for eternity, give 21 roses {chanyeol/sehun}

Jul 08, 2014 14:27

chanyeol/sehun; g; ~660w;; lapslock
summary: chanyeol didn't believe in valentine's, but he believed in flowers.
a/n: this is for rodxlyn who gave me the prompt; i am so sorry this sucked like.. wtf did i write. it started out as a twitfic not that it should be any excuse. i hope it's acceptable :3 happy birthday rin❦❦❦

there was a point in time at which sehun thought he had somehow become a floraphile, when he used to be indifferent at best toward flowers. if you asked him two years ago when exactly that happened, he wouldn't be able to tell you. the most he could gather would be "some time around the time i met chanyeol". and it didn’t seem to matter back then, two years ago, when chanyeol was still very much alive, a perpetual nuisance with protruding ears and a blinding smile.

but today, two years later, sehun remembers everything.

he remembers the exact number of roses chanyeol gave him as a means of confession--33 of them, neatly bundled in a bouquet behind which chanyeol had hidden his flushed face.

he remembers the 21 roses he would receive on the 14th of each month because chanyeol didn't believe in Valentine's, but he believed in faithfulness, the kind embedded in twenty-one buds of carnation pink. every time chanyeol would tell him, in person or in a note, thank you for staying and sehun had regarded it silly then. isn’t giving flowers an expression of love, not gratitude? it wasn’t until he stopped receiving 21 roses, one year and 11 months ago, did it dawn on him--chanyeol had valued sehun's presence beside him much more than his own beside sehun. and sometimes sehun becomes mad before he becomes sad; the flowers wouldn't mean anything if chanyeol wasn't there to deliver them.

the month after chanyeol stopped breathing, sehun gets a bouquet delivered to his doorstep, on the 14th. it's as if chanyeol had never left, but the familiar sight of a bouquet only stings sehun's eyes and chafes his heart. he thinks there must've been a mistake and calls the florist--the one that used to make all of chanyeol's deliveries. he doesn't even realize he's yelling until the florist tells him to calm down in a soothing tone, as if she had expected him to react this way. she reassures him that there had been no mistake, and that chanyeol had paid them in advance to continue the delivery every month "until you get sick of flowers", she says. sehun doesn't know whether he should laugh or cry (he ends up doing both) because he could hear it then, chanyeol giving his instructions to the florist with a light lilt to his voice, as if he hadn't known he was going to succumb to his illness, as if the whole affair was simply another one of his capricious experiments with life.

sehun is still fuming when he squeezes out a thanks to the florist, hangs up the phone with a wistful glance at the bouquet that he had tossed on the table. it's the same number of roses but a different color--a fiery red, the hue that bleeds from his heart as he thinks back to all the times he received flowers from chanyeol, how he had been so reluctant at first, scoffing with contempt because "you don't give flowers to men". and he realizes, belatedly, that it's not about flowers. it never was.

he picks up the bouquet and unties the bundle. that's when a card falls out, sliding into his hand along with stray petals.

thank you for accepting my heart and soul
my love forevermore

sehun has never learned so much about flowers then; their fragility mirrors the transience of life, but the meaning behind them is eternalized by the sender's intention. so he never calls the florist to discontinue the delivery; he would never get sick of flowers, not when he can feel chanyeol as he thumbs the dewy surface of the petals, pricks his finger on the thorns. the roses would last about a week before they begin to wilt, and sehun would strip one of them of its petals and press them in a book, his own way of preserving his love, forevermore.

pairing: chanyeol/sehun, !dedicationfic, genre: angst, !drabble, rating: g

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