Chapter Text
EMERGENCY ALERT: Flash Flood Warning in this area until 3AM. Avoid flood areas. Check Local Media.
The alert flashes across Shiro’s phone where it lays, just to his left. It had been motionless and silent in the moments before. He dismisses the notification, and looks instead to the time.
6:55. Five minutes to go.
Shiro lets his gaze drift back to the rain-spattered window, and the yellow blur of the street lamps which line the sidewalk outside of his little flower shop. The cars on the street move slowly, headlights softened by the haze of rain. A blaze of lightning breaks the peace, and his eyes dart towards the tiny timestamp on the computer monitor nearby.
6:57. Three minutes.
He takes to gathering his belongings from around the store. An empty lunchbox, a travel mug, his jacket which has been softened and worn in by time. Shiro stops, briefly, in the back room, and takes a moment to appraise his day’s work: a grouping of centerpieces for a morning wedding. The soft pinks of the petals are almost cream in the dim light of the floral cooler in which they’re stored. Shiro moves back towards the front counter, and flicks the lightswitch off, casting the room in shadow, and looks to the clock on the wall above the door.
7:00. Closing time.
The crack of nearby thunder rings out and Shiro grits his teeth against the cold as he steps out into piercing sheets of rain.
“Wait, wait!” Shiro’s keys have been tucked firmly into his pockets, and he’s giving the door one final tug when a voice calls out above the din, “ Fuck , you’re closed aren’t you?” Shiro turns towards the sound of rapidly-approaching footsteps, slapping hard and wet against the concrete, pulls his right hand from the relative warmth, of his jacket, and checks his watch.
7:02. Time to go home.
“I--yeah.” He mumbles, eyes set firmly on the pavement in front of him, refusing to make eye contact with the stranger, “Yeah, I’m sorry, I’m closed up for the night.”
“I just need some flowers, please. Like, just some roses or something.”
“I--” Shiro’s digs his hands further into his pockets.
“Please, man. I’ll pay you double.” His voice is tense, but wavers a bit at the end of his statement. Shiro checks his watch, one last time, before looking up from the pavement.
7:03, on the evening of September 4th is the exact moment that Shiro’s life begins a long, cold, downward spiral.
In the dim glow of the streetlights, Shiro gets his first real look at the guy--he’s slim, a bit shorter than Shiro is himself, and absolutely drenched from the rain--Shiro can tell the frigid weather has soaked into his bones from the set of his shoulders.
And he’s gorgeous.
He’s gorgeous even with his face flushed pink, rubbed raw from the rain and wind. Even soaking wet, with his dark hair curling at the ends, just above the collar of his jacket. Even wild eyed and desperate, shivering outside of a flower shop on a Friday night, and begging for a bouquet of roses.
“Yeah...” Shiro sighs, after a beat too many, turning his back to the man briefly in order to unlock the door, “c’mon.”
“What?”
“We’ll get you some flowers. Come inside.” He’s holding the door open, but falters a little when the man only stares in response, mouth parted slightly in what he can only assume is surprise.
“Please? You’ll catch cold out there.” Shiro’s voice is gentler this time, and the man only nods before stepping into the warmth of the shop. Shiro lets the door close behind him and hurries himself with gathering a bouquet, while the stranger stands silently, just barely inside the threshold.
“Special occasion?” Shiro glances over his shoulder from where he’s appraising the selection of bouquets in a cooler. No reply. “Any reason at all?”
The man shrugs noncommittally, and Shiro goes back to work. He can feel the other man’s eyes following him as he moves about the shop.
“Ah,” Shiro sighs, moving towards where the man stands, and holds out the flowers, “Well, I’ve put them into a box for you as well, so that the rain doesn’t ruin the tissue paper. Be careful not to drop it though.”
“How much?” the guy asks, eyeing the box warily. Shiro must pause for a moment too long in his consideration, because the man reaches hastily for his wallet and bites at the corner of his lip. Anxiety tinges his voice, “Sorry, I’m wasting your time.”
“Just take them,” Shiro replies simply. He feels bad for the man, who is visibly shivering, with layers of clothing plastered to his body by the rain, and a small puddle forming at his feet.
God, Shiro thinks, he looks like a drowned cat.
A wave of sympathy washes over Shiro when he realizes that the poor guy probably forgot his anniversary and ran to the shop in the pouring rain, just to find that Shiro was closing up for the evening. As much as Shiro’s business needs the cash, far be it from Shiro to deny this man the right to atone for his sins when he is making an honest effort.
And far be it from Shiro to deny someone who looks like that anything .
“But that’s a lot of--”
“Just promise you’ll come back sometime, and buy flowers when I’m actually open, okay?” Shiro holds the box out towards the man again--an offering. He takes it from Shiro’s hands and turns towards the door.
“Yeah,” he agrees, glancing back at Shiro. The smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth manages to, for some inexplicable reason, shatter Shiro’s heart. “yeah, I can do that.”
When he walks out the door, he takes a little piece of Shiro’s heart with him.
*****
The days that follow are a blur. Shiro is consumed by a sudden barrage of orders--for weddings, for dinner parties, for a sizable gala that he’s still not sure how he secured the contract for. He’s in over his head, never having had to cope with so much in so little time.
Champion’s Floral is located in a quiet neighborhood not too far from the local university, and aside from the occasional visitor asking from directions, the store sees very little foot traffic. In the almost two years that his shop had been open, Shiro had barely managed to keep the business afloat. Initially, the lights were kept on through sheer dumb luck, before he built a small, but loyal, group of clientele.
Shiro is mulling over a plan to tackle the inundation of orders when the bell he has tied to the front door jingles lightly. He jolts upright from where he’s been hunched over the front counter, chewing on the butt end of a pen and staring at a calendar for the last thirty minutes.
Standing just inside the doorsill is the same guy who had left a puddle on his floor the week before. He’s now blessedly dry, bundled against the cold and wind outside in a coat that seems to consume most of his body. He raises a hand in greeting, and gives Shiro a little wave.
What’s left of Shiro’s heart manages to skip a beat.
He looks just as good as he had before, perhaps even better.
“Hey,” Shiro breathes, “welcome back.”
The man silently crosses the room, pulls out his wallet, and shoves a small fortune’s worth of twenty dollar bills across the counter. Shiro looks down at the money before him for a moment, before fixing his gaze back on the man, eyebrow cocked.
“I just--” He takes a deep breath in, hand nervously kneading the back of his neck, “I feel bad about the other night, and I know those flowers couldn’t have been cheap, so I’d like to pay you for them.”
“They’re not that expensive…” Shiro murmurs, pushing the twenties away, “they’re just roses.”
“They weren’t just roses .” He scoffs in reply.
“It’s okay, It was--”
“Listen, I’m not stupid.” The man replies, gathering the cash from the counter and when Shiro opens his mouth to protest, the glare that receives could melt a hole through solid brick, “Those roses were nice-- really nice . You going out of your way to get them even after you were closed was nice. You were nice to give them to me, but I’m not a scab, so I’m paying you for them, because I can be fucking nice, too.”
His tone is biting--sharp. Shiro’s resolve to not accept the money falters when the man grabs Shiro’s hand from where it rests on the counter, and puts the crumpled bills into his palm with fingers that are gentle against Shiro’s, despite the harsh words.
“Okay,” Shiro agrees, turning to the register to deposit the cash, “Let me get your flowers for you though.”
“My what?”
“Your flowers,” and before the man can even open his mouth in response, Shiro has disappeared into the back room. When he comes back out a short while later with a bouquet of blue and white dendrobium orchids cradled in his arms, the man is crouched down in the corner opposite him. His back is to Shiro, head cocked to the side while he examines a display filled with succulents.
Shiro watches the way the man methodically picks up and examines each tiny terra cotta pot before placing it back on the shelf amongst its peers. He moves through the plants, from a tiny barrel cactus, to a jade plant, before he settles his hands on one with plant with long stems hanging over the sides.
“You’re a fan of the Burro’s Tail?” Shiro asks, voice gentle in the quiet of the shop.
“Yeah, they’re nice,” he replies, looking over his shoulder with a soft smile that pulls at Shiro’s heart before he turns away, replacing the little pot on the shelf. After a long moment, he stands up, and faces Shiro again, brushing his hands off on his pants. “Plants are nice.”
“Plants are nice,” Shiro agrees absentmindedly, holding the bouquet of orchids out towards the man.
“How much do I owe you?” He eyes the flowers skeptically.
“You just paid me for them.”
“No,” the man sighs, brows furrowed, “I paid you for the roses.”
“I gave you the roses,” Shiro replies brightly, surely, “but you promised to come back and buy another bouquet when my shop was open. You just came back, paid me for this bouquet, and now it’s yours.”
“I’m--I,” He reaches for the bouquet, stopping just short for a quick second before he takes it in his arms, “okay. Yeah.”
It’s a small victory, but Shiro feels like he’s won a gold medal, even as the man looks down on the orchids with his brow furrowed in a small scowl. After a moment, his face smooths into a carefully trained expression of placidity.
“Yeah.” Shiro confirms, before reaching a hand out, “I’m Shiro, by the way.”
“It’s been nice to meet you Shiro,” the way that his name rolls off the other man’s tongue when he fits his hand into Shiro’s fills him with a liquid warmth.
Bouquet Guy looks up from the orchids to smile at Shiro. It’s a small, fragile smile that makes Shiro’s breath catch in his lungs, because when their eyes meet, Shiro realizes that the man’s eyes are the same deep, dark blue-almost-purple as the flowers that his arms are wrapped around.
“Come back any time,” Shiro raises his hand in a weak wave as the man toddles out the door, trying his best to protect the large bouquet from the cold wind that buffets against him. When the door shuts behind him with a soft thud , Shiro immediately reaches for the nearest pair of shears with which he can gouge his eyes out.
He’d like to physically carve the memory of this man from his brain, because his eyes were the color of orchids, and he smiled at Shiro, and it hurts to think about for more than a few seconds.
Shiro stills his hand and loosens his grip on the shears only when he realizes that although he offered his own name, he never received the other man’s in return.
******
By the following Friday, Shiro has effectively scrubbed Bouquet Guy from his mind, able to focus instead on the orders around him. The week had been busy, enough so that he had been forced to call in help to assemble the myriad of bouquets and centerpieces for a large wedding.
“What precisely was in these boutonnieres again?” A head pops out from the door that leads to the back room, platinum white hair standing in stark contrast to the dark wood of the trim, “I’ve got the pink ranunculus, the little blue delphiniums, but what am I missing?”
“The myrtle,” Shiro supplies, holding the order form out as an explanation, “thanks again for helping, Allura. I appreciate it more than you know.”
“No worries, Shiro,” She takes the slip of paper from his hands, and examines it for a brief moment. With a quick nod, she slips into the back room just as the front door of the shop is pushed open with a burst of cool air and the soft jingling of bells.
“Welcome to Champion’s Floral,” Shiro turns to face the newcomer, “how can I help you today?”
“Hi Shiro,” a familiar voice replies, a broad smile plastered on the speaker’s face. Shiro’s mouth is dry, and feels as though it is full of cotton balls, because the grin he’s faced with belongs to none other than Bouquet Guy.
“Oh hey,” he says, voice meek as he raises a hand in greeting, “welcome back.”
The little entry of Shiro’s shop is uncomfortably silent for a moment, as Shiro’s eyes dart from where they were locked onto the other man’s grin, to his eyes, back down to his mouth where the smile is quickly fading, before he glues them firmly to a cooler full of corsages just past where the stranger’s hair is wisping into soft curls around his ears. Shiro wonders briefly if the sound of his heart hammering in his chest is loud enough to be heard three yards away.
“I was hoping I could--”
“Is there something I can--”
Shiro and Bouquet Guy both begin speaking at the same time before both of them stop, silence fills the space between them, and Shiro hesitates for a moment before speaking again.
“Sorry, I just--”
“My bad, I wasn’t--”
Shiro can feel the heat spreading across his face as he snaps his mouth shut, jaw clenching in embarrassment as the man begins to laugh.
“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be rude,” he chuckles, moving a few strides closer to Shiro’s counter, “I just wanted to get another bouquet.”
“No worries, I didn’t mean to interrupt you, either,” Shiro nods in response, face still hot, “Is there anything you had in mind?”
“I dunno,” Bouquet Guy tilts his head to the side thoughtfully, and worries his lip for a moment, “Something bright maybe? Sunflowers if you have that sort of thing.”
“Yeah,” Shiro waves a hand loosely towards a cooler just beside the counter, “I think I’ve got something.”
The truth is, Shiro knows he has a sunflower bouquet, as he had made one just yesterday with the leftovers from a special order. He doesn’t usually carry sunflowers at this time of year, so it’s one of the pricier bouquets he has in the display case, with little green and pink peonies scattered throughout the bright golden blooms. Bouquet Guy’s eyes follow the movement of Shiro’s hand and he crosses the room to examine his options, leaning down and squinting through the cooler door.
Shiro watches silently as the man assesses each bouquet in the case, and tries not to internalize what he can see of his reaction to each of the arrangements. The soft “oh” that escapes his parted lips when he locks eyes with the sunflowers and the ghost of a smile that Shiro can see reflected in the glass makes him want to melt into a puddle of goo on the floor.
“That’s perfect,” the man murmurs, wrenching the door to the cooler open and reaching in for the vase. “I want these.” He’s smiling again when he turns around, and sets the vase on the counter to reach into his wallet for a credit card.
“They’re very nice” Shiro agrees as he accepts the proffered card. His thumb brushes over the embossed lettering on the flimsy plastic and he’s struck once again by the desire to know Bouquet Guy’s name. He glances down, trying his best to be casual and tries not to let his shoulders slump too much when he sees that the card is only printed with the man’s first initial, and full last name.
He hands the receipt and card back to the man, and offers a small smile and a wave as he tucks the two into the back pocket of his jeans and wraps an arm around the vase. As he is turning to leave, the name on the card flashes in front of Shiro’s eyes again.
K. KOGANE
“Have a nice day!” Shiro calls after him, feeling braver than he had just a moment before, “Thanks for coming back in Mr. Kogane!”
Bouquet Guy spins on his heel, looking back towards Shiro, and gives him a wry smile, “It’s Keith,” he offers, pushing the door open with his hip as he salutes Shiro with his free hand, “you can call me Keith.”
“Keith,” Shiro affirms, raising a hand in salute as well, “come back soon, Keith!”
The door closes behind Bouquet Guy-- Keith he recalls, moving his hands down to brace himself against the countertop.
“Keith,” he murmurs. The name feels like molten honey in his mouth and he has to take a deep breath to center himself. “Keith,” he repeats, when he hears a soft chuckle behind him, Allura is standing in the doorway to the back room, leaning against the frame and holding a boutonniere in her hand while she shakes her head.
“Keith?” she asks with a gentle smile, “oh, Shiro.”