Work Text:
“It’s British Flowers Week next month Nicky! Shall we do something for it?” asked Sarah as she wiped away a layer of dust from a shelf in a neglected corner of the shop. “We’re too late for Chelsea this year. We’re usually more organised.” She shot a wry smile at her youngest son who was suddenly engrossed in organising the order book.
Nick knew exactly why his mother had made that pointed remark and exactly why she enjoyed making it so much, too. It had been six weeks since Charlie had come back from Spain. Six weeks since Nick had thrust some flowers at him and poured his heart out on his doorstep. Six weeks of being boyfriends.
This, however, had also meant six weeks of Sarah and Imogen teasing him almost relentlessly about how smitten he was. Nick would never forget the look on Imogen’s face when he showed up to work one morning, his neck littered with bruises. He genuinely thought she might explode with excitement, like a small child on Christmas morning. Although she had been insufferable all day, at least she’d had the good graces to lend him her concealer before David showed up, even if Nick did have to promise her that she could be a bridesmaid at his and Charlie’s hypothetical wedding.
“Yeah sure, we could do a window display or something?” Nick mumbled without looking up from the order book, doodling little leaves in the corner of an old order sheet. “When is it?”
“The last week of June. It’s late this year. I blame the coronation.”
“The last week of June? I think I’ve booked time off that week. Charlie and I are going up to London for Pride, remember?”
“I remember!” said Sarah with a glib wave, “but we’d need to have this done by the beginning of the week anyway. No point in advertising something at the end of it.”
A fair point, thought Nick, his leaves turning into little stars as the biro started to run out of ink.
“Okay, mum, leave it with me. I’ll have a think.”
“Alright, love, make sure you do, though. Try not to get…distracted.”
Nick stared down at the paper to hide the blush that was burning his cheeks.
*****
That evening, Nick lounged on Charlie’s sofa whilst trying to concentrate on the film they were supposed to be watching together. In reality, he was much more focused on the soothing feeling of Charlie's slender fingers as they carded through Nick’s hair, scratching lightly against his scalp as he rested his head on Charlie’s chest.
He was also preoccupied with the Flower Week thing. He knew that if he came up with something half-arsed, it was really only going to add fuel to the idea that he was so loved-up right now that he couldn’t get anything else done. At the same time, he had been really hoping to get things ready for their trip to London that week, and starting some ridiculous project that was going to take up all his time wasn’t really what he had in mind.
He must have been quiet for longer than he realised because Charlie shifted underneath him, peering down to get a look at Nick’s face.
“Alright in there?” Charlie asked him softly, gently tapping the side of Nick’s head. “I can almost hear you thinking. Wanna talk about it?”
“It’s nothing really, just work.” Nick replied, tightening the grip his arm had around Charlie’s waist. “Mum wants to do something for British Flowers Week, but it’s just before we go to Pride, and I’m just trying to figure out what to do about it. Any ideas gratefully received.”
“Hmm,” hummed Charlie thoughtfully, his fingers settling in the short hairs at the nape of Nick's neck. “I can’t claim to know much about flowers, but this really hot florist made me a rainbow bouquet once, and it was a big hit with its lesbian recipients, so I vote you combine the two somehow.”
“Gay flowers?” Nick looked up at Charlie with an arched eyebrow.
“Gay British flowers.”
Nick snorted and buried his face back into Charlie's chest again. "Can you imagine the look on David's face if we turned the shop into a massive flowery rainbow?!"
Charlie laughed and went back to running his finger through Nick's hair.
"All the more reason to do it."
Nick grinned to himself. A plan was taking shape.
*****
Over the next couple of weeks, Nick and Charlie worked out the design together, settling on a rainbow arch to cover the front of the shop. Nick had briefly wondered if they were biting off more than they could chew, especially as he hadn’t been keen to take on a big project, but conceded that you sometimes have to go big or go home.
As it was Friday and Charlie was working from home, they’d arranged to meet for lunch to talk it over. Usually Nick would just eat at the workbench, but as Imogen was helping them prep for a wedding that weekend and she and Sarah seemed to have everything well under control, he didn’t feel too guilty taking off for a lunch date with his boyfriend.
Charlie arrived early. He greeted Imogen with a wave and Nick with a chaste kiss that took all of Nick’s self control to prevent it from turning into something that was most definitely not safe for work. Imogen grinned and opened her mouth, presumably about to say something smart when she was cut off by the sound of a battered blue transit van parking up outside the shop, 'Weald Flower Farm' plastered on the side in peeling letters.
The same van had been visiting them for years now with Steve from the flower farm bringing buckets of Kent-grown flowers from late spring all the way through to the early autumn. Sarah liked it because they were supporting a local grower. Nick liked it because he didn’t have to get up before sunrise to go to the market quite so often.
“Perfect timing,” Nick muttered, meaning it in more ways than one. “Gimme a sec, I just need to talk to Steve about flowers for Project Rainbow. Let me just tell mum he’s here or she’ll moan.”
Unclasping his hand from Charlie’s, he went over to the door to the kitchen where Sarah had gone to make tea. He propped it open with his foot and bellowed, “Steve’s here!” hoping she could hear him over the rolling boil of the kettle.
His mum always got a bit of a blush on when Steve arrived with his flowers. Nick could never decide if it was cute or completely horrifying when she described the farmer as “a silver fox.”
“Coming!” Sarah’s voice called back, accompanied by the clink of mugs being pulled out of the cupboards. “Ask him if he wants a cup of tea!”
Nick rolled his eyes and went to ask the question only to find that the man getting out of the van was not Steve at all.
“Who is that?” Imogen asked as she craned her neck towards the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the mystery man unloading buckets of flowers from the back of the vehicle. "Why has he never brought us flowers before? Do you think he's new?"
Imogen was still staring almost dreamily at the stranger, and now Charlie had joined her.
"Do you two wanna put your tongues back in your heads?" Nick huffed. The sight of Charlie staring at another man made a hot pang of jealousy seep into Nick's veins, and he found himself feeling irrationally annoyed.
"What?! I know you’re all loved up now, Nicholas, but you still have eyes. He's hot!" hissed Imogen, biting her lip. "Back me up, Charlie.”
"I'm going to have to agree with Imogen on this one," murmured Charlie as he peered out the window with her.
The stranger was tall, maybe even an inch or two taller than Nick, with dark, chestnut hair pulled back from his face in a bun and well-muscled arms that were hefting buckets about with ease. Although Nick hated to admit it, he was extremely easy on the eye.
"I suppose… if you're into that sort of thing," Nick grumbled and huffed off to hurry Sarah along, leaving Charlie and Imogen to the show.
"Do you think he's single?" Imogen speculated.
"Only one way to find out," Charlie replied absentmindedly, still staring.
"And do you think he's straight?"
"Only one way to find that out, too."
"What? We both flirt and see who he's into?"
"I think what Charlie means is ask him, Im!" Nick yelled from the back of the shop, holding the door open so Sarah could come through with the tea.
Sarah bustled through with a teapot, five cups, and a plate of custard creams set out on a floral patterned tea tray that Nick didn't even know they owned. After she sat it down on the workbench, Sarah started pouring out cups of tea whilst actively avoiding looking up at her son. He gave his mum a suspicious look.
"Mum, are you wearing lipstick?!"
Sarah blushed, "I don't know what you mean. Who's having a cuppa?"
Nick rolled his eyes and wondered why everyone around him seemed to have lost their minds today.
Finally, he heard the sound of a van door being slammed shut, and the man appeared with a bucket of flowers under each arm.
"Morning! I've got flowers for you guys. Sorry it took me a while to unload. I'm not used to the delivery drops yet. Hadn't put the buckets in the right order." He set down a bucket of sweet peas at Imogen's feet. She beamed back up at him, her smile only eclipsed by Sarah's frown.
"Where's Steve?!" Sarah blurted out, a little more bluntly than she'd probably intended.
"Done his back in. I'm Chris, his nephew."
Chris held his hand out to Sarah, and she gave it a tepid shake.
"So do you work at the flower farm, too, then?" Imogen asked coyly, playing with a strand of her hair.
"No, no, I just said I'd help out with the heavy lifting whilst he’s laid up. I'm an arborist, and it's a quiet time of year for us, so I could spare the week."
"An arborist? Like a tree surgeon?"
"Yup."
Nick could practically see the image of this guy wielding a chainsaw, probably shirtless, dancing through Imogen's mind. Charlie's too, by the look of it. He frowned.
“I needed to talk to Steve about a project. Do you think he’ll be back next week?” Nick interrupted. He was quite keen to get Chris out of his shop.
“No idea, mate, but give him a call maybe? He’s pretty bored, so I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”
“Right, will do."
Clearly, he wasn’t getting anywhere today.
“Immy, those are for the wedding.” Nick pushed one of the buckets of pale pink sweetpeas towards her. She ignored him completely.
Nick sighed and turned to Charlie instead. “Lunch? I’ll sort the rest when I get back.”
“Sounds good,” Charlie smiled at him, took Nick’s hand in his, and they left Imogen to it.
*****
Nick had made Sarah ring Steve in the end. He thought she would probably have more success in getting him to agree to their project, but after twenty minutes of listening to his mother giggling like a schoolgirl, he was starting to regret that decision. Nonetheless, his assumption had been correct because by the end of the phone call Steve had not only agreed to help them but to do the flowers at a discount too.
Materials sorted, Nick threw himself into the mechanics of the thing. He wasn’t really sure what he’d been thinking when he’d planned something so vast. The whole thing had rather spiralled out of hand in his initial excitement, and now he was wondering how to turn that into an actual thing rather than just an idea. The logistics of it were making his head hurt.
Eventually, they collectively came up with something they thought would work, balancing both sustainability and structural integrity without being ridiculously complicated to execute. Nick spent the rest of his free time making a huge chicken wire frame filled with moss and bracketed by birch poles cemented into buckets for support. Nick had screwed and cable-tied the top of the thing into the shop’s door frame, but he was still frankly a little worried about it buckling under the weight of the flowers.
He’d started adding bits to it in advance of the flowers arriving, attempting to be organised for once. Dried foliage and gypsophila, saved by Sarah “just in case,” were spray painted in bright colours and added in at the correct places. Plenty of passersby stopped to ask what on earth they were doing as Imogen shoved foliage haphazardly into the chicken wire, balanced atop a ladder that Nick held steady with his foot on the bottom rung.
Bright and early on Sunday morning, Steve had appeared with buckets of flowers with everything they had in the right colour scheme. Nick noticed that both Sarah and Steve had been suspiciously absent as soon as the Weald Flower Farm van had been unloaded and she’d offered to put the kettle on and get the biscuits out. Nick had absolutely no intention of going to see what the two of them were up to.
“I guess it’s just us? Do you want to go up the ladder and I'll pass stuff up?” asked Charlie, helpfully.
“Sure. Give me a sec,” Nick shoved his scissors, pointed end down, into the back pocket of his jeans and shimmied up the ladder.
“I now understand why all your trousers have holes in the back pockets,” Charlie mused as he watched Nick climb.
“Charlie Spring, you wouldn’t be looking at my arse right now, would you?” Nick turned to look at Charlie, a fake look of astonishment on his face. “I thought you were keeping the ladder steady? Does my safety mean nothing to you?”
“Shut up. I hope you fall on those scissors,” Charlie mumbled, blushing.
Now at the top of the ladder, Nick checked the cable ties were still holding and added another couple for luck before he started adding the flowers in.
“Right, pass me up some of those alliums, Char.” He gestured widely behind him towards the buckets cluttering the pavement, his eyes on the structure
“The what?”
“Alliums. Big purple balls, smell absolutely rank.”
“Bloody hell, Nicholas. There’s a joke in there somewhere, but I'm not going to be the one to make it.”
Nick scrunched up his face. “Eww, yeah, forget I said that. Just pass them up, please?”
Charlie passed up the flowers one by one, watching as Nick snipped off the bulk of the stalk in a fluid motion before shoving the bloom roughly into the chicken wire. He carried on from the middle down to either end until there was a clean row of big, purple alliums interspersed with spray painted baby’s breath. Nick stood back on the pavement to survey his work and check that it was even.
“That is going to smell absolutely lovely. Onions and cats piss. What a combo,” He said, his hands on his hips.
“You’re really selling the floral dream,” sighed Charlie, sarcastically. “So what’s next? Got anything that smells like dead bodies?”
“Har har. Indigo next. Or the best approximation of it that Steve could provide.”
Nick grabbed a bucket of dark blue larkspur and a bundle of cornflowers before getting back to work again, adding them in clusters until a row of indigo started to take shape.
The two of them continued with Nick going up and down the ladder and back and forth across the rainbow until the rows of colour really started to take shape. Nick was pleased that they were getting somewhere. The constant up and down was starting to make his thigh muscles ache.
“Do you want to take a break, Nick?” Charlie asked . He was also starting to flag after an hour or so of passing heavy, water-filled buckets up to Nick. It was making his arms hurt.
“Nope, just want to get it done,” Nick replied through gritted teeth as he shoved a particularly tricky stem into the arrangement.
At the bottom of the ladder, Charlie sighed. “I feel like floristry has been missold to me. I thought this would be more, I don’t know, gentle? Relaxing?”
Nick barked out a single, harsh laugh. “Absolutely not."
They worked in silence for a bit with Nick occasionally gesturing at Charlie to pass him something and a look of concentration on his face that made Charlie think it was probably best not to interrupt.
Eventually, Nick stepped back and appraised his efforts, looking semi-happy with what they'd achieved.
"It's beautiful, Nick," Charlie told him as he slid an arm around Nick's waist.
"I don't know," Nick said as he frowned at the arrangement. "I think that bit over there is a weird shape, and maybe I should move something into that gap there? It's a bit uneven."
"Sweetheart, it's perfect. Don't change a thing."
Nick sighed, "If you say so."
"I do," Charlie leant up to press a kiss to Nick's cheek before burying himself into his boyfriend's side. “You’ve done a great job.”
Nick wrapped an arm around Charlie and pulled him in tighter as they stared up at their monumental rainbow creation.
“We've done a great job, Char. Team effort.”
“We make a good team, huh?”
“The best.”