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It started off as a perfectly nice romantic gesture, picking up the flowers on his way home from his Tuesday meetings. And it had been wonderful, that first time, to see Chiyo-chan’s eyes come up round as dinnerplates, see her hands cradle the bouquet like it was something breakable, see Mikorin bluster around looking for a vase, turning his face away to hide how pleased he was – but after the first time, Nozaki remembered why he isn’t prone to grand gestures. They routinely blow up in his face.
The girl in the flowershop narrows her eyes at him every time he comes in, now. Once must have seemed charming, seemed like Nozaki was just feeling an overflow of love for his wife that day, so much love that he needed two bouquets to stuff it in – but buying two bouquets every week must somehow instead seem like an admission of guilt. Nozaki is certain the girl thinks he has a wife and a mistress on the go, and is desperately trying to placate both.
He considers telling her that actually, he has two full-time, live-in redheads, and then watch how fast her disgust turns to pity. Instead, he keeps his head down and busies himself looking through the displays, trying not to feel the girl’s needling glare on the back of his neck. Asuka, her nametag reads. Nozaki sees her in his sleep on Monday nights, wielding various pointy objects and yelling.
He buys the same two bouquets every week – for Chiyo-chan it's big bright orange-yellow sunflowers, their heads like cheeky lions' faces; for Mikorin there are velvety, dusk pink roses. Those are the flowers that would ring their panels, if Nozaki drew the manga of their life together.
Asuka gives him a patently insincere smile as she wraps the bouquets. Her eyes still say, loud and clear, Murder.
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The bouquets clash in his arms, each time he catches his reflection on the walk home. It reminds him of when he comes home late and sees Mikorin and Chiyo-chan’s heads leaning together, watching the TV, the two of them propping each other up like sleepy kittens.
Nozaki is an artist, notionally, so it probably should bother him that when Mikorin and Chiyo-chan are right next to each other, their hair clashes. Strangely, instead, it’s one of his favorite things. He loves it most when they’re going out somewhere nice and Chiyo-chan wears this bright yellow sundress she has, and shoves Mikorin into his maroon shirt that, she says, brings out the roses in his cheeks.
Mikorin always ties Nozaki’s tie, even though he’s more than capable of doing it himself. He and Chiyo-chan are a riot of color around Nozaki, peering into the mirror and making last adjustments, Chiyo-chan pulling Nozaki down so she can brush off his shoulders, Mikorin in turn tweaking Chiyo-chan's hair bows. Nozaki used to worry that he was nothing but a blot in the middle, a big stroke of black - but now he knows that it wouldn’t work any other way. It’s simple color theory.
Reds need balance, you see - reds need a black around saying softly oi oi, you can finish dressing up the cat after dinner, now get cleaned up. Reds need a black around to point out that they need to buy food other than sugar flowers and vanilla, a black to put on glasses and frown over the bills, a black to remember the passports sitting on the nightstand when they’re all leaving for the airport (Chiyo-chan wearing her ridiculous sunhat already and trailing a suitcase that’ll take both her men to get into the back of a cab, Mikorin blithely holding out his hands to carry all the things that she’s fretting just won’t fit).
Black darkens red, sure, but Nozaki doesn’t think that ruins it, necessarily. Black darkens red down into wine, into sleepy nights nodding over the kotatsu, rainy afternoons tucked up with tea and watching the water trip down the windowpanes. Life can’t all be red.
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“I’m home,” he announces, bending in the hall to take off his shoes. Something smells… good, actually, and not poisonous, or radioactive. Nozaki blinks. He cooks every other night of the week, firstly because it’s solely up to him if he wants anyone in the house to eat a balanced diet and secondly because he works from home, while the other two are out all day. Usually, though, they order in on Tuesdays, to preserve everyone’s sanity.
“Welcome home~!” Mikorin and Chiyo-chan carol from the direction of the kitchen. The cat also meows, presumably just because she can, and wends her way over to leave cat hair all up the leg of his best work suit. Nozaki sighs, and pets her so she’ll stop staring at him so beseechingly.
“Get in here before it gets cold!” Mikorin calls. Nozaki glances at the cat, but if she knows anything, she isn’t letting on.
He steels himself to see the kitchen like a warzone – and sure, there’s a little something splashed on the floor and they’ve used more pots and pans than was probably strictly necessary, but mostly they seem to have pulled it off. Chiyo is pink-cheeked, a stripe of sauce dried onto her chin, and Mikorin’s hair is starting to curl up in the steamy heat, but nobody looks maimed. They both even remembered to put on aprons. He feels bizarrely proud of them.
Chiyo squeals happily and darts forward to get her sunflowers out of Nozaki’s grip, pausing on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his jaw.
“Is something special happening tonight?” Nozaki asks, indicating the spread with one arm. They’ve made some sort of western pasta dish and a few other plates; there’s a glossy, dog-eared recipe book propped up on the counter. “Did I forget something?”
Mikorin rolls his eyes.
“What, we can’t just do something nice for you?” he asks. He presses his own kiss onto the lipstick print Chiyo-chan has left, and grins, drawing back with his arms full of roses.
“You didn’t think we were capable of this, did you?” Chiyo asks, hands on her hips, eyes teasing. Beside her, Mikorin strikes a superhero pose, and his apron flaps like a cape. Nozaki dutifully applauds them, and they preen.
“Now let’s eeeeat,” Mikorin groans in anticipation, whipping the apron off.
Chiyo-chan opens the window to let the evening air in, and the cat climbs into Nozaki’s lap. He leans his head contentedly back against the wall, his eyes half-closed as he listens to Chiyo-chan re-enact a funny story involving one of her students. His belly full and his side warm against Mikorin’s, he reconsiders whether it would be a good idea to try to dissuade Asuka-at-the-flowershop’s murder glare by telling her about his redheads – the jealousy might actually, in fact, just make her worse.