Work Text:
One second you are happily exploring a vanished middle schooler's room for evidence of some idiotic half assed spell put on him by his classmates (whether you're doing that with his family's permission or not is not really relevant), the next something lands on your shoulder, you barely have the time to register its weight on your body, and you find yourself battling for dear life against an omnipotent neutronium based demi-god squirrel with a crave for human flesh.
Ordinary work hours for you, really. That's what you get for deciding that messing with the supernatural for a job is a good life choice, you guess. After all you still managed to get your job done in time for dinner. You can't really complain for keeping fit in exchange for a conspicuous bank transfer.
You open your car trunk and pull out one of your many replacement black jackets out. You always bring three of them with you just in case. Man, do you love replaceable goods. They're the only things worth owning, if you don't want to fall into a vicious cycle of irrelevant love and loss. You like to think it's a good policy to live by; you put the new jacket on. The cold winter air is stings a little as it enters your nostrils.
A lonely black car silently traversing an equally black road at dusk. Nothing particularly ominous, unless someone specifically wants to see it that way. While it's true you tend to give out a devilish, grim vibe to strangers and friends alike, your life outside of work tends to be rather dull in comparison, to be honest. Though tempted to turn the radio on, you eventually decide against having music clogging your eardrums any further; you can still feel the after effects of that inhuman being's cries vibrating in your ears and you decide that maybe a little silence is best for now.
You spot a dead rat on the side of the road. Its rotting body is just barely illuminated by your headlights.
Was is the Nutcraker the last time you went to the theater? You can't even remember; it's been that long. That story also killed off a rat, if you remember correctly, just as, now that you think about it, many others did in cinema and literature. Something about the concept of a world's clockwork killing off rodents for the sake of a well oiled mechanism leaves you sceptic, but then again not really. A Mouse King is just as expendable as a red shirt, just like the human race. A whole bunch of red shirts. Your long fingers change gears with a swift move between accelerations. A light frown grazes your brow.
You stop by a flower shop on the way home. What will it be this time? Daffodils, daisies... maybe a dozen red roses, for a change? Aren't they just too cliché, though? Everyone buys that bouquet as a default nowadays. You start feeling just the tiniest bit hypocritical in the back of your mind.
"Why hello there, my favorite regular customer!"
"Hello, Mrs. Kimura. Had a good day?"
"Not too bad," she smiles from behind the counter. "Saturdays are usually good in terms of sellings. That's why you're lucky you came here today. We've got the best of the best."
"Is that so," you reply as you eye a vase containing some ten lavender colored fresh roses; you never saw that color on roses before; beside that is another of bellflowers.
"Do you have any preference?" She asks. You take your time walking around the shop. You find the scent of flowers oddly relaxing, even with all the different fragrances mixing together; "Anything will do," you reply, a second away from closing your eyes and taking in the scent. Mrs. Kimura starts moving from behind the counter.
"Wait. On second thought," you interrupt her with a raised hand; the other is on the phone, making a quick Wikipedia search on the meaning of flowers. "I'll, ah... I'll have a bouquet with all the roses in that vase and a couple bellflowers, please."
You push the key inside the lock of your front door. You only need to turn it once: it seems you’re not the first one to enter the apartment tonight.
“Deishuu, is that you?” you hear a voice calling you from the study down the corridor, the only voice to ever use your first name. “I’m still working but I ordered delivery Chinese. Is that ok?”
“Yes.” Your answer is laconic, but not because you don’t want to talk. You just can’t help it; you’re exhausted. You gently put the flowers on the table, loosen the knot of your necktie with a couple of fingers, then collapse on the sofa. “Haaah.”
“Rough day?” the voice shouts from a few meters of distance.
“The usual,” you respond, hearing your wife’s steps approaching the living room. You make a last effort and stand up again to take the bouquet and give it personally to her.
“I wanted to give you a new combination for a change,” you tell her with the subtlest of smiles, one of those only she can notice.
“They’re beautiful,” she says, looking as touched by the bouquet as the first time you ever got her one. You must have already bought her a thousand since you got together. “You always find the time for stuff like this even when you’re tired. I can’t believe that I got married to the sweetest man on earth,” she mutters contentedly against your jacket, hugging you tightly. I can’t believe I have to keep you a secret, you think to yourself as you squeeze her back. Her scent and her warmth are all that you need right now.
“I love you so much.”
“I love you too,” you murmur in her hair, brushing your fingers through her messy locks in the slowest of caresses.
You think that sometimes things that are not expendable are the best ones.