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Took me like 6 months to work out the connective tissue for this fic.
Making slow progress towards feeling like a human being again. Here's a fic I finished in the meantime.
Title: Small Talk
Characters/Pairing: Blossom; veering towards Reds, along with implied Bubbles/Princess & implied Greens.
Rating: T for language, mostly. And brief references to sex.
Disclaimer: I feel like I’m one of a few who still does this! Old habits die hard. No, I don’t own the PpG.
Summary: “You want something normal because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do, not because you actually want it.” Blossom forgets her date’s name at her sister’s illegal pop up restaurant and runs into an unwelcome face, which is to say that her weekend is not off to a good start.
Notes: Nothing special to say about this one. A scene and a conversation that popped into my head sometime late last year. Un-beta'd.
small talk
-sbj
I cannot believe this.
In Blossom’s defense, it had been a long week. Productive! But long. City work kept her busy. And her date’s name wasn’t very unique. Honestly, how many Joes and Johns and Jacks were there? You could probably throw a rock and hit several within a city block.
Or maybe it was Jason. Or Jacob. J-something.
Blossom knew that the mature thing to do was to simply ask. Just ask him. They were adults. This was a first date. If it went on to be, God forbid, a relationship, this would just turn into a cute part of their history, a mildly entertaining milquetoast story to be shared over hors d’ouerves at a holiday party when they met new people, who would laugh politely because How Adorable Is That?
This wasn’t a blunder. This was an opportunity.
Except Blossom had already asked him as soon as she got in his car. And he had told her. And she had smiled and repeated it and then the information had promptly left her brain, because she was a superhero and she was saving the city on a daily basis, sometimes in spectacular ways like felling a monster or thwarting Mojo again, and sometimes in boring ways like working with urban planners to reconstruct the buildings that had been destroyed in the process, and all that data took up literal, physical brainspace, so something as innocuous as the name of a man she was probably only ever going to spend a couple of hours with was immediately discarded as extraneous, useless information.
Blossom’s brain recognized patterns that Blossom herself still refused to see. But she hadn’t given up on the dating thing yet.
Her brain was actually giving her multiple signals that she was failing to read tonight. Like, This street is familiar as they drove, and I know this building as they parked. And it wasn’t until she was staring at the doormat underneath their feet that she furrowed her brow and thought, Why are we at Buttercup’s?
“Why are we—” she started, before Buttercup’s door swung open to reveal (surprise, surprise) Buttercup.
“Heyoooohhhh what are you doing here?” Buttercup’s greeting dissolved upon seeing her sister’s face.
“Oh!” Blossom’s date did a double-take between the women. “I had no idea it was you!”
“I thought we were going to a restaurant,” Blossom said, her brain struggling to catch up. She heard laughter and several voices inside. “Are you… having a party?”
“No—yes. Yes. It’s a party.”
Blossom’s date looked panicked. “Wait, I had a reservation—”
“Shit, you’re my seven o’clock?!” Buttercup yelped at Blossom.
“Someone please tell me what is going on because I am incredibly confused right now,” Blossom said.
It turned out not to be a party.
***
It turned out to be an illegal pop-up restaurant that Buttercup—her sister, her own blood—was operating out of her nine-hundred-square-foot apartment.
“I cannot believe this,” Blossom said, still dazed from the revelation and looking around at the people crowded into Buttercup’s living room, all of them squeezed into tiny folding tables that barely had enough room for elbows, much less food. Bubbles waved at her from two tables over. Bubbles, who had bounced up excitedly once Blossom had entered and explained with a wink that No, this wasn’t an illegal restaurant, actually it was a party and everyone was friends here, and also typically she wasn’t here on Fridays but on Tuesdays, but because Princess had had a boring, stuffy rich-person-thing that Bubbles wasn’t interested in but Princess had to go to, they couldn’t do their usual Friday date night, so they switched and did their date night on Tuesday this week and so Bubbles was here tonight, and what a coincidence, how lucky it was that they were all here together to appreciate Buttercup’s cooking, it had to be fate.
Then Butch had come up and made some rude suggestive comment before asking them what they wanted to drink. And Blossom might have blown up a little at that point because it had been a long, busy week, and this was violating so many city codes, and the last thing she wanted was to be thinking about more work stuff on the first night of her weekend on a date with a guy whose name she could not even remember.
“Whoa, simmer down, red hots,” Butch said, holding his hands up in defense. “You’ll scare off the customers.”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you,” she snarled.
Butch turned to her date and laughed. “You already got her this worked up, huh?”
“What are you even doing here? Shouldn’t you be trying to pass off oregano as pot in a back alley somewhere to teenagers?”
“Ooh, filter’s off tonight and everything,” Butch said, clapping her date on the shoulder. “Good luck, man. You know what, I’ll come back when you two have settled.”
Blossom dropped into her seat with a grimace, so consumed by irritation that it had not even crossed her mind how incredibly rude she was being. In the next instant, she shot back up to her feet when she realized she’d missed the opportunity to rope someone into figuring out her date’s name—
“Hey!” Bubbles appeared with a small tray to collect their phones in an effort to preserve the secrecy of this illegal endeavor. Seriously. Her own blood. “Be nice. Don’t rat Buttercup out.”
“I’m not promising anything,” Blossom said under her breath, her anger once again surging ahead of logic. But once logic caught up a millisecond later, she clutched at her sister and whispered, grateful that the din of the other patrons’ conversations shielded their own from Mystery Man J. Bubbles agreed to help if Blossom promised to help cover dishes that night. Blossom grudgingly shook on it. At least she could broker a short-term deal and save herself the embarrassment of asking again. And she couldn’t help but feel relief along with a welling of familial cameraderie when Bubbles turned to J-man and asked him the million dollar question.
“Justin,” he told Bubbles, dropping his phone in the tray.
Bubbles turned to Blossom and indicated her date, that surge of sisterly love abating as soon as Blossom saw mischief sparking in those blue eyes. “Ah, he’s a Justin.”
Blossom smiled politely and nodded. “So he is,” she affirmed, sending her sister a death glare. Bubbles, sweet, innocent Bubbles, turned a smug smile on them both.
“Very nice to meet you, Justin. I hope you two have a great time tonight!”
***
They chatted. They made small talk. Justin apologized for the surprise dining experience, but social media had been abuzz for weeks about this place and he had wanted to do something special for their evening out. Blossom bit her tongue behind her smile and said through gritted teeth that he had nothing to apologize for.
Justin asked questions—polite, safe, casual questions. Blossom answered and responded with a few of her own. They talked careers. Hobbies. The weather. Blossom continued to smile as the answers went in one ear and out the other, information so innocuous it didn’t warrant a single wrinkle in her brain.
Justin was fine. Just fine. But it was a bad sign that she was actually grateful for the reprieve from just fine when Butch came back for their drink orders.
“So what’re you two going to have? Beer drink, red drink, or white drink? If you want my opinion, it’s really more of a beer kinda meal.”
“What sort of red wine have you got?” Justin asked.
Butch scoffed and said flatly, “I dunno, red,” then turned to Blossom. “Speaking of, what about you, red hots?”
“Or maybe I want a white,” Justin said.
“Or I’ll just mix the two together for you and you’ll drink that,” Butch deadpanned.
This is going to be my entire evening, Blossom suddenly realized, the abyss of her first weekend night stretching endlessly before her. Why had she agreed to this? Why was she even out here? What was she doing?
“You know, I’ll just get my own,” Blossom said distractedly, then, without waiting for a response, got up, pushed past Butch, and stalked to the kitchen.
I always do this to myself.
“Hey, get the fuck out of my—oh, it’s just you,” Buttercup said. Blossom ignored her and made a beeline for the cabinet where her sister kept the liquor. She pawed through the limited bottles until she located an unopened bottle of cognac she herself had gifted Buttercup a year back.
“Give me a glass,” she ordered.
“I was saving that for a special occasion!”
“Well, now the special occasion is me not reporting you to the health department,” Blossom said. “Where’s my glass?”
Another voice, not her sister’s, but just as familiar and twice as unwelcome. “Here.”
A hand popped into her vision, dangling two snifters, and Blossom’s gaze followed the arm to find it led to…
Great. Just great.
She scowled at Brick and snatched one of the glasses away. “What are you doing here?”
“Working,” he said, scowling back.
“That tracks for an illegal restaurant,” she muttered, and headed back for the so-called dining room, bottle and glass in hand.
“Not taking one for your date?” he called after her.
“I didn’t buy this for him,” she said, wishing she lacked enough social propriety to just up and leave this whole evening behind.
“That’s not gonna go with most of the meal!” Buttercup said.
“Do I look like I care?!”
***
Buttercup was right. The cognac didn’t go with the meal. Blossom resorted to sipping at it between courses. She wasn’t exactly having fun, but at least the food was good. By that metric, this date was going a lot better than some of her previous ones had.
That’s one box checked, she thought. So it wasn’t a complete waste. Silver linings.
Unfortunately that silver lining did not seem to exist for Justin. But not out of a lack of appreciation for her sister’s work. Rather, he appeared to have been mildly overwhelmed by the night’s events and at having failed to charm Blossom from Minute One. So he had resorted to liquid confidence in the form of whatever cheap wine had been collecting dust on Buttercup’s shelf.
This did even less to charm her, though he was certainly getting on with the rest of the room just swimmingly. Blossom sipped at her cognac, now incapable of masking her boredom while most of the living room engaged in a lively drunken debate, spurred on by none other than Butch. His most recent hypothetical question had been, “Is Scooby Doo a crime drama?” and that had now been the sole topic of discussion in the room for the last forty-five minutes.
Justin was on the Yes side. Blossom did not care.
So after course five (skillet-fried duck with parsnips and shallots—Blossom’s favorite of the night so far, and the only one that had paired with the cognac perfectly) when they—or, rather, her date—had been cajoled into joining another table to continue the discussion in earnest, and after Blossom had summoned enough courteous patience to convince him that she would meet him there, she made for the kitchen to get a head start on those dishes she owed her sister.
Buttercup was out on the tiny balcony manning a grill, which left only Brick for company, much to Blossom’s dismay.
“I promised Bubbles I’d do the dishes,” she announced, cutting Brick off before he could sour her mood further with whatever snark that threatened to spill out of his stupid mouth.
He watched as she tied an apron around her waist, then shrugged and went back to snipping some kind of herb. Mint, it smelled like.
For a brief, blissful moment, there was no conversation, no small talk, no forced attempt at being polite and interested. Just the sound of water filling the sink, punctuated occasionally by the snip of kitchen shears as Brick went about his work, and underneath it all, the laughter filtering in from the next room. Her brain welcomed the reprieve. Blossom exhaled.
So of course Brick had to go and ruin it.
“Evening’s going that well, huh?” he muttered, and she could hear him sneering.
“Don’t start with me,” she grumbled, rolling up her sleeves and plunging her arms into the water.
“I’m just making conversation.”
“Ooh!” Blossom widened her eyes and made a face, though she knew he couldn’t see it. “Lucky me!”
“Says the woman dating the human equivalent of a sweater vest out there.”
“We’re not dating,” Blossom said, lathering up the flatware. “It’s one. Date.”
“I was using the word ‘dating’ as a statement of the occurrence, not as a description of your state of being in your non-relationship.”
“How long has this popup been running?”
“I’m not going to be an accomplice in your removal of my income stream. Fuck off.”
Blossom flung the flatware in the rinse side of the sink with a splash. “It’s a good thing she has you working in the back.”
“Back of house.”
“What?”
“They call the back part of the restaurant ‘back of house.’ Customer-facing side is front of house, behind-the-scenes is back of house.”
“God, you never know when to keep your mouth shut. Also, this is an apartment, not a restaurant.”
A timer in the kitchen dinged, and Brick set down his shears and left the kitchen without a word. Blossom nearly called him out for his rudeness before realizing his leaving her proximity was the ideal scenario, and resumed washing the dishes in blissful silence while her boring sweater vest of a date yukked it up with the rest of the customers in the other room.
***
“Shit, Blossom, what are you doing dishes for?” Buttercup said as she came back through the kitchen. “I pay Brick to wash those.”
Blossom stared at her sister a moment before blowing the last plate dry and setting it in the cabinet. “How funny that he conveniently forgot to mention that to me.”
“I thought I’d suckered Bubbles into it,” he said, re-entering the kitchen with dessert in tow.
Buttercup whistled. “Ooh, the panna cotta set nicely,” she said. “Nice work, Brick. I should have you do dessert more often.”
He grunted as he set to work gently inserting all those snipped mint leaves in the middle of each panna cotta’d glass.
“Well, thanks for making Brick’s job easier tonight, I guess,” Buttercup said, and if it had been anyone else but her sister, Blossom might have smashed every plate she had just washed. She was feeling that petty. “I was wondering where you went. You missed the last course. Grilled scallops. With lemon garlic brown butter. They’re delicious.”
“I set it aside for her,” Brick said, tossing his head at the counter without looking.
“Holy shit, lifesaver.” Buttercup grabbed it and thrust it at Blossom. “Hurry, before they get any colder. And then you got this guy’s gorgeous dessert to get through.”
Dessert did look very pretty, which was unfortunate. Blossom was hoping it would taste like garbage.
The scallops were incredible. And probably would’ve paired well with the cognac. Blossom regretted leaving the bottle behind. She could hear Butch ushering patrons out. The living room was quieting down. She half-expected Justin to wander in, looking for her.
As soon as she had finished the scallops, Brick snatched the plate out of her hands and traded her for a tumbler containing his panna cotta, set at an appealing diagonal with a thin cookie and sprig of mint decorating it.
“Here,” he said, handing her a tiny spoon.
“Thank you,” she said, because it was an automatic response.
“Funny you’re thanking me for something you bought,” Brick said.
“My date paid for it, technically.”
“Technically he’s also paying for that nap he’s taking on my couch,” Buttercup said.
“What?”
Brick laughed. “You literally bored your date to sleep!”
“That was the alcohol,” she snapped.
“Yeah, but my version makes it a funnier story,” he said as she stalked out of the kitchen to find Justin yes, indeed, sprawled on the couch, one arm dangling off the side of it and gradually losing grip on his half-eaten panna cotta.
Which didn’t taste like garbage, Blossom was dismayed to find.
***
Bubbles, ever the good samaritan, offered to fly Justin and his car home.
“It’s no trouble,” she’d said, after digging out his driver’s license for his address. “He’s on the way. Thanks for covering dishes for me!”
“They weren’t yours to do in the first place!” Blossom shouted after her as she took off with Justin in one arm and his car held up in the other. All the same, she was on the verge of nominating Bubbles for sainthood for giving her an easy out.
Buttercup’s apartment took on a much different character now that no random strangers were here. Blossom was surprised to find the bathroom had undergone an upgrade since she’d last visited, remarkably tidy and neat for Buttercup. Bubbles’ idea, probably. There was a lit bergamot candle, bougie hand soap in a labelless dispenser that smelled faintly of lavender, and some very high quality napkins with an embossed flower pattern on them out for guests.
Nice bathroom. Still illegal.
“Hmph,” Blossom said aloud as she patted her hands dry on one of them. She took note of her expression in the mirror, happy that her reflection agreed.
She exited the bathroom, into the empty living room. Buttercup and Butch were out on the balcony with the door open and their backs to her, passing a bottle of beer back and forth. Butch said something that made her sister laugh and turn into him. She pushed her face close to his and he held the bottle out away from them while his free hand drifted across her back, down to her waist.
Blossom colored and darted quickly into the kitchen, feeling like she stumbled on something she wasn’t supposed to see. Brick was at the tiny kitchen table going through their earnings for the night, an old school ledger sitting open in front of him. They exchanged a brief glance before he resumed his work in silence.
“How long has that been going on?” she asked, jerking her head towards the living room balcony.
He looked in the direction she indicated, though the balcony wasn’t visible from his vantage point. He seemed to know what she was talking about, anyway, because he responded, “A year or two, maybe. I think it was on its way to happening when this whole thing started.”
“Huh. Weird.”
“What’d you think of the panna cotta?”
“Terrible. Worst thing I’ve ever eaten.”
“Right. That must be why you ate the whole thing. Or did you just force feed it to your sleeping date?”
“Shut up.”
“How was your date, anyway? Scale of one to ten.”
“Don’t,” she groaned, and leaned against the counter. She could read the numbers in Brick’s ledger easily despite them being upside down from where she stood. Dang. Buttercup’s illegal restaurant wasn’t doing too bad.
Brick snickered. “So one.”
“No, I’ve been on worse. That wasn’t a one.”
“That’s sad.”
“Maybe a four,” she said.
“Do you start at a one or a five?”
“Five, I guess.”
“Bet you’ve gone on a lot of sub-five dates.”
“None of your business.”
“That’s a ‘Yes,’ if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Enough, smart guy.” She moved from the counter to the kitchen sink, leaning on the edge of it to stare out at the purple night sky. “You’ve got some gall, acting like you know me.”
“Please.” She heard Brick shifting back in his seat. The chair groaned against the vinyl and his pen hit the table. “It doesn’t take an expert, Blossom. You picked him because it fits your narrative. A guy standing behind you, being all supportive. Someone nice and boring, so you’re never in danger of him stealing your spotlight and you get to show everyone just how down-to-earth and approachable you are. ‘Look, she’s dating plebes! She’s just like us. Gosh, I just really like her. Can’t put my finger on it.’”
Blossom’s eyes were sharp enough that she could see all the craters of the moon, even with the light pollution. She was thinking of the folks she’d dated and trying to remember their names, something unique, something special about them. Anything.
I always do this to myself.
“But you don’t want boring,” Brick said. “Joe Blow out there was, what? An accountant? I bet you’ve dated a lot of people like him. Accountants, CPA’s, middle management types. They make you look good. But it isn’t what you want.”
Blossom turned away from the world outside to face the one contained in this tiny one-hundred-and-twenty square foot kitchen, her arms spreading wide along the kitchen counter behind her, not caring about taking up space. Funny that he was giving her grief about guys who did numbers when he was sitting and doing just that.
“What do I want then, Brick?”
At some point during his diatribe he had picked up the pen and gone back to his ledger, though from what she could tell he hadn’t written anything new down. Nevertheless, he was looking at it instead of at her, pen poised and hovering, writing nothing.
“You’re like your sisters,” he said, staring at numbers that weren’t there. “You want someone who challenges you.”
She stayed quiet, waiting for more insight, more roasting, more takedowns. She felt like punching him in the face and while she didn’t have any real inclination to act on it, it was still nice to want that and not feel guilty about it.
Brick finally looked up at her, his pen-wielding hand drifting up to support the weight of his cheek. “Just saying,” he said. “We’ve known each other a long time. You want something normal because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do, not because you actually want it.”
She straightened and crossed her arms, taking a few steps towards him. “Like you and the evildoing thing?” she asked, and she didn’t mean it as a dig.
It struck a nerve, nonetheless. A hint of an edge crept into those red eyes, enough to constitute a glare as she approached.
She drew up close enough to bump her knee against his, taking in his splayed legs, the slouch in his spine. “This is the most relaxed I’ve ever seen you.” It was true. Adulthood had dulled his edges. He looked different. Softer, somehow. Or maybe it was her eyesight that adulthood was doing a number on.
Something had shifted in his expression and he was fixating on his knee. She considered bumping it again.
“You’re looming,” he said quietly.
“My bad,” she said, swaying closer.
It had been a long week culminating in a nothing date. She’d spent more time talking to the guy in this tiny kitchen than she had talking to what’s-his-face at their tiny table. Justin was boring, but Brick was a jerk. This was worse, by all accounts. If someone like Justin pushed her, she wouldn’t even tip over. Brick pushed her and she wanted to shove his face in the dirt.
And then what? she thought, drifting ever closer, her knee moving between his legs. He had to tip his head back to look up at her. She didn’t hate it.
He sighed and dropped his pen as his gaze pulled elsewhere. It annoyed her.
Chicken.
“I guess I just love stickin’ it to Dad.” This last word was accompanied by a slight widening of his gaze, a waggle of his head, and a complete, total lack of affection. She wondered which Dad he was referring to.
Buttercup and Butch entered the kitchen together then, hands entwined, and Blossom backed out of Brick’s personal space. The movement drew Buttercup’s attention, and she dropped Butch’s hand and instantly pulled away from her boyfriend, or sex buddy, or whatever they were.
“You still here?” Buttercup asked Blossom, reaching up to rub her neck. Or cover it. She didn’t move her hand back down, so Blossom had her suspicions.
Blossom nodded at Brick. “I’m making a reservation.”
“Oh,” Buttercup said.
“Oh,” Brick said, and pulled out a different notebook, clearing his throat. Butch was busy blending into the wallpaper and doing a shockingly good job of it, considering he’d never demonstrated an understanding of what an inside voice was.
“You’re not making a ploy to shut me down, are you?” Buttercup asked.
Blossom indicated the wallpaper and asked, “How long has this been going on?”
“Ain’t your business,” Buttercup responded automatically.
“There’re openings next Wednesday,” Brick interrupted.
Blossom drifted over to peer at the calendar herself, looming again. “Wednesday’s no good. I’ve got council meetings every Wednesday.” She reached out to tap the date in question, her arm brushing Brick’s shoulder as she did so. Without waiting for him to make another suggestion, she flipped the page herself. “Here we go. Next next Monday.”
Brick’s shoulder bumped her as he wordlessly added her name to a list of five in that little square. She watched his gaze dart to her arm, a hair’s breadth away from his cheek. “How many?” he asked, then, before she could respond, “Bringing another boring date?”
Blossom ignored her sister’s snort and placed a hand on Brick’s shoulder, close to his neck.
“Put me down for one,” she said, squeezing. Her hand trailed along the nape of his neck and she felt him swallow as she pulled away. “I’ll help with the dishes afterwards.”
-fin-
AO3 | FFNet | AskFM
Title: Small Talk
Characters/Pairing: Blossom; veering towards Reds, along with implied Bubbles/Princess & implied Greens.
Rating: T for language, mostly. And brief references to sex.
Disclaimer: I feel like I’m one of a few who still does this! Old habits die hard. No, I don’t own the PpG.
Summary: “You want something normal because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do, not because you actually want it.” Blossom forgets her date’s name at her sister’s illegal pop up restaurant and runs into an unwelcome face, which is to say that her weekend is not off to a good start.
Notes: Nothing special to say about this one. A scene and a conversation that popped into my head sometime late last year. Un-beta'd.
small talk
-sbj
I cannot believe this.
In Blossom’s defense, it had been a long week. Productive! But long. City work kept her busy. And her date’s name wasn’t very unique. Honestly, how many Joes and Johns and Jacks were there? You could probably throw a rock and hit several within a city block.
Or maybe it was Jason. Or Jacob. J-something.
Blossom knew that the mature thing to do was to simply ask. Just ask him. They were adults. This was a first date. If it went on to be, God forbid, a relationship, this would just turn into a cute part of their history, a mildly entertaining milquetoast story to be shared over hors d’ouerves at a holiday party when they met new people, who would laugh politely because How Adorable Is That?
This wasn’t a blunder. This was an opportunity.
Except Blossom had already asked him as soon as she got in his car. And he had told her. And she had smiled and repeated it and then the information had promptly left her brain, because she was a superhero and she was saving the city on a daily basis, sometimes in spectacular ways like felling a monster or thwarting Mojo again, and sometimes in boring ways like working with urban planners to reconstruct the buildings that had been destroyed in the process, and all that data took up literal, physical brainspace, so something as innocuous as the name of a man she was probably only ever going to spend a couple of hours with was immediately discarded as extraneous, useless information.
Blossom’s brain recognized patterns that Blossom herself still refused to see. But she hadn’t given up on the dating thing yet.
Her brain was actually giving her multiple signals that she was failing to read tonight. Like, This street is familiar as they drove, and I know this building as they parked. And it wasn’t until she was staring at the doormat underneath their feet that she furrowed her brow and thought, Why are we at Buttercup’s?
“Why are we—” she started, before Buttercup’s door swung open to reveal (surprise, surprise) Buttercup.
“Heyoooohhhh what are you doing here?” Buttercup’s greeting dissolved upon seeing her sister’s face.
“Oh!” Blossom’s date did a double-take between the women. “I had no idea it was you!”
“I thought we were going to a restaurant,” Blossom said, her brain struggling to catch up. She heard laughter and several voices inside. “Are you… having a party?”
“No—yes. Yes. It’s a party.”
Blossom’s date looked panicked. “Wait, I had a reservation—”
“Shit, you’re my seven o’clock?!” Buttercup yelped at Blossom.
“Someone please tell me what is going on because I am incredibly confused right now,” Blossom said.
It turned out not to be a party.
***
It turned out to be an illegal pop-up restaurant that Buttercup—her sister, her own blood—was operating out of her nine-hundred-square-foot apartment.
“I cannot believe this,” Blossom said, still dazed from the revelation and looking around at the people crowded into Buttercup’s living room, all of them squeezed into tiny folding tables that barely had enough room for elbows, much less food. Bubbles waved at her from two tables over. Bubbles, who had bounced up excitedly once Blossom had entered and explained with a wink that No, this wasn’t an illegal restaurant, actually it was a party and everyone was friends here, and also typically she wasn’t here on Fridays but on Tuesdays, but because Princess had had a boring, stuffy rich-person-thing that Bubbles wasn’t interested in but Princess had to go to, they couldn’t do their usual Friday date night, so they switched and did their date night on Tuesday this week and so Bubbles was here tonight, and what a coincidence, how lucky it was that they were all here together to appreciate Buttercup’s cooking, it had to be fate.
Then Butch had come up and made some rude suggestive comment before asking them what they wanted to drink. And Blossom might have blown up a little at that point because it had been a long, busy week, and this was violating so many city codes, and the last thing she wanted was to be thinking about more work stuff on the first night of her weekend on a date with a guy whose name she could not even remember.
“Whoa, simmer down, red hots,” Butch said, holding his hands up in defense. “You’ll scare off the customers.”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you,” she snarled.
Butch turned to her date and laughed. “You already got her this worked up, huh?”
“What are you even doing here? Shouldn’t you be trying to pass off oregano as pot in a back alley somewhere to teenagers?”
“Ooh, filter’s off tonight and everything,” Butch said, clapping her date on the shoulder. “Good luck, man. You know what, I’ll come back when you two have settled.”
Blossom dropped into her seat with a grimace, so consumed by irritation that it had not even crossed her mind how incredibly rude she was being. In the next instant, she shot back up to her feet when she realized she’d missed the opportunity to rope someone into figuring out her date’s name—
“Hey!” Bubbles appeared with a small tray to collect their phones in an effort to preserve the secrecy of this illegal endeavor. Seriously. Her own blood. “Be nice. Don’t rat Buttercup out.”
“I’m not promising anything,” Blossom said under her breath, her anger once again surging ahead of logic. But once logic caught up a millisecond later, she clutched at her sister and whispered, grateful that the din of the other patrons’ conversations shielded their own from Mystery Man J. Bubbles agreed to help if Blossom promised to help cover dishes that night. Blossom grudgingly shook on it. At least she could broker a short-term deal and save herself the embarrassment of asking again. And she couldn’t help but feel relief along with a welling of familial cameraderie when Bubbles turned to J-man and asked him the million dollar question.
“Justin,” he told Bubbles, dropping his phone in the tray.
Bubbles turned to Blossom and indicated her date, that surge of sisterly love abating as soon as Blossom saw mischief sparking in those blue eyes. “Ah, he’s a Justin.”
Blossom smiled politely and nodded. “So he is,” she affirmed, sending her sister a death glare. Bubbles, sweet, innocent Bubbles, turned a smug smile on them both.
“Very nice to meet you, Justin. I hope you two have a great time tonight!”
***
They chatted. They made small talk. Justin apologized for the surprise dining experience, but social media had been abuzz for weeks about this place and he had wanted to do something special for their evening out. Blossom bit her tongue behind her smile and said through gritted teeth that he had nothing to apologize for.
Justin asked questions—polite, safe, casual questions. Blossom answered and responded with a few of her own. They talked careers. Hobbies. The weather. Blossom continued to smile as the answers went in one ear and out the other, information so innocuous it didn’t warrant a single wrinkle in her brain.
Justin was fine. Just fine. But it was a bad sign that she was actually grateful for the reprieve from just fine when Butch came back for their drink orders.
“So what’re you two going to have? Beer drink, red drink, or white drink? If you want my opinion, it’s really more of a beer kinda meal.”
“What sort of red wine have you got?” Justin asked.
Butch scoffed and said flatly, “I dunno, red,” then turned to Blossom. “Speaking of, what about you, red hots?”
“Or maybe I want a white,” Justin said.
“Or I’ll just mix the two together for you and you’ll drink that,” Butch deadpanned.
This is going to be my entire evening, Blossom suddenly realized, the abyss of her first weekend night stretching endlessly before her. Why had she agreed to this? Why was she even out here? What was she doing?
“You know, I’ll just get my own,” Blossom said distractedly, then, without waiting for a response, got up, pushed past Butch, and stalked to the kitchen.
I always do this to myself.
“Hey, get the fuck out of my—oh, it’s just you,” Buttercup said. Blossom ignored her and made a beeline for the cabinet where her sister kept the liquor. She pawed through the limited bottles until she located an unopened bottle of cognac she herself had gifted Buttercup a year back.
“Give me a glass,” she ordered.
“I was saving that for a special occasion!”
“Well, now the special occasion is me not reporting you to the health department,” Blossom said. “Where’s my glass?”
Another voice, not her sister’s, but just as familiar and twice as unwelcome. “Here.”
A hand popped into her vision, dangling two snifters, and Blossom’s gaze followed the arm to find it led to…
Great. Just great.
She scowled at Brick and snatched one of the glasses away. “What are you doing here?”
“Working,” he said, scowling back.
“That tracks for an illegal restaurant,” she muttered, and headed back for the so-called dining room, bottle and glass in hand.
“Not taking one for your date?” he called after her.
“I didn’t buy this for him,” she said, wishing she lacked enough social propriety to just up and leave this whole evening behind.
“That’s not gonna go with most of the meal!” Buttercup said.
“Do I look like I care?!”
***
Buttercup was right. The cognac didn’t go with the meal. Blossom resorted to sipping at it between courses. She wasn’t exactly having fun, but at least the food was good. By that metric, this date was going a lot better than some of her previous ones had.
That’s one box checked, she thought. So it wasn’t a complete waste. Silver linings.
Unfortunately that silver lining did not seem to exist for Justin. But not out of a lack of appreciation for her sister’s work. Rather, he appeared to have been mildly overwhelmed by the night’s events and at having failed to charm Blossom from Minute One. So he had resorted to liquid confidence in the form of whatever cheap wine had been collecting dust on Buttercup’s shelf.
This did even less to charm her, though he was certainly getting on with the rest of the room just swimmingly. Blossom sipped at her cognac, now incapable of masking her boredom while most of the living room engaged in a lively drunken debate, spurred on by none other than Butch. His most recent hypothetical question had been, “Is Scooby Doo a crime drama?” and that had now been the sole topic of discussion in the room for the last forty-five minutes.
Justin was on the Yes side. Blossom did not care.
So after course five (skillet-fried duck with parsnips and shallots—Blossom’s favorite of the night so far, and the only one that had paired with the cognac perfectly) when they—or, rather, her date—had been cajoled into joining another table to continue the discussion in earnest, and after Blossom had summoned enough courteous patience to convince him that she would meet him there, she made for the kitchen to get a head start on those dishes she owed her sister.
Buttercup was out on the tiny balcony manning a grill, which left only Brick for company, much to Blossom’s dismay.
“I promised Bubbles I’d do the dishes,” she announced, cutting Brick off before he could sour her mood further with whatever snark that threatened to spill out of his stupid mouth.
He watched as she tied an apron around her waist, then shrugged and went back to snipping some kind of herb. Mint, it smelled like.
For a brief, blissful moment, there was no conversation, no small talk, no forced attempt at being polite and interested. Just the sound of water filling the sink, punctuated occasionally by the snip of kitchen shears as Brick went about his work, and underneath it all, the laughter filtering in from the next room. Her brain welcomed the reprieve. Blossom exhaled.
So of course Brick had to go and ruin it.
“Evening’s going that well, huh?” he muttered, and she could hear him sneering.
“Don’t start with me,” she grumbled, rolling up her sleeves and plunging her arms into the water.
“I’m just making conversation.”
“Ooh!” Blossom widened her eyes and made a face, though she knew he couldn’t see it. “Lucky me!”
“Says the woman dating the human equivalent of a sweater vest out there.”
“We’re not dating,” Blossom said, lathering up the flatware. “It’s one. Date.”
“I was using the word ‘dating’ as a statement of the occurrence, not as a description of your state of being in your non-relationship.”
“How long has this popup been running?”
“I’m not going to be an accomplice in your removal of my income stream. Fuck off.”
Blossom flung the flatware in the rinse side of the sink with a splash. “It’s a good thing she has you working in the back.”
“Back of house.”
“What?”
“They call the back part of the restaurant ‘back of house.’ Customer-facing side is front of house, behind-the-scenes is back of house.”
“God, you never know when to keep your mouth shut. Also, this is an apartment, not a restaurant.”
A timer in the kitchen dinged, and Brick set down his shears and left the kitchen without a word. Blossom nearly called him out for his rudeness before realizing his leaving her proximity was the ideal scenario, and resumed washing the dishes in blissful silence while her boring sweater vest of a date yukked it up with the rest of the customers in the other room.
***
“Shit, Blossom, what are you doing dishes for?” Buttercup said as she came back through the kitchen. “I pay Brick to wash those.”
Blossom stared at her sister a moment before blowing the last plate dry and setting it in the cabinet. “How funny that he conveniently forgot to mention that to me.”
“I thought I’d suckered Bubbles into it,” he said, re-entering the kitchen with dessert in tow.
Buttercup whistled. “Ooh, the panna cotta set nicely,” she said. “Nice work, Brick. I should have you do dessert more often.”
He grunted as he set to work gently inserting all those snipped mint leaves in the middle of each panna cotta’d glass.
“Well, thanks for making Brick’s job easier tonight, I guess,” Buttercup said, and if it had been anyone else but her sister, Blossom might have smashed every plate she had just washed. She was feeling that petty. “I was wondering where you went. You missed the last course. Grilled scallops. With lemon garlic brown butter. They’re delicious.”
“I set it aside for her,” Brick said, tossing his head at the counter without looking.
“Holy shit, lifesaver.” Buttercup grabbed it and thrust it at Blossom. “Hurry, before they get any colder. And then you got this guy’s gorgeous dessert to get through.”
Dessert did look very pretty, which was unfortunate. Blossom was hoping it would taste like garbage.
The scallops were incredible. And probably would’ve paired well with the cognac. Blossom regretted leaving the bottle behind. She could hear Butch ushering patrons out. The living room was quieting down. She half-expected Justin to wander in, looking for her.
As soon as she had finished the scallops, Brick snatched the plate out of her hands and traded her for a tumbler containing his panna cotta, set at an appealing diagonal with a thin cookie and sprig of mint decorating it.
“Here,” he said, handing her a tiny spoon.
“Thank you,” she said, because it was an automatic response.
“Funny you’re thanking me for something you bought,” Brick said.
“My date paid for it, technically.”
“Technically he’s also paying for that nap he’s taking on my couch,” Buttercup said.
“What?”
Brick laughed. “You literally bored your date to sleep!”
“That was the alcohol,” she snapped.
“Yeah, but my version makes it a funnier story,” he said as she stalked out of the kitchen to find Justin yes, indeed, sprawled on the couch, one arm dangling off the side of it and gradually losing grip on his half-eaten panna cotta.
Which didn’t taste like garbage, Blossom was dismayed to find.
***
Bubbles, ever the good samaritan, offered to fly Justin and his car home.
“It’s no trouble,” she’d said, after digging out his driver’s license for his address. “He’s on the way. Thanks for covering dishes for me!”
“They weren’t yours to do in the first place!” Blossom shouted after her as she took off with Justin in one arm and his car held up in the other. All the same, she was on the verge of nominating Bubbles for sainthood for giving her an easy out.
Buttercup’s apartment took on a much different character now that no random strangers were here. Blossom was surprised to find the bathroom had undergone an upgrade since she’d last visited, remarkably tidy and neat for Buttercup. Bubbles’ idea, probably. There was a lit bergamot candle, bougie hand soap in a labelless dispenser that smelled faintly of lavender, and some very high quality napkins with an embossed flower pattern on them out for guests.
Nice bathroom. Still illegal.
“Hmph,” Blossom said aloud as she patted her hands dry on one of them. She took note of her expression in the mirror, happy that her reflection agreed.
She exited the bathroom, into the empty living room. Buttercup and Butch were out on the balcony with the door open and their backs to her, passing a bottle of beer back and forth. Butch said something that made her sister laugh and turn into him. She pushed her face close to his and he held the bottle out away from them while his free hand drifted across her back, down to her waist.
Blossom colored and darted quickly into the kitchen, feeling like she stumbled on something she wasn’t supposed to see. Brick was at the tiny kitchen table going through their earnings for the night, an old school ledger sitting open in front of him. They exchanged a brief glance before he resumed his work in silence.
“How long has that been going on?” she asked, jerking her head towards the living room balcony.
He looked in the direction she indicated, though the balcony wasn’t visible from his vantage point. He seemed to know what she was talking about, anyway, because he responded, “A year or two, maybe. I think it was on its way to happening when this whole thing started.”
“Huh. Weird.”
“What’d you think of the panna cotta?”
“Terrible. Worst thing I’ve ever eaten.”
“Right. That must be why you ate the whole thing. Or did you just force feed it to your sleeping date?”
“Shut up.”
“How was your date, anyway? Scale of one to ten.”
“Don’t,” she groaned, and leaned against the counter. She could read the numbers in Brick’s ledger easily despite them being upside down from where she stood. Dang. Buttercup’s illegal restaurant wasn’t doing too bad.
Brick snickered. “So one.”
“No, I’ve been on worse. That wasn’t a one.”
“That’s sad.”
“Maybe a four,” she said.
“Do you start at a one or a five?”
“Five, I guess.”
“Bet you’ve gone on a lot of sub-five dates.”
“None of your business.”
“That’s a ‘Yes,’ if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Enough, smart guy.” She moved from the counter to the kitchen sink, leaning on the edge of it to stare out at the purple night sky. “You’ve got some gall, acting like you know me.”
“Please.” She heard Brick shifting back in his seat. The chair groaned against the vinyl and his pen hit the table. “It doesn’t take an expert, Blossom. You picked him because it fits your narrative. A guy standing behind you, being all supportive. Someone nice and boring, so you’re never in danger of him stealing your spotlight and you get to show everyone just how down-to-earth and approachable you are. ‘Look, she’s dating plebes! She’s just like us. Gosh, I just really like her. Can’t put my finger on it.’”
Blossom’s eyes were sharp enough that she could see all the craters of the moon, even with the light pollution. She was thinking of the folks she’d dated and trying to remember their names, something unique, something special about them. Anything.
I always do this to myself.
“But you don’t want boring,” Brick said. “Joe Blow out there was, what? An accountant? I bet you’ve dated a lot of people like him. Accountants, CPA’s, middle management types. They make you look good. But it isn’t what you want.”
Blossom turned away from the world outside to face the one contained in this tiny one-hundred-and-twenty square foot kitchen, her arms spreading wide along the kitchen counter behind her, not caring about taking up space. Funny that he was giving her grief about guys who did numbers when he was sitting and doing just that.
“What do I want then, Brick?”
At some point during his diatribe he had picked up the pen and gone back to his ledger, though from what she could tell he hadn’t written anything new down. Nevertheless, he was looking at it instead of at her, pen poised and hovering, writing nothing.
“You’re like your sisters,” he said, staring at numbers that weren’t there. “You want someone who challenges you.”
She stayed quiet, waiting for more insight, more roasting, more takedowns. She felt like punching him in the face and while she didn’t have any real inclination to act on it, it was still nice to want that and not feel guilty about it.
Brick finally looked up at her, his pen-wielding hand drifting up to support the weight of his cheek. “Just saying,” he said. “We’ve known each other a long time. You want something normal because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do, not because you actually want it.”
She straightened and crossed her arms, taking a few steps towards him. “Like you and the evildoing thing?” she asked, and she didn’t mean it as a dig.
It struck a nerve, nonetheless. A hint of an edge crept into those red eyes, enough to constitute a glare as she approached.
She drew up close enough to bump her knee against his, taking in his splayed legs, the slouch in his spine. “This is the most relaxed I’ve ever seen you.” It was true. Adulthood had dulled his edges. He looked different. Softer, somehow. Or maybe it was her eyesight that adulthood was doing a number on.
Something had shifted in his expression and he was fixating on his knee. She considered bumping it again.
“You’re looming,” he said quietly.
“My bad,” she said, swaying closer.
It had been a long week culminating in a nothing date. She’d spent more time talking to the guy in this tiny kitchen than she had talking to what’s-his-face at their tiny table. Justin was boring, but Brick was a jerk. This was worse, by all accounts. If someone like Justin pushed her, she wouldn’t even tip over. Brick pushed her and she wanted to shove his face in the dirt.
And then what? she thought, drifting ever closer, her knee moving between his legs. He had to tip his head back to look up at her. She didn’t hate it.
He sighed and dropped his pen as his gaze pulled elsewhere. It annoyed her.
Chicken.
“I guess I just love stickin’ it to Dad.” This last word was accompanied by a slight widening of his gaze, a waggle of his head, and a complete, total lack of affection. She wondered which Dad he was referring to.
Buttercup and Butch entered the kitchen together then, hands entwined, and Blossom backed out of Brick’s personal space. The movement drew Buttercup’s attention, and she dropped Butch’s hand and instantly pulled away from her boyfriend, or sex buddy, or whatever they were.
“You still here?” Buttercup asked Blossom, reaching up to rub her neck. Or cover it. She didn’t move her hand back down, so Blossom had her suspicions.
Blossom nodded at Brick. “I’m making a reservation.”
“Oh,” Buttercup said.
“Oh,” Brick said, and pulled out a different notebook, clearing his throat. Butch was busy blending into the wallpaper and doing a shockingly good job of it, considering he’d never demonstrated an understanding of what an inside voice was.
“You’re not making a ploy to shut me down, are you?” Buttercup asked.
Blossom indicated the wallpaper and asked, “How long has this been going on?”
“Ain’t your business,” Buttercup responded automatically.
“There’re openings next Wednesday,” Brick interrupted.
Blossom drifted over to peer at the calendar herself, looming again. “Wednesday’s no good. I’ve got council meetings every Wednesday.” She reached out to tap the date in question, her arm brushing Brick’s shoulder as she did so. Without waiting for him to make another suggestion, she flipped the page herself. “Here we go. Next next Monday.”
Brick’s shoulder bumped her as he wordlessly added her name to a list of five in that little square. She watched his gaze dart to her arm, a hair’s breadth away from his cheek. “How many?” he asked, then, before she could respond, “Bringing another boring date?”
Blossom ignored her sister’s snort and placed a hand on Brick’s shoulder, close to his neck.
“Put me down for one,” she said, squeezing. Her hand trailed along the nape of his neck and she felt him swallow as she pulled away. “I’ll help with the dishes afterwards.”
-fin-
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I LOVE THE REDS
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All I really have to say after enjoying this delightful vignette is DAYUMN GURL GET YOU SOME