[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Roses

Series: Flying Red Barrel

Genre: Romance?

Length: 2291 words

B/D: I actually started maybe three Valentine's Day themed stories this year, and this one was the only one that made it in time. An extremely hurried story for busy pilots, maybe? I might polish up the others later, when time allows.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

He was a professional airman. He delivered cargo, flew through storms, fought off pirates. He wasn’t afraid of anything, although Islay had beaten a healthy respect for the forces of meteorology and mathematics into his head. There was no reason for him to hesitate.

But his body felt heavier than usual as he pulled on his boots and tied his scarf. His heart thudded as he put on his boots and his goggles. His stomach sank when he checked his cargo. He wondered whether it was just his head playing tricks on him, or if it was a portent of coming disaster; airmen were superstitious, and he was no different.

But, no matter how deep his misgivings ran, he had a job to do. And on the good name of the fledgling guild, and on his own as the Blue Crow, Peat had a job to do.

On the face of it, it was a simple job. A shipment had arrived at headquarters, and all he had to do was load it onto his plane, take it to the destination, and then await further instructions from the recipient.

But in the air, as in the sea, the devil was in the details. The destination was Marc’s workshop, the date of delivery was Valentine’s Day, and the cargo was box after box of bright red roses.

It was the world’s most obvious setup, and the only question was who had done it. There were a lot of candidates. He and Marc were the bright stars of a new generation of pilots; the world saw them together more often than it saw them apart, although mostly it saw them bickering. A girl and a boy in that kind of situation would always attract… speculation. Evidently, Marc didn’t see the point in discouraging it, and although he’d been more vocal at first, he’d eventually realised that he could only punch so many people in the face before it came back to bite him.

But even closer to home, there were people to be suspicious of. He didn’t think it was the kind of thing Sherry would do, but nobody really seemed to understand what was going through her head most of the time. His current suspicion was that it was Islay, and she intended it as a test of his professionalism and his ability to put the work before his own feelings.

Or – and he hardly dared think it – it might even have been Marc herself. Maybe as some sort of prank, he thought. Or maybe – just maybe – she was hinting at something. The work order had been very specific, Islay said. The client had asked for him by name.

Whatever the case might be, he wasn’t getting any closer to the answer by sitting in the hanger. So he packed the roses into his cargo hold, box after box after box, even throwing out his missiles and machine gun bullets to make room, and he sat in the pilot’s seat as he had many times before. It was a clear, bright day as he taxi’d out into the runway, with only the barest smattering of clouds. Soon, he would rise above them.

And whatever the conspiracy was, and whoever had pranked him with these roses – he would rise above them, too.

+

“G’mornin’, Blue Crow. Why’re you making such a racket at – huaaaaah – this time of day?”

Peat frowned down at her from the pilot’s seat. Not only had she broken off in the middle of her greeting for a long, indulgent yawn, but she had the bleary-eyed look of somebody who’d been pulling jobs into the wee hours of the morning again. She had straw in her hair, as usual. He hated that. It always made him want to pick it out, and he never could because it would be weird.

“Delivery,” he said, sharply. “You’ll have to sign.”

“Huh? Ah, yeah,” she replied, waving the concern away with as if it was a fly. “Come on inside. I just put on a pot of coffee.”

“The delivery–”

“It’ll sit.”

She turned and began to amble back to the kitchen, yawning all the way. With a long-suffering sigh, he swung himself out of the pilot’s seat and followed.

Although he’d been into Marc’s workshop a few times, it wasn’t often that he went into her house. Like most places in the area, it was an old farmhouse; the workshop that housed the famous Red Barrel used to be a barn, complete with a hayloft that he was convinced Marc slept in from time to time. The house itself was full of rugged timber, with floorboards that creaked just enough to be reassuring.

She shuffled through the hall – she’d come outside in her slippers, he noted with vague disapproval – and into the kitchen, which looked almost like a regular kitchen until you looked a little closer and saw an adjustable wrench lying with the knives and forks on the draining board. The whole place smelled like an odd mix of engine grease and suspiciously high-end coffee, the latter of which he was offered in a tiny cup. At first, he almost scoffed, but after throwing it back in one-and-a-half gulps, he did perhaps wish it had been a little tinier.

“Go easy on that stuff, or you’re gonna have the jitters all day,” she said placidly, sipping from a much bigger cup herself. “Don’t need your trigger finger any twitchier than it already is.”

“Like you’re one to talk, Red Barrel.”

As much as he hated to admit it, he was already feeling fidgety. His plan had been to drop off the roses and get out as quickly as possible, to minimise any possible discomfort. But here he was, still without a signature, watching Marc leisurely drink coffee. He didn’t have any other missions scheduled for the day, but she didn’t know that; it felt like she was intentionally taunting him. He tapped his fingers on the side of his empty cup irritably, and fought the urge to pace. It didn’t go unnoticed.

“What’s the matter, Blue Crow? Don’t tell me the coffee already got to you.”

“No, but we’re wasting time,” he snapped.

“Aw, don’t worry about it,” she said, pointing him to a handsome grandfather clock that was well-maintained but in need of some polish. “You delivered them a half-hour ahead of time, so we can get some breakfast if you like.”

He pulled down his goggles and looked at her as if he were scouring the skies for enemy aircraft. “It was you, wasn’t it? Who ordered those roses. Why? Did you do it to mess with me? Or–”

“Peat? You’re shouting. You, uh… you feeling alright? Have you been working too hard or something? I didn’t order the roses.” Her tone was still carefully pleasant, but it had lost the placidness it had before. There was a rising undertone of anger there, hiding below the surface – the fighting spirit that leapt to the fray whenever she sat in the cockpit.

“Don’t lie to me. The only people who knew about this job were Islay, and me. Confidentiality means nobody else saw the job order, and we both know what Islay’s like about that. So the only way – the only way – you could know when that delivery was scheduled is if you ordered it yourself. So, what, Red Barrel? Were you just trying to play with my head? Or you just didn’t think anybody else would get you any flowers?”

He was aware, in his heart of hearts, that the last bit was unnecessary. He didn’t need to spit the words the way he had, and really, he was getting worked up over an entirely harmless prank. He became much more aware of it when, diplomatic as always, Marc stood up, leaned over the table and socked him square in the jaw.

“Watch your mouth, Blue Crow. I don’t care what’s going through your head, you’ve got no place speaking to me like that in my own home. After I gave you coffee, too!” At some point between his getting hit by her (surprisingly respectable) haymaker and him spiraling to the floor, her wrench had magically vanished from the draining board and reappeared in her hand. “I didn’t order the flowers, anyway, so I don’t know what you’re getting so worked up about. If you were wondering, why didn’t you just look at the order?”

It occurred to him, as he looked at Marc’s kitchen ceiling, that there was a slim chance he was in the wrong, and a much greater chance that he would regret it if he didn’t immediately say so. Still, he had a small amount of pride, so he dragged himself off the floor, wiped his mouth, and did his best to look as though he hadn’t just been clobbered by a girl a head shorter than he was.

“Islay said the client requested to be kept anonymous,” he muttered.

“Can’t see why she’d do that,” Marc replied smartly. “Anybody with half a brain could figure out who ordered them.”

“Who?”

“Fernet, of course. You know how expensive roses are this time of year? Who else do you know with money to spend on a whole shipment of them?”

“So why’d she have them delivered to you?”

“Because she needs two planes for the second part of the job,” Marc said irritably, knocking back the rest of her coffee in one gulp. “And she didn’t give any instructions on that bit either, I guess.”

He shook his head silently, and Marc gave him a look that was honestly as angry as any she had given him so far. It said that she would be having words with Fernet, that they would be fighting words, and that there might be actual fighting directly following them. Not impressed was an understatement.

“It’s like a leaflet drop,” she explained, shoving him roughly out of the kitchen. “We’ve got to fly over the town, open the cargo hold, and drop the roses as we go over. Fernet came up with it herself – she said it’ll be like a publicity stunt to draw attention to our guild. That’s why she asked for me and you, specifically. We’ve got the most recognisable planes.”

“What about Sherry? Seems like the Rose Windmill would make the most sense for this kind of thing.”

“Good luck getting Sherry to do anything without throwing a loop-de-loop in. Now come on. Since somebody’s too busy to sit down and enjoy breakfast, we might as well start loading my half of the roses.”

She all but marched him to the workshop, where they spent the next twenty minutes in an angry, uncomfortable silence, picking roses carefully out of the individual crates they’d been packed in and laying them one-by-one in the bomb bay. Marc put on her heavy workshop gloves for the task, and conspicuously declined to offer him a pair. He took off his piloting gloves (which were too soft for the job) and proceeded to tear his fingers apart on the thorns.

“Hey, Red Barrel?”

No response.

“I’m sorry for blowing up at you. I got in my own head.”

Still no response.

“What I said was low. …I appreciate the coffee.”

Perfect stillness.

“Yeah, well. I’m sorry for slugging you,” she said, after a long, long silence.

“No you’re not.”

“No, I’m not, because you deserved it. But I accept your apology anyway.”

He couldn’t exactly argue with that, although he wanted to. He got the feeling that he’d still be arguing with Marc in ten or twenty years’ time. He sighed, and continued to pack away the roses in the bomb bay of his plane. She was probably already done, damn her.

When they were done, they drove the planes out onto the rough-hewn runway outside the workshop, ready to take off. They had a little time before departure; they wanted as many people on the streets as possible, for the biggest impact.

“Oi, Red Barrel,” he said at last, and took a rose that he’d kept separate from his cargo. “Happy Valentine’s.”

She looked at him with furrowed eyebrows, perhaps considering whether she’d hit him too hard earlier and somehow damaged his brain. “Uh, Peat? You know I know where that rose came from, right?”

He thrust his free hand into his pocket. “Y-yeah. But if I said nobody would give you flowers and then nobody did, I’d feel like an ass. So here’s one to start you off. Fernet won’t miss it.”

“You really do just worry about the weirdest things, don’t you? Sorry, but you can keep it. I’ll take my chances. Try again next year if you like,” she said, and pulled on her goggles. “Just make sure not to fall out of the sky before then, Blue Crow.”

“Tch. Same to you, Red Barrel. I won’t bring you flowers if you end up in hospital.”

“Such a gentleman.”

“You’re not a lady.”

He retreated to his cockpit, to the comforting sound of an idling plane. It felt like they’d fallen back into their regular rhythm after the events of the morning, and maybe that was all he could ask for. He hoped that, maybe in a year, they would get along better – that the Peat he would become would be able to just spend a morning drinking coffee, without starting an argument over nothing.

He heard the Marc gunning the Red Barrel’s engine, and knew the time had come. Together – or close enough – they took to the skies.

That Valentine’s Day, people would remember the red and blue planes flying above them in the sky, dropping a cloud of roses like a storm.

A/N: Like I said, extremely hurried -- I didn't even start it until Valentine's Day was already in session, so I feel like this could have been better. Hope everybody's having a good holiday anyway!