JEONGCHEOL || Flower Collections

Rose

His favourite flowers are roses.

He gave Jeonghan roses for their first dinner date together, this is my favourite flower, so I want to give my favourite to you.

There were always roses in his apartment: roses inside a vase in the living room, roses for their bath together (good for the skin, apparently), rose-scented candles. He even grew a couple of rose bushes outside his place.

The first time they made love was on a bed full of rose petals, the silkiness of the satin sheets sprinkled with dashes of texture, of rose petals clinging onto their sweaty entwined bodies as they pushed against each other.

The smell of rose permeates it all: their first date together, his house, his bed, his skin.

Rose is sex, love and memories all rolled up into a fragrance, so ingrained in the mind.

So entwined with him.

They met over roses, even.

At the florist's, is how Jeonghan met him.

A bouquet of roses, lingering looks and secretly exchanged numbers.

In hindsight, he should've known. The man was with another date at the time.

He just didn't think.

His partner is a good man: financial security, intellect, good age, looks, and manners.

Attentive, dedicated, loyal and faithful.

And faithful.

And faithful.

Or so Jeonghan would like to believe, until he sees his partner fucking another man into the bed. Their bed. Both are too into it to notice someone else watching them.

Rose-scented candles and rose petals again.

The smell – cloyingly sweet – fills his nostrils.

He wants to vomit.

The smell of roses.

Of sex, love and memories.

Of the pattern that permeates his life.

Jeonghan thinks he never wants to smell roses again.

He never wants to see them again.

Detached, he watches them, like snakes, coiled around each other, panting, moaning. He wonders if he's half as responsive as the other male on the bed.

Probably not.

Jeonghan waits until they're finished with a shout. Post-coital, he thinks. He wonders when they'll notice him.

They fell asleep, and never noticed.

It's good that he never officially moved in, or else it'd be a hassle to move out and leave.

He pens his (now) ex a note, and walks out the door.

He quits his florist job, gets spectacularly drunk in a shady, shitty bar, and has sex with a stranger.

Jeonghan wakes up in an impersonal, cheap motel and feels sore as fuck.

He hurts everywhere and in places unmentionable, results of nonstop sex last night.

Fragments of memories come back slowly.

Huh.

He was pretty excited.

Guess it was great sex.