Hello everyone! Thank you for reading chapter two. You have no idea how happy that makes me..truly, you have no idea.T-T
Wends- Thank you so much! You were the first one to send me a review! I'm so glad you like my writing style, your review was so flattering! (I just ended the last three sentences with exclamation points...) I suppose I should post the third one then, eh? It'll be out...I dunno...eventually. I'll wait until this one gets good and started first.
AquilaStrife-I'm so glad to hear from you again! I love your reviews! I'm really glad you liked the first chapter. To be honest, I was a bit hesitant to post it...Anyway, I'll get the other one up eventually. Hope to hear from you again!
animegirl999-Thanks for the review! I'm glad you liked it! Your grin makes me grin!
I do hope this story is being enjoyed thus far by those of you who don't review as well. The hit count is way higher than the review count! Don't be scared! Review! If you don't it's like... a hit and run...ha! A pun!
Ahem, sorry. In any case, I own naught but the plot.
"Cloud, would you mind helping me out a little with this box?" Riku called from the delivery truck outside. "Sora's already got three, and I don't think I can carry any more!" There was a fit of coughing and a crash, followed by Riku asking if Sora was alright.
Cloud barely heard the noise from outside and dimly wondered if he should ignore it. After all, if he'd told Riku once, he'd told him a million times, he did not favor being around flowers. Carrying them inside the flower shop directly violated his statement, and Cloud was none too happy about contradicting himself.
Still though, Riku sounded a little desperate, and Cloud found himself glumly slipping off the bench to help his fellow employee with the crates in the moving truck.
The delivery truck was parked right outside the back door for easy access, however Riku seemed to behaving anything but an easy time. His strong arms were holding four boxes of flowers Cloud didn't care to recognize and he was struggling to keep the door open with his foot.
"Hey, could you give me a hand here?"
Cloud shrugged and gripped the doorknob so that Riku could enter and set the boxes down on the counter.
"I don't see why you insist on ordering all these...plants. No one's going to buy this many."
Riku shrugged, already up to get a second load. "I don't order them, they just keep coming. Besides, Sora would have a hissy fit if we attempted to sell anything but the freshest..." he looked down at one of the boxes. "...Mini Gerbera Daisies."
Both of them fought back a snort as they headed down to the delivery truck.
As Far as Cloud was concerned, he had just wasted twenty seven minutes unloading a truck full of flowers into a store room that he would never go near. Sora seemed pleased enough, and Riku seemed indifferent, but Cloud... he headed directly to the mens room to wash off that revolting pollen clinging tenaciously to the already hideous uniform. He did not like flowers, not in the slightest, and he would continue telling his co-workers that until they finally understood.
Laggardly returning to his post, he sat down on the stool and poured himself a cup of coffee. He realized that he wasn't really supposed to drink it, but there were no regulatory rules posted to otherwise hitch his actions, so he reached for the sugar.
The counter that he worked at wasn't especially neat, as Cloud really saw no need to clean something that was inevitably going to get dirty again. The counter was riddled with empty sugar packets—Cloud's own use of the sugar had doubled the size and now the pile was tumbling over itself—and dirty plastic spoons were hanging off the counter, threatening to drip little droplets of coffee onto the freshly waxed floor. Even the lids that came perfectly stacked were teetering over.
The sugar substitute was hopelessly jumbled in with the regular sugar, and between the two types of sugar and the non dairy coffee creamer, it was impossible to tell what was actually being put into the coffee.
His brow arched in consideration. Perhaps an unkept counter was a sort of turn off to customers—a thought that nearly branded itself as a good thing. Then he thought about how Riku would nag him about it later on. With a mixture of boredom and disdain he retrieved a napkin from the front drawer, and pushed the garbage into the giant barrel of a trash can off to the left. His work for the day was finished.
Dropping in a plastic spoon to blend his mixture of sugar that happened to contain coffee, he sat back in the stool and breathed out a sigh of relief as though wiping down a counter was equivalent to a hard day's work.
Then he flicked his eyes upward and dejectedly saw the approaching form of the doctor, apparently there to ruin his break.
"Great," Cloud muttered. Already irritated by the delivery that morning, he wasn't particularly ready to exude kindness. Perhaps he should have left the counter dirty.
"Coffee please." Leon said with a distinct frown.
"We're out. I drank it all."
Leon's eyes glazed over him with ennui. "Then that full coffee pot over there must be a product of my imagination."
Cloud flicked his gaze in the direction of the pot, grimaced, then replied "Probably."
"Cloud!" Riku shouted from the back room.
He frowned and snatched a coffee cup off the stack.
Leon reached in his pocket for some money, all the while muttering just loud enough for Cloud to hear. "Why do they let people like you thrive when there are so many intelligent, hopeful ones that could use the resources you consume?"
Cloud beared his teeth. It wasn't even noon and he was already getting hot under the collar. "Because it's people like me that give gifts to the families of the patients you kill!"
Leon's brow puckered in annoyance. "The patients I kill?"
"That's right! So if I were you—"
"If you were me the patients really would be killed. Now put a lid on your mouth and my coffee so I can get back to my job...which by the way benefits humanity." There was a flicker of embarrassment with his slight loss of control, but it soon passed as he stared belligerently at the man behind the counter.
"WHAT?" Cloud roared ready to jump over the counter. "I served you coffee you prudish pediatrician! Show some gratitude!"
Leon snatched his coffee off the counter. "Don't mistake ingratitude for personal disapproval." He turned around cooly and strolled down the hall.
Cloud's lower lip jutted out in irritation. The nerve of some customers. Especially that overly arrogant Leon. Only that overly arrogant Leon. He watched the slight swing in His stark white coat tails in an almost mocking manner, and just like that his resolve snapped.
Invigorated more than ever, and determined to have last word, he lifted his leg attempting to jump over counter. He had every intention of chasing that doctor down the hallway and pummeling him into those freshly waxed floor tiles. He had absolutely had it with that chesty doctor—his unreasonably short fuse had already hit the gunpowder.
"Come back here!" He screeched, but then he felt a pair of husky arms around his waist, forcefully pulling him back behind the counter where he lost his balance and fell, nearly hitting his head on the shelf.
"Will you cut that out!" Riku hissed, picking himself off of the floor, then extending down a hand to help Cloud up. "I don't understand how you chose to work in a public setting and have absolutely no manners at all!"
"He started it!" Cloud said defensively, dusting himself off. He dimly noted the bystanders that seemed a bit reluctant to order coffee.
"Well, please, please don't finish it? I'll take my job back and put you with Sora if you keep acting this way." Riku bent down to pick up a white bear that had unceremoniously hit the floor.
Cloud could almost see the wicked grin spreading across Sora's face from behind the wall.
"Yeah...whatever."
"Maybe you should take a break."
"I'm fine."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Riku's eyes narrowed. "You won't try to hurt the customers?"
"I won't try to hurt the customers."
"You won't chase them down the hall?"
"I won't chase them down the hall."
"And if Leon comes back you won't start a scene?"
"If Leon comes back I'll make him a patient at his own hospital."
"Cloud!"
"...And if Leon comes back I won't start a scene." He muttered, knowing he was telling a whole hearted lie. He had every intention of putting that uppity doctor in his own place—even thought logically it really made no sense—and he would do it with or without Riku's permission.
Riku could see the gears turning in Cloud's head, but decided to ignore it and exited to the back room.
Leon was sitting in his office, the desk stacked high with hundreds—though neatly placed—forms and reports and charts. This amount of work would normally cripple the forbearance of the most doctors, even when they usually enlisted the aid of a nurse or the receptionists to do it, but Leon was used to the amount of work and preferred to do it himself for fear of someone else's error.
So he sat, scribbling away on the documents that made up his organized mess.
The office was small, but not too small so the stacks of paper made it look cluttered. There was a file cabinet with a fake green fern sitting on top—not of Leon's placing—and it sat right next to the door, which had dark green venetian blinds for privacy. Outside his name was neatly stenciled onto the glass, though it did little for him since he only saw it backwards.
His desk was pecan with a dark—almost black—varnish, not that he could see it, and he had a coat rack of the same wood right next to the file cabinet on which hung his spare lab coat.
Though entirely vapid in it's decor, Leon actually preferred his office to the brightly lit hallways, locker rooms and other departments of the main hospital.
This was his second home...aside from the occasional private meetings with patients, endless paperwork and unannounced intrusions—well, it was an office after all—the place was fairly pleasant.
There was a sharp rap at his door, and without an invitation, his colleague's crown of blonde hair poked in.
"Labs are in," Seifer said apathetically. He tossed the reports in Leon's direction, nearly missing the edge of the desk. "Whoever that is, he's gonna be paying the buck."
"My patient's financial obligations are none of your concern...Dr. Almasy."
"I was just saying." He said shrugging his shoulders indifferently. "Anyway, I'm going on a lunch break."
"You've already had two." Leon said looking up.
"Yeah, well...I'm still hungry." With that, he closed the door, not to be heard from for the next hour and a half.
Leon sighed. It was obvious to tell which one of them was serious about their career. Seifer rarely ever remembered who his patients were, and relied on the receptionist to remind him constantly. Leon however, knew days in advance and was always prompt to the appointments.
They weren't particularly hostile to one another—though far from friends—but Leon wasn't too keen on the man's mannerisms. Case one: Frequent lunch breaks.
Thumbing briefly through the manilla folder that had been dumped onto his desk, it appeared that Seifer was right, the patient would definitely be paying quite a huge sum of money.
He had just had a triple bypass surgery—performed by Leon himself—and needless to say, they were expensive. Leon would have to go through a colossal amount of red tape to keep his patient from having to sell his house. There were insurance files to go through, hospital policies...it was endless.
But he knew as much as he didn't want to, he would be searching for every loop hole in the system for the next three hours. Leon liked his patients just that much.
Though appearing cold hearted and to the book—or as Seifer put it "A frigid ogre with a tongue depressor lodged in his sphincter—he really did like his patients, and wanted to help them in anyway possible. Even if the ways were a little unconventional.
It was this care and concern that made him work in other departments that were short handed—practically all of them—and inevitably created this huge wall of records and documents towering over his desk.
He picked up his cooling cup of coffee and headed out the door to the front desk to hunt for insurance documents.
"Closing time," Riku said cheerfully, hanging up the sign on the door.
"Thank goodness!" Cloud sighed, sliding off his stool.
Sora rolled his eyes. "Yeah, one more minute there and you would have fallen asleep."
"...What's your point?"
"Whatever. Anyway—" He stopped mid sentence with a rough cough.
"Ooh, that's a nasty cough."
"Maybe you're finally understanding why I hate working around flowers so much."
"No," Sora said indignantly. "I've been coughing all day. Must be catching a cold or something."
"Hm," Riku put a hand to Sora's forehead. "You do feel a bit feverish. Maybe you should stay home tomorrow."
His face flushed in shock. "I can't do that! Who will do the flower arrangements?"
Riku smirked. "I'm sure Cloud would be more than happy to—"
"I will quit if you finish that sentence."
"...I'll take care of it for you." Riku finished. Then he narrowed his eyes right at Cloud. "If I'm taking over Sora's job tomorrow, I'll be too busy to babysit you. You had better behave."
Cloud scoffed, hanging up his apron on the rack. "I don't need a babysitter. I'm sure I can handle it fine."
"You did a marvelous job demonstrating that earlier."
"...Shut up."
The three of them headed to the automatic glass doors of the exit and down into the dark parking lot. The dull hum of the emergency entrance breaking up the quiet summer night. In the stillness, Cloud wondered if he really would be able to keep himself in line for the following day.
He smirked. He would try.
Thank you all very much for reading. Do review!