Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE
* * *
Lando Norris was not supposed to fall in love with a florist.
He was supposed to buy a plant.
Exactly one plant.
Like, a normal person plant. A “look, Mum, I’m capable of caring for something that isn’t a gaming headset” plant.
Instead, he walked into Piastri & Petals on a rainy Tuesday and found Oscar Piastri standing behind the counter with his sleeves rolled up, pruning a bonsai like it had personally disappointed him.
Lando stopped dead in his tracks.
The shop smelled like damp earth, roses, eucalyptus, and emotional stability. Everything foreign to Lando.
The florist looked up.
Flat brown eyes, a calm face...and a devastating mouth.
“Can I help you?” he asked, in professional voice, slight accent and all, that sounded like an epiphany.
Lando’s brain immediately unplugged itself.
“Yeah,” he said. “I need something hard to kill.” he all but declared.
A beat.
Oscar glanced him over once.
“Plastic?”
Lando blinked. Then laughed.
The man did not smile.
Oh.
Oh no, Lando thought.
He’s funny and mean.
Perfection.
“I was thinking more like...alive ?” Lando said, leaning on the counter.
The man’s gaze flicked to Lando's hand, then back to his face.
“That's...ambitious.”
“I’m a very nurturing person.” Lando did not stop to think how that could have came across as a tiny itty bitty weird to the other.
The florist studied him for a moment, five seconds at most. “You look like someone who forgets water exists.”
Lando's hand moved to his heart. “Wow. That’s hurtful.”
“Is it inaccurate?”
Lando opened his mouth.
Closed it.
The man turned and selected a small, glossy green plant from a shelf.
“Pothos,” he said. “Low light. Water when the soil dries. Don’t overthink it.”
Lando took it.
“But what if I do overthink it?”
“Then it’ll die of stress.”
He said it with such matter-of-fact certainty that Lando couldn't stop the grin from taking over his entire face.
And then he finally smiled.
Almost.
It was tiny. Barely there. A twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Lando wanted to win it again immediately.
“Does it have a name?” he asked.
The man stared.
“The plant.”
“No.”
“Can I name it Oscar?”
He blinked in surprise, then, as if slowly remembering and realizing he wore a nametag with his name on his chest, he sighed.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because then, when you kill it, you’ll say you killed Oscar,” he said, rolling his eyes.
Lando gasped. “You think I’d kill you?”
“I think you’d forget me on a windowsill.”
That was the exact moment Lando fell violently, embarrassingly in love.
⸻
By Thursday, the plant was dying.
Not completely. Just enough that Lando panicked and returned to the flower shop holding the pot like a wounded child.
Oscar looked up from arranging lilies.
“No.”
“I didn’t even say anything!”
“The answer is still no.”
“But he’s unwell...”
That made him look up from his work station.
“He?”
“Fernando.”
Oscar went very still.
“You named your plant Fernando?”
“He does look like a Fernando.”
Oscar closed his eyes and Lando felt very proud of his naming talent.
“I watered him,” Lando said, trying to win brownie points.
The slight furrow of Oscar’s brow made it clear the gears in his mind were turning.
“How many times?”
“A responsible amount.”
“How many?” Oscar sighed.
A moment of silence followed, then came Lando’s answer, like a life sentence.
“…Twelve.”
Oscar gasped.
“In two days?”
“He looked thirsty.”
Oscar stared at him with an expression so profoundly tired Lando nearly proposed.
“Wow...You drowned Fernando.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“You waterboarded a pothos. A pothos. ”
Lando clutched the pot. “Can you save him?”
Oscar sighed. But he took the plant.
Their fingers brushed.
Lando experienced full system failure.
Oscar did not react much.
Which was rude, frankly.
“I’ll repot it,” Oscar said. “Come back tomorrow.”
Lando leaned closer. “And if I want to come back today?”
Oscar looked up. This time, his eyes lingered.
Then he said, perfectly flat, “Buy flowers.”
So Lando did.
A bouquet of sunflowers. Then tulips the next day. Then daisies. Then something called ranunculus, which sounded like a medieval illness but looked gorgeous.
By the end of the week, Lando’s apartment looked like he was either deeply romantic or running a funeral home (no in-between).
His neighbor and friend, Max stared at the third bouquet on the kitchen counter.
“Mate.”
“What?”
“You’re buying crazy amount of flowers again. Do you the dude or something ?”
“No.”
Lando's answer was convincing no one, not even himself.
“You bought flowers every single day this week. ”
“They were different flowers.” Lando tried to explain.
Max swept his arms around them, presenting the overwhelming evidence as though it might somehow talk Lando back into reason.
“you know this is getting ridiculous.”
Lando watered Fernando with an eyedropper under strict written instructions from Oscar.
“I don’t fancy him....I think.”
Max stared.
Lando lasted four seconds.
“Okay, maybe a little... but! He called me horticulturally irresponsible.”
“And that did it for you?”
Lando shrugged “I’m only human.”
⸻
The crisis began two weeks later.
Lando’s sister called with the zeal of a woman on a mission.
“You need a date.”
Lando frowned, his feet barely out of bed and the phone on speaker on his pillow.
“No.... I need coffee.”
“For Mum’s anniversary party.”
Lando froze.
Oh hell no. Absolutely not.
His family events were already humiliating without his mother asking in front of seventy relatives whether he’d “met anyone special” while his nan tried to introduce him to every eligible person within a ten-km radius.
“I’m busy.” he said with a clipped tone.
“You don’t even know when the party will be.”
“I’ll become busy then. Case closed.”
“Bring someone Lan. This is non-negotiable.”
“Never.”
“Then Mum’s inviting Helena.”
Lando jerked up in alarm, making the phone slide down to the floor.
Helena was his childhood neighbor, terrifyingly blonde, aggressively successful, and convinced she and Lando were soulmates because they’d kissed once behind a trampoline when they were thirteen.
He picked up the phone at the foot of his bed.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Mom would. Don't tell me you'd be surprised.”
Lando looked across his apartment.
At fifteen bouquets. At Fernando, recovering nobly on the windowsill. At the receipt from Piastri & Petals still on the counter.
And a terrible idea bloomed. A beautiful, stupid, hopeless idea.
Oh, he was in for a treat.
The next morning, he walked into Oscar’s shop.
Oscar did not even look up.
“Fernando’s dead ?” he asked as usual.
“That’s actually not why I’m here today.”
“No refunds.” he added, still not getting the unusual tone in Lando's voice.
“I need you to be my boyfriend.”
Oscar cut through a rose stem. Clean and sharp.
He looked up in shock.
“Pardon?”
Lando smiled his most charming smile.
Oscar’s face did not change. But his ears went bright pink.
Lando, the simp that he was, of course noticed.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
* * *
Fernando, the Pothos, minding his own business