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The quiet scratching of Tashigi’s pen was the only noise in the office break room. Smoker leaned back against the couch, putting a cigar in his mouth and cracking his neck. The clock on the back wall read 11pm.
His gaze slid down to Tashigi sitting across from him, the coffee table between them strewn with the island survey reports he was working through and boxes of chocolates, pink colored cards, and a bouquet of flowers perched precariously on the edge of the table.
The end of another Valentine’s Day, and as usual, Tashigi had been bombarded with gifts. It had only gotten worse since joining the G-5, where there were even fewer women stationed. She folded a card in front of her in half and placed it in a pile to her right, then reached over to pick up a box of chocolates from the pile on her left. She flipped it over in her hand to see if the gift giver had left their name.
“Whoever got you that one doesn’t know the first thing about you,” he muttered. Tashigi looked up at him, a lock of black hair falling into her face.
“You think so?” she asked, glancing down at the chocolate box.
“You don’t like white chocolate,” he took a drag on his cigars. She chuckled.
“That’s true, but I appreciate the gesture from…” she opened a little flap and smiled, “Marco Gutierrez, anyway.” Tashigi placed the box in the middle of the table and opened a blank thank you card. Smoker shook his head slightly.
The soft scratching of her pen filled the easy quiet between them. He liked these moments best, when the two of them would congregate in the common area of their office floor. His own office got too stuffy, and there wasn’t enough room for both of them to work in hers. Simple times when they could just exist in the same space with no one to bother them.
“How many of those have you written by now?” Smoker spoke up again. He thought it was a little absurd, sending thank you cards to all the idiots who thought the way to her heart was through boxes of chocolates. But, that was Tashigi. The corners of Smoker’s lips turned up.
She placed another finished thank you card in the pile and reached for another box. “I think I’m over halfway...You want to help me eat these when I’m done?” she flashed him a smile. He rolled his eyes and grunted.
“These are pretty…” Tashigi murmured as she reached for the vase of flowers, carefully setting it between them as she looked for a card. “They didn’t leave their name,” she frowned slightly as she looked at a piece of paper stuck to the vase. “I wonder what these are supposed to mean,” she mumbled, and Smoker raised an eyebrow.
Seeing his look, she gestured at the bouquet. “I know what roses mean, but the others…”
Smoker leaned forward and pointed at the pink camellias. “These mean longing.”
“You know the language of flowers?” she asked, surprised. The lock of hair was back in front of her face again.
“Good for undercover operations, easy way to get a message across in plain sight,” he shrugged. A light lit up in her eyes. She pushed the vase closer to him.
“Can you... tell me what these all mean then?” Their eyes met for a moment. He couldn’t say no.
Smoker tapped the petals of a sprig of lilac. “Romance, sometimes first love,” he glanced at Tashigi. There was a tiny smile on her face. He pointed to a red carnation, “Admiration, affection, combined with the darker colored ones, they mean it intensely.” She looked up at him, a slight blush on her cheeks. His mouth went dry.
“You know the roses, passion. Not love in this case. That would be the tulips instead,” he brushed the back of his finger against a delicate red tulip petal. Their eyes met then bounced away to the corners of the room.
“So altogether...what do they say?” she asked softly.
Smoker gazed at her and rumbled, “Roughly they say “Be Mine”.” Tashigi was fiddling with the pen between her fingers, looking down at the flowers, her face bright red.
She took a breath, looked him in the eyes and whispered breathlessly “Well...will you?”
Smoker’s eyes widened, feeling like someone was imprinting all the exact little details of this moment into his brain. The way she was biting her lip, the ticking of the clock like a heartbeat, the way the light hit her chocolate brown eyes just so.
“Don’t joke like that,” the words felt unreal on his lips. His heart thudded in his chest.
“I… I’m not joking,” Tashigi clenched the pen tightly in her hand, swallowing visibly. He could see her trembling.
Smoker stared at her, heat rising in his face. He glanced away from the earnest expression on her face, all the things he could respond with jumbling in his throat. The brightly colored bouquet between them almost seemed to glow. Mouth dry, he reached out and plucked the red tulip out of the bouquet, then held it out to her, his eyes sliding to meet her face.
A smile spread across her cheeks.
She went back to writing her cards, and he to looking over his island survey reports, their boots touching under the coffee table.