Work Text:
"S'matter, Ace?"
Bob Orton sat in the back corner of the flower shop, slumped in a folding chair that looked ready to buckle beneath his frame. He stared at the floor, utterly sullen, spinning a pink cowboy hat between his hands. The aggressively cheerful display of flower arrangements crowding in on all sides only served to deepen his air of dejection.
"Hey. You're making my bouquets wilt over there."
Adrian Adonis was busy trimming stems at a nearby workbench. He could sense the dark cloud gathering over Bob's head.
A vague panic clutched at Adrian's throat for a moment. This simply wouldn't do; not after the day's events. He wished Jimmy was here, but his manager was out on business, seemingly in five different places as usual. Adrian could always rely on the energetic little man to buoy his spirits—to calm the fickle current of his thoughts. In his absence, Adrian needed something to hold onto. Bob wasn't generally forthcoming with praise and affection as Jimmy was, but Adrian found the tall, rangy bodyguard to be a solid anchor upon which he could moor himself when a storm threatened to sweep him away.
He needed that anchor today.
Adrian sweetened his tongue, running it in a delicate arc along the very underside of his top lip so as not to disturb the red lipstick he had applied earlier.
"Aw c'mon Acey... you can tell me anything." With the kittenish charm of Clara Bow herself, the florist raised his dark eyelashes and cast his most alluring look over into the corner.
Bob didn't even turn his head.
A bitter fang lodged in Adrian's chest as his face burned with sudden rancor. He could put up with the daily indignities of being mocked, be it the snickering and veiled insults in the locker room or the fans pelting him with garbage each night. He could take a chop, a punch, a boot to the face... but being ignored—
"Christ, I'm so sick of this John Wayne bullshit!" Adrian's fist came down with a bang on the countertop. Bob started, still growing accustomed to the mercurial temper that sometimes gripped his client. He scanned Adrian without a word, trying to figure out if this was an example of his hyperbolic sense of humour or if the man was genuinely enraged. It was impossible to tell some days.
Now that he had the cowboy's full attention, Adrian tossed his gleaming hair and continued in a lofty tone. "Robert Orton Junior, cut the crap and tell me what's eating you, or I cut those stupid fringes off your vest." The frenetic bottle-blonde snipped his pruning shears ostentatiously to underscore his point.
Bob rolled his eyes and grunted, settling back into his seat. "...Well."
Snip. Adrian held his tongue, keeping his eyes locked on the flower stems.
"S'just..."
The silence stretched.
"Y'know. Piper."
Adrian pressed the tip of his tongue against the roof of his mouth and tried to tamp down the sick pain welling up anew. He dared not look at his bodyguard. He still felt that sharp tooth sunk into him, and now a queasy sort of jealousy radiated out from it. What the hell did Ace have to say about Roddy? What reason could he possibly have to be so broken up over that maniac? What right did he have to throw the man's name in his face—
Snip.
"Hmph." Adrian's broad, lace-draped shoulders rose and fell as if Bob hadn't just pulled his heart up from the roots. "What about him?"
"You damn well know! You heard what all he said today."
It took everything Adrian had not to throw his shears clean across the room.
He closed his eyes, feeling dizzy. There in his mind stood a denim-clad kid in his early twenties, hazel eyes sparkling with mischief and that big goofy grin splitting his face as if the intervening years meant nothing at all. As if they were right back in the full bloom of their youth, tearing up and down the Pacific Coast highways. All those nights in hostile small-town bars, drinking elbow-to-elbow in the corner with their backs against the wall, both their hearts brimming with rage, hating everything but each other—Christ, they had been so young.
Adrian gripped his shears, fighting the tremor in his hands, willing them to return to their task. The last time they had shaken like this, he wrapped his leather jacket tightly around them, folding it in front of his torso like a shield before walking out into the glare of lights to meet the foul screams of the crowd. The day Adrian chose to show the world who he was—who he really was, he chose to do it with Roddy sitting next to him, holding the mic. Elbow to elbow.
"Who cares what that fuckin' scrub thinks?" Adrian spat.
It had been less than a year since he shed that jacket, the protective layer that had become a part of his own skin. He had looked his dearest friend in the eye and gave away his old identity, the essence of who he had been for thirty years. And there, in defiance of those jeering rednecks, Roddy had bounced for joy in his chair, squealing as he hugged the jacket tight to his own body. "Oh, I love you! Thank you!" Adrian's world had changed forever at that moment.
Bob coughed. "Well he... He used to be my friend, is all."
Snip.
Adrian sucked in a breath. Instinctively, he brought his thumb up to his mouth. Blood mixed with peaty soil on his tongue. Ever the gardener, Adrian wasn't bothered by the taste; he was born of the earth and he'd return again one day. But he didn't appreciate the visceral proof that he was still capable of hurt. He could be so damn careless with himself sometimes.
"The man's a walking advertisement for Valium. You're well rid of him." Adrian tore a long piece of floral tape and stretched it hastily between his fingers before the blood welled up again. "Trust me."
Bob huffed. "That's real easy for you to say."
A caustic laugh escaped despite Adrian's best efforts as he wound the tape in haphazard loops around his thumb. "Easy, sure. You dunno what the hell you're talking about."
He continued trimming as if nothing had happened, ignoring the dark stain setting into the crepe paper, the promise of sharp pain that would greet him when he tore it off later.
Bob continued, tossing his hat in irritation. "You know what I mean! I had that man's back for years. And I still keep track of those things! You're used to not givin' a damn what anyone thinks about—" He caught his hat and looked at the dent Roddy had put in it. "About all this."
"Y'know what Cowboy—" Adrian bit back a truly vicious reply. He thought he heard Bob's raspy baritone hitch just a bit.
Dammit, of course. The field of vision widened on his most cherished memory. Ace had been standing right there at Roddy's side, keeping silent watch over the both of them when Adrian handed that jacket to his friend. He'd even offered a chair, like a gentleman. How could he forget something like that?
Adrian swore he was trying. He tried every goddamn day. Why couldn't he move through life with the same easy grace he displayed in the ring? Sure, his mouth was every bit as nimble as his feet, but it never seemed to be running in the right direction.
He took a deliberate breath, letting his chest expand until he felt a stitch give along the bodice of his dress.
Snip.
"I think the pink really suits you."
"Dammit this ain't a joke—"
"No it ain't." Adrian's hand came down on the counter again. "It ain't a fuckin joke, Bob. And neither am I." The sudden vacuum left in the wake of his anger was almost as jarring as the outburst itself.
The edge had fallen away from Bob's voice by the time it floated across the room. "I never said you were." Adrian heard his reproach all the same.
A thick, heavy lock of hair fell down into his eyes. Adrian brushed it roughly aside, fighting back the urge to simply rip it out. Grace Kelly never had to deal with this shit—then again, Adrian would kill for a fraction of her poise.
How he wished he could cultivate elegance as if it were one of his prize orchids. How he longed to be one of those miraculous, beautiful things sprung from blood and bone and shit and dirt.
"Okay Ace," Adrian started again, lowering his voice, softening the edges. Trying. Trying damn it. "So lemme get this straight then."
Snip.
"Piper thinks less of you now, does he?"
"I guess."
"And why's that, Ace?"
Bob tucked his chin to his chest, unwilling to answer.
"Because I gave you that hat, right? Because you're my bodyguard now? You don't have to say it. I already know."
Snip.
"Piper figures, maybe that makes you just a little bit less of a man, doesn't it Ace? Looking out for me, hanging out in my flower shop, being seen around town with me."
"Adrian—"
"Now you must be thinking, if your dear, good friend Roddy is willing to say all that to your face, just imagine what the other guys are saying behind your back, right? Just imagine what they think of you."
"Euh..."
"It's bad enough knowing everyone's probably having a damn good laugh at your expense, isn't it? But what's worse is, Piper might just have a point. Maybe, you're thinking, they've all got a point. Maybe... being around me is making you just a little bit less of a man. And maybe that's got you feeling just a little bit ashamed, hasn't it?"
Snip.
"Now you tell me, Cowboy: how should I take that?"
When Adrian glanced to the other end of the room, sculpted eyebrow aloft, he saw that Bob had practically disappeared into his chair.
The Adorable One set down his shears. Bracing his fist against his lower jaw, he pushed hard and cracked his neck. It sounded as if a gunshot rang out in the room.
"Y'know that ache you're feeling in your chest right now, Ace?" One by one, Adrian popped his knuckles, rough as rawhide from years of scrapes and bruising. "It's the first thing that hits me every morning, before I even open my eyes."
Adrian flexed his hand, shaking it out briefly before arranging his stems in a neat pile. "I think you'll find that not giving a shit takes a lot out of a man. It ain't easy, and it sure as shit ain't pretty sometimes."
He held a spray of delphinium up to the light, exquisite blooms emerging from his calloused fingertips. "So you need to toughen up, buttercup. Or you need to walk away now. It's nothing personal, just survival." They were so impossibly blue.
Adrian gathered up the whole cluster of trimmed delphs, the broad span of his palms cradling their fragile heads. Bringing them up to his face, he breathed in the smell of earth, growth, life. As the lush flowers played across his skin, a wanton impulse overcame him. He parted his lips and caressed a petal gently between them—a momentary indulgence.
"Listen," Bob's tongue darted out over his lower lip. "I'm not ashamed of a damn thing. I don't mind protecting you. Or being around you... or wearing this thing." He thumbed the edge of the hat's brim. "That ain't it—"
"Then what is it, Cowboy?" Adrian raised his lashes toward his protector once more, the intensity of his gaze challenging the other man even as soft petals tickled the tip of his nose. Perhaps it was just as well that he was no dewy young wisp, no insipid ingenue; he envisioned Theda Bara weaving a spell with her dark-rimmed eyes, golden snakes coiled at her breasts.
Ace gulped, transfixed. Adrian did get some satisfaction from that.
The cowboy shook his head and fumbled on. "Look, I like you just fine, Adrian. And I promised to back you up. If Piper comes after you, I'll knock him flat on his ass. I'm just..." His shoulders stooped as he picked at a scuff in his jeans. "I'm not used to losing friends, is all."
A cryptic smile drifted across the florist's lips. "Why do you think I came to you in the first place?"
Even with a mess of curls partly obscuring his face, Bob had such a hangdog look about him that Adrian couldn't help but feel a pang of softness. The emotion quivered out in the open: tender, delicate, in need of shelter.
"Here," Adrian gestured to the hat in Bob's lap. "Lemme fix that."
Without a word, Ace tossed his hat over. There was a long silence, broken up by soft rustling at Adrian's workbench.
Bob chewed on what Adrian had said to him; he'd never really had to think much about this kind of thing before. He glanced over to the workbench. It had never occurred to Bob that he might be sharing his own hurt with this man who made himself up like a colorblind starlet, who had bits of potting soil lodged under his nails and smeared on his cheek and ground into his bright blonde hair, who muttered and cursed ferociously as he fussed over the vivid pink hat that had been a gift to his new friend. It must be a lonesome life, his. Bob looked down at his boots once more.
Just as Bob was starting to think Adrian must be messing with him, a set of sturdy ankles in kitten-heel shoes invaded his field of vision and playfully kicked the toe of his boot. Bob looked up into the rather pleased face of his charge. Adrian deposited the hat on Bob's bouncing knee.
Bob held it out in front of his face, staring.
Adrian had wreathed the brim with a lavish arrangement of flowers. A riot of colour wound its way around the thin leather hatband—delicate violets, sweet pea and daffodils interwoven with hardy forsythia and splashes of freesia. Along the left side, a single voluptuous plume of blue larkspur jutted out like a middle finger to the world.
The florist surveyed his arrangement with pleasure. Not his very finest work, Adrian admitted, but what it lacked in elegance it made up for in audacity.
With a smirk, Adrian tugged the hat from Bob's hands and perched it at a jaunty angle on the crown of his bodyguard's shaggy head. "There, much better."
Beneath the brim, Adrian could see a bashful smile creeping across the cowboy's face, which was flushed almost as bright as the hat itself. Adrian couldn't resist. He pinched Bob's cheek and gave it an affectionate little slap.
"Told you pink suits you."