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“I love you. I want us both to eat well.” —Christopher Citro, "Our Beautiful Life When It's Filled With Shrieks"
For most, summer meant longer days and a promise of leisure. Sticky fingers from cold treats and raucous laughter over a bonfire in your family’s backyard. For some, summer meant unbearable heat and sweating through your clothes the minute you stepped outside, no matter how light they were. Specifically, for the small flower shop owned by one Vash Saverem, summer was one thing and one thing only: wedding season.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of people wanted to get married during some of the most beautiful months of the year. Fortunately or unfortunately, Vash happened to be good at his job, and over the years has been recommended by friends of friends and grandmothers and whoever else knew about his small shop to arrange countless bouquets and centerpieces for weddings big and small. It was a lucrative time of year and Vash loved watching people’s faces light up at the end products. The only issue that arose was the fact that he more often than not ended up staying late trying to get everything put together in time, often fulfilling orders for multiple weddings at a time.
(Vash had ended up putting a cap on the amount of wedding orders he could work on at one time a few years back when he somehow found himself needing to get nearly a hundred different arrangements ready for five separate weddings that were happening within the span of about three days. Supply issues aside, he had been burning the candle at both ends, causing Meryl, Milly, Nai, and Nick to feel the need to hold an intervention. It had been one of the few times he had seen his brother and partner working together on a united front.
Needless to say, Vash learned very quickly when to say no.)
Currently, the order he was working on was quite large. Milly had been helping for most of the day, but even after a certain point Vash had to let her go home. Together, they’d managed to get most of the arrangements put together and then packed away for transport the following day. That still hadn’t been enough, and Vash told her to go home while he tackled the truly massive centerpiece.
Through the high windows in the back workroom the late evening sun was starting to cast long, gloomy shadows across everything. The room, while always in some sort of organized chaos, looked like a tornado had blown through it. Florist wire and cut foam littered nearly every surface, mingling with the trimmed stems and leaves from the flowers. Vash bit the inside of his cheek as he stepped back to look at the centerpiece in its full glory. He walked slowly around the table, cocking his head and looking at his work from every angle, fixing stray petals or rearranging spots to be just right. Nothing was ever going to be perfect, but he at the very least wanted it to look nice, and when it was someone’s big day he especially didn’t want to slack on the details.
He was debating just taking the damn thing apart and starting over from scratch when he heard the bell on the front door tinkle as it opened, followed shortly by the door being locked again.
“Angel?” Called Nick from the front.
“Back here,” Vash called back, chewing on one of the nails on his flesh hand.
Nick let out a low whistle when he stepped into the workroom, stepping carefully around the detritus on the floor to stand beside Vash. He rested one warm hand on the small of Vash’s back, smelling faintly of cigarettes and the cinnamon gum he liked.
“That is…” He trailed off.
“It’s a lot,” Vash said. He idled closer to his partner, happy to feel the presence of another person. It had been hours since he’d seen another person.
“That’s a way to put it,” Nick finished. “God, that’s fucking massive.”
A bit hysterically, Vash giggled, “That’s what she said .”
The hand at his back quickly retracted and Nick lightly cuffed him on the back of the head. Vash let out an indignant squawk, ducking away. He quickly found another small spot that needed his attention and made quick work of busying his hands with it. Maybe he’d finally be satisfied with it now that it wasn’t just him looking at it.
Having Nick show up was a bit of a treat. When they had first started dating, Nick had shown up at the shop almost daily, giving input on bouquet arrangements or just waiting while Vash counted the tills. That had lasted about a month before he had sheepishly told Vash that he was very allergic to pollen, actually, after he had spent an entire day helping move a mountain of new stock and ended up with watery eyes and hives on his arms. Vash had very politely asked him to stop coming in if that meant he’d be uncomfortable and Nick had happily obliged.
Now, Nick coming into the shop usually meant Vash was staying too late.
“You eat anything?” Nick asked, leaning over the monstrosity of an arrangement to look at Vash.
Vash shooed him away with one hand. “Go back out to the front, I’ll be out in a minute. There’s enough pollen to kill an elephant.”
“I have benadryl with me,” Nick said, but still took a step back anyway. “You didn’t answer my question. Nice try, though.”
His hands stilled on one of the roses. “I had lunch.”
“And when was that?”
Vash bit the inside of his cheek. “It’s fine.”
It wasn’t. Vash had been so focused on this project that he’d been ignoring his body up until Nick walked in. He was very hungry, in fact, but Nick didn’t need to know that he was right . The sigh Nick let out told Vash that he knew he was right anyway.
“C’mon, it’s late, you need to eat,” Nick said, eyes burning a hole into Vash.
“I need to finish this–”
“And it’ll be there in the morning.” Nick stepped up behind Vash, wrapping his arms around Vash’s middle, resting his chin on his shoulder. “Honestly, I think it looks good as it is.”
“You’re just saying that,” Vash whined.
“When have I ever lied about this? If it looked like shit, I’d tell you it looks like shit.”
Without looking, Vash reached over and flicked Nick on the forehead. “Dick.”
He can feel Nick smile, smug. “You love this dick.”
“Despite it all,” he mutters, tilting his head so he gently knocks against Nick’s.
They stay like that for a long moment, just breathing in tandem in the stillness of the closed shop. Dust motes dance in the straggling rays of the evening sunlight. Everything is bathed in shades of orange and yellow. Nick is warm against his back, causing him to sweat a little despite the air conditioning. He doesn’t mind, never does, the closeness always worth a bit of discomfort.
Vash sighed, looking up at the arrangement. As a personal rule, he always tried not to judge other people’s tastes, stones and glass houses and all, but even now he had to admit this thing was gaudy. At the very least, he wouldn’t want something quite this large at his own wedding.
He turned his head, nosing into Nick’s hair. He probably wouldn’t even have real flowers at his wedding. In his daydreams, every arrangement was silk flowers rented from one of the bigger bridal rental places. They’d be sprayed with a non-offensive scent, just faint enough to add to the ambiance. He snorted to himself. Marriage wasn’t something they’d talked about too much; Vash wasn’t even sure it would ever actually happen. It seemed silly to even plan it in his head in the first place. Part of him said to just be happy with what he had, fearing what would come of wanting a little bit more.
Nick jerked his head off of Vash’s shoulder, turning away to sneeze loudly, breaking the calm of the moment. They’d have to leave soon, for his sake.
“Alright, you win,” Vash sighed, patting Nick’s arm. “Let’s go before you start dying for real.”
Sniffling, Nick says, “It builds character.”
Vash starts to pull Nick out toward the front, flipping off lights as they go. Nai is going to have a coronary about the state of the workroom when he comes in the morning to count the till, but that’s what he gets for taking a week off in the middle of one of the busiest times of the year and Vash is tired , okay?
Nick had started to ramble about the goings-on of his day as Vash did what minimal closing tasks were left, mostly to fill the silence. What had happened at his job that day, how Livio was doing, something stupid that their cat had done before he came over. He was half listening up until he turned the key in the lock on the front door, the shop finally officially closed for the night.
“Oh, I got some salmon today–it was a fucking steal. That sound good for dinner?”
“Why didn’t you lead with that? I would’ve left sooner!” Vash said, jogging over to where Nick leant against Angelina II.
“You’re too easy sometimes, I swear,” Nick said, shaking his head. He handed Vash his helmet.
I could marry you right now , Vash thinks, watching Nick pop a benadryl and swallow it dry. Fuck the flowers and fuck everything else, I just need you .
He doesn’t say that, too afraid to put that out there, but he tries his best to convey the feeling in the way he tries to smother Nick with a kiss. They'll get home eventually.