She was immediately worried when Elisa didn’t greet her as she walked in the door. She wasn’t behind the counter wrapping a bouquet or paused mid-stroll in an aisle. Cyg swallowed, stepping cautiously deeper into the flower shop, the intoxicating aroma of blooms and pollen waging war on her senses.

Then Isaac spoke and she almost jumped out of her skin, so poised to jump into the thick of things; her heart hammered in her chest as her brain and body registered NOT A THREAT. “Oh. my god,” she said, her pulse a roar in her ears as her FIGHT/FLIGHT gear slowly cranked down. She fixed Isaac with a look of concern. “Step out? Is she okay?”

Because of course Isaac doesn’t know the hidden facets of Elisa’s business venture so he wouldn’t know the shady, underhanded dealings that often went on in her boss’ life. Or the chemistry lab and scary spiders (literally) crawling around her basement.

Cyg frowned. “Floral arrangement colors?” she parroted, remembering, again, that this was the face of Elisa’s legitimate business she was currently representing. “That’s a shame. Elisa’s much better at it than I am, really.” But she started to catch onto things when he asked her to close her eyes and it dawned on her, then, that she hadn’t yet asked him what he was doing here.

She doesn’t know what made her do it because she’s not normally the sort to go along with this sort of thing but it’s Isaac, and her feelings towards him are convoluted, at best, and downright sloppy affectionate at worst, so she turns her suspicious eye narrow into pressing them closed. She twitched a little when she felt something slip along the side of her head, through her hair, resting behind her ear.

“What do you me--,” she opened her eyes and froze, caught off guard by the mirror and, just, the look of confusion on her face. She got to watch in real time as the blush steadily crawled over her nose, and she ducked her head and looked away, fingers coming up to brush against the petals of the flower-- her favorite kind of flower, he’d remembered-- and she just sort of. Her brain made a little whirring noise and shut down.

“Did you…” she started, trying to find the words to explain how she was feeling, “did you come to the flower shop, where I work to… get me flowers?”

⚰︎ wearing

Isaac Merlo

He was talking. Cyg was staring dumbly at him and he was still talking. Talking like he was running out of air. Talking like he was running out of time. He talked about Elisabeth-- who, predictably, came to her defense in the face of this stranger (a kind-hearted and genuine stranger, but a stranger all the same-- and her heart warmed at that. It was a comfort. In all this-- strange, new world, Elisa having her back was a comfort.

He was still talking.

We just adopted a plot of flowers.

He finally stopped talking and was offering something-- a tin or tray of-- of brookies? She felt her eyebrows knit together in puzzlement but she was smiling. She couldn’t stop smiling. Her heart was doing weird things in her chest and she felt giddy. Giddy and soft. Cyg wasn’t used to feeling soft. Which probably explained what she did next.

“You numbnuts,” she said, half a laugh, half a sigh, and pushed the tray of sweets away as she -- she was grateful but there would be time for that later-- stepped into his orbit. She reached out and gently took his face in her hands, fingers over the nap of his neck, thumb across his cheeks, tilted his head ever so slightly, and kissed him.

It was a real kiss, too, not just a gentle touch. There was force there. Intent. Heat and meaning behind it.

⚰︎ wearing

Isaac Merlo

She panicked for a split second when he didn’t kiss back at first. But then it was like his body and his brain finally reconnected and he started reciprocating, and the panic turned into butterflies. She felt one arm go around her shoulders and the other cinch at her waist, pulling her tighter against him-- so she took that as permission to keep going, and she kept going, tilting a centimeter more for a deeper connection.

She was breathless when they separated, just a little, face reddened all to hell. And of course, he was grinning at her like an idiot and he said something equally as idiotic-- three words in about a hundred different voices, different ways. She felt her own mouth curling up in a smile because even though their faces were differentiated they were still pressed close together, and neither made an attempt to step away.

“Yes?” she said, voice lilting up in a question: a repartee to his many-handed statement, question, phrase: it was equal parts yes, was that okay? and yes, what about it?

“Can I do it again?”

⚰︎ wearing

Isaac Merlo

She could almost see the little hamster in Isaac’s brain struggling to get back on the wheel. It made her feel a little bit better, the fact they were both caught off guard by this sudden display of affection.

But she honestly-- like-- what was she supposed to do? The kid showed up at her work to give her cookies and ended up buying a whole garden plot, and wooed her boss-- enough to the point where Elisa asked her to come over under the guise of work-- and she was, what, not going to kiss him?

So then he kissed her and she took it as a sign that yes, the kissing was alright. Actually, it was better than alright-- she pressed back and he tilted his head, and then it was really good. She felt his hand on her back and instantly was alight in all places, heat stemming from his touch. And she was a little bit breathless in the end when they pressed their foreheads together.

Their fingers folded together like they were made to be there (oh my god) and she couldn’t help but smile.

“You dork. You absolute dork.”

I think-- [redacted].

Oh, god, this was terrifying. This was so scary. Cyg hadn’t had a real boyfriend in ages, not since high school, and even then, it’d been a joke compared to what she was feeling now. And everything was so much heavier, right? Like, now that she was an adult, but also because she was in Rocket, and the world was ending, and--

--she wasn’t panicking, she wasn’t. She wasn’t.

“Show me our flower garden,” she said, instead, reaching out with one hand to sneak into the brookie package and snatch one.

⚰︎ wearing

Isaac Merlo

It started with his face hitting the ground, but yes, the smile definitely didn’t hurt things. He looked like the freaking sun, so obviously the kissing was doing as much for him as it was for her. She hadn’t felt this happy in a long time. It was intoxicating-- something she never, ever wanted to get used to.

After wiping crumbs on her pants she slid her hand into his, rolling her eyes, but she was still grinning, from ear to ear. Grinning like a fool. Because that’s what she was, wasn’t it? A damn fool.

She threaded their fingers together and watched Isaac turn red as a tomato and it only made her smile harder. Oh, god, she was going to die. They made their way out back where Elisa did most of her public cultivation (and not, you know, the illegal and poisonous things) and meandered through the sunlight for a minute before she saw it.

One of the plots was freshly prepped for planting, turned over with dark loamy soil. In the front righthand corner, there was a little, crystal planter in the shape of a Swanna; the planter had been stocked with blue and yellow dahlias.

She tugged Isaac over to stand in front of it, caught in the simplicity of the gesture-- while also trying not to crumble under the weight of a new hobby. But she had a whole new relationship, right? Better make time for it.

“Hope you’re better at growing things than I am,” she said, squeezing his hand, “though I do know some weeds that are pretty and, like, impossible to kill.”

⚰︎ wearing

Isaac Merlo

Cyg felt like a solar panel, drawing in Isaac’s light, letting it flow to distant parts of her; like the blood in her veins was a trillion little PV cells, heated to motion by his energy and reflected back in kind. It was a bizarre, intoxicating, dangerous feeling, to fit so perfectly together so as to form a chain, a cycle--

--a bond.

She laughed, because he was chaotic and funny, but also because she was filled with an incorporeal bubbling light that she’d never felt before. “Yeah, Elisa’s gonna look at it and probably blow a gasket or something.” She didn’t have her mistress’ hand for growth or cultivation, but she had never shied away from manual labor, which was how all gardens got started, she supposed.

His touch down the back of her hand was stoking, buzzing through her own electrical field; and she had a stunning thought. She responded by tugging him gently to the side, turning him to face her, and shifting forward to kiss him again, free hand coming up to cup his cheek and brush the pad of her thumb over his skin, fingers laced gently against the back of his skull. Because she could do this now, with him. This was a thing that she could do.

Holy shit.

"This is already a win on my scoreboard," she said, voice more like a purr than she intended, but it was fine. That's how she felt inside, anyway, she realized, moving to kiss him again.

⚰︎ wearing

Isaac Merlo