Chapter Text

“What flower says ‘I’m so sorry I lost your emotional support hamster?’”

Seb blinks up at the new customer, his trimming scissors clattering on the floor.

He hadn’t heard the bell above the door chime – too focused on making sure the leaves of the lily for Mrs. Greene’s bouquet were neat enough – and he hadn’t expected a new customer, much less a new customer this handsome.

“I – uh – hamster?” Seb manages to say, cursing himself in his head.

Just because the customer was wearing a particularly clean-cut suit, with large glasses that made him look young enough to be Seb’s age, that didn’t mean that Seb could lose his professionalism. They were, after all, a small flowershop off 57th Avenue.

They frequently had pretty – and handsome – faces dropping by their shop to buy flowers before an evening out on Broadway.

Whoever this new customer was, it was unlikely that Seb would ever see him again.

“Yes,” the customer nods, quick and agitated. “I lost my stage manager’s hamster.”

Oh, so they actually work in a Broadway production. Seb takes off his gardening gloves, placing them on the floor beside the scissors.

“You can’t go wrong with a hyacinth – you’re sure your stage manager isn’t allergic?”

The customer nods. “I’m sure. Hyacinths. Can I get a card with the bouquet?”

“We do deliveries too,” Seb nods.

“Actually, that might be better – I do not want my foot crushed by another table.”

“Right,” Seb nods again, even if he doesn’t quite understand. He takes an order form from behind the cashier, sliding it across the counter with a spare pen. “Just fill in your name, contact details, the delivery address, recipient name and what you want your note to say.”

Pushing his glasses up his nose, the customer quickly scribbles it in as Seb checks on his sister’s schedule. There’s a delivery they need to do in an hour that’s near to the address being scribbled on the form, and he slips the order in.

“Here,” the customer – Carlos Rodriguez, the form says – hands him a card. “Do you do online orders too?”

Seb swipes the card on the register. “We have an Instagram page.”

The customer – Carlos squints at him. “You’re surprisingly helpful.”

“Would it help if I became less helpful?” Seb can’t stop himself from offering, if only to watch Carlos blink at him, disbelieving.

“I didn’t know this place existed until five minutes ago.”

That’s reasonable. They were a small flower shop.

It’s Manhattan, there’s no real estate space for sprawling flower gardens, but his parents had been able to keep the shop up and running, and as much as Seb often stared out of the shop’s windows, dreaming of music and bright stage lights, he was proud of what he did here – helping people brighten other people’s days with flowers wrapped up in neat ribbons.

“Well, I hope you come again,” Seb gives the card back to Carlos. “We’ll send you an e-mail when the delivery’s been made.”

“Thanks,” Carlos shoves his hands into his pockets. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

Seb doesn’t really think that someone as polished as Carlos, who hadn’t even bothered to give the bill a second glance, would come back again.

But a customer was a customer.

He watches Carlos leave the shop, the bell above the door chiming loud this time, and he puts his gloves back on.

He has a bouquet of hyacinths to prepare.

“If I accidentally made my director spill latte, what flowers would you suggest?”

Seb very nearly sprays him with water.

He carefully puts the spray bottle on the rack next to the potted orchids. It’s only been three days since Carlos – and Seb refuses to think about why he might still remember Carlos’ name – had ordered the hyacinths, and Seb stares at him, unsure.

“Latte?”

“It was a long morning,” Carlos shrugs, reaching out to poke the –

“Don’t touch them!” Seb darts forward, moving the flowerpot away. “Sorry. The orchids – they’re sensitive.”

Nodding, eyes wide, Carlos fiddles with the sleeves of his coat. It’s a dark red, lined with soft fur that looks more expensive than half the flowers in the shop. “Are your orchids as sensitive as my director?”

Seb wonders if Carlos realises that Seb can’t read minds. “I don’t know your director.”

“Be grateful for that,” Carlos scrunches his nose, “I’ll have whichever one of those orchids that can survive longest without water.”

“Without water?”

“My director can be absent-minded at times.”

Right. He knows what it’s like to lose himself to music. “Are you going to need a delivery this time?”

Carlos takes one long look at him, and Seb braces himself for some snark, but Carlos’ phone rings and he curses –

“What’s your number?” Carlos asks, fishing his phone out from his coat.

“Excuse me?” Seb feels his voice rise high.

Carlos shoves the phone into his hands. “Sorry, I – I really need to go, but I need those flowers.”

Behind his thick glasses, his brows are scrunched up in an apologetic frown – Seb can’t quite be sure that it’s not just good acting, but Carlos looks desperate enough that Seb enters his number into the phone without thinking. The glittery casing around it is surprisingly scuffed, not fancy at all, and there is a missed call on the notification bar from someone named Demon Mazzara?

“I’m, uh,” Seb hands the phone back. “I’m Seb.”

This time, Carlos smiles, and Seb is somehow sure that it is real. The edges of Carlos’ eyes crinkle with it.

“I can read your nametag, Sebastian.”

It should sound condescending – usually, being called his full name means trouble – but from Carlos, it sounds almost fond.

Seb shakes his head. He can’t go around falling for every cute boy who walked into the shop.

This is the second time they’ve met – reading too much into things was useless.

“I’ll get your order ready when you give me the details,” Seb chooses a safe answer.

Carlos gives him a quick nod. “I’ll text you.”

And then he’s out the door again, a whirlwind leaving Seb alone with the orchids.

He blinks at the bell above the door, still chiming softly, the shop suddenly feeling too quiet.

Sighing, he take his own phone out from behind the counter.

A drip of disappointment skitters through him when he sees no new notifications. He tamps it down harshly – Carlos is busy, and this is just a business transaction to deliver flowers for a disgruntled director.

Instead, Seb brings up his Broadway playlist, and he lets it play out loud.

He’s twenty two with half a college degree he never got the chance to finish.

He might not have a stage to dance on, but he has this: morning shifts at his parents’ shop, evenings teaching children how to play the piano.

A simple life. A good one, that puts food on the table with enough to spare for a rainy day.

It’s enough. It has to be.

He just has to learn to believe that.

It takes two days before Seb actually gets a text.

His parents usually insist on a clear flow of orders, and they don’t open tabs for anyone except their most frequent customers, so Seb can’t reserve a whole orchid just for a customer who’s only bought one bouquet.

He does manage to direct his customers away from the orchids to the more expensive lilies, though, and he counts that as a win.

Capital letters. He’s dealing with a customer, so things have to stay formal.

Professional.

Except, Seb hums, typing in another message.

Seb winces.

That wasn’t too bad, was it? He’s not sure what kind of choreography needs a hundred fresh roses, but he doesn’t have the time to worry about it.

He has a piano lesson with Mr. Gutierrez’s daughter in two hours.

Taking out an order form, he fills it out for his sister to find. Georgie always liked roses better than him, anyway.

Seb frowns at the message.

He’s pretty sure he left the clearest instructions for his sister. He needs to drop the bouquet for Mrs. Greene before going to teach Mr. Gutierrez’s daughter, so he doesn’t have time to turn back to the shop.

Would Kourtney mind picking up the order for her mom? But no, Kourtney is doing costume fittings for a show, and Seb knows Georgie would’ve called him if things weren’t clear.

This time around, Seb is pleased that he doesn’t drop anything when the bell above the door chimes.

It’s thirty minutes before his morning shift ends, he’s wearing his gardening gloves – the bright orange glaring in the morning light – and he catches it when Carlos freezes by the door, eyes locking onto his gloves.

“How can I help you today?” Seb offers him a smile.

“I, uh,” Carlos steps inside the shop, pushing his glasses up. “I need to say ‘I love you and I wouldn’t know what to do without you’ but without any pink flowers.”

Not what Seb had expected, but he’s starting to realise that he might never be able to figure Carlos out.  “Is it for a girlfriend?”

Carlos huffs, shaking his head. “Do you really think I’m straight?”

Seb leans on the cashier counter, shrugging. “It’s not polite to stereotype.”

Walking over, Carlos scrunches his nose – adorable, but no, Seb isn’t allowed to go there – and there’s a small quirk to his smile.

“I’m two hundred percent gay and three hundred percent caffeine,” he tells Seb. Then, with a small shrug of his own and a bigger smile, “I also can’t do math.”

Okay. Right. Seb huffs, choking back a laugh. “And the flowers?”

“For my co-choreographer. I might’ve picked a fight with her.”

“So it is for a girl!” Seb grins, finding some of his footing again. Arranging flower bouquets might not be the art that Seb dreams of doing, but it is art, and he has an eye for it.

“Who I am not dating,” Carlos crosses his arms. “I don’t know why the rumors keep saying that.”

For the thousandth time since he met Carlos, Seb frowns. “What rumors?”

“You really don’t know who I am?”

“We have a lot of Broadway stars passing by, and I did mean it when I said we respect privacy a lot,” Seb picks out a few white chrysanthemum stalks, “I can erase your number if that’d make you more comfortable.”

“No, I – it’s fine,” Carlos swallows, hands twisted together in knots – it’s clear that he needs something to hold, his empty hands making him more jumpy than the last two times Seb’s seen him – and Seb hands him a chrysanthemum stalk.

“Here,” Seb isn’t quite sure what made him brave enough to offer it, but he offers it anyway because he knows it’s needed, “for you.”

Carlos takes it, squinting at Seb. He pokes at one of the blooming petals before sniffing it. “I think Gina – my co-choreographer – she’ll like it.”

“It’s for you,” Seb corrects. “On the house. These,” he points at the stalks in his own hand, “are for your co-choreographer. And you’ll have to pay for them.”

“I can’t take this,” Carlos says. He makes no effort to give the flower back to Seb, though, and Seb picks out some purple gladioli to add color to the bouquet.

“Whatever’s going on that you need this many flowers in less than two weeks – I’m sure things will turn out alright,” he tells Carlos.

If there’s anything Seb has learned from working at a flowershop, it’s that sometimes there was safety in trusting parts of yourself to a stranger, to someone whose path you’d likely never cross again. Like putting a seashell back in the ocean, letting the waves carry it away to gentler shores.

Seb has had people pour their broken hearts out to him while he weaves for them bouquets of daisies and tulips and carnations to patch up the cracks running through their walls. He’s heard of granddaughters coming home from college, sons leaving for a new job, friends getting married – parents looking for flowers, for something meaningful and bright and beautiful to fill up the dull monotony of life.

He watches as Carlos’ shoulders fold in on themselves, hunching ever so slightly. The bags under his eyes, Seb realises, are dark with too little sleep and too much schedule.

“Off the record? It’s just been a mess of things – we’re way behind schedule and tensions are high,” Carlos moves to lean against the cashier counter, as if to take some weight off himself. “There’s something missing from my show, and I can’t figure out what.”

“I’m glad it’s not a break-up.” Seb pauses. That probably made no sense to Carlos, so he adds, “yesterday morning, someone came in crying that their partner left them.” He pauses again. “It was, well, messy.”

That earns a small huff from Carlos – almost a laugh. “I’m flattered that you think I’m hot enough to be dating anybody.”

Something warm creeps up the back of Seb’s ears. Oh no. He really hopes he isn’t flushing. “If you’re famous enough to need a – what was it – ” he stutters, trying to find the words, “a non-disclosure agreement, surely you can’t have any trouble finding someone.”

“I’m just,” Carlos lets out a long breath, “a lot, I guess.”

“Don’t they say the more the merrier?” Seb tries to smile. “Being ‘a lot’ is much better than being boring.”

Carlos gives him a half-hearted shrug, shifting his coat around his shoulders. “What about you? Where do you disappear off to when your scary sister takes over?”

“Georgie will grow on you. I teach piano.”

“Your side hustle is a piano?”

Seb shrugs back at him. The pay is good, he enjoys still being able to play an instrument, and “I also sometimes help milk cows in a farm upstate.”

“You just – ” Carlos points at him with his chrysanthemum stalk, “you don’t seem the type.”

“Oh?”

“You’re wearing flannel, you work in a flowershop – I don’t know, I thought you’d be into books?”

“Stereotyping,” Seb grins, tying up the gladioli into a neat bouquet with the rest of the flowers. “No, wait – in your Broadway vocabulary: typecasting.”

Carlos’ smile tips up to one side, friendly and kind. “Alright, then. Where’d you learn how to play the piano?”

The question shouldn’t hurt as much as it does. He could just say the vague answer he always gives: I was seven and I thought it was cool. But he’s never been a good liar, and it isn’t Carlos’ fault that Seb dropped out of a perfectly good college because he was unhappy.

“That’s an answer for another time,” Seb says instead, pushing the finished bouquet towards Carlos. “That’ll be thirty five dollars.”

For a moment, Carlos blinks at him. “Really?”

Seb nods, forcing a smile. “Really.”

“Then I suppose I’ll have to come back here,” Carlos pushes his glasses up his nose as he rummages through his pockets. This time around, he takes out a hundred-dollar bill, placing it on the counter. “Keep the change.”

“What?”

“An apology for typecasting you,” Carlos holds the bouquet with one hand, his other hand still clutching onto the lone chrysanthemum stalk Seb had given him. “I can’t count tips anyway.”

Shaking his head, Seb tries to slide the change over to him too. “I can’t take this.”

Carlos steps away from the counter, walking backwards to the door. “Use it to bribe your sister so she keeps the scissors away from me? Or to buy yourself a book.”

“Very funny,” Seb knows when he’s fighting a losing battle. He quickly slips the change into the tip jar. “In that case,” ducking under the counter to find one of the giftboxes his parents came up with – a small potted cactus inside each of them – he hands one over, “this is for you.”

The box is plain and innocuous, with a simple thank you! message scrawled across the top. He watches as Carlos gingerly takes it. The small frown is back.

“What is this?

Seb moves to open the door from him before he realises just what Seb had given him. “Don’t worry – it doesn’t need a lot of water to survive.”

“Thank you?”

The end of Carlos’ voice lilts up with the question, and Seb finds that his own smile isn’t quite as forced anymore.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” Seb grins. For the first time in a long time, it doesn’t feel like a line he says out of rote habit. It sounds true, so he adds, “come back soon.”

Carlos gives him a small salute. “Not before noon.”

Seb climbs up the stairs tucked behind the flowershop, into the apartment above it. He passes by Georgie’s door to drop off her laundry before he slips into his own room.

He’s grinning. Kourtney asking for help with her levels could only mean one thing. When he first met her four years ago – she had been buying flowers for an event at her mother’s dance school – Kourtney barely thought she could sing. Seb supposes that’s why they’d become such good friends.

They were both hiding where they knew it was safe: Seb behind his flowers and the piano, Kourtney behind her make-up brush.

Now, though, he’s glad that at least she’s stepping out of the shadows.

Seb puts his phone down. She can’t possibly be –

Her Carlos can’t be the Carlos who Seb had just helped out yesterday?

But choreographer.

He itches to search. If Carlos had been that surprised about Seb not knowing him, surely there’d be answers online. Surely, though, it would cross some lines? Carlos deserves his privacy.

And yet, wouldn’t it be better for Seb to know – so that he wouldn’t say the wrong things to Carlos?

It claws at him, and he can’t quite stop himself from opening up his search app. What was Carlos’ last name? He doesn’t remember, so he tries ‘carlos broadway choreographer’ –

An article pops up from two years ago: Carlos Rodriguez Wins Drama Desk Award For Outstanding Choreography, Breaks Record At 21.

That’s – okay. That’s impressive. Seb loves musicals, he would kill for the chance to be onstage. Alright, maybe not kill, but maim? He doesn’t have the training, though, so he knows he’d never make it past auditions.

Still, his playlists are filled with Broadway cast albums, and maybe the only reason he’d never heard of Carlos before was because choreographers rarely came onstage to sing.

Seb scrolls further down, wincing at some of the pictures. Was this why Carlos had been so sensitive about not sharing his number?

Something about Carlos’ trusts settles uneasy over Seb – because going through the articles, seeing all of it laid out, it feels like breaking that trust.

The articles sound nothing like the tired but kind person who had walked into Seb’s flowershop just yesterday, and it’s more than jarring.

Broadway Rising Star Carlos Rodriguez Spotted In Los Cabos

Leaked Photographs of Carlos Rodriguez Casts New Light On Broadway Star

Antoine Dumont and Carlos Rodriguez Caught On Camera

Carlos Rodriguez on Men and Coming Out Young

Broadway Workshop Rumored To Drop Carlos Rodriguez Over Creative Disputes

Forest of Boys: Carlos Rodriguez Addresses Controversy And What It Means To Be Yourself

Carlos Rodriguez Spotted On Date With Gina Porter?

And there, at the bottom of the page is a Playbill article from two months ago. Seb looks up, glancing around his small room, half-afraid of being caught snooping.

He really shouldn’t. It’s none of his business – whatever Carlos was doing about his life, Seb should’ve given Carlos the choice of telling him about it.

But the article stares up at him, and –