He's been sitting there for about two hours now.
There was a guy—probably a college student—who had tucked himself behind the asters and was sitting on the ground with a sketchbook. This was the second day he'd done this. Yesterday, he'd sat in front of the sweet peas for an entire afternoon.
Normally, Rin wouldn't be this bothered. People came into his shop all the time just to stare at the flowers, and while it'd be nice if everyone who visited was also a prospective customer, it wasn't all that uncommon. But the one in his shop right now never said a word and barely even acknowledged Rin's presence at all. It was also Tuesday, and he never got many customers on Tuesdays, so it was just him and the artist stewing in silence. He couldn't stand it.
Would it kill him to at least…look in Rin's direction?
In the next half hour, Rin rearranged his cash register and sorted out a new shipment of flowers with as much noise and large gestures as he could. He felt ridiculous while he did it but he was also pretty sure he had a dumb, inexplicable need to be acknowledged in the stupidest of situations. Like this one.
The boy behind the asters looked at him maybe once when he dropped a large bag of soil onto his counter with a huff and made several loose metal things fall over and clang loudly. And then he went straight back to his sketchbook.
For the rest of the day, Rin moped in the corner and made at least twice his daily quota of bouquets.
(He then realized that most of them would probably go to waste now and despaired.)
Today it was chrysanthemums, and while the taciturn boy sat in front of the flowers, Rin glared holes into them behind him. Thankfully, Wednesdays meant that one of the country clubs down the road had their weekly meeting, so he could at least distract himself by making arrangements with the lady in charge of the orchestration. She was always very specific and kept him on the phone with her for an hour, but Rin was almost thankful for the excuse to work.
Of course, she wanted chrysanthemums this week.
Part of Rin was weirdly excited and another part actually had the gall to be nervous. He wasted the first moments after hanging up just staring in the direction of the flowers he'd been glaring at earlier.
What the fuck are you waiting around like an idiot for, he screamed internally and almost slapped himself.
He walked over to the chrysanthemums as casually as he could and studied them, finally deciding on a few that he took off the shelf. And then—casually—he spared a glance for the guy sitting by them.
Rin had to force himself to keep a neutral face when he saw the wide-eyed expression the guy was giving him.
He still wasn't saying anything.
"Um," Rin started, and damn it what did he mean with that pleading expression? "Were you drawing these?" Obviously, because looking down at his sketchbook, Rin could see that the boy had been drawing the exact cluster he'd just taken away.
Slowly, Rin put them back and took the ones in the other corner. The boy took one look at the flowers and just stared at him.
"Oh, um, they were like this, right?" Rin said, and rotated the flowers he'd put back to the left.
But the look was still unsatisfied, so he inched them slightly to the right.
Clearly he was a failure anyway, because the boy sighed and got up, rearranging the flowers by himself.
"Ah," Rin said stupidly.
"Thanks," was the only reply before he went back to sketching again and Rin awkwardly scuffled off to the side to make the damn chrysanthemum arrangements.
What what what what, he had no idea what just happened and felt like banging his head on the wall. And when his cellphone rang suddenly, he almost dropped the flowers in his arms.
"Gou?"
"Brother! I'm coming over in a few minutes!"
"…Why?"
"I need a favor!"
"And here I thought maybe you just wanted to see your brother."
Gou ignored him. "One of my friends wants to ask this girl out and I said it'd be really sweet if he gave her flowers and that you're a florist so can you make him a nice bouquet for her?"
"I'm a little busy right now…"
"Please? Just something really quick, it doesn't have to be fancy!"
"I—"
"Thanks, you're the best!" The line went dead before Rin could say anything else.
He groaned and set everything down, postponing his job to make the cheesiest bouquet he could come up with. Gou burst in the shop not five minutes later.
"You're the best brother, you know that?"
He sighed and continued cutting the stems of the flowers he'd picked. "So are you going to be paying for these for him?"
His sister gave him those awful, awful puppy eyes and wheedled, "Free of charge? For the best sister?"
Rin rolled his eyes. "When was the last time I got anything free from you?"
"Isn't me visiting you enough?"
"You have ulterior motives, this doesn't count."
Rin thought he might have heard soft laughter coming from the direction of the chrysanthemums, but before he could think about it, the door of the shop swung open again and a tall, kind-looking man walked in. He gave a cheerful greeting to the two at the counter before going straight to the artist on the ground.
"Haru-chan," he said, "did you forget that you said you'd help me babysit today?"
The boy (Haru, apparently) frowned up at him. "No."
"There's only fifteen minutes before we have to go over."
"I was leaving soon."
The tall one chuckled and scratched his head. "Well, might as well come with me now, right?"
Haru wordlessly gathered up his pencils and books in his bag and got up, exiting the store.
After they were gone, Gou sidled up to him with a wicked grin on her face. "So…who was that?"
Rin blinked. "I don't know."
"Really? Because you were staring at him the whole time."
"I—I was not."
"Oooh. 'Course not, silly me."
"He's just been coming in here for the past three days to draw flowers."
"Hm."
"I've barely even talked to him."
"Mhmmm."
"Dammit Gou just take these flowers to loverboy and leave me alone."
"Which loverboy are we talking about here?" she poked his cheeks and Rin realized he was completely red in the face. He glared down at the flowers in his hands and hastily wrapped them up.
"Just take these."
He could feel Gou's teasing eyes on him as she walked out the door, and this time he really did slap his face, willing the heat to go down.
Thursday it was morning glories. Friday it was purple lilacs.
Saturday, he didn't come at all and Rin thought what he felt was probably disappointment.
A/N: I've always loved flower shop and artist AU's, so that's how this happened. I'm the opposite of an expert in flowers though, so although I did some research, please let me know if I got something totally wrong! XD (and sorry this chapter is so short, the others will be longer probably)
