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Hitoka knows this is not the day to be going to the florist’s across the street for a chat. Especially if the flurry of people buzzing in and out of the front door like panicked bees is anything to go by. Valentine’s Day was hell. She’d sworn she could hear the bells on their door ringing non-stop all morning. Even Yamaguchi had whistled through his teeth when he’d caught sight of the flurry of activity.
“Ushiwaka must be swamped,” he’d remarked between tattoo clients, leveling a meaningful look at her as he’d pulled off his gloves and started a fresh pot of coffee.
Yamaguchi could tease her all he wanted. And the frantic bees didn’t scare Hitoka away from her purpose as she left the shop for her lunch break. She returns from her quick café run armed with Ushijima’s go-to caramel latte and a bento for good measure before braving the crowd. She psyches herself up to offer to watch the counter while he eats lunch. God knows Ushijima could use the extra help today. The help wanted sign still sitting in his front window at this moment looking particularly forlorn.
She’s nearly knocked down as she navigates her way inside. Sidestepping men with bottles of wind tucked under their arms and women on frantic phone calls. Usually people took one look at the tattoos scrawling down Hitoka’s arms and gave her a wide berth. Yamaguchi always laughed that people could be frightened of her, as if they didn’t give him wary looks as well. But today she’s invisible. Like highschool all over again.
Hitoka takes a steadying breath as she presses inside, weaving through desperate lovers on her rescue mission. Breathing in the literal floral bouquet wafting through the air of the tiny shop as she slowly muscles her way toward the counter
Ushijima is unflustered as always.
She can glimpse him even through the crowd though she is not close. The advantages of him being so tall. He looks focused, his eyes bright even if his face is fairly stoic. She can even see the sparkle of cheer in his eyes. More than she thinks she could manage if she were him having to run this shop all alone today.
As she squeezes past two people Hitoka is surprised to see he isn’t actually alone today. Satori with his close cut red hair is babbling beside him in a borrowed apron and wide grin wrapping flowers with a flourish. He meets Hitoka eyes through the crowd and his smile gets a little wider elbowing Ushijima. The man himself turns slow and deliberate. Hitoka’s heart, as it always does beneath his eyes, picks up the tempo.
Of course at this moment she’s elbowed out of the way by a man with an armful of roses.
Lost in the sea of people too busy to see her.
She nearly drops the latte before the crowd miraculously parts and standing before her is Ushijima, tall and broad in a way that people can’t help but get out of the way for, no arms covered in tattoos required. He’s reaching out a silent hand to her. The tulip she’d tattooed on the inside of his wrist three months ago making her stomach flip flop with the memory.
Ushijima sitting in her client chair.
The way he’d flinched beneath her pen and she’d offered her free hand to hold as she carefully traced her sketch into his skin.
The way he’d looked into her eyes.
The gentle tenor of his “thank you”.
She lets him take her hand now through the parted sea of customers on the busiest day of the year and he leads her behind the counter and through the swinging door into the back room. The usual colorful riot of back-stock is missing. Every single flower in the shop out on the sales floor. His table for arrangements empty. Shears neat and tidy in their drawers.
“They nearly trampled you,” he says with a frown. Hitoka lets out a sigh of relief, peace bubbling up in her chest just to be here. To be with him. The anxiety of the crowd evaporates from her like a foggy morning dissipating in front of the sun. She offers him the latte
“For you. I thought you might need it,” she says with a laugh. His frown bleeds away into a smile. The greatest gift she could’ve asked for. Ushijima’s smile is like an arrow right through her heart, she feels herself melting under its warmth.
“You always know best,” he says as he takes a sip.
“Not always,” she demurs, cheeks flushing. “Just a lucky guess. I brought you lunch too. The rush probably won’t let up until you run out of flowers or kick everyone out. I can help Satori up front while you eat.”
“No need,” Ushijima says pulling out the two stools as she sets the bento on the table. He nods to the other as he sits down. “Stay. He can handle it.”
“I can handle it! You two take a break!” Satori on cue, sticks his head in to beam at them with a knowing look in his eye and a wink for Hitoka. Her cheeks burn hotter.
They sit at the work table and Hitoka laments not having brought her own lunch like usual.
“I hate Valentine’s Day,” she sighs to break the silence. “You probably do too. With all this.” She waves towards the dull roar of the madness out front, muted a little by the door.
“It’s good for business.”
“You don’t think it’s silly?”
“Not really,” he says plainly as he opens the bento and hums agreeably at the contents. “Want to share?”
Hitoka agrees without much pressing. How often did they share lunch like this? Like it was just a regular day, in the sleepy flower shop, door propped open so Ushijima could hear the bells if anyone came in. They’d talk about their days, Hitoka sketching out tattoos on a scrap of paper. Laughing about clients and friends. Ushijima would tell her about the plants that have taken over his apartment. Names she looks up when she gets back to the tattoo shop, she traces their shapes in her daydreams. Names like ‘monstera deliciosa’ and ‘dracaena trifasciata’ and ‘Epipremnum aureum’. Sometimes Satori would stop by with food from the café and his boyfriend Suga in tow, to be flirty and a little too handsy and Ushijima would give Hitoka a look and she couldn’t help but laugh. She’d be glad when today was over and they could go back to normal.
“Showing love is only natural.”
Ushijima says it after Hitoka’s thought their discussion of Valentine’s Day is over. Just long enough of a gap in conversation she forgets for a second what she’d said about it in the first place. “Flowers are a good way to do it. To tell someone you love them,” Ushijima says it carefully as he picks a piece of chicken from the bento. “You know flowers have their own language,” he adds glancing up at her, the edges of his lips curl with it.
“So you’ve told me,” Hitoka grins back, glad to pick up the threads of their shared joke. Ushijima is always talking about flower language and Hitoka will always ask him to tell her more. She doesn’t have a clue how he can keep it all straight in his head.
“For instance,” Ushijima scoots his stool back and bends down to open the lower cupboard. Hitoka holding back a sigh at the way his t-shirt pulls over his wide shoulders, the curve of his neck, she wonders if his hair would be soft beneath her fingers. When he straightens up it’s with a small arrangement in a little vase. Not fussy or gaudy like some of the arrangements out front.
“Yellow roses for friendship,” he says pointing out the bloom, “red tulips for love, ambrosia for asking if you return my feelings?” Hitoka’s cheeks sear. But she knows it’s just another flower lesson.
“You should have that out front so it could sell. Even if people don’t know what it means, it’s still pretty.”
“It’s not for sale,” he tells her and for a second she finds something new in his handsome face, in his clear honest eyes. Something like uncertainty. “It’s for you,” he finally says
For me.
For a second the words make no sense. Hitoka thinks she’s imagined it. He’s actually spoken something else and she’s imagined this alternate reality. And now she has to act like she’d heard what he’d actually said and not what she’d wanted to hear. And what if she now said the wrong thing and they were actually for his mother? She knew he had a strained relationship with her. Oh god! What should she say?? She wanted to say the right thing and not be insensitive…
“Yachisan,” Ushijima’s steady voice breaks the swell of anxiety, though there seems to be a touch of it in him, the way he chews the inside of his lip. It’s contagious. She’s infected him. Oh god. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he says when she can’t summon words. “Please tell me if it’s too much.”
“For your mother?” Hitoka says because that’s the only guess she’s got. Ushijima’s brow furrows in confusion. Oh god what if…!
He slides the pretty little vase closer to her.
“For you.”
Oh. Oh!
Hitoka can’t breathe.
“Oh,” she exhales, the air leaving her lungs and refusing to come back in.
“That’s a bad ‘oh’,” he says quietly. It’s unlike him to admit defeat
No, no, no. That won’t do.
“They’re beautiful,” she says.
And then Hitoka does something she hardly ever does, and takes a risk.
She holds out her hand to the man, to the friend she’s been slowly falling in love with since he opened this shop. And smiled at her. And told her she belonged here with the silly little sunflower clip in her hair. Since she’d come back every day since. To drink in his steady calm and tease out his gentle smiles and learn everything there was to know about the language of flowers. Since he let her put his love of tulips into permanent ink on his wrist.
Hitoka smiles at Ushijima as he sets his big hand in hers. The warmth of it swelling in her heart.
“I know its cliché,” she said with the calming strength he always gives her, “but do you want to get dinner after work?”
“Nowhere is going to have a table available tonight,” he says. “But I can cook if you want to come over.”
“And you can give me the plant tour you’re always telling me about,” Hitoka laughs. Ushijima’s smile is so bright. There is no sunflower that could resist but turn its face to him. No tulip that could not return his love. Hitoka heart can’t contain the happiness surging through her.
“Yes,” he said smiling down at their linked hands. “I can.”