Chapter Text
A full-time florist who owned a store in Queens, New York City, was not the typical job of a 20-year-old, but then, Peter Parker had never exactly been normal. He should’ve, by all counts, been in college, doing some kind of physics degree at an Ivy League school. God knows he had the smarts for it. He’d graduated from his high school with a 4.0 GPA and a 1200 on his SATs, and he could do complicated math in his head that 95% of people wouldn’t be able to do with a calculator.
But the Ivy League schools had been yanked off the cards for Peter at the age of 18, when his sole remaining family member, his aunt May, had passed away from a debilitating fight with the disease that had slowly sapped her energy over her last year of being alive. She’d hid it from him as long as she could. Doctors appointments when he’d been at school, medical bills draining her pension. And yet it had taken her, quick as anything, and Peter had been left a fresh out of high-school graduate with no family to help him in life.
May had spent most of her life being a florist. She created and ran ‘Reilly’s Flowers’, a self-made, family-run florist store which specialised in artisan personalised bouquets with a family touch, made specially for every customer who stepped through the door. The name–Reilly–stemmed from her maiden name. It encompassed who she’d been prior to getting married to Ben Parker, Peter’s uncle. The pair had adopted him after his parents died in a plane crash, and had looked after him for much of his childhood. Peter only had distant memories of his actual parents.
Reilly’s had been her pride and glory, and in Peter’s humble opinion, it was one of the best places in the whole of New York City. Peter had seen the birth of the shop, and all of its eras. He’d grown up passing handfuls of lilies and ribbons and everything a florist could ever need to his aunt. Peter used to go into middle school with a carnation tucked behind his ear, placed there gently from the new shipments of flowers the shop would get. It had been his childhood, his everything.
When she died, the ownership of the store had passed to Peter. Who else would it have gone to–he had no other family, and neither had she. It had been a whirlwind, those few weeks after she passed. The true shock of it all escaped him until much later–he had no other choice than to think of practicality, to figure out what was going to happen to his life.
Peter had expected to be placed into foster care, or something, but May had died on his 18th birthday, and therefore he’d slipped through the cracks of the care system. He was an adult in the eyes of the care system, and therefore he was able to raise himself. Take care of himself. Figure life out. Somehow.
Any hopes and dreams he’d initially had of going to college–NYU, where he’d wanted to go, because it had an excellent physics programme (even if it wasn’t MIT with its stellar reputation for all things tech-based)–were dashed. He had to sort out a funeral, and cry, and sob, and grieve, at least until bills started arriving at the apartment which had to be sorted through. Reilly’s gathered dust for only two weeks before Peter gritted his teeth and accepted that he was no longer a child and that his grief had to be shelved. He had things to do. A shop to run.
And so he became the main florist of Reilly’s Flowers at the ripe age of 18. He knew most of the tricks. He’d been helping out, making proper bouquets since he was about 15 and knew the ins and outs of the industry, and of the shop. Peter had been conditioning flowers for display since he was little, knew which chlorine tablets to use, knew how to green up arrangements for weddings and funerals.
Funerals. He’d had to do the flowers for his aunt’s own funeral, through tears. That had been the first time Peter had walked into Reilly's without his Aunt cheerily there waiting for him with a smile, and the tears had started flooding down his cheeks before he could even take a step inside. It had been eerily silent, and excruciatingly wrong . The flowers on display were in poor shape–they’d been left without anyone to check up on them. Half of the petals had dried and had fallen the floor. May would have been appalled with the state of it, so he’d taken a deep breath and picked up a broom. Through the sobbing, Peter had cleaned the place up and got it back into a good state before he started on any orders. They’d had fresh stock in the fridge, still good, left untouched and untainted by the fraught two weeks that life had dealt.
It had felt clinical, the way he processed it at the time. Just assessing whether there was enough stock. Sweeping the floor. As if it was another order, another day, nothing personal. He’d had to–to be able to get through it without breaking down then and there. He’d just taken deep breaths, tried to stay level headed, and had picked the flowers he knew he needed for the designs in his head. May’s favourites–including yellow roses. He pricked his finger on one of them as he prepped it and felt nothing, just watched it bleed for a few seconds before squeezing his eyes tight and picking the thorn out. Then he reached for the First Aid Kit and tried not to think about how gently his Aunt would have applied the plaster to his finger, if she’d been there.
That had been a rough week. Peter had had to send out apologies to their regulars for the bouquets never made. They were all ‘ incredibly sorry ’ for his loss. (Everyone always said that. Sorry for your loss. It had never eased the ache in his heart.)
People had gotten flowers, too, for the funeral. The apartment the Parkers had lived in was full of them after the event. No-one ever considered what you did with funeral flower arrangements, when the event was over and everyone went back home. Peter hauled them back to Queens on the Subway and avoided all the cursory curious glances people were eyeing him with. He could only imagine their questions. Why was someone so young carrying what were obviously funeral flowers through the New York subway? Why was he alone?
It had been a hard week. It had been a harder month. That first month after her death had been possibly the toughest of Peter Parker’s life, and life hadn’t been kind to him. The difficult month passed, and it gently tumbled into becoming a hard year. It didn’t get easier once he got back into the swing of things. Once the funeral was over, everyone but him went back to their normal lives, and he had to figure out how to run the business properly.
Because the thing–the thing was. It was relatively difficult to keep a shop afloat, even in central New York. Maybe even more so because it was New York. Aunt May had been struggling before her death in any case, financially. It was considerably more difficult to keep the place alive given that he was eighteen (twenty, but eighteen at the start), still figuring out how to live by himself and was constantly juggling a thousand things at any given moment in time.
And yet.
Quitting had crossed his mind a few times. When it got tough, when the bills looked close to complete bankruptcy, when he had to consider selling the apartment he lived in above the shop and sleeping on the shop floor itself. Like a temptation. He could’ve sold Reillys, let it be bought out and replaced by some chain store that wanted the prime retail spot in Queens.
It was a possibility that he didn’t even consider, not really, because the idea of letting his aunt’s legacy die like that was too much to bear. In reality, May would have wanted Peter to go to college. Had almost made him swear it on her deathbed. Would have begged him to leave the shop, and live his own life. But without him, the store would have had to shut down. No one else could keep it alive, no one else would care enough to do so.
So he stayed. And kept it afloat–just about.
Two years on from her death, at the age of twenty, Peter was the sole staff member at Reilly’s. They’d had another employee, helping, assisting, prior to May’s death. Manuel–a great man and a great florist, talented with assembling bouquets. Everyone had their own personal style. But having an extra employee was an extra sum that the business couldn’t afford if he wanted it to stay afloat. So Peter had had to let him go, much to his own regret. He’d promised the man that there would always be a job at Reilly’s if he was desperate for one, even if it was just helping out on super busy times. The second Peter could afford to take him back, he intended to. There had been no hard feelings between them.
Sometimes, he missed Manuel’s presence in the shop, when his playlist looped and the same songs he’d heard all day repeated themselves. But he tried not to dwell on it. There was a job to be done, and all that.
So–Peter Parker, not exactly the normal twenty year old, with a full-time business that he owned and an apartment atop it, and no-one in his life who gave a true shit about him. Then again, most twenty-somethings figuring out their life plans and jobs also weren’t masked vigilantes monitoring the streets of New York in the middle of the night, either. But Peter really was the antithesis of typical.
Most people, at the end of the working day, would take that chance to sit back and relax. To put on some Netflix, make a nice meal. Spend time with their family and friends. Forget as much as they could about work. Peter generally ran home to shovel in some pesto pasta–or something equally as quick–into his stomach and then pull on a spandex suit and spend the night trying not to get stabbed.
It had a varying success rate.
When Peter had been 14– christ, so much time had passed –he’d been bitted by a radioactive spider, and it had given him superhuman abilities. He’d taken it as a sign to do good for the world, to honour his uncle Ben (who’d been killed by a mugger in New York around the same time as his powers had kicked in). He aimed to be a friendly neighbourhood crime-fighter—stopping bad things happening to innocent people, wherever and whenever he could. There was no one telling him he had to–but it had just felt right. Wasting his abilities had felt inconceivable to the teenage Peter.
So he’d sewn together a red and blue suit, built some web cartridges, and had taken to the streets. It had been rocky at times, but he’d been New York’s one and only Spiderman ever since the bite, keeping Queens as free of crime as was humanly possible for one guy to do. He never dealt in Avenger-level threats, he was just looking out for the little guy. Sure, if shit hit the fan and there were aliens, he’d suit up and do crowd control, but he’d barely interacted with the Avengers. Peter had gotten a word of thanks to Captain America once or twice, but that was about it. He was pretty certain he’d faint if anything more serious happened. But the Avengers kept their distance. It was for the best.
Peter had been terrified they’d stop him from superhero-ing at all, given their main domain as a team being in New York, but no-one had said so much as a peep about his presence. It had been less of a burden when he’d been a teenager–although, there had been the stress of ensuring that no-one in his life found out his secret identity. The adult Peter Parker didn’t have to worry about that, at least. As a teenager he’d had just enough time to balance an evening patrol and still get enough sleep.
As an adult…being Spiderman as well as having a full time job and having to keep himself alive…it meant he had little rest. Patrol from late evening until about three in the morning, and then back to his apartment for some sleep before the working day began. That was Peter’s schedule most days, but on Mondays he stayed awake later, until about four in the morning until it started getting light. For some reason criminals seemed to work overtime on Mondays. He’d never quite understood it.
Which meant that on the Friday morning that his life changed forever, Peter was working on about two hours sleep and was feeling slightly delirious. He was in work mode despite that, half-made bouquet of spray chrysanthemums and roses and a beautiful spiralling centrepiece chrysanthemum in hand as he spun around the shop humming along to his music.
He heard the jingling bell of the door opening, and expected it to be one of his regulars–Mr Wilkinson, who came in every Friday to pick up a small bouquet for his wife’s grave. It was about the right time of day for him to come in. Peter didn’t turn to check the new arrival, instead leaning over to grab the bouquet from the area of the shop where he kept the orders for the day. It was habitual, having the bouquet in hand before he greeted the man.
Peter picked it up–a number he was particularly proud of because he’d managed to incorporate one of the truly stunning ranunculus he’d picked up from the market earlier into it–and turned back around, only to nearly swallow his own tongue as he came face to face with Tony Fucking Stark.
The billionaire stood there casually, kitted out in clearly a custom-made Armani suit, better suited for display in an expensive Italian tailor’s boutique, not to wear in some florist store in Queens. The contrast between the two’s dress was stark–no pun intended. Peter was wearing ratty jeans and a threadbare t-shirt, adorning atop of that the apron that he really grew out of when he had his…growth spurt (aka spider bite) at 15.
Peter Parker and Tony Stark were two totally different human beings in that split second moment, a chasm between them seemingly uncrossable.
Mr Stark was standing perfectly poised, making eye contact with Peter and the flowers in his grip so nonchalantly, as if Peter shouldn’t be at all surprised by him having turned up. Peter took a second to process it, to blink, to open his eyes again to see whether it was actually real.
Yup, Tony Stark was still stood there in front of him.
It wasn’t everyday that your fucking lifelong hero turned up at your workplace, but, hey. Sometimes life was just like that in New York. Peter had gotten superpowers when he was just a teenager. He’d learnt to roll with weird shit happening to him.
Or, he thought he had it all under control, until he opened his mouth.
“You’re not Mr Wilkinson,” Peter said after a moment, wide-eyed, mouth working on auto-pilot because holy fucking shit that was Tony Stark, that was Iron Man himself, standing right there in front of him casual as anything.
Tony Stark raised an unimpressed eyebrow, evidently slightly amused. His mouth had quirked up into a smile. It was evidently a greeting he wasn’t used to getting, being mistaken for someone else. Peter assumed most people greeted him saying something like: oh my god Tony Stark I can’t believe it’s you . Which, obviously, was what his brain was saying, but his mouth hadn’t yet processed.
It must have been tiring–the constant admiration from everyone you met. Strangers who didn’t know him just…fawning over him. He seemed like he didn’t mind it too much, from the sleazy smirk Mr Stark often shot the camera at public events, but Peter thought it would grate on him, if he was the famous one. Although, it wasn’t like everyone had always favoured Tony Stark. Public opinion of him had been poor before he’d turned his life around by becoming Iron Man. Maybe it was nice—to have people treat you nicely after years of vitriol and hate from the press.
All of these thoughts ran through Peter’s brain in about three seconds before he jolted with a start. Christ, he’d never been rude to a customer in his life and he chose the genius billionaire to be rude to? The man who probably held the power to get his shop shut down in an instant if he tried? Seriously, Peter?
“I’m so sorry, sir, uh,” Peter blinked three times in succession, getting himself to reboot into customer service mode, his default for interacting with people. “How can I help you today?”
Tony Stark took a quick glance around at his selection, not responding instantly.
The absurdity of it all hit him, then–Tony Stark, a customer in his shop. Here for–what? Flowers? What need did Tony Stark have for flowers? Didn’t he have, like, people for that? Why the hell would he be running that errand personally–was it some kind of ruse? Was there an Avengers mission ongoing? Was this some secret rendezvous?
Or…a shiver ran through Peter’s spine, and his heart quickened. Perhaps this was it. He’d been rumbled. Tony Stark had come to his shop not to interact with Peter Parker the florist, but instead to confront Spiderman–and had used his high-tech capabilities to track down the neighbourhood hero’s civilian identity. Peter’s own favourite hero was at Reilly’s to tell him directly to his face to stop doing the Avengers job for them–and what was he supposed to do, then? Peter needed to do it–he had a compulsion to help people. He couldn’t help that he was based in the same city as a multi-faceted government-funded agency of superheroes! He’d lived there all his life and he sure as hell wasn’t moving.
But against the Avengers, what chance did he stand?
He tensed himself as Tony opened his mouth, ready for the words, the condemnation, the “ You need to stop, your shitty suit is bringing down New York’s reputation for having reputable heroes” .
“Well,” Tony Stark spoke slowly, eyeing the displays rather than continuing direct eye contact. “It’s my anniversary– our anniversary. My partner and I–Pepper–it’s our anniversary. So, uh, a bouquet…would be great.”
Peter breathed an imperceptible sigh of relief. He assessed the man’s face, but his intentions–whilst exhibiting awkward behaviour–seemed genuine. Tony Stark was truly there for no reason other than to make a bouquet of anniversary flowers. He let his heart rate slow, then, and his body relaxed.
He was quietly surprised at Tony’s demeanour. This was not the man from the papers, the man Peter grew up seeing give interviews on the TV, with the suave attitude and the cool sunglasses. This guy stumbled over his words, was awkward, was distracted by the contents of the flower shop. There was a little grin on his face when he said Pepper’s name, though, which was endearing. It was certainly not what Peter expected him to be like–not in the slightest.
“Of course,” Peter turned to the display of flowers they had on offer, mentally doing an assessment of what they had in stock, before spinning back to ask follow-ups to the billionaire. He already had some kind of mental vision.
It helped immensely that Peter knew who Tony was referring to–who he’s picturing in his mind with that little grin of his. Pepper Potts was well renowned, a celebrity in her own right, and the acting CEO of Stark Industries. She was a beautiful lady–but also a firecracker. A total badass, and Peter already has a sense of what kind of bouquet she’d like. Something weird. Something spectacular, something loud . Something to put on an office desk that could be seen from afar. Not just ‘ My boyfriend got me a bunch of two dozen roses for our anniversary and now they’re on my desk ’ type of flowers. Something bold.
Tony didn’t seem like the kind of boyfriend who would rock up with a dozen roses, either. He seemed like unusual flowers would be right up his street as well. He had a thousand ideas in his mind for what kind of thing he could present to Tony Stark. But the client came first–and he needed to ascertain more of a vibe from him before kicking off.
“What are her favourite flowers, if you know them?”
Please say something that’ll go with the orange dahlias, Peter prayed silently. He’d been dying to use them in an order all day, and they’d just be perfect for that arrangement if Tony’s vision matched his own.
The favourite flowers question was one that stumped a lot of partners–especially middle aged men. They’d come into his shop trying to get something that would perfectly suit their partner’s vibe, attuned to their taste. But they’d fumble about, struggling, because they’d never asked about favourite flowers. A lot of them just kind of assumed Peter would be able to guess–but people varied significantly. One person’s favourite was another persons’ most hated flower. Peter couldn’t fathom it–he’d always thought it’d be the first question he’d ask a partner. But, hey, then again, he was slightly biased.
(It extended beyond expensive bouquets, for the record. Sure, he’d straight up collapse if anyone loved him enough to go to a florist and buy him flowers–Reilly’s ensured he was surrounded by displays of love pretty much every day and he has to violently strangle himself to ensure he doesn’t spend too long thinking about it. But one of Peter’s big fantasies had always been someone picking wildflowers for him ‘just because’. He was a hopeless romantic, so sue him. He would do it all the time, if he had people in his life–give his friends posies of flowers he found in parks, tying little flowers into a bracelet for them. I thought of you, made this for you.
But Tony Stark, as it happened, wasn’t one of the dreaded customers who don’t know their other half’s favourite flowers. His response was immediate.
“She likes freesia,” He said matter of factly, even nodding to the freesia over on the display stand–he knew enough to even recognise them. Tony Stark knew what freesia was–what an insane world he was living in. Beyond roses, most people weren’t able to recognise flowers beyond roses.
“That’s a great start, alright,” Peter grinned back, and turned to grab some of the freesia. “Orange okay, as a colour scheme for ya?”
“Sure thing,” Tony nodded, watching him as he danced around.
Perfect. The dahlias would go great, then.
He liked to incorporate the customer’s preference into his ideas–it made it personal, gave it a more valuable touch. A lot of customers wanted him to make something pretty–and didn’t care to have a say in constructing the bouquet. But it was an act of love, so he often tried to get people involved. He could generally tell who would play ball, and who would be simply putting up with his antics. The miserable ones would tap their foot, look distracted and stand there staring at their phones. Which was fine! It just felt less personal.
Tony Stark, he would have pinned for one to step out of the shop to take a work call. But oddly enough, he wasn’t one of these people. His phone must have been pinging with a thousand messages in the time he’s been standing in Reilly’s, but he hasn’t touched it, instead seemed entranced by Peter dancing around the shop floor, freesia in hand.
Peter asked a few more questions, assessing the vibe that Tony wanted before going behind the work stand to assemble the bouquet. He’d picked some of his favourites, determined to make it one of the best he’d ever done. A challenge, that was for sure.
Midway through the assembly came a female automated voice that just said–“Boss?”
Tony started a bit–seemingly surprised by the interruption. He was watching Peter construct the bouquet intensely. Peter glanced over–curious about the voice that had come out of nowhere. It turned out it had come from his watch, as Tony lifted it up and responded. “Little busy, Fri. Later.”
Fri?
Peter raised an eyebrow to himself, but didn’t inquire. Secretary, probably. But Tony putting off what was likely an urgent matter to focus on the flowers…bizarre. Peter turned around to wrap it and do the ribbon for the flowers, keeping it away from Tony’s view so he could do a big reveal.
He liked doing that. It was slightly showy-offy, but worth it in the end for people’s reactions. The orange bouquet he’d made for Tony, he had to admit, was one of his better creations.
“Holy shit,” Tony’s eyebrow raised as he saw it, and his jaw literally dropped.
Peter held it out to him, showing it closer, hoping it was to his liking.
“God,” Tony blinked. “That’s absolutely perfect, thank you.”
Phew.
“All in a day’s work,” Peter smiled.
“That only took you like five minutes–ten max!” Tony seemed genuinely impressed. The admiration was almost comical. Peter had twisted some flowers together, and Tony Stark, the man who’d pretty much revolutionised the entire tech industry from the second he’d started breathing, was impressed by his simple skill. The man who’d built Iron Man, who piloted the suit.
It felt wrong holding out his regular card machine to a literal billionaire, knowing Tony could easily pull the shop out of debt and that it wouldn’t even leave a dent in his bank balance. But he dealt with rich people all the time–after all, most people didn’t have the money to spend on bouquets of flowers, so his customers were often well-off. So he held it out with a smile. Peter wasn’t one for jealousy, really. Life was life. People got handed different cards. Tony Stark had his own challenges. Peter had never personally been kidnapped and held in a cave for three months.
“Thank you,” Tony repeated after he’d paid, staring down at his flowers as if he wasn’t quite sure how they’d come into existence, and then back at Peter with a curious expression on his face. Then he coughed, and gave a salute to exit.
One second Tony Stark was there in his shop, and then he was gone, leaving no trace, almost like he’d just been a figment of Peter’s hyperactive imagination. But he took a look at the freesia, and sure enough, there were less than he’d had that morning.
About a minute after the celebrity’s departure, the real Mr Wilkinson walked in for his own bouquet, and Peter thanked the stars that the shop had been empty when Mr Stark had stood there.
Average Friday at Reilly’s. Well. Not really. Normally his Fridays were a drudge of making orders and stressing about getting flowers from the market the following day. But that Friday?
Well. It sorta changed everything.