Work Text:
The smell of gardenias wafted Chandler’s way as he passed them along the aisle full of colourful flowers. He’d always loved flowers in principle, but in practice, they weren’t for him. He couldn’t stand the smell of decay when bouquets had been in water too long, and it felt wasteful to throw them out too soon. On the other hand, he couldn’t keep a potted plant alive to save his life, so it was a good thing that he wasn’t there to pick up flowers for himself. A distant relative of his was celebrating her 70th birthday, so he was just there to order something to be sent to her house. He was trying to recall what flowers she liked, distracted by a huge display of roses in every possible colour, when he bumped into something.
“Ah!”
Correction: Someone.
“I’m so sorry!” Chandler said turning around to help the person he’d bumped into, mortified to see he’d hit them with enough force that they’d fallen down and their plant had hit the ground. Dirt was spilled all over the floor.
“I’m so sorry. I-“ he shook his head. For a moment he thought he’d somehow run into Kent, but the dark curly hair was too long to belong to his DC. They looked his way and he realised with a start that he’d not been far off as he recognised the person in front of him to be Erica: Kent’s twin sister.
She began to pick up the remains of her plant and put it back in the pot. Chandler squirmed in his spot. He was about to apologise again when she shot him a glance.
“Are you going to help or what?”
Chandler fidgeted with the jar of tiger balm in his pocket. Normally dirt wouldn’t be a problem, but the unexpectedness and the discomfort of the awkward situation had rattled him.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he emphasized. “I’ll of course pay for that one and a replacement for it.”
She let out a puff of air and looked a bit less intimidating. “You don’t have to worry about that. It’s a hardy plant. It’ll survive.”
“Oh,” Chandler stood there awkwardly as she finished putting as much dirt as it was possible to gather back into the pot.
When she grabbed the plant, he heard her let out a hiss as it cut into her hand. Crimson quickly gathered in her palm, but she looked more annoyed than hurt.
“Are you okay?” Chandler couldn’t help himself from asking.
“Yeah, I’m also hardy, so I’ll survive too.”
Chandler was relieved at how well she was taking it, but before he was completely out of the woods, she turned to him, a serious expression on her face.
He prepared for another apology when she said:
“Emerson likes to pretend he’s hardy too.”
Chandler blinked in confusion. It was somehow related to what she’d just said, but it still felt like a non-sequitur. He didn’t know how to respond.
“And don’t get me wrong, he is, but he’s still very easy to hurt, and I can’t stand seeing him get hurt.”
“Of course not,” Chandler said. He still felt like he was missing a part of the context of the conversation. Erica seemed to recognise this.
“What I’m saying is, you better not hurt him.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Chandler said a little too forcefully. He couldn’t help but feeling defensive at this comment.
“You might not, but the fact is that you’ve already hurt him plenty before, so I don’t really have too much faith in your dreams.”
Chandler wanted to defend himself again, but he shamefully realised that she was right.
He opened and closed the lid of his tiger balm in his pocket.
Where was this coming from? He’d talked to Erica several times before at work events where she’d either been invited by Kent or Mansell, and she’d never seemed this serious before. Normally Kent was the serious twin of the two of them.
She held his gaze until he looked away, but then she got a more characteristically playful look on her face.
“I’m just saying, if you break his heart, you’ve already seen that this snake plant doubles as a weapon and I’m not afraid to use it,” she stuck out her tongue to emphasise that the last part was merely in jest, but Chandler was caught in the middle of her sentence.
“Break his heart?” Chandler furrowed his brow.
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. He’s plenty hardy otherwise – you saw how quickly he bounced back from the striping – but he’s incredibly sensitive, so I just hope it works out between the two of you.”
“Works out?” Chandler echoed, and Erica looked at him suspiciously.
“Yeah?”
“What do you mean?”
She laughed incredulously. “He said he’d finally asked you out on a date after your last case and that you’d said yes.”
“That was a date?!”
“Oh, so you already went?”
“That was a date?” Chandler repeated. “No, no I’m not dating your brother!”
“Well fuck, you better tell him then.”
“He thinks it was a date?” Chandler sounded almost panicked.
“You didn’t know?”
“No! He never said anything like that. I just thought- I mean it’s not unusual to go for drinks after a case,” Chandler scrambled to justify himself.
“Fuck’s sake, Em,” Erica mumbled under her breath. She sighed. “Well, disregard my earlier untoward ramblings then. Heartbreak or not, this seems like a mistake on his part, but it’d probably do you good to clear it up with him, preferably in a nice way.”
“Y-yeah,” Chandler stammered.
They stood in silence for a few moments, both looking down at the remains of dirt on the ground, before Erica raised her hand in a salute. “Well, bye then,” she said and promptly left to escape the awkward situation.
Chandler remained. Not only rooted in place but stuck in the awkwardness. Kent thought they’d been on a date. How was he ever going to clear that up with him?
It plagued him for the rest of the day. How could Kent think that it had been a date? They’d just gone to a pub and chatted. There hadn’t been anything romantic about it. Or had there? Was Chandler just too dense to realise it? Had he led Kent on?
It still plagued him when he laid down to sleep at night, as he tried to recall and analyse every last detail of the night of the supposed date. There was little evidence, but it was there. Kent misspeaking. The fact that everyone else had mysteriously not wanted to go the pub so it had only been him and Kent. Kent laughing and being happier than he had been in a long time. But those were all circumstantial. Anyone could misspeak. The rest of the team had families and partners they hadn’t seen for the duration of the case, and Kent could just be happy about their successful arrest or any number of completely unrelated things. Chandler found it very hard to believe that he’d in any way be the cause of it.
And however much he tried to push it out of his mind, it still plagued him as he got ready for work the following day. No matter if Chandler had somehow led Kent on, or whether Kent had tricked him into a date, or it had all just been a big misunderstanding, the fact still stood that he needed to set things straight and he had no idea how.
He didn’t want to hurt Kent, but he couldn’t just continue on this false pretence either. That would only end up hurting him anyway.
Chandler stared out of the window of his car, up at the windows of the incident room. He was late. Miles had already called him even though it had only been 5 minutes, but that was what he got for always going in much earlier than he needed to – any delay seemed like an emergency. It felt like one for Chandler as well, but he hadn’t revealed it to Miles, who would surely have a field day if he found out. He’d blamed the traffic instead, which in London was an evergreen excuse. If he stayed there much longer though, one of his team were bound to spot his car, so he dragged himself out of the car, drew in a big breath, and entered the station.
It was late in the day before he finally got up the courage to ask Kent to come into his office. His nervousness made him sound a lot harsher than he meant to.
Kent anxiously got out of his chair with a background chorus of:
“Ooh, someone’s in trouble!” from Mansell and Riley.
Miles scoffed and muttered: “Children.”
But Kent didn’t pay it any mind. He meekly entered Chandler’s office, and even though he knew it would wake the suspicion of his team, Chandler shut the door and closed the blinds. It was better than having them hear whatever was to follow, even though Chandler could in no way predict what it would entail.
Despite his mind never once taking a break from thinking about it, he still hadn’t decided what to say. He’d only called Kent into his office to finally be able to put his mind at rest as it was severely affecting his ability to work properly. All he could think about was Kent and dating and dating Kent and hurting Kent and not wanting to hurt Kent.
“Please sit down, Kent,” Chandler said in an overly polite tone. He always defaulted to his learned manners whenever he was nervous and ended up sounding like someone parodying a posh person.
Kent sat down and looked at Chandler expectantly. It wasn’t until Chandler had sat down opposite him and he finally questioned:
“Sir?”
That Chandler realised he really didn’t have a clue what to say. He opened his mouth to speak, but regretted what he was about to say and closed it again. Meanwhile Kent was looking whiter and whiter by the second.
“Is anything wrong?” He asked carefully.
“Yes,” Chandler answered without thinking. He cursed himself when he saw Kent startle. “Uh no, but yes. It’s complicated.”
Kent didn’t reply which forced Chandler to continue.
“The last case-“ Chandler began but cut himself off.
“Yes?” Kent said after a pause.
Chandler reached out to straighten the papers on his desk. They were already straight, so he moved them around a bit instead. Kent’s eyes followed the movement to avoid looking directly at Chandler.
“I met your sister yesterday,” Chandler said, abandoning the last intro to the conversation.
“Okay?” Kent looked around uncertainly.
“She said that- I didn’t know that- Did you mean for it to be- When we- After the last case- Was it?” He looked at Kent expectantly.
“Sir. I have no idea how to answer that,” Kent said after a beat. The anxiety seemed to have given some way for confusion. “Did my sister say something to you?”
“Do you want a drink?” Chandler asked a bit manically.
“I- no. We’re at work,” Kent looked over his shoulder, but there were no glances to be shared with his colleagues, only drawn blinds. “She did say something, right?”
Chandler drew in a big breath.
“Have we been on a date?”
Kent froze.
“I would have said yes, but if you have to ask-“ his voice faded, and Chandler recognised the look of hurt on his face. Of course he’d inevitably messed it up.
“She said you’d said it was a date, and I- I didn’t think that.”
Kent didn’t meet his eyes.
“Shit. I’m sorry. Please just forget about it. I’m so sorry.”
“Didn’t you think it was weird that I wasn’t romantic at all?” Chandler questioned.
Kent’s breath was shaky. “I just thought we were taking it slow- Or that you- I dunno. I’m dumb. Fuck, how could I be so dumb?”
He got up from his chair. “I’m sorry, sir, I’ll back off. I hope it’s possible to put this past us and return to work as normal.”
“No, Kent, wait!” Chandler said as he turned around, frantically trying to think of something to say so he’d stay. Kent looked back over his shoulder. “You- uh- the others are going to talk if they see you crying.”
Kent winced, seemingly only then realising that he was crying. He all but crashed down in the chair again and burrowed his head in his hands.
He didn’t say anything, but it was plain to see that he was hurt and humiliated. Chandler offered him a napkin for his tears. He took it with a simple: “Thanks, sir.”
“Am I really that dense?” Chandler asked after a while.
Kent scoffed. “No, I wasn’t clear about my intentions. I was a coward.”
“The team were never coming for that drink in the first place, were they?”
Kent just shook his head, letting the napkin soak up a few more tears.
“I- I would’ve said yes if you’d asked me.”
Kent looked up at him sceptically.
“Alright, I might have panicked at first, but after some thought I’d have said yes.”
Kent still looked at him as if he was pulling a prank on him.
“I know that might be hard to believe. Especially after how I severely messed this up, but I know it’s true, cause your sister told me yesterday, and after panicking at first, I’m saying yes.”
“You’re saying yes?”
“Yes. I’m saying yes, we went on a date.”
Kent laughed in disbelief.
“You can’t retroactively call something a date. It wasn’t a date, if you didn’t think, it was a date.”
“Okay, then let me fix this-“
“You really don’t have to-“
“No I want to-“
“If it’s just because I’m crying-“
“It’s not that-“
“Cause I really don’t want that to be the case-“
“No I’m saying-“
“And I’d end up deceiving you-“
“No, Kent-“
“and manipulating you-“
“Kent!” Chandler raised his voice in desperation and Kent’s mouth clamped shut. He breathed deeply to calm himself. “We can’t fix that this has come off to a terrible start, but we can start over, so let’s start over. Do you want to go on a date with me?”
Kent was dumbstruck.
“Or is this too awkward now? I promise all will be forgotten if you just want to move on.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Chandler wasn’t sure if it was a rhetorical question, so after a short pause he simply answered: “No.”
“Of course, I’ll go on a date with you!” Kent said. He was still flustered and emotional, but Chandler got a small glimpse of the happy Kent he’d been with that night, and it finally dawned on him that he might actually have been the reason for it.
He allowed himself to feel some satisfaction and relief, before his mind wandered over to the next thing to be nervous about: How to plan a good date.
At least he knew where he could buy some roses.