Chapter Text
Soft roses with petals a light, dusty pink, the color of a girl blushing. Roses that smell the way perfume wishes it smelled, floral and dry, the scent of a rainy day. Their petals are bent because they aren’t grown for consumption. They aren’t meant to be bought, so they don’t have to be perfect.
And Bruce doesn’t mean to start taking them.
It’s the little brown spot on a petal one misty Saturday morning when the sun is barely peaking over the horizon that catches his attention. He can’t look away from the crooked leaves or the sharp thorns of the rose and, without quite thinking about it, he pinches it off and carries it with him.
And the next Saturday, which is dewy and spitting rain, he does it again.
He doesn’t think about it as he reaches over the fence around this stranger’s rose garden. He just picks one each week and curls his fingers around their waxy stems.
Pink roses fade and yellow ones bloom, then white which brown easily and smell of precisely nothing. Their petals fall like rain only a week later and a red rose blooms in their place. It’s as Bruce reaches for one that’s off-looking, with two whirls instead of one, that he gets caught.
“You know, there’s a flower shop just one block over.”
Bruce can’t quite stop his motions in time, and the flower snaps off in his hand. He stares at it, accusatory, and can feel his face flushing with embarrassment. “I, that is, it’s not really…” He gulps. “These are your flowers?”
The guy is leaning against the fence, casual as can be. Bruce must have been in a daze not to have noticed him. “Yeah,” he says. “But it’s okay. I want people to enjoy them. That’s why I grow ‘em.”
Bruce is still blushing. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I, it won’t happen again.”
“Nah.” The guy suddenly vaults over the fence, landing with a dull thump on the sidewalk beside Bruce. He loops his thumbs in his pockets and grins. “Just want to make sure they’re for a good cause.”
“Um, they are. They really, really are.”
“Oh?” He tips his head to one side, grin taking on a slightly mischievous air. “She must be real nice.”
Bruce stares at the rose in his hand. “Yes.”
“Aw, Freckles,” the guy says, momentarily throwing Bruce for a loop before he realizes the guys probably been watching him for at least a few weeks without knowing his name. “You like her?”
Bruce can’t think how to answer that question. He looks up at the man imploringly and the man laughs, punching him lightly on the shoulder.
“Keep bringing her flowers. That’s how you hang onto someone.”
“I don’t think that will work,” Bruce says before he can stop himself.
“What?” The man blinks. “You seem like a total catch. I mean, there’s the stealing, which is usually a point against but this is clearly for a good cause. And you’re cute. Really, she’d be silly to let you get away.”
“It isn’t…” Bruce glances away. The rose in his hand feels heavy. “…Like that, exactly.”
“C’mon,” the guy says. He swings an arm around Bruce’s shoulders and starts to walk away with him, going the way Bruce always goes. “I can talk some sense into her.”
“It’s not,” Bruce tries again. “Like that.”
But his protests are ignored.
The man is named Clint, and he won’t hear anything Bruce tries to say about how it isn’t like that. “You’re a catch,” Clint says, and Bruce kids himself into believing Clint doesn’t look sad that Bruce has apparently already been caught.
He tries to think of how to explain it as they walk in tandem down the sidewalk, but it’s hard. The words stick in his throat and the smell of roses is suddenly darkly cloying. He has to focus on not gripping the rose too hard. His palm is already scratched from the thorns.
He doesn’t know how to say the woman he is visiting is his mother.
He’s never talked about her death with anyone.
When the cemetery comes into view, though, something clicks for Clint. Bruce expects him to back away, throw up his hands, and make excuses. But he just goes solemn and understanding as he follows Bruce into the sea of stones jutting from the ground.
He places the rose, half-wilted now from how hard he gripped it, atop the grass by Rebecca Banner, Beloved Mother. Then he steps back and just thinks for a second. He doesn’t talk to her; that isn’t what he needs from these visits. He glances at Clint out of the corner of his eye and Clint’s face is guarded and wary as he stares at the tombstone.
“You okay?” Bruce whispers. It seems loud.
Clint frowns at him. “I’m supposed to ask you that,” he says, sounding almost offended. Then he glances away, chagrined. “I mean, I’m the idiot who messed up your mourning…thing.”
“No, you didn’t,” Bruce assures him. Something about Clint’s tense posture makes him go on. “I chose to pick your flowers instead of going to the store because they’re imperfect.”
Clint looks at him, silently waiting for him to continue.
Bruce takes a deep breath and says, “I don’t want to delude myself into thinking my life was perfect, or that it would have been perfect if she’d lived. Life’s not like that. Your roses are bent sometimes, or sometimes they’re wilted, and that’s what I like. That’s how flowers are supposed to grow. I guess they remind me of…me.”
The corner of Clint’s mouth tips upward, soft and kind. “I guess they are going to a good cause,” he says. His voice is rough. He clears his throat and glances back at the stone, saying, “I was just, just thinking about someone in a place like this who I haven’t seen in a while.”
Bruce nods. He says nothing because silence feels more appropriate.
When they step out of the cemetery an ephemeral amount of time later, Clint turns to him and asks, “She’s nice?”
Bruce closes his eyes, remembering. “Yes, very.”
“Can I join you again?”
“Yes,” Bruce says.
Bruce leaves early the next Saturday and stops by the flower shop. He buys a purple lily from the discount bin and pulls off one of its petals. When he presents it to Clint the man goes soft and holds it close, inhaling its subtle scent with an absent smile.