Work Text:
“How do I passive aggressively say fuck you in flower?”
Uh...
Historia, elbow deep in a finicky hydrangea, blinked.
The woman was tall, with narrowed eyes, dark hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, and a mouth who’s smile had filed it’s two weeks last month. She had one hand shoved in the front pocket of her sweats, and the other, covered in an eclectic assortment of rings, was holding a twenty dollar bill about a foot away from Historia’s nose.
The woman (who was actually really attractive now that Historia thought about it- not, of course, that Historia was thinking about it) had stormed into the store about fifteen seconds ago, the bell on top of the door ringing aggressively, and had turned around in a rather comedic circle before spotting Historia kneeling next to a hydrangea. She’d walked over, proceeded to shove money in Historia’s face, and then had hit her with the million dollar question: how did you say ‘fuck you’ in flower language?
Historia laughed nervously.
Nervously? Seriously. Grow up.
“Sorry, are you looking for a bouquet or...” she asked, ducking out of the way of the aggressive twenty dollar bill and wiping her dirt covered hands on her green “Reiss Flowers” apron, trying not to make too direct eye contact with the woman.
“Yeah. Something big, aggressive, preferably conveys the maximum amount of loathing a single human soul can contain.” the woman said dryly.
“Right.” Historia said. She stumbled over the pot of mulch she’d left at her feet (embarrassing herself right off of the bat, very on brand) and righted herself with a hasty laugh and a, “Let’s see what I can do.”
The woman shoved the money back into her pocket, and stalked after Historia who had just become uncomfortably aware that the humidity inside the greenhouse-adjacent store had left a massive sweat stain on the back of her shirt.
“You got a name?” the woman asked, as Historia hurried behind the counter at the front of the store, slyly wiping sweat from her face.
“Historia.”
“Pretty.”
“You’re pretty.”
Aw, crap.
The awkward second where Historia, had she been any more talented, could have managed to play whatever the actual hell she just said off casually, flitted past.
In a panic, Historia briefly attempted a cough to cover up the incriminating words, realized it sounded more like she was gagging (theater had never been her thing), and whirled around, face flaming.
Behind her, she heard the woman either scoff or snort-unclear which one- and seriously considered using daphne berries to put herself into a coma.
Actually, the coma was sometimes preceded by convulsions and headaches, so it might take her an embarrassing few days to go out. Provided, of course, that the woman currently wondering if she was insane or just mentally deficient, didn’t call the ambulance.
And that would be even worse, wouldn’t it? The paramedics would come and the woman would have to say something along the lines of, “I came in here for some flowers and then this chick called me pretty and then poisoned herself right in front of me.”
Okay, hold on, she needed to grab something while she was turned around otherwise the woman would just think that-
“Are you alright?”
Jesus Christ, fucking hell-
“Sorry! I’ve just lost track of my notebook.”
“Notebook?”
Notebook? You idiot, you don’t need a notebook!
She puttered about for a minute, purposefully keeping her back to the woman because she’d rather have the sweat stain show than her beet red face, before spotting a pad of paper. She snatched it up and turned back around, slamming it a little too hard on the counter between them.
The woman looked vaguely confused, and Historia plastered on the brightest smile she could manage.
“Sorry. Where were we... right, how to say “f-you” in flowers.”
“F-you?” the woman said. “Cute.”
And then she smiled.
Her mouth was softer when she wasn’t frowning, and her eyes looked warmer and at least somewhat kinder-
Wait- “cute?”
The woman had just called her cute. If she’d been by herself, which that and a phone were usually the prerequisites for flirting at this point in her life, she might have screamed and ran dramatically to her bed.
Seeing as she had no bed, and was also standing directly in front of the woman who’d complimented her, she did no such things.
Historia was well aware that the smile she’d applied to her face was starting to look a bit psychotic, but there were only so many things she could focus on at one time, and currently, her consciousness was leapfrogging between breathing, thinking, and the way the woman’s brown eyes were now staring at her with the smallest hint of a teasing sparkle.
The woman smirked and Historia’s lungs collapsed in on themselves gracefully as her eyes locked in and refused to look anywhere else for a solid thirty seconds.
Did this count as unsafe working conditions? This was absolutely violating some sort of OSHA regulations.
Historia bit her tongue, and let out a breath.
Focus, you idiot. You’re acting like a teenager. You are a 23 year old with a job, get it together.
“Alright,” she coughed loudly, and pointedly stared at a hanging gardenia display across the store.” “So geraniums typically represent stupidity and yellow carnations should work well for disappointment. Oh, who is this for, by the way? I mean if it’s for a girlfriend- or boyfriend, or partner, sorry- then maybe we should dull it down a bit. I don’t want to insult anyone, but maybe you do so that’s alright if that’s what you want.”
Oh, she was really starting to feel like an idiot.
“My chemistry professor.”
She doesn’t have a girlfriend. Thank God.
“What was the offense?” Historia asked.
“She was the worst lecturer of all time.” the woman rolled her eyes. “And she would always make a point to call on the people that never put their hand up. She took away participation credit if you got an answer wrong. And she also graded tests on the largest fucking curve imaginable.”
The woman let out a little huff, and Historia was physically unable to stop from staring at her lips as they pouted.
When she got a hold of herself a second later, she realized that the woman was trying to hold back some sort of smile.
God, you’re so obvious. Idiot.
“In that case, let's add foxglove, meadowsweet, and orange lilies.” Historia stumbled on with another crazed giggle, and the happy little glow in her chest ignited into a full on forest fire inferno when the woman smiled with her again. “That’ll take care of insincerity, uselessness, and just general hatred.”
She thought about it for a moment longer. Would the purple foxglove actually hold up against an orange lily?
Also, would she give up both her first and second born child to see this woman smile again?
“Yes.” She decided that both were more than plausible. “It’ll be striking of course, and we’ll have to figure out what fillers to put in it to make it seem a little more cohesive, but it should get the point across. Now, we could add in some geraniums which are typically associated with stupidity - or, well, silliness really, but the same thing when it really comes down to it...” Historia trailed off.
The woman had leaned into the counter, ( her fucking arms could not be real, holy shit ), and was nodding allong to the in depth analysis of geraniums.
Hello, Historia. Kindly close and sew your mouth shut, yeah?
“I’m sorry, I’ll shut up.” she said stupidly, eyes darting back and forth from the woman’s rippling fucking pectorals to her glittering eyes like she had mad cow disease.
“No, go on. I find you interesting.” the woman said, cocking her head as Historia’s throat started to close up.
She briefly considered running with the mad cow disease theme and just slamming her head into the counter between them so that she could pass out and end her suffering.
But that would pretty much put them in the same situation as earlier, except now the woman would have to say to the paramedics something like, “Yeah, she was ranting about geraniums and then she slammed her head into the counter. Sort of looked like she did it on purpose...”
She’d been staring too long.
“I’m an International Relations major at SMU,” she said to fill the sudden silence, and then like an idiot she untied her whole entire aperon to point at the grey sweatshirt underneath with SMU written across the front. “See? I like politics.”
The apron flopped onto the ground, dragging the rest of her meager intelligence with it.
“I like politics?”
What. The Fuck. Was. Wrong. With. Her.
But the woman was still smiling and she nodded when she saw the sweatshirt.
“Nice.” she said. “I’m a chem major, if you’d believe it. I’ve decided not to let one crotchety professor screw me over.”
Historia snorted, her mind flashing to Professor Zoe who’d done a physical flip off of the third row of desks the other week to prove something about human behavior. (Privately, Historia was actually pretty certain that Professor Zoe had just wanted to do a backflip, because it hadn’t seemed expressly related to the lecture.)
“I’m Ymir, by the way.” the woman said. She cocked her head. “I’m surprised I’ve never seen you on campus before.”
“I’m a bit of a recluse, unfortunately.” Historia admitted, shrugging. “When I’m not here, I’m studying at the library, and when I’m not there, I’m studying at home.”
“That makes sense,” Ymir said. And then she grinned as if she knew something Historia didn’t when she followed it up with, “You have one of those faces I’d have a hard time forgetting, you know?”
Historia’s knees threatened, with more gusto than Hitler’s occupation of Austria-Hungary, to give out on her.
...hard time forgetting...
You know?
“Yeah,” she breathed out, before realizing what she’d said, and snapping her mouth shut, face aflame. “Right. Yes. Well. How about I get started on you- your floral arrangement, that is- the flowers. Yes.”
She made to move out from behind the counter, forgetting all about the apron which had conveniently settled itself around her ankles, not fully untied yet.
It sent her pitching forwards with a screech, and by the direct interference of the Gods above, straight into Ymir. Her hands hit the woman's chest, and in a blind panic, her body decided to engage in the most radical escape maneuver it had ever performed.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry! I swear I’m usually so coordinated, I have no idea where that came from!”
She’d pushed backwards so hard she’d actually tipped the other direction. She wheeled her arms about the other way, narrowly missing Ymir’s head (because that actually was pretty much the only thing that could have made this whole situation worse), and violently attempted to right herself.
She stopped moving.
Ymir had gripped her upper arms, keeping their faces a solid hands distance apart, and hadn’t let her go.
Ymir’s hands were massive. Jesus Christ, she was going to pass out.
They stared at each other for a few seconds, Historia with her hands clapped to her face in a mix of shame and shock. When she lowered them, it took a few seconds for her gay-addled brain to realize that Ymir was staring at her mouth.
“Why are you looking at my mouth?”
Ohmygod.
Shut. The. Fuck. Up. You. Fucking. Idiot.
“Because I want to. Should I not?”
No, no. You should. It’s totally fine. Hey, do you want to like go out sometime or just have wildly passionate sex right here on the floor of my families flower shop. Sorry, was that too forward?
Ymir was smirking again and Historia let out a shaky exhale.
The woman had to know exactly what she was doing. There was no way she did shit like this without being acutely aware of its effect on weak willed individuals with no social life in her presence.
Alright, that was enough. She was a mature adult, damn it, and she had standards for herself.
Her arms burning where Ymir had touched her, Historia spun around and took off at what was as close to a sprint as she could manage naturally towards the isle with the foxgloves to avoid further embarrassment.
She could hear Ymir trailing along behind her.
Traditionally, staring at other people’s mouths constituted as a general signal that they were interested in what the aforementioned mouth could do. And then subsequently admitting that you wanted to stare was simply the proverbial cherry on the proverbial top.
(Ymir was so a top, by the way.)
The thought struck her a moment later: what if Ymir wasn’t gay? What if she just liked mouths?
Plenty of people had a mouth thing, right?
Historia had assumed, primarily because of the rings (gay), the sweatpants (gay?), and that beautifully lazy smile (not necessarily gay, but just knee breakingly attractive) that the woman was a flaming homo. But perhaps she’d been wrong.
Oh, lord. She’d been flirting with a straight woman. Okay, flirting was a bit of a stretch. She’d been ogling a straight woman, who was probably distinctly uncomfortable at the whole thing.
Was Ymir self conscious about her mouth fetish? Historia didn’t know for certain how rare mouth fetishes were, a quick Google search could probably fix that, but it couldn’t have been common. In fact, she’d probably been put down about it earlier in her life, which was now leading to incredible amounts of self doubt surrounding the whole thing, and Historia had just made her feel worse.
They reached the foxgloves and Historia pulled out shears without looking in Ymir’s direction.
She had to apologize. First of all, this woman was a paying customer and this was a reputable business who’s employee’s had no right to make people feel uncomfortable on the basis of unique sexual desires.
She went about gathering up the meadowsweet.
Secondly, she’d made the poor woman sit through enough of her bullshit. If the mouth thing hadn’t made her uncomfortable enough, the fact that Historia had spent most of today flicking her eyes between the woman's mouth, eyes, and hands should have done the trick.
Historia gathered the rest of the flowers up quickly, intensely aware of Ymir’s presence a few feet behind her at all times. She made certain to keep her out of her line of sight, if anything to avoid losing track of what she was doing and cutting off a finger.
When the flowers were finally gathered, they went to the counter in silence, and Historia wrapped the bouquet.
How the hell did one apologize for ruining someone’s day by making them uncomfortable about a (rather odd, to be honest) part of themselves.
She’d just have to go for it.
“I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable because of your mouth fetish.” Historia said in a rush, nearly shoving the bouquet in Ymir’s hands.
It took her a moment to realize that Ymir had just asked, “Hey, do you want to go out sometime?”
She dropped the flowers.
“Wait- what?” they said at the same time. Historia felt the giggle bubble up in her throat and kept it down by sheer willpower and shock alone.
“Do you not have a mouth fetish?” Historia asked dumbly a second later.
Ymir tilted her head, her face looking entirely too bemused, and then she let out a loud laugh.
“Is that seriously what you took away from that?” she snorted.
Historia choked.
“No- I mean, yes, but also no.” Apparently running her dumb mouth was something she enjoyed doing on a minute by minute basis now.
Ymir smiled in a way that made Historia’s mouth dry up, which conveniently stopped it from making noise altogether.
“So you don’t want to go out with me?” she asked with a teasing twinkle in her eye.
“No- wait, yes? I do!” Historia wasn’t sure if whatever had just come out of her mouth constituted a scream or a plea, or maybe something in between, but she didn’t much care because Ymir’s face had lit up in the world's most attractive smile for the second time that day.
“Cool. Give me your phone, yeah?”
Historia handed it over, unblinking.
Ymir took it from her and then stared at her, dimples twitching as she held back another smile.
“Just to be clear, this is me trying to give you my number. Do you want me to write it down somewhere or should I just...”
Historia snatched her phone back and unlocked it with embarrassingly shaky hands.
“Yeah, sorry, sorry.” She handed it back, open to the contacts screen.
When Ymir had finished typing in her phone number and handing Historia back the phone, she picked up the flowers.
Historia rang up her total, handed her the change, and watched as she walked to the door.
“Text me, alright?” Ymir smiled, the door halfway pushed open.
“Yeah.” Historia said, watching as Ymir strode out of the shop and back onto the street.
The little bell rang when the door shut.