. “So. I’m gonna need another bouquet…”

Yoongi sighed. “I already told you, you shouldn’t--”

Taehyung held up a hand, smirking. “This time it’s for my Valentine .”

“What?” Namjoon did a double take, moving in closer. Even the wide-eyed boy still browsing the roses looked up in curiosity.

Meanwhile, Yoongi shook his head in disbelief, chuckling. “I should have known. It’s you , after all, Taehyung. So are you going to bring her by? You know Jin is gonna whine if he doesn’t get to meet her.”

“She’s on her way over now, actually,” Taehyung's smile now seemed less boasting and more bashful, but excited, nonetheless. “So please hurry, I want a good one.”

“Coming right up,” Yoongi said, stepping into the preparation room as Jin looked up in curiosity. After a moment of mumbled explanation, Taehyung could hear Jin’s voice rise in excitement, and suddenly both men were rustling through the bead curtain, Yoongi clutching the tray of cookies and Seokjin clutching his heart.

“Are you serious?!” Seokjin beamed, and Tae sent him a wide grin that seemed to consume most of his face, his eyes squinting shut as he looked proudly at his older brother, a deep giggle trickling its way out of him and warming the atmosphere. “I told you! Hyung told you! Didn’t I?” Seokjin shot a look at Yoongi, waiting for Yoongi’s confirming nod that yes, he did indeed tell him. “What happened?”

“Well. I went to talk to her. You should have seen the look on her face when she saw me holding flowers. She was like…” Taehyung gestured a little haphazardly with his hands, but lost the word he was looking for. “I don’t know. At first I thought she was gonna kill me. I told her they were anger flowers. She started screaming, and so did I, and then I just threw the flowers at her…”

“And then?” Yoongi couldn’t resist a bit of a pompous smirk, expecting Taehyung to say he’d taken his advice. “Did you tell her why you were upset?” 

“Um…” Taehyung sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I tried .” He shuffled a bit awkwardly on the balls of his feet. “But my words came out all jumbled and wrong. I may or may not have called her a tanuki.”

“What?” Yoongi murmured, baffled.

But Jin seemed to understand the implications, as he nearly choked, his neck vein already starting to bulge from surprised anger. “ Taehyung !”

The boy lifted his palms up in a defensive gesture, shrugging. “She hit me with the bouquet and I probably deserved it. Then she asked me ‘Why should I even like you this much?’ and started screaming again. I asked her why she kept hitting me if she liked me, and she said she didn’t know, and..” At the end of his story, Taehyung simply gave a shrug, his lips disappearing as he bit down on them in an expression of resignation. “We ended up having a very long talk, and by the end of it, she was picking petals out of my hair and we were dating.”

“Wow…” Yoongi breathed. ”That’s so…”

“That’s so Taehyung ,” Seokjin finished, his tone half-disbelieving.

“So it really was just a misunderstanding?” Namjoon asked, and Taehyung nodded with a bashful smile.

“I misunderstood what she meant, and she misunderstood me. I thought she just saw me as a friend, but she’d been trying to ask me out for weeks. She thought I was just teasing her.”

Yoongi glanced over at Namjoon, who was deep in thought, and their eyes met momentarily. Namjoon raised one eyebrow, and Yoongi made up his mind.

“Seokjin, go bring me one of the acacia-china rose bouquets I placed in cooler cabinet B yesterday.”

The man looked confused, but curiosity was a strong motivation,and he went over to the cooler cabinet, pulling out a large bouquet that spread almost as wide as his shoulders. “This one?”

“Yes,” Yoongi instructed, pointing a finger to the counter so Seokjin would set it down there. “Now tell him what it means.”

“What it means?” Seokjin’s face was now a crumpled ball of confusion, his head tilted back a little. “But this is one of your--”

“Tell him. What it means,” Yoongi repeated.

Seokjin looked down at the bouquet for a moment, looking puzzled, then his expression faded into one of surprise. He looked up at Yoongi, who said nothing and just went to pick up the landline so he could call Kiara’s studio. Seokjin smiled.

“Yellow acacias,” Seokjin began, brushing his fingertips over the soft, yellow, puffball-like flowers, “For a hidden love. Red china roses…” He touched the long, limp-hanging crimson petals. They didn’t really look like how people imagined a ‘rose’ to typically look, with its bursting golden stamens that reminded Seokjin of a firework and its loosely clinging petals. “For ‘a beauty always new’. It’s a lovely bouquet. Simple but bold.”

Taehyung looked over at Yoongi in question, then beamed at him. “Thanks, hyung.”

Yoongi smiled, his lips spread so wide his gums were showing, and lifted the phone to his ear, waving Taehyung off while trying to fight his smile down to a manageable size while the phone rang. “One of us here has to have some good luck in love, Taehyung, it might as well be you.” He heard someone picking up the line, and with the smile still in his voice he cheerily greeted, “Hello, Kiara? Are you bu-”

“Sorry,” came an all-too familiar voice that was all-too different from Kiara. Yoongi’s heart stopped as his brain registered with severe lag that it was Imani who had picked up the phone. “Kiara’s in the middle of arranging a shoot right now, so her hands are full. What’s up, Yoongi?”

Why wasn’t his mouth moving? Any other time and he would have just rambled on like it was nothing, but now he was feeling the stares from Jin and his brothers, sharing looks between each other in wonder as his jaw flapped like a curtain pulled by the wind. “Uhh…” Yoongi at his lips, trying to patch up the smile from before but feeling how forced it was in the corners, like a tautly pulled rubber band. He was feeling a little nauseated. “Um, well, I was actually wondering if Kiara could come down to take a look at this last bouquet of roses we ordered for the shoot tomorrow?”

“Oh, sure. We should be finished up here by around 6:30, is that alright?”

“Perfect,” Yoongi managed, wishing to god he could just ask if she was coming with Kiara or not, but not having the guts to. Jimin’s laughter rang through the store again, and all of them looked up to see a young woman walking into the shop. Yoongi used the moment to propel himself off the phone in as natural a way as possible. “Thanks. I’ll talk to you later, then.”

“Jieun!” Taehyung called out, holding out one hand for the girl to take as she strode over to them, her lips curled up into a warm smile. Her hair was long with a soft wave to it, pulled into a half-tail with thick brown tendrils framing her high cheekbones, and she wore a pair of oval-shaped burgundy-framed glasses. The last several centimeters of hair was dyed a bright pink color, and the edges of her sleeves were dotted with flecks of paint. “These are my brothers, Seokjin and Namjoon, and Seokjin’s friend Yoongi. Everyone, this is Jieun.”

She was, in a word, beautiful. The slight upturn of her nose was only accentuated by the way she crinkled it just slightly when she smiled, and the way she looked at Taehyung was filled with the soft adoration of an as-yet untarnished infatuation, her long eyelashes fluttering above flushed cheeks. “It’s nice to meet you.”

A long, awkward moment hung in the air between them, with all of them giving shy little smiles and avoiding eye contact with everyone else, and Yoongi fruitlessly scavenged around in his dusty mind for some safe, relevant topic to clutch onto. Thankfully, Seokjin was two steps ahead of him, as usual.

“So Jieun, Taehyung said you’re an artist.”

Jieun flushed a little, tilting her head towards Taehyung and smacking him on the shoulder. The other three boys shared a questioning look, wondering if it had been quite that necessary to hit him that hard, but for some reason it made Taehyung’s smile broaden. “He exaggerates, I’m sure. But yeah, I’m one of those ‘art chicks’ I guess.”

“Well, we like ‘art chicks’ here, I promise,” Seokjin said reassuringly. He let out a little envious noise. “So what do your parents do, Jieun?”

Taehyung groaned dramatically, rolling his eyes. “Thanks dad , now stop embarrassing me.”

Seokjin sent Taehyung an appalled look, “What?! Is that not a valid question to ask someone anymore? Am I supposed to just pretend like she doesn’t have parents here? Don’t tease me when I’m over here doing my best, you rascal!” He turned to Jieun and took hold of one of her hands, sending her an apologetic purse of his lips. “You’re not embarrassed by me asking, are you, Jieun?”

“No, I guess not?” Jieun laughed, and Taehyung slipped in with his fingertips to force Seokjin’s hands to fall away from Jieun’s, replacing them possessively with his own. “My dad works as a professor at the university and my mother is a beautician.”

“Ah, that explains how pretty you are,” Seokjin said candidly, turning to the currently uncharacteristically quiet middle child. “Right, Namjoon?”

“Yeah…” Namjoon murmured, but he seemed distracted, staring at Seokjin as though expecting something. Seokjin’s brow furrowed.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, don’t mind me,” Namjoon tried to flash a smile, but it remained wholly unconvincing to the current party.

Looking between them, Yoongi intervened with a quiet, “Seokjin, why don’t you have the kids try out your cookies? We can get everyone to taste test them before they go officially public.”

“Oh, good idea.” Seokjin took the tray from Yoongi and set them on the counter. Everyone leaned in to take a cookie, each humming in approval. The conversation shifted, then, to Taehyung and Jieun's group art project. They were working on a life-size replica of the sphinx made out of wire and paper mache, and everyone laughed when Taehyung showed them a photo of his original 'rough sketch,' the iconic seventh wonder of the world utterly unrecognizable under Taehyung's pencil. Jieun was in charge of the actual wiring of the head and feet, while Taehyung was going to be doing most of the pasting and sanding.

Partway through, they started pressing Jieun for more information on her paintings, and she excitedly started telling them about the piece that Taehyung had taken note of first - her version of Van Gogh's Starry Night, but with robots. She got so excited, in fact, that her glasses started fogging up, making them laugh and .

"She's too cute," Namjoon laughed, scrunching up his nose and squinting his eyes shut while smirking. Over his shoulder, Yoongi saw Kiara parking her car out front, and realized that time had gotten away from them.

"Namjoon, you came here for something, didn't you?" Yoongi reminded him, his voice a little gruff with impatience and pointed stubbornness. Namjoon's smile fell away instantly.

"Um...yeah..." He wandered back over to the display of roses he'd been looking at before, and started to deliberate upon them once again.

Behind him, the door opened and Kiara wandered in with a smile on her face. "Hey, you guys called about the roses for tomorrow?"

"Yeah." Yoongi stood up from the counter. "I'll get them from the back, so just wait a second."

Taehyung looked over at the bouquet he had been deliberately ignoring since Jieun arrived. Seokjin caught the glance between them and slipped surreptitiously to the corner of the room, busying himself with t some plants just barely within earshot.

"So, um..." Taehyung began, picking up the bouquet. "This is for you."

Jieun looked between the flowers and Taehyung, her eyes a little sad. "Oh, Taehyung.. You already bought me that really nice bouquet, though. The one that I...um... bashed you over the head with." She hesitated, then reached out to delicately take the flowers from him. "You really didn't have to."

"It's okay, I kind of earned it."

"And what's this?" She pulled out the note Taehyung had written down earlier, the ink once again smudged at the edges from the glossy paper. "'Keep your eyes only on me,'" she read quietly. She looked up and smiled at him, and he leaned down to wrap his arms around her waist.

Taehyung leaned in closer, pressing his forehead down to hers until they bumped gently, his voice low and a little raspy. "Do you... wanna go see the basement office?" She nodded, and they wandered off, Taehyung's arm possessively around hers. Seokjin hummed into the geraniums with a smile on his face.

Namjoon, meanwhile, was very seriously examining two separate bouquets of red roses, leaning in until his nose almost brushed the petals because he was determined not to touch them unless he was committed, just in case he ruined them. Whether from nervousness or focus, he was distracted enough to not hear Kiara quietly stepping towards him, clearing once when she was a couple feet from his side. When he didn't hear her, she leaned in a bit closer, and cleared again, this time making him look up in surprise, his eyes wide and his cheeks rounded and softened from being dumbstruck.

"Shopping for anyone in particular, or are you just browsing?" Kiara asked, sending him a little pearly-toothed smile.

"Um, yeah, for someone in particular..." Namjoon murmured, standing up straight and wrapping his fingers around the drawstrings of his hoodie, tugging on them a little. Kiara's face looked, if anything, a little surprised.

"Oh," she gave him a little tight-lipped smile. "Well, good for her..."

An awkwardness hung between them, and Namjoon wasn't sure what to say. "Roses are nice," he ended up saying.

"Yeah... They're kind of a classic." Kiara added helpfully, "They're featured in a lot of novels and stories."

"Yeah, like A Rose For Emily," Namjoon blurted suddenly.

Kiara looked over at him, arching an eyebrow. "Um. Yeah." Another beat of silence. Namjoon wondered what was taking Yoongi so damn long. "Is that the first thing that came to mind?"

He looked back up at Kiara, not understanding the question. "Sorry?" 

"The first story with a rose you thought of, it was A Rose For Emily?" Kiara said, her dramatically red-painted lips twitching in amusement. "Not exactly romantic, you know."

Namjoon flushed. "Uh, I guess not."

"But to be fair, I thought of Phantom of the Opera, and that doesn't actually mention a rose, at least as far as I remember. It just gets featured on all the cover art for it." Kiara said with a giggle.

"I dunno, Phantom of the Opera at least features a romance, even if it's an unhealthy one." Namjoon smiled himself, at last, his dimples deepening into view. Yoongi came up behind them, his arms curiously empty of flowers.

"Turns out Seokjin pulled your roses out to the front by mistake," Yoongi said quietly, reaching quietly between them and grabbing one of the white rose bouquets with dyed pink tips. "Sorry about that."

"Oh, it's no problem," Kiara said lightly, meeting Namjoon's eyes with an unspoken purposefulness.

"Hey, kid!" Seokjin called out from the corner, making the wide-eyed boy at the counter jump nearly a foot in the air, his hands full of as many cookies as his fingertips could cling to. "What do you think you're doing? Leave some for others!" Without a word, the boy rushed out of the shop, still holding half of Jin's cookies.

Yoongi stared dumbly at the door, then over to Seokjin. "What was that all about?" 

"I have no idea!" Seokjin pursed his lips tightly together, going to look out the window, but no longer able to see the boy. "He just started cramming those cookies into his pockets as soon as my back was turned!"

"They weren't that tasty," Yoongi teased, sauntering over to the counter and picking up one of the cookies the kid had dropped on the ground. "But maybe he was hungry."

"Maybe..." Seokjin frowned out the window, thinking.

"Will this be all for you today?" Yoongi inquired in a practiced light-hearted way, looking up as the computer dinged, ringing in her bouquet.

"Actually," Kiara started, her lips curving inwards and down into a smirk. She stepped away from the counter, grabbing the exact bouquet of roses that Namjoon had been inspecting for purchase a few moments ago. "I'd like this one, too."

She didn't turn her head Namjoon's direction or even glance his way, but he still felt her watching him somehow for a reaction, but all he could feel was the emptiness that always followed when he had his hopes dashed. If she was buying the roses for Seokjin, it would feel like the last nail on the coffin of his feelings for her, and he would determinedly pack them away and bury them, never to see the light of day again. It was one thing to like his brother, and another to buy his brother flowers that he had obviously been looking at.

He watched Kiara leave, then shot a helpless look at Yoongi, who just shrugged.

“I was hoping you’d ask her about it directly,” he said after a while. Namjoon scoffed. “Hey, now. Maybe it’s all a misunderstanding, like with Taehyung.”

“If it was that easy I would have already done it, man.”

“Done what?” Seokjin was flipping over the date calendar in preparation for tomorrow, keeping himself busy.

“Nothing,” Namjoon grumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’ll see you guys later, okay?”

“Okay, don’t forget we’re going to Kiara’s photoshoot tomorrow,” Seokjin warned, somehow sounding scolding and chipper at the same time. “It’s the last possible day we could arrange to do it, so we can’t be late.”

“Got it,” came Namjoon’s sigh, following Jimin’s laughter, signaling his exit.

Several comfortable minutes of silence passed between them before Yoongi glanced over to see Seokjin slowly, quietly turning the handle to the basement door, opening it as carefully as possible so as to not make noise. Once the door opened, Taehyung’s excited voice drifted up from below.

“--And the red china roses are for ‘beauty always new!’ There are actually a lot of different kinds of roses, you know. So these ones are special because--”

Seokjin looked over at Yoongi with a smile, closing the door just as quietly. “It means a lot to him, you know. He’s always been drawn to that sort of thing.”

Running a hand through his hair and releasing a sigh, Yoongi nodded. “Yeah, I know. And I get why , too. I used to be just as fascinated by things like floriography and secret languages. Things meaning more than what they appear at first…” Yoongi reached over and toyed with the calendar Seokjin had adjusted earlier, running his nail along the fresh paper. “I guess I just got bitter after what happened with Imani.”

Seokjin smiled a little. “I know.”

Yoongi sighed again, slinking down until he could rest his torso heavily against the counter. He was both dreading and looking forward to tomorrow, his mind a jumble of thoughts and his guts a bundle of nerves.

“Hey,” Seokjin called out in a stage whisper. “Stop over-thinking things. Do you wanna go tease Taehyung about his new girlfriend?”

Yoongi tilted his head to the side, smirking. “You go on ahead. Someone has to sit here and protect what’s left of your cookies from that young punk, you know.”

Seokjin chuckled. “Maybe we’re all just trying to protect our cookies, Yoongi.”

“Yeah,” Yoongi sighed. “Maybe.”