Work Text:
Dirk’s kneeling on the floor, armed with a wet cloth and a spray bottle, polishing the shelves under the cashier’s. A new shipment of pesticides arrived earlier today, but when he went to put them on the shelf, what greeted him was a thick layer of dust.
He figured he should take care of that before the afternoon customer rush.
Dave’s latest mix is blasting in his headphones. He taps his foot to the beat as he scrubs at the dirt that has been accumulating for fuck knows how long.
He’s so absorbed that he almost doesn’t hear the chime of the doorbell.
Almost. He’s a fucking professional who wouldn’t up and greet a customer with his ass jutting out in their direction.
They should at least buy him dinner first.
He stands up, pulls his headphones and shades down in one smooth movement, and turns around to face the newcomer.
His greeting does an U-turn before it reaches his lips.
The customer who walked in is a guy around Dirk’s age, tall and slightly chubby. Rectangular glasses perch on his nose, under a mop of unruly dark brown hair. Two things become immediately apparent to Dirk. First, the guy is adorable. Second, he looks completely fuckin’ pissed.
He storms into the shop and almost trips on a decorative sunflower bucket. Dirk should really find a better place for that before someone injures themselves and sues the shit out of his sorry ass.
He turns his attention back to the angry guy. They don’t usually get many of those there; a flower shop usually attracts softer, gentler emotions. There’s the occasional rejected lover who somehow decided it was the flowers’ fault sometimes, but that’s about it. (Spoiler alert: It’s never the flowers’ fault.)
“They sell alcohol at the booth next door,” Dirk informs him.
“Huh?” The guy looks at him, snapping out of whatever’s troubling him.
“You look like you could use a drink,” Dirk explains.
The guy huffs. “No, I actually need a bouquet. Do you do stuff on request? Like, specific stuff?”
Well. This should be good.
Dirk heads back to the cashier’s, motioning for the guy to follow him. “Sure thing. Lay it on me.”
“Yeah, okay, uh…”
Dirk props his elbows on the counter and rests his chin on one hand. The customer’s frowning like he is rapidly realising whatever idea he had wasn’t very good, and getting sort of embarrassed.
Then, he sighs and goes for it. “How do I passive-aggressively say ‘fuck you’ in flower?”
Dirk almost guffaws. Whatever he expected, this is so much better. He has been waiting for this.
He keeps a poker face and just nods once. “You got it. How big do you want it?”
“Eh…”
“Not too small, not too big?”
He nods. “Sound good.”
Dirk all but launches himself from behind the counter on the hunt for the perfect ingredients. Luckily, he always keeps some orange lilies on hand, to casually recommend to annoying customers who rub him the wrong way. He pulls out a stem with heavy yellow carnations which complement the orange just right, and several stems of meadowsweet. It’s very neutral, unless you are familiar with flower symbolism. Then, it’s a white, soft, sweet-smelling slap in the face.
Dirk’s so proud of keeping this shit in stock.
He adds some geraniums as a colour accent (and another middle finger to the recipient), and puts everything down on the counter. It’s time to get down to work.
“So, what’s got you so frustrated?” He glances at the customer, who’s watching his handiwork, thrumming one hand’s fingers on the counter.
He glances at Dirk and looks away again. “I got invited to a wedding.”
This is somewhat more lack-lustre than Dirk hoped. “By an ex?” he guesses, but the guy’s shaking his head.
“No, no, it’s my great-aunt. Apparently she’s experiencing a middle-age sexual awakening, as you do. Took a trip in Europe and got engaged to an Italian guy.” He pauses and looks at Dirk again. “He’s my age.”
Dirk chuckles then, shaking his head. “So long as they both want it, man.” He shrugs.
“No, yeah, of course. The thing is,” he sighs, and Dirk just waits in silence. “She asked me if I’d be bringing a nice young girl to the wedding.”
“And you’re single.”
“And I’m gay,” he corrects. “Or bi or whatever. Point is, I was in a serious relationship with a guy until recently, and she knows that.”
Oh. Well, Dirk can certainly relate to that.
“I dunno,” he keeps ranting on, and boy, he really needed this, didn’t he? “I guess it’s not such a big deal, but it just keeps happening! I didn’t come out to my whole extended family just for them to keep ignoring the parts of me they have some sort of stupid issue with!”
“Yeah, that’s rough.” Dirk chops a couple of longer stems off. “When I came out to my older brother, he set me up on a blind date with this girl.” He wraps some thin ribbon around everything and bites down on it so he can use both hands to tie it. When his mouth’s free, he resumes his story. “She was sort of nice. Pretty attractive, I guess.” He looks up at the guy, who’s staring at him with a mixture of interest and pity. “It turned out she was this crazy famous porn star,” Dirk concludes. “I guess bro figured if the woman was attractive enough, I would suddenly start swingin’ the other way. Needless to say, didn’t exactly work out.”
“Wow, that sucks. I’m sorry, dude.”
Dirk shrugs and goes to grab some more yellow carnations. “You just weed out the assholes sooner or later,” he throws over his shoulder.
“‘ Weed out’, ” the guy giggles, and Dirk groans.
“That wasn’t intentional.”
“Sure it wasn’t,” he’s giving him a cheeky grin.
Dirk shakes his head and returns to the bouquet.
“The wedding soon, then?” Dirk asks a bit later.
“It’s in three months,” the guy explains. “The bouquet’s actually for the dinner she invited me to, to meet her fiance.”
“Oh.” He arranges the flowers so that the carnations are the most prominent. “Well, look at it this way: You have plenty of time to meet and seduce a cute guy, propose to him and schedule the subsequent wedding on the same day as your aunt’s. Your relatives will obviously choose to attend yours and let her vaguely homophobic ass stew in the knowledge that she’s gonna marry her Marco or Leonardo in an empty church, and bingo. Sweet revenge. Probably a hella nice honeymoon.”
The guy doesn’t respond right away, so Dirk peers at him over his shades. He’s looking at him with a sorta unwarranted intensity. His eyes are a bright, sort of dark blue, like the watercolour pigment before you dilute it with actual water. They stare at each other for a moment, before the guy looks away.
Dirk returns to the final ribbon he’s tying--a thick white one that really brings it all together, if he does say so himself. “There,” he announces and holds up the finished bouquet.
The guy looks at it, then at him, and grins. “I know jack about flowers, but it looks pretty damn great!”
“Yeah. I know what I’m doin’.”
“So, can you like, translate all that from flower language, then?”
“Only if you stop callin’ it ‘ flower language’. The flowers don’t communicate telepathically in it, this is just the meanings we’ve assigned to them.”
The guy rolls his eyes, very slowly.
Dirk smirks. “Alright, alright. Take notes, dude, this is flower symbolism 101.” He points at the delicate purple bells. “These ones are geraniums, which symbolise stupidity. The orange ones are lilies, aka ‘I hate you’. Fluffy white thing’s meadowsweet, which means uselessness. And these are yellow carnations, which translate to ‘you have disappointed me’.” He pauses, looks at the guy. “Figured I’d make ‘em stick out the most. From what I gathered, that’s the biggest thing you’re trynna express. Disappointment in your aunt for bein’ a homophobic sack of shit.”
“Wow.”
He wonders for a moment if he went too far, but then a grin blooms on the guy’s face. “I didn’t think my trip to the florist would come with extra psychological counselling as a bonus.”
“You gotta stay ahead of the competition somehow.”
“I’m not sure exactly what I expected, but this is so much better.”
Dirk can’t help his cheeky smirk. “I get that often.”
“I bet,” the guy answers with a smirk of his own.
They just stand there and look at each other. A moment later, Dirk catches himself and raises the bouquet. “Cast or card?”
“Oh, um--card, please.”
While Dirk tips in the prices, the guy fishes out his wallet and hands him a card. His name’s John Egbert.
“I need you to sign here,” Dirk instructs him and John complies. When it’s all out of the way, he hands him the bouquet.
“Thanks. And thank you for the free therapy session, too.” He smiles sheepishly. “I guess I needed that.”
“You did sorta burst into my shop and start ventin’ your sad, injured emotions, so yeah, I reckon you did.”
John chuckles. “Yeah. Thanks.” He runs a hand through his hair. “So uh, have a nice day, I guess.”
“You too. Good luck with the aunt.”
With a last glance in his direction, John leaves the shop. If Dirk glares at the door for a second afterwards, he’s going to take this secret to the grave.
Then he shakes his head, puts the headphones back on and gets back to cleaning.
***
John comes back short before closing.
Dirk’s taken off his apron and changed his work tee for a black tank. His shades are folded on top of his bag, because at 8 pm it’s too dark for them inside. He’s counting out the cash in the till when the doorbell chimes. He can’t help the warm feeling that pools in his stomach when he recognises the silhouette.
So what if he hoped to see it every time he heard the chime that day.
He frowns. “Forget your card or something?”
“No, no,” there goes the hand into the hair again. John walks up to the cashier’s and stops. He’s still holding the bouquet. “I was on my way to my aunt’s when I realised I still needed to ask you about another bit of flower language.”
“Dude, it’s not--”
“How do you ask someone out in flower?” John chooses to direct the question to the counter, but after a moment, he looks up to meet Dirk’s eyes. He’s smiling hesitantly.
Dirk’s own mouth’s twisting into a smile. He contemplates his answer. “I guess I could tell you, but I do believe sometimes it’s better to just use actual human language. Also saves your local florist a shitton of time.”
“Wanna grab coffee some time?”
Dirk could tease him, come up with some elaborate answer with an embarrassing amount of flower puns. He could at least try not to look overeager.
Instead, the smile spreads on his whole face and he nods. “Sure. I’d like that.”