Author's Notes: Written for
Author's choice, author's choice, Ice plant - Your looks freeze me. Muraki/Tsuzuki. Happy 112th birthday, Tsu!
A simple trip to the garden center to fetch some plant food for his indoor plants and a bag of manure for the outdoor plants: Tsuzuki decided to have a look around the garden center to see what new plants the growers had brought in.
He spotted an unusual flowering plant he hadn't seen before, a tallish plant with white flowers, their petals unusually sparse and stiff; there was a silvery-greyish cast to the leaves as well, a combination of colors that, along with the straight but graceful posture to the plant, put him in mind of a pale, poised being who chilled his heart, someone who habitually dressed in icy shades of grey and white.
He trembled a bit, looking away, deciding he needed to warm himself up by seeing if there were any new varieties of geraniums. But he'd hardly taken a step when a long, lean shadow swooped over him.
"It's called an ice plant," an all too familiar sardonic voice said behind him. Tsuzuki jolted and dropped his bags. "The Victorians called it that, giving it a rather chilly meaning, just as they applied so many meanings to so many plants. Would you like to know what this one means?"
"Muraki, what are *you* doing here, at a garden center?" Tsuzuki snapped, trying to distract himself by bending to pick up his bags.
Muraki stepped into his line of sight, clad somewhat uncharacteristically in tan utility pants neatly pressed and tucked into high-topped black shoes, topped off with a tan canvas shirt-jacket over a collarless white cotton shirt. "I was merely seeing about the delivery of a new wisteria plant: my garden needs one for a grotto in the rear," he said. Not a lie, as Tsuzuki realized when he looked past the other's shoulder, into the near distance where a few workers were loading a large wisteria plant with a root ball wrapped in burlap, into the back of a stake-bed truck. "But I think you knew the meaning of that plant, since you turned away from it so suddenly."
"Why should I care about the damn meaning of a plant?"
Muraki smirked at him. "Because it's similar to the reaction which I seem to inspire in you: it means 'Your looks freeze me'."
Tsuzuki glared at him as he rose to his feet. "Freeze me? You make me blood boil!"
"Mmm, likely your flesh compensating for how your soul and your senses respond to me," Muraki replied.
"Do you think my world revolves around you or something?! Well, let me remind you that it doesn't," Tsuzuki snapped. "If you need any proof, take this!" And with that, he tore a corner off the bag of manure and hurled some in Muraki's general direction. The pale intruder side-stepped a second too late: the full force missed him, but it still ended up on his trousers.
"You realize that you're going to have to pay for that, as well my laundry," Muraki teased. "With your civil servant's salary and the way you spend your pay on sweets, can you really
afford that?"
"How do you know that? Are you snooping on my tax returns or something?!" Tsuzuki snapped, tempted to dump the rest over the nuisance's head.
"It's a simple inference, via common sense," Muraki said, taking out a handkerchief and brushing himself off. "But I think we can arrange a fair trade: you can come home with me and assist my gardener for a day. He'd be happy to have an extra pair of hands; I assure you, I'll see that it's worth your while."
"This isn't happening," Tsuzuki whined, but that didn't make him dig in his heels as Muraki hustled him toward the crew with the wisteria plant.