A/N

An early update! I'm going to be pretty flat out over the weekend, so why not deal with this first?

Uni finishes next week, so I'll have more time to write and sin and such.

Under Cover of Darkness - The Strokes.

It was rare that Eli would ever stay until close. She normally would go to pick up Alisa, then drop her off at ballet. However, Nico was called home to take care of her brother, who had the flu, and Maki's phone went straight to voicemail. Upon checking the roster, Eli remembered that it was university exam week, therefore Maki would be unable to come in.

The winter sunlight filtered through the glass windows, giving the flowers an accent in colour. The natural heat from the shop was making Eli drowsy, as she leaned with her elbows on the counter and her head in her cheek in her palm.

Her eyes were slowly drooping shut, until the door opened and she snapped up at once.

"Welcome, how may I h-" she stopped speaking upon seeing who had entered her store. All of her drowsiness and regret of starting work at 7am left once she saw Nozomi standing in the doorway, hands in the pockets of her jacket and bag lazily slung over her shoulder.

She looked very tired, her half-lidded eyes cast an amble gaze around the store, and surely the warmth wasn't helping. Eli got out from behind the counter and walked up to the artist.

"Hey," her voice was soft as she embraced Nozomi gently. A muffled sigh was the response. Eli detached herself from the artist and locked eyes.

"How did everything go?"

Nozomi stared back, blinking slowly. The warmth of the flower shop was getting to her, too. She could only muster a shrug.

"The lawyer is crazy,"

"Is that a bad thing?" Eli placed her hands on each side of Nozomi's waist.

"I don't know, we discussed it over lunch, and…" her voice grew wistful as her attention was caught a glass vase with red and white roses. The corner of Nozomi's mouth quirked into a lopsided grin.

"Can I draw that please, Elichi?"

Eli, shocked by the sudden change in topic, turned to see what Nozomi was looking at. She figured Nozomi didn't want to talk about the lawyer right now, so she just nodded.

"Yeah, sure. Did you want a chair?"

"No," before Eli knew it, the artist was sitting cross-legged on the ground with one hand in her bag. She pulled out her sketchbook and a pencil. Eli, only a little bewildered by the sudden action, gently ran her fingers through Nozomi's hair, and placed a kiss on the top of her head.

"Just so you know, I'm going to close in forty-five minutes," she murmured, and the response was a soft 'mmm.'

Eli resumed her minimal work, checking orders and arranging bouquets to kill the time. Nozomi didn't speak, she was so focused on drawing the vase that she barely noticed her phone vibrating in her pocket. As soon as she finishing feathering her sketch of a leaf, she pulled out her phone and glanced at the screen.

'Four missed calls from Umi-chan,' Nozomi bit her lip. She hadn't really checked in with Umi ever since the piecer dropped her off. She unlocked her phone and quickly tapped out a message.

17:25
Nozomi
Sorry for missing your calls, I got caught up at home. Currently at Bibi.

Sure enough, she got a text from Umi mere seconds later.

17:25
Umineko
Thank goodness. I was getting worried! We're opening again tomorrow?

17:26
Nozomi
Yes, it should be okay.

The artist put away her phone in her pocket, but before she took her hand off it, the device vibrated again. Assuming it was another text from Umi about something business related, Nozomi automatically opened her phone.

Until she saw the message:

17:27
Unknown number
Hey Toujou,
Heard you were in a tight spot, wanna loosen up?
T

'Oh no…' Nozomi didn't need a caller ID to know who it was, and her knuckles turned white. She stuffed the phone back into her pocket and shook her head vigorously.

'Dealing with dad is bad enough. I'm not going anywhere near her.'

"Everything okay?"

A pair of arms snaked around her neck, and before Nozomi knew it, Eli was standing behind her, eyes full of concern.

"Oh, yeah...Just trying to get myself together," Nozomi lied, repositioning the pencil in her hand to continue sketching.

First her father, now this.

"Oh come on!"

"Elichi, you need to keep your voice down."

"I will not stand for this outrage!" Eli threw another pillow at the laptop screen, and Nozomi just sighed.

While Eli was closing Bibi, she had received a text from her mother to remind her that the Eurovision Song Contest was about to start. Nozomi had never seen Eli count up her till and open a safe so fast in her life. The artist was practically dragged home by the florist to watch the stream in their bed. Nozomi couldn't give a damn about the silly old contest, it was all just glitter, wind machines, bearded women, special effects, dancing grandmothers and men in hamster wheels.

The artist went back to her sketching as Eli let out another growl of frustration.

"Oh really!? You'll give twelve points to fucking Serbia but not Russia?! NICE ONE, SLOVENIA!"

"Elichi, the Yamakus will surely complain again if you don't watch your volume," Nozomi didn't look up from her sketchbook, she could practically feel the icy glare Eli gave her.

"Nozomi, the motherland clearly had the best performance this year, and everyone is voting for everyone but Russia!"

"Yes yes, woe is Russia, Russia deserves to win," Nozomi patted Eli on the shoulder, still not bothering to look at the screen.

She really should be going over what she would say at the hearing, but her mixed emotions about Nitta had made her hit a wall of confusion. It was strange, she knew exactly what to say and how to say, but there was just no will to rehearse or make notes - she was sitting in her bed with her girlfriend sketching.

'What is wrong with me,' Nozomi thought to herself, biting her lip and tapping her nostril ring. She knew for a fact that Umi would be sitting at her desk, pen in hand and paper in front of her, re-writing her notes for the hearing at least twenty times before going to bed. She knew that Rin would have asked Hanayo to help her memorize her notes, and would make little doodles of cats and smiley faces on the paper as bullet points.

And there was Nozomi, sitting in her bed, trying to drown out her soulmate's screams of anguish over some shitty singing competition, doing absolutely nothing…

"...Hey, you okay?"

Eli's concern bought Nozomi out of her snowballing thoughts, She blinked, and actually looked at Eli.

"Yeah, just thinking…" Nozomi trailed off, then stared down at her sketch of a gravestone with withering flowers. She hadn't done any of her renaissance style practice for a while, and decided on something morbid.

Eli arched a blonde eyebrow at Nozomi, who flipped over to a fresh page in her sketchbook and wrote down a heading:

HEARING NOTES

"Keep watching your garbage, Elichi," Nozomi grinned while jotting down some quick notes, and actually looked up to meet Eli's concerned stare.

"Look, Russia just got twelve points," Nozomi noticed the heavily European accented English switch to French to repeat what was just said. Eli narrowed her eyes, then darted back to the screen.

"Huh?! From Greece?!"

Nozomi left Eli to wonder what possessed the country to give her motherland twelve points, but she seemed happy nonetheless.

"We must beat Australia, why the hell are they even there in the first place?!"

The artist ignored her girlfriend's remarks, but noticed her phone vibrate again on the bedside table. She picked it up, and her heart dropped.

20:48
Unknown Number
C'mon Toujou you know you want to
T

'Fuck right off,' Nozomi grit her teeth and placed her phone back on her nightstand, as if it was a poisonous animal.

It took a while for Nozomi to coax Eli to sleep - the blonde was distraught Russia had come third to a very political song from Ukraine and lost to Australia, a country that wasn't even in Europe. Nozomi resorted to wrapping one arm around Eli's waist to trap her against the mattress and let the other stroke her blonde hair.

"Don't worry, there's always next year," she mumbled, her lulling finally getting Eli's eyelids to droop shut.

'About time,' Nozomi pressed a gentle kiss to Eli's forehead, her heart fluttering at the quiet, drowsy hum that came from the florist's throat.

"Good girl," she murmured, continuing to stroke Eli's soft blonde hair while listening to the slo rhythmic heartbeat.

The artist waited another forty-five minutes to make sure Eli was truly sound asleep before untangling herself from her girlfriend and swung her legs over the edge of the bed to sit up.

She got up and shimmied into a pair of jeans, then threw on her leather jacket over her purple pyjama shirt. It had been six hours since her last e-cigarette, and Nozomi was fairly certain if she didn't fulfill that craving, she would turn into Hannibal Lecter with a D cup.

Nozomi grabbed the e-cigarette and her phone (out of habit,) and stepped outside of her apartment. The harsh winter chill blasted her in the face. The artist leaned against the railing opposite her door and lit up the face nicotine.

'Does anything else want to fuck me over?' she bitterly thought, placing the cylinder between her lips.

As if on cue, her phone vibrated in her pocket. Nozomi's heart stopped - who the hell would call her at midnight? Upon seeing the number, her blood ran cold. It had no caller ID, but she didn't need it to know who it was.

The artist automatically let the phone go straight to voicemail. Normally, her father would just hang up, but he left voice message.

'You can't keep ignoring me, Nozomi. I will see you on Friday and in court,'

His voice was monotone, but very clear. It made Nozomi sick to her stomach, but her brain was not letting her turn the phone off.

She ended up standing there, in the cold with the e-cigarette crunched between her teeth, listening to insult after insult and threat after threat.

Nozomi stopped feeling the cold, and eventually, hung up. With a whine of frustration, she smacked her hand against her face, and slowly ran it down her face. Her nail caught onto her nose stud, and she winced slightly while detaching.

Her world was being held together by the seems, and it was only in due time when it would come crumbling down.

#Pray4everyone

I'm Australian and Eurovision is my jam. Believe it or not, Australia gets Eurovision broadcasted to us every year, and my family has watched it religiously every time :D Should we be in the competition though? No. It's more fun to laugh from the bleachers.

*Douwe Bob is my husbando, jsyk