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“leave that boy alone, will you?” your boss at the flower shop laughs it off. “go on, mind the register. still got 20 minutes until closing.”
gojo might be daft, but you’re not. you can feel your sherlock cells tingling - toge inumaki is chowing down on the cherry blossoms when you’re not looking. devouring the daisies when you’re out for your smoke break. snacking on the sunflowers when you're busy misting the greenhouse.
your friends always said that you’re bad at picking up clues, but you’re like a bloodhound on inumaki’s evil trail:
why does he always stutter and go red to his ears whenever you try to talk to him? he’s scared that you’re onto him.
why does he always hang around you at work? because he’s trying to keep you from spilling his secrets to your boss.
why does he always have a mask on? because he’s chewing flowers underneath—that’s why!
why does he disappear to the toilet every hour? to eat. more. flowers.
from your seat at the till, you squint to see what inumaki’s doing all the way at the back. sure, it looks like inumaki is trimming the pine bonsai, but what is he really up to?
“you sound like a flat-earther". gojo just shakes his head. “god, i hope you’re better at accounting than detective work.”
ego slightly injured that he’s not taking you seriously, you present the strongest evidence you have: “i go check the toilet every time he’s done in there.” ignoring your boss’s disgusted face, you instead hammer the point home with a clap after each word. “there’s. always. flowers. in there.”
but gojo just shrugs and gets to arranging a bouquet to take home to the husband. he’s compromised, you realise. in your mind, you throw the cigar down and stomp on it, striking a melancholy pose after.
it’s very difficult with your moriarty being a master manipulator—all that business being cute as hell with his adorable lavender eyes. that’s how he brings in good business too, high school girls lining up after classes to hit on him. he always sends them away with a sweet smile and just shakes his head when he sees you staring. not like you care or anything.
he’s devious in other ways too, always doing things to make people think that he is so not a flower-eating freak. small gestures like taking over the opening shift for you, knowing that you hate it. bringing you flan to share after lunch. this one time he held up an entire rack of flower pots, six feet high, when you accidentally knocked it over.
see? who knew he was athletic like that? talk about having skeletons in his closet.
it’s been on your mind day and night—the very thought that inumaki could be doing his dirty business unstopped vexes you terribly.
“there! he’s chewing under his mask right now! go catch him!” you suddenly cry out, unknown to inumaki, who’s quietly mumbling along to kendrick on his earbuds. “gojo–sensei!”
“can’t move.” gojo-sensei retorts without missing a beat. “have this condition called ‘i-think-you’re-full-of-crap.’”
“you know what?” you pull yourself to your full height. this must be what alexander felt when he crossed the rubicon. “fine. i’ll save our flowers myself.”
you march over to the villain, determined to end his evil plans once and for all. those flowers that you spent months growing did not deserve to become inumaki’s poop. he almost jumps out of his skin when you yell out his full government name.
gojo puts his feet up at the cash register. he wasn’t going to miss this.
“i know what you’re up to, toge.” suddenly rose-red, he’s barely taken his earbuds out with shaky hands when you point a finger at his face. “take your mask off and spit the damn flowers out.”
he stutters on the first syllable of your name.
“oh, yeah, you’re caught red-handed. i know everything.”
inumaki looks absolutely terrified, his jaw tight and sweaty, and it looks like he’s about to have a heart attack. jesus.
and suddenly you hear the first words he’s ever said to you. very quiet, unsteady—a voice not used to speaking. but you hear it. “... everything?”
“uh-huh. that’s sick of you, toge.” he visibly blanches. “so weird. you’ve got to stop it.”
for a second, it looks like he’s fighting back the urge to vomit. then he just drops his head and nods.
“see, gojo-sensei? i was right! i bet you’ve got flowers in your mouth right now, don’t you?” inumaki painfully nods again, spitting out a few slimy petals of carnations and tulips. bit odd, you don’t keep carnations, but maybe he bit them off a street plant.
your keen inductive logic is telling you that if this guy’s eatting shit off random trees, it might be more than deliberate coworker sabotage. maybe it was a medical condition, now that you think of it, like pica or ocd, that he’s struggling with. shit, did you just out a struggling, sick, chlorophyll-addicted poor sod in his place of employment?
you call him one last time as he pathetically limps away.
“uh, hey, toge, you can—you can eat the cheap ones if you want. we have so many marigolds they’re starting to rot, you can eat them once in a while. if you want."
“eat?” comes a whisper-question.
“yeah, you shouldn’t quit cold turkey. wean off slowly.” you kinda pride yourself on your apparently limitless knowledge. just a win after win today. “you can eat the marigolds till then.”
suddenly you realise that he’s just as baffled as you are. which makes no sense.
“... you are eating flowers, aren’t you, toge?”
toge inumaki closes his eyes for a good ten seconds and inhales. on one hand, he can feel his pulse running again, on the other, he’s asking himself if he really chose this idiot to love. you’re still staring at him with your cute dumbass face when he opens his eyes and he knows that yes, he did.
because everything that you are accusing him of makes sense with just one word– “hanahaki.” he points at himself and then at the flowers on the ground.
“hanahaki? you’ve found your soulmate and they don’t love you? god, i’m so sorry!” you scrunch your eyebrows, the lonely brain cell working overtime to connect the dots. “who?”
inumaki, stomach hurting again, decides that this is all the humiliation he can take in one dose. he’s about to run away when–
“you, you fucking idiot.” gojo, climbing over the till on all fours, screeches from across the flower shop. “god hold me back, toge inumaki has a crush on you!”
your first reaction is that this a very elaborate prank. inumaki’s the kind of guy who’s liked by so many other girls that you didn’t even allow yourself the foolishness of imagining you have a chance. any second now, both boys are going to go– “sike! you thought, bitch.” but it doesn’t come. instead, inumaki drops to a squat and buries his face under his arms. the tips of his ears are so red it hurts to watch.
holy shit. toge inumaki has a crush on you.
… how do you respond to someone having a crush on you?
“oh. my. god.” gojo’s straight up standing on the till now, unimaginably frustrated that his romcom leads are this incompetent. “toge, do you want to go out with her?”
the boy nods, still hidden under his arms.
“you, idiot, you want to go out with him?”
you think of all red flowers– poppies, carnations, roses, and dahlias– and you wonder if you’re redder than them when you nod too.
“then, congrats, kids, you’re going out with each other!” gojo’s almost frothing at his mouth. “now get out.”
toge inumaki has no clue how this all happened. one moment he was clipping the pine, and the other he’s walking hand in nervous hand with the coworker he’s been pining over for so long. it’s like his heart’s going to burst from the stress and happiness.
he tries to ignore the constant texts from gojo telling him how he’s got to clean his puked up flowers tomorrow. he's got far more exciting things to focus on right now. neither of you know what to do, so you settle on ice cream and exchange minecraft id to play together after you go home.
when you ask him what flavour he wants to eat he looks straight at you and picks rose.