It's almost closing time at the florist shop when the man walks in. As the bell over the door jingles, Aubrey puts on their best customer service smile and represses a groan.
Everybody in Metro City seems to have suddenly remembered that Valentine's Day is tomorrow, the collective citizenry has been descending on the florist shop in a non-stop desperate horde of romantic procrastinators.
The shop is, by now, extremely picked over, nothing left but floral odds and ends, a circumstance that the last six customers did not hesitate to complain about bitterly. Aubrey had bitten their tongue and refrained from pointing out that it was their own damn fault for waiting so long to buy flowers.
This guy, at least, walks purposefully towards the counter, instead of meandering around the shop, which, Aubrey thinks, is one point in his favor.
"Hi, how can I help you?"
"—I would like to order a bouquet of flowers please," the guy says in a rush, the words running together.
Aubrey blinks in surprise, and the man winces, his dark skin flushing. He's holding a slim dark blue book in his hands, turning it over and over again restlessly.
"Sorry," the guy adds. "Thank you." He grimaces again, a pained look in his disconcertingly bright green eyes.
"…sure," Aubrey says, feeling a rush of sympathy at the guy's clear nervousness. "Did you—have something specific in mind? I'm afraid we're all out of roses, but we've got a few carnations left—I can show you what we have in stock, still—"
"Not roses," the man says, with a quick, dismissive wave of his hand. "Much too ordinary for—red tulips; do you have those?"
"We do," Aubrey says, turning to retrieve the tulips from the shelf behind them, "but only a couple—"
"That's fine," the guy says. "Clematis?"
Aubrey gives him a sidelong look, but wordlessly adds the showy pink clematis flower to the tulips, diplomatically not pointing out that the pairing is…not really visually ideal.
"Gardenias."
Ah, okay, that looks a little better, Aubrey has to admit. The white gardenias pull the classy tulips and ostentatious clematis together, and help balance the color scheme.
"Daffodils."
Aaand there goes the harmony of the bouquet; the bright yellow daffodils make it just look weird again.
"Iris."
Purple? Really? With the daffodils, okay, or with the white gardenias, or with the red tulips. But not with all of them, and pink clematis in the bargain—
"Apple blossoms. Peach blossoms."
"Er—which?" Aubrey asks, hand hovering between the two.
"Both."
Aubrey winces and adds them both. This bouquet is going to be such a mess; should they warn the guy how much of a mess this is going to be? A really expensive mess, too—
"Cypress," the man says, mouth twisting as if he's tasted something bitter.
Maybe he's realized how bad this bouquet looks, Aubrey thinks. The guy doesn't say anything, though, so Aubrey goes ahead and adds the christmas-y green cypress to the bouquet.
The man hesitates, after that.
"Do you have anything—blue?" he asks, sounding uncertain for the first time.
"Blue?" Aubrey asks. Surely this bouquet doesn't need another color—
The man's mouth twists again, his eyes falling.
"—yes," he says. "Blue."
"…I mean, we've got bluebells," Aubrey says.
"Bluebells. Thank you. Yes."
Aubrey adds the bluebells.
"That's all," the man says.
Aubrey blinks in surprise; somehow, they'd felt as if the guy might just keep on adding flowers to the bouquet forever. They glance down at the bouquet in their hands.
—huh. It actually—doesn't look that bad.
Vividly colored, and more than a little bit odd, but not actually bad.
What had the guy said before, about roses? Too ordinary for whoever this bouquet was meant for? Well, this certainly isn't any kind of ordinary.
"Great!" Aubrey says, with another customer service smile. "We have complimentary cards to put in the bouquet, if you'd like to add a message or a signature. Pens and cards are on the counter to your right!"
They turn away to tie up the bouquet and add the plastic card holder; when they turn back around, the man is looking down at a blank card, pen in his hand, biting his lip as if uncertain what to write. Finally he writes a crisp M on the paper, pushes the card across the counter to Aubrey, and replaces the pen in the cup.
"Would you like to pick out a vase?" Aubrey ask.
"A—oh—yes—I—"
The man swallows visibly, his hands moving restlessly, fingertips running along the spine of the book.
"That—that one," he says, pointing at a tall, clear vase on the shelf behind Aubrey.
Aubrey puts the flowers in the vase and sets them on the counter. The man fumbles in his pocket and pulls out his wallet.
"And will you be taking the flowers with you?" Aubrey asks. "Or would you like them delivered?"
"I—I—" the man looks even more nervous now than when he first walked into the shop.
There is a long, strangely fraught silence, the man's expression of anxiety deepening until finally— his whole expression twists, not just bitter or worried this time, but absolutely anguished and filled with despair.
He shakes his head with a sudden violence, breath hissing through his teeth.
"—god," he says, "never—"
Aubrey takes half a step back in shock, and then the man yanks a handful of bills from his wallet and tosses them on the counter.
"—forget it," he says rapidly, "forget it; forget it; never mind—"
He almost runs for the door.
"But—" Aubrey says. "Are you sure you don't want—"
"Keep it," the man says, "keep it; keep the flowers; keep the money; thank you for trying—"
"Your change—"
The man shakes his head violently again, and disappears out the door.
The bell over top of it jangles as it closes. Aubrey stares after him for a moment, and then looks back down at what is really entirely too much money on the counter. Their eyes widen as they count it, then they give a low whistle.
The guy had been severely weird, but he certainly hadn't been stingy. He technically hadn't even had to pay for the bouquet at all; Aubrey's had customers before who made them go through the whole production of making a bouquet only to refuse to pay at the end when they decided they didn't want it after all. And certainly none of them had tipped Aubrey afterwards.
Aubrey glances at the bouquet, pulls the card from it, and looks at it curiously. M.
They wonder if whoever M had meant this strange bouquet for would have liked it, and feel a little twist of melancholy. It's too bad, really. Aubrey had liked the guy, in spite of the weirdness. Even before the tip.
They shake their head, shaking off the sympathetic sadness, and put the card down on the counter.
It's closing time, and Aubrey is more than ready to go home.
The next day is even more hectic; there are three other people working behind the counter with Aubrey today, all of them making bouquets out of odds and ends for customers who have suddenly decided that Valentine's Day is some kind of emergency.
It's actually Clarissa who answers the phone call.
"—Wayne Scott," she says, pausing in filling out the delivery form. She gives a panicked little laugh. "Well—I'm afraid we don't—we don't have a very wide selection left, Mr. Scott; I—oh. Oh. Um. That's—all right, then, let me just—"
She cradles the headset between her head and shoulder and looks around frantically for something to scrounge up. His reassurances that it doesn't really matter what the bouquet looks like notwithstanding; she can't give Metro Man's girlfriend something that's—"
Her eyes fall on the already made up bouquet, leftover from yesterday. An odd selection of flowers, but it doesn't look quite so bad as the things they've been forced to make up today. She swiftly adds up the total and reads it off to Mr. Scott, punches in his credit card number after he recites it for her.
As soon as she hangs up, another customer comes in—and Clarissa forgets to finish filling out the form, and to write a card for the holder. And then another customer comes in, and then the phone rings again and—
When José comes in to pick up the next batch of flowers to be delivered, she's on the phone again, and she mimes desperately at him to pick up the vase and the form.
The card Aubrey put down on the counter last night is still there, beside the vase. Seeing it, José assumes that it must have fallen, and goes to replace it in the bouquet's plastic holder. Then he hesitates, uncertain as to if the letter on the card is meant to be a W or an M.
He glances at the form, but the sender's name has been left off.
He looks back at the card.
M. It looks more like an M.
He puts the card in the plastic holder.
There are a lot of deliveries to make; a lot of bouquets. By the time José puts that particular vase of flowers down on Roxanne Ritchi's desk, he's forgotten all about the question of the card.
(There's a slim blue book on her desk already. José puts the vase down on that.)
"—what made you think the flowers were from me?" Megamind asks, sitting on Roxanne's couch beside her three weeks later. "Besides the card?"
"Oh!" she says, and laughs. "Well—okay, so the card, yeah, and then the poems seemed like you, and then—okay, so, honestly, I looked up the flowers that were in the bouquet, and the florigraphic meaning of all of them was—"
Megamind's expression goes steadily odder as she describes the bouquet.
"—but I mean," Roxanne says, "you can see why I thought that they were from you, right? I don't sound completely—"
"They were."
Roxanne tilts her head curiously.
"They—Wayne said the florist told him they just—gave you whatever they had, right?" Megamind says.
Roxanne nods.
"They—they must not have thrown it away," Megamind says, a happy, incredulous smile beginning to curve the edges of his mouth.
"What are you talking about?" Roxanne asks, smiling bemusedly back at him.
Megamind laughs, a breathless, wondering sound—and then he explains.
...the end.
The flower language interpretation of the bouquet that Megamind has them make up for Roxanne is:
apple blossom - temptation
iris - a message
peach blossom - I am your captive
clematis - mental beauty
gardenias - secret love
daffodils - unrequited love
cypress - despair
red tulips - a declaration of love
bluebells - (the color is a symbol for Megamind)
It basically translates to:
"A message for you, Temptress. You are brilliant and I am your captive. I've been in love with you secretly, and I know you don't love me back, but I'm telling you now that I love you."
-Megamind
Happy day 5 of my birthday fic month! I hope you are all enjoying it!
Someone asked if all of the stories for my birthday fic month would be new ones, or if any of my in-progress stories would be updated. Scroll down if you would like to know the answer; don't scroll down if you'd rather be surprised!
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Most of the stories will be new ones, but this one is obviously a sequel to another story; another day's update will be an additional chapter to one of my one-shots; one will be a multi-chapter sequel to one of my one-shots; one will be a new chapter of Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue; and one will be the first chapter of the next story in the Safe If We Stand Close Together series.