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“Yeah, can I get a dozen red roses?” Lip asks the girl at the counter. He fiddles with his wallet as she nods, pokes through it to count his cash again.
“I’m sure just a few would be fine,” Ian says behind him. “Tami seems pretty reasonable to me.”
Lip snorts.
“Yeah, well, she has expensive taste,” he retorts. “And I don’t have the best track record, so…”
“So a dozen red roses,” Ian repeats.
“Yeah.” Lip sighs. “Then maybe she’ll forget we’re spending Valentine’s day back in an RV because our house got sold out from under us.”
Ian wants to say something, wants to reassure him. Gets as far as clapping one hand onto Lip’s shoulder, shaking him a little back and forth, before the girl working there comes back with his order.
“Only had ten left,” she says, sounding exhausted. She sets a glass vase on the table, brushing off invisible dust with fingers taped up in bandages. “Will that be enough?”
Lip hesitates. Ian glances at him, then at the girl, clearly tired and dreading the response.
“It’ll be fine,” he says, and shakes Lip again when his brother looks at him. “We’ll even pay for the whole twelve.”
“We’ll what?” Lip asks, eyes wide. “Ian, I’m not made out of—”
“And I need to pick up something, too,” Ian talks over him, pulling out his own wallet, “so you can put it all together.”
Lip quiets. Tucks away his money with a bitten lip and a soft nudge of thanks, still too proud to say it but not so stupid to refuse the help.
“Let me guess,” the salesgirl sighs, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Three more wisps fall from her braid to take it’s place, but she ignores them. “You need a dozen roses, too? Pink okay?”
Ian laughs.
“Uh, no,” he says, and hastens to continue when he catches the look on her face. “No to the roses, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with pink.”
“Wait,” Lip interjects, behind him now. “What’s wrong with roses?”
“Nothing,” Ian tells him, rolling his eyes at the saleswoman. She smiles, a small thing, commiserating. “Tami will love them.”
“But Mickey, uh,” Ian starts, then stops and laughs again. “He wanted these special flowers for our wedding, you know. Stargazer lilies.”
He hadn’t meant it as an instruction, but the girl behind the counter nods anyway, and steps away into the back. Ian shrugs, figuring she knows what she’s doing, and turns to face his brother.
“This place wasn’t here yet, then,” he keeps on. “And it was short notice.” He scuffs a shoe on the tile floor, lips quirking into a wry almost-smile. “And the only place in town that had them in stock wouldn’t sell.”
Lip makes a noise, and Ian looks up to see his face twisted in confusion.
“What kind of flower shop doesn’t sell flowers?” he asks. “Was it a front or something?”
Ian chokes off another laugh.
“A front?” he repeats, shaking his head. “Are we in some kind of mobster movie now?”
“Hey, you never know,” Lip retorts. “Stranger things have happened, even with all the fucking gentrification around here. Hell, pretty sure Mickey’s family is basically the mob.”
Ian has to give him that.
“Well, it wasn’t anything like that,” he tells Lip, then frowns. “At least, I don’t think so.” He looks into Lip’s eyes, makes sure to stress the right words in what he says next. “It was just the kind of place that doesn’t sell to people like us.”
“Poor people?” Lip guesses, still not getting it.
“Gay people,” Ian corrects him, and watches Lip’s face fall.
“Oh,” his brother says. The brother that knew first, that gave him shit but helped him out. The brother that was there, that supported him, that didn’t let him down. “That.”
“Yeah,” Ian echoes, and smiles at the obvious disdain in Lip’s voice for someone so stupid, so cruel. “That.”
“Here are your lilies, sir,” the shopkeep says behind them, and they turn to her as one. Sitting there on the counter, perfectly picked and placed, are a dozen red-hearted stargazer lilies.
Ian steps forward. Raises his hand, lets one finger trail over the edge of a soft petal. Watches it fall back into place amongst the others, bright and all but glittering under the artificial lights of the store.
“They’re perfect,” he breathes, and the woman smiles. It takes years off her tired face, puts energy back into her hands as she reaches for the ribbon.
“Mickey picked those?” Lip asks. “Seems kinda…”
“Romantic?” Ian finishes for him. “Sweet? Loving?”
“Was gonna say tasteful,” Lip corrects him, “but sure. That too.”
Ian chuckles.
“He’d surprise you, then,” he says. “Mickey is the most tasteful romantic I know.”
“Really,” Lip says flatly, not even a question.
“Really,” Ian answers softly. “You know he makes me breakfast in bed at least once a week?” he asks. “Even if it means he has to get up before my run.”
“I do that for Tami,” Lip argues, then stops himself. “Well, maybe once a month,” he amends. “Or once every two.”
“He calls me almost every time he leaves,” Ian keeps on, ignoring Lip’s reponse. “Even if we’re only apart for a few hours.”
“That seems…healthy?” Lip says, more of a question than a statement.
“And he always reminds me I have his heart,” Ian finishes. “That he tattoed me right into it, that…”
He trails off. Watches the woman behind the counter tie off the ribbon of the bouquet she made him, and bites his lip.
“Actually,” he starts softly, reaching out a hand to cover the stems. “Could I get these in a vase?”
She pauses. Looks up at him, eyes wary.
“We only have one left,” she says slowly, “and I’m afraid it’s a little bit—”
“I saw it,” Ian interrupts her. “And it’s perfect.”
Her smile returns. She nods at him, just once, and goes to the window. Takes a sculpted vase down from the display, and carries it back to the counter.
“Woah,” Lip says when he sees it. “That’s a little bit out there, isn’t it?”
Ian shakes his head, eyes on the way bandaged hands carefully wind individual stems through selected openings.
“It’s perfect,” he repeats, and accepts it with eager hands once it’s finished. “It means something.”
“That you have some sort of weird heart disease?” Lip jokes, but Ian just keeps smiling.
“He’ll get it,” he says, and turns to the register. “How much?” he asks, and gets ready to pay.
Nothing is too much for the man that has his heart.
