A/N - Some lighter fare for you, darlings. I really…can't excuse this one. Sorry. :-p Enjoy anyway.
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Once upon a time there lived a wealthy drill salesman. He had a beautiful trophy wife and a strong, hearty son that would inherit the business when the salesman grew old. They were happy in their country home and had everything they could ask for. Except for a boy that lived in a small guest room (converted from a closet). They would not mind being rid of him at all. But he was useful for weeding the gardens and mucking the stables, and they kept him despite his financial burden and surly teenage attitude.
One day the drill salesman was needed in town - a three-day trip away. Before he left, the salesman gathered his family, and the misfit, around the fire. "I will no doubt receive a hearty stipend form this sale," he proclaimed. "Tell me, family, what you desire from town?"
"Candy!" the son exclaimed.
"And jewelry," the wife added.
"Licorice and humbugs and chocolates!"
"Pearls and silver and gemstones!"
"And video games, Daddy!"
"And a new dress, dear."
The salesman sighed quietly and hoped it would be a very hearty stipend. "Very well." He turned to the misfit. "And you, boy?"
The misfit looked up from his silent brooding to answer, "You don't care about me, why're you even asking? Get me a damn flower or something." He stalked off melodramatically, and the salesman's family heard the sound of a vase being shattered upstairs, followed by a caps-locked fit of rage. They looked at each other and shrugged.
The drill salesman was sent off tearfully the next morning, his wife's and son's lists in hand. But as the stipend was only modestly hearty, he was forced to only buy select items for his family.
"At least the misfit doesn't want much. A flower," he snorted, "what a bloody pansy." And he guffawed at his own joke and began the journey home, figuring he could pick the misfit a damn flower on the return.
But the drill salesman was an entrepreneur, not a college graduate, for a very good reason. And when he lost his way in the woods, he refused to ask directions. He eventually found a manor, twice - no, three times - as grand as his own home, and began to salivate a bit. Closing his mouth and wiping off his chin, the salesman pushed open the gate and entered the gardens.
"Well, here's the misfit's gift," he muttered, and plucked a blackened flower from its vine. No sooner had he done so than a greasy git stormed out of the manor, a weird dress-thing billowing behind him. The salesman shrunk back instinctively.
"That," the git hissed, "was my night-blooming orchid. I have been cultivating it for six years." He snatched it from the salesman's thick fingers. "But it's worthless now. And in return, you shall be imprisoned here both for trespassing and sabotaging my elixir."
"Well, I didn't do it on purpose," protested the salesman, feeling rather affronted. "Here, look, you can have these humbugs, just let me go, I have a family waiting for me and - "
"Silence," the git snapped. "Then find someone willing to be punished for your ignorance, and they will be imprisoned for eternity."
The drill salesman thought long and hard about this proposition. After several minutes, he grinned. "Of course. I'll send the misfit." The git returned to his manor broodingly.
The misfit was told of his misfortune (well, it wasn't really for any of them, but the wife did manage a few insincere tears) and sent away to live with the git. Upon his arrival, the git sneered at him and said, "Despite the narration, I am not a greasy fit, I am the Potions master and I command respect."
"Yeah, whatever." The misfit was in another on of his sullen teenage moods, but perhaps you would be too if the only family you'd ever known had gleefully sent you off to a greasy git.
"Potions Master! And I command respect!"
Yeah, him.
Anyway, the misfit was shown to his room and allowed to freshen up before joining the Potions Master in his study. The misfit put on his blackest clothes and the angriest frown he could muster before shuffling down the staircase.
"My elixir was ruined by that blundering salesman," the Potions Master announced when the misfit stormed in. "I don't trust a misfit like yourself to cultivate the flowers, but everything else needs to be duplicated as well." He dropped a frog in front of the misfit with a squelch. "To begin, you can extract a golden ball from within the bowels of that frog." The misfit surveyed the specimen distastefully, but got to work.
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Despite his teenage sulkiness and occasional bouts of screaming fits, the Potions Master grew to love the misfit.
"I don't love anyone," the Potions Master protested. "And he's not a misfit."
Fine. The Potions Master grew fond of, um, the boy. They worked alongside each other on the potion, conversing as the Potions Master stirred the cauldron's contents and the boy did menial and humiliating work like disemboweling frogs. (But it must have been cathartic, the Potions Master surmised, because the fits of incontrollable rage grew less frequent.)
Almost six years had passed, the potion was nearing completion, and the boy's birthday was upon them. But far above those concerns were the Potions Master's of the boy. He cared for him above all, and if the boy did not feel the same before the orchid had bloomed… well. The Potions Master returned to his cauldron.
Upstairs, the boy was quietly brooding, still one of his favorite hobbies despite nearly being a man. He had grown to love the Potions Mater, despite being a greasy antisocial git.
From the study thundered the explosion of a cauldron.
"Don't mind that, it was only a spare," the Potions Master snarled.
But how could he return the feelings? He was still yet a boy, and the Potions Master was a man. A sardonic, witty, hot man. The boy blushed and buried his face in his pillow.
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The orchid would blossom at midnight, coincidentally the same day as the boy's twenty-first birthday. The Potions Master hovered over his cauldron and the boy paced the library and muttered under his breath all day. When night fell they brought the cauldron into the garden and stood in wait for the orchid. The moon hung high in the sky when the flower began to unfold itself. They both inhaled sharply when it started to glow.
"I need to confess something to you," the boy said quietly.
"Can't it wait?"
"No, not for much longer." He kept his eyes trained on the blossoming orchid. "I love you, Potions Master. I love you despite your greasy gitness and - "
"What?"
"No, no, it's okay!" the boy cried. "Because I professed my love before the flower blossomed, you'll be transformed back into a handsome prince!"
"You dolt, I really look like this," the Potions Master snapped. "You've been corrupted."
The boy looked crestfallen. "you mean I've been confiding in that candlestick for six years for nothing?"
The Potions Master snipped the orchid from its vine. "I'm afraid so."
"And that flower doesn't symbolize and the potion's not a magical love potion?"
"Where to you get these ideas?" He turned down the heat beneath the cauldron. "This is a bug spray for the aphids in my roses. And sometimes an orchid is just an orchid. This needs to simmer for a while." He wrapped an arm around the boy's shoulders. "In a world not corrupted by Disney," he said conspiratorially, "things aren't so innocent and saccharine. For example, we don't make love. We fuck. Here, I'll show you." And he led the boy inside.
That night the boy became a man. And everyone lived happily ever after. Except for the aphids. And the salesman's wife and son were never really happy with what they had. And the salesman was driven mad by their whining. And… well, that's everyone, isn't it? In any case, the Potions Master and the Man were happy in each other's company. And that's all that really mattered.
The End