Work Text:
Joe walked down the road slowly. He didn’t have anywhere to be that was time sensitive, so he took the scenic route this time. His hands were stained with a mixture of ink and wine, as most of what he did nowadays was make wine and write poems. Sometimes he drew, but mostly his time was dedicated to wine making.
He thought back to the last time he had been out other than to get groceries. It had been for the funeral. Her funeral. His best friend, partner in ‘crime’, the person who helped him think of things to write, and the first person he turned to if something went wrong. Her funeral suited her, though the mood was wrong. Joe managed not to break down until afterwards, but when he did break down it took a good few hours until he did anything but cry.
He was brought back to his thoughts by a gentle breeze, as if the wind knew what he was thinking, and knew the effect. He smiled, though it was emotionless. A commodity, robotic and a precaution so the others wouldn’t worry. He had no idea if it worked- he had never been very good at hiding emotions, but no one had asked him if everything was alright yet, so he had that. They may just be giving him time, that was also a possibility.
The route that he took to walk was a deserted, dirt road. It was far too narrow for cars, and there were far too many holes, worn into the ground by the rain, for bikers to use it safely. It wound around the hills, going through a positively enchanting forest, and there were some places one could look out and see the distant mountains. But Joe hadn’t come there to sightsee. He came to get away from the dank and frankly depressing walls of his winery. The walls hadn’t seemed all too bad when he first got the place, but as he stayed inside for longer periods of time, he started to hate them.
The wind came by again, this time slightly stronger. Clouds were rolling in, and a storm was definitely on the horizon. Joe didn’t mind, he liked the rain. It was the thunder and lightning that bothered him more, but at the moment he enjoyed the smell of rain on the wind, and he watched the sky. The sunlight had started to fade, with the clouds growing thicker. A storm was approaching fast.
Joe continued walking along the dirt road. He kept his eyes on the ground for a long while, until he saw a flash of yellow against the green. He walked closer, keeping his eyes on the spot where he saw it. He approached the yellow faster than he had been walking before, looking at the flowers with a look of great sadness on his face. Daffodils. She liked them, he remembered. Said it was something about the way that they smelled, or maybe it was the way the flower head looked. Either way, he knelt down to get a closer look.
There were big daffodils and small daffodils in the patch, and they looked like they had just bloomed. With rain beginning to fall, he slowly reached out a hand to pick one. It was small, and possibly the brightest yellow he’d seen in a long while. Flowers were rare in the vineyard. For a moment he just stared at it, but then he stood up slowly, looking at the flower in his hand for a moment longer before looking up into the sky, full of the rain that was getting heavier by the minute.
He missed Cleo.