Bouquet

The food has been ordered, delivered and is halfway through being devoured by the time Jack speaks up again. Most of the table’s focus has been spent on Lena and the young green-haired man, Genji, Gabe recalls, who are currently engaged in a life or death battle of who can toss more fries into the air and catch them in their mouth. They’re both tied at zero, and Gabe can spot the long-suffering looks the waitstaff are casting at the food scraps littering the floor.

“So, why flowers?”

Gabe pulls his attention away from Genji, who currently has a fry shoved up one of his nostrils, to where Jack is currently leaning casually on his elbows, encroaching on Gabe’s space at the table.

It’s a question he’s used to. Bored of, honestly. He’s got a whole barrage of prepared answers to keep people from ever asking him a second time.

“Well it certainly helps with dates. You’d be surprised how far a simple bouquet can get you sometimes.” Gabe purrs, leaning forward as well.

Jack’s eyes widen for a second, (and Gabe’s expecting the embarrassed look he came to assume was a natural fixture on the other man’s face from how often he’d seen it at the wedding venue) before quickly narrowing as his brows furrow.

“Huh. From how much Amélie was ranting just the other day about how much of a shut-in you are and, I quote, ‘I swear to god he’s gonna marry a fucking potted plant someday’, it doesn’t seem like your bouquets are getting you very far at all.”

Fucking Amélie.

He quickly considers how long he can avoid talking to her for the sake of being petty. Maybe a day and a half if he fakes an illness. She’s persistent.

Gabe sits back in his seat, whatever french fry antics happening around him have faded into the background as he folds his arms across his chest and levels his best glare at Jack.

“Well look here, you do bite. Is the blushing Boy Scout persona your way to pick up dates, then?”

“Is your Bad Boy persona yours?”

Gabe raises an eyebrow at him.

“I could be bad, you don’t know me.”

Jack finally breaks the state down with a sudden, full-body laugh.

“You’re a florist, you can’t be all bad. I don’t have to know you to be able to figure that much out.”

Gabe leans forward into the space Jack has opened between them. He couldn’t care less about what’s going on with the rest of the table at this point; he’s going in for the kill.

“But you’d sure like to know me, wouldn’t you?”

Finally, finally Gabe gets the reaction out of Jack he’d been expecting; he stops suddenly and Gabe can see the color on the tips of his ears and creeping out from his shirt collar and up his neck. He counts it as a win.

Another round of drinks are dispersed at the table before Genji and the man with the headphones, Lúcio, bid their farewells. Angela and Fareeha are not far behind. Lena is yawning over-dramatically and Amélie figures it’s time she takes her fiancé home as well. It’s not until Gabe is watching her long ponytail disappear out the door before it hits him.

“She set me up.”

Jack is looking at him in confusion, which would probably be annoying considering the circumstances if he didn’t look so much like a puppy when you pretend to throw a ball.

“She was my ride.” Gabe spells out. “She was my ride, and she left me with you because she knew I didn’t have a ride.”

Jack laughs again, and Gabe hates how much he enjoys the sound.

“I’m sure there are worse people who she could have left you with.”

“True, but I haven’t ruled out whether or not you could be an ax murderer yet.” Gabe says with half seriousness as they vacate the table.

They pay their bills and leave to find Jack’s car parked around behind the bar. It’s a bland car; some silver compact car that Gabe would lose track of in a parking garage in a heartbeat. Not even remotely close to Amélie’s purple sports car.

On the short drive back Gabe learns a few things; Jack is from a small town in Indiana which, while not ruling out Gabe’s ax murderer theory, explains a lot of his personality. He wanted to go into the military, he admits upon hearing of Gabe’s service, but went to the police academy instead.

“So you’re a cop then,” Gabe prompts. It fits the poster-boy persona perfectly.

From his spot in the driver’s seat, Jack shrugs.

“It pays the bills.” He says as a means of explanation.

“I’m just saying it suits you.” Gabe clarifies, for what reason he’s not sure. Turning his head to look out the window, he can feel Jack’s eyes on him. The tension in the car feels suffocating.

“The shop’s right here, thanks for the lift.”

“You live in the shop? Jeez, I thought Amélie was kidding but-” Gabe is halfway out of the car when he snaps around.

“My apartment is above the shop you asshole.” He climbs out of the car and slams the door for good measure. Jack lets out another one of those full body laughs that Gabe wishes weren’t so damn endearing.

“Don’t you have someplace else to be? Laws to uphold? Crime to fight and all that?”

“I’m off duty right now Gabe, honestly. And I thought we were bonding for a moment there.”

Gabe folds his arms across his chest defensively.

“Yeah well I’m not inviting you up, if that’s what you think.”

Jack gives him a look before moving to shift the car back into drive.

“Next time, then.” Is all he says, before his car is gone and Gabe is left standing on the dark sidewalk in front of his shop. A breeze sends a chill up his spine.

He’s so fucked.

—

So, of course, he tells Amélie about it the next day.

“Gabriel Reyes you are going to die alone.”

Her lilting voice sounds threatening, even through the phone receiver.

“I open up to you and this is how you treat me.”

“Gabriel,” she starts, and although she’s the only person who calls him by his full name, it has the same tone as when his mother would chastise him as a child.

“I try to set you up with a guy who seemed interested in you, he drives you home and you blatantly tell him you’re not inviting him into your apartment?”

“Look, you weren’t there,” he argues, but knows he’s being a fool about this all the same. “It would have been weird. He said 'next time’ anyways, so I probably didn’t completely blow it.”

“So then text him to schedule a 'next time’, what are you waiting for?”

His silence is all the answer she needs.

“You didn’t even get his number, did you?”

He sighs loudly into the phone as she continues.

“Look Gabriel, you spend so much time in your shop helping out others with their romantic lives, maybe take a little time for your own every once in a while. Anyways, Lena wants to go out, so I’ve got to go. I’ll text you Jack’s number. If you pretend to lose it I will set every one of your precious flowers on fire.”

She ends the call without a goodbye, just as Gabe has come to expect.

A moment later his phone pings with a new text.

It’s a phone number and TEXT HIM written in all caps below it.

Yep, he’s definitely fucked.