“thanks for the flowers!”
“what flowers?”
in which they find out you receive a gift from someone that isn't them.
characters; wanderer, alhaitham, kaveh
; i keep seeing that damn tiktok 😐 gender neutral reader, fluff, crack,
WANDERER eyes you skeptically, suspicion being evident on his pale features as he scans your expression up and down. has he already caught on to your little prank?
“first of all, who in their right mind would court you? and with some sappy flowers as well?”
you return his unamused gaze, finding him very unfunny.
“you do know that you're dating me, right?”
“unfortunately.” he clicks his tongue, further leaning towards your face, brows still furrowed as if he's trying to decipher something, gazing at you with an unreadable expression that has your resolve crumbling. “is this another one of your antics to get a rise out of me? if so, it's not working.”
his lips break out into a grin upon watching your eyes widen. but your shock doesn't last long—him immediately seeing through your silly scheme isn't an unexpected outcome, funnily enough.
“you're too serious sometimes.” you pout at him whilst he scoffs, “just humor me. what would you actually do if i managed to receive flowers from another?”
“it's simple—you can't.” comes his swift and confident reply, offending you as you stare at him incredulously, weighing the implication of his words.
“you speak of me like i'm the most unattractive person in teyvat—what do you mean i can't?”
“you're an idiot. would i have really chosen you if you were unattractive in any way?” he crosses his arms before facing you completely, indigo hues staring directly into yours.
“i already eliminated all those who dare steal you from me.”
...?
you freeze on the spot, processing what you've just heard.
“...excuse me?”
“—just kidding. i'm no longer that type of person, hah.” he huffs out a derisive laugh, yet his humorous farce does not meet his eyes.
not finding any comfort in his supposed testament of it only being a joke, you opt to stare at him confusingly in return. weirdo.
ALHAITHAM, much like the wanderer, catches on to the prank immediately. whether it's intuition, scarily precise deduction or just the way you generally act weird when it comes to lying to his face—he still figured you out in the end like it's nothing.
but unlike the wanderer, he decides to humor you and play along. what a good boyfriend.
“...you mean you didn't give me the flowers?” you flutter your lashes at him, a horrible and terribly inefficient way to convince him that the whole thing with the flowers is actually real. alhaitham suddenly has the rare urge to laugh. since when did you act like this?
alhaitham shifts in his seat. “no. who do you think it's from?”
“hm.” you hum thoughtfully, bringing a finger to your chin as if in deep thought. the scribe briefly wonders how far you're willing to take this joke. but he digresses—the chances of him actually getting mad at you are akin to that of kaveh finally shutting up—
“maybe kaveh? he grew an interest in flowers recently, so i've heard. maybe he sent some as like a sign of friendship or something along those lines...there's no way it means something else, riiiiiight?”
alhaitham pauses his train of thought.
speak of the devil.
momentarily doubting his conclusion that you're just pulling a prank, he quietly glowers at you as if silently telling you to take back your words.
“what about him?”
you immediately cower upon the drop in his tone—raising your arms in defense when alhaitham moves to stalk closer to you. “i was joking! i didn't get any flowers from anyone and last time i conversed with kaveh was when i—”
“let's go.” he grabs the back of your collar and drags you along, a newfound heavy weight in his footsteps as an indescribable and uncomfortable feeling creeps up on his neck.
“i really was just joking, 'haitham! i was bored and i wanted to annoy you for a bit! i swear!”
even if it wasn't true, the thought of kaveh gifting you flowers without his knowledge—
alhaitham's expression subconsciously turns sour. quite unlucky that you couldn't witness the extremely scarce sight of jealousy on your boyfriend as you are comically dragged against your will behind him.
“the nearest flower shop is just around the corner. tell me if anything piques your interest.” he says in way that has no room for argument. he is getting you flowers now.
KAVEH falls for it, obviously. not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed outside his designated profession, you see.
“i don't remember buying any flowers...” he mutters to himself, the gears in his head turning. it's almost laughable when he finally pieces your words together, a look of disbelief painfully present on his faxe but by some miracle, you resisted the urge to burst out in giggles right then and there. “wait...i didn't send any!”
“is that so...then who would send me flowers other than you?” you edge him on, instigating at its finest, much poking a sleeping bear with a stick while you circle it tauntingly.
an actual enraged kaveh is something you've never seen before, just some tantrums and endless ranting about some clients and his roommate. you've always wanted to see it—just not directed at you, hopefully.
“that's...ah, people already know you're dating me though, so it can't be someone hitting on you. maybe it's just from a relative or—”
“really?” you tilt your head, feigning a bit of confusion. “then i suppose i should keep these red roses then. i'll ask tighnari how to keep them alive, i guess.”
“w-wait, wait—could you repeat that?”
“hm?” you face him, “i'll ask tighnari?”
“no, the one before that.”
“...i'll keep the red roses?” you had to hold yourself back from grinning ear to ear when his eyes widen.
it's not unexpected that someone versed in the beauty of art would recognize one of the most common flower's meaning. quite the handy trivia.
he immediately stands up, grabbing your hand in tow as you yelp in surprise at his abruptness.
“kaveh?!”
“those flowers mean love! like, actual romantic love! i'll burn it for you right now! where'd you put it!?” the intensity of his ruby gaze sends shudders down your spine.
“it's not like i reciprocate it—”
“still, no one other than me should be sending those...!” kaveh tightens his grip on your hands, “i don't like the idea of someone hitting on you. i can't let anyone attempt to take you away from me...”
you blink. “kaveh...”
“—that's why show it to me now! or i'll bite you!”
“okay, okay! jeez...”
now...how are you going to break the news to him that it was actually yellow roses, and most definitely not from an admirer?
the biggest hater of my work is myself. wtf am i writing bruh ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ
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A chef!AU, maybe? In any case, a story in which Kara and Lena meet through one of them preparing/serving/etc food for the other and build their relationship based on that.
(also on ao3.)
“I’m telling you, Alex. It’s her.”
At three pm on a Tuesday their restaurant is characteristically dead, save for the one lone customer Kara is spying on from behind the kitchen doors. The woman is perched, a little perilously, on a barstool at the counter. It’s the one that’s closest to their register, the one with the wobbly leg that Alex keeps telling Kara to fix. One of her red-soled heels is dangling from an impatiently bouncing left foot.
“This is the fourth time this week she’s come in here,” Kara says. “You don’t think that’s just a little bit suspicious?”
Alex shrugs, fully committed to her task of mincing onions. “Maybe she’s just a big fan of Italian food.”
“No way,” Kara says. “No woman who looks like that would put something in her mouth that wasn’t clearly marked gluten-free and vegan. Give me your phone.”
Alex rolls her eyes dramatically as she elbows it over. “Tell me again how you’re totally over Siobhan.”
“Oral sex isn’t a moral issue!” Kara takes a decisive breath while she unlocks her sister’s phone with practiced ease. “Whatever. Water under the bridge.”
“Uh-huh.”
“A love for pasta also doesn't explain why I heard this woman answer a call yesterday with a different name than the one that’s on her credit card,” Kara points out, before snapping a quick picture through the porthole window.
“Okay, now you’re being creepy,” Alex says.
“Shut up,” Kara tells her. “I’m texting Winn.”
Kara eyes the woman at the counter while she waits for his reply. The subject of her suspicion—Lena, she’d called herself on the phone; Tess Mercer, it had said on her mastercard—twists a soft-looking lock of dark hair around her finger as she studies their menu. The way the sunlight sets it ablaze almost makes Kara take a second picture, purely for its artistic merit.
Alex dabs at her onion-induced tears with the cuff of her sleeve. “Let it go, Kara,” she sighs.
“Let it go? Let it—” Kara whirls back to face her, throwing her hands up in frustration. “Do you want The Tower to end up like Winn and James’ steakhouse? Or are you fine with getting swindled by this—this… villain?”
“Of course not.” Alex looks at her like she’s stupid. “But even if this woman is your so-called ‘food influencer’, what do you suggest we do about it? It’s not as if we can bully her into giving us a fair review.”
Kara squares her jaw and sets her fists firmly on her hips. “No,” she declares, her tone grim. “But we can teach her a little about journalistic integrity.” She blows at a lock of hair that’s fallen in her face. “And also, possibly, credit card fraud.”
Alex narrows her eyes at her. “Kara,” she warns, putting down her knife. Her voice is low and cautious, as if she’s talking to the rowdy raccoon that moved into their dumpster three weeks ago instead of to her baby sister. “Let’s just take a breath and think about this for a m—”
Kara is already gone, the doors to the kitchen swinging closed behind her. Sliding into the cluttered space behind the counter, she crosses her arms and then drops her elbows on the bar, leaning what she belatedly realizes is probably a little too close to her adversary. She’s close enough to make out the individual downy hairs on her chin and the lines in her painted lips, which are still pursed thoughtfully in what Kara is sure would look like an attractive pout to someone who didn’t know any better.
But Kara knows so much better.
“Let me guess,” she remembers to get out, much less biting than originally intended. “Today you’ll be having the fifth entrée down the list.”
As soon as their eyes meet over the miniscule amount of space left between them, Kara knows leaning in was a fatal mistake. Her nemesis blinks up at her with wide, startled eyes that remind Kara of the glass pebbles she finds on the beach on her morning walks, not-quite-blue and not-quite-green, and for a moment Kara’s brain sputters out as if someone abruptly turned off the flames that kept it cooking.
But the woman recovers fast, like the scheming scoundrel that she is. She guiltily shutters her eyes behind thick, charcoal lashes, and Kara’s temper revives at the observation that her enemy isn’t as good of an actress as she thinks she is.
“I’ve actually been thinking of breaking my own rule,” she says, with a smile that lands somewhere between self-deprecating and apologetic. “I may give in and order the same thing you served me yesterday.” Kara goes hot all over with righteous indignation at the rich timbre of the woman’s voice, the almost flirtatious lilt it takes on when she adds, “I haven’t been able to stop dreaming about it.”
Kara pulls back a little in an effort to escape that curious gaze, the enticing scent of the woman’s perfume. It’s sweet enough to drown out even Alex’s mountain of onions. “I know what you’re doing,” she blusters.
The—frankly unfairly beautiful—soulless grifter stares at her, stricken. “I’m—I’m sorry?”
“You should be,” Kara says. “I know who you are.” And then, as if she’s putting down the last card in a game of Uno, “Lena.”
The woman goes very still for a moment, and then the corners of her lips tug down in a bitter semblance of a smile. “I see,” she says. She’s rigid, regal; she’s royalty perched on a wobbly wooden stool. “And am I to assume that’s enough for you to turn down my patronage?”
Kara’s resolve wobbles, too. She hadn’t expected her adversary—Lena, she now knows—to roll over so easily. “Well, yeah, obviously,” she flusters, her energy suddenly too large and lumbering in the face of Lena’s deference. “Winn and James are family.”
“Family.” There’s a flicker of wistfulness in Lena’s voice, before confusion colors her features. “So the cold shoulder,” she says. “It’s personal?”
Kara scoffs. The fraudster doesn’t even remember the names of her latest victims. Typical. “It was their steakhouse that you razed to the ground last month,” Kara reminds her.
Lena blinks at her. “The establishment just up the road?” She raises a critical eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure they set themselves up for failure when they decided to name their restaurant Misteak.”
Kara huffs. Her air quotes are appropriately vicious when she says, “They were doing just fine before your slanderous ‘review’ went viral.”
Lena does a remarkably convincing impression of someone who is genuinely flabbergasted. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Liar.”
Lena’s shocked laughter is bright but brief. It’s the first time Kara has heard her laugh. It’s maddeningly attractive and deeply annoying.
“Okay,” Lena says. She folds her arms in front of her chest and leans back a little in her seat, unaware of its delicate disposition. A smirk tugs at one corner of her mouth. “Tell me,” she says, her eyes narrowing. “Who do you think I am, exactly?”
Kara leans in close again, refusing to allow Lena to get the upper hand. She’d like to wipe that smirk from Lena’s face—manually, if need be—preferably, even, if it means she’d get to smudge that infuriatingly immaculate lipstick with her thumb—
“You,” Kara charges, in an effort to drown out that unhelpful thought, “are a fraud. You call yourself a ‘mystery food critic’ on TikTok, but really you’re blackmailing businesses into buying a favorable review.”
“Hey, um.” Alex has followed her out of the kitchen, holding her phone. “So. Winn texted back, and he says—”
But Lena laughs again, her guarded posture melting down to unmistakable relief. “I’m so sorry,” she says, her voice a high warble. “That sounds awful. And also extremely illegal. Have you reported this person to the authorities? I can get you in touch with an excellent lawyer, if you’d like.”
Kara doesn’t know if she feels more outraged or confused.
…Or possibly some secret third thing.
“So you’re telling me—” Kara barks out a disbelieving laugh. “You’re saying you’re not her.”
“This, ehm— Tic Tac person?” When Lena’s dark lashes flutter, something in Kara’s chest flutters too. “No.”
Impossible. “Then why have you been in here every day this week?” Kara interrogates, the full force of evidence she’s collected behind it. “When neither one of us has seen you here even once, since we opened?”
Alex rolls her eyes. “I told you I wasn’t sure whether I’d seen her here before,” she points out. “Also, Winn says—”
“Oh please,” Kara scoffs, her eyes fixed on Lena, who has propped her elbows on the counter again, closer now than she’d been the last time their eyes met. “As if you could forget a woman as beautiful as—” Kara’s gaze drops to Lena’s mouth, unbidden, when Lena parts those rude, ruby lips. “...You.”
Alex stares.
Kara swallows.
Lena blinks; two times fast, and then again, after a beat, slow and sticky, her eyes darkening.
“So you may as well come out with it,” Kara croaks out what little remains of her anger. “There’s something you want more than our fettuccine.”
Lena’s cheeks have turned a treacherously charming shade of pink. “I suppose you’re right about that one, at least,” she admits after a beat.
In Kara’s peripheral vision, Alex frantically slides her hand across her throat. Kara frowns at her, telegraphing a wordless what is your problem but finding no satisfactory answer in the crimson shade her sister’s face has taken on.
“Yeah, well,” she says, almost disappointed, fumbling to fill the space left by Lena’s confession. “I’m telling you right now that it’s never going to happen.”
Alex clears her throat with startling force. “Winn wants to know,” she says, reading from her phone, “Who’s the hot chick?”
When Kara returns her gaze to the woman on the other side of the counter, she gulps. Lena is somehow even closer than she was before. She’s also fully propping herself up now on the laminate surface between them, granting Kara a glimpse of freckled cleavage that in no possible universe could be interpreted as unintentional.
“So,” Lena drawls. “What you’re saying is you’re not going to give me your number?”
Kara’s throat is suddenly very dry.
“Huh?” she manages, but only just barely.
“I was hoping,” Lena says slowly, that maddening smirk once again tugging up the corner of her mouth, “that you’d maybe like to—”
Lena shifts in her seat, crossing her legs in what is bound to become a devastatingly seductive pose, but the barstool decides in exactly that moment that's it’s finally had enough. Lena yelps as it gives out beneath her with a dramatic snap, one of its rickety limps flying across the floor as if celebrating its first taste of freedom, and Kara’s never considered herself to be very quick, but here she is anyway, on the other side of the counter in what feels like less than a second, one hand gripping Lena’s forearm, the other slipping smoothly around her waist.
“—fuck,” Lena gasps up at her. She feels good, in Kara’s hands, slight but pleasantly heavy, like the santoku knife Alex has forbidden Kara from touching ever again. “Well,” Lena says. “That’s. Perhaps not the way I would have phrased it, especially in front of your friend—”
They both glance over at Alex, but she’s disappeared, the swaying of the kitchen doors the only indication she was ever there.
“O-kay,” Kara says.
Lena grins. “Okay?”
Kara mentally rewinds the conversation and feels her ears burn at the realization of what she just agreed to. “I mean,” she amends. “We could, maybe, grab something to eat first?”
Something devious sparks in Lena’s terrifyingly gorgeous face. She glances down at Kara’s arms before blinking back up at her again and smirking. “I thought you already had.”
And, goodness gracious.
Kara is about to be in so much trouble.
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