Winter was coming to a close, and preparations for springtime were going swimmingly.

Redleaf drifted past a line of tinker fairies in charge of repairing equipment that had broken during use. At this time of the year, he'd normally be doing lines of dust back at his house or trying to calm Hyacinth the fuck down. That neurotic perfectionist always got even more batshit a week or so before the Everbloom's signal.

Some tinker was tinkering with some lost-shit contraption when it EXPLODED but not really, but shit was flying everywhere. Redleaf didn't bat an eye, even when a metal spring thing whizzed past his bigass schnoz by a hair and bounced around the corner. As the other fairies nearby hurried to help the poor dumbass gather the exploded things, Redleaf casually started fluttering toward the spring around the corner.

"Achoo!"

Redleaf stopped in his invisible, mid-air tracks.

"Goddammit, Hyacinth, is that you?"

"What? No. It's just a spring," a voice replied, followed by a weary looking fairy, metal spring in hand. His wings drooped, his usually perfectly groomed hair was disheveled, and even the blossoms that adorned it looked exhausted. Hyacinth always tired from stress at this time of year, but it hardly got this bad. It was possible that the memory of last year's barely-avoided catastrophe was worrying him.

"Very funny. I thought you had a fever. Isn't that why I'm overlooking things here instead of you?" Redleaf thought fondly of his dust lines back at home, but snapped back to attention as Hyacinth gave another short, weirdly high-pitched sneeze. Redleaf suppressed chuckling at how smallit sounded.

"I am perfectly fit, thank you very much," Hyacinth said indignantly, nose twitching with another oncoming widdle sneezerdoodle. "Who asked you to help me with myjob, anyway?"

Redleaf landed to speak to him eye-to-eye. "You did," he said matter-of-factly.

"What?" he scoffed.

"Yesterday morning. You really don't remember?"

Hyacinth shifted his eyes sideways. "I must've been so busy with preparations that I mis-spoke..." The Minister of Autumn silently sustained his poker face, despite watching the adorable way Hyacinth bit his bottom lip as a shred of doubt started showing in his shrinking posture.

Hyacinth cleared his throat and forced himself to stand upright. "If you'll excuse me, I have to get to work." When he upturned his chin, a sign that always announced his signature "make way" walk, Redleaf could easily see the redness of his nose and the gray under his eyes.

"Oh yes, perfectly fit," Redleaf said as Hyacinth strode past and tried weakly to fly. "And I suppose what's making you sneeze so much is just all that flower sperm."

Hyacinth snapped his head around, a fierce blush coming over his already illness-reddened face. "Excuse you?"

Redleaf smirked. The thing about being viewed so stoic is that flustering others only helps your reputation. The Minister of Spring was a frequent target of his, for obvious reasons.

"Pollen, my dear Minister. Don't get so worked up."

"As if that isn't your aim!" Hyacinth huffed. "You should be more careful with your word-choice, anyway. You're a Minister!"

"It's a natural phenomenon, Minister," Redleaf stated, striding toward the increasingly fidgety sparrowman to stand beside him. "It's what flowers do. They can't help themselves...

"Or, would you prefer if I didn't speak of your precious flowers so sexually?" he said softly, slinging an arm around Hyacinth's waist.

An incoherent sputter of sounds came out of Hyacinth's mouth.

He squirmed a bit much to get out of Redleaf's lax hold and at an armslength away.

"I think you're quite done here! I have work to do!" he squeaked. Redleaf could tell he was trying his best to hide his fever, the way his knees occasionally wobbled. But he also knew the only way to get Hyacinth to give in was to out-do him—let the fever overcome him until he simply can't retort anymore. Only then could he drag that sweet ass back to recover.

"Are you telling me to go home?" Redleaf took a step forward and, trying to maintain that personal bubble of space, Hyacinth took one backward. "Where I'll be all alone?" Another step forward, another backward. "Worrying about you?" A step forward, a wall.

Hyacinth's back was against the wall and the leaves of Redleaf's collar crunched softly against the petals around his own neck, where he could feel the other Minister's breath. Redleaf raised a hand to adjust the uneven wreath of flowers around Hyacinth's head, when Hyacinth sneezed. Right in his face. Well, side-jaw-face area.

He dropped the spring he was holding and it clinked noisily on the floor.

"There's that spring!" a voice shouted across the room. Hyacinth's whole body flinched at the noise and then slumped as Redleaf clamly stepped aside. An oblivious and/or slash-fan tinker fairy came fluttering over and picked up the spring. "Thanks, Ministers." She turned to Hyacinth, who was slouching against a wall and breathing heavy, his hair is disarray and face red as berries. "Err, should you be here, sir? You don't look so good."

"Indeed," Redleaf said, wiping the side of his face with his sleeve. "See, you're worrying the others too. You want to be in top shape for the mainland's equinox, don't you?"

"But I..." Hyacinth mumbled. "I have to..."

"Don't worry about a thing, Minister!" the tinker assured. "We're ahead of schedule, so you should just go home and rest. Get well soon!"

Redleaf watched her zip back to her work station, but Hyacinth's eyes were fixed and narrow at the other Minister. Redleaf gave a small wave back to the tinker before returning his apparent attention to Hyacinth. "You heard her."

He remained silent and motionless, unless you count the gradually slower rise of his chest as his breathing returned to normal.

"Need some help there...?"

"No," Hyacinth said louder than necessary. He quickly moved away from the wall and uselessly tried flying again. The flight to reach the tinkers' headquarters had taken its toll on his strength, but Redleaf caught him when he stumbled. "Perhaps."