So, this is an old prompt I found. I couldn't find the ask in my inbox though, sorry!
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âSteve, you have to tell him, you canât keep going like this,â Robin said quietly as she rubbed his back. He was hunched over a bucket they kept in the back room of Scoops Ahoy, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. âWhat are they this time?â She asked in the same quiet voice, peering over him to see into the bucket.
Inside sat a mix of bright red crumpled petals and softer pink petals clinging to a yellow center. Steve took one final deep breath and then stood up, refusing to look at the stupid flower bucket. âLooks like wild roses and red carnations,â he dismissed.
âWhat do those mean?â
âHow should I know,â he snapped. He turned around to face her, ready for a battle, only to be met with the most compassionate look heâd ever seen on her face. All of the anger and defiance left him in a huff, and he deflated. â âm sorry Robs, I justâŚâ
âI know,â she said, âTammy Thompson, remember?â
âYeah, but you werenât chucking flowers over Tammy the Muppet.â
âYouâve always been the more dramatic one.â A small smile curled at the corners of her mouth, and he was helpless to copy. She always somehow knew exactly what he needed to hear, which was why she was the only person to know about his flowery affliction. After they had realized the petals were changing every so often, she had even returned to him with a book on flowers and their meanings. Heâs nearly memorized the thing by now.
Itâs not like he could have hidden it from her forever either. Not when, after every time Billy Hargrove dropped off his little sister to hang out with the other kids, Steve would run to the back and cough up a handful of petals.
âSteve, seriously though? You have to talk to him before this gets any worse. Itâs already been almost two months.â
âAnd whatâs talking going to do Robin? Kill me faster when he inevitably rejects me because heâs straight? Great. Perfect plan.â
Before she could explain why it was so important for him to talk to Billy, there was the obnoxious âdingâ of the bell out front. Steve straightened up and shot Robin another look and said, âDonât worry, Iâll get it.â
âSteve, I know youâre avoi-â The swinging door cut off the rest of whatever Robin was going to say, but Steve would almost rather hear the end of her rant than face what was ahead, because the person who had rung the stupid bell was none other than Billy.
Of course.
He gulped, already feeling the flutter of petals in his trachea, and stepped forward.
âBack again, Hargrove? Couldnât resist me?â
âYeah, yeah Harrington. Keep it in your pants. I just forgot that Heather had asked me to pick her up a scoop of chocolate.â
âOh,â Steve tried to mask the surprise in his voice, he had never heard Billy mention a girl named Heather. âHeather? She, like, your friend or something?â He tried to play it off, and began preparing the scoop of chocolate.
Billy gave him an odd look, possibly from the strain in his voice as he fought back what was sure to be a cascade of flowers, or from the weirdness of Steve asking him a semi-personal question.
âYeah, or something,â he muttered, taking the ice cream as soon as Steve held it out, and paying for it with a five-dollar bill. âKeep the change,â he said as he rushed off, probably to deliver the ice cream to his girlfriend.
The thought of the word made the petals multiply, and he rushed to the backroom and knelt over the bucket once again. Dutifully, Robin retook her position of rubbing between his shoulder blades and whispering soft words of encouragement. It wasnât until he had filled the bucket halfway that he noticed small drops of blood speckling the yellow petals of the hyacinths. Fuck.
Billy
He barely made it to the mallâs bathroom before he was coughing up those damned petals. This time they had turned small and white, almost like the orange blossoms he had seen back in California, but too small.
It didnât matter anyway, what mattered was that it had been a whole month and he still had no idea why he was coughing up petals. All he knew for sure was that every so often they would change, and it seemed to happen mostly after he interacted with Harri- Steve. He was Steve now, or Pretty Boy, or Bambi that one time when they were both high off their asses at the Quarry, when Billy hadnât been able to stop staring at those big, brown eyes and thinking of Disney fairytale bullshit.
Finally finished coughing up flowers, he stood up and flushed the toilet. He took a step towards the sink and felt something squishy under his boot. He looked down, and saw the ice cream cone he had gone back to the stupid ass ice cream place smashed on the dirty tile.
âFuck. God fucking fucked me.â
He didnât want to go back to that shit hole for a third time, heâd just suffer Heatherâs wrath when he got to work. He walked over to the paper towel dispenser and cleaned off as much of the ice cream as he could. Then he threw away the soggy mess and walked out of the bathroom.
He drove like a bat out of hell to the Hawkins public pool, ignoring every speed limit sign he saw and blasting his radio to drown out thoughts of petals and Disney movies. He arrived ten minutes late to his shift, but Heather wasnât nearly as insufferable as he had thought sheâd be. Instead of demanding to know where her ice cream was, the first thing out of her mouth was, âAre thoseâŚflower petals in your hair?â Fuck.
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Flower Meanings:
Wild Roses- Pleasure and Pain.
Red Carnations- My heart aches for you.
Candytuft- Indifference
Yellow Hyacinths- Jealousy
Mock Oranges- Deceit
Also, my prompts are open! Feel free to send anything in!
tag team: @lostnoise @trashmouth-hargrove @catharrington @trashycatarcade @thesummerof84 @a-jynx @ofbardsandmonsters @opaldraws @yikesharringrove (lmk if you would like to be added/removed from the list, especially now after so long haha)
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