Work Text:
In reality, it was just the asphalt and the concrete that stood stretched between the two of them on that high street. The scent of bright, flourishing greenery and budding flowers would possibly mix in the middle with the delightful smell of tempting, delicious coffee. Two pleasing aesthetics that seemed to mostly meet as one in somebody’s home space.
From an outside perspective, it could look like the simple tale of two people unknowingly attracting one another’s hearts in a silent snare. Windows to be kept pristine, crystal clear so as to not blur the wonderous view of the other from each of their admiring eyes.
This star-crossed tale of love starts with simply two small businesses thriving across the street from one another. Not in any sort of rivalry of trying to outdo the other (in fact, they would recommend and encourage their customers to visit the other establishment after their own), just simply a florist to feed the eyes, and a coffee shop to warm the soul.
Inside the coffee shop, there worked a young man with hair a shade of soft red and complimentary eyes of pale green.
Inside the florist, there worked a young man with sandy-brown hair and a piercing sky-blue gaze.
And the one-year anniversary of the florist’s opening is where our story begins.
Wataru sighed for what must have been the umpteenth time that day. Possibly that entire week. He stood behind the serving counter of Taste So Sweet with an unamused expression, eyes fixed on staring through the large pane of glass that blocked the outside world from within.
His co-worker came by and tapped lightly on the countertop to get his attention, facing the same direction before sighing – a completely more exasperated sigh than Wataru’s.
“You know, you could just go over after your shift or on your break and talk to him. He might be a plant store worker but I’m pretty sure with that smile of pure and utter charm he isn’t some venus fly trap or whatever”.
“He’s been working there for just under a year now, there’s no way I can just go up to him and say “Oh, hey, I’ve totally not been staring at you from the other side of the street for the past several months of our working lives”. He’d never talk to me then, Banri, c’mon”.
Banri chuckled, slapping him lightly on the shoulder, “You’re one heck of a hopeless romantic, that’s for sure. Listen, take your break and go over and just…strike up a casual conversation. I mean, you already love plants – your damn apartment might as well be a botanical garden at this stage – so what better way than to get to know him than through talking about something you both love?”
“And if he doesn’t love plants?”
Banri shot him a deadpanned look, “Well, I highly doubt he’d be working where he does if he didn’t have some kind of liking to them, don’t you? Stop looking for excuses, I know you extended your shifts especially so you could avoid running into him”.
“W-Well what about that girl who was talking to him for such a long time the other month? He might not even be into men – that could be his girlfriend for all we know. Or even his wife. Or—”
“Wataru, this is why you’re single. Seriously, dude, just go and talk to him. And if he does happen to be straight or whatever then where’s the harm done? It’s not like you’re gonna walk in there and ask him out straight away. Unless you want to completely blow all your chances”.
Wataru sighed – again – and drummed his fingers lightly on the countertop as his gaze drifted to the window and across the street once again. He could see the man in question from this spot in particular as he and his own co-workers walked around their building, tending to the various plants they had in stock, and he often saw them at their workstation building up new bouquets. Oh, how he dreamed to receive one for himself from the man who had somehow captured his heart without uttering a single word in his direction.
Banri soon decided to leave him to go and tend to clear up an empty table or three.
I want to talk to him. But I know I’d only be trying to become his friend simply because I currently fancy the man like crazy! It just wouldn’t be as easy to stop myself from feeling that way about him if he does end up rejecting me, whether he knows it or not.
Yuto ran a hand through his hair messily, rubbing down the back of his neck as he looked over the invoices for their most recent orders. Something wasn’t quite adding up in his brain, and he decided he was lacking something from his breakfast. Oh. He hadn’t had coffee that morning. Right.
Filing the invoices away and shutting the drawer a little harder than need be, Yuto glanced through the plants displayed in the front window and to the coffee shop across the street. It seemed someone else was following his train of thought.
“Make it an excuse to go and talk to him. You have been pretty busy all morning since you first got here, a quick break might do you some good”.
“Rio, you really have to stop reading my thoughts”.
The taller man chuckled, “I’m surprised you haven’t adjusted your shifts to meet him when his own end. You do know the window display doesn’t hide you as much as you might like, don’t you?”
Yuto laughed sheepishly, “That wasn’t my intention when I helped with the setup,” he rubbed the back of his neck, craning his head back to stretch the muscles for a moment. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. I didn’t take this job just to start crushing on the super cute barista across the street”.
Reon then suddenly appeared at his side, carrying a box of plant feed, “Sounds like the plot of a romance novel”.
“That just makes it worse!” Yuto cried, throwing his head down into his arms on the countertop with a groan, “He’s so damn cute though…”
“You still don’t know his name, do you?”
“Because you won’t freaking tell me it!” Yuto looked up at Reon and huffed, “You’re evil”.
Reon grinned devilishly, “You’re the guy who’s crushing so hard but won’t try to make an effort to do anything about it. Go over and get a midday coffee and strike up a conversation with him. You never know what’ll happen until you try, Yuto”.
Yuto looked to Rio for help but the other just shrugged his shoulders and went out the back of the store to continue with his work. With neither of his co-workers bothering to be more of a help to him, Yuto gave up his resilience and grabbed his wallet from his jacket, heading out the door and quickly hurrying across the street before stepping into the coffee shop.
The bell chimed and Wataru’s breath caught in his throat when he glanced up from checking his social media on his phone to see who had entered the shop. It couldn’t be. This had to be some kind of cruel joke his mind was playing on him (which meant he must have stupidly fallen asleep at work…for some reason).
In person, he was even more handsome than what Wataru had been able to glimpse and witness from this side of the street. His brown hair looked soft to the touch; his skin was paler than expected in comparison to Wataru’s own (if that didn’t make them a good complimentary couple then what wou- hold up).
“H-Hey, what can I get y-you?” Dammit. First chance he gets to actually talk face-to-face with his stupid little crush, and he messed up the first impression. Way to go, Wataru.
The brunet didn’t seem to mind though, simply ordered a simple basic coffee with a charming smile that sent Wataru’s heart into never-ending somersaults and that smile didn’t falter even as Wataru set to work and handed over the cup with a slight shake in his hand.
He was definitely blushing. He could practically feel Banri’s eyes burning into him as he caught the sound of his friend’s sniggering somewhat nearby. God, if only one of the vines hanging from the ceiling would just reach down and yank him up so he could pretend he didn’t exist right now.
“It’s good, thanks,” his crush said after taking an experimental sip of the drink, “Wish I could taste this at home every day, but…I don’t think it’d be the same if I made it,” there was an edge of something in his tone and something sparkled in those sky-blue eyes that Wataru couldn’t quite figure out over the frantic thumping of his own heartbeat.
“A-Ah, y-you’re so welcome!” Wataru responded with a shy smile and a light scratch on the back of his neck. “I-I don’t suppose I could get your name?” What the hell was he doing? “I just, personally, like to keep check of our customers i-in case they decide to c-come back, y’know?!” No need to throw his voice in the poor guy’s face like that.
“Heh, sure. It’s Goryo Yuto. Can I get yours?”
“M-Matoba Wataru!” He somehow managed to swallow around the tightness in his throat.
Yuto grinned wider then, taking another sip of the coffee and then gave him a grateful wave as he left to quickly jog back to the other side of the street.
When he was (assumingly) safely out of view, Wataru slumped onto the counter with a whine of embarrassing despair. He heard a soft thud before feeling Banri mockingly pat him on the head.
“Well, that was painful to watch. He probably thinks you have a stutter or something, heheh”.
Wataru peeked up to glare at his friend, “Was it really that bad…?”
Banri pinched his forefinger and thumb close together but not enough to actually touch, “I was this close to resorting to just sticking pins in my eyes, buddy”.
Wataru groaned again, slightly louder, and thumped his head back down into the darkness of his arms on the countertop.
Banri chuckled heartily, “You know each other’s name now, at least! So, I wouldn’t worry about it. Also,” there was a smirk in his friend’s tone Wataru didn’t like the sound of, “He totally suggested you guys living together in the future”.
Wait. What?!
“Wh-What the hell?!” Wataru stood up straight so fast he was surprised he didn’t give himself whiplash in the process. “Where the hell did you get that idea from?!”
“The fact he was flirting with you when he said the damn coffee wouldn’t be the same if he made it at home every day for himself?”
“Tha— That just meant that it’s better when the shop itself makes it for a customer!”
“Oh, you hopeless, hopeless idiot,” Banri sighed and leaned on the countertop, chin resting in his palm with his elbow propping him up, “He meant it wouldn’t taste as good as when you specifically make it!”
Wataru stared at Banri with nothing more than dumbfounded thoughts. He quickly replayed the conversation in his head and that was when he realised that Yuto had been using a bit of a flirtatious tone with him, and the sparkle in his eyes had been something akin to charm, perhaps even hope?
And I just responded the same way I would to anyone else! But with a damn stutter!
“Banri… I wish I could melt into a puddle right now and have the sun make me evaporate”.
“Damn, I wish that would happen to you, too, after what I just had to witness. Oh! But if you did melt into a puddle then I could give you over to him so you could water his plant, catch my drift~?”
“B-Banri!!”
Yuto tugged at his shirt collar. The day was so humid it was making him quite literally hot under the collar. He, Reon and Rio had been tending to the plants with extra care today as the weather threatened to wilt and shrivel them up. Thankfully, their water supply for both plants and the workers were plentiful and didn’t fail to hit the spot when needed.
Rio and Reon had slipped out to go to the storage shed down the street and take a stock intake so they would be able to combat the weather while the heat lasted, and Yuto had been left to manage the florist alone for a little while.
He had lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe at his brow (thankful that they at least had a reasonable AC system in place) when the bell chimed to signal someone entering, and the room became ten times hotter when he saw it was Wataru.
It was when Wataru blushed that Yuto realised his stomach was exposed and he quickly dropped his shirt, covering his mouth with a fist as he coughed to clear his throat. God, he felt so hot with embarrassment.
“Err, h-hey! What can I do for you?”
“Well, as much as I did come to do some admiring in here, that wasn’t what I had in mind,” Wataru nervously chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. “Banri would disagree though, little brat”.
“Your co-workers give you trouble too, huh? Mine was the reason I came in the other week, to be honest. N-Not that meeting you wasn’t great or anything like that! I just meant, like…like…y-y’know…?” Well, this was going swell. If Reon and Rio managed to bring back a tub of water for Yuto to happily drown himself in, the day could wrap up on a good note.
Luckily, it sounded as if Wataru took things in good spirits if his humorous smirk was anything to go by as he drew closer to the counter until he was standing directly in front of Yuto with just the countertop between them. Just like the other day, except this time it was happening with their roles reversed.
“Honestly,” Wataru averted his gaze shyly, and Yuto felt a sharp pang for those pretty pools of green to look back at him beggingly, “I was wondering if you had any sort of recommendations for taking care of a certain plant. See, I, err, have a bit of an obsession back home and, well, the f-family grew in size recently but it’s acting differently than what I was told, so…I figured that since this place is just over the road from work then I’d take a gamble of sorts”.
And I am, meanwhile, so ready to gamble on something else entirely, Yuto quickly shook the thought from his head mentally before twisting to reach to a shelf behind him and pull out the store’s catalogue binder. It was in there that they kept a record of all the plants they usually stocked. He started to flick through the pages to find the beginning of the actual plant information instead of his and his co-workers’ personal details until he stopped mid-turn of a page and looked up to meet Wataru’s eyes with an eyebrow slightly raised.
“Why not just search it online? I thought that’s what most people would do, first thought for every question in the world in this day and age, isn’t it?”
Wataru then tugged at the edge of his shirt collar, skin flushing from a pink to red gradient almost, “Uh… I suppose I just wanted an excuse to come to talk to you again, eheh~”
Yuto was about to respond when he heard the back door squeak open and the sound of his name in Rio’s voice, “Ah, gotta go help those two. Here,” he grabbed a pen and piece of paper, swivelling the open binder to face Wataru correctly, “Just find what it is you’re after in there and write down the details you need. I’ll be back in a moment!”
Wataru gave him a polite nod with a smile and Yuto hurried out to the back of the shop to help his friends. When he returned, however, Wataru was nowhere to be seen.
Eh? I wasn’t gone that long, surely, he pondered quizzically and then noticed that the sheet of paper he’d given to Wataru was still laying on top of the binder pages, laying abandoned alongside the pen. Yuto scratched his head, he didn’t take it? Maybe we don’t have what he needed, then.
Except, he noticed there was definitely something scrawled onto the paper, regardless. In spite of knowing he should ignore his curiosity; Yuto couldn’t help himself and picked up the paper whilst filing the pen and binder away. He almost dropped the white note as his brain took in what his eyes were showing him.
There, written as clear as day, was a phone number with Wataru’s name beside it.
“Well damn,” Yuto chuckled under his breath, “So, that’s what he came in here for, hm?”
Before they both knew it, three months had gone by with Wataru and Yuto both being at a stage where they were much more talkative and comfortable coming into each other’s workplaces during breaks to chat and catch up. Things were working well between them, and it was becoming even obvious to their customers that the two of them were developing mutual feelings far more expansive than just infatuated crushes.
“He’s definitely pretty handsome, Wataru,” Ren – one of their regulars simply due to his boyfriend being one and having tagged along but being the more talkative of the two – said in awe as he and Wataru peeked over through the windows and across the street. “I think you’re in for a good chance!”
“You think so? I thought giving him my number like that was too risky but after he text me that evening, I’d never felt happier,” the redhead propped his elbows on the countertop and rested his chin on his knuckles uncomfortably, “But he’s so kind and sweet and such a gentleman sometimes like what the hell did I do to deserve someone like that come waltzing into my life?”
“Well, you haven’t managed to spill coffee on him yet, so that’s a bonus,” Banri commented in passing as he carried some dirty mugs back to the sink.
“Oh, come on, now you’re gonna jinx it! Thanks a lot, Banri!”
Ren chuckled through closed lips before turning to his boyfriend, “What do you think about it, Nayuta-kun? Do you think Wataru and Yuto could work out together?”
Nayuta shrugged, eyes narrowed in a glare at being unwillingly brought into the conversation, “What do I care? Do whatever the hell you want. Take him to your apartment and rip each other’s clothes off for a night or a week or however you damn well want. Ain’t no business of mine if Matoba wants to fuck in a greenhouse or whatever”.
“Want me to buy you some rose petals to cover yourself in after giving him a spare key to your place?” Banri smirked and started cackling at the red heat that suddenly took up Wataru’s face. “You’re so easy to rile up and embarrass! Haha, aw man, I’m so happy you got a crush on the cute plant shop worker across the street”.
Wataru sighed, mentally exhausted with Banri’s antics already (and they were only halfway through his usual shift, great) and looked over the street through the window again. This time, however, he unintentionally met Yuto’s eyes and a sweet little grin was sent over his way.
That man was going to give him a heart attack if his excessive sweet tooth didn’t first.
Somehow, the two of them had made plans for Yuto to accompany Wataru home and to spend an evening with him back in the barista’s apartment.
“Damn,” Yuto had let slip as he’d entered, “Your friend wasn’t kidding when he said your home would look like a copy of my workplace, huh?”
Wataru looked torn between being thoroughly embarrassed and pissed off at his co-worker for the comment, so he decided to settle between the two, “I’d say Shiroishi Banri meant that as a sweet little rosy compliment if he wasn’t actively trying to be the damn thorn in my side instead”.
Yuto laughed airily, “Nice one,” he said, winking, “But that being said, this place is decked out pretty great. I honestly thought you were just trying to make conversation with me when you kept mentioning you liked all sorts of plants and stuff”.
He saw Wataru blush from a side-eye view.
“I promise you, if that was the case then I wouldn’t have the courage to go through the effort of buying all these,” he grinned shyly, “I’m happy you like it though. Although, I am still kind of embarrassed like hey, look at that; I’m plant obsessed and happen to work in the coffee shop across the street from the local florist and have the biggest, stupidest crush on one of the workers there, eheh…”
Yuto felt the heat rise and direct itself mostly to his cheeks, successfully forming a blush of his own. God, the moment was perfect. Almost seemingly too perfect. But, here had been presented with the chance of a lifetime and he decided his best course of action was to simply take it.
“Y’know…,” he began tentatively, “I found myself in a funnily similar situation…”
“O-Oh?”
“Yeah…,” he stepped closer to his host, gathering up every ounce of courage he could and reached out, taking Wataru’s hand in his and pulling the redhead even closer to close the gap between them both.
Wataru gulped softly, not taking his eyes off Yuto’s and soon enough the both of them knew they’d gotten lost in one another.
Yuto was the first to fully close the space between their lips, a gentle hum emitting from his throat as he finally got a taste sweeter than anything else Wataru could serve him. It was a kiss like a flower perking up and coming into bloom.
Much to Yuto’s surprise, it didn’t take long for Wataru to respond to him, pressing into the kiss himself and being the first one to reconnect their lips the moment they broke apart for a few spare seconds.
After the blissful moments of their first kiss fizzled away but still lingered in the air around them, Yuto couldn’t help but grin as Wataru’s slightly tense body relaxed in his arms and the redhead’s own arms came up around his neck as he buried his face into Yuto’s shoulder.
“So…does this mean I get to call you my little rosebud now? Y’know, what with the red hair and love of plants and all~” he teased.
Wataru chuckled, bringing his head up at smirk at Yuto, eyes glimmering with mischief as he leant in to whisper against his own crooked little grin.
“That depends, do you get to be my sweet taster in return~?”
Yuto had one thought cross his mind as he leant into Wataru’s invitation.
Oh, most definitely~