Work Text:
It was a nice normal day. Harry opened up the shop promptly at 8:30am as always, putting the buckets of daffodils and the short table that held the small plants along outside the front of the window, before opening up the sandwich board to put out on the pavement. He pottered around inside, tidying the display up and removing any flowers that were looking a little peaky. He sold a few smaller bouquets, to businessmen for their secretaries/wives/lovers as they passed by on their way to work. He put together a larger hand tied spray for a young couple who came in full of love and heart eyes for each other.
As soon as the initial 'rush' (if you can call it that) settled down, he pulled down the clip of orders that he'd printed off as soon as he'd got in that morning. Niall would be in by ten to start taking care of deliveries, so he had to get a move on with putting them together, to make sure that they were ready. He also had a funeral wreath to plan out, which had to be put together that afternoon, and stored in the fridge overnight, ready to be collected by the funeral directors the following morning.
Harry flicked the radio on, sending out a positive grateful vibe as he always did, to the young solicitor who'd carefully informed him that he needed a licence to have his music playing in the shop where people could hear it. He managed to avoid a pretty hefty fine for illegal performances on that advice.
He was just getting his groove on to a bit of classic Bee Gees, when the bell over the door jingled, signalling the presence of a new customer. Harry turned with a cheerful smile, almost missing a step as he caught sight of the man who'd just entered his shop.
Wearing a black vest that revealed inked collarbones and arms, with the tightest skinny black jeans Harry had ever seen, and a pair of scuffed up Vans, the man stepped up to the counter and slammed down his credit card.
"How do I passive-aggressively say 'fuck you' in flower?" a soft clear voice demanded.
"U-uh," Harry stammered, caught by a pair of bright blue eyes, and taking a few moments to register what had been said. "Wait. What?"
"I just found out that my supposed boyfriend is fucking the girl next door," the customer glared. "I've already burned his favourite books, snapped all of his vinyl," Harry pressed a hand to his chest at the mere thought, "and had the locks changed. Now I wanna send the girl flowers. I want a 'with sympathy' card. And I want 'fuck you' flowers. Cos she was supposed to be my friend."
"Um, well," Harry scratched the back of his neck as he thought. "Okay. Off the top of my head. Geraniums are a good place to start - they mean stupidity."
"Love, you're gonna have to just pull them together, I can barely tell a rose from a carnation," the customer sighed. "But I'm trusting you to know your shit."
"Yeah, I know my shit." Harry crossed to the large display of flowers and reached out to grab a couple stems of geraniums, holding them out. "Geraniums. Also, meadowsweet. They signify uselessness." He added a few stems to the geraniums, then picked out another flower. "Yellow carnations. They literally mean 'you have disappointed me'. One of the politest rude flowers you can get. And very passive aggressive. I pissed my mum off when I skipped a couple days of college to go to Leeds Festival when I was 17, and when I got home, there was a bouquet of yellow carnations in my room. It was the flower equivalent of 'I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed', and it hit like a kick in the stomach."
"That sounds a bit harsh," the customer grinned, his eyes crinkling up at the sides. "But I love the symbolism. It's perfect." He looked at the flowers in Harry's hand. "Is that it?"
"Nope," Harry shook his head. "A bit of foxglove for insincerity, and finish up with orange lilies for hatred. The harshest of all the flowers."
"Yes, that is perfect. I'll take it."
"Would you like the ribbons and stuff? Make it all pretty?" Harry asked, moving back around the counter and setting the stems down.
"Oh, why not? Let's make it even worse," the customer nodded and leaned against the other side of the counter, watching Harry work.
"I have to ask, why are you saying it with flowers? I mean, not that I'm complaining, because obviously I'm getting business out of it. But it seems a bit of an odd thing to do? Are they even going to know what it means?"
"Yeah, she's studying floristry or something at college. So she should know where I'm coming from with this." The customer scowled. "Especially as I'd told her about all of the problems Ben and I were having. I thought she was my friend, and the bitch used that to hop into bed with him. And then, to add insult to injury, I found the shitheads in my fucking bed!"
"That's horrible," Harry empathised. "I don't understand people."
"I mean, I was going to break up with him anyway, but that really is not the point."
Harry let out a soft snicker, focusing on his hands as he worked, settling the flowers into a tidy bouquet and tying the stems with plain ribbon, before he wrapped them in cellophane and added decorative ribbons, using a pair of scissors to curl the ends artfully.
"There we go, sir," he eventually said, turning the bouquet around to show the customer.
"It's Louis, not sir. Sir is more my grandad than me."
"There we go, Louis," Harry amended. "One passive aggressive 'fuck you' bouquet."
"It's perfect," Louis assured him. "I can't thank you enough."
"Well, I'm hoping you'll thank me to the tune of £45."
"Of course, of course," Louis pulled his card back out of his pocket. "That was cheaper than I was expecting. I've always been led to believe that florists are really expensive."
"Well, it depends what you're after," Harry held out the card machine for Louis to pay. "If you're going all out with the expensive flowers - roses, lilies, orchids - then yeah, it's going to cost a bit. But your basic flower - carnations, alstroemeria, gypsophelia - they're relatively inexpensive in comparison. You get more for your money with those, and they typically tend to last longer in the home, as long as they're given the correct flower food."
"Wow, I had no idea the depth of complexity that was involved with flowers," Louis looked a little awed. "But thank you. This is amazing."
"You're very welcome," Harry beamed, his dimples out in full force. "I hope they have the impact you require."
"If they don't, I'll just hit them both over the head with them, and then throw his TV out of the window. Asshole."
"Well, that should definitely get your opinion across," Harry said carefully.
"Hey, uh, once I'm done with this, I don't suppose you fancy going out for a drink, do you?"
"A drink?"
"Yeah, my treat, as a thank you, and also as a date...?"
"You're about to go give your ex and his mistress a fuck you bouquet, but you're asking me on a date?" Harry looked at Louis in disbelief.
"Yeah, the guy's a tool," Louis shrugged. "Like I said, I've been planning on ending things for a while - but it's his birthday tomorrow, so I didn't want to rock the boat this close to it. But apparently I'm the one who's being made a fool of. Or at least, they were attempting." He looked up at Harry through his eyelashes, leaning his hip against the counter coyly. "But you're cute as hell. And you know your flowers."
"Yes, this is my shop, so I would hope I know my flowers," Harry said drily. "But I'm still not sure about agreeing to a date when these are for your ex. No matter how much of a tool he is."
"I think I'm doing this wrong," Louis said ruefully.
"Kinda?"
"Let me start again. Hi, my name's Louis, and I think you're pretty awesome. Would you care to join me for a refreshing beverage at a time and location of your choice, with precisely zero obligation or expectation of anything further?"
"That's some pretty words you got there."
"I thought so. But that's not an answer to the question."
Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair, gazing at the other man for a few moments.
"Fine. One drink. Coffee. At the cafe two doors down. At lunchtime today."
"That's good enough for me," Louis beamed. "I'll meet you outside here? Midday?"
"I lunch at one. And you're paying."
"I'll be here at ten to," promised Louis. "See you then!"
Without waiting for a reply, Louis grabbed the flowers and spun around, leaving the shop quickly.
Harry watched him go, shaking his head a little, and feeling slightly confused. He wasn't entirely sure what had happened, or how he'd been manipulated - maybe manipulated was too harsh a word, but he couldn't really think of another way to describe it - into going for a lunch date with someone that a, he'd only just met, and b, wasn't even properly out of a relationship yet. Besides which, the bloke was a customer, and Harry had some pretty uncertain feelings about dating customers. It wasn't a hard and fast rule of 'no dating the customers', but more of a slightly wrong gut sensation about it, like indigestion or heartburn.
He sighed and shrugged to himself, turning back to the clip of orders, deciding to put the slightly strange Louis out of his mind for now. The flowers weren't going to arrange themselves, and he didn't want to wind up with a pile of complaints about non-fulfilment. He'd seen that happen to the people who'd owned the shop before he bought them out, and swore he'd never let that happen to his business.
"Yo, yo, yo, what's up dude?!" a loud voice came from the back room, shortly followed by the source.
"Please stop calling me dude, Niall," Harry sighed. "Neither you nor I are beach bums from California, or hippies from the seventies."
"Okay, what pissed in your cornflakes this morning?" Niall asked, leaning against the counter next to him.
"I don't eat cornflakes, I eat muesli as you well know, and no one pissed in it. I just had a bit of a weird customer, who bought a 'fuck you' bouquet for his cheating soon-to-be ex, and then promptly asked me out on a date."
Niall blinked at him.
"Come again?"
Harry explained briefly what had happened with meeting Louis, and how he'd somehow been talked into meeting him for a drink that afternoon, despite his rational self trying to intervene. Niall listened on in amazement and disbelief, shaking his head a little.
"You can't be left alone for five minutes, Styles," he told Harry. "This is all gonna go wrong."
"I know. You don't have to tell me that." Harry moved to the front counter to grab an accompanying message card for the arrangement he had just completed, carefully copying the text on the order form and then slipping it into a cellophane sleeve and taping it to the front of the bouquet. "I have no idea how it even happened. The guy is such a smooth talker."
~~~~~~~~~
A year later
It was a nice, normal morning. Harry opened up the shop as usual at 8:30am, putting the small table out in front of the window for the small plants and bucket of daffodils, and standing the sandwich board in its normal place. The normal pre-office foot business dropped in, requiring birthday flowers, apology flowers, and well done flowers. He chatted happily to a new Mama, who'd come in for flowers for her wife, who was still in the hospital with their baby boy (he threw in a box of chocolates at no extra charge, with a wink when Mama protested).
He turned to the clip of orders, taking the first one down and collecting the stems he needed, humming along to the radio as he normally did. Wiggling his hips, he worked diligently, putting the arrangement together and tying it carefully with the ribbons.
Harry had just gone into the back room to fetch some prepared oasis for the next arrangement when the bell over the front door jangled, signalling the entrance of a customer.
"I'll be with you in a moment," he called through. "I'm just grabbing something from the back room!"
He paused to listen for a reply, and shrugged when he didn't get one. He quickly grabbed the oasis and flower wire he needed, before he slipped back into the front room. He stopped dead when he saw who was standing alongside the counter.
Louis gazed at him for a moment, then held up his credit card in one hand, and a ring box in the other.
"How do I passive-aggressively say 'marry me' in flower?"